n't_, and strongly suspects that Bacon _did_.
We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that
in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out
ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but
the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and
persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites.
The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an
unchanging and immutable law--which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added
together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you
cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon
any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before
him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any
case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will
get just the proper 31.

Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way
calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and
unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed,
uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred
from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and
is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of
him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the
three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait half an
hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and
let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be
decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand. One
verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as
certainly say the mouse is in the tomcat.

The Shakespearite will Reason like this--(that is not my word, it is
his). He will say the kitten _may have been_ attending school when
nobody was noticing; therefore _we are warranted in assuming_ that it did
so; also, it _could have been_ training in a court-clerk's office when no
one was noticing; since that could have happened, _we are justified in
assuming_ that it did happen; it _could have studied catology in a
garret_ when no one was noticing--therefore it _did_; it _could have_
attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one
was noticing, and harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat
lawyer-talk in that