How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision

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 through the
trapdoor 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 perfect 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
this 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 none 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 my 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, showed 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 understands 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,
showing 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.