“We May Assume”
In the Assuming trade three separate and independent
cults are transacting business. Two of these
cults are known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians,
and I am the other one—the Brontosaurian.
The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s
Works; the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote
them; the Brontosaurian doesn’t really know
which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly
sure that Shakespeare didn’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 tom-cat.
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;
