?" said I.
"Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow
limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is
no easy task," said my Master; "try you."

Hereon, raising by voice to the uttermost, I addressed the Point as
follows:

"Silence, silence, contemptible Creature. You call yourself the All in
All, but you are the Nothing: your so-called Universe is a mere speck
in a Line, and a Line is a mere shadow as compared with--" "Hush, hush,
you have said enough," interrupted the Sphere, "now listen, and mark
the effect of your harangue on the King of Pointland."

The lustre of the Monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon
hearing my words, shewed clearly that he retained his complacency; and
I had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. "Ah, the joy,
ah, the joy of Thought! What can It not achieve by thinking! Its own
Thought coming to Itself, suggestive of its disparagement, thereby to
enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in
triumph! Ah, the divine creative power of the All in One! Ah, the
joy, the joy of Being!"

"You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far
as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own--for
he cannot conceive of any other except himself--and plumes himself upon
the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us
leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his
omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue
him from his self-satisfaction."

After this, as we floated gently back to Flatland, I could hear the
mild voice of my Companion pointing the moral of my vision, and
stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire. He had been
angered at first--he confessed--by my ambition to soar to Dimensions
above the Third; but, since then, he had received fresh insight, and he
was not too proud to acknowledge his error to a Pupil. Then he
proceeded to initiate me into mysteries yet higher than those I had
witnessed, shewing me how to construct Extra-Solids by the motion of
Solids, and Double Extra-Solids by the motion of Extra-Solids, and all
"strictly according to Analogy," all by methods so simple, so easy, as
to be patent even to the Female Sex.

SECTION 21 How I tried to teach the Theory of Three Dimensions
to my Grandson, and with what success

I awoke rejoicing, and began to reflect o