The word “the” implies existence and uniqueness; it is a mistake to talk of “the son of So-and-So” if So-and-So has a fine family of ten sons.[65] People who refer to “the Oxford Movement” imply that Oxford only moved once; and those quaint people who say that “A is quite the gentleman” imply both the doubtful proposition that there is only one gentleman in the world, and the indubitably false proposition that he is that man. Probably A is one of those persons who add to the confusion in the use of the definite article by speaking of his wife as “the wife.”
In a certain Children’s Hymn Book one reads:
The river vast and small.
Few would deny that there is not more than one such river, but unfortunately it is doubtful if there is such a river at all. The case is exactly the same with the ontological proof of the existence of the most perfect being.[66]
According to the Daily Mail of October 9, 1906, Judge Russell decided against a claim brought by an agent against his company for appointing another agent, the claim being on the ground that he was appointed as “the” agent.
Most people admit that the number 2 can be added to the number 2 to give the number 4, but this is a mistake. They concede, when they use the, that there is only one number 2, and yet they imagine that, when they consider it apart as the first term of our above sum, they can find another to add to it, and thereby form the third term. The truth is that “2 + 2 = 4” is a very misleading equation, and what we really mean by that faultily abbreviated statement is more precisely: If x and y denote any things which form a class B, and x´ and y´ any other things that form a class (A) which, like that of x and y, is a member of the class (which we call “2”) of those classes which have a one-one correspondence with B (so that any member of A corresponds to one, and only one, member of B, and conversely), the class of all the terms of A and B together is a member of that class of classes which, analogously, we call “4.” In this, for the sake of shortness, we have introduced abbreviations which should not be used in a rigorous logical statement.
CHAPTER XXV
