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?
PH.--Certainly not.
F.--Why not?
PH.--I do not know.
F.--Excellent philosopher!
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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!
* * * * *