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'Who d'you think's to mek gravy anuff, if you're to baste people's gownds wi' it? 'Well, suggested John, humbly, 'you should wet the bottom of the duree a bit, to hold it from slippin'. 'Wet your granny! returned the cook; a retort which she probably regarded in the light of a reductio ad absurdum, and which in fact reduced John to silence.
This reductio ad absurdum was too much for Dodd's gravity; he burst into a laugh, and digging his heels into his horse's ribs, dashed with a great splatter into the fourth arm or bend of the river, and rode up on the other side into the village of Genal.
There are no facts to sustain it, and even if he were not able to see how man's mind could be developed by natural selection, it is a sort of reductio ad absurdum to call in the angels to bridge the chasm.
There is no method except the highest poetic treatment which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the reductio ad absurdum of humor; for all human institutions have their ridiculous sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but from viewing which we suddenly become aware of relative values before misunderstood.
When I was crossing the Po, we were all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's telling another that his argument was absurd; one maintaining it to be a perfectly admissible logical term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad absurdum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational bully.
Their letters and prefaces sounded like a satire upon his own attitude, a reductio ad absurdum of his claims to "genius". Here, for instance, was a man who wrote to introduce himself as America's first epic poet stating incidentally that he was an inspector of gas-meters, and had a wife and six children.
It is to be feared that it was a conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the Renaissance in Coalchester by this reductio ad absurdum.
It is not clear why, if Germany has wealth exceeding $1,250,000,000,000. Sir Sidney Low is content with the trifling sum of $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 annually. But his letter is an admirable reductio ad absurdum of a certain line of thought.
"All that I altogether deny," said Wilson, "but, even if it were true, it would not affect the sociological laws." "I don't say it would. I only say that the sociological laws are as unimportant, if possible, as the law of gravitation." "Which," replied Wilson, "may be regarded as a reductio ad absurdum of your view." "Anyhow," I interposed, "we are digressing from our point.
Why not leave children wholly to the discipline of nature? why not remain quite passive and let them get knowledge as they best can? why not be consistent throughout?" This is an awkward-looking question. Plausibly implying as it does, that a system of complete laissez-faire is the logical outcome of the doctrines set forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them by reductio ad absurdum.
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