[lit-ideas] Robinson Crusoe's Parrot
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:05:48 EDT
The question, it seems to me, is what is knowing. Do nonhuman animals know
things? It would take a braver man than me to deny that they do. Do they have
language? Hard to say. If they do, it's nothing they apparently want to share
with us.
-----
Well, I copied this conversation that Locke heard from Prince Maurice of the
Netherlands. At least that old Brazilian bird _had_ a language, and it _was_
something he apparently wanted to share (with the Prince):
"of an old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke,
and asked, and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature: so
that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery or
possession; and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland,
would
never from that time endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them."
Locke goes on to report the conversation between Prince Maurice and the
Parrot from Brazil. Locke explains: "[The parrot spoke] in Brazilian. I asked
the Prince if he understood Brazilian; he said No, but he had taken care to
have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the
other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch". The dialogue went as follows:
Prince Maurice, "D’ou venez-vous?"
Parrot, "De Marinnan"
Prince Maurice, "A qui estes-vous?"
Parrot, "A un Portugais"
Prince Maurice, "Que fais-tu la?"
Parrot, "Je garde les poulles"
Prince Maurice, "Vous gardez les poulles?"
Parrot, "Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire"
Locke wonders:
"I ask any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this
parrot had talked, as we have a prince’s word for it whether they would not
have passed for a race of rational animals; but yet, whether, for all that,
they would have been allowed to be "Men", and not "Parrots"? For I presume it
is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the idea of
a 'Man' in most people’s sense: but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to
it: and if that be the idea of a 'Man,' the same successive body not shifted
all at once, must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of
the same man.
Cheers,
JL
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