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

more rapidly towards its extremities; but the identity of the colours
would give you an immediate impression of identity in Class, making
you neglectful of other details. Bear in mind the decay of Sight
Recognition which threatened society at the time of the Colour revolt;
add too the certainty that Woman would speedily learn to shade off
their extremities so as to imitate the Circles; it must then be surely
obvious to you, my dear Reader, that the Colour Bill placed us under a
great danger of confounding a Priest with a young Woman.
How attractive this prospect must have been to the Frail Sex may
readily be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that
would ensue. At home they might hear political and ecclesiastical
secrets intended not for them but for their husbands and brothers, and
might even issue some commands in the name of a priestly Circle; out
of doors the striking combination of red and green without adddition
of any other colours, would be sure to lead the common people into
endless mistakes, and the Woman would gain whatever the Circles lost,
in the deference of the passers by. As for the scandal that would
befall the Circular Class if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the
Women were imputed to them, and as to the consequent subversion of the
Constitution, the Female Sex could not be expected to give a thought
to these considerations. Even in the households of the Circles, the
Women were all in favour of the Univsersal Colour Bill.
The second object aimed at by the Bill was the gradual
demoralization of the Circles themselves. In the general intellectual
decay they still preserved their pristine clearness and strength of
understanding. From their earliest childhood, familiarized in their
Circular households with the total absence of Colour, the Nobles alone
preserved the Sacred Art of Sight Recognition, with all the advantages
that result from that admirable training of the intellect. Hence, up
to the date of the introduction of the Universal Colour Bill, the
Circles had not only held their own, but even increased their lead of
the other classes by abstinence from the popular fashion.
Now therefore the artful Irregular whom I described above as the
real author of this diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower
the status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution
of Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic
opportunities of training in the Art of Sight Recognition, so as to
enfeeble their intellects by depriving them of their pure and
colourless homes. Once subjected to the chromatic taint, every
parental and every childish Circle would demoralize each other. Only
in discerning between the Father and the Mother would the Circular
infant find problems for the exercise of his understanding -- problems
too often likely to be corrupted by maternal impostures with the
result of shaking the child's faith in all logical conclusions. Thus
by degrees the intellectual lustre of the Priestly Order would wane,
and the road would then lie open for a total destruction of all
Aristocratic Legislature and for the subversion of our Privileged
Classes.