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THE COLLEGES OF UNREASON.
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ment of the unreasoning faculties were much more cogent. But here they depart from the principles on which they justify their study of hypothetics; for they base the importance which they assign to hypothetics upon the fact of their being a preparation for the extraordinary, while their study of Unreason rests upon its developing those faculties which are required for the daily conduct of affairs. Hence their professorships of Inconsistency and Evasion, in both of which studies the youths are most carefully examined before being allowed to proceed to their degree in hypothetics. The more "earnest" and "conscientious" students attain to a proficiency in these subjects which is quite surprising: there is hardly any inconsistency so glaring but they soon learn to defend it, or injunction so clear that they cannot find some pretext for disregarding it. I saw the lecture-rooms of both these professors. Over the door of the one was written, "Consistency is a vice which degrades human nature and levels man with the brute;" over the other, "It is the glory of the parliament to make a law—it is the glory of the minister to evade it."

Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason only. Reason betrays men into the drawing of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language—language being like the sun, which reareth and then scorcheth. Extremes are alone logical, but they are almost invariably absurd; the mean is illogical or unreasonable, but it is better than the purely reasonable; in fact there are no follies and no unreasonablenesses so great as those which can apparently be