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. Finally when the number of the sides becomes so numerous,
and the sides themselves so small, that the figure cannot be
distinguished from a circle, he is included in the Circular
or Priestly order; and this is the highest class of all.

It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have
one more side than his father, so that each generation
shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development
and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon;
the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on.

But this rule applies not always to the Tradesman,
and still less often to the Soldiers, and to the Workmen;
who indeed can hardly be said to deserve the name of human Figures,
since they have not all their sides equal. With them therefore