Year: 1869

The word o3{i93 is subject To para
doxical construction. When you
ohEgc Il man TO do thing which he
does not wantto do, you may ,lisoblige
| h!m at the same time. 1t has been
remarked that there is very great
| difference between a church where the
gospel is dispensed, and one where it
is dispensed with. We have often
heard the story OF how the captain OF
Il canal boat cried Look ont to his
passengers when they were gong I'M
der bridge, and how 'Frenchman


looked out accordingly and received a
bump on his head; but It has never
been decided that the Frcnchman took
any incorrect or unusual signiticatlon
from the words. 1t has never been de-
Observation-Disclosures upor down.
The question whether a man who fails
from a boat aud is rescued from drow-
ming, is pulled out or pulled in. de-
pends mainly whether you are speak
ing primarily OF the water or OF the
boat. Some one has noticed that peo-
pie say they shell peas when they un-
shell them that they husk corn when
they unhusk it; they skin buffalo
when they unskin it; that they scale
fishes when they unscaIe them, and
their gardens want wedding when they
are weedy enough already.


These paraloXcs in words are the
foundation OF the puzzles in logic which
are SO common. For instance, the
trte sylloglsm TO The effect that be-
cause no cat has two tails, and because
a cat has one tail more than no cat,
therefore a cat has three tails, the
trouble arises in tbs paradoxical use OF
The pharse no cat While it is quite
true III one sense that no cat has two
tails. it is not true III the sense in
which it is employed, in the syllogism,
because q mo cat being a noncntity
has no tail Similar it is argued that
Oxford must, from all antiquity, have
been either somewhere or nowhere
Where was it at the time OF Tarqumius
Prscus? 1t was nowhere, then it
surely must have been somewhere.
Where was it? Aristotle and Philetus,
and don't know how many others,
are said to have bothered themselves
very much with a proposition some
thing like this. If you say Of your
telf, 81 lie and in saying so tell the
truth, then it is quite evident that you
lie in saying it, then you also tell the
truth in saying it. In either cases you
lie and tell the truth at the same time.
have heard somebody make the
following proposition Suppose, for
example, that man 30 years old mar.
ries GIRL five years old. He is seven
times as old as she. They live togcth-
er five years and the girl is 10 years
old Then the man is forty years old,
or only four times rs old rs the girl
They live together five years more
and she is fifteen. The man is forty
five, or only three times as old. They
live until she is thirty and the man
sixty. he is then only twice rs old


Now, how long will they have to live
to make the girl as old as the man?


Although, in tins case, the girl is
catching the man very last, the reason
ing is similar to that by which it was
long ago argued that man never
could catch a tortoise which had
mile the start. While the man runs
mile the tortoise goes one-tenth OF a
mile; while the man runs that one-tcnth
of a mile, the tortoise goes one-hun-
dredth Of mile; while the man runs
one hundrcdth OF mile, the tortoise
goes one-thousandth of mile; while
the man runs one-thousandth of mile,
the tortoise goes onc-ten nthousandth OF
4 mile, aud so on to any extent OF
which the decimal notation is capable
the tortoise always being some
,nlin..csimal fraction OF space ahead of