Of Aesop himself we are informed that he was a deformed and humpbacked slave; and for his place of residence we are transported into Phrygia, the very land, that is, which marks the passage from the immediately symbolical and the existence still fettered on Nature, to a land in which man begins to take real hold of the spiritual and himself as the source of the same. In our present connection, no doubt, he does not behold the animal and natural world in the way the Hindoos and Egyptians beheld it, that is, as something of itself, superior and Divine. He regards it with prosaic vision as something whose relations are only of service in the presentment of a picture of human act and avoidance. His conceits are further merely the reflections of wit, without real energy of soul or depth of insight and a fundamental grasp of reality, without poetry and philosophy, in fact. His opinions and maxims are, in consequence, fairly rich in sensuous image and traits of cleverness, but we never get beyond the digging away into mere trifles, which, instead of creating free shapes from the unfettered life of spirit, is contented to discover some additional aspect that is new in material already close at hand, such as the specific instincts and habits of animals or other daily occurrences of little moment; and this is so because that which he would teach he is still afraid to express freely, and is only able to make it intelligible in a kind of riddle which is at the same time always being solved. Prose has its origin in the slave, and in the same way prose clings to the entire type of conception with which we are now concerned.
Despite this fact, however, the experience of almost all nations and times has in one form or another run through these old tales; and however much any particular people whose literature is generally well versed in fable may pride itself as possessing more than one fabulist of distinction, we shall find that their poetry is for the most part merely a reflection of these primary sallies of invention, merely translated into the vernacular of the age. All that has since been added to the general heritage of such conceits falls far behind the original legacy in real merit.
(b) There are, however, among these fables of Greek descent a number which betray the greatest poverty of invention and execution, being mere pegs on which to hang the instructive moral, so that the contents, whether they refer to gods or animals, have merely a formal significance. Yet even these are far enough removed from the modern tendency of doing violence to the animal world as we find it in Nature. An example of this tendency is that fable of Pfeffel about a marmot which collected provisions in autumn, an act of foresight which another marmot neglected, and so was brought to the condition of beggary and starvation. Or there is that other of the fox, the bloodhound, and the lynx, of whom it is narrated that they presented themselves before Jupiter, together with the talents which exclusively belonged to them of cunning, keen scent, and clear sight, and requested that these gifts should be equally divided between them; the fable goes on that they obtained such consent under these rather surprising terms: "The fox gets a blow on the forehead, the bloodhound is good for no more hunting, the Argus Lynx receives a cataract." That a marmot should cease to make provision for its wants, or that the three animals above mentioned should ever incidentally meet with, or be naturally capable of receiving, a proportionate division of their respective gifts is contrary to all reason and consequently meaningless. A better fable than those above cited is that of the ant and the grasshopper, or that other of the deer with the beautiful horns and the slender legs.
Conformably to the tenor of fables of this kind we have grown, as a rule, accustomed to accept the moral of the fable as that which is of first importance, and to regard the narrative as merely an external form, and consequently an event entirely composed with a view to expound that moral. Embodiments of this sort, however, more particularly when the occurrence described is wholly at variance with the natural character of specific animals, are in the highest degree insipid, attempts at invention which mean less than nothing. The real ingenuity of a fable consists exclusively in this that it is able to impart to that which already exists in determinate form a further and more universal significance than that which is immediately presented.
The question has further been raised, in reference to the general assumption that the essence of a fable consists in setting before us the actions and speech of animals rather than those of mankind, as to what it is precisely which attracts us in this allusion. We cannot suppose, however, that there is after all much that is attractive in such a furbishing up of our humanity in animal form, even though it should exceed or at least differ from that of a comedy of apes and dogs, where, apart from the sight of the general cleverness of the dressing up, the entire interest consists rather in the deliberate contrast between animal nature as it really is and appears, and that represented as taking part in human affairs. On grounds of this sort Breitinger finds the attraction to consist entirely in the element of the marvellous. In the original type of the fable, however, the appearance of animals endowed with speech is not put before us as anything uncommon or surprising. And for this very reason Lessing is of the opinion that the introduction of animals is really of great use in helping us to understand and assisting the poet to abridge his exposition; in other words we are well acquainted with the qualities of animals, the cuteness of the fox, the magnanimity of the lion, the voracity and violence of the wolf, and are consequently able to set before our minds a concrete image in place of such abstract qualities. An advantage of this kind, however, in no essential degree mitigates the triviality of the relation when it has become one purely of form, and generally it is even a disadvantage to place animals thus before us instead of men, for the reason that the animal form remains a mask, which, so far as intelligibility is concerned, veils fully as much as it declares the significance.
The most important fable of this kind should be in that case the old history of Reinecke, the fox, which is notwithstanding strictly speaking no fable at all.
(c) In other words we may in conclusion add a third type of the fable, in which we find that there is already a tendency to pass beyond the real boundaries of the type. The ingenuity of a fable consists, as already pointed out, in the discovery of particular cases among the variety of natural phenomena, which we are able to use as evidential support of general reflections upon human action and behaviour, without essentially displacing the animal and natural world from its own native mode of existence. For the rest this general application or adaptation of the particular case to the so-called moral is an exercise of personal caprice, or shall we say native wit, and is therefore to all intents and purposes an affair of pleasantry. It is this aspect which receives the main emphasis in the type of fable now before us. The fable is in fact accepted as a witty jest. Goethe has written many a delightful and ingenious poem in this vein. The following lines occur in one of them, which is entitled "The Barking Dog":
Down every road afield we ride
On business bent or pleasure;
And ever in our wake full-cry
A hound's bark beats the measure.
Loosed from our horse's stable he
Will always gallop beside us:
And this is what his clamour proves!
We ride, are with the riders.
It is equally necessary here, as in the case of Aesop's fables, that objects which are borrowed from Nature should receive their native aspect, and only bring before us in their action and habits human circumstances, passions, and traits, which have a close affinity to those of the animal world. The story of Reinecke is one of this kind, and is really more a fairy-tale than a fable in the strict sense. We find in the content of this the reflection of an age of disorder and lawlessness, of evil generally, weakness, baseness, violence, and shamelessness, of unbelief in religion, that merely retains the appearance of a mastery, or indeed an established position in the world-drama; and the result is that craft, cunning, and selfishness have it all their own way. It is, in fact, the condition of the Middle Ages, more especially as developed in Germany. The powerful vassals pay, it is true, some appearance of respect to the king; but practically every man does as he pleases—robs, murders, oppresses the weak, betrays the king, finds a way somehow to the favours of the queen, so that if the community just holds together that is about all. Such is the human content, which by this fable is preserved, not in a mere abstract proposition but in an entire complexus of conditions and characters, and by reason of its baseness fits in with the animal nature exactly, under the forms of which it is unfolded. For this reason we find nothing embarrassing in the fact that it is without any reserves transferred to the animal realm; and for the same reason the particular form it takes does not so much appear as an exceptional case cognate with it; rather we are inclined to feel the singularity of it make way for a certain breadth of universality, a vision emphasizing the general truth: "Such is the way things happen in the world." The comical side consists in the forms under which the whole is put together, drollery and jest being freely mingled with the bitter earnestness of the situation; the general effect of which is that we not only have human meanness admirably depicted through that of animals, but we are further made a present of the most entertaining traits, and most characteristic anecdotes wholly peculiar to animal life, so that, despite all tartness to the palate, our final view is that of a comedy whose main intention is neither bad nor purely capricious, but one that has genuine earnestness to support it.
2. PARABLE, PROVERB, APOLOGUE