Love is a Fallacy.docx

1、Love is a FallacyLove is a Fallacyby Max Shulman Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astuteI was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemists scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. Andthink of it!I am only eighteen.It is not often that one s

2、o young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the ve

3、ry negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender oneself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing itthis, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his fa

4、ce that I immediately diagnosed appendicitis. “Dont move,” I said, “Dont take a laxative. Ill get a doctor.”“Raccoon,” he mumbled thickly.“Raccoon?” I said, pausing in my flight.“I want a raccoon coat,” he wailed.I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. “Why do you want a raccoon c

5、oat?”“I should have known it,” he cried, pounding his temples. “I should have known theyd come back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I cant get a raccoon coat.”“Can you mean,” I said incredulously, “that people are actually wearing raccoon coats

6、again?”“All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. Whereve you been?”“In the library,” I said, naming a place not frequented by Big Men on Campus.He leaped from the bed and paced the room. “Ive got to have a raccoon coat,” he said passionately. “Ive got to!”“Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Racco

7、on coats are unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. They weigh too much. Theyre unsightly. They”“You dont understand,” he interrupted impatiently. “Its the thing to do. Dont you want to be in the swim?”“No,” I said truthfully.“Well, I do,” he declared. “Id give anything for a raccoon coat. Anything!

8、” My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. “Anything?” I asked, looking at him narrowly.“Anything,” he affirmed in ringing tones.I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a raccoon coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it

9、 lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didnt have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not emotional in n

10、ature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions, but I was not one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason.I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of the importance of the right k

11、ind of wife in furthering a lawyers career. The successful lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions, but I felt tha

12、t time would supply the lack. She already had the makings.Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding. At table her manners were exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy Kampus Korner eati

13、ng the specialty of the housea sandwich that contained scraps of pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkrautwithout even getting her fingers moist.Intelligent she was not. In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she would smarten up. At any

14、 rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.“Petey,” I said, “are you in love with Polly Espy?”“I think shes a keen kid,” he replied, “but I dont know if youd call it love. Why?”“Do you,” I asked, “have any kind of

15、 formal arrangement with her? I mean are you going steady or anything like that?”“No. We see each other quite a bit, but we both have other dates. Why?”“Is there,” I asked, “any other man for whom she has a particular fondness?”“Not that I know of. Why?”I nodded with satisfaction. “In other words, i

16、f you were out of the picture, the field would be open. Is that right?”“I guess so. What are you getting at?”“Nothing , nothing,” I said innocently, and took my suitcase out the closet.“Where are you going?” asked Petey.“Home for weekend.” I threw a few things into the bag.“Listen,” he said, clutchi

17、ng my arm eagerly, “while youre home, you couldnt get some money from your old man, could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat?”“I may do better than that,” I said with a mysterious wink and closed my bag and left. “Look,” I said to Petey when I got back Monday morning. I threw open th

18、e suitcase and revealed the huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.“Holy Toledo!” said Petey reverently. He plunged his hands into the raccoon coat and then his face. “Holy Toledo!” he repeated fifteen or twenty times.“Would you like it?” I asked.“Oh yes!” he c

19、ried, clutching the greasy pelt to him. Then a canny look came into his eyes. “What do you want for it?”“Your girl.” I said, mincing no words.“Polly?” he said in a horrified whisper. “You want Polly?”“Thats right.”He flung the coat from him. “Never,” he said stoutly.I shrugged. “Okay. If you dont wa

20、nt to be in the swim, I guess its your business.”I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the corner of my eye I kept watching Petey. He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif at a bakery window. Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely.

21、 Then he looked back at the coat, with even more longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much resolution this time. Back and forth his head swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning. Finally he didnt turn away at all; he just stood and stared with mad lust at the coat.“It isnt as

22、though I was in love with Polly,” he said thickly. “Or going steady or anything like that.”“Thats right,” I murmured.“Whats Polly to me, or me to Polly?”“Not a thing,” said I.“Its just been a casual kickjust a few laughs, thats all.”“Try on the coat,” said I.He complied. The coat bunched high over h

23、is ears and dropped all the way down to his shoe tops. He looked like a mound of dead raccoons. “Fits fine,” he said happily.I rose from my chair. “Is it a deal?” I asked, extending my hand.He swallowed. “Its a deal,” he said and shook my hand.I had my first date with Polly the following evening. Th

24、is was in the nature of a survey; I wanted to find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I required. I took her first to dinner. “Gee, that was a delish dinner,” she said as we left the restaurant. Then I took her to a movie. “Gee, that was a marvy movie,” she said as

25、 we left the theatre. And then I took her home. “Gee, I had a sensaysh time,” she said as she bade me good night.I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my task. This girls lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to supply her wit

26、h information. First she had to be taught to think. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I was tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking about her abundant physical charms and about the way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and fork, and

27、I decided to make an effort.I went about it, as in all things, systematically. I gave her a course in logic. It happened that I, as a law student, was taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my fingertips. “Poll,” I said to her when I picked her up on our next date, “tonight we ar

28、e going over to the Knoll and talk.”“Oo, terrif,” she replied. One thing I will say for this girl: you would go far to find another so agreeable.We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak, and she looked at me expectantly. “What are we going to talk about?” she

29、 asked.“Logic.”She thought this over for a minute and decided she liked it. “Magnif,” she said.“Logic,” I said, clearing my throat, “is the science of thinking. Before we can think correctly, we must first learn to recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up tonight.”“Wow-dow!” sh

30、e cried, clapping her hands delightedly.I winced, but went bravely on. “First let us examine the fallacy called Dicto Simpliciter.”“By all means,” she urged, batting her lashes eagerly.“Dicto Simpliciter means an argument based on an unqualified generalization. For example: Exercise is good. Therefo

31、re everybody should exercise.”“I agree,” said Polly earnestly. “I mean exercise is wonderful. I mean it builds the body and everything.”“Polly,” I said gently, “the argument is a fallacy. Exercise is good is an unqualified generalization. For instance, if you have heart disease, exercise is bad, not

32、 good. Many people are ordered by their doctors not to exercise. You must qualify the generalization. You must say exercise is usually good, or exercise is good for most people. Otherwise you have committed a Dicto Simpliciter. Do you see?”“No,” she confessed. “But this is marvy. Do more! Do more!”“It will be better if you stop tugging at my sleeve,” I told her, and when she desisted, I continued. “Next we take up a fallacy called Hasty Generalization. Listen carefully: You cant speak French. Petey B