1 62 THE FOX 



the logical alternative is the belief that they are only 

 automata. 



Fables have a special interest for author and 

 readers of a book like this. They enshrine the 

 earliest observations on natural history, and a con- 

 sideration of them may lead us to understand that 

 we have only inherited, not discovered, the study of 

 animal life. 



But although the East is the cradle of the fable, 

 the fox as a hero belongs not to the East but to the 

 West. He makes no figure in the earlier Eastern 

 fables, and it is thought that the later Hindoo stories 

 in which the jackal stands for the type of cunning, 

 wisdom, or policy, are borrowed from the fox of Greek 

 fabulists. The fox's place in fable steadily grew in 

 importance, from the days when ysop pointed his 

 pithy sayings and illustrated his teaching with fables 

 drawn no doubt from popular stories in* vogue in 

 his day (about 620 B.C.), down to the twelfth and 

 thirteenth centuries, when the fox became the hero of 

 that most popular and elaborate of fables of which 

 many versions have come down to us. Of these the 

 best known are the Latin poem, ' Renardus Vulpes,' 

 the German ' Reineke Fuchs,' and the French ' Roman 

 de Renart.' 



All the fabulists from /Esop onwards based their 



