Stories From The Old Attic, Robert Harris [top ten books of all time .txt] 📗

subtracting the anomalous from the universal.”

“Certainly you have read Dohesius On the Nature of the Universe in the last twenty-five years,” the other philosopher said with some indignation. “Don’t you recall his dictum that ‘a second example is not an explanation’? How do you pretend to instruct the ignorance of youth when you have never instructed yourself? ‘The canvas remains blank when the artist has no paint,’ says Hugo de Brassus. Go back to your books.”

“And as de Roquefort says, ‘To sit on a cheese and eat whey is the destiny of fools.’”

“See here, young man,” said the beard, ignoring his colleague, “treeness is a life process displaying the aspiration of matter toward hierarchy, order, and structure. It finds analogues and even homologues in life systems everywhere.”

“The frogs croak at night, but the sky remains dark,” said the glasses, smirking slightly.

“Nonsense,” replied the beard. “What I have said is self-evident. Sir Humphrey Boodle even noted it.”

“But Boodle has been refuted these three hundred years.”

“Well, Calesimon said so, too.”

“Hah!” cried the glasses with a laugh of forced incredulity. “Calesimon! Calesimon was an idiot!”

“Argumentum ad hominem.”

“Oh, come on. The man was institutionalized.”

“And genetic fallacy, too. My, my.”

“Ignore him, son,” said the glasses to the youth. “He’s not been very well since his wife laughed at his last paper. A tree—”

“She did not laugh,” interrupted the beard.

“—is a woody plant containing specialized structures, larger overall than a bush and often, as you see here [pointing] having only one trunk rather than many.”

“And is this the effect of dotage or of primordial ignorance?”

“False dilemma, Mr. Logician.”

“Surely you were there that day in bonehead English when they distinguished between ‘definition’ and ‘explanation.’ You are familiar with the English language, aren’t you? The young man has asked for an explanation.”

“Well, as Frabonarde says, ‘The whole is known by its parts.’”

“The doctrine of those who pull the wings from fruit flies.”

“Yes, it would be too straightforward for someone who needs six hundred pages to discover that he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

“A classic example of the projectionist error. Not everything you don’t understand is a problem with the text,” said the beard, tapping his finger to his temple.

“If I may be permitted one last allusion to Oriental wisdom, I would note only that the Chinese have said, ‘Men hurt their eyes seeking a water lily in a rock garden—even in a large rock garden.’”

“I thought you knew that the Poems of Chen had been exposed as a product of nineteenth-century Europe. Don’t make it a habit to go around quoting hoaxes. It gives philosophy a bad name.”

“Excuse me, sirs,” the youth interjected, “but I have to go now.”

“Very well,” said the beard. “Only remember, with the knowledge you attain, seek to achieve understanding.”

“Oh, so now we are quoting the Bible!” cried the glasses with triumphant scorn. “The rest of the department will be interested in this.”

“I was not quoting the Bible. I have never even read the Bible.”

“Why don’t you ask God to bless him while you’re at it?”

“Listen, don’t you think I know that your doctrine of cosmic mental states is just a front and that you’re a closet monotheist?”

“And may I remind you that slander is an offense punishable by law?”

“And is this the state of a wise man?” asked the beard, looking at the sky, “to threaten his friend for speaking truth?”

“Now he’s even praying! I can’t believe this!”

“‘We cannot see around corners,’ says Germulphius, ‘so what is left to the man who refuses to see in a straight line?’”

“Someone like your wife,” answered the glasses. “No doubt by now she’s found twelve more insupportably ridiculous assertions in your paper on aperceptual phenomenalism.”

“Well, at least my wife reads my papers. At least my wife can read.”

“My wife is an avid reader of literature.”

“Since when did the television listings become ‘literature’? That’s the most transparent semantic ploy I have ever heard.”

“Are you accusing me of owning a television?”

“He who can see the maggots need not ask if the dog is dead.”

“‘Ignore the shadow cast by a passing vapor,’ says Phonetes.”

“You’ve always been sloppy with bibliography, haven’t you?” demanded the beard. “Phonetes would have been utterly embarrassed to have said that.”

“No matter. Truth needs no ascription.”

“That statement is obviously the product of extensive reading and protracted thought. With a little more effort, no doubt you’ll be able to announce that the sun shines on a clear day.”

“I suppose you have never read von Hoch: ‘I had always known what he said, but I did not live it until I heard it spoken.’”

“I reject that statement together with its sordid implications. It smacks of the grimy hands of utilitarianism. In a minute you’ll be insisting that philosophy have practical consequences for berry pickers and children. Perhaps you would be happier as some sort of mechanic where you could get your hands on things, rather than as one who pretends to instruct youth.”

“You and Sir Peter Poole, who was proud that he couldn’t tell a hoe from a rake.”

“Well, what of that? My profession is philosophy, and I look for truth, not for mud.”

“Even the sun cannot be seen through a silver coin.”

“I have never accepted money for anything I’ve published,” said the beard hotly.

“‘Beware of those who look to the right and walk to the left,’ says della Corta.”

“How dare you accuse me—” At this point they were interrupted. A young man, deeply preoccupied with thinking about the purpose of mankind, had just bounced his head against a tree and—ah, but this is where you came in.

 

A Tale Revealing the Wisdom Of Being a Cork on the River of Life

Once upon a time, not very far from a town pretty much like yours, an old, nearsighted man was wandering down a country road quite pleasantly, musing to himself thusly: “I wonder what I should seek today? Some new treasure of the Orient, or a lost clue to the secrets of nature? That would be nice, as I spit” (and here, had there been but a small brass spittoon by the wayside, a clear ring would have sounded across the nearby pastures), “but,” continued the old man, “this is pretty barren ground hereabouts, so I’d best not set my hopes too high. I’ll start by looking for a silver dollar.”

With this thought, the man’s eyes brightened and he continued now more alertly down the road, staring intently at the ground and knocking little pebbles around with his cane. After a little, he thought he saw something ahead. Mending his pace somewhat, he hurried (as an old man with a cane hurries) up to the object, which he now believed to be a quarter. When he stooped down to pick it up, however, he found it to be merely a bottle cap, covered with red ants eating the remaining sugar. “Just what I was looking for!” exclaimed the old man with glee, even though the ants began to sting him on the thumb and forefinger. “Bottlecaps can be very useful.” So he put the new possession into his pocket and once more began his stroll, still watching the ground.

He had hardly begun to wonder what he might find next, when, there, just a little way off, he saw a pearl lying in the roadbed. “Surely,” he thought, “nothing is round or shiny exactly like a pearl, so I could not be mistaken this time.” So he began to amble over without delay. As he came nearer, his joy increased. “Hee hee!” the old man laughed, before stifling his mirth lest he call attention to himself and bring competitors for his newfound treasure. He even paused a moment and looked around to see if anyone had noticed him or the pearl.

The way seemed clear so he closed the final distance, reached down, and picked it up. Instantly he was aware that this was no pearl, but just a partly dried up chicken brain, which must have fallen off some farmer’s cart, or been left by some animal in haste. “Just what I was looking for!” the old man said very joyfully. “Chicken brains make real good soup.” Into his pocket with the bottle cap went the brains, and down the road with his cane went the old man.

It was not long after this that he saw another, much larger item in the road before him, which looked, from where he now was, just exactly like a fat roll of paper money. Blessing his astrological reading promising riches for that day, he made his way up to the spot with a speed truly remarkable for a person of his age and infirmities, and anxiously bent over to retrieve his treasure. A closer look, however, and a confirming touch revealed that the man had found a “road apple,” or, as it is sometimes called, a “horse biscuit.” “Just what I was looking for,” the old man said, now more perfectly pleased than ever; “I can use this biscuit to cook my chicken soup. Seems dry enough to burn right well.”

Now the old man, between his nearsightedness and his preoccupation with his great discoveries, wandered unknowingly over to the side of the road, and pretty soon he stepped off into a ditch and fell down with remarkable violence. A farmer not very far off saw this episode, and hurried over to help the old man up. As he got to his feet, the old man, wincing with pain and holding one arm, cried out with a tone of satisfaction, “A broken arm! Just what I was looking for! A broken arm can be very useful.” The farmer blinked once or twice, recognizing that this sentiment did not conform with what his own would have been under the like circumstances, but he said nothing. Instead, he quite generously helped the old gentleman into his cart and took him to town.

When the two arrived, the farmer dutifully summoned a doctor and the constable and some others of note in the place and repeated how the old man had fallen and broken his arm, only to exclaim that such a result was apparently what he had intended. This narrative caused some strange looks and a little discussion among them, and no one could think what to do next (aside from fixing the man’s arm), when the constable suddenly remembered that he did not know the man’s name. “Sir,” he asked, “have you any identification?”

“Why, I think so, sonny,” replied the old man, beginning to fumble in his various pockets, and then, to the indescribable surprise of his audience, to remove what they did not know, and could not have imagined, were the souvenirs from his previous wanderings. When his pockets were finally emptied, there was still no identification, but instead, on the table before them, his interrogators saw the following objects, namely, viz., and to wit: the bottle cap, the chicken brains, the horse manure, a piece of grimy string, a cigar butt, three pieces of chewed and flattened gum, a wing nut with stripped threads, a rusty nail (bent in two places), part of a candy wrapper, some rat pills (eleven of them), half a marble, and a common pebble.

After a moment or two of reflective silence, the mayor made bold to speak (seeing the constable in a reverie), and asked gently and softly, “Where did you get all these, uh, items?”

“Why, looking for gold and treasure, sonny,” the old man answered, in a tone that implied that the mayor should have known the answer already. “But,” he added as a second thought, and in the face of these gentlemen’s now rather extravagantly and injudiciously raised eyebrows and opened mouths,