The monkey judgement

The monkey judgement story

One day, a dog and a fox were quarreling over a piece of meat. The dog said, “let me eat it!” the fox replied, “No. it belongs to me.”

They agreed to ask their friend, Mr. monkey, to decide the matter for them.

The monkey listened to what they had to say. “To be fair to both of you,” he said. “I shall divide the meat into two equal pieces and give you one each.”

He took a pair of scales and

a kitchen knife. He cut the meat into two pieces and weighed each of them on the scales.

On was heavier than the other.

He bit off a piece from the heavier portion, and weighed the two pieces again. This time, the other portion was heavier. He then bit off a piece from this portion. And weighed the two pieces. Once again, one piece was heavier that the other. He went on like this, weighing and biting off, until all the meat was finished.

“If we’d only known this,” the dog said to the fox, “We would never have asked the monkey to be the judge. Really, the old Korean saying is quite true—“It’s better to settle a case out of court than to to court and lose everything.”