CHAPTER IX 



THE FOX IN FABLE 



THE fox is frequently mentioned in literature : he 

 is a favourite hero in folk-tales and fables in almost 

 every country. The East is the birthplace of the 

 fable, and indeed these stories could only have found 

 congenial soil at first where the doctrine of the 

 transmigration of souls was held. 



To the people who believed that the soul of man 

 might find a prison in the shape of the lower animal 

 there was nothing wonderful or incredible in a fox, 

 a lion, or a frog speaking and thinking as a man 

 might do under like circumstances and with similar 

 limitations. The fable, indeed, anticipated the animal 

 psychology of Darwin and Romanes in that it assumes 

 that the minds of men and brutes differ in degree, 

 but not in kind. If we are to study the intelligence 

 of the lower animals it can only be by assuming that 

 within their limits their mind is the same as our own. 

 Otherwise we can know nothing about them, and 



M 



