Section 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland
The greatest length or breadth of a full grown inhabitant of Flatland
may be estimated at about eleven of your inches. Twelve inches may be
regarded as a maximum.
Our Women are Straight Lines.
Our Soldiers and Lowest Classes of Workmen are Triangles with two
equal sides, each about eleven inches long, and a base or third side
so short (often not exceeding half an inch) that they form
at their vertices a very sharp and formidable angle.
Indeed when their bases are of the most degraded type (not more than
the eighth part of an inch in size), they can hardly be distinguished
from Straight Lines or Women; so extremely pointed are their vertices.
With us, as with you, these Triangles are distinguished from others
by being called Isosceles; and by this name I shall refer to them
in the following pages.
Our Middle Class consists of Equilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles.
Our Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares (to which class
I myself belong) and Five-Sided Figures or Pentagons.
Next above these come the Nobility, of whom there are several degrees,
beginning at Six-Sided Figures, or Hexagons, and from thence rising
in the number of their sides till they receive the honourable title
of Polygonal, or many-sided. Finally when the number of the sides
becomes so numerous, and the sides themselves so small,
that the figure cannot be distinguished from a circle,
he is included in the Circular or Priestly order; and this is
the highest class of all.
It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have
one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise
(as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility.
Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon; the son of a Pentagon,
a Hexagon; and so on.
But this rule applies not always to the Tradesmen, and still
less often to the Soldiers, and to the Workmen; who indeed can hardly
be said to deserve the name of human Figures, since they have not
all their sides equal. With them therefore the Law of Nature
does not hold; and the son of an Isosceles (i.e. a Triangle with
two sides equal) remains Isosceles still. Nevertheless,
all hope is not shut out, even from the Isosceles, that his posterity
may ultimately rise above his degraded condition. For, after a long
series of military successes, or diligent and skilful labours,
it is generally found that the more intelligent among
the Artisan and Soldier classes manifest a slight increase
of their third side or base, and a shrinkage of the two other sides.
Intermarriages (arranged by the Priests) between the sons
and daughters of these more intellectual members of the lower classes
generally result in an offspring approximating still more to the type
of the Equal-Sided Triangle.
Rarely -- in proportion to the vast numbers of Isosceles births --
is a genuine and certifiable Equal-Sided Triangle produced
from Isosceles parents. [Note: "What need of a certificate?"
a Spaceland critic may ask: "Is not the procreation of a Square Son
a certificate from Nature herself, proving the Equal-sidedness
of the Father?" I reply that no Lady of any position will marry
an uncertified Triangle. Square offspring has sometimes resulted
from a slightly Irregular Triangle; but in almost every such case
the Irregularity of the first generation is visited on the third;
which either fails to attain the Pentagonal rank, or relapses to
the Triangular.] Such a birth requires, as its antecedents,
not only a series of carefully arranged intermarriages,
but also a long, continued exercise of frugality and self-control
on the part of the would-be ancestors of the coming Equilateral,
and a patient, systematic, and continuous development
of the Isosceles intellect through many generations.
The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents
is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs around.
After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board,
the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial
admitted into the class of Equilaterals. He is then immediately
taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some
childless Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child
henceforth to enter his former home or so much as to look upon
his relations again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may,
by force of unconscious imitation, fall back again into
his hereditary level.
The occasional emergence of an Equilateral from the ranks
of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by
the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon
the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy
at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that
these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize
their own privileges, serve as a most useful barrier against
revolution from below.
Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception,
absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have
found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks,
so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much
even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature
has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase
in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion
their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible)
shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless
angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal
and formidable of the soldier class -- creatures almost on a level
with women in their lack of intelligence -- it is found that,
as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ
their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane
in the power of penetration itself.
How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof
of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin
of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland!
By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles
are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle,
taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness
of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order.
It is generally found possible -- by a little artificial
compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians --
to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion
perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into
the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below
the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled,
are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept
in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone
of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led
to execution.
Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless and leaderless,
are either transfixed without resistance by the small body
of their brethren whom the Chief Circle keeps in pay
for emergencies of this kind; or else more often, by means of
jealousies and suspicions skilfully fomented among them
by the Circular party, they are stirred to mutual warfare,
and perish by one another's angles. No less than one hundred
and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor
outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-five;
and they have all ended thus.
