Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists/Fable CCXX
Fab. CCXX.
An Eagle and a Tortoise.
A Tortoise was thinking with himself, how Irksom a sort of Life it was, to spend All his Days in a Hole, with a a House upon his Head, when so many Other Creatures had the Liberty to Divert Themselves in the Free, Fresh Air, and to Ramble about at Pleasure. So that the Humor took him One Day, and he must needs get an Eagle to Teach him to Fly. The Eagle would fain have put him off, and told him 'twas a Thing against Nature, and Common Sense; but (according to the Freak of the Wilful Part of the World) the More the One was Against it, the More the Other was For it: And when the Eagle saw that the Tortoise would not be said Nay, she took him up a matter of Steeple-high into the Air, and there turn’d him Loose to shift for Himself. That is to say; she dropt him down, Squab upon a Rock, that Dash’d him to Pieces.
The Moral.
Nothing can be either Safe, or Easy, that’s Unnatural.
REFLEXION.
THIS shews us, how Unnatural a Vanity it is, for a Creature that was Made for One Condition, to Aspire to Another. The Tortoise's Place was upon the Sands, not among the Stars; and if he had kept to his Station, he would have been in No Danger of Falling. Many a Fool has Good Councel Offer'd him, that has not either the Wit, or the Grace to Take it ; and his Willfulness commonly Ends in his Ruine.
Every thing in Nature has it’s Appointed Place, and Condition, and there's No putting a Force upon any thing, contrary to the Biass and Intent of it's Instisution. What Bus’ness has a Tortorise among the Clouds? Or why may not the Earth it self as well Covet a Higher Place, as any Creature that's Confin'd to't? It is, in short, a Silly, an Extravagant, and in Truth, so Impious a Fancy, that there can hardly be a Greater Folly then to Wish, or but so much as to Suppose it: But there's an Ambition in Mean Creatures, as well as in Mean Souls. So many Ridiculous Upstarts as we find Promoted in the World, we may Imagine to be so many Tortorises in the Air; and when they have Flutter’d there a While, like Paper-Kites, for the Boys to stare at, He that took them up, grows either Asham'd, or Weary of them, and so lets them Drop again; and, with the Devil Himself, e'en leaves them where he found them. ‘This may serve to put a Check to the Vanity and Folly of an Unruly Ambition; that's Deaf, not only to the Advice of Friends, but to the Councels and Monitions of the very Spirit of Reason it self: For Flying without Wings is All one with Working without Means. We see a Thousand Instances in the World, Every jot as Ridiculous as This in the Fable. That is to say of Men that are Made for One Condition, and yet Affect Another. What Signifies the Fiction of Phaeton in the Chariot of the Sun? The Frog vying Bulk with an Oxe; or the Tortorise Riding upon the Wings of the Wind; but to Prescribe Bounds and Measures to our Exorbitant Passions; and at the same time, to thew us upon the Issue, that All Unnatural Pretensions are Attended with a Certain Ruine?