Fragment XLIV
◄Fragment XLIII - Fragment XLV►
Why do we continue to be lazy and careless and sluggish and seek excuses for not working hard and sitting up late to perfect our mastery of logical argument? "Well, if I have made a mistake in this problem, I haven't been guilty of killing my own father, have I?" Stupid boy, shall I show you where in this instance there was a father to kill? The only possible error to make in this example you have made. Yet that was the very answer I once made to Rufus when he scolded me because I could not find the missing member in a certain syllogism. "It is not as bad," I said, "as if I had set fire to the Capitol." Whereupon he answered, "In this case, you foolish fellow, the missing member is the Capitol." Are these the only possible wrongs, burning the Capitol and killing one's father? But using one's impressions without purpose or profit and quite at random and failing to follow argument or demonstration or semblance of reason, and completely missing what is to one's advantage or disadvantage in question and answer —are none of these wrongs?