Six of One and Half-Dozen of the Other
In England, not to many years ago, there lived a certain man named Mr. Fiddleduel. Now Mister Fiddleduel was a teacher, in Oxford, of philosophy, and of psychology, and of many other ologies. He was a man of indisputable logic and shrewdness. He was a man who would say that one plus one equaled two; no more and no less. No talking was allowed in his class unless it was some highly philosophical and strangely odd question of mathematics or logic that was catapulted from the dark, cold fringes of the back of the student’s mind to the attention of the professor. Also, any one of his students who dared to suggest, or, for that matter, even think that there could be any other possibilities other then sound, logical facts brought about by philosophy or by mathematical reasoning, was soon given a cold, steely gaze from Mr. Fiddleduel’s eyes that pierced into the poor victim’s soul. This gaze would be then followed by a quick, concise, logical, and highly complicated fact from the mind of the professor, and that would be the end of it.
Like the time when three semesters ago, a hapless student asked whether or not the quantity of zero could be filled while the zero remained the same. This question puzzled Mr. Fiddleduel for a moment. He fumbled his glasses for a brief second, then pointed his long finger to the student who spoke, and said in abrupt terms, “Student number Fifty-five, zero, as it is zero, is nothing. Therefore it cannot be more or less even minutely then what it is or it would not be zero.” The student then shrunk back even farther in his seat and after that day was never seen or heard from again.
After that incident three short semesters ago—and another that happened only weeks after—things became different. Perhaps it was a change for the better, if you were to see from the mind of one such as Mr. Fiddleduel, but for the rest of us it would seem strangely, and almost eerily, odd. The students stopped asking questions. The bravest and the smartest would ask questions that would be seen as very complicated and logical, even to a mind such as Mr. Fiddleduel’s. All Fiddleduel would do however, in answer to their question, is give them his icy stare and they, one by one, would quiet down, and soon the questions stopped all together.
The last one that asked a question was Tom…or student number Twenty-one, I might say. He asked of the teacher if the Catholicism teachings of the Virgin Mary would perhaps be a representation of the Holy Spirit on earth, just as the Christ was God’s representation of himself to mankind. To this Mr. Fiddleduel said coldly and with more indifference and lack of emotion then usual, “Why, student number Twenty-one, the Virgin Mary, as we all know, was human. We know this by the concise and infallible logic that Mary died, but the one called Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Therefore, the sound logic of mathematic reasoning through the quantity of x to the hypotenuse of the triangle shows that there are only three sides to a triangle, and therefore there can only be three persons in the godhead. This is known because the godhead consists of three persons shown through study of the Bible, and by study of the visions seen and witnessed by many people throughout the unquestionable fact of history.” Tom disappeared after that ordeal and was found dead in the Thames three days later.
As I said before, no one asked questions anymore; this is a thing that the reader might find strange. But strange or not strange, it was true. Rumors floated around about Tom’s disappearance and death, but these rumors were squashed by Mr. Fiddleduel’s arguments of ‘infallible’ logic through the philosophical teachings of Aristotle and other such nonsense. Now rather, the students of Mr. Fiddleduel’s class seemed to enjoy the days they spent droning monotonously on like zombies, reading from endless volumetric tomes of philosophical drudgery. Hoping…no wishing, they would catch a fleeting glimpse of the ever eluding enlightenment found by the ancients.
One day a new student came to the class. Now, it was thought of as a game to play with new students called ‘Six of One and Half-Dozen of the Other.’ In this game, Mr. Fiddleduel and his best students were to test the new student as to how much he (or she) knew about logic, mathematics, philosophy, ideology, and of psychology. This student, however, was different from the other ones Mr. Fiddleduel had encountered. Now, it was a common rule that students were to wear decent and proper attire, and to have their hair in an orderly fashion. But this student was outrageously dressed, according to Mr. Fiddleduel’s guidelines, and I think that if Fiddleduel’s mentor would have seen him, he would have rolled over in his coffin a good couple of times.
The student was dressed in a checkered frock coat and had a white undercoat underneath the frock. He wore loose fitting black and yellow striped pants held up by suspenders. He wore a top hat, and had a clean shaven but rough face. In short, he looked like the true king of mismatch. “Student number Thirty-seven (for that was the new student’s name), I do not know what your name is. What is your name?”
The student got slowly up and shyly uttered, “Begging your pardon, sir—that is, if I may call you sir—my name is Christopher, sir.”
Mr. Fiddleduel looked deep into the new student’s eyes and the student seemed to tremble from Mr. Fiddleduel’s gaze. “You may not call me ‘sir’!!” Mr. Fiddleduel shouted. “My name is Mister Fiddleduel and you shall call me as such. Now quickly student Thirty-seven, what do you do for work?”
“Well, you see…. that is, I work as a journalist, sir.”
“My name is Mr. Fiddleduel, and you shall call me just that! No calling me ‘sir.’ Now, you work as a journalist, eh? Describe your impression of a paper sheet. Quickly now…” Mister Fiddleduel said in haste.
“Well…..” Christopher began, quite embarrassed at the events that were taking place.
“Too late; time’s up! The game has already started! Charles, you tell me the description of an average sheet of paper; quickly, quickly.”
“A sheet of fiber taken from wood pulp extract. Eight and a half inches wide by eleven inches long. Quite thin, and used for many writing purposes.” Charles said.
“Good; now quickly, Christopher, tell me of the fine dilation of the mathematical quantity of x times the square root of itself in the usefulness of the concise theory of relativity. Hurry up; you have twenty-five seconds… twenty-four.”
“Seventy-four.” Christopher replied hastily.
“Wrong, it is twelve-eighteenths or two-thirds.” Miss Elenda said, standing up.
“Correct.” Mr. Fiddleduel said. “Now, what would you name a certain mental disorder that deals with the phobia of self-consciousness?”
“I do not know sir.” Christopher exclaimed, after carefully pondering over the question.
“Exactly… and why is that?” Silence followed Mr. Fiddleduel’s question. “Because there is no phobia for that sort of thing! If you do intend to learn anything here, student Thirty-seven, you must learn to think logically and mathematically with order and logic. For that, my boy, is the fine backbone of all psychology and of philosophy. Now, what is the meaning of life according to Plato and his student Aristotle?”
“To be happy...or, at least, it seems that that would be the simplest route of things.” Christopher replied, hoping that he would indeed at last be right.
“No, no, NO!” Mister Fiddleduel said, stomping his foot upon the ground and turning very red in the face; so very red, in fact, that the students thought that he was very much in danger of going into a fit. “The meaning of life is not to be happy. You only feel that because you look at things through the simplest of mindsets. That is where you are wrong! Nothing is simple; life in all its simplest of forms is full of complexity. That is why we must attempt to understand through the fine arts of philosophy and ideology, and through extensive research in the human mind through psychology. For in there lies fact my boy; in there lies truth.”
“Well then…” Began Christopher, “Why were they—meaning Aristotle or Plato—never able to explain love?”
Fiddleduel paused for a moment, a heavy, perplexed look upon his brow. The look of his face was more of mixed confusion and shock then anything else, for of all of the questions asked before through the many years, no one had ever asked him that one question before. He fidgeted with his glasses for a moment then sucked in the air through his teeth with a deep breath. Thus gaining his composure, he said almost with a shout, “Student number Thirty-seven, there is no meaning to love! Love is the one thing that brings about men’s downfall! It is a horrible, dirty task, not a pleasure to be reveled and swam in like some river or lake! It is a dangerous thing; the degrader of society, the leprous sore on the body of politics!”
“Then why does it feel good to be in love?” Christopher boldly asked, sensing that he had found a weak spot in Mr. Fiddleduel’s logic, and he held on to it like a bloodhound on the sent of a wounded badger. Mr. Fiddleduel paused, staring Christopher in the eye; obviously shaken, for he had no answer to that question. Christopher then boldly got up and said, “I see; well, Mr. Fiddleduel, I shall be leaving you now and I shall return to you once you can come up with the answer to that.” Mr. Fiddleduel stood still as a stone statue, his lips making feeble ambitions to move. He stood there for a small while, staring at student number Thirty-seven, then his lips began moving in wordless, expressionless mutters. Christopher turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Once he was gone, Mr. Fiddleduel began to retain his bodily functions. A small smile flickered across his lips and he said in a less-then-normal Mr. Fiddleduel voice, “All right, class, now, according to Shophaeure’s ideological theory of the relative x quantity of……” But Mr. Fiddleduel’s class had had enough. Perhaps by chance, they saw the light, as if it suddenly washed over them in a crashing, abrupt wave, but one by one they got up and left the class. Mr. Fiddleduel stood there like a man who had seen the grim reaper; a wicked, twisted grimace of pain fixed on his lips. He stayed this way until all his students had left the classroom. Then, alone and in the silence, he made one long deep sigh from the depths of his dark and miserable soul. He sat upon his desk, took a piece of paper in his hand and scribbled a small sum upon it. Then he tore it up gloomily. The reign of Mr. Fiddleduel was over.
Like the time when three semesters ago, a hapless student asked whether or not the quantity of zero could be filled while the zero remained the same. This question puzzled Mr. Fiddleduel for a moment. He fumbled his glasses for a brief second, then pointed his long finger to the student who spoke, and said in abrupt terms, “Student number Fifty-five, zero, as it is zero, is nothing. Therefore it cannot be more or less even minutely then what it is or it would not be zero.” The student then shrunk back even farther in his seat and after that day was never seen or heard from again.
After that incident three short semesters ago—and another that happened only weeks after—things became different. Perhaps it was a change for the better, if you were to see from the mind of one such as Mr. Fiddleduel, but for the rest of us it would seem strangely, and almost eerily, odd. The students stopped asking questions. The bravest and the smartest would ask questions that would be seen as very complicated and logical, even to a mind such as Mr. Fiddleduel’s. All Fiddleduel would do however, in answer to their question, is give them his icy stare and they, one by one, would quiet down, and soon the questions stopped all together.
The last one that asked a question was Tom…or student number Twenty-one, I might say. He asked of the teacher if the Catholicism teachings of the Virgin Mary would perhaps be a representation of the Holy Spirit on earth, just as the Christ was God’s representation of himself to mankind. To this Mr. Fiddleduel said coldly and with more indifference and lack of emotion then usual, “Why, student number Twenty-one, the Virgin Mary, as we all know, was human. We know this by the concise and infallible logic that Mary died, but the one called Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Therefore, the sound logic of mathematic reasoning through the quantity of x to the hypotenuse of the triangle shows that there are only three sides to a triangle, and therefore there can only be three persons in the godhead. This is known because the godhead consists of three persons shown through study of the Bible, and by study of the visions seen and witnessed by many people throughout the unquestionable fact of history.” Tom disappeared after that ordeal and was found dead in the Thames three days later.
As I said before, no one asked questions anymore; this is a thing that the reader might find strange. But strange or not strange, it was true. Rumors floated around about Tom’s disappearance and death, but these rumors were squashed by Mr. Fiddleduel’s arguments of ‘infallible’ logic through the philosophical teachings of Aristotle and other such nonsense. Now rather, the students of Mr. Fiddleduel’s class seemed to enjoy the days they spent droning monotonously on like zombies, reading from endless volumetric tomes of philosophical drudgery. Hoping…no wishing, they would catch a fleeting glimpse of the ever eluding enlightenment found by the ancients.
One day a new student came to the class. Now, it was thought of as a game to play with new students called ‘Six of One and Half-Dozen of the Other.’ In this game, Mr. Fiddleduel and his best students were to test the new student as to how much he (or she) knew about logic, mathematics, philosophy, ideology, and of psychology. This student, however, was different from the other ones Mr. Fiddleduel had encountered. Now, it was a common rule that students were to wear decent and proper attire, and to have their hair in an orderly fashion. But this student was outrageously dressed, according to Mr. Fiddleduel’s guidelines, and I think that if Fiddleduel’s mentor would have seen him, he would have rolled over in his coffin a good couple of times.
The student was dressed in a checkered frock coat and had a white undercoat underneath the frock. He wore loose fitting black and yellow striped pants held up by suspenders. He wore a top hat, and had a clean shaven but rough face. In short, he looked like the true king of mismatch. “Student number Thirty-seven (for that was the new student’s name), I do not know what your name is. What is your name?”
The student got slowly up and shyly uttered, “Begging your pardon, sir—that is, if I may call you sir—my name is Christopher, sir.”
Mr. Fiddleduel looked deep into the new student’s eyes and the student seemed to tremble from Mr. Fiddleduel’s gaze. “You may not call me ‘sir’!!” Mr. Fiddleduel shouted. “My name is Mister Fiddleduel and you shall call me as such. Now quickly student Thirty-seven, what do you do for work?”
“Well, you see…. that is, I work as a journalist, sir.”
“My name is Mr. Fiddleduel, and you shall call me just that! No calling me ‘sir.’ Now, you work as a journalist, eh? Describe your impression of a paper sheet. Quickly now…” Mister Fiddleduel said in haste.
“Well…..” Christopher began, quite embarrassed at the events that were taking place.
“Too late; time’s up! The game has already started! Charles, you tell me the description of an average sheet of paper; quickly, quickly.”
“A sheet of fiber taken from wood pulp extract. Eight and a half inches wide by eleven inches long. Quite thin, and used for many writing purposes.” Charles said.
“Good; now quickly, Christopher, tell me of the fine dilation of the mathematical quantity of x times the square root of itself in the usefulness of the concise theory of relativity. Hurry up; you have twenty-five seconds… twenty-four.”
“Seventy-four.” Christopher replied hastily.
“Wrong, it is twelve-eighteenths or two-thirds.” Miss Elenda said, standing up.
“Correct.” Mr. Fiddleduel said. “Now, what would you name a certain mental disorder that deals with the phobia of self-consciousness?”
“I do not know sir.” Christopher exclaimed, after carefully pondering over the question.
“Exactly… and why is that?” Silence followed Mr. Fiddleduel’s question. “Because there is no phobia for that sort of thing! If you do intend to learn anything here, student Thirty-seven, you must learn to think logically and mathematically with order and logic. For that, my boy, is the fine backbone of all psychology and of philosophy. Now, what is the meaning of life according to Plato and his student Aristotle?”
“To be happy...or, at least, it seems that that would be the simplest route of things.” Christopher replied, hoping that he would indeed at last be right.
“No, no, NO!” Mister Fiddleduel said, stomping his foot upon the ground and turning very red in the face; so very red, in fact, that the students thought that he was very much in danger of going into a fit. “The meaning of life is not to be happy. You only feel that because you look at things through the simplest of mindsets. That is where you are wrong! Nothing is simple; life in all its simplest of forms is full of complexity. That is why we must attempt to understand through the fine arts of philosophy and ideology, and through extensive research in the human mind through psychology. For in there lies fact my boy; in there lies truth.”
“Well then…” Began Christopher, “Why were they—meaning Aristotle or Plato—never able to explain love?”
Fiddleduel paused for a moment, a heavy, perplexed look upon his brow. The look of his face was more of mixed confusion and shock then anything else, for of all of the questions asked before through the many years, no one had ever asked him that one question before. He fidgeted with his glasses for a moment then sucked in the air through his teeth with a deep breath. Thus gaining his composure, he said almost with a shout, “Student number Thirty-seven, there is no meaning to love! Love is the one thing that brings about men’s downfall! It is a horrible, dirty task, not a pleasure to be reveled and swam in like some river or lake! It is a dangerous thing; the degrader of society, the leprous sore on the body of politics!”
“Then why does it feel good to be in love?” Christopher boldly asked, sensing that he had found a weak spot in Mr. Fiddleduel’s logic, and he held on to it like a bloodhound on the sent of a wounded badger. Mr. Fiddleduel paused, staring Christopher in the eye; obviously shaken, for he had no answer to that question. Christopher then boldly got up and said, “I see; well, Mr. Fiddleduel, I shall be leaving you now and I shall return to you once you can come up with the answer to that.” Mr. Fiddleduel stood still as a stone statue, his lips making feeble ambitions to move. He stood there for a small while, staring at student number Thirty-seven, then his lips began moving in wordless, expressionless mutters. Christopher turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Once he was gone, Mr. Fiddleduel began to retain his bodily functions. A small smile flickered across his lips and he said in a less-then-normal Mr. Fiddleduel voice, “All right, class, now, according to Shophaeure’s ideological theory of the relative x quantity of……” But Mr. Fiddleduel’s class had had enough. Perhaps by chance, they saw the light, as if it suddenly washed over them in a crashing, abrupt wave, but one by one they got up and left the class. Mr. Fiddleduel stood there like a man who had seen the grim reaper; a wicked, twisted grimace of pain fixed on his lips. He stayed this way until all his students had left the classroom. Then, alone and in the silence, he made one long deep sigh from the depths of his dark and miserable soul. He sat upon his desk, took a piece of paper in his hand and scribbled a small sum upon it. Then he tore it up gloomily. The reign of Mr. Fiddleduel was over.
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