from one little accident in the process of Feeling. 

    As this point I think I hear some of my better educated readers 
exclaim, "How could you in Flatland know anything about angles and 
degrees, or minutes?  We _see_ an angle, because we, in the region of 
Space, can see two straight lines inclined to one another; but you, 
who can see nothing but on straight line at a time, or at all events 
onlly a number of bits of straight lines all in one straight line, -- 
how can you ever discern an angle, and much less register angles of 
different sizes?" 

    I answer that though we cannot _see- angles, we can _infer_ them, 
and this with great precision.  Our sense of touch, stimulated by 
necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish 
angles far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a 
rule or measure of angles.  nor must I omit to explain that we have 
great natural helps.  It is with us a Law of Nature that the brain of 
the Isosceles class shall begin at half a degree, or thirty minutes, 
and shall increase (if it increases at all) by half a degree in every 
generation until the goal of 60 degrees is reached, when the condition 
of serfdom is quitted, and the freeman enters the class of Regulars. 

    Consequently, Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale 
or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimen of 
which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land.  
Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and 
intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the 
Criminal and Vagabond classes, there is always a vast superfluity of 
individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair 
abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees.  These are absolutely 
destitute of civil rights; and a great number of them, not having even 
intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the 
States to the service of education.  Fettered immovably so as to 
remove all possibility of danger, they are placed in the classrooms of 
our Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Board of 
Education for the pupose of imparting to the offspring of the Middle 
Classes the tact and intelligence which these wretched creatures 
themselves are utterly devoid. 

    In some States the Specimens are occasionally fed and suffered to 
exist for several years; butin the more temperate and better regulated 
regions, it is found in the long run more advantageous for the 
educational interests of the young, to dispense with food, and to 
renew the Specimens every month -- which is about the average duration 
of the foodless existence of the Criminal class.  In the cheaper 
schools, what is gained by the longer existence of the Specimen is 
lost, partly in the expenditure for food, and partly in the diminished 
accuracy of the angles, which are impaired after a few weeks of 
constant "feeling."  Nor must we forget to add, in enumerating the 
advantages of the more expensive system, that it tends, though 
slightly yet perceptibly, to the diminution of the redundant Isosceles 
population -- an object which every statesman in Flatland constantly 
keeps in view.  On the whole therefore -- although I am not ignorant 
that, in many popularly elected School Boards, there is a reaction in 
favour of "the cheap system" as it is called -- I am myself disposed 
to think that this is one of the many cases in which expense is the 
truest economy. 

    But I must not allow questions of School Board politics to divert 
me from my subject.  Enough has been said, I trust, to shew that 
Recognition by FEeling is not so tedious or indecisive a process as 
might have been supposed; and it is obviously more trustworthy than 
Recognition by hearing.  Still there remains, as has been pointed out 
above, the objection that this method is not without danger.  For this 
reason many in the Middle and Lower classes, and all without exception 
in the Polygonal and Circular orders, prefer a third method, the 
description of which shall be reserved for the next section. 

                                 * * *

                 SECTION 6. -- Of Recognition by Sight 

    I am about to appear very inconsistent.  In the previous sections 
I have said that all figures in Flatland present the appearance of a 
straight line; and it was added or implied, that it is consequently 
impossible to distinguish by the visual organ between individuals of 
different classes:  yet now I am about to explain to my Spaceland 
critics how we are able to recognize one another by the sense of 
sight. 

    If however the Reader will take the trouble to refer to the 
passage in which Recognition by Feeling is stated to be universal, he 
will find this qualification -- "among the lower classes."  It is only 
among the higher classes and in our more temperate climates that Sight 
Recognition is practised. 

    That this power exists in any regions and for any classes is the 
result of Fog; which prevails during the greater part of the year in 
all parts save the torrid zones.  That which is with you in Spaceland 
an unmixed evil, blotting out the landscape, depressing the spirits, 
and enfeebling the health, is by us recognized as a blessing scarcely 
inferior to air itself, and as the Nurse of arts and Parent os 
sciences.  But let me explain my meaning, without further eulogies on 
this beneficent Element. 

    If Fog were non-existent, all lines would appear equally and 
indistinguishably clear; and this is actually the case in those 
unhappy countries in which the atmosphere is perfectly dry and 
transparent.  But wherever there is a rich supply of Fog, objects that 
are at a distance, say of three feet, are appreciably dimmer than