i call our world flatland not because we call it so but to make its nature clearer to you my happy readers who are privileged to live in space imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight lines triangles squares pentagons hexagons and other figures instead of remaining fixed in their places move freely about on or in the surface but without the power of rising above or sinking below it very much like shadows  only hard and with luminous edges  and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen  alas a few years ago i should have said my universe  but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things in such a country you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a solid kind but i dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the triangles squares and other figures moving about as i have described them  on the contrary we could see nothing of the kind not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another  nothing was visible nor could be visible to us except straight lines and the necessity of this i will speedily demonstrate place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in space and leaning over it look down upon it  it will appear a circle but now drawing back to the edge of the table gradually lower your eye thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of flatland and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table so that you are as it were actually a flatlander the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all and will have become so far as you can see a straight line
