62 
The Elastic Mind 
Cara Soror, 
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 
You ask me what I mean by an "elastic mind" - from our 
telephone conversation on Friday. 
It is hard to define; but let me give you an example of the 
bad kind: an old riddle. "Why is a story like a ghost?" 
Because 
A story's a tale 
a tail's a brush 
a brush is a broom 
a brougham is a carriage 
a carriage is a gig 
a gig's a trap 
a trap is a snare 
a snare's a gin 
gin is a spirit 
and a spirit's a ghost. 
You will have noticed a logical blunder-usually 
non 
distributio medii or Hobson Jobson-at every step in the 
sorites. It is your instinctive, or instructed, objection to 
commit these that prevents your mind from actually moving 
on such lines. 
But these "correspondences," such as they are, ought to 
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