Section 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland
The greatest length or breadth of a full grown inhabitant of Flatland
may be estimated at about eleven of your inches. Twelve inches may be
regarded as a maximum.
Our Women are Straight Lines.
Our Soldiers and Lowest Classes of Workmen are Triangles with two
equal sides, each about eleven inches long, and a base or third side
so short (often not exceeding half an inch) that they form
at their vertices a very sharp and formidable angle.
Indeed when their bases are of the most degraded type (not more than
the eighth part of an inch in size), they can hardly be distinguished
from Straight Lines or Women; so extremely pointed are their vertices.
With us, as with you, these Triangles are distinguished from others
by being called Isosceles; and by this name I shall refer to them
in the following pages.
Our Middle Class consists of Equilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles.
Our Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares (to which class
I myself belong) and Five-Sided Figures or Pentagons.
Next above these come the Nobility, of whom there are several degrees,
beginning at Six-Sided Figures, or Hexagons, and from thence rising
in the number of their sides till they receive the honourable title
of Polygonal, or many-sided.
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