LoveisaFallacy课文

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1 Charles Lamb, as merry and enterprising a fellow as you will meet in a month of Sundays,

unfettered the informal essay with his memorable Old China and Dream's Children. There follows an

informal essay that ventures even beyond Lamb's frontier, indeed,

word to describe this essay;

2 Vague though its category, it is without doubt an essay. It develops an argument; it cites

instances; it reaches a conclusion. Could Carlyle do more Could Ruskin

3 Read, then, the following essay which undertakes to demonstrate that logic, far from being a dry,

pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion, and trauma --Author's Note

4 Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute--I was all of these. My

brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And--think

of it! --I was only eighteen.

5 It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Butch, my

roommate at the University of Minnesota. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough

young fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all,

a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes

along, to surrender yourself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it--this, to me, is the acme of

mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.

6 One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that

I immediately diagnosed appendicitis.

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10 I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental.

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back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can't get a

raccoon coat.

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15 He leaped from the bed and paced the room,

passionately.

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They weight too much. They're unsightly. They--

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be in the swim

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20 My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear.

him narrowly.

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22 I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to set my hands on a raccoon

coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also

happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn't have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it.

I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.

23 I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not

emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions but I was not one to let my heart

rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason.

24 I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of

the importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer's career. The successful lawyers I had

observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one

omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.

25 Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions but I felt sure that time would supply

the lack She already had the makings.

26 Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease

of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding, At table her manners were exquisite. I had

seen her at the Kozy Kampus Korner eating the specialty of the house--a sandwich that contained scraps of

pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut--without even getting her fingers moist.

27 Intelligent she was not. in fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under

my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful

dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.

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steady or anything like that

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34 I nodded with satisfaction.

open. Is that right

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from your old man, could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat

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revealed the huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.

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face.

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48 He flung the coat from him.

49 I shrugged.

50 I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the corner of my eye I kept

watching Petey. He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif at a bakery

window. Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even more

longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much resolution this time. Back and forth his head

swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning . Finally he didn't turn away at all; he just stood and stared with

mad lust at the coat.

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that.

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57 He complied. The coat bunched high over his ears and dropped all the way down to his shoe

tops. He looked like a mound of dead raccoons.

58 I rose from my chair.

59 He swallowed.

60 I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This was in the nature of a survey; I

wanted to find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I required. I took her

first to dinner.

（

=delicious

）

dinner,

her to a movie.

her home.

61 I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my task.

This girl's lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to supply her with information

First she had to be taught to think. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I was

tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking about her abundant physical charms and about

the way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an effort.

62 I went about it, as in all things, systematically. I gave her a course in logic. It happened that I,

as a law student, was taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my finger tips.

her when I picked her up on our next date,

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another so agreeable.

64 We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak, and she

looked at me expectantly.

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66 She thought this over for a minute and decided she liked it.

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we must first learn to recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up tonight.

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69 I winced, but went bravely on.

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71,

Exercise is good. Therefore everybody should exercise.

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everything.

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generalization. For instance, if you have heart disease, exercise is bad, not good. Many people are ordered by

their doctors not to exercise. You must qualify the generalization. You must say exercise is usually good, or

exercise is good for most people. Otherwise you have committed a Dicto Simpliciter. Do you see

she confessed.

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continued:

I can't speak French. Petey Burch can't speak French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the

University of Minnesota can speak French.

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77 I hid my exasperation.

too few instances to support such a conclusion.

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79 I fought off a wave of despair. I was getting nowhere with this girl absolutely nowhere. Still, I

am nothing if not persistent. I continued.

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out with us, it rains.

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never falls. Every single time we take her on a picnic--

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connection with the rain. You are guilty of Post Hoc if you blame Eula Becker.

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84 I sighed deeply.

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88 I frowned, but plunged ahead.

anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won't be able to lift it

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93 She scratched her pretty, empty head.

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can be no argument. If there is an irresistible force, there can be no immovable object. If there is an

immovable object, there can be no irresistible force. Get it

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96 I consulted my watch.

over all the things you've learned. We'll have another session tomorrow night.

97 I deposited her at the girls' dormitory, where she assured me that she had had a perfectly terrif

evening, and I went glumly to my room. Petey lay snoring in his bed, the raccoon coat huddled like a great

hairy beast at his feet. For a moment I considered waking him and telling him that he could have his girl

back. It seemed clear that my project was doomed to failure. The girl simply had a logic-proof head.