Of The Universal Colour Bill

: THIS WORLD
: Flatland

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 feel into

disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of

Feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools.

Then he 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 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 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 as 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 a 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 the 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.



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 in 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 Woman 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 some 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 Woman 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

status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of

Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of

training in the Art of Sight Recognition, so as to enfeeble their

intellects by depriving them of their pure and colourless homes. Once

subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish

Circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the

Father and the Mother would the Circular infant find problems for the

exercise of his understanding--problems too often likely to be

corrupted by maternal impostures with the result of shaking the child's

faith in all logical conclusions. Thus by degrees the intellectual

lustre of the Priestly Order would wane, and the road would then lie

open for a total destruction of all Aristocratic Legislature and for

the subversion of our Privileged Classes.