Chapter 7 No.7

FOOL.-I have a question for you.

PHILOSOPHER.-I have a number of them for myself. Do you happen to have heard that a fool can ask more questions in a breath than a philosopher can answer in a life?

F.-I happen to have heard that in such a case the one is as great a fool as the other.

PH.-Then there is no distinction between folly and philosophy?

F.-Don't lay the flattering unction to your soul. The province of folly is to ask unanswerable questions. It is the function of philosophy to answer them.

PH.-Admirable fool!

F.-Am I? Pray tell me the meaning of "a fool."

PH.-Commonly he has none.

F.-I mean-

PH.-Then in this case he has one.

F.-I lick thy boots! But what does Solomon indicate by the word fool? That is what I mean.

PH.-Let us then congratulate Solomon upon the agreement between the views of you two. However, I twig your intent: he means a wicked sinner; and of all forms of folly there is none so great as wicked sinning. For goodness is, in the end, more conducive to personal happiness-which is the sole aim of man.

F.-Hath virtue no better excuse than this?

PH.-Possibly; philosophy is not omniscience.

F.-Instructed I sit at thy feet!

PH.-Unwilling to instruct, I stand on my head.

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FOOL.-You say personal happiness is the sole aim of man.

PHILOSOPHER.-Then it is.

F.-But this is much disputed.

PH.-There is much personal happiness in disputation.

F.-Socrates-

PH.-Hold! I detest foreigners.

F.-Wisdom, they say, is of no country.

PH.-Of none that I have seen.

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FOOL.-Let us return to our subject-the sole aim of mankind. Crack me these nuts. (1) The man, never weary of well-doing, who endures a life of privation for the good of his fellow-creatures?

PHILOSOPHER.-Does he feel remorse in so doing? or does the rascal rather like it?

F.-(2) He, then, who, famishing himself, parts his loaf with a beggar?

PH.-There are people who prefer benevolence to bread.

F.-Ah! De gustibus-

PH.-Shut up!

F.-Well, (3) how of him who goes joyfully to martyrdom?

PH.-He goes joyfully.

F.-And yet-

PH.-Did you ever converse with a good man going to the stake?

F.-I never saw a good man going to the stake.

PH.-Unhappy pupil! you were born some centuries too early.

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FOOL.-You say you detest foreigners. Why?

PHILOSOPHER.-Because I am human.

F.-But so are they.

PH.-Excellent fool! I thank thee for the better reason.

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PHILOSOPHER.-I have been thinking of the pocopo.

FOOL.-Is it open to the public?

PH.-The pocopo is a small animal of North America, chiefly remarkable for singularity of diet. It subsists solely upon a single article of food.

F.-What is that?

PH.-Other pocopos. Unable to obtain this, their natural sustenance, a great number of pocopos die annually of starvation. Their death leaves fewer mouths to feed, and by consequence their race is rapidly multiplying.

F.-From whom had you this?

PH.-A professor of political economy.

F.-I bend in reverence! What made you think of the pocopo?

PH.-Speaking of man.

F.-If you did not wish to think of the pocopo, and speaking of man would make you think of it, you would not speak of man, would you?

PH.-Certainly not.

F.-Why not?

PH.-I do not know.

F.-Excellent philosopher!

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FOOL.-I have attentively considered your teachings. They may be full of wisdom; they are certainly out of taste.

PHILOSOPHER.-Whose taste?

F.-Why, that of people of culture.

PH.-Do any of these people chance to have a taste for intoxication, tobacco, hard hats, false hair, the nude ballet, and over-feeding?

F.-Possibly; but in intellectual matters you must confess their taste is correct.

PH.-Why must I?

F.-They say so themselves.

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PHILOSOPHER.-I have been thinking why a dolt is called a donkey.

FOOL.-I had thought philosophy concerned itself with a less personal class of questions; but why is it?

PH.-The essential quality of a dolt is stupidity.

F.-Mine ears are drunken!

PH.-The essential quality of an ass is asininity.

F.-Divine philosophy!

PH.-As commonly employed, "stupidity" and "asininity" are convertible terms.

F.-That I, unworthy, should have lived to see this day!

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