"The enemy of Fo will come to defy him at the end of the world;
certainly this enemy will be a rhinoceros, for the rhinoceros fights the
elephant." It is thus that in mature age the fakir's learned pupil
reasons, and he becomes one of the lights of India; the more subtle his
mind, the more false is it, and he forms later minds as false as his.

One shows all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it easily
enough; but strange to relate, their minds are not straightened for
that; they perceive the truths of geometry; but they do not learn to
weigh probabilities; they have got into a habit; they will reason
crookedly all their lives, and I am sorry for them.

There are unfortunately many ways of having a false mind:

1. By not examining if the principle is true, even when one deduces
accurate consequences therefrom; and this way is common.

2. By drawing false consequences from a principle recognized as true.
For example, a servant is asked if his master is in his room, by persons
he suspects of wanting his life: if he were foolish enough to tell them
the truth on the pretext that one must not lie, it is clear he would be
drawing an absurd consequence from a very true principle.

A judge who would condemn a man who has killed his assassin, because
homicide is forbidden, would be as iniquitous as he was poor reasoner.

Similar cases are subdivided in a thousand different gradations. The
good mind, the just mind, is that which distinguishes them; whence comes
that one has seen so many iniquitous judgments, not because the judges'