The Original Fables of La Fontaine Part 6

How I have always hated the opinions of the mob! To me, a mob seems profane, unjust, and rash, putting false construction on all things, and judging every matter by a mob-made standard.

Democritus had experience of this. His countrymen thought him mad.

Little minds! But then, no one is a prophet in his own country! The people themselves were mad, of course, and Democritus was the wise man.

Nevertheless the error went so far that the city of Abdera[6] sent a messenger to the great physician Hippocrates, requesting him both by letter and by spoken word to come and restore the sage's reason.

"Our citizen," said the spokesman with tears in his eyes, "has lost his wits, alas! Study has corrupted Democritus. If he were less wise we should esteem him much more. He will have it that there is no limit to the number of worlds like ours and that possibly they are inhabited with numberless Democrituses. Not satisfied with these wild dreams, he talks also of atoms--phantoms born only in his own empty brain. Then, measuring the very heavens, though he remains here below to do it, he claims to know the universe; yet admits that he does not know himself.

Time was when he could control debates, now he mutters only to himself.

So come, thou divine mortal, for the patient's case is a bad one."

Hippocrates, though he had little faith in these people, went nevertheless. Now mark, I beg of you, what strange meetings fate may bring about in this life! Hippocrates arrived just at the time when this man, who was supposed to have neither sense nor reason, happened to be searching into a question as to whether this very reason was seated in the heart or in the head of men and beasts.

Sitting in leafy shade, beside a brook, and with many a volume at his feet, he was occupied wholly with a study of the convolutions of the brain; and thus absorbed, as his manner was, he scarcely noticed the advance of his friend the learned physician. Their greeting was soon over as you may imagine, for the sage is at all times chary of time and speech. So having put aside mere trifles of conversation, they reasoned upon man and his mind, and next fell to talking upon ethics.

It is not necessary that I should here enlarge upon what each had to say to the other on these matters.

The little tale suffices to show that we may rightly take exception to the judgments of the mob. That being so, in what sense is it true, as I have read in a certain pa.s.sage, that the voice of the people is the voice of G.o.d?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: A city on the sh.o.r.es of Thracia.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXIV

THE ACORN AND THE PUMPKIN

(BOOK IX.--No. 4)

What G.o.d does is done well. Without going round the world to seek a proof of that, I can find one in the pumpkin.

A villager was once struck with the largeness of a pumpkin and the thinness of the stem upon which it grew. "What could the Almighty have been thinking about?" he cried. "He has certainly chosen a bad place for a pumpkin to grow. Eh zounds! Now I would have hung it on one of these oaks. That would have been just as it should be. Like fruit, like tree!

What a pity, Hodge," said he, addressing himself, "that you were not on the spot to give advice at the Creation which the parson preaches about. Everything would have been properly done then. For instance; wouldn't this acorn, no bigger than my little finger, be better hanging on this frail stem? The Almighty has blundered there surely! The more I think about these fruits and their situations, the more it seems to me that it is all a mistake."

Becoming worried by so much reflection our Hodge cast himself under an oak saying, "A man can't sleep when he has so much brain." Then he at once dropped off into a nap.

Presently an acorn fell plump upon his nose. Starting from sleep, he put his hand up to see what had happened and found the acorn caught in his beard, whilst his nose began to pain and bleed. "Oh, oh!" he cried, "I am bleeding. How would it have been if a heavier ma.s.s than this had fallen from the tree: if this acorn had been a pumpkin? The Almighty did not intend that, I see. Doubtless he was right. I understand the reason why perfectly now."

So praising G.o.d for all things Hodge took his way home.

XXV

THE SCHOOLBOY, THE PEDANT, AND THE OWNER OF A GARDEN

(BOOK IX.--No. 5)

A youngster, who was doubly foolish and doubly a rogue--in which perhaps he savoured of the school he went to--was given, they say, to robbing a neighbour's garden of its fruit and flowers. This may have been because he was too young to know better, and perhaps because teachers do not always mould the minds of young people in the right way.

The owner of the garden boasted in each season the very best of what was due. In spring he could show the most delightful blossoms and in autumn the very pick of all the apples.

One day he espied this schoolboy carelessly climbing a fruit tree and knocking off the buds, those sweet and fragile forerunners of promised fruit in abundance. The urchin even broke off a bough, and did so much other damage that the owner sent a message of complaint to the boy's schoolmaster. This worthy soon appeared, and behind him a tribe of the scholars, who swarmed into the orchard and began behaving worse than the first one. The schoolmaster's plan in thus aggravating the injury was really to make an opportunity for delivering them all a good lesson, which they should remember all their lives. He quoted Virgil and Cicero; he made many scientific allusions and ran his discourse to such a length that the little wretches were able to get all over the garden and despoil it in a hundred places.

I hate pompous and pedantic speeches that are out of place and never-ending; and I do not know a worse fool in the world than a naughty schoolboy--unless indeed it be the schoolmaster of such a boy. The better of them would never suit me as a neighbour.

XXVI

THE SCULPTOR AND THE STATUE OF JUPITER

(BOOK IX.--No. 6)

Once a sculptor who saw for sale a block of marble was so struck with its beauty that he could not resist the temptation to buy it. When it was in his studio he thought to himself, "Now what shall my chisel make of it? Shall it be a G.o.d, a table, or a basin? It shall be a G.o.d. And I, myself, shall ordain that the G.o.d shall poise a thunderbolt in his hand.

So tremble, mortals, and worship! Behold the lord of the earth!"

The artist set to work and expressed so powerfully the attributes of the G.o.d that those who saw it averred that it only lacked speech to be Jupiter himself. It is said that the sculptor had scarcely completed the statue when he became so overawed as to fear and tremble before the work of his own hands.

The poet of old, likewise, greatly dreaded the hate and the wrath of the G.o.ds he himself created: a weakness which left little to choose between him and the sculptor.

These traits are those of childhood. The minds of children are always anxious lest any one should maltreat their dolls. The emotions invariably give the lead to the intellect, and this fact accounts for the great error of paganism. For that error has been prompted by the emotions of men in all the peoples of the earth. Men uphold with fanatic zeal the interests of the unreal creatures of their imagination.

Pygmalion became enamoured of the Venus[7] he had created, and in the same way every one tries to turn his dreams into reality. Man remains as ice before truth, but catches fire before illusion.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: La Fontaine forgets. It was Galatea whose image Pygmalion created and whom Venus brought to life.]

XXVII

THE OYSTER AND THE PLEADERS

(BOOK IX.--No. 9)

One day two pilgrims espied upon the sands of the sh.o.r.e an oyster that had been thrown up by the tide. They devoured it with their eyes whilst pointing at it with their fingers; but whose teeth should deal with it was a matter of dispute.