'" (footnote 1)
On this point the defence of the Square seems to me to be impregnable.
I wish I could say that his answer to the second (or moral) objection
was equally clear and cogent. It has been objected that he is a woman-hater;
and as this objection has been vehemently urged by those whom Nature's
decree has constituted the somewhat larger half of the Spaceland race,
I should like to remove it, so far as I can honestly do so. But the
Square is so unaccustomed to the use of the moral terminology
of Spaceland that I should be doing him an injustice if I were
literally to transcribe his defence against this charge.
Acting, therefore, as his interpreter and summarizer,
I gather that in the course of an imprisonment of seven years
he has himself modified his own personal views, both as regards
Women and as regards the Isosceles or Lower Classes. Personally,
he now inclines to the opinion of the Sphere (see page 86) that
the Straight Lines are in many important respects superior to the Circles.
But, writing as a Historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closely)
with the views generally adopted by Flatland, and (as he has been informed)
even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent times)
the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed
worthy of mention and never of careful consideration.
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