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 If we really want to solve a problem that is obssessing us, it is better to avoid attacking it outright; too much force might make it spook and get away from us. It is better to take it from the edges.
Thus, despite all the reasons we invent for ourselves, we do not really know why our ass is so unpredictible and even less why we allow ourselves to beat it until it bleeds whenever it turns off the path or refuses to budge.
 Let us forget for a moment the ass's behavior and our own, and put all our care into healing its wounds. It is advisable to stitch up the wounds oneself, and to decorate this work with fine plant motifs. To help us along, we should take example from surrounding nature. Thus, wound by wound, we will learn to better understand the world around us; we will conscientiously choose the switch for beating the ass and stitch up the resulting wound in the shape of the switch's greenery.
Little by little, the ass will become covered with embroidered leaves, and seem to us to blend into nature; and even when it goes off the right path, it will still seem like part of the landscape to us. We will no longer have any reason to beat it 'till it bleeds. Aside from the desire to complete our world herbarium.
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 That which one tries to hide, even for honorable reasons, always ends up coming out one day or another. Thus, despite all our attempts to keep it secret, the ass knows perfectly well that the day it is no longer able to carry anything, we will get a good price for its hide which will go for making tambourines and bass drums. This prospect does not however make the ass feel beaten down. On the contrary, it feels excited by the idea of someday joining in the rythm of the world. And perhaps the way it receives our blows so naturally is understandable to the extent that, for the ass, life is just a rehearsal for the Big Day. The ass never tarries, never up and refuses to go, but in expectation of the three strikes of the cane that announce the curtain rising on the promised land.
But what of us who do not share the ass's ideal, what prospect makes us beat him so?
Every day, in raising the stick to beat the ass, we rehearse the dignified movement of the fighter rising up against the fright of the last Day in order to delay it. Each day, this fright comes back to us in a different light; and so it is normal that, like any good musician, we learn to vary our blows.
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  When we beat or console our ass, we call it all sorts of names that we will have quickly forgotten. But how could we ever baptise it with a single and true name? Baptism is a hope we bestow on those we want to save; and our ass, despite the many things we load on its back, bears no hope for us. We know it could leave us at any moment.
We speak to our ass the way we speak to the unknown soldier. Regardless of which side he was on. What name can be given to the one who endured so much hatred and compassion; the one who, had he not been killed, might have deserted two minutes later? Even the wisest of nations, in their duty of remembrance, have not known how to answer this question.
Maybe we could give our ass a stage name, under which it would play all the martyr's and Judas's roles that we would like to see it play. But this would mean that in talking to it, we would also be part of the play. Under the name that God has given us.
N.B. If the occasion presents itself, we will not hesitate to take our ass along to the unknown soldier's tomb. The ass will rush straight to the flowers to eat them. At first, we will not understand that these flowers are as much the ass's as they are the Other's, and so will open its mouth to pull the flowers from between its teeth. But we will understand the ass is not cheating as soon as our head is in its jaw. There, we will discover a true battlefield: mutilated chrysanthemums bathed in the red of carnations, roses dripping with spit, tulips already halfway decomposed.
The ass will take its time to ruminate the flowers. Because it is not hungry. It is only our taster. With its eyes of a beaten dog, it tastes the misery of the world so that we can digest it without too much trouble.
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 Though the ass seems to dawdle on its way, it would be deeply unjust to criticize it for going too slowly, because it hasn't got the same conception of time and space as we have. It lives in the measure of paradise lost. At that time, its paws were more than three meters high. Then it sinned by ignorance, was cut off from itself, and given hooves as a prosthesis for its past grandeur. But just as the armless ever feel a tingling in their phantom limbs, the ass has still got his original paws in mind. To get an understanding of this, all you have to do is lift one of the ass's hooves and strike it violently with a stone: the shock wave will bounce back from three meters away. When it walks, the ass feels its paws extending underground. With each step, it is mentally turning over several cubic meters of the soil which will one day cover us.
So one should beware of making rash judgements. All the more so considering that our own feeling of speed is no more than a vestige of primitive times. Whereas the ass's ignorance shrank it, our sin of knowledge made us grow bigger. But let us not forget that despite this growth, the poor little thing we once were is still in our heads and that in its original hurry it was always desperately trying to avoid the long legs about to crush it.
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 It is written that the ass - especially when it is carrying the child that has just been born - can stop at any moment. On this path or elsewhere. Without apparent reason. If one wishes for the ass to get going again, one must speak gently into the hollow of its ear. This method has not the least chance of success, but is something one must go through.
It is advisable to place one's voice well in the animal's pavilion. Do not pay attention to the alluvium blocking the auricular furrows; this was not secreted by the ass, but deposited by impatient people hurling abuse. Their voices, overcharged, only made it half way.
 When one's voice reaches the eardrum, it will pierce it with a little cry of joy. This is nothing to worry about. The ass will not budge. It will play dead. Or be dead. For reasons beyond our will power, it will take many long years for the voice to move up the ass's acoustic meatus. Over the course of the operation, one will have grown considerably older oneself. This is no problem. The ass still won't budge. But it will not matter anymore. As we will have already carried the child that had just been born into adulthood.
From then on, it will be his turn, if he is patient enough to stand our presence at his side, to get us to move along by speaking gently into the hollow of our ear.
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Say our ass wants to go off the path for no apparent reason, and that this is the futile pretext for our going into an unspeakable rage. Say that in our anger we take a switch and whip the ass so hard it begins to bleed. Would this be cause to call us a monster? Yes it would. But a monster of confusion. For no sooner has remorse got us consoling the animal, than we will notice that the blood springing from its wounds is about to cover our face. The wounded ass always bleeds on the side of the one who struck it. Just as - said Lucrecius - semen springs out of man and covers the woman who has just wounded him with Venus's arrows.
The ass will not go on. Neither in its direction, nor in ours. It will wait to see what happens. It will share in our confusion. So we will continue to beat it, harder and harder, all the while speaking to it more and more softly. Because, torn between anger and consolation, our throat will be knotted in confusion. To undoe the knot that is strangling us, we will pull the rope at both ends.