ABSTRACT
Lewis Carroll was also the Revd. C. L. Dodgson, mathematician and Fellow of
Christ Church, Oxford. Claude M. Blagden (who became Bishop of Peter-
borough) gives us, in the course of reminiscences of his time at Christ Church, a
picture of the man who wrote Symbolic Logic and also, on the quiet, Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland. Dodgson, he explains, ‘‘would constantly send his ser-
vant across to Strong with hard questions carefully written down for him to
answer. Strong at first took these questions seriously, and set himself to give
reasoned answers to them; but he soon discovered, on receipt of an answer from
Dodgson with hardly a moment’s delay, that he was being used, not by a tireless
seeker after truth, but by a very determined and skilful games player, who had
worked out all possible solutions, and was prepared to play a game of logic
chopping till the skies fell.’’1 ‘‘Strong’’ is Thomas Banks Strong, a man not noted
for originality of mind, who was optimistically keen on promoting morality and
religion among the young in the recently secularized university. He later became
Bishop of Oxford. It is an oddly chilling anecdote. We do not know the content
of the problems set by Dodgson. They could hardly have been as garishly sur-
real as the material he used in his ‘‘Concrete Propositions, proposed as Premises
for Sorites.’’ The first set reads,
1 Babies are illogical;
2 Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile;
3 Illogical persons are despised.2
