"Take out your razor, Ockham." [1]
Wenceslaus fingered the mug more openly. I didn't know who was baiting whom. I thought I had bested him but realized in doing so I was only personifying the shallowness I strove to dismantle through argument.
"Wenceslaus, Wenceslaus, let's cease this before emotion colours our better judgment. Let us stop for the time being and let a wager stand."
"A wager?"
"Yes, you know of Pascal and his wager on faith?"
"Vaguely, but I'm tired of this thumb-pressing."
"I know, but hear me out."
"What we wish to establish here," I began, "is the superiority of experience over imagination, actual events to intellect."
"Precisely," I maintained. "Let each of us do a bibliographical survey establishing the whereabouts of most authors' inspiration. The Muse as it were, that is the point whereby a given author is ready to grasp order from the chaos of eclecticism. Not exhaustively, of course, just a random selection of say ten and then report back to one another. Each must promise to abide by the general consensus of the search."
"Such a thing will deteriorate to mere sham, a freshman's guide to the use of periodical literature, he parodied holding a hand aloft like a scolding professor."