SOME LOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES itt 



laughed out of Court. In every other walk of life any difficult 

 point is submitted to an expert, and his judgment is taken ; but 

 who ever heard of a professor of Logic being consulted as to the 

 cogency or validity of an argument ? Men of science are 

 arguing with one another all the year round, and many of 

 them are attached to universities, and must sometimes come 

 into contact with professors of Logic — cannot at any rate be 

 ignorant that professors of Logic exist ; but when did ever a 

 controversialist in any other branch of science appeal to 

 a professor of Logic to decide on the validity of an argument ? 

 These, it seems to me, are the considerations inarticulately and 

 unavowedly present in the minds of those — the vast majority 

 of educated men — who ignore the existence of Logic ; who, if 

 they have learnt it, make haste to forget it the moment they 

 shut their text-book or leave their class-rooms ; and if they have 

 not learnt it, feel no curiosity about a subject which has 

 produced no visible beneficial effect on the minds of those 

 who have. 



It is well that Logic has few students ; for, if we may judge 

 by its professors, it does not conduce either to skill in reasoning 

 or to clearness of exposition ; and it certainly produces in all 

 who have learnt it a despairing helplessness in the face of 

 difficulties that to the non-logical mind are not difficulties at 

 all, but to the logician are " logical impossibilities." Far be 

 it from me to say that logicians are impostors. Those who are 

 known to me are high-minded men and my very good friends ; 

 and I know full well that they believe as implicitly in the fads 

 and the formulae, the prohibitions and impossibilities, of their 

 pseudo-science as any Christian Scientist, or astrologer, or flat- 

 earth crank, or circle-squarer of them all ; but that traditional 

 Logic is an imposture I hope to satisfy my readers before I 

 have done. 



I quite realise the gravity of this accusation, and am fully 

 alive to its prima-facie improbability. The science of Logic was 

 founded by a man who stands for all time as the embodiment 

 and great exemplar of reasoning power ; of whom it was said by 

 Averroes that " his doctrine is the perfection of truth, and his 

 understanding attained the utmost limit of human ability : so 

 that it might truly be said of him that he was created and given 

 to the world by Divine Providence that we might see in him 

 how much it is possible for men to know." This is very much 



