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Unit 4 Love is a Fallacy
爱情就是谬误
Max
Shulman
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,
the right word to
describe this essay;
appropriate.
查尔斯．
兰姆是一个百年难遇的性情欢快、富有进取心的人。他那令人难忘的作品《古瓷器》和《梦
中的孩子》打破了随笔的羁绊。下面这篇文章比兰姆的作品更加随意。实际上，用“随意”这个的字眼来
形容这篇文章或许并不十分恰当；用“柔软的”
、
“松软的”
或“富有弹性的”或许更恰当。
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?
尽管很难说清这篇文章是属于哪一类，但可以
肯定它是一篇散文。它提出了论点，列举了例子，并得
出了结论。卡莱尔能写出比这得更
好的作品吗
?
拉斯金呢
?
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.
那么，就
读一读下面的文章吧。这篇文章意在论证逻辑学远非一门枯燥乏味而又迂腐的学科，而是
一种活泼、清新的事物，充满了美感、激情和创伤。
--Author's Note
（
作者注
）
1
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.
2
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.
3
One afternoon I
found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of
such distress on his
face that I
immediately diagnosed appendicitis.
a
doctor.
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coat?
I perceived that
his trouble was not physical, but mental.
8
come
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.
9
you
mean.
I
said
incredulously,
people
are
actually
wearing
raccoon
coats
again?
10
11
12
He leaped from
the bed and paced the room,
passionately.
13
bad. They weight too much.
They're unsightly. They--
14
be
in the swim?
15
16
17
My brain, that precision instrument,
slipped into high gear.
at him
narrowly.
18
19
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.
20
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.
21
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.
22
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.
23
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.
24
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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26
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steady or anything like
that?
28
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30
31
I nodded with satisfaction.
be open. Is that right?
32
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35
36
money from your old man,
could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a
raccoon coat?
37
38
revealed the huge, hairy,
gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz
Bearcat in 1925.
39
his
face.
40
41
42
43
44
45
He flung the
coat from him.
46
I shrugged.
47
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.
48
like that.
49
50
51
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53
54
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.
55
I rose from my
chair.
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8
56
He
swallowed.
57
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,
restaurant. Then I
took her to a movie.
left the theater.
And then I took her home.
she bade me
good night.
58
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.
59
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.
I
said
to
her
when
I
picked
her
up
on
our
next
date,
we
are
going
over
to
the
Knolland
talk.
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find another so
agreeable.
61
We went to the Knoll, the campus
trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak,
and
she looked at me expectantly.
62
63
She
thought
this
over
for
a
(=magnificent),
64
I
said,
clearing
my
throat,
the
science
of
thinking.
Before
we
can
think
correctly, we must first learn to
recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we
will take up
tonight.
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66
I
winced,
but
went
bravely
on.
let
us
examine
the
fallacy
called
①
Dicto
Simpliciter
.
67
68
Dicto Simpliciter
means an
argument based on an unqualified generalization.
For
example: Exercise is good.
Therefore everybody should exercise.
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and
everything.
70
I
said
gently,
argument
is
a
fallacy.
Exercise
is
good
is
an
unqualified
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?
71
72
continued:
Hasty
Generalization
. Listen carefully: You
can't
minute
and
decided
she
likedit.
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