mind, to be kept in health, must be kept in exercise. The proper
exercise of the mind is elaborate reasoning. Analytical reasoning is a
base and mechanical process, which takes to pieces and examines, bit
by bit, the rude material of knowledge, and extracts therefrom a few
hard and obstinate things called facts, every thing in the shape of
which I cordially hate. But synthetical reasoning, setting up as its
goal some unattainable abstraction, like an imaginary quantity in
algebra, and commencing its course with taking for granted some two
assertions which cannot be proved, from the union of these two assumed
truths produces a third assumption, and so on in infinite series, to
the unspeakable benefit of the human intellect. The beauty of this
process is, that at every step it strikes out into two branches, in
a compound ratio of ramification; so that you are perfectly sure of
losing your way, and keeping your mind in perfect health, by the
perpetual exercise of an interminable quest; and for these reasons I
have christened my eldest son Emanuel Kant Flosky.


THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

Nothing can be more luminous.


THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

And what has all that to do with Dante, and the blue devils?


MR HILARY