They say the earth is round.

That they do.

Surely you will agree with me that it is all rather ridiculously, really.

I shall do nothing of the sort.

You don’t mean to say you put stock in such things!

That is precisely what I mean to say.

Dear sir! What folly! Is it not self-evident? Look yonder, beyond the prow of this ship. What is it you see? The horizon! Is it not flat as the rock underneath a waterfall, straight as the hawk’s swoop?

That it is.

It is a mockery of our intelligence, then, to claim that that very horizon does curve, and indeed meet beyond the powers of vision granted to us men!

‘Tis a great tragedy that you are destined to never perceive the profundity of what you just uttered, for it is true to the last word, and on a scale larger than one is able to grasp on a warm May morn without an unhealthy dose of brandy.

I find it astonishing that a man of such obvious intellect as yourself should be taken with such sensationalist ideas!

And so men may grow wiser every day. Have you ever seen the Pyramids of Egypt, sir?

One of my greatest regrets, to not have seen with mine own vision what my mind’s eye has pictured countless times.

A pity indeed.

It is said that they reach for the sky with such undisguised ferocity as to make a man feel entirely insignificant, a speck of dust, if you will.

Is it not queer that such things should stand in all their majesty without any scaffolding of any kind?

Decidedly not, I should think. I have heard that each layer stands firm upon an even larger one below it, each block deriving support from the very nature of its foundation, giants standing upon the shoulders of giants.

What if I, of a whim, should keel it completely around? Should it stand firm then?

Certainly not—how absurd!

But if I were to tell you that the very edifice of what one might unimaginatively call our civilisation is a monument to the unyielding stability of such a structure?

I would shake my head and laugh.

And so it stands.