In this lesson, we will study Aesop’s Fable, “The Stag Looking into the Pool”.
I. THE FABLE
Read the fable below carefully. Read it aloud if you are able to do so. Then read it a second time, slowly, before you go on to the rest of the lesson. The rest of the lesson will make little sense to you unless the story itself is clear in your mind first.
A Stag drinking at a clear pool, admired the handsome look of his spreading antlers, but was much displeased at the slim and ungainly appearance of his legs. “What a glorious pair of branching horns!” said he. “How gracefully they hang over my forehead! What an agreeable air they give my face! But as for my spindle-shanks of legs, I am heartily ashamed of them.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when he saw some huntsmen and a pack of hounds making towards him. His despised legs soon placed him at a distance from his followers, but, on entering the forest, his horns got entangled at every turn, so that the dogs soon reached him and made an end of him. “Mistaken fool that I was!” he exclaimed; “had it not been for these wretched horns my legs would have saved my life.”
II. LITERAL SENSE
Before we can find the lesson in this fable, we must be sure we understand exactly what happens in it. A lesson cannot be built on a story that is still cloudy in the mind. So let us go through the fable piece by piece, and take up each part in order.
First, the stag. A stag is a full-grown male deer. Two things about a stag matter for this story. The first is his antlers. Antlers are the branching, bony growths that rise from the top of a stag’s head. The fable calls them “horns,” which was a common older way of speaking, but they are not horns in the way a bull or a goat has horns. A bull’s horns are permanent and grow all his life. A stag’s antlers fall off once a year and grow back again, larger, in a new season. Antlers are wide, spreading, and full of branches, somewhat like the bare branches of a small tree. Stags use them to fight other stags, and they are handsome to look at, wide and proudly carried. The second thing that matters about a stag is his legs. A deer’s legs are thin, long, and light, built for running fast over open ground. A deer is a hunted animal. Wolves and other predators chase deer, and a deer survives chiefly by being able to run faster and longer than the creature chasing it. His legs are not built to look impressive. They are built to move.
Second, the pool. A pool here means a still, clear body of water, calm enough to show a reflection. When water is not stirred by wind or by a current, its surface acts like a mirror, and anyone bending over it can see his own face and shape looking back up at him. The stag has come to this pool to drink, which is an ordinary thing for a deer to do. But because the water is so clear and so still, he sees himself in it, and he begins to look himself over.
Third, the word “spindle-shanks.” A spindle is a thin, straight rod used long ago in spinning thread by hand. It is narrow all the way along, without much thickness anywhere. A “shank” is an old word for the lower part of a leg. So “spindle-shanks” means legs that are thin like a spindle, without much muscle showing, plain and narrow to look at. The stag uses this word about his own legs because, next to his wide branching antlers, his legs look small and unimpressive to his eye.
Fourth, the huntsmen and the hounds. Huntsmen are men who hunt, in this case men hunting on foot or on horse with the help of dogs. A pack of hounds is a group of hunting dogs, trained and bred to chase an animal for a long distance, following its scent or its movement, until the animal tires or is caught. In the world where Aesop’s fables were first told, hunting deer with hounds was an ordinary pursuit, done by lords and huntsmen for food and for sport. A stag standing at a pool, suddenly seeing huntsmen and hounds coming toward him, would have understood at once that his life was now in danger.
Fifth, the forest. A forest is a large area thick with trees growing close together, their branches low and tangled in places, especially at the edges where young trees and brush grow up beneath the older ones. A stag running through open ground faces nothing in his way. A stag running through a forest faces branches on every side, at every height, including the height of his own head.
Now let us tell the order of events again, and see how each one follows from the one before.
The stag comes to the pool to drink, and because the water is clear and still, he sees his own reflection. Because he sees his reflection, he begins to judge his own body by its looks. He looks at his antlers first, and because they are wide, branching, and finely shaped, he praises them highly. He looks at his legs next, and because they are thin and plain beside the antlers, he is ashamed of them. Then, almost the instant he finishes speaking, huntsmen and hounds appear, coming toward him. Because the hunt has now begun, the stag must run for his life. Because his legs are light and built for speed, they carry him far ahead of the huntsmen and hounds, out across the open ground. But then he enters the forest. Because the forest is thick with branches, and because his antlers are wide and spreading, his antlers catch and tangle in the branches at every turn he makes. Because his antlers hold him fast again and again, the hounds are able to close the distance and catch him. The fable ends with the stag’s own words, spoken as he understands what has happened. He calls himself a mistaken fool, and he says that his legs, which he had despised, would have saved his life, if only his horns had not undone him.
This is one of the few fables that runs all the way to its end. We are told the stag is caught, and we are told his last words. We are not told what the huntsmen did afterward, and we are not told whether any other stag ever heard the story and learned from it. But the action itself, the praising, the fleeing, the catching, and the dying, is complete.
Here is the point where a child might easily misread the stag’s last words. The stag says, “had it not been for these wretched horns.” A hearer might think the stag means that antlers are a bad thing to have, or worthless, or that Aesop wants us to think antlers are simply useless. That is not what the stag means, and it is not what the fable teaches. Antlers are not useless. A stag uses them to fight for supremacy among other stags, and in open ground they do him no harm at all. The stag’s mistake was not in having antlers. His mistake was in judging his antlers and his legs only by how they looked, and never asking, until it was too late, which of the two would actually serve him when his life depended on it.
III. MORAL LESSON
The principal lesson of this fable is that we must judge the parts of our life, and the things we have, by how useful they are for our true good, and not merely by how pleasing they are to look at.
To see this clearly, we must notice that there are two different measures by which a thing can be judged. One measure is how pleasant a thing is to look at, how much it pleases the eye or strikes us as handsome. We may call this measure comeliness, or beauty. The other measure is how useful a thing is, that is, how well it actually serves the true good of the one who has it, especially in time of need. These two measures very often agree. A well-made tool is often pleasant to look at as well as useful. But they do not always agree, and when they disagree, a wise creature must know which measure matters more.
The stag, standing at the pool, uses only the first measure. He looks at his antlers and judges them by comeliness alone: they hang gracefully, they give his face an agreeable air. He looks at his legs and judges them the same way: they look slim and ungainly, so he is ashamed of them. At no point while he stands at the pool does he ask the second question, the question of usefulness. He does not ask, “which of these will serve me if I must run for my life?” He has no reason to ask it yet, because no danger has appeared. But this is exactly the trouble. He forms his judgment of what is his glory and what is his shame before the true test ever comes, and he forms it using only the eye.
We should notice something important here, so that this lesson is not misunderstood. The stag’s underlying wish, to know what is excellent in himself and what is not, is not a foolish wish. It is natural, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to understand your own strengths and weaknesses. His fault is not that he wondered about himself. His fault is in the manner of his judging. He judged by sight alone, by what pleased his eye in a moment of leisure, and never asked what would actually serve him well.
Now let us watch the doctrine appear in the very events of the story. The moment danger comes, the truth is revealed, whether the stag was ready to see it or not. His legs, which he called spindle-shanks and was ashamed of, carry him far ahead of the huntsmen and the hounds across the open ground. This is the legs’ true worth, shown in action, not in looks. Then he enters the forest, and his antlers, which he called glorious, catch again and again in the branches. This is the antlers’ true cost, shown in action, in the one place where their wide branching shape becomes a hindrance rather than an ornament. The very things the stag admired and despised change places entirely once real use is asked of them. What looked fine nearly killed him. What looked poor would have saved him, had the antlers not undone that rescue.
There is a fault on one side of this matter, and there is a fault on the other side, and the truth lies between them. The fault the stag falls into is judging by appearance and forgetting usefulness almost entirely, valuing what is splendid to see over what is sound and serviceable. But it would also be a fault to go to the other extreme, and to despise all beauty and fitness of appearance as if it never mattered at all, refusing ever to care how a thing looks or presents itself. A creature who cared for nothing but bare usefulness, and thought no attention should ever be paid to what is fitting or well-made, would also judge poorly, though in the opposite direction. The right judgment lies between these two: to value a thing rightly, giving proper weight to both its usefulness and its fittingness, but always giving usefulness the greater weight when the two come into conflict, especially when what is at stake is one’s true good and safety.
We should also ask whether the stag’s mistake could have been undone. Notice that his judgment at the pool, by itself, harmed no one. He could have stood there all day admiring his antlers and been ashamed of his legs, and nothing bad would have followed, if no huntsman had ever come. The judgment itself was still standing open to correction, right up until the moment the hunt began. But once the huntsmen and hounds appeared, there was no more time left to reconsider. He had to run on the legs and antlers he had, judged rightly or wrongly, and by the time he understood the truth, inside the forest, with the hounds closing in, it was far too late to change anything. The rule to draw from this is important. Judgments of worth, about ourselves, about our friends, about the things we own, should be examined and corrected calmly, before any crisis comes, because once the crisis is upon us, we no longer have leisure to rethink. We act on whatever judgment we already hold, true or false.
Aesop was a pagan and did not have the teaching of the Christian faith, and yet natural reason alone can see the truth of this fable. Any thinking man, pagan or Christian, can see that a creature who values things wrongly may pay for that error with his life. The teaching of the Church confirms this and carries it further. She reminds us that outward appearance often deceives, and that the eye alone is not a safe judge of what is truly good, whether we are judging a possession, a companion, or even ourselves. A Christian is asked to weigh every choice, not only by how pleasant or handsome a thing appears, but by whether it serves his true good, and his true good is finally found in God, toward whom his whole life is ordered. The stag had only his life in this world to lose. A man who judges by appearance alone risks something greater.
IV. AESOP’S CHOICES
Aesop was a teacher, and every part of this little story was chosen with care. Let us take up the parts one at a time and ask why each one was fitting.
Why a stag, rather than some other animal? Because a stag carries, in his own body, the very contrast the lesson requires. He has one part built purely for splendor, his antlers, wide, branching, and admired, and another part built purely for service, his legs, plain and swift. No other common animal displays this contrast so plainly in a single body. A bull’s horns are not shed and regrown for display in the same way, and a horse has no ornamental part to compare against its legs at all. The stag was made to order for this lesson.
Why a clear pool, rather than a river or a puddle? Because only still, clear water gives a true reflection. A river’s moving water would break up his image, and a muddy puddle would show him nothing at all. The pool must be perfectly calm, so that the stag can study himself closely and at leisure, exactly as a person studies himself when there is no danger pressing him and nothing to disturb his self-regard.
Why huntsmen and a pack of hounds? Because the fable needs a true test of worth, a trial that will show, beyond any argument, which part of the stag actually serves him. Admiring words at a pool prove nothing. Only real danger, with real consequences, can show whether the stag’s judgment was right or wrong. The hunt is the proof.
Why does the chase move from open ground into a forest? Because the two settings are needed to show the two truths in order. In the open ground, the legs alone matter, and they save him, exactly as their built purpose would suggest. In the forest, the antlers alone matter, and they betray him, exactly because their wide branching shape, so pleasing beside a pool, becomes a snare among close-set branches. Had the whole chase stayed in the open, we would never see the antlers cause any harm at all. Aesop needs the forest to complete the lesson.
Why let the fable run all the way to the stag’s death and his final words, instead of stopping earlier? Because here Aesop wants the character himself to state the lesson plainly, in his own dying breath, as a kind of self-correction. This is different from some other fables, where Aesop lets the story break off before its end, so that the hearer must supply the conclusion himself. Here, Aesop lets the mistake ripen fully into its consequence, and lets the stag speak the truth only after it is too late for the stag, though not too late for us.
Now consider why Aesop tells a story at all, rather than simply stating a rule. He might have written, “Judge things by their usefulness, and not merely by how they appear.” That sentence is true, and that sentence would slide out of a hearer’s mind almost as fast as it entered it.
Here is why the story succeeds where the bare rule fails. All that we come to know begins in the senses. We first learn by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling particular things, one at a time. From many particular things gathered through the senses, the mind draws out what is true of many such things, and at last what is true always. A child has never seen “the danger of judging by appearance” floating before him in the air, because that is not a thing eyes can see. But a child can see, in his mind’s eye, a stag bending over clear water, praising his antlers, and despising his legs. He can see those same antlers catching in branches while the legs that were despised run free. Once he holds that picture, his mind can travel from the picture to the general truth, and the truth will stay with him because the picture stays with him.
This is not a turning away from the visible world toward some higher world of pure ideas. It is the opposite. The fable teaches through the very things a child can picture, a pool, antlers, thin legs, hounds, and branches, because picturing is the road by which the human mind travels toward understanding. Man is made to learn this way, from the particular seen thing to the general truth.
V. APPLICATION
A lesson you cannot use in your own days is a lesson you will not keep. So let us bring the stag and his pool into your own life.
Consider first your own abilities, the things you are good at. Perhaps you can do one thing that looks impressive to others, something that draws attention and praise quickly, like a clever trick or a striking bit of skill. And perhaps you can also do another thing that looks plain and draws no praise at all, like keeping your room in order, or doing a chore carefully, or being patient with a younger brother. The faulty judgment is to prize the flashy skill highly and to be ashamed of the plain one, exactly as the stag praised his antlers and despised his legs. The right judgment asks a different question: which of these will actually serve me well when I truly need it? Very often it is the plain, patient skill, the one that looked like spindle-shanks, that carries you safely through a hard day, while the flashy skill turns out to be no help at all when it is needed most.
Consider next your friends. It can happen that you are drawn to a friend because he seems impressive, quick with jokes, admired by others, exciting to be near, much as the stag was drawn to admire his own bright antlers. At the same time you may have a quieter friend, less remarkable to look at, who is steady and loyal, much like the plain legs the stag was ashamed of. The faulty judgment values the first friend highly and looks down on the second, judging both only by how they appear. The right judgment asks which friend will actually stand by you when trouble comes, as the hounds came for the stag. Very often it is the quiet, steady friend, undervalued at first, who proves the truer good.
Consider third your schoolwork and your chores. There is often a difference between the tasks that seem grand and interesting and the tasks that seem dull and lowly, like practicing your letters carefully, or learning your arithmetic facts by heart, or doing a small daily duty without being told. The faulty judgment despises the dull task and gives all its attention and pride to the grand one, exactly as the stag gave all his admiration to his antlers. The right judgment remembers that the dull, plain task is very often the one that will serve you later, when the moment of real need arrives, the way the stag’s legs served him in the open ground. To scorn a plain, useful thing because it is not glorious to look at is to repeat the stag’s very error.
Now here is why this fable will help you remember, long after a bare rule would have faded. Picture the stag bending over the still, clear pool, seeing his own wide antlers and his thin legs side by side in the water. Picture him fleeing across open ground on those same despised legs, faster than the hounds behind him. Picture him entering the forest, and his fine antlers catching fast in the branches, turn after turn, until the hounds are upon him. These pictures will stay with you. And someday, when you are about to prize some part of your life for how it looks and despise another part for how plain it seems, the stag at his pool will come back to you before any rule does. That is exactly what Aesop intended when he made a story instead of a maxim.
Carry the lesson in one sentence: Judge every part of your life by what it is worth in use, not merely by what it is worth to look at.
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