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if this argument is any good at all, it goes to show that we might as well guess at the truth of every question without going to the trouble of reasoning at all.
Reasoning is computation, sayd Hobbes; and it is quite true that a plunder is possible in adding up a column, and if it be tested by adding it a second time still the same blundermay occur again and so on ad infinitum.
This reasoning is just as good and just the same as the defendents'; but do you not think it is better in conducting a bank to have accountants to add up the columns rather than to guess at the sums total?
However, this way of refuting the argument, serviceable enough when one is in hurry, is not scientific.
My duty is to show exactly where the error lurks.
The reasoning involves more faults than one, and I shall not select the easiest way of refuting it, but the most instructive way.
I will just remark, by the way, that since a blunder maybe made at any point in addition, it is conceivable that everybody who as added two to two had everytime committed