Concerning Our Priests

: THIS WORLD
: Flatland

It is high time that I should pass from these brief and discursive

notes about things in Flatland to the central event of this book, my

initiation into the mysteries of Space. THAT is my subject; all that

has gone before is merely preface.



For this reason I must omit many matters of which the explanation would

not, I flatter myself, be without interest for my Readers: as for

example, our method of propel ing and stopping ourselves, although

destitute of feet; the means by which we give fixity to structures of

wood, stone, or brick, although of course we have no hands, nor can we

lay foundations as you can, nor avail ourselves of the lateral pressure

of the earth; the manner in which the rain originates in the intervals

between our various zones, so that the northern regions do not

intercept the moisture falling on the southern; the nature of our hills

and mines, our trees and vegetables, our seasons and harvests; our

Alphabet and method of writing, adapted to our linear tablets; these

and a hundred other details of our physical existence I must pass over,

nor do I mention them now except to indicate to my readers that their

omission proceeds not from forgetfulness on the part of the author, but

from his regard for the time of the Reader.



Yet before I proceed to my legitimate subject some few final remarks

will no doubt be expected by my Readers upon these pillars and

mainstays of the Constitution of Flatland, the controllers of our

conduct and shapers of our destiny, the objects of universal homage and

almost of adoration: need I say that I mean our Circles or Priests?



When I call them Priests, let me not be understood as meaning no more

than the term denotes with you. With us, our Priests are

Administrators of all Business, Art, and Science; Directors of Trade,

Commerce, Generalship, Architecture, Engineering, Education,

Statesmanship, Legislature, Morality, Theology; doing nothing

themselves, they are the Causes of everything worth doing, that is done

by others.



Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemed a Circle, yet

among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really

a Circle, but only a Polygon with a very large number of very small

sides. As the number of the sides increases, a Polygon approximates to

a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example

three or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate

touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather it WOULD be

difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is

unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be

considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from

Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain

the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to

enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference. Three feet

being the average Perimeter it follows that, in a Polygon of three

hundred sides each side will be no more than the hundredth part of a

foot in length, or little more than the tenth part of an inch; and in a

Polygon of six or seven hundred sides the sides are little larger than

the diameter of a Spaceland pin-head. It is always assumed, by

courtesy, that the Chief Circle for the time being has ten thousand

sides.



The ascent of the posterity of the Circles in the social scale is not

restricted, as it is among the lower Regular classes, by the Law of

Nature which limits the increase of sides to one in each generation.

If it were so, the number of sides in the Circle would be a mere

question of pedigree and arithmetic, and the four hundred and

ninety-seventh descendant of an Equilateral Triangle would necessarily

be a polygon with five hundred sides. But this is not the case.

Nature's Law prescribes two antagonistic decrees affecting Circular

propagation; first, that as the race climbs higher in the scale of

development, so development shall proceed at an accelerated pace;

second, that in the same proportion, the race shall become less

fertile. Consequently in the home of a Polygon of four or five hundred

sides it is rare to find a son; more than one is never seen. On the

other hand the son of a five-hundred-sided Polygon has been known to

possess five hundred and fifty, or even six hundred sides.



Art also steps in to help the process of higher Evolution. Our

physicians have discovered that the small and tender sides of an infant

Polygon of the higher class can be fractured, and his whole frame

re-set, with such exactness that a Polygon of two or three hundred

sides sometimes--by no means always, for the process is attended with

serious risk--but sometimes overleaps two or three hundred generations,

and as it were double at a stroke, the number of his progenitors and

the nobility of his descent.



Many a promising child is sacrificed in this way. Scarcely one out of

ten survives. Yet so strong is the parental ambition among those

Polygons who are, as it were, on the fringe of the Circular class, that

it is very rare to find the Nobleman of that position in society, who

has neglected to place his first-born in the Circular Neo-Therapeutic

Gymnasium before he has attained the age of a month.



One year determines success or failure. At the end of that time the

child has, in all probability, added one more to the tombstones that

crowd the Neo-Therapeutic Cemetery; but on rare occasional a glad

procession bears back the little one to his exultant parents, no longer

a Polygon, but a Circle, at least by courtesy: and a single instance

of so blessed a result induces multitudes of Polygonal parents to

submit to similar domestic sacrifice, which have a dissimilar issue.