The two appendixes. The first from "Philosophy 4" and the idea that Witters
should have made his aphorism a question, not a statement -- allowing
Geary to provide an answer ("If a lion could speak, could we understand
him?").
The second appendix, Maurice's Parrot.
Cheers,
Speranza
A) Here is that paper. You will not be able to answer all the questions,
probably, but you may be glad to know what such things are like.
PHILOSOPHY 4
1. Thales, Zeno, Parmenides, Heracleitos, Anaxagoras. State briefly the
doctrine of each.
2. Phenomenon, noumenon. Discuss these terms. Name their modern
descendants.
3. Thought=Being. Assuming this, state the difference, if any, between (1)
memory and anticipation; (2) sleep and waking.
4. Democritus, Pythagoras, Bacon. State the relation between them. In what
terms must the objective world ultimately be stated? Why?
5. Experience is the result of time and space being included in the nature
of mind. Discuss this.
6. Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensibus. Whose
doctrine? Discuss it.
7. What is the inherent limitation in all ancient philosophy? Who first
removed it?
8. Mind is expressed through what? Matter through what? Is speech the
result or the cause of thought?
9. Discuss the nature of the ego.
10. According to Plato, Locke, Berkeley, where would the sweetness of a
honeycomb reside? Where would its shape? its weight? Where do you think these
properties reside?
11. (Extra credit). If a lion could talk, could we understand him?
Ten questions (and an extra one), and no Epicharmos of Kos. But no
examination paper asks everything, and this one did ask a good deal. Bertie and
Billy wrote the full time allotted, and found that they could have filled an
hour more without coming to the end of their thoughts. Comparing notes at
lunch, their information was discovered to have been lacking here and there.
Nevertheless, it was no failure; their inner convictions were sure of fifty
per cent at least, and this was all they asked of the gods. "I
was ripping about the ego," said Bertie. "I was rather splendid myself,"
said Billy, "when I got going. And I gave him a huge steer about memory."
After lunch both retired to their beds and fell into sweet oblivion until
seven o'clock, when they rose and dined, and after playing a little poker went
to bed again pretty early.
Some six mornings later, when the Professor returned their papers to them,
their minds were washed almost as clear of Plato and Thales as were their
bodies of yesterday's dust. The dates and doctrines, hastily memorized to
rattle off upon the great occasion, lay only upon the surface of their minds,
and after use they quickly evaporated. To their pleasure and most genuine
astonishment, the Professor paid them high compliments. Bertie's discussion
of the double personality had been the most intelligent which had come in
from any of the class. The illustration of the intoxicated hack-driver who
had fallen from his hack and inquired who it was that had fallen, and then
had pitied himself, was, said the Professor, as original and perfect an
illustration of our subjective-objectivity as he had met with in all his
researches. And Billy's suggestions concerning the inherency of time and space
in the mind the Professor had also found very striking and independent,
particularly his reasoning based upon the well-known distortions of time and
space which hashish and other drugs produce in us. This was the sort of thing
which the Professor had wanted from his students: free comment and
discussions, the spirit of the course, rather than any strict adherence to the
letter. He had constructed his questions to elicit as much individual
discussion as possible and had been somewhat disappointed in his hopes.
Yes, Bertie and Billy were astonished. But their astonishment did not equal
that of Oscar, who had answered many of the questions in the Professor's
own language. Oscar received seventy-five per cent for this achievement--a
good mark. But Billy's mark was eighty-six and Bertie's ninety. "There is
some mistake," said Oscar to them when they told him; and he hastened to the
Professor with his tale. "There is no mistake," said the Professor. Oscar
smiled with increased deference. "But," he urged, "I assure you, sir, those
young men knew absolutely nothing. I was their tutor, and they knew nothing
at all. I taught them all their information myself." "In that case,"
replied the Professor, not pleased with Oscar's tale-bearing, "you must have
given them more than you could spare. Good morning."
Oscar never understood. But he graduated considerably higher than Bertie
and Billy, who were not able to discover many other courses so favorable to
"orriginal rresearch" as was Philosophy 4. That is twenty years ago, To-day
Bertie is treasurer of the New Amsterdam Trust Company, in Wall Street;
Billy is superintendent of passenger traffic of the New York and Chicago Air
Line. Oscar is successful too. He has acquired a lot of information. His
smile is unchanged. He has published a careful work entitled "The Minor Poets
of Cinquecento," and he writes book reviews for the Evening Post.
* * * *
B) Maurice's Parrot
Whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize,
would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and say, the one was
a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot.
A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance
the supposition of a rational parrot.
His words are:
I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a
common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others,
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.
I had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard
to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it.
He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something
true, but a great deal false of what had been reported.
I desired to know of him what there was of the first.
He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when
he had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a
good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it: that it was a
very great and a very old one; and when it came first into the room where
the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, What
a company of white men are here! They asked it, what it thought that man
was, pointing to the prince. It answered, Some General or other. When they
brought it close to him, he asked it, D'ou venez-vous? It answered, De
Marinnan. The Prince, A qui estes-vous? The Parrot, A un Portugais. The
Prince,
Que fais-tu la? Parrot, Je garde les poulles.
The Prince laughed, and said, Vous gardez les poulles? The Parrot answered,
Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire; and made the chuck four or five times
that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down the words
of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me.
I asked him in what language the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian.
I asked whether 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; that he asked them separately
and privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing
that the parrot had said.
I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way,
and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say
this Prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed
for a very honest and pious man: I leave it to naturalists to reason, and
to other men to believe, as they please upon it; however, it is not,
perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such
digressions,
whether to the purpose or no.
I have taken care that the reader should have the story at large in the
author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible;
for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency
enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much
pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on
a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a Prince in whom he
acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself
thought
incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous.
The Prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who
relates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot: and I ask any one
else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this parrot, and all
of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one
did,- whether, I say, 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.
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