"Abbott, Edwin A - flatland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abbott Edwin A)

even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent
times) the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom
been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration.
In a still more obscure passage he now desires to disavow the
Circular or aristocratic tendencies with which some critics have
naturally credited him. While doing justice to the intellectual power
with which a few Circles have for many generations maintained their
supremacy over immense multitudes of their countrymen, he believes
that the facts of Flatland, speaking for themselves without comment on
his part, declare that Revolutions cannot always be suppressed by
slaughter, and that Nature, in sentencing the Circles to infecundity,
has condemned them to ultimate failure -- "and herein," he says, "I
see a fulfilment of the great Law of all worlds, that while the wisdom
of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains
it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing." For
the rest, he begs his readers not to suppose that every minute detail
in the daily life of Flatland must needs correspond to some other
detail in Spaceland; and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work
may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of
moderate and modestminds who -- speaking of that which is of the
highest importance, but lies beyond experience -- decline to say on
the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must
needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it."
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Footnote 1. The Author desires me to add, that the misconceptions of
some of his critics on this matter has induced him to insert (on pp.
74 and 92) in his dialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have
a bearing on the point in question and which he had previously omitted
as being tedious and unnecessary.


* * *


FLATLAND

PART 1

THIS WORLD



SECTION 1. -- Of the Nature of Flatland

I call our world Flatland, not because we cal it so, but to make
its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to
live in Space.
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles,
Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining
fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but