Tertium Organum

The plane being will never notice this. 
He will never notice that in the direction in which for one line, visible to him, lies 
the past, for the other line lies the future. This thought will never even occur to him, 
because he will have a very nebulous idea of both the past and the future, and will 
regard them only as 
concepts, 
and not as concrete facts. At the same time he will be 
firmly convinced that the past proceeds 
in
one direction and the future 
in another.
For 
him it will seem a wild absurdity that on one side 

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something past and 
something future 
may lie together, and on another side, 
also together, something future and 
something past.
No less absurd will be 
the idea that some phenomena appear from where others disappear and vice 
versa. He will persist in thinking that the future is that from which everything 
comes and the past is that to which everything goes, and 
from which nothing 
returns. 
The plane being will be incapable of understanding that phenomena 
may proceed from the past as well as from the future. 
Thus we see that the plane being will have a very naive view of the 
changing colour of the line lying on the surface. The appearance of 
different 
spokes he will regard as changes in the colour of 
one and the same line,
and, 
for him, the recurring appearance of a spoke of the same colour will be, each 
time, a 
new
appearance of the given colour. 
Yet, having noticed a certain periodicity in the changes of the colour of the 
lines on the surface, having memorized the order of their appearance and 
learned to determine the 'time' of the appearance of certain spokes in relation 
to some other more permanent phenomenon, the plane being will be able to 
foretell the change of the line from one colour to another. 
Then he will say that he 
has studied
this phenomenon, i.e. that he can 
apply to it the 'mathematical method' - can 'calculate it'. 
If we enter the world of the plane being, he will sense only the lines 
bounding the sections of our bodies. These sections, which will be 
living
beings
for him, will appear from nowhere, change for no apparent reason, 
and disappear somewhere 
in a miraculous manner. 
The sections of all our 
inanimate but moving objects will also be independent living beings for him. 
If the consciousness of a plane being could have the faintest suspicion of 
our existence or enter into any kind of communication with our 
consciousness, we would be for him higher, omniscient, maybe omnipotent 
and, above all, unknowable beings 
of a totally incomprehensible category. 
We would see his world 
as it is 
and not as it appears to him. We would see 
the past and the future; we would be able to foretell, direct and even create 
events. 
We would know the essence of things. We would know what 'matter' (a 
straight line) is, what 'motion' (a curve, an irregular line, an angle) is. We 
would see the 
angle
and see the 
centre.
And this would give us an enormous 
advantage over a two-dimensional being. 
In all the phenomena of the two-dimensional world we would see 

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much more than the plane being does, or would see something quite different from 
what he sees. 
We would be able to tell him many new, unexpected and striking things about the 
phenomena of his world - if he could hear and