It seemed that this poor ignorant Monarch⁠—as he called himself⁠—was persuaded that the Straight Line which he called his Kingdom, and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of the world, and indeed the whole of Space. Not being able either to move or to see, save in his Straight Line, he had no conception of anything out of it. Though he had heard my voice when I first addressed him, the sounds had come to him in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had made no answer, “seeing no man,” as he expressed it, “and hearing a voice as it were from my own intestines.” Until the moment when I placed my mouth in his world, he had neither seen me, nor heard anything except confused sounds beating against⁠—what I called his side, but what he called his inside or stomach ; nor had he even now the least conception of the region from which I had come. Outside his world, or Line, all was a blank to him; nay, not even a blank, for a blank implies Space; say, rather, all was nonexistent.