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Starting from a hypothesis, namely the contradictory of what we desire to prove, we use the same process of analysis, carrying it back until we arrive at something admittedly false or absurd. Aristotle describes this method in various ways as reductio ad absurdum, proof per impossibile, or proof leading to the impossible. But here again, though the term was new, the method was not.
There is a class of minds much more ready to believe that which is at first sight incredible, and because it is incredible, than what is generally thought reasonable. Credo quia impossibile est, "I believe, because it is impossible," is an old paradoxical expression which might be literally applied to this tribe of persons.
While the Greek was speaking, Mr Dobbin came up behind him, and made signs that he was the very man who had plundered their brig. "Why, sir, the master of an English merchantman complains that you ill-treated his people and robbed his vessel." "O Signori, impossibile; that I should be guilty of such an act!" and the Greek smiled sweetly and put his hand on his heart.
How Butler would have answered Hume, Butler to whom probability was the guide of life, we cannot tell. Newman's answer was not satisfactory to Froude. If Hume were right, how could he also be wrong? Newman might say, with Tertullian, Credo quia impossibile.
In vain does the man in the street declare that he, too, could have been a king if he had been born in the purple; for that potentiality does not belong to him as he is, but only as he might have been, if per impossibile he had not been himself.
A child from one of the villages said to me, in broken English, that it was the place where God said his prayers. I for one could not ask for a finer or more defiant statement of all that separates the Christian from the Moslem or the Jew; credo quia impossibile.
If then, per impossibile, it could be demonstrated that there was a period in the history of mankind, when charms and magic existed, and religion was utterly unknown; if it be argued that the spirit of religion, when at length it breathed upon mankind, transformed spells into prayers still all that would then be maintained is that spoken formulæ which were spells were followed by other formulæ which are the very opposite of spells.
The utmost they do is to avert their minds reverentially. Credo quia impossibile. That is offensive to a Western mind. I can quite understand the disposition to cry out at such things, 'This is not the Church of God! to run out from it "You have some dream, I suspect, of a dramatic dissidence. "Now, my dear Brother and erstwhile pupil, I ask you not to do this thing. Wait, I implore you.
The Treaty fixes the payments in terms of gold marks, which are converted in the above rate of 20 to $5. If, per impossibile, Germany discharged $2,500,000,000 in cash or kind by 1921, her annual payments would be at the rate of $312,500,000 from 1921 to 1925 and of $750,000,000 thereafter.
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