ir superior
culture and breeding, know all about your movements, while you know
very little or nothing about theirs. In a word, to comport oneself
with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon
oneself. Such at least is the painful teaching of my experience.

It is astonishing how much the Art--or I may almost call it
instinct--of Sight Recognition is developed by the habitual practice of
it and by the avoidance of the custom of "Feeling". Just as, with you,
the deaf and dumb, if once allowed to gesticulate and to use the
hand-alphabet, will never acquire the more difficult but far more
valuable art of lipspeech and lip-reading, so it is with us as regards
"Seeing" and "Feeling". None who in early life resort to "Feeling"
will ever learn "Seeing" in perfection.

For this reason, among our Higher Classes, "Feeling" is discouraged or
absolutely forbidden. From the cradle their children, instead of going
to the Public Elementary schools (where the art of Feeling is taught),
are sent to higher Seminaries of an exclusive character; and at our
illustrious University, to "feel" is regarded as a most serious fault,
involving Rustication for the first 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 professi