Of The Ancient Practice Of Painting

: THIS WORLD
: Flatland

If my Readers have followed me with any attention up to this point,

they will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull in

Flatland. I do not, of course, mean that there are not battles,

conspiracies, tumults, factions, and all those other phenomena which

are supposed to make History interesting; nor would I deny that the

strange mixture of the problems of life and the problems of

Mathematics, continually in ucing conjecture and giving an opportunity

of immediate verification, imparts to our existence a zest which you in

Spaceland can hardly comprehend. I speak now from the aesthetic and

artistic point of view when I say that life with us is dull;

aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed.



How can it be otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes,

historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a

single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and

obscurity?



It was not always thus. Colour, if Tradition speaks the truth, once

for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient

splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages. Some

private individual--a Pentagon whose name is variously reported--having

casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colours and a

rudimentary method of painting, is said to have begun by decorating

first his house, then his slaves, then his Father, his Sons, and

Grandsons, lastly himself. The convenience as well as the beauty of

the results commended themselves to all. Wherever Chromatistes,--for

by that name the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling

him,--turned his variegated frame, there he at once excited attention,

and attracted respect. No one now needed to "feel" him; no one mistook

his front for his back; all his movements were readily ascertained by

his neighbours without the slightest strain on their powers of

calculation; no one jostled him, or failed to make way for him; his

voice was saved the labour of that exhausting utterance by which we

colourless Squares and Pentagons are often forced to proclaim our

individuality when we move amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles.



The fashion spread like wildfire. Before a week was over, every Square

and Triangle in the district had copied the example of Chromatistes,

and only a few of the more conservative Pentagons still held out. A

month or two found even the Dodecagons infected with the innovation. A

year had not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the very

highest of the Nobility. Needless to say, the custom soon made its way

from the district of Chromatistes to surrounding regions; and within

two generations no one in all Flatland was colourless except the Women

and the Priests.



Here Nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against

extending the innovations to these two classes. Many-sidedness was

almost essential as a pretext for the Innovators. "Distinction of

sides is intended by Nature to imply distinction of colours"--such was

the sophism which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting

whole towns at a time to a new culture. But manifestly to our Priests

and Women this adage did not apply. The latter had only one side, and

therefore--plurally and pedantically speaking--NO SIDES. The

former--if at least they would assert their claim to be readily and

truly Circles, and not mere high-class Polygons, with an infinitely

large number of infinitesimally small sides--were in the habit of

boasting (what Women confessed and deplored) that they also had no

sides, being blessed with a perimeter of only one line, or, in other

words, a Circumference. Hence it came to pass that these two Classes

could see no force in the so-called axiom about "Distinction of Sides

implying Distinction of Colour;" and when all others had succumbed to

the fascinations of corporal decoration, the Priests and the Women

alone still remained pure from the pollution of paint.



Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific--call them by what names

you will--yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of

the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland--a

childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the

blossom of youth. To live then in itself a delight, because living

implied seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to

behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre

are said to have more than once proved too distracting from our

greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have

been the unspeakable magnificence of a military review.



The sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly

facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the

orange of the two sides including their acute angle; the militia of the

Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and blue; the mauve,

ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square artillerymen

rapidly rotating near their vermillion guns; the dashing and flashing

of the five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and Hexagons careering

across the field in their offices of surgeons, geometricians and

aides-de-camp--all these may well have been sufficient to render

credible the famous story how an illustrious Circle, overcome by the

artistic beauty of the forces under his command, threw aside his

marshal's baton and his royal crown, exclaiming that he henceforth

exchanged them for the artist's pencil. How great and glorious the

sensuous development of these days must have been is in part indicated

by the very language and vocabulary of the period. The commonest

utterances of the commonest citizens in the time of the Colour Revolt

seem to have been suffused with a richer tinge of word or thought; and

to that era we are even now indebted for our finest poetry and for

whatever rhythm still remains in the more scientific utterance of those

modern days.