Tumults and Seditions of past ages have generally derived their leaders;
and so great is the mischief thence arising that an increasing minority
of our more progressive Statesmen are of opinion that true mercy would
dictate their entire suppression, by enacting that all who fail to pass
the Final Examination of the University should be either imprisoned for
life, or extinguished by a painless death.
But I find myself digressing into the subject of Irregularities, a matter
of such vital interest that it demands a separate section.
§ 7.—_Of Irregular Figures._
Throughout the previous pages I have been assuming—what perhaps should
have been laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental
proposition—that every human being in Flatland is a Regular Figure, that
is to say of regular construction. By this I mean that a Woman must not
only be a line, but a straight line; that an Artisan or Soldier must have
two of his sides equal; that Tradesmen must have three sides equal;
Lawyers (of which class I am a humble member), four sides equal, and,
generally, that in every Polygon, all the sides must be equal.
The size of the sides would of course depend upon the age of the
individual. A Female at birth would be about an inch long, while a tall
adult Woman might extend to a foot. As to the Males of every class, it
may be roughly said that the length of an adult’s sides, when added
together, is three feet or a little more. But the size of our sides is
not under consideration. I am speaking of the _equality_ of sides, and it
does not need much reflection to see that the whole of the social life in
Flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that Nature wills all Figures to
have their sides equal.
If our sides were unequal our angles would be unequal. Instead of its
being sufficient to feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order
to determine the form of an individual, it would be necessary to
ascertain each angle by the experiment of Feeling. But life would be too
short for such a tedious groping. The whole science and art of Sight
Recognition would at once perish; Feeling, so far as it is an art, would
not long survive; intercourse would become perilous or impossible; there
would be an end to all confidence, all forethought; no one would be safe
in making the most simple social arrangements; in a word, civilization
would relapse into barbarism.
Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious
conclusions? Surely a moment’s reflection, and a single instance from
common life, must convince every one that our whole social system is
based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles. You meet, for example, two
or three Tradesmen in the street, whom you recognize at once to be
Tradesmen by a glance at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you
ask them to step into your house to lunch. This you do at present with
perfect confidence, because every one knows to an inch or two the area
occupied by an adult Triangle: but imagine that your Tradesman drags
behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of twelve or
thirteen inches in diagonal:—what are you to do with such a monster
sticking fast in your house door?
But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating details
which must be patent to every one who enjoys the advantages of a
Residence in Spaceland. Obviously the measurements of a single angle
would no longer be sufficient under such portentous circumstances; one’s
whole life would be taken up in feeling or surveying the perimeter of
one’s acquaintances. Already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in
a crowd are enough to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated Square;
but if no one could calculate the Regularity of a single figure in the
company, all would be chaos and confusion, and the slightest panic would
cause serious injuries, or—if there happened to be any Women or Soldiers
present—perhaps considerable loss of life.
Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the seal of its
approval upon Regularity of conformation: nor has the Law been backward
in seconding their efforts. “Irregularity of Figure” means with us the
same as, or more than, a combination of moral obliquity and criminality
with you, and is treated accordingly. There are not wanting, it is true,
some promulgators of paradoxes who maintain that there is no necessary
connection between geometrical and moral Irregularity. “The Irregular,”
they say, “is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by his
brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics, scorned and suspected
by society, and excluded from all posts of responsibility, trust, and
useful activity. His every movement is jealously watched by the police
till he comes of age and presents himself for inspection; then he is
either destroyed, if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation,
or else immured in a Government Office as a clerk of the seventh class;
prevented from marriage; forced to drudge at an uninteresting occupation
for a miserable stipend; obliged to live and board at the office, and to
take even his vacation under close supervision; what wonder that human
nature, even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted by such
surroundings!”
All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not
convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying
it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is
incompatible with the safety of the State. Doubtless, the life of an
Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that
it shall be hard. If a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back
were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity,
what would become of the arts of life? Are the houses and doors and
churches in Flatland to be altered in order to accommodate such monsters?
Are our ticket-collectors to be required to measure every man’s perimeter
before they allow him to enter a theatre, or to take his place in a
lecture room? Is an Irregular to be exempted from the militia? And if
not, how is he to be prevented from carrying desolation into the ranks of
his comrades? Again, what irresistible temptations to fraudulent
impostures must needs beset such a creature! How easy for him to enter a
shop with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods to any extent
from a confiding tradesman! Let the advocates of a falsely called
Philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogation of the Irregular Penal
Laws, I for my part have never known an Irregular who was not also what
Nature evidently intended him to be—a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up
to the limits of his power—a perpetrator of all manner of mischief.
Not that I should be disposed to recommend (at present) the extreme
measures adopted in some States, where an infant whose angle deviates by
half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily destroyed at
birth. Some of our highest and ablest men, men of real genius, have
during their earliest days laboured under deviations as great as, or even
greater than, forty-five minutes: and the loss of their precious lives
would have been an irreparable injury to the State. The art of healing
also has achieved some of its most glorious triumphs in the compressions,
extensions, trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diætetic
operations by which Irregularity has been partly or wholly cured.
Advocating therefore a _Via Media_, I would lay down no fixed or absolute
line of demarcation; but at the period when the frame is just beginning
to set, and when the Medical Board has reported that recovery is
improbable, I would suggest that the Irregular offspring be painlessly
and mercifully consumed.
§ 8.—_Of the Ancient Practice of Painting._
If my Readers have followed me with any attention up to this point, they
will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull in Flatland. I
do not, of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies,
tumults, factions, and all those other phenomena which are supposed to
make History interesting; nor would I deny that the strange mixture of
the problems of life and the problems of Mathematics, continually
inducing conjecture and giving the opportunity of immediate verification,
imparts to our existence a zest which you in Spaceland can hardly
comprehend. I speak now from the æsthetic and artistic point of view when
I say that life with us is dull; æsthetically and artistically, very dull
indeed.
How can it be otherwise, when all one’s prospect, all one’s landscapes,
historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a
single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and
obscurity?
It was not always thus. Colour, if Tradition speaks the truth, once for
the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient charm upon
the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages. Some private
individual—a Pentagon whose name is variously reported—having casually
discovered the constituents of the simpler colours and a rudimentary
method of painting, is said to have begun by decorating first his house,
then his slaves, then his Father, his Sons and Grandsons, lastly himself.
The convenience as well as the beauty of the results commended themselves
to all. Wherever Chromatistes,—for by that name the most trustworthy
authorities concur in calling him,—turned his variegated frame, there he
at once excited attention, and attracted respect. No one now needed to
“feel” him; no one mistook his front for his back; all his movements were
readily ascertained by his neighbours without the slightest strain on
their powers of calculation; no one jostled him, or failed to make way
for him; his voice was saved the labour of that exhausting utterance by
which we colourless Squares and Pentagons are often forced to proclaim
our individuality when we move amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles.
The fashion spread like wildfire. Before a week was over, every Square
and Triangle in the district had copied the example of Chromatistes, and
only a few of the more conservative Pentagons still held out. A month or
two found even the Dodecagons infected with the innovation. A year had
not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the very highest of
the Nobility. Needless to say, the custom soon made its way from the
district of Chromatistes to surrounding regions; and within two
generations no one in all Flatland was colourless except the Women and
the Priests.
Here Nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against
extending the innovation to these two classes. Many-sidedness was almost
essential as a pretext for the Innovators. “Distinction of sides is
intended by Nature to imply distinction of colours”—such was the sophism
which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting whole towns at a
time to the new culture. But manifestly to our Priests and Women this
adage did not apply. The latter had only one side, and therefore—plurally
and pedantically speaking—_no sides_. The former—if at least they would
assert their claim to be really and truly Circles, and not mere
high-class Polygons with an infinitely large number of infinitesimally
small sides—were in the habit of boasting (what Women confessed and
deplored) that they also had no sides, being blessed with a perimeter of
one line or, in other words, a Circumference. Hence it came to pass that
these two Classes could see no force in the so-called axiom about
“Distinction of Sides implying Distinction of Colour”; and when all
others had succumbed to the fascinations of corporal decoration, the
Priests and the Women alone still remained pure from the pollution of
paint.
Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific—call them by what names you
will—yet, from an æsthetic point of view, those ancient days of the
Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland—a childhood,
alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the blossom of
youth. To live was then in itself a delight, because living implied
seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold; the
richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre are said to
have more than once proved too distracting for our greatest teachers and
actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the unspeakable
magnificence of a military review.
The sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly
facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the
orange and purple of the two sides including their acute angle; the
militia of the Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and blue;
the mauve, ultramarine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square
artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermilion guns; the dashing and
flashing of the five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and Hexagons
careering across the field in their offices of surgeons, geometricians
and aides-de-camp—all these may well have been sufficient to render
credible the famous story how an illustrious Circle, overcome by the
artistic beauty of the forces under his command, threw aside his
marshal’s bâton and his royal crown, exclaiming that he henceforth
exchanged them for the artist’s pencil. How great and glorious the
sensuous development of these days must have been is in part indicated by
the very language and vocabulary of the period. The commonest utterances
of the commonest citizens in the time of the Colour Revolt seem to have
been suffused with a richer tinge of word or thought; and to that era we
are even now indebted for our finest poetry and for whatever rhythm still
remains in the more scientific utterance of these modern days.
§ 9.—_Of the Universal Colour Bill._
But meanwhile the intellectual Arts were fast decaying.
The Art of Sight Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer
practised; and the studies of Geometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other
kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and fell into
disrepute and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of Feeling
speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools. Then the
Isosceles classes, asserting that the Specimens were no longer used nor
needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from the Criminal
classes to the service of Education, waxed daily more numerous and more
insolent on the strength of their immunity from the old burden which had
formerly exercised the twofold wholesome effect of at once taming their
brutal nature and thinning their excessive numbers.
Year by year the Soldiers and Artisans began more vehemently to
assert—and with increasing truth—that there was no great difference
between them and the very highest class of Polygons, now that they were
raised to an equality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with all
the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, whether Statical and
Kinetical, by the simple process of Colour Recognition. Not content with
the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began
boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all “monopolising and
aristocratic Arts” and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the
studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling. Soon, they began
to insist that inasmuch as Colour, which was a second Nature, had
destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the Law should follow in
the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should
be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights.
Finding the higher Orders wavering and undecided, the leaders of the
Revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last
demanded that all classes alike, the Priests and the Women not excepted,
should do homage to Colour by submitting to be painted. When it was
objected that Priests and Women had no sides, they retorted that Nature
and Expediency concurred in dictating that the front half of every human
being (that is to say, the half containing his eye and mouth) should be
distinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore brought before a
general and extraordinary Assembly of all the States of Flatland a Bill
proposing that in every Woman the half containing the eye and mouth
should be coloured red, and the other half green. The Priests were to be
painted in the same way, red being applied to that semicircle in which
the eye and mouth formed the middle point; while the other or hinder
semicircle was to be coloured green.
There was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed emanated, not
from any Isosceles—for no being so degraded would have had angularity
enough to appreciate, much less to devise, such a model of
state-craft—but from an Irregular Circle who, instead of being destroyed
in his childhood, was reserved by a foolish indulgence to bring
desolation on his country and destruction on myriads of his followers.
On the one hand the proposition was calculated to bring the Women in all
classes over to the side of the Chromatic Innovation. For by assigning to
the Women the same two colours as were assigned to the Priests, the
Revolutionists thereby ensured that, in certain positions, every Woman
would appear like a Priest, and be treated with corresponding respect and
deference—a prospect that could not fail to attract the Female Sex in a
mass.
But by some of my Readers the possibility of the identical appearance of
Priests and Women, under the new Legislation, may not be recognized; if
so, a word or two will make it obvious.
Imagine a woman duly decorated, according to the new Code; with the front
half (_i.e._ the half containing eye and mouth) red, and with the hinder
half green. Look at her from one side. Obviously you will see a straight
line, _half red_, _half green_.
[Illustration: ]
Now imagine a Priest, whose mouth is at M, and whose front semicircle
(AMB) is consequently coloured red, while his hinder semicircle is green;
so that the diameter AB divides the green from the red. If you
contemplate the Great Man so as to have your eye in the same straight
line as his dividing diameter (AB), what you will see will be a straight
line (CBD), of which _one half_ (CB) _will be red, and the other_ (BD)
_green_. The whole line (CD) will be rather shorter perhaps than that of
a full-sized Woman, and will shade off more rapidly towards its
extremities; but the identity of the colours would give you an immediate
impression of identity if not Class, making you neglectful of other
details. Bear in mind the decay of Sight Recognition which threatened
society at the time of the Colour Revolt; add too the certainty that
Women would speedily learn to shade off their extremities so as to
imitate the Circles; it must then be surely obvious to you, my dear
Reader, that the Colour Bill placed us under a great danger of
confounding a Priest with a young Woman.
How attractive this prospect must have been to the Frail Sex may readily
be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that would
ensue. At home they might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets
intended not for them but for their husbands and brothers, and might even
issue commands in the name of a priestly Circle; out of doors the
striking combination of red and green, without addition of any other
colours, would be sure to lead the common people into endless mistakes,
and the Women would gain whatever the Circles lost, in the deference of
the passers by. As for the scandal that would befall the Circular Class
if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the Women were imputed to them,
and as to the consequent subversion of the Constitution, the Female Sex
could not be expected to give a thought to these considerations. Even in
the households of the Circles, the Women were all in favour of the
Universal Colour Bill.
The second object aimed at by the Bill was the gradual demoralization of
the Circles themselves. In the general intellectual decay they still
preserved their pristine clearness and strength of understanding. From
their earliest childhood, familiarized in their Circular households with
the total absence of Colour, the Nobles alone preserved the Sacred Art of
Sight Recognition, with all the advantages that result from that
admirable training of the intellect. Hence, up to the date of the
introduction of the Universal Colour Bill, the Circles had not only held
their own, but even increased their lead of other classes by abstinence
from the popular fashion.
Now therefore the artful Irregular whom I described above as the real
author of this diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower the
status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of
Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of
training in the Art of Sight Recognition, so as to enfeeble their
intellects by depriving them of their pure and colourless homes. Once
subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish
Circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the Father
and the Mother would the Circular infant find problems for the exercise
of its understanding—problems too often likely to be corrupted by
maternal impostures with the result of shaking the child’s faith in all
logical conclusions. Thus by degrees the intellectual lustre of the
Priestly Order would wane, and the road would then lie open for a total
destruction of all Aristocratic Legislature and for the subversion of our
Privileged Classes.
§ 10.—_Of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition._
The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years;
and up to the last moment of that period it seemed as though Anarchy were
destined to triumph.
A whole army of Polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers,
was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles Triangles—the
Squares and Pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all, some
of the ablest Circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by
political animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their
lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the Colour Bill; and
some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their
innocent children and husbands, perishing themselves in the act of
carnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation no less than
twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord.
Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice
between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events
was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which
Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes
perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with
which they appeal to the sympathies of the populace.
It happened that an Isosceles of a low type, with a brain little if at
all above four degrees—accidentally dabbling in the colours of some
Tradesman whose shop he had plundered—painted himself, or caused himself
to be painted (for the story varies) with the twelve colours of a
Dodecahedron. Going into the Market Place he accosted in a feigned voice
a maiden, the orphan daughter of a noble Polygon, whose affection in
former days he had sought in vain; and by a series of deceptions, aided
on the one side by a string of lucky accidents too long to relate, and,
on the other, by an almost inconceivable fatuity and neglect of ordinary
precautions on the part of the relations of the bride, he succeeded in
consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on
discovering the fraud to which she had been subjected.