Whether to obtain some sympathy for his bruised head, or to excuse his
inattention, or perhaps simply because they were standing near a wheel
barrow and looked for all the world like gardeners, the young man
interrupted them with the slightly exasperated question, "Excuse me,
but what is that tree doing there, anyway?"
Now it so happens that these two men were not gardeners at all. They
were, in fact, tenured professors of philosophy, the very subject the
young man was struggling to understand. They turned to him at once
and condescended to admit him to their conversation.
"Well," said the first philosopher, pushing his glasses up the bridge
of his nose, "see here. This is a tree." And pointing to the tree
the young man was already too-intimately familiar with, concluded with
apparent satisfaction, "As Circumplexius has said in the fourth book
of his De Scientia, 'An example is the best definition.'"
"I know that is a tree," replied the youth, rubbing his forehead.
"What I want to know is, Why is it there in the first place?"
"You see," said the other philosopher to the first, "the dance of
the blind with the senile." Then, momentarily stroking his beard, he
turned to the young man and continued, "A tree means what it is. The
concept of treedom does not subsist in some fortuitous, exogenous
hyle--that is the doctrine of carpenters, not of philosophers. As
Herman of Rimboa has aptly remarked, 'Inner eyes must perceive beyond
what the outer eyes see.'"
"And as the Chinese say, 'The flies buzz in the wind, but men drink
their tea,'" added the one with glasses. "Here, son," he went on,
pointing again, "this is also a tree. Compare them and deduce
treehood by subtracting the anomalous from the universal."
"Certainly you have read Dohesius On the Nature of the Universe in
the last twenty-five years," the other philosopher said with some
indignation. "Don't you recall his dictum that 'a second example is
not an explanation'? How do you pretend to instruct the ignorance of
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