20
Why, here is monopoly of wisdom, monopoly of beauty, monopoly of courage, monopoly of justice. Sole king, sole orator, sole legislator, sole millionaire.
20
And I suppose sole cook, sole tanner, sole carpenter, and all that?
20
Presumably.
21
Regard me as your purchaser, good fellow, and tell me all about yourself. I dare say you think it rather hard to be sold for a slave?
21
Not at all. These things are beyond our control. And what is beyond our control is indifferent.
21
I don’t see how you make that out.
21
What! Have you yet to learn that of indifferentia some are praepostta and others rejecta?
21
Still I don’t quite see.
21
No; how should you? You are not familiar with our terms. You lack the comprebensio vist. The earnest student of logic knows this and more than this. He understands the nature of subject, predicate, and contingent, and the distinctions between them.
21
Now in Wisdom’s name, tell me, pray, what is a predicate? what is a contingent? ‘There is a ring about those words that takes my fancy.
21
With all my heart. A man lame in one foot knocks that foot accidentally against a stone, and gets a cut. Now the man is subject to lameness; which is the predicate. And the cut is a contingency.
22
Oh, subtle! What else can you tell me?
22
I have verbal involutions, for the better hampering, crippling, and muzzling of my antagonists. This is performed by the use of the far-famed syllogism.
22
Syllogism! I warrant him a tough customer.
22
Take a case. You have a child?
22
Well, and what if I have?
22
A crocodile catches him as he wanders along the bank of a river, and promises to restore him to you, if you will first guess correctly whether he means to restore him or not. Which are you going to say?
22
A difficult question. I don’t know which way I should get him back soonest. In Heaven’s hame, answer for me, and save the child before he is eaten up.
22
Ha, ha. I will teach you far other things than that.
22
For instance?
