As to the doctrine of the Circles it may briefly be summed up in a single maxim, "Attend
to your Configuration." Whether political, ecclesiastical, or moral, all their teaching has
for its object the improvement of individual and collective Configuration -- with special
reference of course to the Configuration of the Circles, to which all other objects are
subordinated.
It is the merit of the Circles that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies
which led men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief that conduct depends
upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else but Configuration. It
was Pantocyclus -- the illustrious Circle mentioned above, as the queller of the Colour
Revolt -- who first convinced mankind that Configuration makes the man; that if, for
example, you are born an Isosceles with two uneven sides, you will assuredly go wrong
unless you have them made even -- for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles
Hospital; similarly, if you are a Triangle, or Square, or even a Polygon, born with any
Irregularity, you must be taken to one of the Regular Hospitals to have your disease
cured; otherwise you will end your days in the State Prison or by the angle of the State
Executioner.
All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime,
Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure,
caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take
exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature,
resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore,
concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit
subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise,
for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client,
when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or
again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the
incurable inequality of his sides?
Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing
with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his
unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance
to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed -- and
there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of
consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes
comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own
Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of
the temperature has been too much for his Perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not
on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the
choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept,
his conclusions.
