Flatland (Annotated)

This is an annotated version of the book1.contains an updated biography of the author at the end of the book for a better understanding of the text.2.This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errorsI call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make itsnature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live inSpace.Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remainingfixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, butwithout the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much likeshadows--only hard and with luminous edges--and you will then have apretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few yearsago, I should have said "my universe" but now my mind has been openedto higher views of things.In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible thatthere should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I daresay you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight theTriangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have describedthem. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at leastso as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, norcould be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity ofthis I will speedily demonstrate.Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space; and leaningover it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle.But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower youreye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of theinhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny becoming more andmore oval to your view, and at last when you have placed your eyeexactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actuallya Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.The same thing would happen if you were to treat in the same way aTriangle, or Square, or any other figure cut out of pasteboard. Assoon as you look at it with your eye on the edge on the table, you willfind that it ceases to appear to you a figure, and that it becomes inappearance a straight line. Take for example an equilateralTriangle--who represents with us a Tradesman of the respectable class.Fig. 1 represents the Tradesman as you would see him while you werebending over him from above; figs. 2 and 3 represent the Tradesman, asyou would see him if your eye were close to the level, or all but onthe level of the table; and if your eye were quite on the level of thetable (and that is how we see him in Flatland) you would see nothingbut a straight line.