Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (247 page)

DR.
LIDDELL.

From a photograph

by Hill & Saunders.
.

In October it became generally known that Dean Liddell was going to resign at Christmas.
This was a great blow to Mr.
Dodgson, but little mitigated by the fact that the very man whom he himself would have chosen, Dr.
Paget, was appointed to fill the vacant place.
The old Dean was very popular in College; even the undergraduates, with whom he was seldom brought into contact, felt the magic of his commanding personality and the charm of his gracious, old-world manner.
He was a man whom, once seen, it was almost impossible to forget.

Shortly before the resignation of Dr.
Liddell, the Duchess of Albany spent a few days at the Deanery.
Mr.
Dodgson was asked to meet her Royal Highness at luncheon, but was unable to go.
Princess Alice and the little Duke of Albany, however, paid him a visit, and were initiated in the art of making paper pistols.
He promised to send the Princess a copy of a book called "The Fairies," and the children, having spent a happy half-hour in his rooms, returned to the Deanery.
This was one of the days which he "marked with a white stone."
He sent a copy of "The Nursery 'Alice'" to the little Princess Alice, and received a note of thanks from her, and also a letter from her mother, in which she said that the book had taught the Princess to like reading, and to do it out of lesson-time.
To the Duke he gave a copy of a book entitled "The Merry Elves."
In his little note of thanks for this gift, the boy said, "Alice and I want you to love us both."
Mr.
Dodgson sent Princess Alice a puzzle, promising that if she found it out, he would give her a "golden chair from Wonderland."

THE DEAN OF CHRIST CHURCH.

From a photograph

by Hill & Saunders.
.

At the close of the year he wrote me a long letter, which I think worthy of reproducing here, for he spent a long time over it, and it contains excellent examples of his clear way of putting things.

To S.D.
Collingwood.

Ch.
Ch., Oxford,
Dec
.
29, 1891.

My Dear Stuart,—(Rather a large note—sheet, isn't it?
But they do differ in size, you know.) I fancy this book of science (which I have had a good while, without making any use of it), may prove of some use to you, with your boys.
[I was a schoolmaster at that time.] Also this cycling-book (or whatever it is to be called) may be useful in putting down engagements, &c., besides telling you a lot about cycles.
There was no use in sending it to
me; my
cycling days are over.

You ask me if your last piece of "Meritt" printing is dark enough.
I think not.
I should say the rollers want fresh inking.
As to the
matter
of your specimen—[it was a poor little essay on killing animals for the purpose of scientific recreations,
e.g
., collecting butterflies]—I think you
cannot
spend your time better than in trying to set down clearly, in that essay-form, your ideas on any subject that chances to interest you; and
specially
any theological subject that strikes you in the course of your reading for Holy Orders.

It will be most
excellent
practice for you, against the time when you try to compose sermons, to try thus to realise exactly what it is you mean, and to express it clearly, and (a much harder matter) to get into proper shape the
reasons
of your opinions, and to see whether they do, or do not, tend to prove the conclusions you come to.
You have never studied technical Logic, at all, I fancy.
[I
had
, but I freely admit that the essay in question proved that I had not then learnt to apply my principles to practice.] It would have been a great help: but still it is not indispensable: after all, it is only the putting into rules of the way in which
every
mind proceeds, when it draws valid conclusions; and, by practice in careful thinking, you may get to know "fallacies" when you meet with them, without knowing the formal
rules
.

At present, when you try to give
reasons
, you are in considerable danger of propounding fallacies.
Instances occur in this little essay of yours; and I hope it won't offend your
amour propre
very much, if an old uncle, who has studied Logic for forty years, makes a few remarks on it.

I am not going to enter
at all
on the subject-matter itself, or to say whether I agree, or not, with your
conclusions
: but merely to examine, from a logic-lecturer's point of view, your
premisses
as relating to them.

(1) "As the lower animals do not appear to have personality or individual existence, I cannot see that any particular one's life can be very important," &c.
The word "personality" is very vague: I don't know what you mean by it.
If you were to ask yourself, "What test should I use in distinguishing what
has
, from what has
not
, personality?"
you might perhaps be able to express your meaning more clearly.
The phrase "individual existence" is clear enough, and is in direct logical contradiction to the phrase "particular one."
To say, of anything, that it has
not
"individual existence," and yet that it
is
a "particular one," involves the logical fallacy called a "contradiction in terms."

(2) "In both cases" (animal and plant) "death is only the conversion of matter from one form to another."
The word "form" is very vague—I fancy you use it in a sort of
chemical
sense (like saying "sugar is starch in another form," where the change in nature is generally believed to be a rearrangement of the very same atoms).
If you mean to assert that the difference between a live animal and a dead animal,
i.e.,
between animate and sensitive matter, and the same matter when it becomes inanimate and insensitive, is a mere rearrangement of the same atoms, your premiss is intelligible.
(It is a bolder one than any biologists have yet advanced.
The most sceptical of them admits, I believe, that "vitality" is a thing
per se.
However, that is beside my present scope.) But this premiss is advanced to prove that it is of no "consequence" to kill an animal.
But, granting that the conversion of sensitive into insensitive matter (and of course
vice versa
) is a mere change of "form," and
therefore
of no "consequence"; granting this, we cannot escape the including under this rule all similar cases.
If the
power
of feeling pain, and the
absence
of that power, are only a difference of "form," the conclusion is inevitable that the
feeling
pain, and the
not
feeling it, are
also
only a difference in form,
i.e.,
to convert matter, which is
not
feeling pain, into matter
feeling
pain, is only to change its "form," and, if the process of "changing form" is of no "consequence" in the case of sensitive and insensitive matter, we must admit that it is
also
of no "consequence" in the case of pain-feeling and
not
pain-feeling matter.
This conclusion, I imagine, you neither intended nor foresaw.
The premiss, which you use, involves the fallacy called "proving too much."

The best advice that could be given to you, when you begin to compose sermons, would be what an old friend once gave to a young man who was going out to be an Indian judge (in India, it seems, the judge decides things, without a jury, like our County Court judges).
"Give
your decisions
boldly and clearly; they will probably be
right
.
But do
not
give your
reasons: they
will probably be
wrong"
If your lot in life is to be in a
country
parish, it will perhaps not matter
much
whether the reasons given in your sermons do or do not prove your conclusions.
But even there you
might
meet, and in a town congregation you would be
sure
to meet, clever sceptics, who know well how to argue, who will detect your fallacies and point them out to those who are
not
yet troubled with doubts, and thus undermine
all
their confidence in your teaching.

At Eastbourne, last summer, I heard a preacher advance the astounding argument, "We believe that the Bible is true, because our holy Mother, the Church, tells us it is."
I pity that unfortunate clergyman if ever he is bold enough to enter any Young Men's Debating Club where there is some clear-headed sceptic who has heard, or heard of, that sermon.
I can fancy how the young man would rub his hands, in delight, and would say to himself, "Just see me get him into a corner, and convict him of arguing in a circle!"