Chapter One

Art,

Literature,

Music

Aesop Revised

I. THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

The grasshopper was an artist, whose labors, like those of most artists, were unprofitable and whose leisures were lively and expensive. The ant, on the contrary, was a pillar of his community; he went regularly to the office, worked fourteen hours a day, and put by every penny he could spare.

    Time passed. The ant's capital yearly increased; that of the grasshopper yearly diminished. "That young fellow," prophesied the ant, "will come to a bad end." And he sighed hypocritically. But secretly he was delighted. For, like all untalented, hard-working, and self-denying insects, he bore an envious grudge against anyone who was happy; he feared and hated all who were naturally superior in talent, in intelligence, in spiritual quality to himself. He wanted everyone to lead a life as drearily laborious, as dully good, as utterly pointless and empty as his own. Nothing distressed him more than the spectacle of talent out of what he regarded as its proper place in the gutter, of lighthearted gaiety attended, in spite of all the proverbs, by worldly success. The sight of a butterfly that had contrived to hibernate through the winter without being killed by the frosts was enough to make him lose his appetite for a week. His greatest pleasure was to observe the misfortunes of others less virtuous and more highly gifted than himself, and to draw the flattering moral.

    When, at last, the much hoped-for, long-anticipated event took place and the bankrupt grasshopper came to ask him for a loan, the ant gave vent to the accumulations of his envious spite in a long sermon, full of moral indignation, platitudes, and triumphant "I-told-you-sos." As for helping the unfortunate grasshopper--no, no; on the highest ethical and social grounds he refused to lend him a penny.

    A few days later the spiders sent their historical ultimatum to the bumblebees. War was declared. The wasps, the hornets, and the honeybees came in at once on the side of the bumbles. The ants and termites marched with their old allies the spiders. In a little while almost every insect species in the world was involved in the conflict. The grasshopper enlisted. The ant stayed at home and in two years trebled his fortune, which he invested (being the most prudent of virtuous insects) in high-class mortgages and government stock. At the end of the war he was a millionaire. Three months later, after the collapse of the Antland currency, his accumulated millions were just sufficient, if the exchange fell no further, to keep him in bread and margarine for a week.

    Meanwhile, by reckless gambling on the stock exchange and the money market, the grasshopper had made himself the world's fourth richest insect. The moral of this is that prudence and virtue are not invariably rewarded (thank goodness! we may say in chorus) according to their deserts.

    But the tale has a postscript. When the impoverished ant applied to his old friend for help, the grasshopper, who had the vice of excessive generosity, incontinently wrote him out a large check and refused to hear of interest. The ant divided the borrowed money into two parts. With the first he bribed the financial journalists to create a panic on the market; and with the other part he proceeded to buy, at slump prices, all the shares which the duly panic-stricken grasshopper sold out. When, in due course, the prices rose again, the ant was once more extremely rich, while the grasshopper was reduced to relative poverty.

    And the moral of that is obvious: the gifted must always be on their guard against the good, who are their natural enemies and between whose virtue and their talent there is and always will be unsleeping war.

II. THE FROGS AND THEIR KING

The frogs being leaderless asked Jupiter for a king. Jupiter heard their prayer and let fall a log into their pond. The splash caused some alarm among the frogs; but when the ripples had died down, they emerged from their hiding places and came to pay their respects to their new sovereign. Familiarity soon turned their respect into contempt and, after a few days, the frogs might be seen climbing on to their unresponsive king, using him as a diving board or basking by the hour on his sun-warmed belly.

    Time passed. Under King Log's mild government the frogs increased and multiplied. Much to the satisfaction of patriotic Batrachians, the population went up by leaps and bounds. "Our great and growing country," wrote the frog journalists. "A rising population is the infallible sign of national greatness and moral progress." And so on.

    But as the years went by, the pond began to grow uncomfortably crowded. The prices of worms and duck-weed, of mosquitoes' eggs and snails and mayflies and all the other necessities of life rose alarmingly. In the best quarters, among the water lilies, the rents were prohibitive. In the industrial areas at the bottom of the pond there was terrible overcrowding. As for the slums at the roots of the willow trees--they were beyond description horrible. Thoughtful frogs were distressed to observe that it was precisely in the worst districts that the birthrate was the highest. Among the leisured and professional classes of Batrachia there was a marked decrease in fecundity. Contraceptive practices were rife in these circles; frog ladies who, in the past, would have produced as many as six or seven thousand fertilized eggs were now laying no more than the same number of hundreds.

    The slum-dwellers, on the contrary, continued to spawn in the most reckless manner. The most superficial observer could not fail to be struck by the number of deformed, rickety, cretinous, and half-witted tadpoles to be seen swimming about in the pond. It was clear that, if things went on at the same rate, a few years would see the complete and irreparable degeneration of the Batrachian stock. This decline in the quality would be fatally accompanied by an increase in the quantity of the population, and the time, according to the best Batrachian statisticians, was not far off when the resources of the pond would be insufficient for the numbers of its inhabitants.

    Deputations waited on the king, but the log would take no steps to deal with the problem; it had been brought up in the laissez-faire school of Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In the end the Batrachian priesthood made a solemn appeal to Jupiter. "Lord Jupiter," they croaked, "your king is of no use to us. He is inactive, his political ideas are out of date, he is incapable of dealing with the problems of modern life."

    Jupiter was annoyed by what he regarded as the frogs' ingratitude and mutability. "Very well," he answered, "if you want a new king, you shall have one." Whereupon he sent down a very large stork which, arriving in the middle of the religious ceremony, incontinently swallowed the Cardinal-Archbishop and half the leading clergy of Batrachia. The rest hopped off the lily leaves and swam for safety in the depths. The appetite of the new king was inextinguishable, and in a very little time he had reduced the population of the pond by more than half.

    Jupiter, whose sense of humor is crude and who understands no joke except a practical one, looked on at the scene with undisguised satisfaction. "How do you like your new king?" he inquired some little time later of the wisest of frogs. To his disgust the aged frog replied that he and all his friends were very much pleased with their gracious sovereign.

    "Pleased?" echoed Jupiter, who had looked forward to hearing another complaint and so having an opportunity to give the frogs a good sermon on fickleness. "Pleased? But he has eaten half your people."

    "Which is precisely why we are so delighted with him," answered the wise frog. "The stronger and the more intelligent among us find no difficulty in escaping from his bill. It is only the feeble in mind and body who become his victims. He has eaten half our people, it is true; but the half that remains is the better half. By eliminating the unfit he has preserved our race from degeneration, he has solved our political problems and abolished the most crying of our social evils--the slums; he has guaranteed us against starvation, caused prices to fall and the standard of living to rise. His reign, in a word, has been one prolonged act of beneficence. We cannot praise him too highly, nor thank you enough, Lord Jupiter, for giving us so admirable a king."

    "Well, I'm blowed!" said Jupiter.

III. THE FOX AND THE CROW

A crow was sitting on the branch of a tree; a fox happened to be passing along the road below. The fox was hungry (foxes are chronically hungry); the crow was holding a piece of cheese in her beak. It was not a very large piece, nor was the cheese of particularly good quality. But the fox was not dainty, nor did he consider it beneath his dignity to pick up the smallest trifles; that was the secret of his success.

    "Dear lady," he said, looking up at the crow, "I can see at a glance that you are a highly sensitive and artistic soul, compelled by circumstances to live among unappreciative people and in an uncongenial milieu, where it is impossible for you to develop your native talents."

    The crow looked pleased and cocked her head to listen more attentively.

    "Allow me," the fox went on, "to present myself. My name is Fox and my Mission in Life is to be of Service to my fellows. The particular branches of Service to which I have devoted my energies are Development of Personality, the Realization of Legitimate Happiness, and the Achievement of Success, all of which I teach, for a purely nominal fee, either personally or in a series of money-back-if-not-successful correspondence courses. Your case, dear lady, is one in which I know I can be of Service. The Misunderstood Soul is one of my specialties. Let me help you to find Self-Expression and, along with Self-Expression, Success, Happiness, and Wealth."

    "With pleasure," replied the crow rather indistinctly; for she had to talk without opening her beak and her words were muffled by the cheese. Like all members of her sex she liked being talked to about her soul; she was flattered by being told that she was misunderstood and that she had a Personality to misunderstand.

    "Then tell me," said the fox, "what are your special gifts and what your private ambitions. Do you wish to Express your Personality on the

(Continues...)

Excerpted from ALDOUS HUXLEY COMPLETE ESSAYS by . Copyright © 2001 by Ivan R. Dee. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.