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The consequence was that when such a logician was challenged to state the precise line of reasoning in any given demonstration of Euclid, for example, and he produced his statement, a sharp critic would ask, Well, how are you justified in passing from this statement to this? and he would reply, 'Oh, that is a mere change in the form of expression?
But it would invariably be found that the entire gist of the demonstration lay in these changes in the form of the expression.
After this sort of thing had happened many times, the attempt to divest thought of expression and to get at the naked thought itself which some logicians have made is like trying to remove the peel from an onion and get at the naked onion itself.
Reasoning is nothing but the discourse of the mind to its future self.
What is required is simply to adopt a system of expressing ourselves which admits of no