it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open
your eye once again and try to look steadily."

I looked, and, behold, a new world! There stood before me, visibly
incorporate, all that I had before inferred, conjectured, dreamed, of
perfect Circular beauty. What seemed the centre of the Stranger's form
lay open to my view: yet I could see no heart, lungs, nor arteries,
only a beautiful harmonious Something--for which I had no words; but
you, my Readers in Spaceland, would call it the surface of the Sphere.

Prostrating myself mentally before my Guide, I cried, "How is it, O
divine ideal of consummate loveliness and wisdom that I see thy inside,
and yet cannot discern thy heart, thy lungs, thy arteries, thy liver?"
"What you think you see, you see not," he replied; "it is not giving to
you, nor to any other Being, to behold my internal parts. I am of a
different order of Beings from those in Flatland. Were I a Circle, you
could discern my intestines, but I am a Being, composed as I told you
before, of many Circles, the Many in the One, called in this country a
Sphere. And, just as the outside of a Cube is a Square, so the outside
of a Sphere represents the appearance of a Circle."

Bewildered though I was by my Teacher's enigmatic utterance, I no
longer chafed against it, but worshipped him in silent adoration. He
continued, with more mildness in his voice. "Distress not yourself if
you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By
degrees they will dawn upon you. Let us begin by casting back a glance
at the region whence you came. Return with me a while to the plains of
Flatland and I will shew you that which you have often reasoned and
thought about, but never seen with the sense of sight--a visible
angle." "Impossible!" I cried; but, the Sphere leading the way, I
followed as if in a dream, till once more his voice arrested me: "Look
yonder, and behold your own Pentagonal house, and all its inmates."

I looked below, and saw with my physical eye all that domestic
individuality which I had hitherto merely inferred with the
understanding. And how poor and shadowy was the inferred conjecture in
comparison with the reality which I now behold! My four Sons calmly
asleep in the North-Western rooms, my two orphan Grandsons to the
South; the Servants, the Butler, my Daughter, all in their several
apartments. Only my affectionate Wife, alarmed by my continued
absence, had quitted her room and