THE ASS

Can we talk about hay?

Hay? I think first of the stable, and of that warm, persistent scent that clings to the clothes long after one has left it. Appetite is not a punctual faculty. It lingers, it colors judgment. I doubt we ever approach our objects with the balance philosophers attribute to us—

There are two heaps.

Two?

One there. One there.

What a pleasant imagination. To fancy a mind exactly balanced between two equal desires; for, doubtless, it can never pitch upon either. Were we set betwixt the bottle and the ham with an equal appetite to drink and eat, we would have no remedy but to die of thirst and hunger. Yet nothing presents itself to us wherein there is not some difference, how little soever; there is always some choice that, though imperceptibly, tempts and attracts us.

If the two are equal in all relevant respects, the situation is symmetrical and the case analytically trivial. There is no need to appeal to the imperceptible.

If the case is so neatly disposed of in your calculus, pray instruct the poor beast how he is to proceed.

He should flip a coin.

I do not have a coin.

How readily we surrender our perplexities to metal. I have seen men consult coins before duels, before marriages, before voyages. We call it chance, but often it is merely fatigue disguised as courage.

Well, then let me be precise and consider the matter in a wider frame. If they are equal in all relevant respects, they are merely two points on what I have called a curve of indifference.

They are not a curve.

They are two heaps.

Curves are drawn by the mind, not by the hay. And the mind is a restless draftsman. It straightens what is crooked, balances what was never equal, and then wonders at the stillness it has invented. We mistake our diagrams for the world and call the world defective when it refuses to obey them.

If utility is identical at both points, there is no difficulty in mathematical terms. Either choice is admissible. Why not go left, then?

Yes, do. For I imagine it may smell a trifle sweeter, perhaps more matured in the sun. We are seldom as indifferent as we pretend; even when we say left, we already suspect it preferable. And I have observed in other assemblies that those who seat themselves to the left are rarely without conviction.

My only conviction is hunger.

Hunger increases the marginal utility of food. It increases your urgency.

Urgency is a tyrant, not a guide. It constrains rather than counsels. Under its rule we mistake haste for judgment.

I am still between two piles.

Piles, you say. A word not without its ambiguities. I have suffered from certain piles myself, though of a most unphilosophical sort, and I assure you they admit of no indifference whatsoever.

Luckily not on my arse.