the
time may be not far distant when, the race being no longer able to
produce a Chief Circle, the Constitution of Flatland must fall.

One other word of warning suggests itself to me, though I cannot so
easily mention a remedy; and this also refers to our relations with
Women. About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the Chief
Circle that, since women are deficient in Reason but abundant in
Emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive
any mental education. The consequence was that they were no longer
taught to read, nor even to master Arithmetic enough to enable them to
count the angles of their husband or children; and hence they sensibly
declined during each generation in intellectual power. And this system
of female non-education or quietism still prevails.

My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been carried
so far as to react injuriously on the Male Sex.

For the consequence is that, as things now are, we Males have to lead a
kind of bi-lingual, and I may almost say bi-mental, existence. With
Women, we speak of "love", "duty", "right", "wrong", "pity", "hope",
and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no
existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control
feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an
entirely different vocabulary and I may almost say, idiom. "Love" then
becomes "the anticipation of benefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or
"fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover,
among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their
Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more
devoutly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are
both regarded and spoken of--by all except the very young--as being
little better than "mindless organisms".

Our Theology also in the Women's chambers is entirely different from
our Theology elsewhere.

Now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as
in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young,
especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the
maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language--except for the
purpose of repeating it in the presence of their Mothers and
Nurses--and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already
methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the
present time a