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.