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Article: Notes a dog philosophy.(Literature)
- Article from:
- Quadrant
- Article date:
- May 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Quadrant Magazine Company, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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RABELAIS REMINDS US, in his prologue to Gargantua, that Plato calls the dog, in the second book of The Republic, the most philosophical creature. Dogs love to gnaw bones, the cortex of which must be broken open to allow them to savour the perfect nourishment of the marrow--la substantifique moelle. As Sir Thomas Urquhart puts it, in his Scots English translation of 1653:
In imitation of this Dog, it becomes you to be wise,
to smell, feele and have in estimation these faire
goodly books, stuffed with high conceptions, which
though seemingly easie in the pursuit, are in the
cope and encounter somewhat difficult; and then
like him you must, by a ...