Flatland
“that was only my fun, and of course I meant nothing at all by it; and we did not know anything then about the new Law; and I don’t think I said anything about the Third Dimension; and I am sure I did not say one word about ‘Upward, not Northward,’ for that would be such nonsense, you know. How could a thing move Upward, and not Northward? Upward and not Northward! Even if I were a baby, I could not be so absurd as that. How silly it is! Ha! ha! ha!”
“Not at all silly,” said I, losing my temper; “here for example, I take this Square,” and, at the word, I grasped a moveable Square, which was lying at hand—“and I move it, you see, not Northward but—yes, I move it Upward—that is to say, Northward but I move it somewhere—not exactly like this, but somehow—” Here I brought my sentence to an inane conclusion, shaking the Square about in a purposeless manner, much to the amusement of my Grandson, who burst out laughing louder than ever, and declared that I was not teaching him, but joking with him; and so saying he unlocked the door and ran out of the room. Thus ended my first attempt to convert a pupil to the Gospel of Three Dimensions.
§22.—How I then tried to diffuse the Theory of Three Dimensions by other means, and of the result.
My failure with my Grandson did not encourage me to communicate my secret to others of my household; yet neither was I led by it to despair of success. Only I saw that I must not wholly rely on the catch-phrase, “Upward, not Northward,” but must rather endeavour to seek a demonstration by setting before the public a clear view of the whole subject; and for this purpose it seemed necessary to resort to writing.
So I devoted several months in privacy to the composition
of a treatise on the mysteries of Three Dimensions. Only, with
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