[Footnote 40: The remarks of Ritter (Gesch. der Philos. ii. p. 189. 2nd ed.) upon these Megaric philosophers are more just and discerning than those made by most of the historians of philosophy "Doch darf man wohl annehmen, dass sie solche Trugschlüsse nicht zur Täuschung,** sondern zur Belehrung für unvorsichtige, oder zur Warnung vor der Seichtigkeit gewöhnlicher Vorstellungsweisen, gebrauchen wollten. So viel ist gewiss, dass die Megariker sich viel mit den Formen des Denken beschäftigten, vielleicht mehr zu Aufsuchung einzelner Regeln, als zur Begründung eines wissenschaftlichen Zusammenhangs unter ihnen; obwohl auch besondere Theile der Logik unter ihren Schriften erwähnt werden." This is much more reasonable than the language of Prantl, who denounces "the shamelessness of doctrinarism" (die Unverschämtheit des Doctrinarismus) belonging to these Megarici "the petulance and vanity which prompted them to seek celebrity by intentional offences against sound common sense," &c. (Gesch. der Logik, pp. 39-40.--Sir Wm. Hamilton has some good remarks on these sophisms, in his Lectures on Logic, Lect. xxiii. p. 452 seq.)] [Footnote 41: See the first chapter of his book v. on Fallacies, System of Logic, vol. ii.] [Footnote 42: Aristotel. Metaphys. B. 1, p. 995, a. 33. [Greek: dio\ dei= ta\s duscherei/as tetheôrêke/nai pa/sas pro/teron, tou/tôn de\ cha/rin kai\ dia\ to\ tou\s zêtou=ntas a)/neu tou= diaporê=sai prô=ton o(moi/ous ei)=nai toi=s poi= dei= badi/zein a)gnoou=si, kai\ pro\s tou/tois ou)d' ei) pote to\ zêtou/menon eu(/rêken ê)\ mê\ gignô/skein; to\ ga\r te/los tou/tô| me\n ou) dê=lon, tô=| de\ proêporêko/ti dê=lon]. Aristotle devotes the whole of this Book to an enumeration of [Greek: a)po/riai].] [Side-note: If the process of theorising be admissible, it must include negative as well as affirmative.] You may dislike philosophy: you may undervalue, or altogether proscribe, the process of theorising. This is the standing-point usual with the bulk of mankind, ancient as well as modern: who generally dislike all accurate reasoning, or analysis and discrimination of familiar abstract words, as mean and tiresome hair-splitting.[43] But if you admit the business of theorising to be legitimate, useful, and even honourable, you must reckon on free working of independent, individual, minds as the operative force--and on the necessity of dissentient, conflicting, manifestations of this common force, as essential conditions to any successful result. Upon no other conditions can you obtain any tolerable body of reasoned truth--or even reasoned _quasi-truth_.