LESSONS TAUGHT BY FABLES.
'The tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry.'
COWPER: _Pairing Time Anticipated_.
In the earlier ages of the world's history fables were invented for
the edification of men and women. This was so in the palmiest days of
Greek, Roman and Arabian or Saracenic civilization. In these later days
fables are generally assumed to be more for the delectation of children
than adults. This change of auditory need not be regretted; it has its
marked advantages. The lesson which the fable inculcates is indelibly
stamped on the mind of the child, and has an influence, less or more,
on his or her career during life.
Jean Jacques Rousseau is the only writer of eminence who has inveighed
against this use of the fable, but his remarks are by no means
convincing. He accounted them lies without the 'medicinable quality,'
and reprobated their employment in the instruction of youth. 'Fables,'
says Rousseau, 'may amuse men, but the truth must be told to children.'
His animadversion had special reference to the fables of La Fontaine,
and doubtless some of these, and the morals deduced from them, are
open to objection; but to condemn fables in general on this account is
surely the height of unreason.
A greater than Rousseau had, long before, given expression in cogent
language to the worth of the fable as a vehicle of instruction for
youth. Plato, whilst excluding the mythical stories of Hesiod and Homer
from the curriculum of his 'Republic'--that perfect commonwealth,
in depicting which he lavished all the resources of his wisdom and
genius--advised mothers and nurses to repeat selected fables to their
children, so as to mould and give direction to their young and tender
minds.
Phædrus, again, in the prologue to his fables, says--
''Tis but a play to form the youth
By fiction in the cause of truth,'
so that his view of the question also was just the very antipodes of
that of the French philosopher.
Quintilian urges[17] that 'boys should learn to relate orally the
fables of Æsop, which follow next after the nurse's stories.' True, he
recommends this with a view to initiating them in the rudiments of the
art of speaking; but he would not have inculcated the use of fables for
children for even this secondary purpose, if he had dreamt for a moment
they would have had a bad effect on their minds.
Rousseau, with all his knowledge of human character and his power of
imagination, had a matter-of-fact vein running through his mind, which
led him to entertain the mistaken view that the influence of fables on
the juvenile mind was objectionable. Cowper, who was no mean writer of
fables himself, with his clear common sense, broad natural instincts,
and mother wit--in which Rousseau was lacking--saw the unwisdom of the
philosopher's conclusions, and satirized his views in the well-known
lines:
'I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau
If birds confabulate or no;
'Tis clear that they were always able
To hold discourse, at least in fable;
And e'en the child, who knows no better
Than to interpret by the letter
A story of a cock and bull,
Must have a most uncommon skull.'[18]
It is no exaggeration to assert that the effect which fables and their
lessons have had on the people is incalculable. They have been read
and rehearsed and pondered in all ages, and by thousands whom no other
class of literature could attract. The story and its moral (in the
Æsopian fable at least) are obvious to the dullest comprehension, and
they cling to the memory like the limpet to the rock, and find their
application in all the concerns of daily life.
But it is not the illiterate alone that have profited by the fable;
all classes have been affected by its lesson. We are all apt scholars
when the fable is the schoolmaster. There is no class of the community
that has not come under its sway. It has penetrated to the highest
stratum of society equally with the humblest, and may be credited with
an influence as wide and far-reaching as the sublimest moral treatise
which the human intellect has produced.
The epic and the novel (fables of a kind), like some paintings, cover
a wide canvas, and the details are not always easily grasped and
remembered; but the true fable is a story in miniature which we take
in at a glance, and stow away for after use in a small corner of our
memory.
We have the 'successful villain' in the fable as sometimes on the
stage; and it may be a question whether the tendency of this is not
rather to encourage dissimulation in certain ill-constituted minds,
than to inculcate virtue. One of Northcote's fables, _The Elephant and
the Fox_, will exemplify what we mean.
'A grave and judicious elephant entering into argument with a pert fox,
who insisted upon his superior powers of persuasion, which the elephant
would not allow, it was at length agreed between them that whichever
attracted the most attention from his auditors by his eloquence should
be deemed the victor. At a certain appointed time a great assembly
of animals attended the trial, and the elephant was allowed to speak
first. He with eloquence spoke of the high importance of ever adhering
with strictness to justice and to truth; also of the happiness which
resulted from controlling the passions, of the dignity of patience, the
inhospitable and hateful nature of selfishness, and the odiousness of
cruelty and carnage.
'The pert fox, perceiving the audience not to be much amused by the
discourse of the elephant, made no ceremony, but interrupted the
oration by giving a farcical account of all his mischievous tricks
and hairbreadth escapes, the success of his cunning, and his adroit
contrivances to extricate himself from harm--all which so delighted the
assembly, that the elephant was soon left, in the midst of his wise
advice, without a single auditor near him; for they one and all with
eagerness thronged to hear the diverting follies and knaveries of the
fox, who, of course, was in the end declared the victor.'
It might almost appear that a fable of this kind is an error of
judgment, and that it is calculated to do harm rather than good,
inasmuch as it exhibits the triumph of duplicity and the defeat of
wisdom. True, the author of the fable tries to recover the lost ground
in the application, by mildly holding up the fox to reprobation, thus:
'Application: The effect these two orators had on the perceptions of
their audience was exactly the reverse one to the other. That of the
elephant touched the guilty, like satire, with pain and reproach; even
the most innocent was humbled, as none were wholly free from vice, and
all felt themselves lowered even in their own opinion, and heard the
admonition as an irksome duty, but still with little inclination to
undergo the difficult task of amendment. But when the fox began, all
was joy; the innocent felt all the gratification which proceeds from
the consciousness of superiority, and the guilty to find their vices
and follies treated only as a jest; for we all have felt how much more
pleasure we enjoy laughing at a fool than in being scrutinized by the
sage. From this cause it is that farce of the most grotesque and absurd
kind is tolerated and received, and not without some degree of relish,
even by the good and the wise, as we all want comfort.'
In spite of the application--nay, rather to some extent by reason of
it, for the anti-climax is extraordinary in a fable--it may be doubted
whether our sympathies are not with the fox rather than with the
elephant. We feel that the latter, with all his wisdom and good advice,
is somewhat of a bore; whilst the fox, rake and wastrel though he be,
has that touch of nature that makes him kin.
Æsop's well-known fable of _The Fox and the Crow_ is also an example of
the success of the scoundrel, but mark the difference: here there is
the obvious reproof of the vain and silly bird, deceived by flattering
words, till, in attempting to sing, she drops into the mouth of the fox
the savoury morsel she held in her beak! Here our verdict is: 'Served
her right!' In Northcote's fable, clever though it is as a narration,
this climax is altogether wanting.
It has been suggested that there is a closer natural affinity than at
first sight appears between man and the lower animals, and that the
recognition of this contact at many points would suggest the idea of
conferring the power of speech upon the latter in the fable. In the
higher reason and its resultant effects they differ fundamentally; mere
animals are wanting discourse of reason, but the purely animal passions
of cunning, anger, hatred, and even revenge and love of kind, and the
nobler characteristics of faithfulness and gratitude prevail in the
dispositions of both. These similarities would strike observers in the
pastoral ages of the world with even greater force than in later times.
The ineradicable impression which certain fables have made upon
the mind through uncounted generations by their self-evident
appropriateness and truth, is well exemplified in _The Wolf and the
Lamb_; _The Fox and the Grapes_; _The Hare and the Tortoise_; _The Dog
and the Shadow_; _The Mountain in Labour_; _The Fox without a Tail_;
_The Satyr and the Man_, who blew hot and cold with the same breath,
and others. It is safe to assert that nothing in literature has been
more quoted than the fables named. We could not afford to lose them;
their absence would be a distinct loss--literature and life would be
the poorer without them; and, such being the fact, we are justified in
holding those writers in esteem who have contributed to the instruction
and entertainment of mankind in the fables they have invented.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] 'Institutes of Oratory,' book i., chap. ix.
[18] 'Pairing Time Anticipated.'