Page:Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions (1963, fifth edition).djvu/42

 If for example, when my Father, the Triangle, approaches me, he happens to present his side to me instead of his angle, then, until I have asked him to rotate, or until I have edged my eye round him, I am for the moment doubtful whether he may not be a Straight Line, or, in other words, a Woman.



Again, when I am in the company of one of my two hexagonal Grandsons, contemplating one of his sides full front, it will be evident from the accompanying diagram that I shall see one whole line in comparative brightness (shading off hardly at all at the ends) and two smaller lines ( and ) dim throughout and shading away into greater dimness towards the extremities and.

But I must not give way to the temptation of enlarging on these topics. The meanest mathematician in Spaceland will readily believe me when I assert that the problems of life, which present themselves to the well-educated—when they are themselves in motion, rotating, advancing or retreating, and at the same time attempting to discriminate by the sense of sight between a number of Polygons of high rank moving in different directions, as for example in a ball-room or conversazione—must be of a nature to task the angularity of the most intellectual, and amply justify the rich endowments of the Learned Professors of Geometry, both Static and Kinetic, in the illustrious University of Wentbridge, where the Science