pairs of socks. The problem is: How many boots had he, and how many socks? One would naturally suppose that he had twice as many boots and twice as many socks as he had pairs of each, and that therefore he had
of each, since that number is not increased by doubling. But this is an instance of the difficulty, already noted, of connecting the sum of
classes each having
terms with
. Sometimes this can be done, sometimes it cannot. In our case it can be done with the boots, but not with the socks, except by some very artificial device. The reason for the difference is this: Among boots we can distinguish right and left, and therefore we can make a selection of one out of each pair, namely, we can choose all the right boots or all the left boots; but with socks no such principle of selection suggests itself, and we cannot be sure, unless we assume the multiplicative axiom, that there is any class consisting of one sock out of each pair. Hence the problem.