Dear Anne,

This morning in the protracted twilight of awakening, I began once more
to reflect on your recent letter, pregnant as it is with so many unanswered
and perhaps unanswerable issues, to which my reply did not begin to do
justice. Not knowing where to begin, let me trott out one of the theories
espoused by Maximilian Katenus which has perhaps become lame from being 
overworked: that the original sin of our species is not the consumption 
of that fatal apple from the tree of knowledge. On the contrary, Eve was 
overly parsimonious to have supplied Adam with only one apple. Had she fed 
him a peck or a bushel, had she baked him an American apple pie or a Viennese 
Apfelstrudel she would have turned Adam into an elite intellectual, smart 
enough to understand that he (and she) were not better than all the (other) 
animals; that they were only one of many animal species, and by no means the 
loftiest, for that distinction belongs to the eagle which soars far above 
our heads.

At his trial, Katenus was charged with treason to the human race, because
he had taught that humans were not superior to (other) animals, and in some
ways inferior to them. He was charged with being in league with the Devil
because he, Katenus, not only claimed not to know the Truth, but even claimed
that Chief Justice Roberts did not know the Truth either, because the Truth was 
in God, and God was unknowable. At that juncture, the judge tried to suspend
the proceedings, on the grounds that further evidence would be cumulative
and need not be heard. Katenus however, who loved to hear himself, refused 
to listen, pretended he was deaf, and kept on talking.

I can't, at this juncture, remember everything Katenus said. Some of it will
come back to me. What sticks in my mind, was his point about demonization.
It is a debilitating characteristic of our thinking that we are all under-cover
Manicheans who deceive themselves by presuming to rationalize a world which
is multi-colored into black and white, good and evil, saints and sinners,
gods and devils. Rather than to presume to understand the world in terms of
our projected delusions, we should divest ourselves of prejudice, and allow
the experience of reality to reshape our understanding from day to day, if
not indeed, from our to hour. At that juncture the presiding judge found 
Katenus guilty of elite intellectuality, and ordered the colurt officers to 
silence Katenus with their tasers.

Now it's your turn. Tell me what happened next.

Jochen