Thursday, December 23, 2004

The scientific temper

I asked him whether he had any genuine enemies. I suppose it would have been more to the point to ask him whether he had any genuine friends.

‘You’ve got to have enemies, haven’t you, where I live,’ he said. ‘That’s why I never walk, I always creep.’

‘Do you ever get into fights?’ I asked.

‘I’m up for assault,’ he said, ‘because I get these violent mood swings.’

‘Whom did you assault?’

‘One of my mates.’

‘And why?’

‘Because I wanted to see how he would like it to be beaten up.’

A disinterested inquiry into truth, therefore.

From a column in the Spectator by that marvellous essayist, Theodore Dalrymple.

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