Jan
25th
Fri
25th
Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge
According to this, there are 14 types of animal in the world:
- those that belong to the Emperor,
- embalmed ones,
- those that are trained,
- suckling pigs,
- mermaids,
- fabulous ones,
- stray dogs,
- those included in the present classification,
- those that tremble as if they were mad,
- innumerable ones,
- those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
- others,
- those that have just broken a flower vase,
- those that from a long way off look like flies.
Useless, wonderful, and beautiful — imperfect categorization is better than none at all.
Turning your vast, nebulous, inter-related technical knowledge into a bunch of neatly titled chapter compartments might feel like this.
Wouldn’t you love to read a book about natural history if that was the TOC?