Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/130

126 It appeared that she had first set down the original price as given in the book, and then looked at the answer in the end of the book, and, finding that the shillings there corresponded with what stood before her on her paper, she copied them straight into the "Answer" place, thinking that it would be useless (and, I am sure, feeling vaguely that it would be irreverent) to meddle with what the book pronounced to be right. She had therefore set to work to manipulate the pounds with a view to get them into accordance with the official standard! Of course she failed. Of course,—from our point of view; but from hers, it seemed that adhering to the book as long as you could must be the right thing to do! I was then able to explain to her a little about the right use of authoritative standards; to show her that, if used as a check on results, they may often be of use by revealing errors in our reasoning which might otherwise have passed unperceived; but that, if taken advantage of to spare ourselves the effort of working out our own problems at our own cost, they are generally found misleading. My pupil profited, I hope, by the lesson, in more ways than one. But what chance should I have had of teaching her either arithmetic, or the right use of standards, or anything else, if any other teacher had confused her mind, before I had half finished my explanation, by reproving me for teaching her to rebel against the authority of the text-book, and to work sums as she liked, without reference to the only infallible standard; and by warning her that I was only pandering to license and carelessness?

"Truth for ever on the scaffold; wrong for ever on the throne." The scaffold on which Truth is murdered, the