Flatland, by A. SquareSeeley, 1884 - Geometry |
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Common terms and phrases
according to Analogy æsthetic angles appear Art of Sight Behold brightness Chief Circle Chromatistes Circular Colour Revolt Configuration Contralto creature cried Cube cut-throat dimness discern distinguish Dodecagon door dream Equilateral Triangle exclaimed existence extremities feel Female Fourth Dimension Geometrical Progression Gospel of Three Grandson half hearing height Hexagon hundred sides imprisonment infer Inhabitants of Flatland inside Isosceles King Land of Three Law of Nature least length Lineland look Lord Lordship Male marriage mean Monarch motion mouth moving mysteries of Spaceland Nature of Flatland Northward offspring once Pentagon perfect perfect Circle Perimeter Plane Polygon Priests Regular replied sense of sight sides equal Sight Recognition silence Soldiers Space speak Sphere Square Straight Line Stranger suppose tablets Third Dimension thou Three Dimensions three inches Tradesman truth Universal Colour Bill unrecognized Dimension Upward utterance vanished vision voice Wentbridge whole Wife Woman Women words World
Popular passages
Page xiii - Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it...
Page 55 - World. Out of your Space. For your Space is not the true Space. True Space is a Plane; but your Space is only a Line. KING If you cannot indicate this motion from left to right by yourself moving in it, then I beg you to describe it to me in words, i...
Page 1 - I, the sole possessor of the truths of Space and of the theory of the introduction of Light from the world of Three Dimensions — as if I were the maddest of the mad! But a truce to these painful digressions: let me return to our houses. The most common form for the construction of a house is five-sided or pentagonal, as in the annexed figure. The two Northern sides RO, OF, constitute the roof, and for the most part have no doors; on the East is a small door for the Women; on the West a much larger...
Page 55 - Well, yes. Out of your World. Out of your Space. For your Space is not the true Space. True Space is a Plane; but your Space is only a Line. King. If you cannot indicate this motion from left to right by yourself moving in it, then I beg you to describe it to me in words.
Page 84 - And once there, shall we stay our upward course ? In that blessed region of Four Dimensions, shall we linger on the threshold of the Fifth, and not enter therein ? Ah, no ! Let us rather resolve that our ambition shall soar with our corporal ascent. Then, yielding to our intellectual onset, the gates of the Sixth Dimension shall fly open ; after that a Seventh, and then an Eighth...
Page 72 - Space that was not Space ; I was myself, and not myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, " Either this is madness or it is Hell." " It is neither," calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, " it is Knowledge ; it is Three Dimensions : open your eye once again and try to look steadily.
Page 55 - Alas! How shall I make it clear- When you move straight on, does it not sometimes occur to you that you could move in some other way, turning your eye round so as to look in the direction towards which your side is now fronting? In other words, instead of always moving in the direction of one of your extremities, do you never feel a desire to move in the direction, so to speak, of your side? King; Never. And what do you mean? How can a man's inside "front
Page 95 - Upward, not Northward"? 2. Whether I could by any diagrams or descriptions (other than the enumeration of imaginary sides and angles) indicate the Figure I was pleased to call a Cube? I declared that I could say nothing more, and that I must commit myself to the Truth, whose cause would surely prevail in the end. The President replied that he quite concurred in my sentiment, and that I could not do better. I must be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; but if the Truth intended that I should emerge...
Page 4 - Isosceles from the ranks of his serfborn ancestors, is welcomed not only by the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges, serve as a most useful barrier against revolution from below. Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of...
Page 80 - O Thou Whom I must no longer address as the Perfection of all Beauty ; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant a sight of thine interior." Sphere. "My what?" /. " Thine interior : thy stomach, thy intestines." Sphere. " Whence this ill-timed impertinent request ? And what mean you by saying that I am no longer the Perfection of all Beauty ? " /, My Lord, your own wisdom has taught me to aspire to One even more great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate to Perfection than yourself. As...