August 5, 2025 • 20 mins
https://www.solgoodmedia.com Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and ambient sounds all ad-free! Embark on a journey beyond the ordinary with our Sci-Fi podcast, where each day a new chapter unfolds from classic tales that defy the limits of imagination. Dive into worlds of mystery and adventure with timeless stories like "Anthem," "Around The World in Eighty Days," "Baron's Marvellous Underground Journey," "Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions," "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Out of Time's Abyss," "The Door Through Space," "The Flying Inn," "The Gods of Mars," "The House of Arden," "The Invisible Man," "The Island of Dr. Moreau," "The Machine Stops," "The New Atlantis," "The Time Machine," "The War of The Worlds," and "Thuvia, Maid of Mars." Each chapter is a portal to a different universe, offering a fresh dose of excitement and wonder. Subscribe now and let your imagination soar as we transport you to realms unknown, one chapter at a time.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one, Section eleven, concerning our priests. It is high
time that I should pass from these brief and discursive
notes about things in Flatland to the central event of
this book, my initiation into the mysteries of space, that
is my subject. All that has gone before is merely preface.
(00:25):
For this reason I must omit many matters of which
the explanation would not I flatter myself, be without interest
for my readers, as for example, our method of propelling
and stopping ourselves, although destitute of feet, the means by
which we give fixity to structures of wood, stone or brick,
(00:46):
although of course we have no hands, nor can we
lay foundations as you can, nor avail ourselves of the
lateral pressure of the earth. The manner in which the
rain originates in the intervals between our various zones, so
that the northern regions do not intercept the moisture from
falling on the southern. The nature of our hills and mines,
(01:09):
our trees and vegetables, our seasons and harvests, our alphabet
and method of writing adapted to our linear tablets. These
and a hundred other details of our physical existence I
must pass over, Nor do I mention them now except
to indicate to my readers that their omission proceeds not
(01:31):
from forgetfulness on the part of the author, but from
his regard for the time of the reader. Yet, before
I proceed to my legitimate subject, some few final remarks
will no doubt be expected by my readers upon those
pillars and mainstays of the constitution of flatland, the controllers
of our conduct and shapers of our destiny, the objects
(01:54):
of universal homage and almost of adoration. Need I say
that I mean our priests when I call them priests,
Let me not be understood as meaning no more than
the term denotes with you, with us. Our priests are
administrators of all business, art and science, directors of trade, commerce, generalship, architecture, engineering, education, statesmanship, legislature, morality, theology.
(02:29):
Doing nothing themselves, they are the causes of everything worth
doing that is done by others. Although popularly everyone called
a circle is deemed a circle, yet among the better
educated classes it is known that no circle is really
a circle, but only a polygon with a very large
(02:50):
number of very small sides. In proportion to the number
of the sides, the polygon approximates to a circle. And
when the number is very great, say for example, three
or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most
delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather,
(03:12):
it would be difficult, for as I have shown above,
recognition by feeling is unknown among the highest society, and
to feel a circle would be considered a most audacious insult.
This habit of abstention from feeling in the best society
enables a circle the more easily to sustain the veil
(03:34):
of mystery in which from his earliest years he is
wont to enwrap. The exact nature of his perimeter or circumference,
three feet being the average perimeter, it follows that in
a polygon of three hundred sides, each side will be
no more than the hundredth part of a foot in length,
or little more than the tenth part of an inch,
(03:57):
And in a polygon of six or seven hundred sides,
the sides are little larger than the diameter of a
spaceland pin head. It is always assumed, by courtesy that
the chief circle for the time being has ten thousand sides.
The ascent of the posterity of the circles in the
(04:17):
social scale is not restricted, as it is among the
lower regular classes, by the law of nature, which limits
the increase of sides to one in each generation. If
it were so, the number of sides in a circle
would be a mere question of pedigree and arithmetic, and
the four hundred and ninety seventh descendant of an equilateral
(04:38):
triangle would necessarily be a polygon with five hundred sides.
But this is not the case. Nature's law prescribes two
antagonistic decrees affecting circular propagation. First, that as the race
climbs higher in the scale of development, so developments shall
(04:58):
proceed at an accelerated Second, that in the same proportion,
the race shall become less fertile. Consequently, in the home
of a polygon of four or five hundred sides, it
is rare to find a sun. More than one is
never seen. On the other hand, the sun of a
(05:19):
five hundred sided polygon has been known to possess five hundred,
fifty or even six hundred sides. Art also steps in
to help the process of the higher evolution. Our physicians
have discovered that the small and tender sides of an
infant polygon of the higher class can be fractured and
(05:42):
his whole frame reset with such exactness that a polygon
of two or three hundred sides, sometimes by no means always,
for the process is attended with serious risk, but sometimes
overleaps two or three hundred generations, and, as it were,
doubles at a stroke the number of his progenitors and
(06:03):
the nobility of his descent. Many a promising child is
sacrificed in this way. Scarcely one out of ten survives.
Yet so strong is the parental ambition among those polygons
who are, as it were, on the fringe of the
circular class, that it is very rare to find a
(06:23):
nobleman of that position in society who has neglected to
place his firstborn son in the circular neo therapeutic gymnasium
before he has attained the age of a month. One
year determines success or failure. At the end of that time,
the child has, in all probability added one more to
(06:45):
the tombstones that crowd the neo therapeutic cemetery. But on
rare occasions, a glad procession bears back the little one
to his exultant parents, no longer a polygon but a circle.
At LEAs least by courtesy, and a single instance of
so blessed a result induces multitudes of polygonal parents to
(07:08):
submit to similar domestic sacrifices which have a dissimilar issue
Section twelve of the Doctrine of Our Priests. As to
the doctrine of the Circles, it may briefly be summed
up in a single maxim attend to your configuration, whether political, ecclesiastical,
(07:32):
or moral. All their teaching has for its object the
improvement of individual and collective configuration, with special reference, of course,
to the configuration of the circles, to which all other
objects are subordinated. It is the merit of the circles
that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led
(07:53):
men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief
that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or
anything else but configuration. It was Pantocyclus, the illustrious Circle
mentioned above as the Quella of the colour of Vault,
(08:14):
who first convinced mankind that configuration makes the man. That, if,
for example, you are born an Isosceles with two uneven sides,
you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made,
even for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles hospital. Similarly,
if you are a triangle or square, or even a
(08:36):
polygon born with any irregularity, you must be taken to
one of the regular hospitals to have your disease cured.
Otherwise you will end your days in the state prison
or by the angle of the state executioner. All faults
or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime.
(08:58):
Pentocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect regularity in the
bodily figure, caused, perhaps if not congenital, by some collision
in a crowd, by neglect to take exercise, or by
taking too much of it, or even by a sudden
change of temperature resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in
(09:19):
some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore concluded that
illustrious philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct, is a
fit subject in any sober estimation for either praise or blame.
For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of
a square who faithfully defends the interests of his client,
(09:42):
when you ought, in reality, rather to admire the exact
precision of his rectangles, Or again, why blame allying thievish
Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality
of his sides. Theoretically this doctrine is unquestionable, but it
(10:04):
has practical drawbacks in dealing with an Isosceles. If a
rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness,
you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot
help being a nuisance to his neighbors, you the magistrate
cannot help sentencing him to be consumed, And there's an
(10:25):
end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, whether
penalty of consumption or death is out of the question.
This theory of configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly, and I
must confess that occasionally when one of my own hexagonal
grandsons pleads, as an excuse for his disobedience, that a
(10:48):
sudden change of the temperature has been too much for
his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame
not on him, but on his configuration, which can only
be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats. I neither
see my way logically to reject nor practically to accept
his conclusions. For my own part, I find it best
(11:12):
to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has
some latent and strengthening influence on my grandson's configuration. Though
I own that I have no grounds for thinking so
at all events, I am not alone in my way
of extricating myself from this dilemma, For I find that
many of the highest circles, sitting as judges in law courts,
(11:35):
use praise and blame towards regular and irregular figures, and
in their homes I know by experience that when scolding
their children, they speak about right or wrong as vehemently
and passionately, as if they believed that these names represented
real existences, and that a human figure is really capable
(11:56):
of choosing between them, Distantly carrying out their policy of
making configuration the leading idea in every mind, the circles
reverse the nature of that commandment which in Spaceland regulates
the relations between parents and children. With you, children are
(12:17):
taught to honor their parents with us, next to the circles,
who are the chief object of universal homage. A man
is taught to honor his grandson if he has one,
or if not his son. By honor, however, is by
no means meant indulgence, but a reverent regard for their
(12:39):
highest interests. And the circles teach that the duty of
fathers is to subordinate their own interests to those of posterity,
thereby advancing the welfare of the whole state as well
as that of their own immediate descendants. The weak point
in the system of the circles, if a humah square
(13:00):
may venture to speak of anything circular as containing any
element of weakness, appears to me to be found in
their relations with women. As it is of the utmost
importance for society that irregular births should be discouraged, it
follows that no woman who has any irregularities in her
(13:21):
ancestry is a fit partner for one who desires that
his posterity should rise by regular degrees in the social scale. Now,
the irregularity of a male is a matter of measurement.
But as all women are straight and therefore visibly regular,
so to speak, one has to devise some other means
of ascertaining what I may call their invisible irregularity, that
(13:46):
is to say, their potential irregularities. As regards possible offspring.
This is effected by carefully kept pedigrees, which are preserved
and supervised by the state, and without assertainied pedigree, no
woman is allowed to marry. Now, it might have been
supposed that a circle, proud of his ancestry and regardful
(14:10):
for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a
chief circle, would be more careful than any other to
choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon.
But it is not so. The care in choosing a
regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the
social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who had
(14:34):
hopes of generating an equilateral son, to take a wife
who reckoned a single irregularity among her ancestors. A square
or pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily
on the rise does not inquire above the five hundredth generation.
A hexagon or dodecahedron is even more careless of the
(14:56):
wife's pedigree. But a circle has been known deliberately to
take a wife who has had an irregular great grandfather,
and all because of some slight superiority of luster, or
because of the charms of a low voice which with us,
even more than with you, is thought an excellent thing
(15:18):
in woman. Such ill judged marriages are as might be
expected barren if they do not result in positive irregularity
or in diminution of sides. But none of these evils
have hitherto proved sufficiently deterrent. The loss of a few
sides in a highly developed polygon is not easily noticed,
(15:42):
and is sometimes compensated by a successful operation in the
neo therapeutic gymnasium, as I have described above. And the
circles are too much disposed to acquiesce in inficundity as
a law of the superior development. Yet it is evil
be not arrested. The gradual diminution of the circular class
(16:03):
may soon become more rapid, and the time may not
be far distant when the race, being no longer able
to produce a chief circle, the constitution of flatland must fall.
One other word of warnings suggests itself to me, though
I cannot so easily mention a remedy. And this also
(16:24):
refers to our relations with women. About three hundred years ago,
it was decreed by the chief circle that, since women
are deficient in reason, but abundant in emotion, they ought
no longer to be treated as rational nor receive any
mental education. The consequence was that they were no longer
(16:45):
taught to read, nor even to master arithmetic enough to
enable them to count the angles of their husband or children.
And hence they sensibly declined during each generation in intellectual power.
And this system of female non education or quietism, still prevails.
(17:06):
My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy
has been carried so far as to react injuriously on
the male sex. For the consequence is that, as things
now are, we males have to lead a kind of
bilingual and I may almost say by mental existence. With
(17:28):
the women we speak of love, duty, right, wrong, pity, hope,
and other irrational and emotional conceptions which have no existence,
and the fiction of which has no object except to
control feminine exuberances. But among ourselves and in our books,
(17:49):
we have an entirely different vocabulary, and I may almost
say idiom love then becomes the anticipation of benefits, duty
becomes necessity or fitness, and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover,
among women, we use language implying the utmost deference for
(18:13):
their sex, and they fully believe that the Chief circle
himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are.
But behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken
of by all except the very young, as being little
better than mindless organisms. Our theology, also in the women's chambers,
(18:37):
is entirely different from our theology elsewhere. Now, my humble
fear is that this double training in language as well
as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon
the young, especially when, at the age of three years
old they are taken from the maternal care and taught
to unlearn the old language except for the purpose of
(19:00):
repeating it in the presence of their mothers and nurses,
and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already,
methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical
truth at the present time, as compared with the more
robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago. I
say nothing of the possible danger if a woman should
(19:23):
ever surreptitiously learn to read and convey to her sex
the result of her perusal of a single popular volume,
nor of the possibility that the indiscretion or disobedience of
some infant male might reveal to a mother the secrets
of the logical dialect on the simple ground of the
(19:45):
enfeebling of the male intellect. I rest this humble appeal
to the highest authorities to reconsider the regulations of female education.
End of Section twelve and of Post one
Part one, Section eleven, concerning our priests. It is high
time that I should pass from these brief and discursive
notes about things in Flatland to the central event of
this book, my initiation into the mysteries of space, that
is my subject. All that has gone before is merely preface.
(00:25):
For this reason I must omit many matters of which
the explanation would not I flatter myself, be without interest
for my readers, as for example, our method of propelling
and stopping ourselves, although destitute of feet, the means by
which we give fixity to structures of wood, stone or brick,
(00:46):
although of course we have no hands, nor can we
lay foundations as you can, nor avail ourselves of the
lateral pressure of the earth. The manner in which the
rain originates in the intervals between our various zones, so
that the northern regions do not intercept the moisture from
falling on the southern. The nature of our hills and mines,
(01:09):
our trees and vegetables, our seasons and harvests, our alphabet
and method of writing adapted to our linear tablets. These
and a hundred other details of our physical existence I
must pass over, Nor do I mention them now except
to indicate to my readers that their omission proceeds not
(01:31):
from forgetfulness on the part of the author, but from
his regard for the time of the reader. Yet, before
I proceed to my legitimate subject, some few final remarks
will no doubt be expected by my readers upon those
pillars and mainstays of the constitution of flatland, the controllers
of our conduct and shapers of our destiny, the objects
(01:54):
of universal homage and almost of adoration. Need I say
that I mean our priests when I call them priests,
Let me not be understood as meaning no more than
the term denotes with you, with us. Our priests are
administrators of all business, art and science, directors of trade, commerce, generalship, architecture, engineering, education, statesmanship, legislature, morality, theology.
(02:29):
Doing nothing themselves, they are the causes of everything worth
doing that is done by others. Although popularly everyone called
a circle is deemed a circle, yet among the better
educated classes it is known that no circle is really
a circle, but only a polygon with a very large
(02:50):
number of very small sides. In proportion to the number
of the sides, the polygon approximates to a circle. And
when the number is very great, say for example, three
or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most
delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather,
(03:12):
it would be difficult, for as I have shown above,
recognition by feeling is unknown among the highest society, and
to feel a circle would be considered a most audacious insult.
This habit of abstention from feeling in the best society
enables a circle the more easily to sustain the veil
(03:34):
of mystery in which from his earliest years he is
wont to enwrap. The exact nature of his perimeter or circumference,
three feet being the average perimeter, it follows that in
a polygon of three hundred sides, each side will be
no more than the hundredth part of a foot in length,
or little more than the tenth part of an inch,
(03:57):
And in a polygon of six or seven hundred sides,
the sides are little larger than the diameter of a
spaceland pin head. It is always assumed, by courtesy that
the chief circle for the time being has ten thousand sides.
The ascent of the posterity of the circles in the
(04:17):
social scale is not restricted, as it is among the
lower regular classes, by the law of nature, which limits
the increase of sides to one in each generation. If
it were so, the number of sides in a circle
would be a mere question of pedigree and arithmetic, and
the four hundred and ninety seventh descendant of an equilateral
(04:38):
triangle would necessarily be a polygon with five hundred sides.
But this is not the case. Nature's law prescribes two
antagonistic decrees affecting circular propagation. First, that as the race
climbs higher in the scale of development, so developments shall
(04:58):
proceed at an accelerated Second, that in the same proportion,
the race shall become less fertile. Consequently, in the home
of a polygon of four or five hundred sides, it
is rare to find a sun. More than one is
never seen. On the other hand, the sun of a
(05:19):
five hundred sided polygon has been known to possess five hundred,
fifty or even six hundred sides. Art also steps in
to help the process of the higher evolution. Our physicians
have discovered that the small and tender sides of an
infant polygon of the higher class can be fractured and
(05:42):
his whole frame reset with such exactness that a polygon
of two or three hundred sides, sometimes by no means always,
for the process is attended with serious risk, but sometimes
overleaps two or three hundred generations, and, as it were,
doubles at a stroke the number of his progenitors and
(06:03):
the nobility of his descent. Many a promising child is
sacrificed in this way. Scarcely one out of ten survives.
Yet so strong is the parental ambition among those polygons
who are, as it were, on the fringe of the
circular class, that it is very rare to find a
(06:23):
nobleman of that position in society who has neglected to
place his firstborn son in the circular neo therapeutic gymnasium
before he has attained the age of a month. One
year determines success or failure. At the end of that time,
the child has, in all probability added one more to
(06:45):
the tombstones that crowd the neo therapeutic cemetery. But on
rare occasions, a glad procession bears back the little one
to his exultant parents, no longer a polygon but a circle.
At LEAs least by courtesy, and a single instance of
so blessed a result induces multitudes of polygonal parents to
(07:08):
submit to similar domestic sacrifices which have a dissimilar issue
Section twelve of the Doctrine of Our Priests. As to
the doctrine of the Circles, it may briefly be summed
up in a single maxim attend to your configuration, whether political, ecclesiastical,
(07:32):
or moral. All their teaching has for its object the
improvement of individual and collective configuration, with special reference, of course,
to the configuration of the circles, to which all other
objects are subordinated. It is the merit of the circles
that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led
(07:53):
men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief
that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or
anything else but configuration. It was Pantocyclus, the illustrious Circle
mentioned above as the Quella of the colour of Vault,
(08:14):
who first convinced mankind that configuration makes the man. That, if,
for example, you are born an Isosceles with two uneven sides,
you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made,
even for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles hospital. Similarly,
if you are a triangle or square, or even a
(08:36):
polygon born with any irregularity, you must be taken to
one of the regular hospitals to have your disease cured.
Otherwise you will end your days in the state prison
or by the angle of the state executioner. All faults
or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime.
(08:58):
Pentocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect regularity in the
bodily figure, caused, perhaps if not congenital, by some collision
in a crowd, by neglect to take exercise, or by
taking too much of it, or even by a sudden
change of temperature resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in
(09:19):
some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore concluded that
illustrious philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct, is a
fit subject in any sober estimation for either praise or blame.
For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of
a square who faithfully defends the interests of his client,
(09:42):
when you ought, in reality, rather to admire the exact
precision of his rectangles, Or again, why blame allying thievish
Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality
of his sides. Theoretically this doctrine is unquestionable, but it
(10:04):
has practical drawbacks in dealing with an Isosceles. If a
rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness,
you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot
help being a nuisance to his neighbors, you the magistrate
cannot help sentencing him to be consumed, And there's an
(10:25):
end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, whether
penalty of consumption or death is out of the question.
This theory of configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly, and I
must confess that occasionally when one of my own hexagonal
grandsons pleads, as an excuse for his disobedience, that a
(10:48):
sudden change of the temperature has been too much for
his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame
not on him, but on his configuration, which can only
be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats. I neither
see my way logically to reject nor practically to accept
his conclusions. For my own part, I find it best
(11:12):
to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has
some latent and strengthening influence on my grandson's configuration. Though
I own that I have no grounds for thinking so
at all events, I am not alone in my way
of extricating myself from this dilemma, For I find that
many of the highest circles, sitting as judges in law courts,
(11:35):
use praise and blame towards regular and irregular figures, and
in their homes I know by experience that when scolding
their children, they speak about right or wrong as vehemently
and passionately, as if they believed that these names represented
real existences, and that a human figure is really capable
(11:56):
of choosing between them, Distantly carrying out their policy of
making configuration the leading idea in every mind, the circles
reverse the nature of that commandment which in Spaceland regulates
the relations between parents and children. With you, children are
(12:17):
taught to honor their parents with us, next to the circles,
who are the chief object of universal homage. A man
is taught to honor his grandson if he has one,
or if not his son. By honor, however, is by
no means meant indulgence, but a reverent regard for their
(12:39):
highest interests. And the circles teach that the duty of
fathers is to subordinate their own interests to those of posterity,
thereby advancing the welfare of the whole state as well
as that of their own immediate descendants. The weak point
in the system of the circles, if a humah square
(13:00):
may venture to speak of anything circular as containing any
element of weakness, appears to me to be found in
their relations with women. As it is of the utmost
importance for society that irregular births should be discouraged, it
follows that no woman who has any irregularities in her
(13:21):
ancestry is a fit partner for one who desires that
his posterity should rise by regular degrees in the social scale. Now,
the irregularity of a male is a matter of measurement.
But as all women are straight and therefore visibly regular,
so to speak, one has to devise some other means
of ascertaining what I may call their invisible irregularity, that
(13:46):
is to say, their potential irregularities. As regards possible offspring.
This is effected by carefully kept pedigrees, which are preserved
and supervised by the state, and without assertainied pedigree, no
woman is allowed to marry. Now, it might have been
supposed that a circle, proud of his ancestry and regardful
(14:10):
for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a
chief circle, would be more careful than any other to
choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon.
But it is not so. The care in choosing a
regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the
social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who had
(14:34):
hopes of generating an equilateral son, to take a wife
who reckoned a single irregularity among her ancestors. A square
or pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily
on the rise does not inquire above the five hundredth generation.
A hexagon or dodecahedron is even more careless of the
(14:56):
wife's pedigree. But a circle has been known deliberately to
take a wife who has had an irregular great grandfather,
and all because of some slight superiority of luster, or
because of the charms of a low voice which with us,
even more than with you, is thought an excellent thing
(15:18):
in woman. Such ill judged marriages are as might be
expected barren if they do not result in positive irregularity
or in diminution of sides. But none of these evils
have hitherto proved sufficiently deterrent. The loss of a few
sides in a highly developed polygon is not easily noticed,
(15:42):
and is sometimes compensated by a successful operation in the
neo therapeutic gymnasium, as I have described above. And the
circles are too much disposed to acquiesce in inficundity as
a law of the superior development. Yet it is evil
be not arrested. The gradual diminution of the circular class
(16:03):
may soon become more rapid, and the time may not
be far distant when the race, being no longer able
to produce a chief circle, the constitution of flatland must fall.
One other word of warnings suggests itself to me, though
I cannot so easily mention a remedy. And this also
(16:24):
refers to our relations with women. About three hundred years ago,
it was decreed by the chief circle that, since women
are deficient in reason, but abundant in emotion, they ought
no longer to be treated as rational nor receive any
mental education. The consequence was that they were no longer
(16:45):
taught to read, nor even to master arithmetic enough to
enable them to count the angles of their husband or children.
And hence they sensibly declined during each generation in intellectual power.
And this system of female non education or quietism, still prevails.
(17:06):
My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy
has been carried so far as to react injuriously on
the male sex. For the consequence is that, as things
now are, we males have to lead a kind of
bilingual and I may almost say by mental existence. With
(17:28):
the women we speak of love, duty, right, wrong, pity, hope,
and other irrational and emotional conceptions which have no existence,
and the fiction of which has no object except to
control feminine exuberances. But among ourselves and in our books,
(17:49):
we have an entirely different vocabulary, and I may almost
say idiom love then becomes the anticipation of benefits, duty
becomes necessity or fitness, and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover,
among women, we use language implying the utmost deference for
(18:13):
their sex, and they fully believe that the Chief circle
himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are.
But behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken
of by all except the very young, as being little
better than mindless organisms. Our theology, also in the women's chambers,
(18:37):
is entirely different from our theology elsewhere. Now, my humble
fear is that this double training in language as well
as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon
the young, especially when, at the age of three years
old they are taken from the maternal care and taught
to unlearn the old language except for the purpose of
(19:00):
repeating it in the presence of their mothers and nurses,
and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already,
methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical
truth at the present time, as compared with the more
robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago. I
say nothing of the possible danger if a woman should
(19:23):
ever surreptitiously learn to read and convey to her sex
the result of her perusal of a single popular volume,
nor of the possibility that the indiscretion or disobedience of
some infant male might reveal to a mother the secrets
of the logical dialect on the simple ground of the
(19:45):
enfeebling of the male intellect. I rest this humble appeal
to the highest authorities to reconsider the regulations of female education.
End of Section twelve and of Post one
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.