Some true answers...

"Some true answers are better than others, especially for their brevity."

-Peter Kreeft

LEPORIDE, from Alexandre Dumas’ Dictionary of Cuisine.

Alexandre Dumas’ Dictionary of Cuisine is a marvellous book. I want to try his recipes for kangaroo. Here is a delightful entry:

LEPORIDE. For the past six thousand years, more or less, scientists have been reproached with struggling against God, though unable ever to create even the smallest animal. Weary of reproaches, they set to work, and, in the same year of grace 1866, finally created the leporide. In doing this they defied not merely God, but even Buffon.

Observing the antipathy between rabbits and hares, despite their generally similar appearance, Buffon pronounced: “Never do the individuals approach each other.”

Buffon was mistaken.

The antipathy between the two was not racial. It had to do with the characters of the animals. If no two animals are more alike physically than the rabbit and the hare, neither are any two more different morally. The hare is a dreamer. His dwelling is the surface of the earth. He leaves his form only after the most elaborate precaution of turning the mobile organs of his hearing in every direction. He wanders about mostly by day, and does not return to his form after being chased from it two or three times.

The rabbit, on the other hand, seeks his repose in long, subterranean tunnels, which he himself digs and of which no one else knows the turnings. He emerges imprudently, generally at sundown, paying no attention to the noise he makes. Then, since he is very fond of clover, young shoots of grain, and wild thyme, he goes forth to seek these elegant hors d’oeuvres that are lacking in his forest. There he is ambushed by the huntsman and made to pay for his imprudence.

It has been said that the antipathy between the hare and the rabbit is such that a warren invaded by rabbits is immediately evacuated by hares, and vice versa. This is true. But this is because the noisy, freedom-loving rabbit sleeps by day and wakes by night, while the hare does the opposite. It is obvious that such a difference in living habits must make it impossible for two such creatures to share a habitation.

But it was precisely on this fact that the scientists counted. They took a litter of rabbits and a litter of hares whose eyes had not yet opened and fed them on cow’s milk, which, having no relation to either, could not inculcate preconceived prejudices through their nourishment. The two litters were kept in a dark room where, when their eyes opened, they were unable to observe the slight differences between their two species.

The animals believed themselves to belong to the same family. They were well nourished and had no reason to quarrel. They lived in brotherly friendship until they felt the early onset of love needs.

Then one day the scientists, who watched in relays so as to miss nothing of the conjugation adjudged impossible by Buffon, saw a rabbit doe and a buck hare approach each other with a more than fraternal tenderness. Then the little colony began to promise growth in such proportions as to leave no doubt of the crossing of these two races which supposedly could not even approach each other.

Twenty little ones resulted from this mysterious work of science. But nature held its own. The doe rabbits always littered eight or ten little ones, but doe hares never more than two. All that remained was to continue the experiment and give the lie completely to Buffon, who had said: “If, through an error, or weakness, or violence, the two races should make a rapprochement, the hybrids would not be capable of reproduction.”

These abnormal litters were isolated from all others of their kind. To the great satisfaction of the scientists, they followed their parents’ example and cross-bred among themselves. The crossing and reproduction continued.

Now we have completely new animals, the joy of their creators, who have named them leporides. They take after both the rabbit and the hare, but are bigger than either, weighing up to thirteen and fourteen pounds each.

Their meat is whiter than the hare’s and darker than the rabbit’s. They may be served with sauces invented for either. Within the next two or three years they should be sufficiently abundant to take an honorable place in our forests and our markets. I have been told they have already appeared in the markets at Mans and in Anjou.

The Société d’Acclimatation sent me one of these animals, on condition that I eat it. I can affirm that they have in no way degenerated from either of their ancestors.

"There is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity."

"Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth ... then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity... From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable."

-Benito Mussolini, Diuturna (1921), pages 374-77

Psalm 1: For Any who Suffer Persecution

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,

or take the path that sinners tread,

or sit in the seat of scoffers;

but their delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

and their leaves do not wither.

In all that they do, they prosper.

The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.