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This unintelligible sophism not convincing Williams, he was, for this, and for his other heresies, banished by the magistrates, as a disturber of the peace of the church, and of the commonwealth. From the painting by W.L. Williams
I have set out elsewhere the true rejoinder to the Buridan sophism: it is that the case of perfect equipoise is impossible, since the universe can never be halved, so as to make all impressions equivalent on both sides. Let us see what M. Bayle himself says elsewhere against the chimerical or absolutely undefined indifference.
But here is presented to us an ingenious machine, which cuts down the oak, squares it, makes it into staves, and, gathering these together, forms them into casks. The obstacle is thus diminished, and with it the fortunes of the coopers. We must prevent this. Let us proscribe the machine! To sift thoroughly this sophism, it is sufficient to remember that human labor is not an end but a means.
The old antinomies of the infinite were, I imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their dogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, as many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the tortoise.
'With possible intervals of torture? Don't you think that, if they could choose, they would rather not live at all? 'Oh, a canny old fox doesn't mind the run so much, you know enjoys it after a fashion, no doubt. 'Don't salve your conscience by that sophism, Gerald; the fox is canny because he has been terrified so often, said Helen.
Finally I will make it plain that the hypothetical and the moral necessity which subsist in free actions are open to no objection, and that the 'Lazy Reason' is a pure sophism.
And perhaps the best suggestion for the present would be, that travellers should carry in their hands an apparent telescope or a reputed walking-cane; which peaceful and natural part of his appointments will first operate to draw out his lurking forest friend from his advantage; and on closer colloquy, if this friend should turn restive, then the 'Tuscan artist's tube, contrived of course a double debt to pay, will suddenly reveal another sort of tube, insinuating an argument sufficient for the refutation of any sophism whatever.
The affair was already too far advanced, and spite of all my efforts they would have made a point of bringing it to a conclusion. The sophism which ruined me has had a similar affect on the greater part of mankind, who lament the want of resolution when the opportunity for exercising it is over.
The principle may be applied to pursuits of a frivolous or useless kind, and to such acquirements as lead only to pedantry or sophism; or it may be directed to a desultory application, which leads to a superficial acquaintance with a variety of subjects, without a correct knowledge of any of them.
A malicious being would shower good things at such a price upon the people for whom he had the most hatred. All these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change and mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true.
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