SOME YEARS AGO, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel—a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught.
The resultant
metaphysical problem now is this: Does
the man go round the squirrel or not? He
goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he
go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, discussion
had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the
numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I appeared, therefore appealed
to me to make it a majority! Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you
meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and
found one, as follows: "Which party is right," I said, "depends
on what you practically
mean by 'going
round' the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the east,
then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him again,
obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies these successive
positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front of him, then on
the right of him, then behind him, then on his left, and finally in front
again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the
compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards
the man all the time, and his back turned away.
Make the distinction, and there
is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong
according as you conceive the verb 'to go round' in one practical fashion or
the other."
Well as I went out to check with my fried Antnee stuffing himself on the feeder and asked him what he thought he sat there a while and looked at me somewhat stunned. His first comment was:
"Was this from some Professor Sir?"
Surprised I said "Yes, Antnee."
"A Professor from Harvard Sir?"
I replied again, "Yes".
He then said:
"Enough said Sir."
Then he went about eating again. I guessed that was pragmatism for Antnee!
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