The professors and elders and priests who now took the creature in hand were far from silly. They were puzzled, and amused, and interested — at first. They looked at it, in the disused monkey-cage at the city’s menagerie, where it was kept. And it stood upright, on finely-furred feet as arched and perfect as the feet of an ancient statue.

“It is oddly human,” said the learned men.

They amused themselves by bringing it a chair and watching it sit down gracefully, though not very comfortably, as if it was used to furniture of better shape and construction. They gave it a plate and a cup, and it ate with its hands most daintily, looking round as though for some sort of cutlery. But it was not thought sage to trust it with a knife.

“It is only a beast,” said everyone. “However clever at imitation.”

“It’s so quick to learn,” said some.

“But not in any way human.”

“No,” said the creature, “I am not human. But, in my own place, I am a man.”

“Parrot-talk!” laughed the elders, uneasily.

The professor of living and dead languages taught it simple speech.

After a week, it said to them:

“I understand all the words you use. They are very easy. And you cannot quite express what you mean, in any of your tongues. A child of my race — ” It stopped, for it had no wish to seem impolite, and then it said, “There is a language that is spoken throughout the universe. If you allow me — ”

And softly and musically it began to utter a babble of meaningless nonsense at which all the professors laughed loudly.

“Parrot-talk!” they jeered. “Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly!”

For they were much annoyed. And they mocked the creature into cowering silence.

The professors of logic came to the same conclusions as the others.

“Your logic is at fault,” the creature had told them, despairingly. “I have disproved your conclusions again and again. You will not listen or try to understand.”

“Who could understand parrot-talk?”

“I am no parrot, but a man in my own place. Define a man. I walk upright. I think. I collate facts. I imagine. I anticipate. I learn. I speak. What is a man by your definition?”

“Pretty Polly!” said the professors.

They were very angry. One of them hit the creature with his walking-cane. No one likes to be set on a level with a beast. And the beast covered its face with its hands, and was silent.

The creature defines a man this way: "I walk upright. I think. I collate facts. I imagine. I anticipate. I learn. I speak." Evaluate both the creature and the elders against this definition.