Page:The Anatomy of Tobacco.pdf/52

 predecessors, and are therefore untouched by these curious subtleties.

But with regard to those who would affirm that all receptacles of tobacco are contingently necessary, I confess their sophistries are somewhat less facile to grapple with.

Now I will not deny their main thesis, that if I smoke tobacco I must have tobacco; that that tobacco must be contained by something; that the various subdivisions of "pouch," "jar," &c., are merely different sorts of things for containing tobacco; and therefore that they are necessary. So in some wise they are in the right. But if we consider that the category is applied strictly to the act of smoking without reference à parte ante or à parte post, but only to the very act itself, we shall perceive the Schoolmen to have been in the right in maintaining that category to be valid. For taking their heterodox position we might as fairly maintain that ash-trays are necessary, seeing that before a pipe can be filled with tobacco the ashes that be in it must