"Abbott, Edwin A - Flatland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abbott Edwin A)

individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair
abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely
destitute of civil rights; and a great number of them, not having even
intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the
States to the service of education. Fettered immovably so as to
remove all possibility of danger, they are placed in the classrooms of
our Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Board of
Education for the pupose of imparting to the offspring of the Middle
Classes the tact and intelligence which these wretched creatures
themselves are utterly devoid.
In some States the Specimens are occasionally fed and suffered to
exist for several years; butin the more temperate and better regulated
regions, it is found in the long run more advantageous for the
educational interests of the young, to dispense with food, and to
renew the Specimens every month -- which is about the average duration
of the foodless existence of the Criminal class. In the cheaper
schools, what is gained by the longer existence of the Specimen is
lost, partly in the expenditure for food, and partly in the diminished
accuracy of the angles, which are impaired after a few weeks of
constant "feeling." Nor must we forget to add, in enumerating the
advantages of the more expensive system, that it tends, though
slightly yet perceptibly, to the diminution of the redundant Isosceles
population -- an object which every statesman in Flatland constantly
keeps in view. On the whole therefore -- although I am not ignorant
that, in many popularly elected School Boards, there is a reaction in
favour of "the cheap system" as it is called -- I am myself disposed
to think that this is one of the many cases in which expense is the
truest economy.
But I must not allow questions of School Board politics to divert
me from my subject. Enough has been said, I trust, to shew that
Recognition by FEeling is not so tedious or indecisive a process as
might have been supposed; and it is obviously more trustworthy than
Recognition by hearing. Still there remains, as has been pointed out
above, the objection that this method is not without danger. For this
reason many in the Middle and Lower classes, and all without exception
in the Polygonal and Circular orders, prefer a third method, the
description of which shall be reserved for the next section.


* * *


SECTION 6. -- Of Recognition by Sight

I am about to appear very inconsistent. In the previous sections
I have said that all figures in Flatland present the appearance of a
straight line; and it was added or implied, that it is consequently
impossible to distinguish by the visual organ between individuals of
different classes: yet now I am about to explain to my Spaceland
critics how we are able to recognize one another by the sense of