Why is the sausage going wrong?

In a larger society of professors and lecturers of the university and cosmopolitan

city of L., I raised the question: Why is the sausage rather obliquely than straight cut
so that the cut surface as the discs are not circular, but elliptical (oval) represent?
The thing does not seem worth the question; but ingenuity can easily be practiced,
and perhaps one learns not reluctantly how the ingenuity of such learned men
practiced it. And if even great principles on the small can be explained just as well,
only cuterly rather than big, why not all the more the little principles that we want to
use here to answer the question?
In the future, one should only listen to an ear every time one encounters the
aesthetically disagreeable words "sausage", which deprives many fine-mouthed
people of the taste of the sausage itself and thus threatens the same fate for this essay.
"Sausage might try to imitate some German singers who does not want to recommend
the German taste without success by Italianizing her name, but would probably be
even worse with the beautiful name, as it already has become against today already in
the present time, because even in the old days still like that since Freytag has brought
her good name, but in sausages she was really a good one, mocking the honest name
of the experiment, and since otherwise one often has to put up with it, that it sounds
bad,If you call a thing by the right name, you can probably put up with it here.
From the outset, it would be hard to believe that so many answers to the simple
question could be found when I received them, and the decision between them may
remain so dubious as to show what some respect for the question can bring, as it does
that has in common with the biggest problems. Some of those present even gave
several answers; and most fruitful in this respect was the Professor of Philosophy W.,
who, though denying the fact itself, gave four different explanations of the fact,
unlike other philosophers who have only one explanation for all the facts in the
world. For this, some agreed in the same answer or changed only the form of the
same. Since the question itself was half joking, The answers were partly joking or
sought in the interest of originality. But there must also be a serious answer to it,
which can be searched without being sought.
But before we go out to find them, I have the answers followed indiscriminately
according to the series, as I find them recorded in the note (already in bold, dated a
number of years ago). It's all really given, not made by me answers. In doing so, I
will designate the originators (including some foreigners) by the initial and end letters
of their name, in order to facilitate the guessing of the authors in a later history of the
problem without saving it, remembering how much the great art question about the
actual originator of the Dresden Holbein'schen Madonna the connoisseurs, which
they declare for a non-Holbein'sche would come in their helplessness in guessing the
same if they knew only the beginning and end of his name; but if one knew this
completely, then the question also removed the interest of the question. So here are
the answers to the repeated title question:
"Why is the sausage going wrong?"
1) Because the oblique cut is the most natural one; because of infinitely many slanted
cuts can be taken just once. (Wkd.)
2) Because you are worried about the round shape, the sausage slice could run
away. (Wkd.)
3) Because the elliptical shape is in itself more graceful, if not vice versa it is more
graceful because it recalls the cut sausage. (KOe).
4) Because the elliptical shape joins the elongated trajectory of the sausage
more. (KOe).
5) Because the sausage slices are larger in the elliptical shape. (Rór, MóI, Schór.)
6) According to the mechanical conditions of the sausage at hand, the sausage is
easier to cut askew than straight. (Róe) SóI, Hón, the latter with the remark that you
also cut beans wrong.)
7) (More definite motivation of No. 3.) Because the ellipse as a higher-order curve
gives more pleasure than the circle. (0óck, Aós.)
8) The fact is denied by Wóe, because his wife and daughters cut the sausage just as
often as wrong, which Wó ch, W ó ck, Wór (oddly enough, by the same initial letter
nothing but name of the sausage) agree.
9) One must distinguish. A blood sausage becomes lighter and rather straight, a liver
sausage is cut obliquely because the liver sausage is firmer. (Sór.) Fón distinguishes
in the same respect rather between thick and thin sausages. So one after substance,
the other according to dimensions.
10) The housewife looks through the larger section to show the goodness of the
sausage to the guest. (POI).
11) The straight cut has something violent, as the poet says: "degree goes out the
lightning, the cannon ball terrible path" etc. The oblique section has more the
character of the gentle train; in the case of women, however, the gentle
prevails. (Wkd.)
12) A thin disk, obliquely made of a cylinder, gives the eye, with equal thickness,
more marginal surface, and therefore is more easily slanted than straight, as the
author of this view found in his plant averages an opportunity to observe. (Hor.)
13) Out of the spirit of contradiction against the men who love the straight. (Wkd.)
14) Out of consideration for the sausage lobes. In the case of straight cuts, the slices
become smaller towards the end, and in the case of oblique cuts the inequality is not
so noticeable. (Week).
15) Because from the obliquely-cut slices the grease-burrows are less likely to fall out
than from the straight-cut (from St. Móe.)
If someone else finds another explanation, he will prove more ingenuity than any
professor they could not find. Of course, since not only Prof. W., but a few others
denied the facts themselves, it may from the outset appear unreasonable to think of a
serious explanation of them, for I am reminded of the familiar questionable stories of
the king who asked the scholars of his country why a fish done in a vessel full of
water did not overflow it; and from the member of a learned academy, who, having
turned a glass globe shining in the garden, asked to his summoned colleagues the
question why the sunshine made the ball above cold and warm below.
In the meantime, we do not have to arrange to be in a similar case with the question
posed here; for it will be necessary to admit that, if not everywhere, the crooked
sausage slice is predominantly preferred to the straight; therefore, a question of the
merit of preference can also be asked. From the explanations that have been tried,
however, we leave aside those who may be too flattered by a serious consideration,
and at first throw aside those who are too flattered to be the right ones.
Especially the first. To be sure, it does not seem quite natural that the oblique
incision, as the more general case, must be more often and more easily accidentally
hit than it is at the moment. Yes, if only the cutting of a sausage was a matter of
chance. But everywhere we see, when a process is repeated many times, that it
establishes itself in a certain way, determined either by pleasure or purpose, or
both. So one does not cut into a roast by accident, but a certain rule of precutting has
been formed, the reason of which one could just as well ask as the reason of the
sausage cut; but we stay with this.
If the first explanation is not quite right, the second seems to make every other
superfluous if we remember how easily the round money runs out of our hands, and
how unpleasant it is that it runs away; Even with the sausage slice but it would be
uncomfortable. Meanwhile, in order to prevent the sausage slice, the fork is enclosed,
and one would only wish that many young spendthrift at the appropriate fork for his
money was not missing. So let's take this explanation to the previous one and jump
straight into the middle with the rest, the sixth.
Is not it really the right thing to do, according to its mechanical relation to sausage,
more convenient to cut the sausage askew than straight? But the reverse is to be
expected. For, if you place the sausage in front of you with your left hand to cut it
with your right, and do both as casually and comfortably as possible, sausage and
knife both take a crooked position to the body, but right angles to each other , as a
result of which one has to expect the straight cut. In addition, the straight cut is faster
and easier due to sawing lower mass. If the skewness of the cut were determined by
the ease of its execution, why would not the wood also be skewed rather than straight
through or sawed through? So even with this explanation nothing.
Let's try it with your neighbor number 5, after which the sausage is cut through
obliquely, because the sausage slices are larger thereby. In fact, that while the circle
of all possible figures includes the largest surface, the circular average of a cylinder,
for which one can take a proper sausage, is the smallest of all possible
intersections. Also, mathematics, as you can see, has its moods. In general, everyone
prefers to pick a big peach or plum instead of a small one. Why should not he
generally prefer to grab a big sausage slice instead of a small one? The at the same
time frugal and hospitable housewife, however, seeks to awaken the impression of
large slips to the husband or guest even with the thinnest sausage, which gives the
never-for-want weekly or monthly allowance. This is what the crooked sausage slice
does. He looks like a magnifying glass. Because, of course, the guest would be very
deceived ñ and I hope to earn his thanks for this hint, ñ if he meant to get more
sausage with the larger sausage cuts. Rather, as everywhere great depth can not be
tolerated with great superficiality, here the remark made by the Professor of Botany H
under no. 12 can be considered.
In the meantime the sausage slice is not supposed to be calculated for an indecent
appetite, since a large stomach is no more considered to be an ornament of the human
than a large mouth for an external one; Thus, the housewife returns to the straight
cuts in the elephantine mass sausages, and in general assumes the inclination for this
slice with the thickness of the sausage, which enters into the remark made in No. 9 of
F. For the same reason, one does not offer butter cuts to all bread, except children,
who are little wolverines, or boasters, which are big ones. The housewife, however,
proves her education by measuring the slices correctly according to the degree of
education of her guests.
Is one satisfied with this? The previous explanation, as one expresses it, may not
really be without; but is certainly only something with; and should anyone expect her
to visit something, how can I prove to him that she is not? Perhaps only by the fact
that it was found by No. 5 of more than one, and since it was a professor of
economics, a professor of medicine, and a professor of mathematics, who agreed
upon it, the adjunct opinion of a lady came with it So this explanation presents itself
as a Rome, where many roads lead. So far, however, we have considered mere
declarations of purpose in the first place, and the explanations have not yet been
considered for reasons of pleasure or beauty, for which reason intersperses nos. 3 and
7, but in a certain way also 4 and 11 belong; and as these explanations involved a
professor of jurisprudence, a professor of archeology of art, a professor of practical
philosophy, and a professor of theoretical philosophy, to whom I may still associate
myself as a professor of this and that, we have a second Rome, where many paths
lead.
In fact, the previous purpose may not be that it alone is enough. What comes on the
blackboard does not just fill you up. But also taste good and look good; The previous
explanation does, however, as if it would be enough to make it full without getting
satiated. And with all things else, it's not just about size, but also about shape; the
previous explanation does, however, as if it were all about size alone. Rather, the
oblique direction and the elliptical shape of the sausage slice will serve to add the
pleasantriness to convenience, thereby elevating the sausage from an object that
merely tastes to an object of taste.
But, one will say, is not that the wrong world? What could give leaning everywhere
a preference for complacency in front of the straight line, robbing the circle of such
one from all other figures? How bad does a crooked nose, a slanted mouth, a slate
tower, a slate look, etc. look like. Yes, once you go into the rooms of two professors
or students, and see why it depends, that one consistently makes the agreeable
impression of order, the other the displeasing of debauchery. One will find that in one
of them books, manuscripts, writing utensils, pens, cigars, etc., all are di straight
parallel and perpendicular to each other, in the other everything is wrong against each
other. And from the other side, which figure would be purer and more self-
contained, made the impression of a more harmonious fullness, of a more perfect
regularity, of a more self-fulfilling satisfaction than the circle? He represents among
the characters the all-round genius, each other only a one-sided talent. It has always
been true that the circle has always been explained as the most perfect figure, and at
first unwilling to believe in the elliptical shape of the planetary orbits, because, as
heavenly, they must at the same time be the most perfect, that is, circular. Of course
they are not, but they are not seen, and so they do not visibly disturb the heavenly
harmony. On the other hand, sun, moon, the perimeter of the horizon, which one sees,
are circular; the earthly money, the plates, the wheels, the dials are circular, the cross
section of the trees, the pillars, the vessels, the sticks and sticks is circular, and all that
would look bad if it were other than circular. Everything in the world at all would be
circular if not so many unilateral purposes, which are but mere values of perfection,
were tugging, crushing, and chiselling on things, and that alone is the reason that the
whole human being is not a globe; yet its main part approaches, the head, and its
most beautiful part, the eye, the ball and the star of the eye is even the purest
circle. Do you think that Paris offered Venus a lemon as the price of beauty? that the
whole man is not a bullet; yet its main part approaches, the head, and its most
beautiful part, the eye, the ball and the star of the eye is even the purest circle. Do you
think that Paris offered Venus a lemon as the price of beauty? that the whole man is
not a bullet; yet its main part approaches, the head, and its most beautiful part, the
eye, the ball and the star of the eye is even the purest circle. Do you think that Paris
offered Venus a lemon as the price of beauty?
It all sounds pretty nice, but it's all far-fetched without being so far away, as it's
only from the study table, even with my own from earlier times. But now you make
the very simple experiment that matters here, ie cut two straight sausages, one
straight, the other wrong, and one will find, if one puts them next to each other, that
one after only just as it seems to be hacked, staring stiffly at us with its circular
countenance, while the other one gains our inclination, turning the lovely oval of her
face to us with just such lovely affection. And to complete the experiment, put one
plate with circular discs and another with elliptical discs of the same sausage opposite
each other.
How to resolve the contradiction? Is the sausage such a peculiar creature, that all
the beauty-rules of the figure turn to her for a name contrary to beauty? Not at
all; You just have to make wrong rules and think that the foot does not fit the shoes,
where rather the shoe does not fit the foot; and so far every shoe that one has wanted
to wear for beauty has been found too far or too narrow for her, hence the goddess of
beauty is always portrayed barefoot. The straight can be beautiful, but also the
crookedness can be beautiful. A crooked belt around the waist looks bad, of course,
but a bandelier that goes awry all over the body does not look bad at all, and the
crooked ligament on which Diana wears the quiver probably takes on the beauty belt
of Aphrodite. How beautifully a garland or flowering tendril climbs up a pillar in
crooked turns, and how bad would it be if one wanted to make straight ringlets out of
it, or replace the crooked turns of the national colors with signposts and turnpikes
with transverse stripes. The labels on the wine bottles usually run straight around the
belly; but if it looks quite graceful, they will go awry, but it will make reading
difficult. I saw a tombstone the other day in the form of a truncated tree trunk with
the usual inscription plate on it; he was not exactly, but quite wrongly trimmed after
the example of the sausage. So the artist cuts himself off, while the woodcutter, who
does not care for good-will, trims the tribes in the forest; and you watch,
In short, wherever a body stretches out long, the eye finds itself offended by the
sharp contrast of standing straight or straight against it, where it is not the natural end
or a natural structure over its length that gives it a motivated grip. No one wants to be
stopped in his path for no reason, not even the eye, but the oblique lobe follows it
with pleasure. This correctly answered the answer under no. 4, and just as fittingly
the answer under no. 11, in the reluctance of even so cuddly women against the
straight sausage cut, recognized only a special case of their general reluctance against
the rugged. Wurst, however, has no waist, which prepares the way for the cuts, so the
feeling of beauty prescribes the way, and it prescribes it wrongly; yes, if you raise the
belt a little higher or lower, it looks bad because it makes a waist where there is
none. No lady, therefore, also thinks about wearing a dress with transverse stripes
around her waist: it would look like it was cut into slices, and if an edge running all
around her looks like the lower frame of the dress, that's just it because, instead of the
length of the figure, it follows the length of the edge of the garment, which makes the
next claims to it; but if a series of steps or falsewoods goes too high up the dress, the
lady looks like a walking staircase. Also have not found in any architectural style
columns with transverse Cannelüren place; ribbed columns would look like
skeletons. No lady, therefore, also thinks about wearing a dress with transverse stripes
around her waist: it would look like it was cut into slices, and if an edge running all
around her looks like the lower frame of the dress, that's just it because, instead of the
length of the figure, it follows the length of the edge of the garment, which makes the
next claims to it; but if a series of steps or falsewoods goes too high up the dress, the
lady looks like a walking staircase. Also have not found in any architectural style
columns with transverse Cannelüren place; ribbed columns would look like
skeletons. No lady, therefore, also thinks about wearing a dress with transverse stripes
around her waist: it would look like it was cut into slices, and if an edge running all
around her looks like the lower frame of the dress, that's just it because, instead of the
length of the figure, it follows the length of the edge of the garment, which makes the
next claims to it; but if a series of steps or falsewoods goes too high up the dress, the
lady looks like a walking staircase. Also have not found in any architectural style
columns with transverse Cannelüren place; ribbed columns would look like
skeletons. and if an edge running transversely around them is quite except the lower
frame of the dress, it is only because, instead of the length of the figure, it follows the
length of the edge of the garment, which makes the next claims to it; but if a series of
steps or falsewoods goes too high up the dress, the lady looks like a walking
staircase. Also have not found in any architectural style columns with transverse
Cannelüren place; ribbed columns would look like skeletons. and if an edge running
transversely around them is quite except the lower frame of the dress, it is only
because, instead of the length of the figure, it follows the length of the edge of the
garment, which makes the next claims to it; but if a series of steps or falsewoods goes
too high up the dress, the lady looks like a walking staircase. Also have not found in
any architectural style columns with transverse Cannelüren place; ribbed columns
would look like skeletons.
Of course, not only do you not want to cross a dress, you also want no crooked
lines and stripes. Of course, since one requires the dress to conform to the shape of
the body, one would think that it is oriented to a crooked body; and a principal figure
certainly does not want to be crooked or appear. Being crooked is not the only
principle of beauty. Whether a secondary form is to extend completely along the
length of the main form or merely cling to it through an oblique direction depends on
circumstances. No one wants to cut the sausage all the way to the length: so you cut
them at least askew; but what the crookedness misses when fully connected can be
brought back by the charm of the variety.
If only the slant of the cut and the deviation of the slices from the circular shape
were done enough; but who still looks at the slices of the cut on the plate; and what
does it help the elliptical disks to look more beautiful when it is philosophically
proven that the circular ones are more beautiful. In fact, the philosophers Batteux,
Baumgarten, Herder, Moriz, Zschokke, Hermann, and others, have not yet proved
everything in unison. That beauty is the perfection of the sensuous appearance or
sensuous appearance of perfection, and what corresponds more perfectly to this
concept than the appearance of the universal self, equal in all directions, free from all
excrescences, gaps, one-sidedness, to a greater abundance than any another figure
pleasing circle.
Well, to make philosophers afraid, you just have to use mathematicians against
them. Alas, there lived only the old Professor Mobius, who had such ingenious ideas
and explained mathematics as the most poetic of all sciences: he was quite the man to
offer the edge to all philosophical circle proofs for the circle with a Keplerian proof
of the ellipse; he would certainly have declared the circle instead of the most poetic
of figures, only a homely pie-shape, which is left to impact the apprentices in the
mathematical bakery. It occurs to me to tell, to satisfy the principle of variety, as I
once sat in a company next to him, and asked him for advice about the establishment
of a world that would have only one, instead of three dimensions, and that seemed to
me to promise great advantages, because it removed all annoying entanglements in
the world, and it would be impossible to deviate from the right path. The biggest
difficulty seemed to be how people in such a world should be able to get past or over
each other; and the reader may consider for himself whether he can find a means; but
through mutual support we have even come up with two means according to which
this world seems quite practicable. One was to think of the linear world as elliptical
in itself, as the focal point of the divine monad; then the people who could not pass
each other needed merely to turn around and to meet the other side, which, since at
the same time such a world was a natural railroad track, It would be possible to do it
very quickly, but of course it only suited two people. The other one, subject to no
such limitation, was that one had to think of people merely as linear waves, which, as
is well known, can pass through each other without disturbance, and since our
thoughts are already attached to ether waves in the brain, one would become such
with the At the same time, in reality, to be able to transpose thoughts beyond the
other. But since Professor Mobius is dead, and his help with the previous problem
does not help me with the present one, I must try to cope with it myself, and so I ask,
and now again, to comply with the principle of connection: that one would only have
to think of people as linear waves, which are known to be able to pass through each
other without interference, and since our thoughts are already attached to ether waves
in the brain, one would be able to transcend the other in such a way with the thought
at the same time , But since Professor Mobius is dead, and his help with the previous
problem does not help me with the present one, I must try to cope with it myself, and
so I ask, and now again, to comply with the principle of connection: that one would
only have to think of people as linear waves, which are known to be able to pass
through each other without interference, and since our thoughts are already attached
to ether waves in the brain, one would be able to transcend the other in such a way
with the thought at the same time , But since Professor Mobius is dead, and his help
with the previous problem does not help me with the present one, I must try to cope
with it myself, and so I ask, and now again, to comply with the principle of
connection:
Can you seriously want to see in circles the most beautiful of the characters? Each
one is more beautiful than the outline of a beautiful girl's face than the painted face of
the moon, an Arabian horse more beautiful than a clenched hedgehog giving circular
intersections in all directions, and the statue modeled by an artist of a globular cluster
more beautiful than this lump Find; otherwise the artist needed only to let the
spherical lump. Of course, the statue does emerge from the globular lump as if from a
roundish egg, and so, too, the circle or the sphere of chaotic irregularity may be
regarded as the egg of beauty; but if the circle wants to mean more, then it is just an
egg, which wants to be more than the hen. The ellipse is, so to speak, the first step in
the development of beauty from the egg or, if the circle is the A of beauty, then the
ellipse is the B of the same, ascending from the simple equality of the parts to a
higher-order reference properly noticed under No. 7 finds. Of course, one can not get
beyond the ABC of beauty with visible forms at all, if they do not bear the higher
beauty of an invisible meaning, but they can wear something of simple stimuli
without it, and more depends on the ellipse than on the circle.
The fact that the circle appears so much more frequently in nature and applications
than the ellipse makes it only meaner, but not more beautiful; he just fits more for
common purposes. *) A potter, a turner, can only turn circularly, not elliptically, and
nature can not turn their tree trunks otherwise. The wheel wants to roll, not elliptical
hobble. The money, the cross-section of the vessels, is there for the sake of a purpose
which knows no advantage of one direction over the other, and therefore consists in
turn of the circle. Also, plates want to be set fast, coins must be counted quickly; how
is that supposed to go with ellipticals without them standing criss-cross against each
other; the pleasure of it would lose more through the situation than it would gain by
the figure. One should not brush at all for common services, otherwise the plaster
loses its value through everydayness; and so the ellipse does not give itself to
common service, but looks for itself like all beauty the most beautiful and best
places,

*)The contradiction of these expressions against the utterances of the comparative

anatomy of the angels, which are not everywhere in jest, is only apparent, and is
conveyed by the sentence of the touch of the extremes expressed there. The meaning
of the low and the common comes only to the undeveloped and undeveloped circles.
Thus, after the Greek vase has done enough in circular cross-section to do the same
general purpose, it curves elliptically to the height, and after the tin spoon with the
circular mouthpiece satisfies the farmer, the silver on the fine plate stretches the same
elliptical, indeed elliptical. While the useful button and useful money are circular, the
ornamental medallion and toilet mirror are elliptical. On greetings cards and in the
upper corner of elegant letterhead you can often see elliptical, never circular framed
pictures, names, sayings. Winkelmann says absolutely, not: the line of beauty is
circular, but: "The line of beauty is elliptical." And where the circle changes in the
interplay of purpose and benevolence considerations with the ellipse, in garden beds,
Of course, some beds are made circular rather than elliptical, because they radiate
from it, for which it has to act as a center; one speaks of a round table, not of a table
ellipse, because the round table is sociable, in that it places all those seated in it in the
same relation to one another; and if a table is often to be set back and forth, the
circular shape retains the advantage of fitting equally well in every situation. But
constraints can change everything.
Even in the sky, where simplicity is made up by sublimity, and at the culmination
of a development returning to the beginning, circle and sphere acquire a high position
and dignity, and the circle, as extremes touch everywhere, with the A of beauty, so to
speak also the O of beauty, in which the richness of its developments concludes; but
this itself lies between the simple beginning and the high end. And since one can not
see in the sausage slice either something heavenly or a summit of earthly
development, neither can its meaning give an ideal height to the circle, nor can it owe
its simplicity to any particular complacency, while in its lowness of the ellipse it is its
modest measure owes.
So far I had come at just fancying my reasons for the elliptical sausage cut at mere
fanciful, and who knows how far I would have come with it; So it happened that a
real sausage was served and cut from the kitchen by a housewife, and I was careful
how she did it, though she thought that I saw only her pretty hands, which I did, of
course. and it occurred to me that in it I had a better object for my aesthetic
considerations than the sausage cut. But after seeing her picking up the sausage, and
without any previous study of this scholarly essay, even without looking, carelessly
cutting into the sausage, as it now lay, and making some oblique cut, it came to me
further the reservation, whether my former reasons of wellbeing are not as well-
known as my previous expediencies, and I do not blame chance for excluding it from
the reasons, rather than directing it to the first place. In the meantime, many things
look like chance to a woman, because it does not look like intention, because tact
replaces intention; and since one must be right in every case and not want to have a
long essay written in vain, I say firstly: If the cut of the sausage depended on chance
rather than an aesthetic privilege, the ellipse would have to thank me, on this
occasion, to have helped her with her aesthetic rights, which, to the contrary, does not
depend on the sausage cut; secondly, it should be really coincidence Thus a tasteful
housewife would not be left to the same, if he did not go with the pleasurable on its
own, but on the straight cut, he would be the most agreeable, as well as her hood does
not accidentally skewed; In any case, good-naturedness retains its share of the causes,
even if chance keeps it to such an extent that soon this, now that crooked cut is
made; and so I would have saved my right in this regard too. But in the fact that the
coincidence of the sausage goes by itself with the pleasantriness, the sausage is really
a very distinguished being, because otherwise it is not of the coincidence kind; which
can help lift the sausage in our respect.
Since there are so many reasons involved and quarreled with each other in our
question, so many learned minds have tried in vain to decide them, and I myself
declare incapable of making a pure decision, it would of course be best to have an
academy made a price task out of it for the thorough completion of the question; and
with the known difficulty of finding suitable price issues, I think I have already
earned half the price with this proposal. Besides, I did something else in the
question. Since there are various ellipses, slimmer and more corpulent ones, I have
experimented with the ratio of the ellipse axes or the width and length of the ellipse
that gives the most beautiful sausage slice, and I think to take a patent on the cut thus
obtained. Now one will perhaps say that no further attempts were needed after
Zeising had philosophically proved that the most beautiful section in the world is the
so-called Golden Section, where the width and length behave as 5: 8, and therefore
the sausage cut is no different can; but what is valid for a philosophical sausage does
not yet have to be considered a real one, which can not be established a priori; and,
indeed, I also find the usual deviation between the ideal construction and the real
results. Until the patent is obtained, the matter remains my secret; But whoever can
not wait to learn about it, just needs to send me a good sausage for the private
message; however, every one of me, who, after the patenting, still uses the sausage
cut I discovered, will sue for confiscation of the sausage for me, and finally invite all
readers of this essay to a big sausage feast. In the process, I shall make the most
beautiful sausage cut on the best sausages before all eyes, put off the bad ones by the
straight cut, and mark the degree of the goodness of the others by the beauty of their
cut afterwards weighed, hereby, according to Plato, beauty and goodness one are,
make our sausage feast a truly platonic feast.