How the Sphere, hav­ing in vain tried words, resort­ed to deeds. It was in vain. I brought my hard­est right angle into vio­lent col­li­sion
with the Stranger, press­ing on him with a force suf­fi­cient to have destroyed any ordi­nary Cir­cle: but I could feel him slow­ly and unar­restably slip­ping from my con­tact; not edg­ing to the right nor to the left, but mov­ing some­how out of the world, and van­ish­ing into noth­ing.

Soon there was a blank. But still I heard the Intrud­er’s voice.
Sphere. Why will you refuse to lis­ten to rea­son? I had hoped to find in you–as being a man of sense and an accom­plished math­e­mati­cian– a fit apos­tle for the Gospel of the Three Dimen­sions, which I am allowed to preach once only in a thou­sand years: but now I know not how to con­vince you. Stay, I have it. Deeds, and not words, shall pro­claim the truth. Lis­ten, my friend.

I have told you I can see from my posi­tion in Space the inside of all things that you con­sid­er closed. For exam­ple, I see in yon­der cup­board near which you are stand­ing, sev­er­al of what you call box­es (but like every­thing else in Flat­land, they have no tops or bot­tom) full of mon­ey; I see also two tablets of accounts. I am about to descend into that cup­board and to bring you one of those tablets. I saw you lock the cup­board half an hour ago, and I know you have the key in your pos­ses­sion. But I descend from Space; the doors, you see, remain unmoved. Now I am in the cup­board and am tak­ing the tablet. Now I have it. Now I ascent with it.

I rushed to the clos­et and dashed the door open. One of the tablets was gone. With a mock­ing laugh, the Stranger appeared in the oth­er cor­ner of the room, and at the same time the tablet appeared upon the floor. I took it up. There could be no doubt–it was the miss­ing tablet. I groaned with hor­ror, doubt­ing whether I was not out of my sense; but the Stranger con­tin­ued: “Sure­ly you must now see that my expla­na­tion, and no oth­er, suits the phe­nom­e­na. What you call Sol­id things are real­ly

Flat­land 67 super­fi­cial; what you call Space is real­ly noth­ing but a great Plane. I am in Space, and look down upon the insides of the things of which you only see the out­sides. You could leave the Plane your­self, if you could but sum­mon up the nec­es­sary voli­tion. A slight upward or down­ward motion would enable you to see all that I can see.

“The high­er I mount, and the fur­ther I go from your Plane, the more I can see, though of course I see it on a small­er scale. For exam­ple, I am ascend­ing; now I can see your neigh­bour the Hexa­gon and his fam­i­ly in their sev­er­al apart­ments; now I see the inside of the The­atre, ten doors off, from which the audi­ence is only just depart­ing; and on the oth­er side a Cir­cle in his study, sit­ting at his books. Now I shall come back to you. And, as a crown­ing proof, what do you say to my giv­ing you a touch, just the least touch, in your stom­ach? It will not seri­ous­ly injure you, and the slight pain you may suf­fer can­not be com­pared with the men­tal ben­e­fit you will receive.”

Before I could utter a word of remon­strance, I felt a shoot­ing pain in my inside, and a demo­ni­a­cal laugh seemed to issue from with­in me. A
moment after­wards the sharp agony had ceased, leav­ing noth­ing but a dull ache behind, and the Stranger began to reap­pear, say­ing, as he grad­u­al­ly increased in size, “There, I have not hurt you much, have I? If you are not con­vinced now, I don’t know what will con­vince you. What say you?”

My res­o­lu­tion was tak­en. It seemed intol­er­a­ble that I should endure exis­tence sub­ject to the arbi­trary vis­i­ta­tions of a Magi­cian who could thus play tricks with one’s very stom­ach. If only I could in any way man­age to pin him against the wall till help came! Once more I dashed my hard­est angle against him, at the same time alarm­ing the whole house­hold by my cries for aid. I believe, at the moment of my onset, the Stranger had sunk below our Plane, and real­ly found dif­fi­cul­ty in ris­ing. In any case he remained motion­less, while I, hear­ing, as I thought, the sound of some help approach­ing, pressed against him with redou­bled vig­or, and con­tin­ued to shout for assis­tance.

A con­vul­sive shud­der ran through the Sphere. “This must not be,” I thought I heard him say: “either he must lis­ten to rea­son, or I must have