All pigs eat cheese,
Old snaggle is a pig.
If Snaggle is sick and refuses to eat, try cheese.
Games, games, games!" He snorted fire. "They only think they think. No total vision,
total system, merely schemes with a vague family resemblance, no more identity than
bridges and say, spiderwebs. But they rush across chasms on spiderwebs, and sometimes
they make it, and that, they think, settle, that! I could tell you a thousand tiresome stories
of their absurdity. They'd map out roads through Hell with their crackpot theories, their
here-to-the-moon-and-back lists of paltry facts. Insanity-the simplest insanity ever
devised! Simple facts in isolation, and facts to connect them-ands and buts are the
sine qua non of all their glorious achievements! But there are no such facts.
Connectedness is the essence of everything. It doesn't stop them, of course. They build
the whole world out of teeth deprived of bodies to chew or be chewed on."
"They sense that, of course, from time to time; have uneasy feelings that all they live by
is nonsense. They have dim apprehensions that such propositions as 'God does not exist
are somewhat dubious at least in comparison with statements like 'All carnivorous cows
eat meat. That's where the-Shaper saves them. Provides an illusion of reality-puts
together all their facts with a gluey whine of connectedness. Mere tripe, believe me.
Mere sleight-of-wits. He knows no more than they do about total reality-less, if
anything: works with the same old clutter of atoms, the givens of his time and place and
tongue. But he spins it all together with harp runs and hoots, and they think what they
think is alive, think Heaven loves them. It keeps them going for what that's worth. As
for myself, I can hardly bear to look."
Guiding Questions:
1. How does the Dragon define human nature or human thought in this passage?
Rec