"
"The '_late_ John Bellingham,' hey! How do you know he is the late John
Bellingham?"
"As a matter of fact, I don't; only I rather understood that that was
your own belief."
"You understood! Now, from whom did you 'understand' that? From Godfrey
Bellingham? H'm! And how did he know what I believe? I never told him.
It is a very unsafe thing, my dear sir, to expound another man's
beliefs."
"Then you think that John Bellingham is alive?"
"Do I? Who said so? I did not, you know."
"But he must be either dead or alive."
"There," said Mr. Jellicoe, "I am entirely with you. You have stated an
undeniable truth."
"It is not a very illuminating one, however," I replied, laughing.
"Undeniable truths often are not," he retorted. "They are apt to be
extremely general. In fact, I would affirm that the certainty of the
truth of a given proposition is directly proportional to its
generality."
"I suppose that is so," said I.
"Undoubtedly. Take an instance from your own profession. Given a million
normal human beings under twenty, and you can say with certainty that a
majority of them will die before reaching a certain age, that they will
die in certain circumstances and of certain diseases.
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