Rob felt his skin crawling with nervous suspense. His mouth felt dry. His heart began to pound. Clear and distinct ideas are terms which, though familiar and frequent in mens mouths, I have reason to think every one who uses does not perfectly understand. And possibly it is but here and there one who gives himself the trouble to consider them so far as to know what he himself or others precisely mean by them; I have, therefore, in most places, chose to put determinate or determined, instead of clear and distinct, as more likely to direct men’s thoughts to my meaning in this matter.—Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding; Epistle to the Reader. Id prefer to be at home rather than here!’ Hell, guy, I told you there was dough in this case. That fat wolf will talk about dough any hour of the day or night. This kind of dough, anyway. When she was sixteen, and three months after Lauren was born, Augusta took on a brawny lad named Colin ORourke, this time on the football field itself, the better to enjoy the splendor in the grass, no doubt. Lo and behold, and having learned nothing about birth control on her earlier go-round, Augusta discovered that she was once again pregnant. Young Colin, left tackle but devout Catholic, also chose not to marry her, preferring instead to enlist in the United States Army. He was whisked almost at once to a post in peacetime Germany, where he was killed in an automobile accident on the Autobahn. Augusta’s first child was only a year old when the second one was born. In honor of her slainIrish swain, she named this second daughter Kelly. 40 It cant wait, he said. But when hehas thought of something, science can tell him whether that which he has thought of will suit his purpose or not. The inquirer or arguer must be guided by his own knowledge and sagacity in the choice of the inductions out of which he will construct his argument. But the validity of the argument when constructed, depends on principles, and must be tried by tests which are the same for all descriptions of inquiries, whether the result be to give A an estate, or to enrich science with a new general truth. In the one case and in the other, the senses, or testimony, must decide on the individual facts; the rules of the syllogism will determine whether, those facts being supposed correct, the case really falls within the formulæ of the different inductions under which it has been successively brought; and finally, the legitimacy of the inductions themselves must be decided by other rules, andthese it is now our purpose to investigate. If this third part of the operation be, in many of the questions of practical life, not the most, but the least arduous portion of it, we have seen that this is also the case in some great departments of the field of science; in all those which are principally deductive, and most of all in mathematics; where the inductions themselves are few in number, and so obvious and elementary that they seem to stand in no need of the evidence of experience, while to combine them so as to prove a given theorem or solve a problem, may call for the utmost powers of invention and contrivance with which our species is gifted. It is inherent in the peculiar character of the Method of Difference, that the nature of the combinations which it requires is much more strictly defined than in the Method of Agreement. The two instances which are to be compared with one another must be exactly similar, in all circumstances except the one which we are attempting to investigate: they must be in the relation of A B C and B C, or ofa b c and b c. It is true that this similarity of circumstances needs not extend to such as are already known to be immaterial to the result. And in the case of most phenomena we learn at once, from the commonest experience, that most of the co-existent phenomena of the universe may be either present or absent without affecting the given phenomenon; or, if present, are present indifferently when the phenomenon does not happen and when it does. Still, even limiting the identity which is required between the two instances, A B C and B C, to such circumstances as are not already known to be indifferent, it is very seldom that nature affords two instances, of which we can be assured that they stand in this precise relation to one another. In the spontaneous operations of nature there is generally such complication and such obscurity, they are mostly either on so overwhelmingly large or on so inaccessibly minute a scale, we are so ignorant of a great part of the facts which really take place, and even those of which we are not ignorant are so multitudinous, and therefore so seldom exactly alike in any two cases, that a spontaneous experiment, of the kind required by the Method of Difference, is commonly not to be found. When, on the contrary, we obtain a phenomenon by an artificial experiment, a pair of instances such as the method requires is obtained almost as a matter of course, provided the process does not last a long time. A certain state of surrounding circumstances existed before we commenced the experiment; this is B C. We then introduce A; say, for instance, by merely bringing an object from another part of the room, before there has been time for any change in the other elements. It is, in short (as M. Comté observes), the very nature of an experiment, to introduce into the pre-existing state of circumstances a change perfectly definite. We choose a previous state of things with which we are well acquainted, so that no unforeseen alteration in that state is likely to pass unobserved; and into this we introduce, as rapidly as possible, the phenomenon which we wish to study; so that in general we are entitled to feel complete assurance that the pre-existing state, and the state which we have produced, differ in nothing except the presence or absence of that phenomenon. If a bird is taken from acage, and instantly plunged into carbonic acid gas, the experimentalist may be fully assured (at all events after one or two repetitions) that no circumstance capable of causing suffocation had supervened in the interim, except the change from immersion in the atmosphere to immersion in carbonic acid gas. There is one doubt, indeed, which may remain in some cases of this description; the effect may have been produced not by the change, but by the means employed to produce the change. The possibility, however, of this last supposition generally admits of being conclusively tested by other experiments. It thus appears that in the study of the various kinds of phenomena which we can, by our voluntary agency, modify or control, we can in general satisfy the requisitions of the Method of Difference; but that by the spontaneous operations of nature those requisitions are seldom fulfilled. Trenton said,Bring him down to the deck aft of the swimming pool. Tie a rope on the end of the leash so that you have a good long leash and do exactly as I tell you. Well, we are, Shirley says, and picks up an egg roll. Besides the competition between analogy and diversity, there may be a competition of conflicting analogies. The new case may be similar in some of its circumstances to cases in which the factm exists, but in others to cases in which it is known not to exist. Amber has some properties in common with vegetable, others with mineral products. A painting of unknown origin may resemble, in certain of its characters, known works of a particular master, but in others it may as strikingly resemble those of some other painter. A vase may bear some analogy to works of Grecian, and some to those of Etruscan, or Egyptian art. We are of course supposing that it does not possess any quality which has been ascertained, by a sufficient induction, to be a conclusive mark either of the one or of the other. She used to do translations for the UN. Youve known him for a long time? I do like him, she said, smiling, but the reason I liked him was because he drewyou out. He started you talking, Rob. I love to listen to you. Merton knew the country and the people and he was very observing, but... well,you knew more of the underlying philosophy of people and of life. But if it hadnt been for Merton to sort of start you going, you’d have just sat there and soaked up the scenery. She was ten. And shes my daughter. § 4. It is a fundamental principle in logic, that the power of framing classes is unlimited, as long as there is any (even the smallest) difference to found a distinction upon. Take any attribute whatever, and if some things have it, and others have not, we may ground on the attribute a division of all things into two classes; and we actually do so, the moment we create a name which connotes the attribute. The number of possible classes, therefore, is boundless; and there are as many actual classes (either of real or of imaginary things) as there are general names, positive and negative together. That is a rare instance. Pearl isnt even aware of it at first, she’s busy with her sausage and eggs. They were up till two in the morning, and this is now close to noon, and they’re sitting opposite each other in one of the booths, neither of them wearing makeup, Annie in a halter top and jeans, Pearl wearing overalls over awhite T-shirt. This is 1986, and this is the enlightened South, and a black girl eating yellow scrambled eggs can sit at a table with a white girl licking purple jam off whole wheat toast. I thought the same but didnt admit it. sexy girls swimsuits.