ea in every mind, the Circles reverse the nature of that
Commandment which in Spaceland regulates the relations between parents
and children. With you, children are taught to honour their parents;
with us--next to the Circles, who are the chief object of universal
homage--a man is taught to honour his Grandson, if he has one; or, if
not, his Son. By "honour," however, is by no means mean "indulgence,"
but a reverent regard for their highest interests: and the Circles
teach that the duty of fathers is to subordinate their own interests to
those of posterity, thereby advancing the welfare of the whole State as
well as that of their own immediate descendants.

The weak point in the system of the Circles--if a humble Square may
venture to speak of anything Circular as containing any element of
weakness--appears to me to be found in their relations with Women.

As it is of the utmost importance for Society that Irregular births
should be discouraged, it follows that no Woman who has any
Irregularities in her ancestry is a fit partner for one who desires
that his posterity should rise by regular degrees in the social scale.

Now the Irregularity of a Male is a matter of measurement; but as all
Women are straight, and therefore visibly Regular so to speak, one has
to device some other means of ascertaining what I may call their
invisible Irregularity, that is to say their potential Irregularities
as regards possible offspring. This is effected by carefully-kept
pedigrees, which are preserved and supervised by the State; and without
a certified pedigree no Woman is allowed to marry.

Now it might have been supposed the a Circle--proud of his ancestry and
regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a
Chief Circle--would be more careful than any other to choose a wife who
had no blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so. The care in choosing
a Regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the social scale.
Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who has hopes of generating
an Equilateral Son, to take a wife who reckoned a single Irregularity
among her Ancestors; a Square or Pentagon, who is confident that his
family is steadily on the rise, does not inquire above the
five-hundredth generation; a Hexagon or Dodecagon is even more careless
of the wife's pedigree; but a Circle has been known deliberately to
take a wife who has had an Irregular Great-Grandfather, and all because
of some slight sup