“ ‘Aim high’ has been my motto,” said Sir Humphrey, “all through my life. You probably won’t get what you want, but you may get something; aim low, and you get nothing at all. It’s like throwing a stone at a cat. When I was a kid that used to be great sport in our yard; I dare say you were throwing cricket-balls when you were that age, but it’s the same thing. If you throw straight at it, you fall short; aim above, and with luck you score. Every kid knows that. I’ll tell you the story of my life.”
´Aim high ´is a good piece of advice in general, but in this case I think it´s not quite correct. Or at least it
doesn´t agree about the solution of the famous mental experiment of the hunter
and the monkey. With some simple equations of elemental Physics ( which I don´t
write here in order not to chase any hipotetycal reader away) can be proved that
if the monkey ( or the cat) falls at the moment of listening the shot, the
hunter always scores if he´s aiming to
the monkey. But if you throw a stone at a cat, he can react and fall a bit
later, that´s why Evelyn Waugh suggests
this adjustment in this novel whose tittle, by the way, is so suitable for this
post
