Page:Philosophy and Fun of Algebra.djvu/21

THE MAKING OF ALGEBRAS when it sees a bright tea-pot, turns its head away and screams, and will not be pacified while the tea-pot is near. It has learned, by empirical experience, that tea-pots are nasty boiling hot things which burn one's fingers.

Now you will observe that both these babies have learnt by experience. Some people say that experience is the mother of Wisdom; but you see that both babies cannot be right; and, as a matter of fact, both are wrong. If they could talk, they might argue and quarrel for years; and vote; and write in the newspapers; and waste their own time and other people's money; each trying to prove he was right. But there is no wisdom to be got in that way. What a wise baby knows is that he cannot tell, by the mere look of a tea-pot, whether it is hot or cold. The fact that is most prominent in his mind when he sees a tea-pot is the fact that he does not know whether it is hot or cold. He puts that fact along with the other fact:—that he would very much like to play with the picture in the tea-pot supposing it would not burn his fingers; and he deals logically 17