nians think differently; the store they set by this
hypothetical language can hardly be believed; they will even give any one
a maintenance for life if he attains a considerable proficiency in the
study of it; nay, they will spend years in learning to translate some of
their own good poetry into the hypothetical language--to do so with
fluency being reckoned a distinguishing mark of a scholar and a
gentleman. Heaven forbid that I should be flippant, but it appeared to
me to be a wanton waste of good human energy that men should spend years
and years in the perfection of so barren an exercise, when their own
civilisation presented problems by the hundred which cried aloud for
solution and would have paid the solver handsomely; but people know their
own affairs best. If the youths chose it for themselves I should have
wondered less; but they do not choose it; they have it thrust upon them,
and for the most part are disinclined towards it. I can only say that
all I heard in defence of the system was insufficient to make me think
very highly of its advantages.

The arguments in favour of the deliberate development of the unreasoning
faculties were much more cogent. But here they depart from the
principles on which they justify their study of hypothetics; for they
base the importance which they assign to hypothetics upon the fact of
their being a preparation for the extraordinary, while their study of
Unreason rests upon its developing those faculties which are required for
the daily conduct of affairs. Hence their professorships of
Inconsistency and Evasion, in both of which studies the youths are
examined before being allowed to proceed to their degree in hypothetics.
The more earnest and conscientious students attain to a proficiency in
these subjects which is quite surprising; there is hardly any
inconsistency so glaring but they soon learn to defend it, or injunction
so clear that they cannot find some pretext for disregarding it.

Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all
they did by reason and reason only. Reason betrays men into the drawing
of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language--language being
like the sun, which rears and then scorches. Extremes are alone logical,
but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean
is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme. There are no follies
and no unreasonablenesses so great as those which can appa