The Fox and the Cat (fable)
Encyclopedia
The Fox and the Cat is an ancient fable
, with both Eastern and Western analogues involving different animals, that addresses the difference between resourceful expediency and a master strategem. Included in collections of Aesop's fables
since the start of printing in Europe, it is number 605 in the Perry Index
. In the basic story a cat and a fox discuss how many tricks and dodges they have. The fox boasts that he has many; the cat confesses to having only one. When hunters arrive with their dogs, the cat quickly climbs a tree, but the fox is caught by the hounds. Many morals have been drawn from the fable's presentations through history, and, as Isaiah Berlin
's use of it in his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox
" shows, it continues to be interpreted anew.
There is a proverb in a fragment attributed to the ancient Greek
poet Archilochus
: (the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing). In Erasmus'
Adagia
from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum. This proverb seems to imply the existence of an ancient fable involving a hedgehog instead of a cat, as do some folktales from the Balkans
.
(story 6) illustrates the danger of being too clever. The tale concerns two fish, Satabuddhi (hundred-wit) and Sahasrabuddhi (thousand-wit) and a frog, Ekabuddhi (single-wit), who inhabit the same pond. When they hear two fishermen talk about returning the next day to fish, frog is anxious. "Oh, my friend," Sahasrabuddhi says, "don't be afraid of words alone! They probably will not come back. But even if they do come back, I will be able to protect myself and you as well, through the power of my understanding, for I know many pathways through the water." Satabuddhi adds, "Yes, what Sahasrabuddhi says is correct, for one rightly says: Where neither the wind nor the sun's rays have found a way, intelligent understanding will quickly make a path." The frog's single understanding, however, advises him to flee, and this is what he does, leaving the two fish to try and find their own way to escape the fishermen. But the fish are caught in a net, while the frog escapes.
Book 1 of the Panchatantra has a similar story (the 14th) which this time points up the danger of not being wise, or a least clever, enough. It is also preserved in the Persian Kalila and Dimna as a tale of three fishes, one wise, one clever and one stupid. When the fishes notice the fishermen passing, the wise fish simply makes a quick exit from the pool. "Effective, but not particularly elegant," remarks clever fish (Ramsay Wood
's retelling). "Where did he go?" asks the stupid fish, "Why all the fuss?" Clever fish, after much deliberation, also manages to avoid being eaten, by playing dead, but for stupid fish, caught napping at the bottom of the pool, it is the frying pan.
Rumi, writing in the 13th century, knew Kalila and Dimna and used this story in Book IV of his Masnavi
. For him the wise fish is 'he who possesses a torch of his own... the guide and leader of the caravan.' Rumi advises:
The analogue in the ancient Indian Mahabharata
has the swan and the crow as protagonists. The swan has only one way to fly while the crow boasts of a hundred and one. The crow, however, gets himself into trouble with his displays of aerobatics
when he ends up far out over the ocean, unable to find a place to land. The swan flies down to the crow who, exhausted, is now beginning to trail his wings and beak in the sea. "Which of the hundred and one ways of flying is this?" asks the swan, before taking him, suitably humbled, back to land on his back.
The 'wise fool' Nasreddin
appears in a tale with the same structure - a tale also used as a parable by Ramakrishna. Though this time not the usual animal fable, the story contrasts someone who knows many things with someone who can do the one thing necessary to escape danger. While working as a ferryman, he has as passenger a scholar who wants to discuss the details of grammar and linguistics with him. When Nasreddin confesses he has no use for these tools, the scholar informs him he has wasted half his life. "Have you ever learned to swim?" asks Nasrudin. "No!" the scholar scoffs, "I have immersed myself in thinking." "In that case," Nasreddin replies, "you've wasted all your life. The boat is sinking!"
(80 tricks), in Marie de France
's Ysopet
(2 tricks, 'and a whole sackful besides'), as well as the fable collections of Odo of Cheriton
(17 tricks in a bag) and John Sheppey
.
For the preacher Odo, the cat represented those who know the single scheme, to 'spring into heaven', while the fox stood for "attorneys, casuists, tricksters" and others with a 'bagful of tricks'. The moral supplied by Marie de France is different, though perhaps complementary: that a wise man would be able to detect a liar, however plausibly he talked.
The fox is known for his craftiness in Western fables, and sometimes the fabulists go into more naturalistic detail in their retellings. In the 13th century poem of The Owl and the Nightingale
, for instance, the nightingale
, arguing that its one ability (to sing in summertime) is worth more than all the skills of the owl
, describes some of the fox's devices, the feints and devious courses it takes to outwit the dogs: 'The fox can creep along the hedge and turn off from his earlier route, and shortly afterwards double back on it, then the hound is thrown off the scent' (þe uox kan crope bi þe heie an turne ut from his forme weie an eft sone kume þarto þonne is þe hundes smel fordo).
Also in the 13th century, Berechiah ha-Nakdan
included the tale as number 94 of his hundred Fox Fables. His moral is different in emphasis again, contrasting simple, necessary labour with status
-consciousness. For him the fox represented those who despise and neglecte basic work to look after themselves and sustain their families, those who say 'our hand is too lofty to put sickle to standing grain' and boast of their professions: 'I am a scribe; I am a smith, I am a tailor; I am a goldsmith, I am a merchant; I am a sage, and what other is there like me to equal me?'
William Caxton
, who in 1484 published the first printed English version of Aesop's fables, including this one in it. For him the fable was about people who have pretensions of wisdom and subtlety, but who in fact are 'grete fooles and knowynge no thynge'.
Another landmark in the fable's history was its inclusion in Jean de La Fontaine
's influential Fables Choisies (IX.14, published in 1678). With La Fontaine, the fable has moved from the pulpit
to the salon
and his telling of this tale is typically lighter and more urbane in tone; the truth the tale points up for him is a question of expediency rather than the grave moral failure seen by earlier authors. Here the cat and the fox are travelling together:
The fable proceeds as in earlier versions and La Fontaine finishes with the practical moral:
", originally written in 1953, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin
uses the fable as summed up by Archilochus to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea; and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea. The essay, though not meant too seriously by Berlin, has proved influential, with a number of writers using his distinction.
Stephen Jay Gould
's The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox
uses both Berlin's book and the fable in exploring the complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities. Gould sees Archilochus's original image as containing two levels of metaphorical meaning for human contrasts. "The first speaks of psychological styles... Scamble or persist." The second is a question of intellectual practice: "Diversify and color, or intensify and cover", a union of the two strategies being the most fruitful for understanding between the two disciplines.
The sculptor Richard Serra
also cites Isaiah Berlin's essay as the source of the title of his "The Hedgehog and the Fox
" (1999). Serra explained at the time of the sculpture's installation in the grounds of Princeton University, "It points to how scholars either become free thinkers and invent or become subjugated to the dictates of history. This is the classical problem posed to every student." His reading therefore reverses the moral order of the original fable. The hedgehog, being resistant to change, is intellectually dead; the fox's adaptability (demonstrated by sculpture's relationship to its environment) is the correct strategy for intellectual development and survival.
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
, with both Eastern and Western analogues involving different animals, that addresses the difference between resourceful expediency and a master strategem. Included in collections of Aesop's fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
since the start of printing in Europe, it is number 605 in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
. In the basic story a cat and a fox discuss how many tricks and dodges they have. The fox boasts that he has many; the cat confesses to having only one. When hunters arrive with their dogs, the cat quickly climbs a tree, but the fox is caught by the hounds. Many morals have been drawn from the fable's presentations through history, and, as Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
's use of it in his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox
The Hedgehog and the Fox
"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is an essay by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin. It was one of Berlin's most popular essays with the general public. Berlin himself said of the essay: "I never meant it very seriously. I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously...
" shows, it continues to be interpreted anew.
History
The fable and its variants is a story of world-wide popularity which contrasts the fate of one animal proud of the many tricks at its disposal with another with just one simple trick. In time of danger it is that one trick that proves more effective than the many options.There is a proverb in a fragment attributed to the ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
poet Archilochus
Archilochus
Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
: (the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing). In Erasmus'
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and a theologian....
Adagia
Adagia
Adagia is an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus' collection of proverbs is "one of the most monumental ... ever assembled" Adagia (adagium is the singular form and adagia is the plural) is an...
from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum. This proverb seems to imply the existence of an ancient fable involving a hedgehog instead of a cat, as do some folktales from the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
.
Eastern
An analogous story in book 5 the PanchatantraPanchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
(story 6) illustrates the danger of being too clever. The tale concerns two fish, Satabuddhi (hundred-wit) and Sahasrabuddhi (thousand-wit) and a frog, Ekabuddhi (single-wit), who inhabit the same pond. When they hear two fishermen talk about returning the next day to fish, frog is anxious. "Oh, my friend," Sahasrabuddhi says, "don't be afraid of words alone! They probably will not come back. But even if they do come back, I will be able to protect myself and you as well, through the power of my understanding, for I know many pathways through the water." Satabuddhi adds, "Yes, what Sahasrabuddhi says is correct, for one rightly says: Where neither the wind nor the sun's rays have found a way, intelligent understanding will quickly make a path." The frog's single understanding, however, advises him to flee, and this is what he does, leaving the two fish to try and find their own way to escape the fishermen. But the fish are caught in a net, while the frog escapes.
Book 1 of the Panchatantra has a similar story (the 14th) which this time points up the danger of not being wise, or a least clever, enough. It is also preserved in the Persian Kalila and Dimna as a tale of three fishes, one wise, one clever and one stupid. When the fishes notice the fishermen passing, the wise fish simply makes a quick exit from the pool. "Effective, but not particularly elegant," remarks clever fish (Ramsay Wood
Ramsay Wood
Ramsay Wood is a writer best known for his modernized compilation of the ancient animal fables derived from The Panchatantra. His Kalila and Dimna-- Selected Fables of Bidpai was published by Knopf in 1980...
's retelling). "Where did he go?" asks the stupid fish, "Why all the fuss?" Clever fish, after much deliberation, also manages to avoid being eaten, by playing dead, but for stupid fish, caught napping at the bottom of the pool, it is the frying pan.
Rumi, writing in the 13th century, knew Kalila and Dimna and used this story in Book IV of his Masnavi
Masnavi
The Masnavi, Masnavi-I Ma'navi or Mesnevi , also written Mathnawi, Ma'navi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, the celebrated Persian Sufi saint and poet. It is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature...
. For him the wise fish is 'he who possesses a torch of his own... the guide and leader of the caravan.' Rumi advises:
-
- If you lack perfect wisdom, make yourself as dead
- Under the shadow of the wise, whose words give life.
- The fool is neither alive so as to companion with Jesus,
- Nor yet dead so as to feel the power of His breath.
The analogue in the ancient Indian Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
has the swan and the crow as protagonists. The swan has only one way to fly while the crow boasts of a hundred and one. The crow, however, gets himself into trouble with his displays of aerobatics
Aerobatics
Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flight. Aerobatics are performed in airplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment and sport...
when he ends up far out over the ocean, unable to find a place to land. The swan flies down to the crow who, exhausted, is now beginning to trail his wings and beak in the sea. "Which of the hundred and one ways of flying is this?" asks the swan, before taking him, suitably humbled, back to land on his back.
The 'wise fool' Nasreddin
Nasreddin
Nasreddin was a Seljuq satirical Sufi figure, sometimes believed to have lived during the Middle Ages and considered a populist philosopher and wise man, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes. He appears in thousands of stories, sometimes witty, sometimes wise, but often, too, a fool or...
appears in a tale with the same structure - a tale also used as a parable by Ramakrishna. Though this time not the usual animal fable, the story contrasts someone who knows many things with someone who can do the one thing necessary to escape danger. While working as a ferryman, he has as passenger a scholar who wants to discuss the details of grammar and linguistics with him. When Nasreddin confesses he has no use for these tools, the scholar informs him he has wasted half his life. "Have you ever learned to swim?" asks Nasrudin. "No!" the scholar scoffs, "I have immersed myself in thinking." "In that case," Nasreddin replies, "you've wasted all your life. The boat is sinking!"
European
Written records of the fable do not appear in Europe after Archiolocus until Medieval times. Here the boastful animal is generally the fox, but the animal with the one trick may be the hedgehog (Greece), the crane (Russia), the squirrel (Armenia) or the cock or dove. In western Europe it is always the cat, appearing in very similar versions, though with variation in the number of tricks the fox possesses. Some of the collections we find the fable in are the Anglo-Latin RomulusRomulus (fabulist)
Romulus is the author, now considered a legendary figure, of versions of Aesop's Fables in Latin. These were passed down in Western Europe, and became important school texts, for early education. Romulus is supposed to have lived in the 5th century....
(80 tricks), in Marie de France
Marie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...
's Ysopet
Ysopet
Ysopet refers to a medieval collection of fables in French literature, specifically to versions of Aesop's Fables. Alternatively the term Isopet-Avionnet indicates that the fables are drawn from both Aesop and Avianus....
(2 tricks, 'and a whole sackful besides'), as well as the fable collections of Odo of Cheriton
Odo of Cheriton
Odo of Cheriton was a Roman Catholic preacher and fabulist.He visited Paris, and it was probably there that he gained the degree of Master...
(17 tricks in a bag) and John Sheppey
John Sheppey
John Sheppey was an English administrator and bishop. He served as treasurer from 1356 to 1360. Little is known of his family and background. A Benedictine, he was ordained deacon in 1318, and later studied at Oxford. Later he became involved in royal government, and was made bishop of Rochester...
.
For the preacher Odo, the cat represented those who know the single scheme, to 'spring into heaven', while the fox stood for "attorneys, casuists, tricksters" and others with a 'bagful of tricks'. The moral supplied by Marie de France is different, though perhaps complementary: that a wise man would be able to detect a liar, however plausibly he talked.
The fox is known for his craftiness in Western fables, and sometimes the fabulists go into more naturalistic detail in their retellings. In the 13th century poem of The Owl and the Nightingale
The Owl and the Nightingale
The Owl and the Nightingale is a 12th- or 13th-century Middle English poem detailing a debate between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by the poem's narrator. It is the earliest example in Middle English of a literary form known as debate poetry...
, for instance, the nightingale
Nightingale
The Nightingale , also known as Rufous and Common Nightingale, is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher, Muscicapidae...
, arguing that its one ability (to sing in summertime) is worth more than all the skills of the owl
Owl
Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...
, describes some of the fox's devices, the feints and devious courses it takes to outwit the dogs: 'The fox can creep along the hedge and turn off from his earlier route, and shortly afterwards double back on it, then the hound is thrown off the scent' (þe uox kan crope bi þe heie an turne ut from his forme weie an eft sone kume þarto þonne is þe hundes smel fordo).
Also in the 13th century, Berechiah ha-Nakdan
Berechiah ha-Nakdan
Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, , commonly known as Berachya, was a Jewish exegete, ethical writer, grammarian, translator, poet, and philosopher...
included the tale as number 94 of his hundred Fox Fables. His moral is different in emphasis again, contrasting simple, necessary labour with status
Social status
In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
-consciousness. For him the fox represented those who despise and neglecte basic work to look after themselves and sustain their families, those who say 'our hand is too lofty to put sickle to standing grain' and boast of their professions: 'I am a scribe; I am a smith, I am a tailor; I am a goldsmith, I am a merchant; I am a sage, and what other is there like me to equal me?'
William Caxton
William Caxton
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
, who in 1484 published the first printed English version of Aesop's fables, including this one in it. For him the fable was about people who have pretensions of wisdom and subtlety, but who in fact are 'grete fooles and knowynge no thynge'.
Another landmark in the fable's history was its inclusion in Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
's influential Fables Choisies (IX.14, published in 1678). With La Fontaine, the fable has moved from the pulpit
Pulpit
Pulpit is a speakers' stand in a church. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Typically, the one on the left is called the pulpit...
to the salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
and his telling of this tale is typically lighter and more urbane in tone; the truth the tale points up for him is a question of expediency rather than the grave moral failure seen by earlier authors. Here the cat and the fox are travelling together:
- The way was long and therefore wearisome, so they shortened it by arguing. Argumentation is a great help. Without it one would go to sleep. Our pilgrims shouted themselves hoarse. Then having argued themselves out, they talked of other things.
The fable proceeds as in earlier versions and La Fontaine finishes with the practical moral:
- Too many expedients may spoil the business. One loses time in choosing between them and in trying too many. Have only one; but let it be a good one.
The Hedgehog and the Fox
In his popular essay "The Hedgehog and the FoxThe Hedgehog and the Fox
"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is an essay by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin. It was one of Berlin's most popular essays with the general public. Berlin himself said of the essay: "I never meant it very seriously. I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously...
", originally written in 1953, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
uses the fable as summed up by Archilochus to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea; and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea. The essay, though not meant too seriously by Berlin, has proved influential, with a number of writers using his distinction.
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
's The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is Stephen Jay Gould's posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities in a scholarly discourse....
uses both Berlin's book and the fable in exploring the complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities. Gould sees Archilochus's original image as containing two levels of metaphorical meaning for human contrasts. "The first speaks of psychological styles... Scamble or persist." The second is a question of intellectual practice: "Diversify and color, or intensify and cover", a union of the two strategies being the most fruitful for understanding between the two disciplines.
The sculptor Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
also cites Isaiah Berlin's essay as the source of the title of his "The Hedgehog and the Fox
The Hedgehog and the Fox (sculpture)
The Hedgehog and the Fox is a late Minimalist sculpture of Richard Serra, installed between Peyton and Fine halls and the football stadium at Princeton University in 2000...
" (1999). Serra explained at the time of the sculpture's installation in the grounds of Princeton University, "It points to how scholars either become free thinkers and invent or become subjugated to the dictates of history. This is the classical problem posed to every student." His reading therefore reverses the moral order of the original fable. The hedgehog, being resistant to change, is intellectually dead; the fox's adaptability (demonstrated by sculpture's relationship to its environment) is the correct strategy for intellectual development and survival.
External links
- D. L. Ashliman: fables of Aarne-Thompson type 105 about the dangers of being too clever
- Laura K Gibbs collection of images related to the fable on flickr
- The fable in Grimm's Fairy Tales, wikisource