MR. EDITOR:
The following extract of a letter written to a friend in the State of N. Y. may be of some consequence to the numerous readers of the Messenger and advocate: if you think so you are at liberty to insert it in its columns.
DEAR SIR:—Yours of a recent date has been received and read, I trust, with that attention which the nature of the subject requires. Every man has his peculiarities, his peculiar feelings, his peculiar taste, and his mode of reasoning or arriving at conclusions from any premises.—You have yours and I have mine; and without pretending to tell yours, suffice it to say, that I arrive at mine in the following manner. If I am requested to solve a question in arithmetic, I know there are certain rules, by which, if I proceed, I am sure of a correct result, and inasmuch as I love and value the truth, with just so much intensity of thought and fixedness of purpose I shall pursue that course, that will enable me in the conclusion to arrive at the object of my desire,—If I have no confidence in the rule I shall most assuredly take my own way and when I have gone through with my process and find I have failed, ought I to blame the correct rule, or the author of it, or say that either or both are changed? Certainly not; Again, if I, with all the zeal and energy of my soul, should labor with you to prove that six and four make twelve, how do you think I should succeed? Poorly I trust, poorly you would respond truly. Why, I ask, have I not been sincere and unwearied in my efforts to convince you? Certainly I have. Why then are you not bound to believe me? Your answer will no doubt be ready. My dear friend, I am bound to respect your feelings and treat you with becoming reverence, but I cannot concede to your opinion or your judgment with regard to your operation with the figures. The result of your process was incorrect for the reason, that you applied the wrong rules. Although you labored unremittingly, and seem to be positive in your own mind that you are correct, still, you will say, I do know and can fully prove by a correct process, and strict application of known rules, that six and four, make but just ten, that they do not make twelve nor never did. What then is the difficulty with me? I pretend to believe in just principles and correct rules as much as you do, I certainly have as much anxiety and as much zeal? Your answer will again be ready, My friend, you neither believe me nor the rule I take to arrive at my conclusions, if you did, we should draw like inferences from the same premises, and it would be a clearly demonstrable fact in your mind as it is in mine that six and four make just ten.