Diminution

Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, who founded a city that would house the most voluminous library of the ancient world — until it was burned, until forgetting came back into vogue. The great minds come down through the years like monkeys descending from high branches. Always a leopard is waiting to greet them — in the tall grass, among the magnetic berries, in the place they should have checked.