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 their
comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle.
Thus, in the most brutal and formidable off 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 the 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 of 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.
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