But life would
be too short for such a tedious groping. The whole science and art
of Sight Recognition would at once perish; Feeling, so far as it is
an art, would not long survive; intercourse would become perilous
or impossible; there would be an end to all confidence, all forethought;
no one would be safe in making the most simple social arrangements;
in a word, civilization might relapse into barbarism.
Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious conclusions?
Surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life,
must convince every one that our social system is based upon Regularity,
or Equality of Angles. You meet, for example, two or three Tradesmen
in the street, whom your recognize at once to be Tradesman by a glance
at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to step into
your house to lunch. This you do at present with perfect confidence,
because everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied by
an adult Triangle: but imagine that your Tradesman drags behind
his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of twelve
or thirteen inches in diagonal:--what are you to do with such
a monster sticking fast in your house door?
But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating
details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages
of a Residence in Spaceland.
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