Of the Ancient Practice of Painting

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
inducing conjecture and giving the 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 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 innovation 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 the 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 really 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 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 was 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 for 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 and purple of the two sides including their acute angle; the
militia of the Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and
blue; the mauve, ultramarine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square
artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermilion 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 these
modern days.