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The old schoolmen were fond of quoting Buridan's Ass, that famous Donkey who, when placed between two bundles of hay, starved to death because he was unable to decide in favour of either by breaking the equilibrium between two equal but opposite attractions. They slandered the worthy animal.
It is as if the whole wood were full of friendly voices calling you farther in, and you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's donkey, in a maze of pleasure. Comely beeches send up their white, straight, clustered branches, barred with green moss, like so many fingers from a half-clenched hand.
After all, this last word of moral science is scarcely more than the cry of Pyrrhus set betwixt good and evil, or Buridan's ass between the two measures of oats. But let this everlasting question alone, resolved to-day by a 'Yes' and a 'No. What experience did you look to find by a jump into the Seine? Were you jealous of the hydraulic machine on the Pont Notre Dame?"
And the wonderful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart tinkling to a new tune or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest. it is as if the whole wood were full of friendly voice, calling you farther in, and you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's donkey, in a maze of pleasure.
The bill fell through with a minority of 108 votes; the Mountain had, accordingly, thrown the casting vote It now found itself in the predicament of Buridan's donkey, not, indeed, between two sacks of hay, forced to decide which of the two was the more attractive, but between two showers of blows, forced to decide which of the two was the harder; fear of Changarnier, on one side, fear of Bonaparte, on the other.
In consequence of this, the case also of Buridan's ass between two meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot occur in the universe, in the order of Nature, although M. Bayle be of another opinion.
Now if you are accustomed to writing articles for a living, you will know that sometimes the difficulty is not writing the article, but choosing a subject. It is not that subjects are few: it is that they are so many. It is not poverty you suffer from, but an embarrassment of riches. You are like Buridan's ass.
Immovables were thought more worthy of protection against execution and distress than movables, and movables than money. Aquinas advises the rulers of States to encourage the artes possessivae, especially agriculture. The fullest analysis of the order in which the different artes possessivae should be ranked is to be found in Buridan's Commentaries on Aristotle's Politics.
The crux of Buridan's donkey was as nothing to the uncertainty of the boy as he handled and lingered and doated on these bundles of delight; there was a physical pleasure in the sight and touch of them which he would jealously prolong; and when at length the deed was done, the play selected, and the impatient shopman had brushed the rest into the grey portfolio, and the boy was forth again, a little late for dinner, the lamps springing into light in the blue winter's even, and The Miller, or The Rover, or some kindred drama clutched against his side on what gay feet he ran, and how he laughed aloud in exultation!
It is pathetic to think of the mediæval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle were alive, but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern mind.
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