The tiger you see madly pacing its cage is nevertheless preoccupied by something that a human would certainly recognize as a thought. And this thought is a question: Why
'Why, why, why, why, why, why,' the tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year. It cannot analyze the questions or elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, "Why what?" It would be unable to answer you.
Nevertheless this question burns like an unquenchable flame in its mind, inflicting a searing pain that does not diminish until the creature lapses into a final lethargy that zookeepers recognize as an irreversible rejection of life.
And of course this questioning is something that no tiger does in its normal habitat.
- in 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn
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