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There was a boy who wished to learn humility and pride in order to become skillful and worthy in the woods, who suddenly found himself becoming so skillful so rapidly that he feared he would never become worthy because he had not learned humility and pride, although he had tried to. Until one day and as suddenly he discovered either had led him, as though by the hand, to that point where an old bear and a little mongrel of a dog showed him that, by possessing one thing other, he would possess them both.

And a little dog, nameless and mongrel and may-fathered grown, yet weighing less than six pounds, saying as if to itself, “I can’t be dangerous, because there’s nothing much smaller than I am; I can’t be fierce because they would call it just a noise; I can’t be humble, because I’m already too close to the ground to genuflect; I can’t be proud, because I wouldn’t be near enough to it for anyone to know who was casting the shadow, and I don’t even know that I’m not going to heaven, because they have already decided that I don’t possess and immortal soul. So all I can be is brave. But it’s all right. I can be that even if they still call it just noise.”