ed? My
volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling my humiliation;
yet, like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse, if by any
means I may arouse in the interiors of Plane and Solid Humanity a
spirit of rebellion against the Conceit which would limit our
Dimensions to Two or Three or any number short of Infinity. Away then
with all personal considerations! Let me continue to the end, as I
began, without further digressions or anticipations, pursuing the plain
path of dispassionate History. The exact facts, the exact words,--and
they are burnt in upon my brain,--shall be set down without alteration
of an iota; and let my Readers judge between me and Destiny.

The Sphere would willingly have continued his lessons by indoctrinating
me in the conformation of all regular Solids, Cylinders, Cones,
Pyramids, Pentahedrons, Hexahedrons, Dodecahedrons, and Spheres: but I
ventured to interrupt him. Not that I was wearied of knowledge. On
the contrary, I thirsted for yet deeper and fuller draughts than he was
offering to me.

"Pardon me," said I, "O Thou Whom I must no longer address as the
Perfection of all Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant
a sight of thine interior."

Sphere. My what?

I. Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines.

Sphere. Whence this ill-timed impertinent request? And what mean you
by saying that I am no longer the Perfection of all Beauty?

I. My Lord, your own wisdom has taught me to aspire to One even more
great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate to Perfection than
yourself. As you yourself, superior to all Flatland forms, combine
many Circles in One, so doubtless there is One above you who combines
many Spheres in One Supreme Existence, surpassing even the Solids of
Spaceland. And even as we, who are now in Space, look down on Flatland
and see the insides of all things, so of a certainty there is yet above
us some higher, purer region, whither thou dost surely purpose to lead
me--O Thou Whom I shall always call, everywhere and in all Dimensions,
my Priest, Philosopher, and Friend--some yet more spacious Space, some
more dimensionable Dimensionality, from the vantage-ground of which we
shall look down together upon the revealed insides of Solid things, and
where thine own intestines, and those of thy kindred Spheres, will lie
exposed to the view of the poor wandering exile from Flatland, to whom
so much has already been vouchsafed.

Sp