CORROBORATIVE READINGS 



" Look yonder/' said my Guide, " in Flatland thou 

 hast lived; of Lineland thou hast received a vision; 

 thou hast soared with me to the heights of Spaceland; 

 now, in order to complete the range of thy experience, 

 I conduct thee downward to the lowest depth of exist- 

 ence, even to the realm of Pointland, the Abyss of No 

 Dimensions. 



" Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a 

 Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimen- 

 sional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own 

 Universe; of any other than himself he can form no 

 conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor 

 Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has 

 no cognisance even of the number Two; nor has he a 

 thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and 

 All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self- 

 contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be 

 self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to 

 aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. 

 Now listen." 



He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing 

 creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, 

 as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from 

 which I caught these words, " Infinite beatitude of ex- 

 istence! It is; and there is none else beside It." 



" What," said I, " does the puny creature mean by 

 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere; "have 

 you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish 

 people, who cannot distinguish themselves from the 

 world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But 

 hush!" 



195 



