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These three great luminaries of the literary world were of course attended by a host of satellites of various magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum.

It has even been held by some writers, that all ratiocination rests in the last resort on a reductio ad absurdum; since the way to enforce assent to it, in case of obscurity, would be to show that if the conclusion be denied we must deny some one at least of the premises, which, as they are all supposed true, would be a contradiction.

New conclusions may be got as well from fictitious as from real inductions; and this is even consciously done, viz. in the reductio ad absurdum, in order to show the falsity of an assumption. It has even been argued that all ratiocination rests, in the last resort, on this process.

"I may state the system, then, in general terms, as one in which the patients were menages-humored. We contradicted no fancies which entered the brains of the mad. On the contrary, we not only indulged but encouraged them; and many of our most permanent cures have been thus effected. There is no argument which so touches the feeble reason of the madman as the argumentum ad absurdum.

The name was nailed over His head on the cross as a scornful reductio ad absurdum of His claims to be King of Israel This explanation of the evangelist's meaning does not exclude a reference in his mind to the prophecy in Isaiah xi. 1, where Messiah is called 'a branch' or more properly, 'a shoot' for which the Hebrew word is netzer.

These are all vital matters, yet I cannot believe that it is the church's chief business thus to turn her energies to the problems of the material world. This would be a stupendous program, even if complete in itself; as an item in a program it becomes almost a reductio ad absurdum.

The constructive ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. Nothing could be more happily imagined, as a reductio ad absurdum of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the hereditary legislators of a great country.

If the Cross and a nameless grave had been the end, what a reductio ad absurdum that would have been to the claims of Jesus to have ever been with the Father and to be doing always the things that pleased Him.

It was on this occasion that Septimus made his one contribution to pessimistic philosophy. "When you analyze anything in life," said he, "don't you think that you always come down to a reductio ad absurdum?" "I'm very sorry to leave you, Mr. Sypher," said Shuttleworth, "but my first duty is to my wife and family."

It has even been held by some writers, that all ratiocination rests in the last resort on a reductio ad absurdum; since the way to enforce assent to it, in case of obscurity, would be to show that if the conclusion be denied we must deny some one at least of the premisses, which, as they are all supposed true, would be a contradiction.