XII 



GUESSING AT HALF AND MULTIPLYING 

 BY TWO 



" THE small philosopher is a great character in 

 New England. His fundamental rule of logical 

 procedure is to guess at the half and multiply by 

 two. [Applause.] " l It is [in 1880] only two 

 or three years since the philosopher from whom 

 this text is quoted was himself a great character 

 in New England, inasmuch as he could give a lec- 

 ture once every week, in one of the largest halls of 

 New England's principal city, and could entertain 

 his audience of two or three thousand people with 

 discussions of the most vast and abstruse themes 

 of science and metaphysics. The success with 

 which he entertained his audience is carefully 

 chronicled for us in the volumes made up from the 

 reports of his lectures, in which parenthetical notes 



1 Cook's Boston Monday Lectures : Biology, p. 51. After some 

 hesitation I have decided to reprint this paper, because the " fun- 

 damental rule of procedure " here criticised is a favourite one 

 with other controversialists than Mr. Cook, and it is one against 

 which readers sometimes need to be put on their guard. 



