Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these
obvious conclusions? Surely a moment's reflection, and a single
instance from common life, must convince every one that our whole
social system is based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles.
You meet, for example, two or three Tradesmen in the street,
whom you recognize at once to be Tradesmen by a glance at their angles
and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to step into your house
to lunch. This you do at present with perfect confidence,
because everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied
by an adult Triangle: but imagine that your Tradesman drags
behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram
of twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal: -- what are you to do
with such a monster sticking fast in your house door?
But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating
details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages of
a Residence in Spaceland. Obviously the measurements of
a single angle would no longer be sufficient under such
portentous circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up
in feeling or surveying the perimeter of one's acquaintances.
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