Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott: Part 1, Sections 11 - 12

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one, sections eleven and twelve of flat Land. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding.
Flatland are Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot. Abbot
Part one, section eleven. Concerning our priests, It is high

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time that I should pass from these brief and discursed
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.
For this reason I must omit many matters of which

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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 feat the means by
which we give fixity to structures of wood, stone or brick,
although of course we have no hands, nor can we

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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,
our trees and vegetables, our seasons and harvests, our alphabet

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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
from forgetfulness on the part of the author, but from
his regard for the time of the reader. Yet, before

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I proceed to my legitimate subject, some few final remarks
will no doubt to 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 of universal homage and almost of adoration. Need I
say that I mean our circles or priests. When I

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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.

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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

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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,

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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 abstension from feeling in the best society
enables a circle the more easily to sustain the veil

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of mystery, in which from his earliest years he is
wont to enrap. The exact nature of his perimeter or
circumference 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,

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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

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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

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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 development shall

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proceed at an accelerated pace. 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

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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

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and 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

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progenitors and 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

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find a 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 properability added one

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more to the tombstones that crowd the neo therapeutic symmetry.
But on rare occasions, a glad procession bears back the
little one to his exultant parents, no longer a polygon,
but a circle, at least by courtesy, and a single
instance of so blessed a result induces multitudes of polygonal

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parents to 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,

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whether political, ecclesiastical, 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

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ancient heresies which led 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 color of Vault,

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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 polygon,

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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. Pentocyclus

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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 some too susceptible

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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, when you ought,

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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 has practical drawbacks in

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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 end of the matter.

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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 sagonal grandsons pleads, as an
excuse for his disobedience, that a sudden change of the

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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

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own part, I find it best 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,

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sitting as judges in law courts, 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

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a human figure is really capable of choosing between them.
Consistently 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 taught to honor their

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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 highest interests. And the

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circles teach them 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 humble square may venture
to speak of anything circular as containing any element of weakness,

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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 ancestry is a fit
partner for one who desires that his posterity should rise

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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 is to say,

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their potential irregularities as regards possible offspring. This is effected
by carefully kept pedigrees, which are preserved and supervised by
the state. And without a certified pedigree, no woman is
allowed to marry. Now, it might have been supposed that
a circle, proud of his ancestry and regardful for a

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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.

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Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who had 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

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hexagon or dodecahedron is even more careless. Of the 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

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more than with you, is thought an excellent thing 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

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a highly developed polygon is not easily noticed, 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 if this evil be not arrested,

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the gradual diminution of the circular class 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

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so easily mention a remedy. And this also 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.

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The consequence was that they were no longer 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.

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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chambers 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

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taught to unlearn the old language except for the purpose
of 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

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say nothing of the possible danger if a woman should
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

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of the logical dialect. On the simple ground of the
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 Part one. Recording by

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Ruth Golding