common, untried nomenclature habitual that is, until it is a habit to be occupied upon a novelty. It is observed that many persons reason well in some things and badly in others; and this is attributed to the consequence of employing the mind too much upon one or another subject. But those who know the truth of the preceding remarks will not have far to seek for what is often, perhaps most often, the true reason…I maintain that logic tends to make the power of reason over the unusual and unfamiliar more nearly equal to the power over the usual and familiar than it would otherwise be. The second is increased; but the first is almost created.'
Mr. James Smith, by bringing ignorance, folly, dishonesty into contact with my name, in the way of conditional insinuation, has done me a good turn: he has given me right to a freedom of personal remark which I might have declined to take in the case of a person who is useful and respected in matters which he understands.
Tit for tat is logic all the world over. By the way, what has become of the rest of the maxim: we never hear it now. When I was a boy, in some parts of the country at least, it ran thus:—
Butter for fat:
If you kill my dog,
I'll kill your cat.
He is a glaring instance of the truth of the observations quoted above. I will answer for it that, at the Mersey Dock Board, he never dreams of proving that the balance at the banker's is larger than that in the book by assuming that the larger sum is there, and then proving that the other supposition—the smaller balance—is, upon that assumption, an absurdity. He never says to another director. How can you dare to refuse me a right to assume the larger balance, when you yourself, the other day, said,—Suppose, for argument's sake, we had 80,000l. at the banker's, though you knew the book only showed 30,000l.? This is the way in which he has supported his geometrical paradox by Euclid's example: and this is not the way he reasons at the board; I know it by the character of him as a man of business which has reached my ears from several quarters. But in geometry and rational arithmetic he is a smatterer, though expert at computation; at the board he is a trained man of business. The language of geometry is so new to him that he does not know what is meant by 'two mean proportionals:' but all the phrases of commerce are rooted in his mind. He is most unerasably booked in the history of the squaring of the circle, as the speculator who took a right
