"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 youth when you have never instructed yourself? 'The canvas remains blank when the artist has no paint,' says Hugo de Brassus. Go back to your books."
"And as de Roquefort says, 'To sit on a cheese and eat whey is the destiny of fools.'"
"See here, young man," said the beard, ignoring his colleague, "treeness is a life process displaying the aspiration of matter toward hierarchy, order, and structure. It finds analogues and even homologues in life systems everywhere."
"The frogs croak at night, but the sky remains dark," said the glasses, smirking slightly.
"Nonsense," replied the beard. "What I have said is self-evident.
Sir Humphrey Boodle even noted it."
"But Boodle has been refuted these three hundred years."
"Well, Calesimon said so, too."