Pity Not the Mole

“A small degree of vision is sufficient for a creature that is ever destined to live in darkness.  A more extensive sight would only have served to show the horrors of its prison.”

~Oliver Goldsmith (1774), quoted in Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes (1983)

Intolerable arrogance of the human mind!

Which pities the mole for being blind

And thinks it a mercy of man’s private God

To imprison a creature below the sod

And proceed to deprive what he enslaves

Of power to perceive its dismal cage.

            But consider this:

The mole, though blind, seeks not to blight

Others endowed with better sight

Nor does he imagine a Sky-Mole above

Who reserves for only moles his love—

Yet spite of all, man thinks his soul

Sees further than that of guileless mole.

            This is piss.

Mole afflicts not mole with poisonous toil

Nor condemns him to labor beneath the soil

Nor stocks up his brains with slanderous lies

Nor blackens his lungs and darkens his eyes

Nor purrs to himself complacently:

“It is a kindness he cannot see.”

           In light of this:

I see not why moles should stricken be

With patient, kindly contumely

Or have crocodile tears shed for them

By Mr. Oliver Goldsmith’s pen

Perhaps Moles, though blind, see further than

The featherless biped known as man.

            Remember this.