In this lesson, we will study Aesop’s Fable, “The Wolf and the Lamb”.
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 hungry Wolf one day saw a Lamb drinking at a stream, and wished to frame some plausible excuse for making him his prey. “What do you mean by muddling the water I am going to drink?” fiercely said he to the Lamb. “Pray forgive me,” meekly answered the Lamb; “I should be sorry in any way to displease you, but as the stream runs from you towards me, you will see that such cannot be the case.” “That’s all very well,” said the Wolf; “but you know you spoke ill of me behind my back a year ago.” “Nay, believe me,” replied the Lamb, “I was not then born.” “It must have been your brother then,” growled the Wolf. “It cannot have been, for I never had any,” answered the Lamb. “I know it was one of your lot,” rejoined the Wolf, “so make no more such idle excuses.” He then seized the poor Lamb, carried him off to the woods, and ate him.
II. LITERAL SENSE
Before we can find the lesson in this fable, we must be sure we understand exactly what happens in it. We cannot build a moral on a story we have not first understood plainly. So let us go through the fable piece by piece, in order.
First, the two creatures. A wolf is a large wild animal that hunts and eats other animals. A wolf’s whole way of living depends on catching prey, which means catching weaker animals to kill and eat. A lamb is a young sheep. A sheep is a gentle animal that eats grass and does not hunt anything. A lamb, being young, is smaller and weaker even than a grown sheep. The fable depends on you knowing this about each animal from the very first line. A wolf is naturally the kind of creature that wants to eat a lamb. A lamb is naturally the kind of creature that cannot fight a wolf or run from one easily. This is why the fable can happen at all. If both creatures had been wolves, or both had been lambs, there could be no such story.
Second, the place. The fable happens at a stream. A stream is a small body of water that flows, moving steadily from a higher place to a lower place, unlike a lake or a pond which mostly sits still. This detail about flowing matters a great deal to this fable, and we will come back to it in a moment.
Third, the word “prey.” Prey is an animal that is hunted and killed by another animal for food. When the fable says the wolf wished to make the lamb “his prey,” it means the wolf wanted to kill and eat the lamb.
Fourth, the phrase “frame some plausible excuse.” To frame an excuse means to make one up, to build it on purpose, the way you might frame, or build, a wooden box. Plausible means seeming reasonable or believable on the surface, even if it is not true underneath. So the wolf did not simply want to eat the lamb. He wanted to invent some reason, some believable-sounding complaint, that would make it look as though eating the lamb was fair or deserved. This is the single most important sentence in the whole fable, and we will return to it in the next section.
Fifth, the wolf’s first complaint. The wolf accuses the lamb of muddling the water he, the wolf, was going to drink. To muddle water means to stir up the mud and dirt at the bottom of it, so that it becomes cloudy and unpleasant to drink. Now here is a fact about flowing water that the fable expects you to know, and that every shepherd and every hunter around the Mediterranean Sea, where Aesop’s fables were first told, would have known without being told. Water in a stream flows in one direction, from higher ground down to lower ground. If one creature is standing upstream, meaning closer to where the water comes from, and another creature is standing downstream, meaning further along in the direction the water is flowing, then whatever the upstream creature stirs up will flow down to the downstream creature. It cannot flow the other way. Mud stirred up downstream can never reach a creature standing upstream, because water does not run backward.
Sixth, the lamb’s first answer. The lamb points out, quite reasonably, that the stream runs from the wolf toward the lamb. This means the wolf is upstream and the lamb is downstream. Therefore anything muddled by the lamb could only flow further downstream, away from the wolf, and could never reach the wolf at all. The lamb has not merely denied the wolf’s charge. The lamb has shown, by the plain behavior of flowing water, that the charge was impossible from the very start.
Seventh, the wolf’s second complaint. Rather than admitting he was wrong, the wolf changes his charge entirely. He now says the lamb spoke ill of him, meaning said unkind or false things about him, a year ago, behind his back, meaning when the wolf was not present to hear it or answer it.
Eighth, the lamb’s second answer. The lamb replies that he was not even born a year ago, so he could not possibly have said any such thing.
Ninth, the wolf’s third complaint. Instead of accepting this answer either, the wolf simply says it must have been the lamb’s brother.
Tenth, the lamb’s third answer. The lamb says he never had a brother at all.
Eleventh, the wolf’s final words. The wolf says he knows it was one of the lamb’s lot, meaning one of the lamb’s family or kind, some sheep or other, and he tells the lamb to make no more idle excuses. Idle here means worthless, empty, having no real weight, the way idle chatter is talk that means nothing.
Twelfth and last, the ending. The wolf seizes the lamb, meaning grabs him suddenly and by force, carries him off to the woods, and eats him.
Now let us look at the order of events from the start, and see how each step follows from the one before. Because the wolf is hungry, he wants to eat the lamb. Because he wants to eat the lamb but wants also to seem justified in doing so, he looks for an excuse rather than simply attacking. Because he needs an excuse, he accuses the lamb of muddling the water. Because that accusation is shown to be impossible, he abandons it at once and reaches for a new one, the old insult. Because that one too is shown to be impossible, since the lamb was not yet born, he reaches for a third, blaming the lamb’s brother. Because the lamb had no brother, that fails too. And because every real excuse has now failed him, the wolf drops the pretense of excuses altogether and simply seizes the lamb by force.
The fable stops there, at the eating of the lamb. We are told nothing else. We are not told whether any other animal saw this happen, and we are not told whether the wolf felt any shame afterward. Aesop gives us nothing but the plain fact of what was done.
Here is a misunderstanding a child might easily fall into, and we should correct it now. It might seem, reading quickly, that the wolf actually believed his own accusations, and was simply confused or mistaken about the facts. But look again at the very first sentence of the fable. Aesop tells us plainly, before the wolf says a single word, that the wolf “wished to frame some plausible excuse for making him his prey.” This tells us that the wolf’s mind was made up from the very beginning. The wolf never wanted an honest answer to any of his questions. The wolf wanted only some words that sounded like a reason, so that his own violence would look fair. When each excuse is proven false, the wolf does not pause to reconsider; he simply reaches for the next excuse, and when even that runs out, he stops excusing himself altogether and takes what he wanted from the start. The accusations were never really about muddy water, or old insults, or brothers. They were only a covering laid over a decision already made.
III. MORAL LESSON
The principal lesson of this fable is that a person who has already decided to do wrong will not be turned aside by any true answer, because his excuses are not the real reason for his action.
The fault at work in the wolf has a name. It is a form of injustice. Justice is the virtue that gives to each person what is rightly his, and does no harm to another without cause. A virtue, remember, is a good habit of the soul, a settled readiness to act well that a creature builds up by acting the same good way again and again. Injustice is the opposite of this: a settled readiness to take from another, or harm another, what is not rightly ours to take or harm. The wolf’s injustice here is plain and total. He takes the lamb’s very life, and the lamb has done nothing at all to deserve it.
We judge any act by three things: by what is done, by why it is done, and by the circumstances surrounding it. Let us judge the wolf’s act by these three measures. What is done is the killing of an innocent creature. Why it is done is not for any true wrong the lamb committed, since the fable shows us plainly that no such wrong ever happened; it is done because the wolf is hungry and wants to eat. The circumstance is that the wolf holds all the power in this meeting, and the lamb holds none. When we lay these three together, we see that the wolf’s excuses never had anything to do with why he acted. The true why was hunger and appetite, undisciplined by reason. The false why, offered aloud, was the muddled water and the old insult.
Here we should notice something the fable teaches about the difference between wanting a thing and going after it rightly. It is not wrong for a wolf to be hungry, nor wrong that a wolf, by its nature, eats other creatures. But a wolf that wanted its food justly would hunt as a wolf hunts, openly, using the strength nature gave it, rather than pretending that the lamb deserved to die. What is wrong here is not hunger itself. What is wrong is dressing up naked force in the clothing of justice, making violence look like a fair sentence handed down for a real fault. This is worse, in a way, than open violence, because it adds a lie to the injury. The wolf does not merely wish to eat the lamb; he wishes to seem right to do so.
Prudence, which we have studied before as the virtue that judges rightly what is to be done, has no place at all in the wolf’s actions here, because the wolf has already decided what he will do before he asks a single question. Prudence considers what is remembered, what is seen now, and what is likely to follow, and then judges rightly on the strength of that. But the wolf considers nothing honestly. He does not want to learn the truth about the water, or about who insulted him, or about the lamb’s family. He asks his questions only to find a shape of words he can throw over his own hunger. This is the opposite of true reasoning, and it is worth knowing that not every question asked aloud is really a question. Some questions, like the wolf’s, are only masks worn by a decision already made.
Now let us name what the lamb does, because the lamb’s part in this fable also teaches something, though it teaches by showing what a good answer cannot accomplish. The lamb speaks the truth every single time. He answers with real facts: the water runs the wrong way for the charge to be true; he was not yet born; he has no brother. Each of these answers is entirely correct, and each is entirely useless, because the wolf was never listening for truth. This is a hard thing to accept, but the fable means for us to accept it: truth spoken to someone who has already decided to do wrong does not always save us from the wrong. The lamb does nothing wrong in speaking truly, and it would be a mistake to say the lamb should have answered some other way. His truthfulness is not the failure here. His safety was never really in his own hands at all, once the wolf had determined beforehand to devour him.
There are two faults that stand on either side of true justice, and we should name them both so that justice is seen clearly in the middle. On one side stands the wolf’s fault, which we may call open injustice covered by false excuse, seizing what is not ours while pretending we deserve it. On the other side stands a different fault, a kind of excessive fear or weakness that gives up what is rightly ours the moment anyone raises an angry voice against us, without waiting to see whether the anger is just. The lamb does not fall into this second fault either. Notice that the lamb does not simply agree with the wolf to please him. The lamb answers each charge honestly and clearly, standing on the truth, even while speaking gently. Justice does not require us to be harsh, and the lamb’s gentle manner of speaking, described in the fable as meek, is not weakness. It is simply good manners joined to a firm grip on the truth.
We must also say plainly that this fable shows us a choice that could not be undone. Once the wolf seized the lamb, there was no calling the act back. This is different from the fable of the two frogs, where the danger was that the frog himself might make an unwise choice he could not undo. Here the danger is of a different kind: it is the lamb who suffers a deed done to him that he did not choose and could not have prevented, once the wolf’s mind was made up. The lesson this teaches is not chiefly about the lamb’s own choices, since the lamb chose rightly at every point. The lesson is about seeing clearly what kind of creature, or what kind of person, is standing before us, before we place ourselves entirely in that creature’s power.
Aesop was a pagan and did not have the teaching of the Church, and yet plain natural reason, without any help from faith, can see that it is wrong to harm the innocent, and wrong to dress up wrongdoing in false reasons. Any thinking person, in any age, can see the injustice of the wolf. The Church teaches this same truth and carries it further. She teaches that every person, no matter how weak or how friendless, has a dignity that comes from being made in the image of God, and that no excuse, however clever, can make it right to harm an innocent person. She teaches also that a man who does evil while telling himself a comforting story about his own fairness does not escape judgment by believing his own excuse; he is judged, in the end, by what he truly did and why he truly did it, not by the words he used to dress it up.
IV. AESOP’S CHOICES
Aesop was a teacher, and every part of this fable was chosen on purpose to teach exactly what it teaches. Let us take up the parts one at a time and ask why each one was chosen as it was.
Why a wolf? Because among the animals known to Aesop’s first hearers, the wolf was already known as a hunter of flocks, a creature whose whole living was made by killing sheep. A wolf’s own nature, seeking prey by strength, fits it perfectly to stand for a person who takes what he wants by force. Had Aesop chosen some harmless animal to play the wolf’s part, the danger in the story would not be believable, and the fear the lamb ought to feel would make no sense.
Why a lamb, and not a grown sheep or some sturdier animal? Because a lamb is young, small, and defenseless in a way that even a grown sheep is not quite so plainly. A lamb cannot fight, cannot run especially fast, and has no horns or strength to speak of. This makes the lamb the perfect picture of complete innocence paired with complete weakness. If Aesop had chosen a stag, which has horns and speed, or a grown ram, which has horns and some strength, we might wonder whether the victim could have defended itself and simply failed to try. The lamb removes that question entirely. There is no possible reading in which the lamb could have won by force. The only weapon left to the lamb is truth, and Aesop wants us to see truth used, and still to see it fail to save.
Why a stream, and why does Aesop bother to tell us which way it flows? Because the flowing of the water is the very tool by which the lamb proves the wolf’s first charge false. Water always runs downhill, from higher ground to lower ground, and this is a fact of nature that any hearer, then or now, can check simply by watching any stream. By grounding the lamb’s defense in a plain fact of nature rather than in some claim no one could verify, Aesop makes sure we see that the lamb’s innocence is not merely asserted, but proven. This makes the wolf’s refusal to accept it far more clearly unjust, because the wolf is not refusing an opinion; he is refusing a plain fact.
Why does the wolf offer three separate excuses instead of one? Because a single excuse, once disproven, might make us think the wolf was merely mistaken, and perhaps would give up honestly once shown he was wrong. By making the wolf reach for a second excuse, and then a third, each one weaker and more absurd than the last, moving from an old insult, to the insult of a brother who may not exist, to simply “one of your lot,” Aesop shows us a mind that is not seeking truth at all, but is merely hunting for any words that will serve. The three attempts, growing visibly worse and worse, let us watch the wolf’s real purpose come into the light, a little more with each failed excuse, until by the third excuse there is hardly any pretense of reason left at all.
Why does the fable end so quickly, with the killing stated in one short sentence and no further comment? Because Aesop has already shown us everything we need in the arguing. The killing itself needs no long description; its meaning has already been made completely plain by the conversation that came before it. A long, dramatic ending would only soften the point by turning our attention to the horror of the act, when Aesop wants our attention fixed instead on the injustice of the reasoning that led up to it.
Now, why does Aesop tell a story at all, rather than simply writing down a rule such as, “A person determined to do wrong will not be persuaded by true answers”? Such a rule is true, and worth remembering, but notice how easily it slides out of the mind almost as soon as it is read. All human knowledge begins in the senses; we learn first by seeing, hearing, and touching particular things, and only afterward does the mind draw out from these particular things what is true more generally, and at last what is true always. You have never seen “injustice covered by a false excuse” walking about by itself, because it is not a thing that can be seen. But you have now seen, in your mind’s eye, a wolf standing over a stream inventing one excuse after another while a lamb answers him truly and is eaten all the same. From that one clear picture, your mind can travel on its own to the general truth about every person who decides beforehand what he will do, and only afterward hunts for reasons to make it look fair. This is not a turning away from the real world toward some higher realm of pure ideas; it is the opposite. The fable teaches through a picture a child can hold, because picturing is the very road by which human understanding travels, and a person is made by nature to learn in this way, from the particular thing seen to the general truth known.
V. APPLICATION
A lesson you cannot use in your own life is a lesson you will not keep, so let us bring this fable down into the days you actually live.
Consider your words first. Suppose you are angry with your sister for some reason that has nothing at all to do with what she is doing right now, perhaps because you are simply in a bad mood, or tired, or disappointed about something else entirely. If you find yourself searching for something to accuse her of, some fault to pin on her so that your anger looks fair, ask yourself honestly whether you are the lamb’s accuser in that moment. The wolf did not want the truth about the water; he wanted an excuse. If you notice that no answer she gives will satisfy you, and that you keep reaching for a new charge whenever the old one fails, you are behaving exactly as the wolf behaved, and the just thing to do is to stop, admit that your anger came first and the accusations came after, and set the accusations aside.
Consider next your friendships and your fairness toward others. Suppose a friend of yours becomes unpopular, and other children begin inventing small faults against him simply because it has become the fashion to dislike him, faults that do not hold up any better than the wolf’s charges about muddy water. The faulty act is to join in the accusing, or to accept the excuses without examining them, because it is easier to go along with a crowd than to ask, as the lamb’s plain answers ask us to, whether the charge could possibly be true. The just act is to do what the lamb does: to check the charge calmly against the plain facts, the way you would check which direction a stream is flowing, and to say so if the facts do not bear the charge out, even if this is not the popular thing to say.
Consider third the handling of your own power over someone weaker than yourself, whether a younger brother, a smaller child at play, or an animal in your care. The lamb had no power at all in that meeting, and everything depended on how the wolf chose to use his own strength. When you hold real power over someone weaker than you, whether the power of your size, your age, or simply your standing among other children, the fable asks you to notice that you are always closer to the wolf’s position than to the lamb’s. The unjust use of such power is to take what you want from someone weaker and then hunt for some reason afterward that makes it look deserved. The just use of such power is to ask honestly, before you act at all, whether the weaker person has actually done anything wrong, and to hold yourself to the same true standard you would demand of anyone else.
Now here is why this fable will stay with you long after a bare rule would have faded. A rule such as “do not harm the innocent” is easy to agree with in an instant and just as easy to forget an hour later, because there is nothing in it for your mind to hold onto. But a picture stays. You can see the stream running from the wolf’s feet down toward the lamb’s. You can see the wolf’s mouth forming one excuse, then dropping it, then forming another. You can see the lamb answering gently and truly every time, and you can see, at the end, that none of it mattered to the wolf at all.
That picture will return to you exactly when you need it, before any rule would, and this is precisely what Aesop intended when he made the story instead of merely stating the truth. Someday you will feel your own temper reaching for an excuse to justify something you already meant to do, and before any rule about justice comes to your mind, the wolf and the stream will come first. You will hear the wolf say, “That’s all very well, but,” and you will know, from the story alone, exactly what kind of moment you are standing in.
Carry the lesson in one sentence: When someone has already decided to do wrong, no true answer will stop him, so look honestly at what a person intends, not only at what he says.
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