Note: ^[1]

Α young and inexperienced man who wanted to reform the world went to the East in search of Wisdom. There he found a sage who presented him with a book which contained all the wisdom that can be found in the world. Thereupon the young man was exceedingly glad, and had the book nicely bound up in modern style, after which he started to return home to show the book to his friends. But on his way a storm arose and the ship in which he had taken passage was wrecked, and he landed on an island which was only inhabited by animals. He showed his book to the animals, and they all seemed to be delighted with the way in which it was bound. He then read the book to them, whereupon the lions roared, the monkeys chattered, the goats said “Mah-mah,” the sheep, “Bah-bah,” the asses, ‘‘Haw-hee, hee-haw,” and the oxen “Mooh-mooh”; in fact, each one of the animals acted just as before, according to its own nature; and whether or not the reading of that book did them any good has not yet been found out.

Notes

^[1] The Reformer. Franz Hartmann, M.D. The Word 7, no. 5 (August 1908), 294. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}