A Peasant was sowing oats one day. Seeing the work go on, a young
Horse began to reason about it, grumbling to himself:
"A pretty piece of work, this, for which he brings such a quantity of
oats here! And yet they are all the time saying that men are wiser
than we are. Can anything possibly be more foolish or ridiculous than
to plough up a whole field like this in order to scatter one's oats
over it afterward to no purpose. Had he given them to me, or to the
bay there, or had he even thought fit to fling them to the fowls, it
would have been more like business. Or even if he had hoarded them up,
I should have recognized avarice in that. But to fling them uselessly
away--why, that is sheer stupidity!"
Meanwhile time passed; and in the autumn the oats were garnered, and
the Peasant fed this very Horse upon them all the winter.
There can be no doubt, Reader, that you do not approve of the opinions
of the Horse. But from the oldest times to our own days has not man
been equally audacious in criticising the designs of a Providence of
whose means or ends he sees and knows nothing?