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Untitled [Lion, Myself, Stockholm]: photo by Hans Söderstrom, 13 April 2014
II.xi. "What is internal is hidden from us." --- The future is hidden from us. But does the astronomer think like this when he calculates an eclipse of the sun?
If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.
We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language, we do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them.
"I cannot know what goes on in him" is above all a picture. It is the convincing expression of a conviction. They are not readily accessible.
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.Ludwig Wittgenstein: from Philosophical Investigations, c. 1945-1949
If a lion could talk,
...would he talk to Mark
...would he talk to Matthew
...would he talk to Luke
...would he talk to John
...would he talk to Mark
...would he talk to Matthew
...would he talk to Luke
...would he talk to John
or to the four archangels
mounted on the queen's bedposts
No
even if he were in great pain
even if his life were ending
even if the hyena pack were closing in
and the vultures already wheeling in patient circles
in a wide early evening sky
he would not let on
he would not let on
and we would continue to fail to understand him
