VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 203 



purpose that I should say anything about narratives 

 which are professedly fictitious. Yet it may be 

 well, perhaps, if I disclaim any intention of dero- 

 gating from their value, when I insist upon the 

 paramount necessity of recollecting that there is 

 no sort of relation between the ethical, or the 

 aesthetic, or even the scientific importance of such 

 works, and their worth as historical documents. 

 Unquestionably, to the poetic artist, or even to the 

 student of psychology, " Hamlet " and " Macbeth " 

 may be better instructors than all the books of a 

 wilderness of professors of aesthetics or of moral 

 philosophy. But, as evidence of occurrences in 

 Denmark, or in Scotland, at the times and places 

 indicated, they are out of court ; the profoundest 

 admiration for them, the deepest gratitude for their 

 influence, are consistent with the knowledge that, 

 historically speaking, they are worthless fables, in 

 which any foundation of reality that may exist is 

 submerged beneath the imaginative superstructure. 

 At present, however, I am not concerned to 

 dwell upon the importance of fictitious literature 

 and the immensity of the work which it has 

 effected in the education of the human race. I 

 propose to deal with the much more limited in- 

 quiry : Are there two other classes of consecutive 

 narratives (as distinct from statements of in- 

 dividual facts), or only one ? Is there any known 

 historical work which is throughout exactly true, 

 or is there not ? In the case of the great majority 



