What we have, however, to deal with now is a natural phenomenon, an occurrence, which, in its passage, exhibits a particular relation, which maybe accepted as symbol for a general significance in the circle of human deeds and dealings, in other words for an ethical maxim, a saw, for a significance, therefore, whose content unfolds a reflection over the nature of the course which either is taken or ought to be taken in human matters, that is, facts which are related to volition. Here it is no longer the Divine will, which is self-revealed in its essential nature to mankind through natural events, and their religious import. We have nothing more than a quite ordinary course of everyday occurrences, from the isolated reproduction of which we are able to abstract in a way commonly intelligible an ethical _dictum_, a warning, ensample, or rule of prudence, by whatever name we choose to call it, which is set before us in a form that appeals to our imagination for the sake of the reflection it carries with it. And this is just the way in which we ought to regard the fables of Aesop. (_a_) In other words, the fables of Aesop in their original form are just such a mode of conceiving a natural relation or event between single natural objects generally, mainly between animals, whose intercourse with one another is based on the same practical necessities of life that are the motive force in that of humanity. This relation or occurrence, as viewed in its more general characters, is consequently of a kind that may happen in the sphere of human life, and as such carries with it a significance for man. As thus explained the genuine fable of Aesop is therefore the reproduction of a condition of animate or inanimate life, of some occurrence in the animal world for example, which is not by any means composed at haphazard, but is put together in conformity with natural fact and genuine observation, and so reproduced in the form of narrative that, in its relation to human existence, and particularly the practical aspect of the same, a general maxim may be deduced from it. The requirement of _primary_ importance that it implies, therefore, is that the particular case in question, which is to supply the so-called moral, must not be purely _imaginary_, that is to say, first and foremost the substance of the composition must not present facts which run _counter_ to the mode of their appearance in real life. The narrative may be further and yet more clearly characterized in this that it does not record the particular case itself in its universality, but rather the mode under which this, taken in its concrete singularity and as a real fact, is in such external reality the type for all action based upon analogous circumstances.