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

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 innovations 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 a new culture. But
manifestly to our Priests and Women this adage did not apply. The
latter had only one side, and therefore -- plurally and pedanticallly
speaking -- _no sides._ The former -- if at least they would assert
their claim to be readily 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 only 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
named you will -- yet, from an aesthetic 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 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 from our greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishing
of all is said to have been the unspeakable magnificence of a military