'" (footnote 1)
On this point the defence of the Square seems to me to be
impregnable. I wish I could say that his answer to the second (or
moral) objection was equally clear and cogent. It has been objected
that he is a woman-hater; and as this objection has been vehemently
urged by those whom Nature's decree has constituted the somewhat
larger half of the Spaceland race, I should like to remove it, so far
as I can honestly do so. But the Square is so unaccustomed to the use
of the moral terminology of Spaceland that I should be doing him an
injustice if I were literally to transcribe his defence against this
charge. Acting, therefore, as his interpreter and summarizer, I
gather that in the course of an imprisonment of seven years he has
himself modified his own personal views, both as regards Women and as
regards the Isosceles or Lower Classes. Personally, he now inclines
to the opinion of the Sphere (see page 86) that the Straight Lines are
in many important respects superior to the Circles. But, writing as a
Historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the
views generally adopted by Flatland, and (as he has been informed)
even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent
times) the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom
been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration.
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