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

figure cannot be distinguished from a circle, he is included in the
Circular or Priestly order; and this is the highest class of all.
It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have one
more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a
rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. Thus the son
of a Square is a Pentagon; the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so
on.
But this rule applies not always to the Tradesman, and still less
often to the Soldiers, and to the Workmen; who indeed can hardly be
said to deserve the name of human Figures, since they have not all
their sides equal. With them therefore the Law of Nature does not
hold; and the son of an Isosceles (i.e. a Triangle with two sides
equal) remains Isosceles still. Nevertheless, all hope is not such
out, even from the Isosceles, that his posterity may ultimately rise
above his degraded condition. For, after a long series of military
successes, or diligent and skillful labours, it is generally found
that the more intelligent among the Artisan and Soldier classes
manifest a slight increase of their third side or base, and a
shrinkage of the two other sides. Intermarriages (arranged by the
Priests) between the sons and daughters of these more intellectual
members of the lower classes generally result in an offspring
approximating still more to the type of the Equal-Sided Triangle.
Rarely -- in proportion to the vast numbers of Isosceles births --
is a genuine and certifiable Equal-Sided Triangle produced from
Isosceles parents (footnote 1). Such a birth requires, as its
antecedents, not only a series of carefully arranged intermarriages,
but also a long-continued exercise of frugality and self-control on
the part of the would-be ancestors of the coming Equilateral, and a
patient, systematic, and continuous development of the Isosceles
intellect through many generations.
The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents is
the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs round.
After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board,
the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial
admitted into the class of Equilaterals. He is then immediately taken
from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some childless
Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child henceforth
to enter his former home or so much as to look upon his relations
again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may, by force of
unconscious imitation, fall back again into his hereditary level.
The occasional emergence of an Equilateral from the ranks of his
serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor serfs
themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous
squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy at large; for
all the higher classes are well aware that these rare phenomena, while
they do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges, serve as
amost useful barrier against revolution from below.
Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception,
absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found
leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to