The Anatomy of Tobacco
the essential part? For bowls cannot whistle, either of themselves or by the help of another. And if the essence and primary nature lies in the bowl, why do we not call this "instrument for smoking" a bowl and not a pipe? And how comes it to pass that we do not call the stem a "bowl-pipe?" Responde mihi, O genus cœlosphaericum et rotundum!
Finally Dummerkopfius citeth the famous Sorites Smalgrueli. The name of ⟨a⟩ thing expresses the innate ideas we have of that thing; the name of an "instrument for smoking tobacco" is a pipe; the name pipe expresses not ideas of sphæricity and circularity, but of length and hollowness; therefore our innate ideas of an "instrument for smoking tobacco" are not conceptions of sphæricity and circularity, but conceptions of length and hollowness."
But the Cœlosphaerics reply, in answer to the "pipe-bowl" argument, that Dummerkopfius might as well argue from the term "goat-skin" that goats can exist without skins, and that such analogous
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