The certificate of independent thought
Page 1113 Later the observer entered the same room with a trusted friend and felt glad.
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4 The clerk said: That is merely a feeling.
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5 And I shit you not, the observer requested the rule by which the clerk was making this distinction.
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6 The clerk presented two sets of scales.
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7 Upon the first, sorrow weighed as knowledge. Upon the second, joy could weigh as nothing else than sentiment.
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8 The observer said: Let us use the same questions for both.
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9 What occurred? What did I experience? What evidence supports my account of its cause?
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10 The fear was not erased by asking.
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11 Neither was the gladness.
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12 And neither alone established the entire nature of the universe.
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13 Then the clerk complained that the world had become less easy to summarize.
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14 The observer replied: It may have been that way before the summary.
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A harsh story is not automatically a truer one.
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TRY IT Use the same questions about evidence for a comforting and a troubling account.
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READING CONVERSATION Letter 30; pp. 61–62.
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CHAPTER 11
The certificate of independent thought
A certificate is offered; its authority is questioned; the printer survives the inquiry.
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1 And I shit you not, the Society prepared a Certificate of Independent Thought, with a border sufficiently handsome to suggest that much had been settled.
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2 A visitor admired it and asked: Who hath determined that I am an independent thinker?
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3 The officiant answered: No one hath examined thee.
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4 Then, said the visitor, what doth the certificate prove?
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5 The officiant considered the matter and said: Principally, that we have access to a printer.