Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

The greatest length or breadth of a full grown inhabitant of Flatland
may be estimated at about eleven of your inches. Twelve inches may be
regarded as a maximum.

Our women are Straight Lines.

Our soldiers and lowest classes of workmen are Triangles with two equal
sides, each about eleven inches long, and a base or third side so short
(often not exceeding half an inch) that they form at their vertices a
very sharp and formidable angle. Indeed when their bases are of the most
degraded type (not more than the eighth part of an inch in size), they
can hardly be distinguished from Straight Lines or women; so extremely
pointed are their vertices. With us, as with you, these Triangles are
distinguished from others by being called "Isosceles"; and by this name
I shall refer to them in the following pages.

Our middle class consists of Equilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles.

Our professional men and gentlemen are Squares (to which class I myself
belong) and Five-Sided Figures or Pentagons.

Next above these come the nobility, of whom there are several degrees,
beginning at Six-Sided Figures, or Hexagons, and from thence rising in
the number of their sides till they receive the honourable title of
Polygonal, or many-sided. Finally when the number of the sides becomes
so numerous, and the sides themselves so small, that the 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 tradesmen, 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 shut 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 skilful 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.2{#chapter-3.xhtml#noteref-2 .noteref}
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 around. 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 a most 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 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 the comparatively
harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and
formidable of 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 this 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 in Flatland! By a judicious 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 generally 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 more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly
irregular are led to execution.

Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless and leaderless, are
either 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 suspicions skilfully 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.