COMMENTARY in His Essay, “The Fourth Dimension,” E. T. Bell Urges
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æ COMMENTARY In his essay, “The Fourth Dimension,” E. T. Bell urges that Flatland be read “merely as a work of the creative fantasy without reading nonsense into the white spaces between the print.” [The Search for the Truth, 1934, p. 233] While Bell’s remarks were directed toward those who found spirits in the fourth dimension, they might also be taken as a warning against encumbering a very charming story with critical explanations and analysis. Nonetheless, Flatland was written for a British audience of more than a century ago, and a modern-day reader, especially an American reader, will need to have a great many things explained in order to understand this ingeniously contrived book fully. In the foreword to his book, Lectures on Literature, Vladimir Nabokov makes some suggestions on how to be a good reader: “In reading, one should notice and fondle details. ... Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” It is especially to the rereaders that we address the following annotations. Cover. Romance. This ‘romance’ is a fictitious prose narrative with scenes and incidents that seem to be remote from those of ordinary life. In English Lessons for English People,Abbott and Seeley define a romance to be a form of imaginative narrative in which character and manners are subordinate to adventure. The reviewer in The Critic (April 18, 1885) attributes to Hawthorne the statement that the aim of a novel is to present to humanity “the illusion of a lofty reality.” He notes that A Square has inverted this statement in presenting “the reality of a lofty illusion.” Dimension. Flatland is more than a novel introduction to the geometry of higher dimensions; here ‘dimension’ is not restricted to the notion of measurement of spatial extent. Abbott intends that the dimensions of an entity include any component aspect or attribute as well as any way in which it may be regarded or in which it presents itself to the mind. A Square. Edwin Abbott Abbott’s name reflects the surname of both of his parents, Edwin Abbott and Jane Abbott, who were first cousins. ‘A Square’ is a pun on his initials, EAA = EA2; this pun accounts for the absence of a period after the A in author’s name, A Square. Abbott published two other books anonymously (Philochristus and Onesimus), but let it be known in each case that he was the author. In a letter to his publisher, Macmillan and Co. (January 6, 1874), he explained that he did not wish “to be abused by name in the religious papers.” He made A Square the author of Flatland not to avoid controversy, but rather to emphasize that it was a first-person story of a two-dimensional being. 1 The first public indication that Abbott was the author of Flatland appeared in the Literary Gossip column of The Athenaeum, No. 2978 (22 Nov 1884), p.660: “That curious little book Flatland, which we noticed last week is said to be the production of the head master of a well-know school. This was followed by an (unsigned) review of Flatland in The City of London School Magazine 8 (December 1885), 217–221 in which the author concluded: We have strong reasons for believing that the author of the above is not unknown to most of our readers: that this is not the first or the most philosophical production of his pen: and, what is more to the point, that the name of A Square will be found in the Mathematical Tripos list for the year 186- by any one who will consult the Cambridge Calendar for that purpose. (The Tripos is the final honors examination for the B. A. degree. In 1861, Abbott finished first in the Classical Tripos and was seventh ‘Senior Optime’ in the Mathematical Tripos.) Abbott confirmed his authorship of Flatland in a footnote on page 29 of The Spirit on the Waters (1897). Epigraph. The epigraph is from Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Horatio has seen the ghost of Hamlet’s father appear and disappear. There is an allusion to the miraculous, and to the way we confront phenomena we recognize as being beyond our ordinary experience. In his reply, Hamlet urges Horatio not to shrink from the wondrous, but rather to welcome it and learn from it. It was natural for Abbott to use a quotation from Shakespeare. His first published work, Shakespearian Grammar (1869), was a pioneering study of Shakespeare’s language The book is subtitled, An attempt to illustrate some of the differences between Elizabethan and modern English for the use of schools. At the time he wrote the grammar, the City of London School was one of a few where English was systematically taught. (The classics, Greek and Latin, were emphasized instead.) Abbott felt strongly that the study of English should be a part of the curriculum, and he knew from his own experience that school boys had great difficulty in understanding Shakespeare’s language. [3] Seeley & Co. Seeley & Co. was owned by Robert B. Seeley, the father of Abbott’s friend, John R. Seeley. Earlier, Seeley, Jackson, and Hallilday had published Abbott and Seeley’s highly successful English Lessons for English People. In all, Abbott published eleven books with Seeley & Co. 2 Half-a-crown. A half-crown is (was) 1/8 of a pound. The present value of 1/8 of a pound of silver in 1884 is $38.63. In 1881, the average annual income of a teacher was 120 pounds. Title page. “Fie, fie, how franticly I square my talk,” is a punning reference from Titus Andronicus, Act 3, Scene 2. Dedication. H.C.InApologia(1907), p. xiii, Abbott explicitly identified his life-long friend Howard Candler as “the ‘H. C.’ to whom Flatland was dedicated many years ago.” When he inscribed the title page of a prepublication copy of Flatland for his best friend, Abbott wrote, To H. C. in particular from the Square. Oct. 1884 That volume was given to the Wren Library of Trinity College in 1969, by Christopher Candler, a grandson of Howard Candler. Abbott’s weekly letters to Candler were a primary source for A. E. Doulas-Smith in writing his history, The City of London School (1937). Unfortunately, it appears that these letters no longer exist; they probably were destroyed by Abbott’s two children, Edwin and Mary, when they disposed of their books and personal papers late in their lives. Mysteries. This may be a reference to mystery religions, where anyone who attempts to reveal the cult’s secrets is punished. One such cult was the Pythagorean brotherhood, founded by the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, in southern Italy in the 6th century BC. Imagination. Rosemary Jann notes: “The idea of imagination working through appearances to higher truth is for Abbott the fundamental mechanism of both scientific and religious thought.” [1, p. 294] In The Kernel and the Husk, Abbott writes: “Our knowledge of the external world as well as ourselves comes not from sensations as interpreted by reason, but (at least to a large extent) from sensations as interpreted by imagination.” “The role of imagination in science was a subject that had been in the air at least since the forties, when it was raised by William Whewell’s controversies with J. S. Mill over the nature of scientific induction. Both Whewell and Mill wished to correct the naive Baconianism that limited scientific endeavor to mere observation.” [1, p. 295] In the title essay of his book Possible Worlds (pp. 292–293), the legendary British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) wrote Our only hope of understanding the universe is to look at it front as many different points of view as possible. This is one of the reasons why the data of the mystical 3 consciousness can usefully supplement those of the mind in its normal state. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming. Modesty.InThe Spirit and the Waters (p. 32), Abbott explained that he hoped that the reader of Flatland might be led to contemplate wider views of possible circumstances and existences and thereby develop modesty, respect for facts, a deeper reverence for order and harmony, and a mind more open to new observations and to fresh inferences from old truths. In Apologia, p. 83, he reiterates the importance of (intellectual) modesty. The remedy ::: is to liberate our thoughts from the yoke of materialism, and to take a more ample view of the Universe. Not — as I have said before — that we must ever mix Thoughtland and Factland. But we must make ourselves modest by trying to conceive that there may be a Thoughtland, as much more real than Factland as the land of three dimensions seems to us more real than the land of two.