Cobwebs from an Empty Skull - novelonlinefull.com
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
