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

render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the
wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed
that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence,
knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle
(which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and
approximate to their comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral
Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable off the soldier
class -- creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of
intelligence -- it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability
necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage,
so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.
How admirable is the Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof
of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the
aristocratic constitution of the States of Flatland! By a juidicious
use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always
able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the
irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also
comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generall found possible --
by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the
State physicians -- to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a
rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the
privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the
standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are
induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in
honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the most
obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.
Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless and
leaderless, are ether transfixed without resistance by the small body
of their brethren whom the Chief Circle keeps in pay for emergencies
of this kind; or else more often, by means of jealousies and
suspicious skillfully fomented among them by the Circular party, they
are stirred to mutual warfare, and perish by one another's angles. No
less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in our
annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-
five; and they have all ended thus.
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Footnote 1. "What need of a certificate?" a Spaceland critic may ask:
"Is not the procreation of a Square Son a certificate from Nature
herself, proving the Equal-sidedness of the Father?" I reply that no
Lady of any position will mary an uncertified Triangle. Square
offspring has somethimes resulted from a slightly Irregular Triangle;
but in almost every such case the Irregularity of the first generation
is visited on the third; which either fails to attain the Pentagonal
rank, or relapses to the Triangular.


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SECTION 4. -- Concerning the Women