Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
commended themselves to all. Wherever Chromatistes,--for by that name
the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him,--turned his
variegated frame, there he at once excited attention, and attracted
respect. No one now needed to "feel" him; no one mistook his front for
his back; all his movements were readily ascertained by his neighbours
without the slightest strain on their powers of calculation; no one
jostled him, or failed to make way for him; his voice was saved the
labour of that exhausting utterance by which we colourless Squares and
Pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we move
amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles.
The fashion spread like wildfire. Before a week was over, every Square
and Triangle in the district had copied the example of Chromatistes,
and only a few of the more conservative Pentagons still held out. A
month or two found even the Dodecagons infected with the innovation. A
year had not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the very
highest of the Nobility. Needless to say, the custom soon made its way
from the district of Chromatistes to surrounding regions; and within
two generations no one in all Flatland was colourless except the Women
and the Priests.
Here Nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against
extending the innovation to these two classes. Many-sidedness was
almost essential as a pretext for the Innovators. "Distinction of
sides is intended by Nature to imply distinction of colours"--such was
the sophism which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting
whole towns at a time to the new culture. But manifestly to our
Priests and Women this adage did not apply. The latter had only one
side, and therefore--plurally and pedantically speaking--NO SIDES. The
former--if at least they would assert their claim to be really and
truly Circles, and not mere high-class Polygons with an infinitely
large number of infinitesimally small sides--were in the habit of
boasting (what Women confessed and deplored) that they also had no
sides, being blessed with a perimeter of one line, or, in other words,
a Circumference. Hence it came to pass that these two Classes could
see no force in the so-called axiom about "Distinction of Sides
implying Distinction of Colour"; and when all others had succumbed to
the fascinations of corporal decoration, the Priests and the Women
alone still remained pure from the pollution of paint.
Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific--call them by what names
you will--yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of
the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland--a
childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the
blossom of youth. To live was then in itself a delight, because living
implied seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to
behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre
are said to have more than once proved too distracting for our greatest
teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the
unspeakable magnificence of a military review.
The sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly
facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the
orange and purple of the two sides including their acute angle; the
militia of the Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and
blue; the mauve, ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the Square
artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermilion guns; the dashing
and flashing of the five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and
Hexagons careering across the field in their offices of surgeons,
geometricians and aides-de-camp--all these may well have been
sufficient to render credible the famous story how an illustrious
Circle, overcome by the artistic beauty of the forces under his
command, threw aside his marshal's baton and his royal crown,
exclaiming that he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil.
How great and glorious the sensuous development of these days must have
been is in part indicated by the very language and vocabulary of the
period. The commonest utterances of the commonest citizens in the time
of the Colour Revolt seem to have been suffused with a richer tinge of
word or thought; and to that era we are even now indebted for our
finest poetry and for whatever rhythm still remains in the more
scientific utterance of these modern days.
Section 9. Of the Universal Colour Bill
But meanwhile the intellectual Arts were fast decaying.
The Art of Sight Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer
practised; and the studies of Geometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other
kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and fell into
disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of
Feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools.
Then the Isosceles classes, asserting that the Specimens were no longer
used nor needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from the
Criminal classes to the service of Education, waxed daily more numerous
and more insolent on the strength of their immunity from the old burden
which had formerly exercised the twofold wholesome effect of at once
taming their brutal nature and thinning their excessive numbers.
Year by year the Soldiers and Artisans began more vehemently to
assert--and with increasing truth--that there was no great difference
between them and the very highest class of Polygons, now that they were
raised to an equality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with all
the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, whether Statical
or Kinetical, by the simple process of Colour Recognition. Not content
with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they
began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and
aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for
the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling. Soon, they
began to insist that inasmuch as Colour, which was a second Nature, had
destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the Law should follow
in the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes
should be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights.
Finding the higher Orders wavering and undecided, the leaders of the
Revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last
demanded that all classes alike, the Priests and the Women not
excepted, should do homage to Colour by submitting to be painted. When
it was objected that Priests and Women had no sides, they retorted that
Nature and Expediency concurred in dictating that the front half of
every human being (that is to say, the half containing his eye and
mouth) should be distinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore
brought before a general and extraordinary Assembly of all the States
of Flatland a Bill proposing that in every Woman the half containing
the eye and mouth should be coloured red, and the other half green.
The Priests were to be painted in the same way, red being applied to
that semicircle in which the eye and mouth formed the middle point;
while the other or hinder semicircle was to be coloured green.
There was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed emanated not
from any Isosceles--for no being so degraded would have had angularity
enough to appreciate, much less to devise, such a model of
state-craft--but from an Irregular Circle who, instead of being
destroyed in his childhood, was reserved by a foolish indulgence to
bring desolation on his country and destruction on myriads of his
followers.
On the one hand the proposition was calculated to bring the Women in
all classes over to the side of the Chromatic Innovation. For by
assigning to the Women the same two colours as were assigned to the
Priests, the Revolutionists thereby ensured that, in certain positions,
every Woman would appear like a Priest, and be treated with
corresponding respect and deference--a prospect that could not fail to
attract the Female Sex in a mass.
But by some of my Readers the possibility of the identical appearance
of Priests and Women, under the new Legislation, may not be recognized;
if so, a word or two will make it obvious.
Imagine a woman duly decorated, according to the new Code; with the
front half (i.e. the half containing eye and mouth) red, and with the
hinder half green. Look at her from one side. Obviously you will see
a straight line, HALF RED, HALF GREEN.
[ASCII approximation follows]
[for simplicity's sake, the circle is approximated as an octogon]
M
_____
/ \ - C_
/ \|| - _
| || - _
A|- - - - - - -||B- - - - - -_-+(> (Eye)
| || _ -
\ /||_ -
\ _____ / - D
Now imagine a Priest, whose mouth is at M, and whose front semicircle
(AMB) is consequently coloured red, while his hinder semicircle is
green; so that the diameter AB divides the green from the red. If you
contemplate the Great Man so as to have your eye in the same straight
line as his dividing diameter (AB), what you will see will be a
straight line (CBD), of which ONE HALF (CB) WILL BE RED, AND THE OTHER
(BD) GREEN. The whole line (CD) will be rather shorter perhaps than
that of a full-sized Woman, and will shade off more rapidly towards its
extremities; but the identity of the colours would give you an
immediate impression of identity of 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 Women 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 commands in the name of a priestly Circle; out of
doors the striking combination of red and green, without addition of
any other colours, would be sure to lead the common people into endless
mistakes, and the Women 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 Universal 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