Three Parables (Tolstoy)
Short summary
Tolstoy presents three parables to illustrate humanity's resistance to necessary change. In the first parable, tenants of a meadow infested with weeds ignore their wise master's advice to pull weeds by the roots rather than mow them. They continue mowing, which spreads the weeds further, eventually ruining the meadow. When someone reminds them of the master's original counsel, they attack him as a fool who wants to destroy their meadow. Tolstoy relates this to how people misunderstand his teaching about non-resistance to evil by violence, claiming he advocates allowing evil to flourish when he actually teaches destroying evil at its root through love.
In the second parable, merchants adulterate food with harmful substances. When a housekeeper discovers this and demands genuine products, the merchants and customers attack her, claiming she wants to destroy all food and starve people. Tolstoy parallels this with reactions to his criticism of contemporary art and science. The third parable describes lost travelers who refuse one man's advice to stop and find their bearings using the sun or stars. Instead, they continue wandering or trying random directions. Tolstoy notes:
...this treatment of the advice to 'think it over' proves more distinctly than anything else how hopelessly astray we have gone and how great is our despair.
Detailed summary by parables
Parable subtitles are editorial.
Parable 1. The meadow and the weed: on nonresistance to evil
A weed spread across a beautiful meadow, and the tenants tried to control it by mowing, but this only made it grow more luxuriantly. When a wise master visited the meadow, he gave the tenants good counsel among other advice.
...the kind, wise master came to visit the tenants of the meadow...he told them they ought not to mow the weed, since that only made it grow the more luxuriantly, but that they must pull it up by the roots.
However, the tenants ignored this advice, either because they didn't understand it or because it seemed foolish to them. They continued mowing the weed, and over time this practice became not only a custom but a sacred tradition.
...mowing of the weed as soon as it began to appear became not only a custom but even a sacred tradition, and the meadow grew more and more infested.
Eventually, one man remembered the master's forgotten prescription and tried to remind the tenants of their error. Instead of listening to his recollections or proving them wrong, the tenants abused him, calling him a conceited fool, a malicious interpreter, and a dangerous man who wanted to deprive them of their meadow.
Parable 2. The adulterated food: on false art and science
Merchants trafficked in flour, butter, milk, and foodstuffs, but seeking maximum profit, they adulterated their goods with cheap and harmful mixtures - bran and lime in flour, oleomargarin in butter, water and chalk in milk. The wholesale traders sold to retailers, who distributed them to consumers.
City consumers found the food harmful and disagreeable but continued buying it since no other goods were available. They blamed themselves for the poor taste and unwholesomeness. A housekeeper who had always prepared her own food came to the city and immediately recognized the adulterated goods when her bread failed to rise and her milk produced no cream.
Your goods are adulterated...You ought to throw all this stuff of yours into the river or burn it, and get unadulterated goods instead.
The tradesmen showed her their medals and claimed their goods were first class, but she insisted on wholesome food. When she began warning other purchasers, the merchants told the crowd she was a lunatic who wanted people to starve, purposely ignoring that she wanted good provisions substituted for bad ones.
The crowd fell upon the woman and beat her, refusing to hear her pleas that she only wanted those who fed the people to stop poisoning them with harmful adulterations. Tolstoy draws the parallel to his own experience with contemporary art and science, which he found adulterated with foreign elements harmful to the soul.
...the poison for the soul was many times more dangerous than a poison for the body, and that therefore these spiritual products ought to be examined with the greatest attention...
When he called for rejection of counterfeit intellectual wares, he faced the same chorus of cries as the housekeeper, with dealers shouting that he wanted to destroy art and science.
Parable 3. The lost travelers: on the need to pause and reflect
Travelers lost their way and found themselves struggling through a bog among bushes, briers, and fallen trees. They divided into two parties: one decided to keep going in the same direction, convinced they hadn't wandered from the right road, while the other decided to move rapidly in all directions to find the way.
One man suggested a different approach: before continuing in any direction, they should pause and deliberate on their situation, then decide based on careful consideration.
...it was necessary first of all to pause and deliberate on their situation, and then after due deliberation to decide on one thing or the other.
Both parties met this suggestion with universal indignation, calling it advice of weakness, cowardice, and sloth. They refused to heed his argument that they needed to halt in order to find the right way using the sun or stars. Neither division reached their journey's end, remaining lost in the bushes and briers. Tolstoy compares this to his own experience when suggesting that society pause to consider whether their current path through social and political problems is correct, facing the same indignant response from those who prefer continued movement over reflection.