By JOSEPH ADDISON.
There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
We look upon the man who gives it us as offering an affront to our
understanding, and treating us like children or idiots. We consider
the instruction as an implicit censure, and the zeal which any one
shows for our good on such an occasion, as a piece of presumption or
impertinence. The truth of it is, the person who pretends to advise,
does, in that particular, exercise a superiority over us, and can
have no other reason for it but that, in comparing us with himself,
he thinks us defective either in our conduct or our understanding.
For these reasons there is nothing so difficult as the art of making
advice agreeable; and, indeed, all the writers, both ancient and
modern, have distinguished themselves among one another, according to
the perfection at which they have arrived in this art. How devices have
been made use of to render this bitter potion palatable! some convey
their instructions to us in the best chosen words, others in the most
harmonious numbers; some in points of wit, and others in short proverbs.
But among all the different ways of giving counsel, I think the finest,
and that which pleases the most universally, is fable, in whatsoever
shape it appears. If we consider this way of instructing or giving
advice, it excels all others, because it is the least shocking, and the
least subject to those exceptions which I have before mentioned.
This will appear to us, if we reflect, in the first place, that upon
reading of a fable we are made to believe we advise ourselves.[P]
We peruse the author for the sake of the story, and consider the
precepts rather as our own conclusions, than his instructions. The
moral insinuates itself imperceptibly, we are taught by surprise, and
become wiser and better unawares. In short, by this method a man is
so far over-reached as to think he is directing himself, whilst he is
following the dictates of another, and consequently is not sensible of
that which is the most unpleasing circumstance in advice.
In the next place, if we look into human nature, we shall find that the
mind is never so much pleased as when she exerts herself in any action
that gives her an idea of her own perfections and abilities. This
natural pride and ambition of the soul is very much gratified in the
reading of a fable: for in writings of this kind, the reader comes in
for half of the performance; everything appears to him like a discovery
of his own; he is busied all the while in applying characters and
circumstances, and is in this respect both a reader and a composer. It
is no wonder, therefore, that on such occasions, when the mind is thus
pleased with itself, and amused with its own discoveries, it is highly
delighted with the writing which is the occasion of it. For this reason
the Absalon and Achitophel was one of the most popular poems that ever
appeared in English. The poetry is indeed very fine, but had it been
much finer it would not have so much pleased, without a plan which gave
the reader an opportunity of exerting his own talents.
This oblique manner of giving advice is so inoffensive, that if we look
into ancient histories, we find the wise men of old very often chose[Q]
to give counsel to their kings in fables. To omit many which will occur
to every one’s memory, there is a pretty instance of this nature in a
Turkish tale, which I do[R] not like the worse for that little Oriental
extravagance which is mixed with it.
We are told that the Sultan Mahmoud, by his perpetual wars abroad, and
his tyranny at home, had filled his dominions with ruin and desolation,
and half unpeopled the Persian empire. The vizier to this great sultan
(whether an humorist or an enthusiast we are not informed) pretended to
have learned of a certain dervise to understand the language of birds,
so that there was not a bird that could open his mouth but the vizier
knew what it was he said. As he was one evening with the emperor,
on their return from hunting, they saw a couple of owls upon a tree
that grew near an old wall, out of an heap of rubbish. “I would fain
know,” says the sultan, “what those two owls are saying to one another;
listen to their discourse, and give me an account of it.” The vizier
approached the tree, pretending to be very attentive to the two owls.
Upon his return to the sultan, “Sir,” says he, “I have heard part of
their conversation, but dare not tell you what it is.” The sultan would
not be satisfied with such an answer, but forced him to repeat word for
word everything that the owls had said. “You must know then,” said the
vizier, “that one of these owls has a son, and the other a daughter,
between whom they are now upon a treaty of marriage. The father of the
son said to the father of the daughter, in my hearing, ‘Brother, I
consent to this marriage, provided you will settle upon your daughter
fifty ruined villages for her portion.’ To which the father of the
daughter replied, ‘Instead of fifty, I will give her five hundred, if
you please. God grant a long life to Sultan Mahmoud; whilst he reigns
over us, we shall never want ruined villages.’”
The story says, the sultan was so touched with the fable, that he
rebuilt the towns and villages which had been destroyed, and from that
time forward consulted the good of his people.
To fill up my paper I shall add a most ridiculous piece of natural
magic, which was taught by no less a philosopher than Democritus,
namely, that[S] if the blood of certain birds, which he mentioned,
were mixed together, it would produce a serpent of such wonderful
virtue, that whoever did eat it should be skilled in the language of
birds, and understand everything they said to one another. Whether the
dervise above-mentioned might not have eaten such a serpent, I shall
leave to the determinations of the learned.