The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi by Eugene Ostashevsky

Author:Eugene Ostashevsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781681370910
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2017-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

An eclogue. Two pastors reason. Meliboeus says, “Beasts don’t reason.” Tityrus says, “Beasts do reason.”

MELIBOEUS

If Beasts reasoned, they would speak to each other— Or, if their throats forbade it, sign like the Deaf.

TITYRUS

Does the Hen cluck to warn her Chickens of Danger or alert them to Food?

Animals also communicate by Grimace and Gesture, for instance, Dogs.

MELIBOEUS

That a Beast reasons the Beast itself must tell me so.

TITYRUS

Animals have often told you they had Reason,

And if you understood them not, it was your Fault.

MELIBOEUS

They ought then tell it me in the Language of Men.

TITYRUS

Why should they be more obliged to learn the Language of Men,

Then Men are to learn theirs?

MELIBOEUS

At least the Birds which learn our Language

Should make Use of it to discourse with us.

TITYRUS

Our language Teaching is at fault. It stresses Pronunciation.

If a Parrot were taught food Words only when hungry,

She would learn what they mean soon enough.

MELIBOEUS

A reasoning Parrot would of herself have learned

How to demand her Necessities.

TITYRUS

Schoolboys are not obliged to use Latin

To entertain themselves with others, nor to obtain Victuals;

But they do so in their own language, that is French.

Parrots also have another Language which they use for Necessities,

A Language which, being native to them, is more natural.

MELIBOEUS

You ask me to acquiesce that Bird has Reason,

for whom Squawking is more natural than French?

TITYRUS

Certainly it is with Men and Beasts when they speak together as it is with two Strangers,

Which entertain themselves every one in its natural Language;

For a Man speaks to them in his Language, and Beasts also speak in theirs;

And it happens also to them as to those Strangers,

That they often understand one another, and that often they not at all understand,

Having not a full knowledge of the Language which either of them make Use of.

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