(_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