Much has been made of the "oriental fable" Tolstoy recounts in his Confessions and James quotes in the "Sick Soul" part of the Varieties:
“Seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler jumps into a well with no water in it; but at the bottom of this well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour him. And the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to the bottom lest he should be devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush which grows out of one of the cracks of the well. His hands weaken, and he feels that he must soon give way to certain fate; but still he clings, and see two mice, one white, the other black, evenly moving round the bush to which he hangs, and gnawing off its roots.
“The traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably perish; but while thus hanging he looks about him and finds on the leaves of the bush some drops of honey. These he reaches with his tongue and licks them off with rapture."
“Thus I hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the inevitable dragon of death is waiting ready to tear me, and I cannot comprehend why I am thus made a martyr. I try to suck the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and the black mouse gnaw the branch to which I cling. ..."
The fable turns out to come from the legend of the saints Barlaam and Josaphat, and has been traced across many centuries, languages and even religious traditions: the origin appears to have been in a story about a Bodisaf, the Buddha-to-be. But by the time James presents it, he's offered two stories structurally similar enough to resonate interestingly. The first appears in the discussion of "Healthy-Mindedness":
A story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found himself at night slipping down the side of a precipice. At last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours. But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. He fell just six inches. If he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared.
The other appears between these two, and it's in James' own voice. It comes early in the discussion of the "Sick Soul," where James makes common cause with his presumably dour Scottish audience in finding healthy-mindedness misses the centrality of evil to human life.
For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.
I kind of like that one for its sense of collective doom, and for the cruel detail that every sunny day, every bonfire, and every cut of an ice skate will hasten this doom. (There's no suggestion here that, in fact, the lake is only six inches deep!) The other cases are stages on the journey of a soul - everyone knew that Tolstoy didn't stay in that deep funk.
I drew a picture of the scene, complete with ice skater and sun, as students shared responses, but it turned out they didn't like the story as much as I did, let alone relish the polyphony of James' stories as did a class a decade ago. I still saw a beautifully crafted fable, but in 2020 the ice melting doom scenario isn't just a fable. Rather is one inclined to say of it what Tolstoy said of the "oriental fable":
This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every one may understand.
“Seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler jumps into a well with no water in it; but at the bottom of this well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour him. And the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to the bottom lest he should be devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush which grows out of one of the cracks of the well. His hands weaken, and he feels that he must soon give way to certain fate; but still he clings, and see two mice, one white, the other black, evenly moving round the bush to which he hangs, and gnawing off its roots.
“The traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably perish; but while thus hanging he looks about him and finds on the leaves of the bush some drops of honey. These he reaches with his tongue and licks them off with rapture."
“Thus I hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the inevitable dragon of death is waiting ready to tear me, and I cannot comprehend why I am thus made a martyr. I try to suck the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and the black mouse gnaw the branch to which I cling. ..."
The fable turns out to come from the legend of the saints Barlaam and Josaphat, and has been traced across many centuries, languages and even religious traditions: the origin appears to have been in a story about a Bodisaf, the Buddha-to-be. But by the time James presents it, he's offered two stories structurally similar enough to resonate interestingly. The first appears in the discussion of "Healthy-Mindedness":
A story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found himself at night slipping down the side of a precipice. At last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours. But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. He fell just six inches. If he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared.
The other appears between these two, and it's in James' own voice. It comes early in the discussion of the "Sick Soul," where James makes common cause with his presumably dour Scottish audience in finding healthy-mindedness misses the centrality of evil to human life.
For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.
I kind of like that one for its sense of collective doom, and for the cruel detail that every sunny day, every bonfire, and every cut of an ice skate will hasten this doom. (There's no suggestion here that, in fact, the lake is only six inches deep!) The other cases are stages on the journey of a soul - everyone knew that Tolstoy didn't stay in that deep funk.
I drew a picture of the scene, complete with ice skater and sun, as students shared responses, but it turned out they didn't like the story as much as I did, let alone relish the polyphony of James' stories as did a class a decade ago. I still saw a beautifully crafted fable, but in 2020 the ice melting doom scenario isn't just a fable. Rather is one inclined to say of it what Tolstoy said of the "oriental fable":
This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every one may understand.
