'If a lion could talk, we wouldn't understand it' Wittgenstein Would it talk, but in such a thick, lionish accent we couldn't understand a word, or maybe speak perfect English, or whatever language we happen to speak ourselves, but sound to our biased ears as if it was only growling? Would it play tricks on us, hold long conversations from behind a tree or rock, or call us up on the telephone, selling timeshares in safari holidays? Would it get frustrated at being called 'it' all the time, would it lecture us on lion psychology and how, despite our best intentions, we could never understand? Would it engage in cat and mouse style language games, claim that eating us at the end of such affairs was, for it, a means of communication, fitting us in to its scheme of things, via an oral act? Or none of the above, would it just prowl on the edge of some lexical forest, another thought- experimental animal, misunderstood and silent, fading to an enigmatic smile, a single quoted line?