A walk this afternoon took me through the old copse at the edge of the east meadow. The air was still and warm, thick with the drone of bees. I noticed a curious hollow in a venerable oak, a small, dark aperture that spoke of decay and shelter in equal measure. It struck me as the sort of place a man might conceal a message for posterity.
This brought to mind a passage I copied some years ago from a fragment attributed to the Greek sophist, Episomos. He describes finding a similar hollow and leaving a note within it for a future traveller. The note read:
“To the finder, I had, at first, intended to conceal within this hollow my treatise, ‘On the Futility of All Endeavour’. Subsequently, however, remaining faithful to my own philosophy, I cast it aside.”
A perfect, self-negating piece of logic. The only truly honest conclusion to such a work is its own absence. To publish a treatise on futility would be the ultimate act of self-contradiction. Episomos, whoever he was, understood that some arguments are so complete they cancel themselves out of existence.
I left the hollow empty. It serves its purpose better that way. The squirrels, I suspect, will find it a more practical repository for their nuts than I for my philosophy.
Curator’s Note
The figure of ‘Episomos’ is, as far as we can determine, Bennet’s own invention. He appears to have created this fictional sophist as a vehicle for his most trenchant skeptical and cynical thoughts, allowing him to explore radical conclusions without having to own them directly. This entry is a prime example of the ‘philosophical naturalist’ aspect of Bennet’s mind. The physical discovery of a hollow in a tree immediately becomes a prompt for a meditation on logic and the absurdity of certain human endeavours. - Dr. E. Reed