Jain Shwetambar Conference Herald 1910 Book 06

Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Jain Shwetambar Conference

Page 365

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Æsop's Fables:
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Most of the fables which thus far have been mentioned we can not use. The discovery 6f their 'Astátie origil sheds a new, keen light upon their meaning. They breathe, in many cases, a spirit of fear, of abject subserviency, of hopeless pessimism. Can we desire to inoculate the young with this spirit ? The question may be asked why fables are so popular with boys. I should sày, because school-boy society reproduces in miniature to a certain extent the social conditions which are reflected in the fables. Among unregenerate school.boys there often exists a kind of despotism, not the less degrading because petty. The strong are pitted against the weak-witness the fagging system in the English schools and their mutual antagonism produces in both the characteristic vices which we have noted above. The psychological study of school-boy society has been only begun, but even what lies on the surface will, I think, bear out this remark. Now it has come to be one of the commonplaces of educational literature that the individual of to-doy must pass through the same stages of evolution as the human race as a whole. But it should not be forgotten that the advance of civilization depends on two conditions: first that the course of evolution be accelerated, that the time allowed to the successive stages be shortened; and, secondly that the unworthy and degrading elements which entered into the process of evolution in the past, and at the time were inseparable from it, be now eliminated. Thus the fairy-tales which correspond to the myth-making epoch in human history must be purged of the dross of superstition which still adheres to them, and the fables which correspond to the age of primi. tive despotisms must be cleansed of the immoral elements they still embody.
The fables which are fit for use may be divided into two classes : those which give illustrations of evil, the effect of which on the young should be to arouse disapprobation, and those which present types of virtue. †
* It may be remarked that fables should be excluded if the moral they inculcate is bad, not if they depict what is bad. In the latter case they often way serve a useful purpose.
† Prof. Adler then goes on to consider these two classes of fables at length.