Younger people can probably be divided into two categories. In the first are those who are many years younger than us, whom we not only tolerate but even delight in and seek to protect. We can flaunt our age at them and our relative seniority only adds to our dignity. In the second are those just slightly younger than us. These people invite only our loathing and envy. As they have already lost a sense of respect for their elders, our age fails to elicit their pity for the old and infirm. Not only can we not flaunt our age at them, but our advanced years actually work to our disadvantage and we strive to emulate their youth. These two attitudes can be seen everywhere. A woman approaching thirty, for instance, may still be willing to speak well of the features of an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl, but she will mercilessly criticize those of a young woman of twenty-three or twenty-four. For this reason, grown-ups always dote on little kids, whereas between big and little kids frequent conflict is unavoidable. Any human relationship that touches on issues of age and generational seniority can validate this analysis.
Looking at history in its entirety, antiquity corresponds to mankind’s childhood. Man began in infancy and, through several thousand years of advancement, slowly reached the modern age. The more ancient the era, the shorter man’s history, while the later the era, the deeper his accumulated experience and the greater his age. Thus, we are actually our grandfathers’ elders and the Three Dynasties
1 of high antiquity cannot match the modern age in long standing. Our faith in and fondness for ancient things consequently takes on new meaning. Perhaps our admiration for antiquity is not necessarily esteem for our forebears but merely delight in children; not respect for age but the flaunting of age. No old fogey is willing to acknowledge his stubbornness and decrepitude. Likewise, we believe the value and quality of everything in the modern age to be more advanced than that of antiquity.
These revelations came to me as I happened to be flipping through Aesop’s Fables. That’s right—Aesop’s Fables is well worth reading. At the very least, it offers us three types of consolation. First, it is an ancient book, so reading it can increase our pride in modern civilization. Second, it is reading material for children, so reading it enhances our sense that we are grown-ups and have surpassed such childish notions. As for the third sort of consolation, this book is pretty much entirely about animals—just think how long it takes an animal to evolve into a human! As we read about the doings and sayings of so many bats, foxes, and the like, we get the distinct impression of visiting a poor friend after gaining fame and fortune, or of returning to our hometown having made good. Still, poor friends need our help and children deserve our guidance, so when we read Aesop’s Fables we also sense that it has a number of superficial views that require correction.
Take the story of the bat, for example. A bat pretends to be a crow when he encounters a crow and pretends to be a land animal when he encounters a land animal. Man, being much smarter than a bat, employs the bat’s method conversely. Among crows he will pretend to be a land animal to show that he is down-to-earth, while among land animals he pretends to be a crow to show that he transcends worldly matters. He parades refinement before soldiers and plays the hero to men of letters. Among the upper classes he is a poor and tough commoner, but among common people he becomes a condescending man of culture. Of course, this is not bat, this is just—human.
The story of the ant and the cricket:
2 When winter arrives, the ant takes out his winter rice to dry in the sun. Half dead with hunger, the cricket asks to borrow some food and the ant replies: “You’re the one who sang the summer away and now you’re going hungry—serves you right!” This story shouldn’t end here. According to the Platonic dialogue
Phaedrus, when the cricket evolves he turns into a poet.
3 We can deduce from this that a person who sits by and watches a poet suffer poverty and hunger, not deigning to lend him money, was undoubtedly an ant in his former life. The cricket himself turns into ant food after he dies. Similarly, great writers who were unable to provide for themselves while alive will have a whole group of people living off them after they die, such as relatives and friends writing sentimental reminiscences and critics and scholars writing research theses.
4The story of the dog and his shadow: A dog holding a piece of meat in his mouth sees his shadow in the water while crossing a bridge. Thinking it’s another dog holding a piece of meat, he drops the meat in his own mouth and fights with the reflection, trying to snatch the meat the reflection is holding. As a result, he loses the meat in his own mouth. This fable cautions against greed, but today we can apply it another way. It’s been said that everyone needs a mirror in which to look frequently at one’s own reflection and know what one is. However, those with self-knowledge don’t need to look in the mirror, and looking in the mirror is of no use to those who lack it. For this meat-holding dog, for instance, looking in the mirror actually hurt him by provoking him to throw a fit and futilely attack his own reflection with vicious barking. One can see from this that some creatures are best off not looking at themselves in the mirror.
5The story of the astronomer: While looking up at the constellations, an astronomer loses his footing, falls down a well, and cries “Help!” Neighbors who hear him sigh, “Why did he only look up and ignore what’s on the ground!” Always looking up and not watching one’s feet sometimes results in a fall down a well and sometimes a fall from office or a fall from power. After falling, however, one should never admit that one fell due to carelessness. Instead, one should claim to be carrying out a planned investigation or working with one’s subordinates. This astrologer, for instance, had a splendid excuse—looking at the sky from the bottom of a well.
6 It’s true: even after we have fallen, our eyes still look upward.
The story of the crow: God wants to choose the most beautiful bird to be the king of the birds. The crow covers his entire body and tail in peacock feathers and goes before God as a candidate. Sure enough, God picks him. The other birds are furious and tear out the inserted feathers, revealing his original crow likeness. This goes to show that those with long hair are not necessarily artists. By the same token, bald people are, of course, not necessarily scholars or thinkers—what could emerge from a head that has produced nary a sprout? Nor does the parable stop here. After the crow has had his borrowed feathers pulled out and his original form exposed, his shame turns to anger and he proposes that everyone else might as well pull out all their own feathers so that when all are naked they can see how a real peacock, swan, or other bird differs from a crow. This method of covering up one’s own embarrassment is one that man, at least, uses frequently.
The story of the cow and the frog: A mother frog inhales as much air as she can and asks her baby frog, “Is a cow as big as me?” The baby frog responds: “Don’t swell up so much or your belly might burst!” What an idiotic mother frog! She shouldn’t compete with a cow on size—she should compete on delicateness. Thus, each of our defects has its upside: stinginess we call frugality, stupidity we call honesty, unscrupulousness we call finesse, and lack of talent we call virtue. Thus, no woman on earth considers herself completely unlovely, nor does any man think himself inferior to others in every respect. This way there is something for everyone, and peace and harmony reign as a matter of course.
The story of the old woman and the hen: An old woman raises a hen who lays one egg a day. The greedy old woman wants her hen to lay two eggs a day, so she feeds her twice as much. From then on, as the hen eats more and more she gets fatter and fatter and stops laying eggs—so the injunction is against greed. But Aesop got it wrong! He should have said: fat people are always stingy.
The story of the fox and the grapes: A fox sees a vine full of ripe grapes, but no matter what he tries he can’t get them into his mouth. All he can do is give up and console himself by saying, “Those grapes are probably still sour. I’m better off not eating them anyway!” Had he eaten them, he still would have said, “Just as I expected: these grapes are sour.” If he were a fox with high standards, he would have told himself this because reality is always “insufficiently ideal.” If he were a fox who is easy to please, he would have said this to others because by telling a sob story he could prevent others from coming to share the spoils.
7The story of the donkey and the wolf: A donkey encounters a wolf and pretends that his hoof is hurt, saying to the wolf: “There’s a thorn in my hoof. Please pull it out so it won’t prick your tongue when you eat me.” The wolf believes him, and while he is focused on looking for the thorn the donkey kicks him in the head and escapes. The wolf sighs: “Heaven intended me to be a butcher who sends others to their graves; why be a physician who cures illnesses?” This is funny in a childish way, of course—he doesn’t know that a doctor is also a type of butcher.
These few examples demonstrate that Aesop’s Fables is not suitable reading material for today’s children. In Émile, book 2, Rousseau opposes children’s reading fables because he claims that fables have bad intentions. He cites the example of the fox who tricks a piece of meat from the mouth of a crow and says that children who read this story will envy the crafty fox instead of sympathizing with the cheated crow. If this is the case, doesn’t it prove that children have bad intentions to begin with? Whether or not children should read fables depends entirely on the kind of world and social environment that we grown-ups create for children to grow up in and inhabit. Rousseau believes that fables are detrimental because they make unsophisticated children complicated and deprive them of their innocence. I believe that fables are detrimental because they make unsophisticated children even more simpleminded and childish. Fables lead them to believe that in human affairs the distinction between right and wrong and the consequences of good and evil are as fair and clear-cut as in the animal kingdom. As a result, when these children grow up they will be tricked and rebuffed at every turn. The essential difference between Rousseau and me is that he is a primitivist who advocates a return to antiquity, while I am a man who believes in progress—though not like the fly in the fable who sits on the axle of the cart wheel, buzzing, “It’s all my power that’s moving this cart along.”