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SECTION 2 Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland - Flatland| Set Display | Please Turn On Your Virtual Bookmarks | Help Support This Site | Table of Contents | Edwin Abbott |
Page 3 of 72
SECTION 2 Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland - Flatland
SECTION 2 Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland
As with you, so also with us, there are four points of the compass North, South, East, and West.
There being no sun nor other heavenly bodies, it is impossible for us to determine the North in the usual way; but we have a method of our own. By a Law of Nature with us,
there is a constant attraction to the South;
and, although in temperate climates this is very slight-- so that even a Woman in reasonable health can journey several furlongs northward without much difficulty-- yet the hampering effort of the southward attraction is quite sufficient to serve as a compass in most parts of our earth. Moreover, the rain (which falls
at stated intervals) coming always from the North, is an additional assistance; and in the towns
we have the guidance of the houses,
which of course have their side-walls
running for the most part North and South,
so that the roofs may keep off the rain from the North. In the country, where there are no houses,
the trunks of the trees serve as some sort of guide. Altogether, we have not so much difficulty as might be expected in determining our bearings.
Yet in our more temperate regions, in which
the southward attraction is hardly felt,
walking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain
where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me, I have been occasionally compelled to remain stationary for hours together, waiting till the rain came
before continuing my journey. On the weak and aged, and especially on delicate Females, the force of attraction tells much more heavily than on the robust of the Male Sex, so that it is a point of breeding, if you meet a Lady on the street, always to give her the North side of the way--by no means an easy thing to do always at short notice when you are in rude health and in a climate where it is difficult to tell your North from your South.
Windows there are none in our houses: for the light comes to us alike in our homes and out of them,
by day and by night, equally at all times and in all places, whence we know not. It was in old days, with our learned men, an interesting and oft-investigate question,
"What is the origin of light?" and the solution of it has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers. Hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the Legislature, in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them. I--alas, I alone in Flatland--know now only too well the true solution of this mysterious problem;
but my knowledge cannot be made intelligible
to a single one of my countrymen; and I am mocked at --I, the sole possessor of the truths of Space
and of the theory of the introduction of Light
from the world of three Dimensions--as if I were
the maddest of the mad! But a truce to these painful digressions: let me return to our homes. 
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