How can you ask? And you a mathematician!
The side of anything is always, if I may so say, one Dimension behind
the thing. Consequently, as there is no Dimension behind a Point,
a Point has 0 sides; a Line, if I may say, has 2 sides
(for the Points of a Line may be called by courtesy, its sides);
a Square has 4 sides; 0, 2, 4; what Progression do you call that?
I. Arithmetical.
SPHERE. And what is the next number?
I. Six.
SPHERE. Exactly. Then you see you have answered your own question.
The Cube which you will generate will be bounded by six sides,
that is to say, six of your insides. You see it all now, eh?
"Monster," I shrieked, "be thou juggler, enchanter, dream, or devil,
no more will I endure thy mockeries. Either thou or I must perish."
And saying these words I precipitated myself upon him.
Section 17. How the Sphere, having in vain tried words,
resorted to deeds
It was in vain. I brought my hardest right angle into violent
collision with the Stranger, pressing on him with a force sufficient
to have destroyed any ordinary Circle: but I could feel him
slowly and unarrestably slipping from my contact; no edging to
the right nor to the left, but moving somehow out of the world,
and vanishing to nothing.
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