In the mouths of his professional fools he
places many reductions to absurdity of what he calls the "simple
syllogism." He invests the term "chop-logic" with the significance of
foolery _in excelsis_.[26] Again, metaphysics, in any formal sense,
were clearly not of Shakespeare's world. On one occasion he wrote of
the topic round which most metaphysical speculation revolves:--
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded by a sleep.
(_Tempest_, IV., i., 156-8.)
[Footnote 26: The speeches of the clown in _Twelfth Night_ are
particularly worthy of study for the satiric adroitness with which
they expose the quibbling futility of syllogistic logic. _Cf._ Act I.,
Scene v., ll. 43-57.
_Olivia._ Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides you
grow dishonest.
_Clown._ Two faults, Madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend:
for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the
dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if
he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything that's mended is but
patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin
that amends is but patched with virtue.
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