“Very well!” I replied. “The consequence is that all the people who wear stockings are princesses of the kingdom of the gnomes.”
This seemed strange to Adalga, but she could not prove that it was not so, and I proceeded to explain to her that the power to draw logical inferences was the highest power which a scientist could possess, and that by means of logic almost anything could be proved, be it true or false. Thus I proved to her by way of an illustration, first, that white was black; secondly, that black was white; and thirdly, that there was no colour at all.
“White, my dear!” I said, “is, as everybody knows, no colour at all; for it is produced by a combination of all the prismatic colours in the same proportion as they exist in the solar ray, where each colour neutralises the other. Now, if there is no colour, there can be no light, and where no light exists everything is as black as night, and if everything is black, white must be black also, and consequently white is black.”
“Very strange!” exclaimed Adalga.
“If white is black,” I continued, “it follows that black is white, because if there is no difference between two things they must be identical. Moreover, everybody knows that black is no colour at all, but the negation of colour, and it follows that if a thing has no particular colour of any kind, it must necessarily be white.”
“Incredible!” exclaimed the princess.
“There is nothing incredible about it,” I said. “It is all very reasonable. Moreover, there is no such thing as a colour at all, for what we call by that name refers only to a certain sensation which is produced in our brains by means of certain vibrations transmitted through the retina and the optic nerve. If you look at any coloured thing in the dark you will find it to be without any colour at all. The sensations we receive are only due to certain vibrations of something unknown.”
“What is a vibration?” asked Adalga.
“Vibration,” I said, “is nothing but a certain kind of motion, and as motion per se does not exist, vibration is nothing, while that unknown thing which moves must be everything. But the existence of that unknown thing is not admitted by science, and consequently science knows nothing of everything, and of everything nothing, just as you like; and you can make nothing out of everything, and everything out of nothing, at your own pleasure.”
The princess was delighted to hear that she could now make everything out of nothing, although for the beginning it could be done only theoretically, and her repugnance to philosophical hair-splittings faded away. She continued her lessons with great diligence, and very soon I had the pleasure of seeing that she believed nothing and denied everything. A few weeks more, and I was highly gratified to find that she could no longer tell a mock-turtle from a tommy cat without entering into a long series of arguments for the purpose of proving which was which. Unfortunately, in proportion as she lost her power of perceiving the reality, while improving in the practice of logic, her own light grew more and more dim, her luminosity less, and the green colour in her sphere darker; but I considered this as a matter of only secondary importance; for it is said that beauty is a perishable thing, while wisdom remains.