"Abbott, Edwin A - Flatland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abbott Edwin A)

is possible for the well-educated classes among us to discriminate
with fair accuracy between the middle and lowest orders, by the sense
of sight. If my Spaceland Patrons have grasped this general
conception, so far as to conceive the possibility of it and not to
reject my account as altogether incredible -- I shall have attained
all I can reasonably expect. Were I to attempt further details I
should only perplex. Yet for the sake of the young and inexperienced,
who may perchance infer -- from the two simple instances I have given
above, of the manner in which I should recognize my Father and my Sons
-- that Recognition by sight is an easy affair, it may be needful to
point out that in actual life most of the problems of Sight
Recognition are far more subtle and complex.
If for example, when my Father, the Triangle, approaches me, he
happens to present his side to me instead of his angle, then, until I
have asked him to rotate, or until I have edged my eye around him, I
am for the moment doubtful whether he may not be a Straight Line, or,
in other words, a Woman. Again, when I am in the company of one of my
two hexagonal Grandsons, contemplating one of his sides (AB) full
front, it will be evident from the accompanying diagram that I shall
see one whole line (AB) in comparative brightness (shading off hardly
at all at the ends) and two smaller lines (CA and BD) dim throughout
and shading away into greater dimness towards the extremities C and D.
But I must not give way to the temptating of enlarging on these
topics. The meanest mathematician in Spaceland will readily believe
me when I assert that the problems of life, which present themselves
to the well-educated -- when they are themselves in motion, rotating,
advancing or retreating, and at the same time attempting to
discriminate by the sense of sight between a number of Polygons of
high rank moving in different directions, as for example in a ball-
room or conversazione -- must be of a nature to task the angularity of
the most intellectual, and amply justify the rich endowments of the
Learned Professors of Geometry, both Static and Kinetic, in the
illustrious University of Wentbridge, where the Science and Art of
Sight Recognition are regularly taught to large classes of the _elite_
of the States.
It is only a few of the scions of our noblest and wealthies
houses, who are able to give the time and money necessary for the
thorough prosecution of this noble and valuable Art. Even to me, a
Mathematician of no mean standing, and the Granddfather of two most
hopeful and perfectly regular Hexagons, to find myself in the midst of
a crowd of rotating Polygons of the higher classes, is occasionally
very perplexing. And of course to a common Tradesman, or Serf, such a
sight is almost as unintelligible as it would be to you, my Reader,
were you suddenly transported to my country.
In such a crowd you could see on all sides of you nothing but a
Line, apparently straight, but of which the parts would vary
irregularly and perpetually in brightness or dimness. Even if you had
completed your third year in the Pentagonal and Hexagonal classes in
the University, and were perfect in the theory of the subject, you
would still find there was need of many years of experience, before