Will Cuppy Tonight: "Aristotle, Indeed!" (from "How to Become Extinct")

"Is it my fault if anything one quotes from Aristotle sounds as if he was a little touched in the head? And does that necessarily make him the greatest thinker of all time?

"I don't doubt that Aristotle thought more in actual footage during his life than any other person ever thought in the same elapsed time of sixty-two years. I do say, however, that any prize he deserves for so doing should be for quantity, not quality, as a great deal of it was spinach. . . .

"Give our growing citizens plenty of Aristotle, and you'll have a lot of citizens who have tried to read Aristotle. . . ."

-- Will Cuppy, in "Aristotle, Indeed!"

As I noted last night in introducing our Will's "Own Your Own Snake," tonight's offering was directly inspired by it. But then, things were always bound to come to a head, sooner or later, between Will and the Father of Learning. -- Ken

Drawings by William Steig

ARISTOTLE, INDEED!
(from How to Become Extinct)

I have received a curious letter from a lady who signs herself "Furious." The communication reads in part:

I guess you think you know it all, don't you, Mr. Cuppy? I have admired some of your articles. I loved the one about the Yak. [Author's note: I have never written an article about the Yak.] [Editor's note: The author eventually did write an article about the Yak. It's collected in the later books of natural-history pieces, How to Tell Your Friends from the Wombat.] But when you attack Aristotle, the greatest thinker who ever lived, like you did in a piece entitled "Own Your Own Snake," you are out of your depth. Aristotle had more sense in his little finger than you have in your whole ugly carcase.

Sez you! I may be dumb, "Furious," but you're not putting anything over on me with that letter, not for one moment. I know what you mean, for all your beating about the bush and saying you admire me and all that. You mean I am not as smart as Aristotle, and you needn't try to deny it. I can read between the lines as well as the next one.

I'll give you credit for one thing, "Furious." You have raised an issue that will have to be met sometime, sooner or later. I was hoping it would be later. Whether Aristotle was a smarter man than I am, or vice versa, is a point, however, to be determined by a group of duly constituted authorities, not by some flighty young woman in a pet. Do you follow?

And while I'm about it, I may as well add that your use of the word "like" in the expression "like you did" is not English. The word you were groping for is "as." "As you like" -- see? I suggest, for your own good, that you spend part of your time each day learning the language. Or why don't you take up tatting? You might have a future there.

It's very strange, too, your leaping to the defense of an ancient Greek who died in 322 B.C., as if he were your best friend in an awful spot and only you could save him. There's something back of this, "Furious." Have you got Aristotle mixed up with some other old Greek you happen to have met around town? Are you barking up the wrong Greek? Or is it just some personal grudge you have against me? A member of the Hate Cuppy Movement, eh?

The fact is, I gave Aristotle quite a break in that article. I only quoted a sentence or two from his study of the snake's tongue and made a few remarks -- disparaging, it is true, but nothing to what he had coming. Is it my fault if anything one quotes from Aristotle sounds as if he was a little touched in the head? And does that necessarily make him the greatest thinker of all time?

I don't doubt that Aristotle thought more in actual footage during his life than any other person ever thought in the same elapsed time of sixty-two years. I do say, however, that any prize he deserves for so doing should be for quantity, not quality, as a great deal of it was spinach. He would sit around and think like one possessed, or he would walk around and think, since he was a Peripatetic, as they called it in those days. And then he would announce that Swallows spend the winter under water on the bottom of ponds and streams, or that Eels are the product of spontaneous generation, or that women have fewer teeth than men. And then it would be published and taught in the schools, because it sounded like the sort of thing that always is taught in the schools.

Still and all, Aristotle stimulates you. He keeps you guessing, not only about what he meant but about what he thought he meant. Take what he says about the snake's legs -- or lack of legs, rather. He says snakes have no legs because, if they had any, they would have only two or four, and that wouldn't be nearly enough. You can stay up all night figuring that one, snatch a few winks of sleep, and fly at it again the next morning. And you'll be little the wiser. All you'll be is a wreck.

How, you may wonder, did Aristotle arrive at this goofy bit of natural history? Well, he had a theory that "no sanguineous creature [by which he meant red-blooded] can move itself at more than four points." "Granting this," says he, and I'll grant it, merely to see what happens -- "Granting this, it is evident that sanguineous animals like snakes, whose length is out of all proportion to the rest of their dimensions, cannot possibly have limbs; for they cannot have more than four (or they would be bloodless), and if they had two or four they would be practically stationary; so slow and unprofitable would their movement necessarily be."

Now that's what I call talking too much. That particular passage has taken so much out of me that I can't go into it and parse it the way I should. But I can see what it's driving at. Snakes have no legs because it wouldn't jibe with a rule that Aristotle made up himself out of his own head -- that stuff about the four points. And if they had two or four legs, they would be rooted to the earth, as if they were nailed down. Honestly, if I made a practice of promulgating such drivel, where would I be today? In Ward 8.

Of course, there's always the chance, however slim, that Aristotle may know what he's talking about. Some rather long lizards have only four legs. Maybe they can't have any more. Maybe they do have only four places where they can have legs. Even so, they seem to get by with the four. They aren't stationary. Then why couldn't a snake get along with only four legs, too? Surely four legs are better than none. And then again, snakes abandoned legs during the course of evolution. They thought it all over for millions of years and they don't want any legs. You have to consider that, too.

It is a pity that Aristotle didn't drop the whole subject with the comment he made in another place: "Serpents, like fish, are devoid of feet." There is a statement worthy of a scientist. I couldn't improve on it myself. It says nothing about legs, but the implication is clear, for nobody would expect any legs where there are no feet. It is not brilliant, but it is true, and true it will remain until Dr. William Beebe shows up at the American Museum of Natural History with a four-footed fish, which might be any day now.

In a word, Aristotle's discovery that snakes and fish have no feet is a keen bit of observation for an ancient Greek, but why should it make him the Father of Learning?

Yet there is something else about the snake that our old friend missed altogether. He said snakes do not have something which they certainly do have, for when snakes were deciding what to abandon as they evolved, they appear to have voted unanimously to keep that one, though the heavens fall, and they have stuck to it through thick and thin. Snakes have a pretty firm grasp of fundamentals when you come right down to it, and a fine feeling for what is essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Snakes are perfectly O.K. in that way.

You may wonder how Aristotle could make such an error, when the subject was right up his alley. He had what amounted to a yen for investigating the more recondite anatomy and watching the private gyrations of even the humblest creatures, so much so that one wonders how he ever found time for his own dates. Well, he appears to have convinced himself by the use of pure reason that snakes would not be any fun to watch because they were footless animals, and he had already laid down a certain rule about the way footless animals were built. This teaches us that the thing to do is to look at the animal.

Aristotle, of course, was frequently right, for it is almost impossible, under the laws of chance, to be wrong all the time. Thanks to him we know that the Weasel does not bring forth its young by the mouth, as held by Anaxagoras. He also denied that Hyenas change their sex every year. He was only guessing, but it sounds like a good guess. I don't know what to say of his theory that flat-footed people are treacherous. Some of them are, very likely.

If Aristotle could speak for himself, though, he would probably tell us that he never wrote half the tosh they call his, at least in its present form. His books may be only lecture notes taken down in class by some of his backward pupils and later touched up from time to time by professors of philosophy. Have you ever met one of those?

Also, after everything has been done that can be done, the commentators are always having to explain that part of this or that sentence must have been lost in transit. It dropped out some way, that's why it doesn't make sense. That's fine for Aristotle. I only wish a few commentators would get busy with my works and tell the public it isn't my fault. Part of it must have dropped out when I wasn't looking. Or some fiend broke into my office and garbled the manuscript before I could send it off to the publishers. I have never seen any of these manuscript garblers myself, but perhaps they exist.

Anyway, Aristotle should worry. I was glad to see, when I called there recently, that the reference department of that splendid institution, the New York Public Library, contains enough index cards on Aristotle to choke a herd of Elephants, all referring to several miles of the actual volumes in the stacks. Swell! Give our growing citizens plenty of Aristotle, and you'll have a lot of citizens who have tried to read Aristotle.

I haven't a spark of envy in my whole system, but I couldn't help noticing, as I just happened to be riffling through the files, that they haven't so much as one card on any of my books. Not a mention, not a whisper, about a single one of the Cuppy volumes, all two of them. They don't take me seriously, I suppose.

I'm not kicking. I'm only hinting that Aristotle never had anything like that to contend with. All the libraries in the world have been buying his books like mad for two thousand years, and they would buy more if there were any more. Naturally, with that kind of help, his fame is now so secure that you can't budge it. I can't honestly feel that I've budged it an inch, pick on him as I may, year in and year out.

Well, I've always said, and I say it again, I ought to be more of a mixer. I guess I don't get drunk with the right people.


TOMORROW in WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: "Lucrezia Borgia" (from The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody)


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT and WILL CUPPY TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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