Chapter I: 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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