[39]
Again oratory
sometimes detects falsehoods closely resembling the
truth by the use of geometrical methods. An
example of this may be found in connexion with
numbers in the so-called pseudographs, a favourite
amusement in our boyhood.1 But there are more
important points to be considered. Who is there
who would not accept the following proposition?
“When the lines bounding two figures are equal in
length, the areas contained within those lines are
equal.” But this is false, for everything depends on
the shape of the figure formed by these lines,
1 It is not known to what Quintilian refers.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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