Excerpts from FLATLAND
-Edwin A. Abbott
“...as a distinct and fundamental proposition- that every human being in Flatland is a Regular Figure, that is to say of regular construction. By this I mean that a woman must not only be a line, but a straight line; that an artisan or soldier mush have to of his sides equal; that tradesmen must have three sides equal;lawyers, four side equal, and generally, that in every Polygon, all the sides must be equal.”
“It is with us a law of Nature that the brain of the Isosceles class shall begin at half a degree, or thirty minutes, and shall increase (if it increases at all) by half a degree in every generation; until the goal of 60° is reached, when the condition of serfdom is quitted, and the freeman enters the class of Regulars.”
“...This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of Mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his perimeter or circumference. Three feet being the average perimeter it follows that, in a Polygon of three hundred sides each side will be no more that the hundredth part of a foot in length, or litter more than the tenth part of an inch; an in a Polygon of six or seven hundred sides the sides are little larger than the diameter of a Spaceland pinhead. It is always assumed, by courtesy, that the Chief Circle for the time being has ten
thousand sides.”