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04 - Flatland- A Romance of Many Dimensions - Edwin Abbott Abbott · Classic Sci Fi Books - Daily

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Speaker 1: Part one, Section eight of the Ancient Practice of painting.
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Speaker 1: If my readers have followed me with any attention up
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Speaker 1: to this point, they will not be surprised to hear
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Speaker 1: that life is somewhat dull in flatland. I do not,
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Speaker 1: of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions,
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Speaker 1: and all those other phenomena which are supposed to make
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Speaker 1: history interesting. Nor would I deny that the strange mixture
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Speaker 1: of the problems of life and the problems of mathematics,
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Speaker 1: continually inducing conjecture and giving the opportunity of immediate verification,
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Speaker 1: imparts to our existence a zest which you in spaceland
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Speaker 1: can hardly comprehend. I speak now from the esthetic and
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Speaker 1: artistic point of view when I say that life with
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Speaker 1: us is dull, esthetically and artistically very dull. Indeed, how
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Speaker 1: can it be otherwise when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes,
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Speaker 1: historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life are nothing but a
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Speaker 1: single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and obscurity.
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Speaker 1: It was not always thus color, If tradition speaks the truth, once,
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Speaker 1: for the space of half a dozen centuries or more,
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Speaker 1: threw a transient charm upon the lives of our ancestors.
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Speaker 1: In the remotest ages, some private individual, a pentagon whose
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Speaker 1: name is variously reported, having casually discovered the constituents of
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Speaker 1: the simpler colors and a rudimentary method of painting, is
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Speaker 1: said to have begun by decorating first his house, then
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Speaker 1: his slaves, then his father, his sons and grandsons, lastly himself.
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Speaker 1: The convenience, as well as the beauty of the results,
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Speaker 1: commended themselves to all wherever chromatistes, For by that name,
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Speaker 1: the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him, turned his
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Speaker 1: variegated frame. There he at once excited attention and attracted respect.
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Speaker 1: No one now needed to feel him. No one mistook
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Speaker 1: his front for his back. All his movements were readily
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Speaker 1: ascertained by his neighbors, without the slightest strain on their
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Speaker 1: powers of calculation. No one jostled him or failed to
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Speaker 1: make way for him. His voice was saved the labor
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Speaker 1: of that exhausting utterance by which we colorless squares and
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Speaker 1: pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we
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Speaker 1: move amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles. The fashions spread
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Speaker 1: like wildfire. Before a week was over, every square and
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Speaker 1: triangle in the district had copied the example of Chromatistes,
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Speaker 1: and only a few of the more conservative pentagons held out.
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Speaker 1: A month or two found even the Dodecadens infected with
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Speaker 1: the innovation. A year had not elapsed before the habit
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Speaker 1: had spread to all but the very highest of the nobility.
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Speaker 1: Needless to say, the customs soon made its way from
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Speaker 1: the district of Chromatists to surrounding regions, and within two
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Speaker 1: generations no one in all flatland was colorless except the
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Speaker 1: women and the priests. Here, nature herself appeared to erect
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Speaker 1: a barrier, and to plead against extending the innovation to
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Speaker 1: these two classes. Many sidedness was almost essential as a
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Speaker 1: pretext for the innovators. Distinction of sides is intended by
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Speaker 1: nature to imply distinction of colours. Such was the sophism,
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Speaker 1: which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting
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Speaker 1: whole towns at a time to the new culture, but
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Speaker 1: manifestly to our priests and women, is added, did not apply.
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Speaker 1: The latter had only one side, and therefore plurally and
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Speaker 1: pedantically speaking, no sides. The former, if at least they
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Speaker 1: would assert their claim to be really and truly circles,
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Speaker 1: and not mere high class polycans with an infinitely large
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Speaker 1: number of infinitesimally small sides were in the habit of
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Speaker 1: boasting what women confessed and deplored that they also had
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Speaker 1: no sides, being blessed with a perimeter of one line,
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Speaker 1: or in other words, a circumference. Hence, it came to
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Speaker 1: pass that these two classes could see no force in
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Speaker 1: the so called axiom about distinction of sides implying distinction
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Speaker 1: of color. And when all others had succumbed to the
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Speaker 1: fascinations of corporal decoration, the priests and the women alone
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Speaker 1: still remained pure from the pollution of paint in moral life, sensious, anarchical, unscientific.
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Speaker 1: Call them by what names you will. Yet, from an
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Speaker 1: esthetic point of view, those ancient days of the color
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Speaker 1: revolked with a glorious childhood of art in Flatland, a
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Speaker 1: childhood alas that never ripened into manhood nor even reached
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Speaker 1: the blossom of youth. To live was then in itself
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Speaker 1: a delight, because living implied seeing, even at a small party,
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Speaker 1: the company was a pleasure to behold the richly varied
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Speaker 1: hues of the assembly in a church or theater are
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Speaker 1: said to have more than once proved too distracting for
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Speaker 1: our greatest teachers and actors. But most ravishing of all
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Speaker 1: is said to have been the unspeakable magnificence of a
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Speaker 1: military review. The sight of a line of battle of
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Speaker 1: twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly facing about and exchanging the somber
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Speaker 1: black of their base for the orange and purple of
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Speaker 1: the two sides, including their acute angle, the militia of
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Speaker 1: the equilateral triangles tricoloured in red, white and blue, the mauve,
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Speaker 1: ultramarine gamboge and burnt umber of the square artillerymen rapidly
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Speaker 1: rotating near their vermilion guns. The dashing and flashing of
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Speaker 1: the five colored and six colored pentagons and hexagons careering
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Speaker 1: across the field in their offices of surgeons, geometricians, and
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Speaker 1: aide de camp. All these may well have been sufficient
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Speaker 1: to render credible the famous story how an illustrious circle,
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Speaker 1: overcome by the artistic beauty of the forces under his command,
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Speaker 1: threw aside his marshal's battle and his royal crown, exclaiming
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Speaker 1: that he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil. How
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Speaker 1: great and glorious the sensuous development of these days must
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Speaker 1: have been is in part indicating by the very language
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Speaker 1: and vocabulary of the period. The commonest utterances of the
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Speaker 1: commonest citizens in the time of the colour Revolt seemed
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Speaker 1: to have been suffused with a richer tinge of word
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Speaker 1: or thought, And to that era we are even now
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Speaker 1: indebted for our finest poetry, and for whatever rhythm still
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Speaker 1: remains in the more scientific utterance of these modern days
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Speaker 1: Section nine of the Universal Color Bill. But meanwhile the
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Speaker 1: intellectual arts were fast decaying. The art of sight recognition,
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Speaker 1: being no longer needed, was no longer practiced, and the
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Speaker 1: studies of geometry, statics, kinetics, and other kindred subjects came
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Speaker 1: soon to be considered superfluous and fell into distribute and neglect.
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Speaker 1: Even at our university. The inferior art of feeling speedily
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Speaker 1: experienced the same fate at our elementary schools. Then, the
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Speaker 1: Isosceles classes, asserting that the specimens were no longer used
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Speaker 1: nor needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from
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Speaker 1: the criminal classes to the service of education, waxed daily
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Speaker 1: more numerous and more insolent on the strength of their
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Speaker 1: immunity from the old burden which had formerly exercised the
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Speaker 1: twofold wholesome effect of at once taming their brutal nature
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Speaker 1: and thinning their excessive numbers. Year by year, the soldiers
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Speaker 1: and artisans began more vehemently to assert, and with increasing truth,
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Speaker 1: that there was no great difference between them and the
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Speaker 1: very highest class of polygons, now that they were raised
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Speaker 1: to inequality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with
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Speaker 1: all the difficulties and solve all the problems of life,
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Speaker 1: whether statical and kinetical, by the simple process of color recognition.
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Speaker 1: Not content with the natural neglect into which site recognition
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Speaker 1: was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition
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Speaker 1: of all monopolizing and aristocratic arts, and the consequent abolition
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Speaker 1: of all endowments for the studies of site recognition, mathematics,
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Speaker 1: and feeling. Soon they began to insist that inasmuch as color,
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Speaker 1: which was a second nature, had destroyed the need of
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Speaker 1: aristocratic distinctions, the law should follow in the same path,
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Speaker 1: and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be
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Speaker 1: recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights. Finding
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Speaker 1: the higher orders wavering and undecided, the leaders of the
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Speaker 1: revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last
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Speaker 1: demanded that all classes alike, the priests and the women
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Speaker 1: not excepted, should do homage to colour by submitting to
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Speaker 1: be painted. When it was objected that priests and women
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Speaker 1: had no sides, they retorted that nature and expediency concurred
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Speaker 1: in dictating that the front half of every human being,
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Speaker 1: that is to say, the half containing his eye and mouth,
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Speaker 1: should be distinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore brought
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Speaker 1: before a General and Extraordinary Assembly of all the states
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Speaker 1: of Flatland a bill proposing that in every woman, the
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Speaker 1: half containing the iron mouth should be colored red and
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Speaker 1: the other half green. The priests were to be painted
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Speaker 1: in the same way, red being applied to that semicircle
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Speaker 1: in which the eye and mouth formed the middle point,
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Speaker 1: while the other or hinder semicircle was to be colored green.
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Speaker 1: There was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed
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Speaker 1: emanated not from any Isosceles, for no being so degraded
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Speaker 1: would have had angularity enough to appreciate, much less to
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Speaker 1: devise such a model of state craft. But from an
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Speaker 1: irregular circle, who, instead of being destroyed in his childhood,
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Speaker 1: was reserved by a foolish indulgence to bring desolation on
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Speaker 1: his country and destruction on myriads of his followers. On
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Speaker 1: the one hand, the proposition was calculated to bring the
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Speaker 1: women in all classes over to the side of the
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Speaker 1: chromatic innovation. For by assigning to the women the same
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Speaker 1: two colours as were assigned to the priests, the revolutionists
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Speaker 1: thereby ensured that in certain positions, every woman would appear
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Speaker 1: like a priest and be treated with corresponding respect and deference,
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Speaker 1: a prospect that could not fail to attract the female
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Speaker 1: sex in a mass. But by some of my readers,
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Speaker 1: the possibility of the identical appearance of priests and women
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Speaker 1: under the new legislation may not be recognized. If so,
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Speaker 1: a word or two will make it obvious. Imagine a
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Speaker 1: woman duly decorated according to the new code, with the
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Speaker 1: front half i e. The half containing eye and mouth red,
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Speaker 1: and with the hinder half green. Look at her from
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Speaker 1: one side. Obviously you will see a straight line half
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Speaker 1: read half green. Reader's note. The following paragraph makes reference
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Speaker 1: to an accompanying diagram. The diagram shows a circle or
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Speaker 1: priestly figure. If it is visualized as a clock face,
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Speaker 1: twelve o'clock is marked M for the priest's mouth, three
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Speaker 1: o'clock is marked B, and nine o'clock is marked A.
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Speaker 1: The diameter AB is drawn as a dotted line and
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Speaker 1: is extended outside the circle rightwards to a point which
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Speaker 1: represents the position of the observer. Dotted lines are drawn
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Speaker 1: downward and rightward from M towards this point, and upward
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Speaker 1: and rightward from six o'clock to this point. A broad
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Speaker 1: vertical line C b D is drawn between the dotted
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Speaker 1: lines to indicate what the observer sees. Cbd is bright
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Speaker 1: at the center and darkens sharply towards its ends. End
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Speaker 1: of reader's note. Now imagine a priest whose mouth is
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Speaker 1: at M, and whose front semicircle A M B is
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Speaker 1: consequently colored red, while his hinder semicircle is green, so
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Speaker 1: that the diameter A B divides the green from the red.
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Speaker 1: If you contemplate the great man so as to have
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Speaker 1: your eye in the same straight line as his dividing
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Speaker 1: diameter A B, what you will see will be a
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Speaker 1: straight line C b D, of which one half c
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Speaker 1: B will be red, and the other b D Green.
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Speaker 1: The whole line CD will be rather shorter, perhaps than
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Speaker 1: that of a full sized woman, and will shade off
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Speaker 1: more rapidly towards its extremities. But the identity of the
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Speaker 1: colors would give you an immediate impression of identity, if
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Speaker 1: not class, making you neglectful of other details. Bear in
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Speaker 1: mind the decay of sight recognition which threatened society at
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Speaker 1: the time of the color revolt, add to the certainty
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Speaker 1: that women would speedily learn to shade off their extremities
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Speaker 1: so as to imitate the circles. It must then be
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Speaker 1: surely obvious to you, my dear reader, that the color
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Speaker 1: bill placed us under a great danger of confounding a
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Speaker 1: priest with a young woman. How attractive this prospect must
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Speaker 1: have been to the frail sex may readily be imagined.
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Speaker 1: They anticipated with delight the confusion that would ensue at home.
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Speaker 1: They might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets intended not for
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Speaker 1: them but for their husbands and brothers, and might even
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Speaker 1: issue command in the name of a priestly circle out
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Speaker 1: of doors. The striking combination of red and green, without
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Speaker 1: addition of any other colours, would be sure to lead
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Speaker 1: the common people into endless mistakes, and the women would
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Speaker 1: gain whatever the circles lost in the deference of the
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Speaker 1: passes by. As for the scandal that would befall the
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Speaker 1: circular class if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the
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Speaker 1: women were imputed to them, and as to the consequence
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Speaker 1: subversion of the constitution, the female sex could not be
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Speaker 1: expected to give a thought to these considerations. Even in
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Speaker 1: the households of the circles, the women were all in
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Speaker 1: favor of the Universal Color Bill. The second object aimed
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Speaker 1: at by the bill was the gradual demoralization of the
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Speaker 1: circles themselves. In the general intellectual decay, they still preserved
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Speaker 1: their pristine clearness and strength of understanding from their earliest childhood,
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Speaker 1: familiarized in their circular households with the total absence of color.
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Speaker 1: The nobles alone preserved the sacred art of sight recognition,
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Speaker 1: with all the advantages that result from that admirable training
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Speaker 1: of the intellect. Hence, up to the date of the
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Speaker 1: introduction of the Universal Color Bill, the circles had not
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Speaker 1: only held their own, but even increased their lead of
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Speaker 1: other classes by abstinence from the popular fashion. Now, therefore,
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Speaker 1: the artful irregular, whom I described above as the real
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Speaker 1: author of this diabolical bill, determined at one blow to
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Speaker 1: lower the status of the hierarchy by forcing them to
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Speaker 1: submit to the pollution of color, and at the same
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Speaker 1: time to destroy their domestic opportunities of training in the
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Speaker 1: art of sight recognition, so as to enfeeble their intellects
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Speaker 1: by depriving them of their pure and colorless homes. Once
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Speaker 1: subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish
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Speaker 1: circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the
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Speaker 1: father and the mother would the circular infant find problems
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Speaker 1: for the exercise of its understanding, problems too often likely
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Speaker 1: to be corrupted by maternal impostures, with the result of
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Speaker 1: shaking the child's faith in all logical conclusions. Thus, by degrees,
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Speaker 1: the intellectual luster of the priestly order would wane, and
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Speaker 1: the road would then lie open for a total destruction
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Speaker 1: of all aristocratic legislature and for the subversion of our
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Speaker 1: privileged classes Section ten of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition.
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Speaker 1: The agitation for the Universal Color Bill continued for three years,
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Speaker 1: and up to the last moment of that period, it
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Speaker 1: seemed as though anarchy were destined to triumph. A whole
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Speaker 1: army of polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers,
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Speaker 1: was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles triangles.
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Speaker 1: The squares and pentagons, meanwhile, remains neutral. Worse than all,
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Speaker 1: Some of the ablest circles fell a prey to conjugal fury.
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Speaker 1: Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble
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Speaker 1: household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their
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Speaker 1: opposition to the colour bill, and some, finding their entreaties fruitless,
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Speaker 1: fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husbands, perishing
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Speaker 1: themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that
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Speaker 1: during that triennial agitation, no less than twenty three circles
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Speaker 1: perished in domestic discord. Great indeed was the peril. It
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Speaker 1: seemed as though the priests had no choice between submission
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Speaker 1: and extermination, when suddenly the course of events was completely
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Speaker 1: changed by one of those picturesque incidents which statesmen ought
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Speaker 1: never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate,
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Speaker 1: because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal
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Speaker 1: to the sympathies of the populace. It happened that an Isosceles,
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Speaker 1: of a low type with a brain little, if at all,
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Speaker 1: above four degrees, accidentally dabbling in the colors of some
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Speaker 1: tradesman whose shop he had plundered, painted himself, or caused
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Speaker 1: himself to be painted, for the story varies with the
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Speaker 1: twelve colors of a dodecahedron. Going into the market place,
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Speaker 1: he accosted, in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan
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Speaker 1: daughter of a noble polygon, whose affection in former days
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Speaker 1: he had sought in vain, and by a series of deceptions,
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Speaker 1: aided on the one side by a string of lucky
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Speaker 1: accidents too long to relate, and on the other by
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Speaker 1: an almost inconceivable fetuity and neglect of ordinary precautions on
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Speaker 1: the part of the relations of the bride, he succeeded
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Speaker 1: in consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on
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Speaker 1: discovering the fraud to which she had been subjected. When
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Speaker 1: the news of this catastrophe spread from state to state,
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Speaker 1: the minds of the women were violently agitated sympathy with
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Speaker 1: the miserable victim, and anticipations of similar deceptions for themselves.
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Speaker 1: Their sisters and their daughters made them now regard the
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Speaker 1: color Bill in an entirely new aspect. Not a few
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Speaker 1: openly avowed themselves converted to antagonism. The rest needed only
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Speaker 1: a slight stimulus to make a similar avowal. Seizing this
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Speaker 1: favorable opportunity, the circles hastily convened an extraordinary assembly of
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Speaker 1: the states, and besides the usual guard of convicts, they
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Speaker 1: secured the attendants of a large number of reactionary women.
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Speaker 1: Amidst an unprecedented concourse, the chief circle of those days,
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Speaker 1: by name pantos Hyclus, arose to find himself hissed and
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Speaker 1: hooted by a hundred twenty thousand Isosceles, But he secured
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Speaker 1: silence by declaring that henceforth the circles would enter on
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Speaker 1: a policy of concession, yielding to the wishes of the majority,
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Speaker 1: they would accept the Color Bill. The uproar being at
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Speaker 1: once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leader of
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Speaker 1: the sedition, into the center of the hall, to receive
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Speaker 1: in the name of his followers, the submission of the hierarchy.
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Speaker 1: Then followed a speech, a masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied
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Speaker 1: nearly a day in the delivery, and to which no
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Speaker 1: summary can do justice with a grave appearance of impartiality.
22:48
Speaker 1: He declared that as they were now finally committing themselves
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Speaker 1: to reform or innovation, it was desirable that they should
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Speaker 1: take one last view of the perimeter of the whole
22:59
Speaker 1: subject its defects as well as its advantages. Gradually introducing
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Speaker 1: the mention of the dangers to the tradesmen, the professional classes,
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Speaker 1: and the gentlemen, he silenced the rising murmurs of the
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Speaker 1: Isosceles by reminding them that in spite of all these defects,
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Speaker 1: he was willing to accept the bill if it was
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Speaker 1: approved by the majority, but it was manifest at all
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Speaker 1: except the Isosceles were moved by his words and were
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Speaker 1: either neutral or averse to the bill. Turning now to
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Speaker 1: the workmen, he asserted that their interests must not be neglected,
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Speaker 1: and that if they intended to accept the Color Bill,
23:44
Speaker 1: they ought at least to do so with a full
23:46
Speaker 1: view of the consequences. Many of them, he said, were
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Speaker 1: on the point of being admitted to the class of
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Speaker 1: the regular triangles. Others anticipated for their children a distinction
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Speaker 1: they could not hope for themselves, that honorable ambition would
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Speaker 1: now have to be sacrificed. With the universal adoption of colour,
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Speaker 1: all distinctions would cease, Regularity would be confused with irregularity.
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Speaker 1: Development would give place to retrogression. The workmen would in
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Speaker 1: a few generations be degraded to the level of the
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Speaker 1: military or even the convict class. Political power would be
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Speaker 1: in the hands of the greatest number, that is to say,
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Speaker 1: the criminal classes, who were already more numerous than the workmen,
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Speaker 1: and would soon outnumber all the other classes put together.
24:42
Speaker 1: When the usual compensative laws of nature were violated, a
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Speaker 1: subdued murmur of assent ran through the ranks of the
24:51
Speaker 1: artisans and chromatistes in alarm attempted to step forward and
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Speaker 1: address them, but he found himself in compass with guards
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Speaker 1: and forced to remain silent, while the chief circle, in
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Speaker 1: a few impassioned words, made a final appeal to the women,
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Speaker 1: exclaiming that if the color Bill passed, no marriage would
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Speaker 1: henceforth be safe, no woman's honor secure. Fraud, deception, hypocrisy
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Speaker 1: would pervade every household. Domestic bliss would share the fate
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Speaker 1: of the constitution and pass to speedy perdition. Sooner than this,
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Speaker 1: he cried, come death. At these words, which were the
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Speaker 1: preconcerted signal for action, the Isosceles convicts fell on and
25:41
Speaker 1: chansfixed the wretched chromatistes. The regular classes, opening their ranks,
25:47
Speaker 1: made way for a band of women, who, under direction
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Speaker 1: of the circles, moved back foremost invisibly and unerringly upon
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Speaker 1: the unconscious soldiers. The artisans, in imitating the example of
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Speaker 1: their betters, also opened their ranks. Meantime, bands of convicts
26:07
Speaker 1: occupied every entrance with an impenetrable phalanx. The battle, or
26:13
Speaker 1: rather carnage, was of short duration. Under the skillful generalship
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Speaker 1: of the circles. Almost every woman's charge was fatal, and
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Speaker 1: very many extracted their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter.
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Speaker 1: But no second blow was needed. The rabble of the
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Speaker 1: Isosceles did the rest of the business for themselves. Surprised, leaderless,
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Speaker 1: attacked in front by invisible foes, and finding egress cut
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Speaker 1: off by the convicts behind them, they at once, after
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Speaker 1: their manner, lost all presence of mind and raised the
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Speaker 1: cry of treachery. This sealed their fate. Every Isosceles now
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Speaker 1: saw and felt a foe in every other. In half
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Speaker 1: an hour, not one of that vast multitude was living,
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Speaker 1: and the fragments of seven score thousand of the criminal
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Speaker 1: class slain by one another's angles, attested the triumph of order.
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Speaker 1: The circles delayed, not to push their victory to the
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Speaker 1: uttermost the workingmen they spared, but decimated. The militia of
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Speaker 1: the equilaterals was at once called out, and every triangle
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Speaker 1: suspected of irregularity on reasonable grounds was destroyed by court martial.
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Speaker 1: Without the formality of exact measurement by the Social Board.
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Speaker 1: The homes of the military and artisan classes were inspected
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Speaker 1: in a course of visitations extending through upwards of a year,
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Speaker 1: and during that period every town, village and hamlet was
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Speaker 1: systematically purged of that excess of the lower orders which
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Speaker 1: had been brought about by the neglect to pay the
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Speaker 1: tribute of criminals to the schools and university, and by
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Speaker 1: the violation of other natural laws of the Constitution of Flatland.
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Speaker 1: Thus the balance of classes was again restored. Needless to
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Speaker 1: say that henceforth the use of colour was abolished and
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Speaker 1: its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting
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Speaker 1: color except by the circles or by qualified scientific teachers,
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Speaker 1: was punished by a severe penalty only at our university,
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Speaker 1: in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes,
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Speaker 1: which I myself have never been privileged to attend. It
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Speaker 1: is understood that the sparing use of color is still
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Speaker 1: sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper
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Speaker 1: problems of mathematics. But of this I can only speak
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Speaker 1: from hearsay. Elsewhere in Flatland colour is now non existent.
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Speaker 1: The art of making it is known to only one
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Speaker 1: living d person, the Chief Circle, for the time being,
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Speaker 1: and by him it is handed down on his death
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Speaker 1: bed to none but his successor. One manufactory alone produces it,
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Speaker 1: and lest the secret should be betrayed, the workmen are
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Speaker 1: annually consumed and fresh ones introduced. So great is the
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Speaker 1: terror with which even now our aristocracy looks back to
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Speaker 1: the far distant days of the agitation for the Universal
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Speaker 1: Color Bill. End of Section ten.