Page:Philosophy and Fun of Algebra.djvu/14

PHILOSOPHY AND FUN OF ALGEBRA if the material had been tea at 3s. a pound. Moreover, you would have done just the same kind of action if you had been asked the price of seven pounds of tea at 2s. a pound. You do what you do under direction of the Logos or hidden wisdom. And this law of the Logos is made not by any King or Parliament, but by whoever or whatever created the human mind. Suppose that any Parliament passed an act that all the children in the kingdom were to divide the price by the number of pounds; the Parliament could not make the answer come right. The only result of a foolish Act of Parliament like that would be that everybody's sums would come wrong, and everybody's accounts be in confusion, and everybody would wonder why the trade of the country was going to the bad.

In former times there were kings and emperors quite stupid enough to pass Acts like that, but governments have grown wiser by experience and found out that, as far as arithmetic goes, there is no use in ordering people to go contrary to the laws of the Logos, because the Logos has 10