Thinking that it was time to bring down the Monarch1 from his raptures2 to the level of common sense, I determined3 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 every one 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 ascertained4. Behold5 me — I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over 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 impervious6 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 eight inches away, the one to the North, the other to the South. Listen, I call to them.”
He chirruped, and then complacently7 continued: “My wives at this moment receiving the sound of one of my voices, closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval8 in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that one of my mouths is 6.457 inches further 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 feigns9 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 deceptions10 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 perfectly12.
“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 dominions14 by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail15 form of a Woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since Women cannot be distinguished16 by the sense of sight from Men, the Law ordains17 universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the approximator and the approximated.
“And indeed what possible purpose would be served by this illegal and unnatural18 excess of approximation which you call TOUCHING19, when all the ends of so brutal20 and coarse a process are attained21 at once more easily and more exactly by the sense of hearing? As to your suggested danger of deception11, it is non-existent: for the Voice, being the essence of one’s Being, cannot be thus changed at will. But come, suppose that I had the power of passing through solid things, so that I could penetrate22 my subjects, one after another, even to the number of a billion, verifying the size and distance of each by the sense of FEELING: how much time and energy would be wasted in this clumsy and inaccurate23 method! Whereas now, in one moment of audition24, I take as it were the census25 and statistics, local, corporeal26, mental and spiritual, of every living being in Lineland. Hark, only hark!”
So saying he paused and listened, as if in an ecstasy27, to a sound which seemed to me no better than a tiny chirping28 from an innumerable multitude of lilliputian grasshoppers29.
“Truly,” replied I, “your sense of hearing serves you in good stead, and fills up many of your deficiencies. But permit me to point out that your life in Lineland must be deplorably dull. To see nothing but a Point! Not even to be able to contemplate30 a Straight Line! Nay31, not even to know what a Straight Line is! To see, yet be cut off from those Linear prospects32 which are vouchsafed33 to us in Flatland! Better surely to have no sense of sight at all than to see so little! I grant you I have not your discriminative34 faculty35 of hearing; for the concert of all Lineland which gives you such intense pleasure, is to me no better than a multitudinous twittering or chirping. But at least I can discern, by sight, a Line from a Point. And let me prove it. Just before I came into your kingdom, I saw you dancing from left to right, and then from right to left, with Seven Men and a Woman in your immediate36 proximity37 on the left, and eight Men and two Women on your right. Is not this correct?”
“It is correct,” said the King, “so far as the numbers and sexes are concerned, though I know not what you mean by ‘right’ and ‘left’. But I deny that you saw these things. For how could you see the Line, that is to say the inside, of any Man? But you must have heard these things, and then dreamed that you saw them. And let me ask what you mean by those words ‘left’ and ‘right’. I suppose it is your way of saying Northward38 and Southward.”
“Not so,” replied I; “besides your motion of Northward and Southward, there is another motion which I call from right to left.”
KING. Exhibit to me, if you please, this motion from left to right.
I. Nay, that I cannot do, unless you could step out of your Line altogether.
KING. Out of my Line? Do you mean out of the world? Out of Space?
I. 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.
I. If you cannot tell your right side from your left, I fear that no words of mine can make my meaning clear to you. But surely you cannot be ignorant of so simple a distinction.
KING. I do not in the least understand you.
I. Alas39! 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 extremities40, 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” in any direction? Or how can a man move in the direction of his inside?
I. Well then, since words cannot explain the matter, I will try deeds, and will move gradually out of Lineland in the direction which I desire to indicate to you.
At the word I began to move my body out of Lineland. As long as any part of me remained in his dominion13 and in his view, the King
kept exclaiming, “I see you, I see you still; you are not moving.” But when I had at last moved myself out of his Line, he cried in his shrillest voice, “She is vanished; she is dead.” “I am not dead,” replied I; “I am simply out of Lineland, that is to say, out of the Straight Line which you call Space, and in the true Space, where I can see things as they are. And at this moment I can see your Line, or side — or inside as you are pleased to call it; and I can see also the Men and Women on the North and South of you, whom I will now enumerate41, describing their order, their size, and the interval between each.”
When I had done this at great length, I cried triumphantly42, “Does that at last convince you?” And, with that, I once more entered Lineland, taking up the same position as before.
But the Monarch replied, “If you were a Man of sense — though, as you appear to have only one voice I have little doubt you are not a Man but a Woman — but, if you had a particle of sense, you would listen to reason. You ask me to believe that there is another Line besides that which my senses indicate, and another motion besides that of which I am daily conscious. I, in return, ask you to describe in words or indicate by motion that other Line of which you speak. Instead of moving, you merely exercise some magic art of vanishing and returning to sight; and instead of any lucid43 description of your new World, you simply tell me the numbers and sizes of some forty of my retinue44, facts known to any child in my capital. Can anything be more irrational45 or audacious? Acknowledge your folly46 or depart from my dominions.”
Furious at his perversity47, and especially indignant that he professed48 to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted in no measured terms, “Besotted Being! You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess49 to see, whereas you can see nothing but a Point! You plume50 yourself on inferring the existence of a Straight Line; but I CAN SEE Straight Lines, and infer the existence of Angles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and even Circles. Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the completion of your incomplete self. You are a Line, but I am a Line of Lines, called in my country a Square: and even I, infinitely51 superior though I am to you, am of little account among the great nobles of Flatland, whence I have come to visit you, in the hope of enlightening your ignorance.”
Hearing these words the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry as if to pierce me through the diagonal; and in that same moment there arose from myriads52 of his subjects a multitudinous war-cry, increasing in vehemence53 till at last methought it rivalled the roar of an army of a hundred thousand Isosceles, and the artillery54 of a thousand Pentagons. Spell-bound and motionless, I could neither speak nor move to avert55 the impending56 destruction; and still the noise grew louder, and the King came closer, when I awoke to find the breakfast-bell recalling me to the realities of Flatland.
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1
monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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raptures
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| 极度欢喜( rapture的名词复数 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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impervious
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| adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的 | |
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complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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feigns
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| 假装，伪装( feign的第三人称单数 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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deceptions
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| 欺骗( deception的名词复数 )； 骗术，诡计 | |
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deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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ordains
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的第三人称单数 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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inaccurate
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| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
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audition
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| n.(对志愿艺人等的)面试(指试读、试唱等) | |
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census
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| n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查 | |
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corporeal
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| adj.肉体的，身体的；物质的 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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chirping
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| 鸟叫，虫鸣( chirp的现在分词 ) | |
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grasshoppers
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| n.蚱蜢( grasshopper的名词复数 )；蝗虫；蚂蚱；（孩子）矮小的 | |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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discriminative
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| 有判别力 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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extremities
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| n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地 | |
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41
enumerate
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| v.列举，计算，枚举，数 | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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retinue
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| n.侍从；随员 | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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50
plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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51
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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53
vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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54
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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