In the latest and most complete elaboration of his metaphysical system (thePhilosophy of Discovery), as well as in the earlier discourse on the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy, reprinted as an appendix to that work, Dr. Whewell, while very candidly admitting that his language was open to misconception, disclaims having intended to say that mankind in general can now perceive the law of definite proportions in chemical combination to be a necessary truth. All he meant was that philosophical chemists in a future generation may possibly see this. Some truths may be seen by intuition, but yet the intuition of them may be a rare and a difficult attainment.[86] And he explains that the inconceivableness which, according to his theory, is the test of axioms, “depends entirely upon the clearness of the Ideas which the axioms involve. So long as those ideas are vague and indistinct, the contrary of an axiom may be assented to, though it can not be distinctly conceived. It may be assented to, not because it is possible, but because we do not see clearly what is possible. To a person who is only beginning to think geometrically, there may appear nothing absurd in the assertion that two straight lines may inclose a space. And in the same manner, to aperson who is only beginning to think of mechanical truths, it may not appear to be absurd, that in mechanical processes, Reaction should be greater or less than Action; and so, again, to a person who has not thought steadily about Substance, it may not appear inconceivable, that by chemical operations, we should generate new matter, or destroy matter which already exists.[87] Necessary truths, therefore, are not those of which we can not conceive, but “those of which we can not distinctly conceive, the contrary.[88] So long as our ideas are indistinct altogether, we do not know what is or is not capable of being distinctly conceived; but, by the ever increasing distinctness with which scientific men apprehend the general conceptions of science, they in time come to perceive that there are certain laws of nature, which, though historically and as a matter of fact they were learned from experience, we can not, now that we know them, distinctly conceive to be other than they are. A second instance is, the argument by which it used to be contended, before the commutation of tithe, that tithes fell on the landlord, and were a deduction from rent; because the rent of tithe-free land was always higher than that of land of the same quality, and the same advantages of situation, subject to tithe. Whether it be true or not that a tithe falls on rent, a treatise on Logic is not the place to examine; but it is certain that this is no proof of it. Whether the proposition be true or false, tithe-free land must, by the necessity of the case, pay a higher rent. For if tithes do not fall on rent, it must be because they fall on the consumer; because they raise the price of agricultural produce. But if the produce be raised in price, the farmer of tithe-free as well as the farmer of tithed land gets the benefit. To the latter the rise is but a compensation for the tithe he pays; to the first, who pays none, it is clear gain, and therefore enables him, and if there be freedom of competition, forces him, to pay so much more rent to his landlord. The question remains, to what class of fallaciesthis belongs. The premise is, that the owner of tithed land receives less rent than the owner of tithe-free land; the conclusion is, that therefore he receives less than he himself would receive if tithe were abolished. But the premise is only true conditionally; the owner of tithed land receivesless than what the owner of tithe-free land is enabled to receive when other lands are tithed; while the conclusion is applied to a state of circumstances in which that condition fails, and in which, by consequence, the premise will not be true. The fallacy, therefore, is à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. ... and his doctor tried to tell him otherwise, but the guy kept insisting he was dead, he was dead. So the doctor asked him if dead men bleed, and the patient said, No, of course not. So the doctor pricked the man’s finger with a pin, and of course he started bleeding. So the doctor said, ‘There. Does that prove anything to you?’ And the patient looked at his finger, amazed, and said, ‘Yes. I was wrong. Dead mendobleed.’ Well, there was a fair amount of cash, quite a few stocks and some savings bonds, and there were three pieces of property, farm property of three hundred and twenty acres, and the Londonwood apartment building, which went to Linda Carroll, and the house in Falthaven which went to Linda Mae Carroll. On the afternoon of the twenty-first. Augusta is back from her nicotine break. The Mex came out, followed by a man that stood at least three inches over six feet. And who didnt weigh over a hundred and twenty pounds. Just skin and bone. Mac looked him over and said: Hagh! Boney Seitz, hunh? And yet you say that your examination of this body led you to believe that the man died as the result of the fire? Where can we see her? Because they have kitchens. So we would be in a car, on holiday and in a kitchen! When we get back to the house, so is Maggie. Whatll I do with whoever I pick up? Such familiar experimental processes are not regarded as inductions by Dr. Whewell; but they are perfectly homogeneous with those by which, even on his own showing, the pyramid of science is supplied with its base. In vain he attempts to escape from this conclusion by laying the most arbitrary restrictions on the choice of examples admissible as instances of Induction: they must neither be such as are still matter of discussion (p. 265), nor must any of them be drawn from mental and social subjects (p. 269), nor from ordinary observation and practical life (pp. 241-247). They must be taken exclusively from the generalizations by which scientific thinkers have ascended to great and comprehensive laws of natural phenomena. Now it is seldom possible, in these complicated inquiries, to go much beyond the initial steps, without calling in the instrument of Deduction, and the temporary aid of hypothesis; as I myself, in common with Dr. Whewell, have maintained against the purely empirical school. Since, therefore, such cases could not conveniently be selected to illustrate the principles of mere observation and experiment, Dr. Whewell is misled by their absence into representing the Experimental Methods as serving no purpose in scientific investigation; forgetting that if those methods had not supplied the first generalizations, there would have been no materials for his own conception of Induction to work upon. The heavy-set man kicked Rob in the stomach. Rob pivoted but the pain of the kick robbed his punch of its power. He hit the other man in his ribs, then went down. § 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan,paganus; which originally, as its etymology imports, was equivalent to villager; the inhabitant of a pagus, or village. At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of the old religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns having been earliest converted; as in our own day, and at all times, the greater activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediately under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had embraced Christianity. From this casual coincidence, the word paganus carried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of a worshiper of the ancient divinities; until at length it suggested that idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using the word. But when paganus had come to connote heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was soon disregarded in the employment of the word. As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was noneed for a separate word to denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that exclusively. So you found me, huff? she says. You knew where to find me..