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"If the Church would set herself to amuse her young folks, instead of discussing doctrines and metaphysical hair-splitting, she would prove herself a true mother, and not a hard-visaged stepdame. Let her keep this department, so powerful and so difficult to manage, in what are morally the strongest hands, instead of giving it up to the weakest.
It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.
Pedagog, coldly. "Take it to him." "Empty, ma'am?" asked the maid. "Certainly, Mary," said the Idiot, perceiving Mrs. Pedagog's point. "I asked for another cup, not for more coffee." Mrs. Pedagog smiled quietly at her own joke. At hair-splitting she could give the Idiot points. "I am surprised that Mary should have thought I wanted more coffee," continued the Idiot, in an aggrieved tone.
No one dare confess that he satanizes. The Church, not duped by these hair-splitting distinctions, condemns black and white magic indifferently." "Well," said Durtal, lighting a cigarette, after a silence, "this is a better topic of conversation than politics or the races, but where does it get us? Half of these doctrines are absurd, the other half so mysterious as to produce only bewilderment.
He wanted Christianity to regain its early spiritual force, and largely for that purpose he published in 1516 the Greek text of the New Testament with a new Latin translation and with notes which mercilessly flayed hair-splitting theologians.
The fact is, that the metaphysical, defining, hair-splitting mind of New England, turning its whole powers on this one bit of ritual, this one only day of divine service, which was left of all the feasts and fasts of the old churches, made of it a thing straiter and stricter than ever the old Jews dreamed of.
Even this revolting use of casuistry, however, did less to injure its name and pretensions than a persuasion, pretty generally diffused, that the main purpose and drift of this science was a sort of hair-splitting process, by which doubts might be applied to the plainest duties of life, or questions raised on the extent of their obligations, for the single benefit of those who sought to evade them.
His whiskers would have bristled with rage and he would have stormed at you for hair-splitting and "lingo," if you had answered that William was German Emperor, while Napoleon was not French Emperor, but only Emperor of the French. What could such mere order of the words matter?
It is not the minister of the Duncairn Church who preaches, but a returned missionary, who tells us by what logical hair-splitting in the regions of Irish metaphysics he confounds Hindoo enquirers after truth, and argues them into the Christian religion. Pity the poor Hindoos upon whom this man inflicts himself.
Or, again, has it ever entered his head that, if I accept him, I lay myself open to the shadow of a reproach or am in any sense rewarding or thanking him? I am harrowed by the hair-splitting casuistry of the heroines in Cyrus and Astraea, by all the subtle arguments of the court of love.
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