All systems of philosophy have sought in vain to explain it, ceaselessly rolling up their rock, which, never reaching the top, falls back upon them--each raising its frail structure on the ruins of the others, only to see it fall in its turn.
I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller--some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.

Thus he hoped to find in the historic recital examples which might support the moral truths of which he was conscious.

Few single careers could satisfy this longing, being only incomplete parts of the elusive whole of the history of the world; one was a quarter, as it were, the other a half of the proof; imagination did the rest and completed them.

From this, without doubt, sprang the fable.

Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.
This Truth, so beautiful, so intellectual, which I feel, I see, and long to define, the name of which I here venture to distinguish from that of the True, that I may the better make myself understood, is the soul of all the arts.