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!
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
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!
II.
FOOL.-If
DOCTOR.-I should endeavour to be a fool.
F.-You would fail; folly is not easily achieved.
D.-True; man is overworked.
F.-Let him take a pill.
D.-If he like. I would not.
F.-You are too frank: take a fool's advice.
D.-Thank thee for the nastier prescription.
FOOL.-I have a friend who-
DOCTOR.-Stands in great need of my assistance. Absence of excitement, gentle restraint, a hard bed, simple diet-that will straighten him out.
