Equality

Use in the book

The Hermetic explanation of sleep says that the maker assigned equal time to movement and rest, then immediately corrects this to more time for rest. Equality is the initial formulation, not the final exact claim. The correction supports the argument that the body requires generous restoration.

Places to read

1. I.41.8.4Equal shares of movement and rest are qualified in favor of rest.
2. I.49.27.5Equal shares of psychic power are rejected where functions are unlike.
3. Arith.6Unequal portions characterize the whole-number division of odd number.

Translation in this edition

“Equality” and “equal” should preserve the comparison’s terms. Do not smooth away the source’s explicit self-correction.

Unequal division

Anisos means unequal. In Arith.6, odd numbers divide into unequal whole-number portions and retain a middle, in contrast with even numbers. The point concerns the treatment of units in the account’s arithmetic. It does not deny that an odd numerical magnitude can be halved if fractional quantities are admitted.

Use in the book

The early denial of natural equality invokes differences produced by strength, ingenuity and reason. The measuring-instruments argument warns that ease of conceiving an equal distribution does not establish its justice. Yet sumptuary laws can maintain equality in a republic, or equality within classes together with distinctions between classes in a monarchy. This last use makes equality relative to a social framework rather than a single undifferentiated condition.

Places to read

1. I, p. 50–51, entry begun p. 48, no. 2, ¶26Natural equality is denied through differences of capacity.
2. I, p. 258, entry 10, ¶1Clear conception does not establish distributive justice.
3. II, p. 749, entry 2, ¶1Equality operates differently in republic and monarchy.

Translation in this edition

The English translation distinguishes ingenuity from modern industrial production in the early passage and preserves all/every-class relations in the sumptuary discussion. Its bracketed English completions do not certify lost French letters. The latter’s damaged May date remains as transmitted despite surrounding sequence.

Use in the book

The ethical demand is exacting: one must desire other people’s happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal felt for one’s own. Elsewhere equality describes love’s communication without diminution. Love at its source and love reaching its object are the same love, while perfected love can be equally vigorous wherever it extends. These are related affirmations of plenitude and reciprocity, but they are not one explicit political doctrine. A reader should preserve the particular comparison each passage makes.

Places to read

1. I.30Equal concern for others’ happiness is made a condition of enjoying the world.
2. II.41Love in fountain and stream is equal in time and glory because it is the same communicated love.
3. IV.66Perfect love is imagined as equally vigorous and wholly present throughout its extent.

In this edition

“Equality” is an editorial gathering of the attested adjective and adverb. Do not import a complete programme of legal or economic equality into comparisons about charity or divine communication.

Use in the book

The claim that all these are equal and of like age protects the plurality of the explanatory sources. No root is said to be the original substance from which the others were subsequently created. Yet equal standing does not make their characters interchangeable. B 172 immediately assigns different offices and characters and lets them prevail in turn.

The same vocabulary marks the Sphere's uniformity: it is equal to itself from every side. This is a different application, describing a condition without articulated limbs or distinguishable cosmic regions. Love's equal length and breadth and Strife's balance in every direction similarly describe their reach, not a measured equation of Love's quantity with one root's quantity.

B 98's near-equality of ingredients in blood and flesh belongs to another level again, that of a specific mixture. Its permitted slight excesses and deficits should not be read as contradiction of B 172's equality. The poem can give sources equal fundamental standing while making individual compounds with unequal proportions, as the bone mixture demonstrates.

Places to read

1. B 17.18–292Love and Strife receive spatial descriptions; the sources are equal and coeval but possess distinct offices.
2. B 28Equality from every side characterises the Sphere.
3. B 29The unarticulated Sphere is equal to itself.
4. B 98.1–4Near-equality and small departures from it belong to a particular bodily mixture.
5. B 96The different shares in bone demonstrate that not every mixture has equal parts.

Translation in this edition

The repeated English “equal” preserves a useful echo but can conceal different functions. “Of like age in their birth” in B 172 should be read with the denial of absolute generation, not converted into a narrated creation date.

Use in the book

In the Acron anecdote Empedocles opposes a request for a family monument by speaking about equality. Medical eminence is therefore denied an automatic claim to exceptional civic privilege. Neanthes’ account gives the principle a broader setting: after Meton’s death and the beginnings of tyranny, Empedocles urges the Acragantines to end faction and practice political equality. These are related representations of an aristocratically wealthy figure siding against unequal power. They do not amount to the text of an Empedoclean democratic program. Timaeus’ contrast between moderate civic conduct and self-exalting poetry also cautions against assuming that equality in political honors and exceptional religious status were automatically understood as consistent. The edition offers a reconciliation through the philosopher’s supposed escape from rebirth; that is a modern interpretation rather than the explanation supplied by the ancient witnesses.

Places to read

1. A 1 §§ 64–66 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 65, reporting Timaeus. Uses equality against Acron’s requested memorial privilege.
2. A 1 §§ 73–74 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 72–73, reporting Neanthes. Connects political equality with ending faction after Meton’s death.
3. A 1 §§ 64–66 (polemical)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 66, reporting Timaeus. Contrasts civic moderation with poetic self-presentation.

Translation in this edition

“Levelling” is the edition’s interpretive shorthand, not the only possible content of isotēs. The reports do not specify franchise, institutional offices, citizenship qualifications, or an equal distribution of wealth.

Use in the book

The lower classes first claim that colour recognition has made the traditional hierarchy less functionally relevant. They can solve practical problems without the aristocratic arts. The narrator grants increasing truth to this claim. The demand for equal rights therefore develops from altered conditions rather than appearing as a bare slogan. If a privilege's practical justification has diminished, law might be asked to change with it.

Yet the reformers' programme contains several distinguishable measures: ending educational tribute, removing endowments, prohibiting exclusive arts, establishing equality, and requiring everyone to be painted. These should not be compressed into a single innocuous or sinister act. A programme can challenge oppression while also proposing coercive restrictions. Abbott gives readers enough detail to assess measures separately, even though the narrator's language encourages collective condemnation.

The central political conflict is between equality and advancement. Artisans hope for admission to the Regular classes, either personally or through descendants. Pantocyclus argues that abolishing distinctions would deprive them of this expected honour. An unequal institution recruits support by making individual escape seem more valuable than collective change. The future possibility of being above someone else defeats a present alliance with those below.

Majority rule receives a similarly interested description. The Chief Circle professes readiness to accept the Bill if the majority approves, while warning that the greatest number consists of the Criminal Classes. He makes numerical legitimacy and numerical menace alternately available according to the audience he addresses. The phrase greatest number does not guarantee the welfare of that number; it becomes a reason to fear their power and later to kill them.

Women's support broadens the movement beyond male rank. The proposed colour code promises respect and access to knowledge otherwise reserved for Priests. The narrator caricatures those hopes as vanity and intrusion, but the very content of his fears reveals how much exclusion is being defended. Their eventual mobilization against the Bill does not erase the initial grievance. Reform in these chapters is consequently a field of competing interests, partial emancipations, and diverted expectations. Its defeat demonstrates how a hierarchy can preserve itself without answering every claim made against it.

Places to read

1. §923“raised to an equality”
2. §923“entitled to equal rights”
3. §1023“Reform or Innovation”
4. §1023“if it was approved by the majority”
5. §1023“That honourable ambition would now have to be sacrificed”

In this edition

Modern note 93 supplies the 1884 British Reform context and observes women's exclusion from the franchise settlement. Note 100 discusses fears of government by the poorest majority. These comparisons illuminate the fictional debate without making its Bill a one-to-one transcription of a British statute.

Averse

Opposed or strongly disinclined. Pantocyclus’s speech renders most groups neutral towards or hostile to the Bill. Printed form: averse (§ 1023). See Reform and equality.

Monopolising

Reserving a benefit or practice to a restricted group. The reformers use the term for arts whose institutional support maintains aristocratic advantage. Printed form: monopolising (§ 923). See Reform and equality.

Reform

Alteration of an existing institution presented as improvement. Pantocyclus appears to accept its principle while organizing opposition to the Colour Bill and preparing violence. Printed form: Reform (§ 1023). See Reform and equality.

Retrogression

Movement backwards to a supposedly lower state. Pantocyclus predicts bodily and social decline if distinctions of rank disappear. Printed form: retrogression (§ 1023). See Reform and equality.

a second Nature (contextual phrase)

Exact wording: “a second Nature” (§923).

An acquired habit becomes second nature when it seems as immediate as an original disposition. Flatland gives the idiom constitutional force. Colour recognition has changed what ordinary people can do, so the reformers argue that legal distinctions should change too. The capitalized Nature brings the new practice into competition with the authority constantly invoked for inherited rank. The phrase does not mean that painting literally alters the number of anyone’s sides. It means that a cultural invention can transform the practical consequences of those sides. This distinction is crucial: the new code makes competence more widely available while remaining capable of imitation. Its political strength and its vulnerability arise from the same detachment of visible signs from bodily form.

Related: Colour; Reform and equality; Dodecagon.

the greatest number (contextual phrase)

Exact wording: “the greatest number” (§1023).

Pantocyclus equates the greatest number with the Criminal Classes and converts a possible democratic justification into an alarm. The modern annotation connects the wording with the utilitarian language of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, already invoked in §723. In this speech, however, numbers establish a threat rather than a claim to welfare. The argument relies on the ruler’s prior classification of an entire population as criminal; it does not demonstrate each person’s criminal act. Artisans are encouraged to identify with the honour they hope to acquire rather than with the numerical majority to which they belong. The phrase therefore marks a change of political perspective: counting people can expose exclusion, or it can make their abundance a reason to suppress them.

Related: Compensation; Reform and equality; Isosceles rebels.