________________
THE MEMOIRS OF A CAT
don't you think it would be more appropriate to preach it to the owner of the bowl of milk? By addressing the sermon to me, you are again safcguarding the bowl of milk for its owner who has misappropriated it from the calf.
Take another example--this time concerning your own kind. In this case, you would perhaps see the point more clearly. One must always tell the truth. To lie is a sin. Now, suppose someone's son has committed an offence punishable by law. If the man tells a lic, his son can escape the penalty of law. What should the man do in such a painful predicament ? Tell the truth, or perform his paternal duty, which is to protect the son from danger ? Truth hcre runs counter to a natural feeling which is supposed to elevate man above the animal.
There are innumerable such instances when practice of truth not only violates some other code of morality, but often amounts to a veritable lie. In such predicaments, man must choose between the gods involved, although both of them are equally fickle. Subjected to the tyranny of words, man has lost the faculty of acting naturally, that is, according to his own judgment which can be correct only when determined by spontaneous emotion.
Whenever I chance upon a bowl of milk, a very rare occurrence in the world I am condemned to live in, owing to some crime committed in a pre
35
