offence, and Expulsion for the
second.

But among the lower classes the art of Sight Recognition is regarded as
an unattainable luxury. A common Tradesman cannot afford to let his
son spend a third of his life in abstract studies. The children of the
poor are therefore allowed to "feel" from their earliest years, and
they gain thereby a precocity and an early vivacity which contrast at
first most favourably with the inert, undeveloped, and listless
behaviour of the half-instructed youths of the Polygonal class; but
when the latter have at last completed their University course, and are
prepared to put their theory into practice, the change that comes over
them may almost be described as a new birth, and in every art, science,
and social pursuit they rapidly overtake and distance their Triangular
competitors.

Only a few of the Polygonal Class fail to pass the Final Test or
Leaving Examination at the University. The condition of the
unsuccessful minority is truly pitiable. Rejected from the higher
class, they are also despised by the lower. They have neither the
matured and systematically trained powers of the Polygonal Bachelors
and Masters of Arts, nor yet the native precocity and mercurial
versatility of the youthful Tradesman. The professions, the public
services, are closed against them, and though in most States they are
not actually debarred from marriage, yet they have the greatest
difficulty in forming suitable alliances, as experience shews that the
offspring of such unfortunate and ill-endowed parents is generally
itself unfortunate, if not positively Irregular.

It is from these specimens of the refuse of our Nobility that the great
Tumults and Seditions of past ages have generally derived their
leaders; and so great is the mischief thence arising that an increasing
minority of our more progressive Statesmen are of opinion that true
mercy would dictate their entire suppression, by enacting that all who
fail to pass the Final Examination of the University should be either
imprisoned for life, or extinguished by a painless death.

But I find myself digressing into the subject of Irregularities, a
matter of such vital interest that it demands a separate section.

SECTION 7 Concerning Irregular Figures

Throughout the previous pages I have been assuming--what perhaps should
have been laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental
proposition--that every human being in Flatland is