him forth in the mystical character of the hero of the narrative, as the chosen favourite of Jupiter and the sun; as born of gods, and himself sometime to be a god. On this subject, however, enough has been said. We may conclude our remarks by some observations on the nature and use of the parable, or fable, when employed as an example.

Servius, ad Æneidem, i. 235. draws a distinction between a fable, an history, and an argument, (or plot,) as follows: Et sciendum, inter fabulam, et argumentum, et historiam, hoc interesse: quod fabula est dicta res contra naturam, sive facta, sive non facta, ut de Pasiphae: historia est quicquid secundum naturam dicitur, sive factum, sive non factum, ut de Phædra: argumentum, ut sic definiam, est res ficta, quæ tamen fieri potest, ut sunt argumenta comoediarum.

The first of these definitions seems to describe a mere monstrous or unnatural occurrence, which though improbable, is yet not impossible; the second, one which is natural and probable, and therefore possible, though not necessarily a fact; the third, something, which must be natural and probable, and therefore possible, but yet not a matter of fact something which might have happened, and would be natural enough, if it had happened; but yet never has happened. It differs therefore, from the second, in the circumstance that while both are what is natural and probable, alike, that may have been matter of fact also; but this never can.

On the same principle which induced Servius to make this distinction between an argument and an history, we may presume he would have drawn a

distinction between an example and a fable, supposing them both to have consisted of possible and probable circumstances alike; viz. that the example must still be matter of fact, the fable must not. In the judgment of Aristotle, however, as far as regards the use of either of them for practical purposes, this distinction would be quite immaterial; for he classes them together as species of exactly the same kind of reasoning; and had he been called upon to define them reciprocally in terms of each other, he would have pronounced the example a real λoyos, on the same principle, that he called the xyos a fictitious example.

It was considered by him essential to the λóyos, that it should be fictitious, in the sense of invented; but not that it should consist of possible or probable, and therefore of such as might be real, circumstances. Otherwise, he would not have referred, as instances of what he meant by λóyo, to such collections as the λόγοι Αισώπειοι, and Λιβυκοὶ, abovementioned; for these consisted of stories invariably made up of circumstances frequently impossible; still more frequently not probable; and always unreal, that is, not matter of fact, but purely invented and imaginary. He refers too to such collections, not as to storehouses, which would supply at any time a variety of this kind of arguments, whenever they should be wanted; but simply as exhibiting models or patterns of what the orator, when he had occasion. for such examples, was to frame for himself. For he supposes one practical use of the λoyos to be, that it tries the inventive powers of the speaker; and its chief recommendation with the hearers, to be its novelty: neither of which things could be the case with

Xóyo, borrowed at second hand, and merely applied, because they were apposite to the occasion.

The most essential characteristic of the Xoyos, which we will call, in its classical sense, by the name of fable, is to substitute a feigned, for a real matter of fact; which, nevertheless, pro tanto, and for the purpose of the argument at the time, must be received, and allowed to stand as real. It is the only other species of the example, napáderyμa, which Aristotle makes, as the proper counterpart of the actual historical example; simply too, on the principle that all fiction is, or professes to be, the imitation and likeness of truth.

Now, even a real matter of fact, not previously known, in order to be rendered available for the purpose of argument from it, would require to be related in detail; much more then a fictitious story, which is to be both invented and applied at the time. Hence in every fable, there must be some degree of preliminary narrative, more or less; as its very name implies, whether alvos, pulos, λóyos, or fabula ; all meaning a tale, or story.

As it accommodates the circumstances of a supposed event, to those of some reality; there must be a variety of particulars in the one, answering to corresponding particulars in the other; between which, however, the analogy will not fully appear, until all the circumstances of the fictitious history have been drawn out and laid before the hearer, preparatory to their juxtaposition with those of the real. This is the true reason, why narratives so intended for comparison with something else, should be called parables, or comparisons, as well as λόγοι,

or fables. A direct induction or application, may then be founded upon the circumstances of the fictitious case, to something which concerns the real case-justified indeed, and borne out by the circumstances of the case related, and by their resemblance to those of the case actually existing, but directed to an end and purpose quite independent of them. A fable, then, or fictitious example, without a moral, in its application to something beyond itself, was as much an absurdity, as a fable or example, previously not known, without some preliminary narrative and statement, was an impossibility. And every such moral of the fable, or fictitious example, as used in rhetoric, must be of a practical nature and tendency. Rhetoric could never require them except for a special purpose; and there could be no such purpose either in public or in private deliberations, but what was practical, and concerned in some way or other, the regulation and direction of the future, by the experience of the past.

All examples, whether real matters of fact or fictitious, are arguments a pari; and are founded in an apparently self-evident axiom, that what has happened, under such and such circumstances, before, may, and probably will, under the same circumstances, happen again. Aristotle has entered at large into the metaphysical process of this kind of argument, which he calls the areλns étaуwyn, as well as into that of induction, or maywyn properly so called, in his Analytica Priora; and though it may appear presumptuous in me to venture to call in question the accuracy or justness of the views of one

so acute and profound as Aristotle; I think he has mistaken the nature of both.

The account which he gives of the process of reasoning in the example, or imperfect induction, if I understand him right, is this; not that it supposes the direct transition of the mind, on the mere principle of the analogy perceptible between two cognate things, from the fact of something past, to the expectation of something like it, still future; but that, by means of one or two, or as many more facts of a like kind, as history or experience can furnish—a general law is first collected (as in induction) relating to all such facts collectively; and then by the help of that general so established, (as in the process of syllogism,) the particular fact is inferred, relating to the contingency still future, on which the deliberation turns.

With respect to this explanation of the principle of reasoning in the use of the example, as well as to that which is also proposed in the same part of his works, of the principle of induction; I cannot help thinking that he was misled by too great a desire to make out every kind and process of reasoning to be founded on the syllogistic at the bottom: whereas both the inductive process of reasoning, and that of the example, as it seems to me, are carried forward by the help of principles, perfectly independent of the syllogistic, yet quite as natural, and quite as simple, as they. Certain it is, that no one ever employs either the inductive process, or the example, in practice, in any such way, as would be the case, if Aristotle's explanation of its principle were correct ; nor in fact, could do so, without committing such