All beings in Flatland, animate and
inanimate, no matter what their form, present TO OUR VIEW the same,
or nearly the same, appearance, viz. that of a straight Line. How then
can one be distinguished from another, where all appear the same?
The answer is threefold. The first means of recognition is the sense
of hearing; which with us is far more highly developed than with you,
and which enables us not only to distinguish by the voice of our
personal friends, but even to discriminate between different classes,
at least so far as concerns the three lowest orders, the Equilateral,
the Square, and the Pentagon--for the Isosceles I take no account.
But as we ascend the social scale, the process of discriminating
and being discriminated by hearing increases in difficulty, partly because
voices are assimilated, partly because the faculty of voice-discrimination
is a plebeian virtue not much developed among the Aristocracy. And wherever
there is any danger of imposture we cannot trust to this method.
Amongst our lowest orders, the vocal organs are developed to a degree
more than correspondent with those of hearing, so that an Isosceles
can easily feign the voice of a Polygon, and, with some training,
that of a Circle himself.
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