le at a stroke, the number of his progenitors and
the nobility of his descent.

Many a promising child is sacrificed in this way. Scarcely one out of
ten survives. Yet so strong is the parental ambition among those
Polygons who are, as it were, on the fringe of the Circular class, that
it is very rare to find the Nobleman of that position in society, who
has neglected to place his first-born in the Circular Neo-Therapeutic
Gymnasium before he has attained the age of a month.

One year determines success or failure. At the end of that time the
child has, in all probability, added one more to the tombstones that
crowd the Neo-Therapeutic Cemetery; but on rare occasional a glad
procession bears back the little one to his exultant parents, no longer
a Polygon, but a Circle, at least by courtesy: and a single instance
of so blessed a result induces multitudes of Polygonal parents to
submit to similar domestic sacrifice, which have a dissimilar issue.

SECTION 12 Of the Doctrine of our Priests

As to the doctrine of the Circles it may briefly be summed up in a
single maxim, "Attend to your Configuration." Whether political,
ecclesiastical, or moral, all their teaching has for its object the
improvement of individual and collective Configuration--with special
reference of course to the Configuration of the Circles, to which all
other objects are subordinated.

It is the merit of the Circles that they have effectually suppressed
those ancient heresies which led men to waste energy and sympathy in
the vain belief that conduct depends upon will, effort, training,
encouragement, praise, or anything else but Configuration. It was
Pantocyclus--the illustrious Circle mentioned above, as the queller of
the Colour Revolt--who first convinced mankind that Configuration makes
the man; that if, for example, you are born an Isosceles with two
uneven sides, you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made
even--for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles Hospital;
similarly, if you are a Triangle, or Square, or even a Polygon, born
with any Irregularity, you must be taken to one of the Regular
Hospitals to have your disease cured; otherwise you will end your days
in the State Prison or by the angle of the State Executioner.

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most
flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect
Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if n