Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

71 страница из 72

Your judges also assert that from the want on your part of being able to attach one idea to another, you do not think of your master when he is absent from you. What ingratitude! But I wonder whether those friends, who profess so much pleasure in my company, think of me when I am absent; perhaps no more than you do.

Let me continue my enquiries for a few minutes. We will suppose that we two are in my study. I am occupied with a book, and am not thinking of you at all. You are stretched at my feet with your nose between your paws, watching a fly near you. I make a sudden movement, you look at me, and at the same moment wag your tail.... Am I to suppose that you wag it to hide your dislike to me? The noble quality which I and all your superiors possess is lacking in you; you have no speech for thought in which to tell me your love for me; but if you could speak, that is, were like one of ourselves, would you be as truthful as you are now, being only a dog that has nothing but his tail with which to make his master understand his feelings towards him? Schopenhauer ... but you know nothing of Schopenhauer, if you could speak I should teach you to read, and then you would know him. Schopenhauer is a great and learned philosopher, who says, “How much this movement of the tail surpasses in sincerity many other assurances of friendship and devotion.”[37]