Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott

Author:Edwin Abbott [Abbott, Edwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION, science fiction, Classics, Hard Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781453253939
Google: h2fFAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-07-01T21:18:11+00:00

SECTION 14

How I Vainly Tried to Explain the Nature of Flatland

THINKING THAT IT WAS TIME to bring down the Monarch from his raptures to the level of common sense, I determined to endeavour to open up to him some glimpses of the truth, that is to say of the nature of things in Flatland. So I began thus: “How does your Royal Highness distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects? I, for my part, noticed by the sense of sight, before I entered your Kingdom, that some of your people are Lines and others Points; and that some of the Lines are larger—”

“You speak of an impossibility,” interrupted the King; “you must have seen a vision, for to detect the difference between a Line and a Point by the sense of sight is, as everyone knows, in the nature of things, impossible, but it can be detected by the sense of hearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained. Behold me—I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, more than six inches of Space—”

“Of Length,” I ventured to suggest.

“Fool,” said he, “Space is Length. Interrupt me again, and I have done.”

I apologized, but he continued scornfully, “Since you are impervious to argument, you shall hear with your ears how by means of my two voices I reveal my shape to my Wives, who are at this moment six thousand miles, seventy yards, two feet, and eight inches away, the one to the North, the other to the South. Listen, I call to them.”

He chirruped and then complacently continued: “My wives at this moment, receiving the sound of one of my voice, closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that one of my mouths is 6.457 inches farther from them than the other, and accordingly know my shape to be 6.457 inches. But you will, of course, understand that my wives do not make this calculation every time they hear my two voices. They made it, once for all, before we were married. But they COULD make it at any time. And in the same way I can estimate the shape of any of my Male subjects by the sense of sound.”

“But how,” said I, “if a Man feigns a Woman’s voice with one of his two voices or so disguises his Southern voice that it cannot be recognized as the echo of the Northern? May not such deceptions cause great inconvenience? And have you no means of checking frauds of this kind by commanding your neighbouring subjects to feel one another?” This, of course, was a very stupid question, for feeling could not have answered the purpose, but I asked with the view of irritating the Monarch, and I succeeded perfectly.

“What!” cried he in horror, “explain your meaning.”

“Feel, touch, come into contact,” I replied.

“If you mean by FEELING,” said the King, “approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death.

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