Tertium Organum

one with another, 
that is, he will think that one phenomenon 
is the effect of another 
which has also taken place there -
on his plane - and 
the cause of a third 
which will take place there also. 
If a multi-coloured cube passes through the plane, the whole cube and its 
motion will be perceived by the plane being as changes in the colour of the 
lines lying on the surface. So, if a blue line replaces a red one, the plane being
will regard the red line as a 
past event.
He will be unable to conceive of the 
red line still existing somewhere. He will say that the line is the same but that 
it has become blue
owing to certain causes of a physical nature. If the cube 
starts moving backwards and the red line again replaces the blue line, it will 
be a 
new phenomenon
for the plane being. He will say that the line has 
become red again. 
Everything situated above and below, if the plane is horizontal, or to the 
right and left if the plane is vertical, will lie in time for a being living on that 
plane, that is, it will be in the past and the future. Everything that exists in 
reality outside the plane will be regarded as non-existent: either as already in 
the past, i.e. as something that has vanished, ceased to be, something that will 
never return; or in the future, i.e. as something not yet existing, not 
manifested but merely potential. 
Let us imagine a wheel with multi-coloured spokes rotating through the plane 
on which lives a two-dimensional being. The movement of the spokes will 
appear to a two-dimensional being as changes in the colour of a line lying on
the surface. The plane being will call these 

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changes phenomena and, observing these phenomena, he will notice a certain sequence 
in them. He will know that the black line is followed by a white one, the white by a 
blue, the blue by a pink. If something else is connected with the appearance of the 
white line - the ringing of a bell for instance - the two-dimensional being will say that 
the white line is the cause of the ringing. The changing colour of the lines will, in the 
opinion of the two-dimensional being, depend on some causes to be found there, on his 
plane. Any conjecture as to the possible existence of causes lying 
outside
the plane he 
will dismiss as utterly fantastic and absolutely unscientific. And this will be so because 
he himself will never be able to visualize the 
wheel,
i.e. the different parts of the wheel 
on each side of the plane. Having studied the changes in the colour of the lines and 
learnt their order, the plane being, on seeing one of them - say, the blue one - will think 
that the black and the white have already passed, i.e. have vanished, have ceased to 
exist, have 
receded into the past;
whereas the lines which have not yet appeared -the 
yellow, the green and so on, and among them the 
new 
white and the 
new
black which 
are to come - do not yet exist but lie in the future. 
Thus, although not conscious of the form of his universe and regarding it as infinite 
in all directions, the plane being will involuntarily think of the past as lying somewhere 
on one side of 
everything, 
and of the future as lying somewhere on the other side of 
everything. 
This is how the two-dimensional being arrives at the 
idea of time.
We see 
that this idea arises from the fact that, out of three dimensions of space, the two­
dimensional being is aware of only two; the third dimension he senses only through its 
effects on the plane; therefore he regards it as something distinct from the first two 
dimensions of space, and calls it 
time. 
Now let us imagine two wheels with multi-coloured spokes rotating through the plane 
on which the two-dimensional being lives, and rotating in opposite directions. The 
spokes of one of them come from above and go below; the spokes of the other come 
from below and go above.