Throughout the previous pages I have been assuming -- what perhaps should have been
laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental proposition -- that every human
being in Flatland is a Regular Figure, that is to say of regular construction. By this I mean
that a Woman must not only be a line, but a straight line; that an Artisan or Soldier must
have two of his sides equal; that Tradesmen must have three sides equal; Lawyers (of
which class I am a humble member), four sides equal, and generally, that in every
Polygon, all the sides must be equal.
The size of the sides would of course depend upon the age of the individual. A Female at
birth would be about an inch long, while a tall adult Woman might extend to a foot. As to
the Males of every class, it may be roughly said that the length of an adult's sides, when
added together, is two feet or a little more. But the size of our sides is not under
consideration. I am speaking of the EQUALITY of sides, and it does not need much
reflection to see that the whole of the social life in Flatland rests upon the fundamental
fact that Nature wills all Figures to have their sides equal.
If our sides were unequal our angles might be unequal. Instead of its being sufficient to
feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order to determine the form of an individual, it
would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the experiment of Feeling. But life would
be too short for such a tedious grouping. The whole science and art of Sight Recognition
would at once perish; Feeling, so far as it is an art, would not long survive; intercourse
would become perilous or impossible; there would be an end to all confidence, all
forethought; no one would be safe in making the most simple social arrangements; in a
word, civilization would relapse into barbarism.
Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious conclusions? Surely a
moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one
that our whole social system is based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles. You meet,
for example, two or three Tradesmen in the street, whom you recognize at once to be
Tradesmen by a glance at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to
step into your house to lunch. This you do at present with perfect confidence, because
everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied by an adult Triangle: but imagine
that your Tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of
twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal: -- what are you to do with such a monster sticking
fast in your house door?
But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating details which must be
patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages of a Residence in Spaceland. Obviously
the measurements of a single angle would no longer be sufficient under such portentous
circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up in feeling or surveying the perimeter
of one's acquaintances. Already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are
enough to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated Square; but if no one could calculate
the Regularity of a single figure in the company, all would be chaos and confusion, and
