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

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
mmiddle 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
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
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 as 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 a 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 the 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._
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