- If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic?--I
should say that its most frequent work was to build a pons asinorum
over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a
structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove
anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show
that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was
ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, which
couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other.
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these
are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary
relations with truth, as I understand truth,--not for any secondary
artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in
argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust
the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-
player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily
because he wrangles or plays well.

The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand up, as a pointer
lifts his forefoot, at the expression, "his relations with truth,
as I understand truth," and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and
said I talked like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense
was good enough for him.

Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied; common sense, AS YOU
UNDERSTAND IT. We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our
own minds, either of things or persons. A man who is willing to
take another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice
of whom to follow, which is often as nice a matter as to judge of
things for one's self. On the whole, I had rather judge men's
minds by comparing their thoughts with my own, than judge of