How The Sphere Encouraged Me In A Vision

: OTHER WORLDS

Although I had less than a minute for reflection, I felt, by a kind of

instinct, that I must conceal my experiences from my Wife. Not that I

apprehended, at the moment, any danger from her divulging my secret,

but I knew that to any Woman in Flatland the narrative of my adventures

must needs be unintelligible. So I endeavoured to reassure her by some

story, invented for the occasion, that I had accidentally fallen

th ough the trap-door of the cellar, and had there lain stunned.



The Southward attraction in our country is so slight that even to a

Woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and well-nigh

incredible; but my Wife, whose good sense far exceeds that of the

average of her Sex, and who perceived that I was unusually excited, did

not argue with me on the subject, but insisted that I was ill and

required repose. I was glad of an excuse for retiring to my chamber to

think quietly over what had happened. When I was at last by myself, a

drowsy sensation fell on me; but before my eyes closed I endeavoured to

reproduce the Third Dimension, and especially the process by which a

Cube is constructed through the motion of a Square. It was not so

clear as I could have wished; but I remembered that it must be "Upward,

and yet not Northward," and I determined steadfastly to retain these

words as the clue which, if firmly grasped, could not fail to guide me

to the solution. So mechanically repeating, like a charm, the words,

"Upward, yet not Northward," I fell into a sound refreshing sleep.



During my slumber I had a dream. I thought I was once more by the side

of the Sphere, whose lustrous hue betokened that he had exchanged his

wrath against me for perfectly placability. We were moving together

towards a bright but infinitesimally small Point, to which my Master

directed my attention. As we approached, methought there issued from

it a slight humming noise as from one of your Spaceland bluebottles,

only less resonant by far, so slight indeed that even in the perfect

stillness of the Vacuum through which we soared, the sound reached not

our ears till we checked our flight at a distance from it of something

under twenty human diagonals.



"Look yonder," said my Guide, "in Flatland thou hast lived; of Lineland

thou hast received a vision; thou hast soared with me to the heights of

Spaceland; now, in order to complete the range of thy experience, I

conduct thee downward to the lowest depth of existence, even to the

realm of Pointland, the Abyss of No dimensions.



"Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves,

but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World,

his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception;

he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no

experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor

has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being

really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn

his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and

that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now

listen."



He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny,

low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland

phonographs, from which I caught these words, "Infinite beatitude of

existence! It is; and there is nothing else beside It."



"What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means

himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that

babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the

world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But hush!"



"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and

what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It

utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer,

Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah,

the happiness, ah, the happiness of Being!"



"Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said I.

"Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow

limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is

no easy task," said my Master; "try you."



Hereon, raising by voice to the uttermost, I addressed the Point as

follows:



"Silence, silence, contemptible Creature. You call yourself the All in

All, but you are the Nothing: your so-called Universe is a mere speck

in a Line, and a Line is a mere shadow as compared with--" "Hush, hush,

you have said enough," interrupted the Sphere, "now listen, and mark

the effect of your harangue on the King of Pointland."



The lustre of the Monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon

hearing my words, shewed clearly that he retained his complacency; and

I had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. "Ah, the joy,

ah, the joy of Thought! What can It not achieve by thinking! Its own

Thought coming to Itself, suggestive of its disparagement, thereby to

enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in

triumph! Ah, the divine creative power of the All in One! Ah, the

joy, the joy of Being!"



"You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far

as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own--for

he cannot conceive of any other except himself--and plumes himself upon

the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us

leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his

omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue

him from his self-satisfaction."



After this, as we floated gently back to Flatland, I could hear the

mild voice of my Companion pointing the moral of my vision, and

stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire. He had been

angered at first--he confessed--by my ambition to soar to Dimensions

above the Third; but, since then, he had received fresh insight, and he

was not too proud to acknowledge his error to a Pupil. Then he

proceeded to initiate me into mysteries yet higher than those I had

witnessed, shewing me how to construct Extra-Solids by the motion of

Solids, and Double Extra-Solids by the motion of Extra-Solids, and all

"strictly according to Analogy," all by methods so simple, so easy, as

to be patent even to the Female Sex.