Circles and Priests

Use in the book

§112 corrects a misleading analogy with Spaceland priesthood. Flatland's Priests administer business, art, and science, and direct everything from commerce to theology. Their apparent universality is summarized in a splendidly equivocal compliment: they do nothing themselves but cause everything worth doing that others do. The statement can be heard as a doctrine of supreme direction; it also describes a class appropriating credit for other people's work. The generalization invites readers to separate intellectual leadership from an institution's claim to indispensable causation.

The Circle's body explains how this claim is sustained. Its tiny sides make close discrimination difficult, but class etiquette prevents the decisive test: feeling a Circle would be an insult. Deference thus obstructs the very procedure by which the society ordinarily establishes identity. A “veil of mystery” protects the perimeter. The secret is less a miraculous shape than the practical refusal to let inferior observers examine a prestigious one. The name acquires its certainty socially where geometry denies it literally.

The class is not closed in a simple hereditary sense. A sufficiently many-sided Polygon may ascend into it, and risky operations promise a sudden increase in sides. This possibility converts deference into aspiration. Parents sacrifice children at the Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium because one surviving success seems to justify many deaths. The cemetery is the material underside of the courtesy title. The narrative makes rank appear at once inherited, medically manufactured, and ceremonially bestowed.

The Circles also cultivate contradictory relations to knowledge. They preserve sight recognition when colour makes it unnecessary; they reportedly reserve colour itself for secret advanced instruction after prohibiting it elsewhere, though the Square marks this university practice as hearsay. Later they maintain archives of dimensional visitations while punishing public testimony about other worlds. These are not simply enemies of science. They make inquiry an unequal possession and remove observations whose circulation would threaten their authority. Their priestliness is therefore most legible in the management of initiation, orthodoxy, and access, rather than in a fully described creed or ritual life.

Places to read

1. §323“the Circular or Priestly order”
2. §112“doing nothing themselves”
3. §112“no Circle is really a Circle”
4. §112“the veil of mystery”
5. §112“a Circle, at least by courtesy”

In this edition

Note 107 offers the philosophical First Cause as a comparison for the claim to cause others' work. Note 108 explains the limit approached by regular polygons and the social force of courtesy. These are the modern editor's explanatory frames; the narrator's admission that no Circle is literally a circle is in Abbott's main text.

Ecclesiastical

Pertaining to the church or priesthood. Ecclesiastical secrets belong to the restricted information Women might overhear when mistaken for Priests. Printed form: ecclesiastical (§ 923). See Circles and Priests.

Enwrap

Wrap or envelop. A Circle surrounds the truth about his perimeter with a protective social mystery. Printed form: enwrap (§ 112). See Circles and Priests.

Hierarchy

An ordered structure of authority, here especially the ruling priestly order. Its high status depends partly on distinction from other bodies. Printed form: Hierarchy (§ 923). See Circles and Priests.

Mainstays

Principal supports. The Circles are represented as the supporting pillars of the Constitution. Printed form: mainstays (§ 112). See Circles and Priests.

Priests

Members of Flatland’s highest, supposedly Circular order. Their authority extends over government, commerce, education, and science as well as theology. Printed form: Priests (§ 112). See Circles and Priests.

doing nothing themselves (contextual phrase)

Exact wording: “doing nothing themselves” (§112).

The participial phrase sits within a grand catalogue of priestly direction. At first it could sound like praise of pure supervision: others perform the work while the Circles provide its organizing cause. Read less deferentially, it exposes a governing class that takes credit without labour. The following qualification, restricting their causation to everything “worth doing,” lets authority decide in advance which accomplishments deserve recognition. The modern note compares the paradox to the philosophical First Cause, but the social meaning does not depend on that allusion. The Circles rule commerce, science, education, and theology without a corresponding account of their own productive acts. Syntax allows praise and indictment to occupy the same sentence, leaving readers to hear what the admiring narrator does not adequately judge.

Related: Circles and Priests; Chief Circle; Science and institutions.

assumed, by courtesy (contextual phrase)

Exact wording: “assumed, by courtesy” (§112).

The inserted qualification quietly removes the Chief Circle’s ten thousand sides from the category of measured fact. The numerical claim sounds exceptionally precise, but assumed identifies its evidentiary weakness and courtesy supplies its social justification. The prohibition on feeling a Circle prevents routine verification. This is not an argument that ten thousand sides would make a true mathematical circle: a finite polygon would still remain polygonal. The phrase instead shows how a convention receives the outward form of scientific certainty. It also prepares the later description of surgically promoted children as Circles “at least by courtesy.” At the summit and threshold of rank alike, the title depends partly on authorized recognition rather than on literal fulfilment of its geometric name.

Related: Chief Circle; Circles and Priests; Fertility and extinction.