Goldfinger presents smoking as an example of behaviour that has become socially familiar despite appearing strange when stripped of its cultural context. His comparison with animals is deliberately comic: by imagining a cow inhaling smoke from burning straw, he makes an everyday human habit appear artificial and absurd.

The argument depends on contrasting learned behaviour with what he regards as natural instinct. Because other animals do not smoke, he treats the practice as evidence of how far human customs can depart from basic biological behaviour. This does not by itself establish that smoking is wrong, but it reframes a normalised habit from an unfamiliar perspective.

More broadly, the quotation illustrates how convention can make unusual practices seem ordinary. By questioning that familiarity, Goldfinger draws attention to the gap between what people routinely accept and what might appear irrational when considered without social habit or tradition.