Not that I should be disposed to recommend (at present)
the extreme measures adopted by some States, where an infant
whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity
is summarily destroyed at birth. Some of our highest and ablest men,
men of real genius, have during their earliest days laboured under
deviations as great as, or even greater than, forty-five minutes:
and the loss of their precious lives would have been an irreparable
injury to the State. The art of healing also has achieved
some of its most glorious triumphs in the compressions, extensions,
trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diaetetic operations
by which Irregularity has been partly or wholly cured.
Advocating therefore a VIA MEDIA, I would lay down no fixed
or absolute line of demarcation; but at the period when the frame
is just beginning to set, and when the Medical Board has reported that
recovery is improbable, I would suggest that the Irregular offspring
be painlessly and mercifully consumed.
Section 8. Of the Ancient Practice of Painting
If my Readers have followed me with any attention up to this point,
they will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull
in Flatland.
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