It is perhaps obvious how, given what I have said in Analogy, the typical fable can constitute an argument. I claim that fables are incompletely stated analogical arguments.⁽¹⁾ The body of the fable is the first case. The "moral," is often a partial statement, and sometimes a complete one, of the principle.

There is one, however, one sharp difference between fables and straightforward cases of analogical arguments. It is that, in fables, there seems in general to be no second case given at all. This, admittedly, constitutes a problem for the claim I am making here, since it makes fables look quite unlike any sort of argument at all.

The problem, however, is not quite as bad as it sounds. It is actually not true that a second case is never given. The one Aesopian fable discussed by Aristotle is a case in point. It was allegedly told by Aesop himself, as he spoke before the assembly of Samos, defending an official on trial for a capital offense involving misappropriation of public funds:

"A fox, in crossing a river, was swept into a hole in the rocks; and, not being able to get out, suffered miseries for a long time through the swarms of fleas that fastened on her. A hedgehog, while roaming around, noticed the fox; and feeling sorry for her asked if he might remove the fleas. But the fox declined the offer; and when the hedgehog asked why, she replied, 'These fleas are by this time full of me and not sucking much blood; if you take them away, others will come with fresh appetites and drink up all the blood I have left.' 'So, men of Samos," said Aesop,"my client will do you no further harm; he is wealthy already. But if you put him to death, others will come along who are not rich and their peculations will empty your treasury completely.'⁽²⁾

Here the presentation makes it quite clear that this is an analogy, with both cases stated fully with the principle - which could have been formulated as the moral of the first case - left unstated. Unfortunately, this particular analogy is such a poor argument that the fact that it is an argument might be difficult to see. Perhaps that can be remedied by the following specimen, which constitutes a much better argument but is otherwise remarkably parallel to Aristotle's story.

An ally once warned President Lincoln that his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was planning to replace him as the Republican presidential nominee in 1864, with the implication that Lincoln should fire Chase before he became dangerous.

"In response, Lincoln asked his political friend, 'Do you know what a "chinfly" is?' When his friend shook his head, Lincoln explained that it was a big stinging horsefly. 'A neighbor of mine,' related Lincoln, 'had this lazy plow horse. One day a visiting farmer saw a chinfly alight on this sleepy horse and shooed it away. "Why did you do that?" said the farmer, "That chinfly is what gets that horse moving." 'Well,' continued Lincoln, 'if Chase has a presidential "chinfly" biting him, I'm not going to knock it off. It will only make his department go'."⁽³⁾

Here, again, the both cases are stated with enough thoroughness to make it clear that this is an analogy. Further, it is reasonably clear that this is an analogical argument, meant to counter the suggestion made by Lincoln's friend. Once again, the principle is left unstated. It would be a shame to try to state it fully, since the connections we make between the two cases are more subtle than any that could be reduced to the pat form of an Aesopian moral. The principle would seem, however, to be something to the effect that things that would otherwise be evil will be good if their most important effect is to provide a motive for useful action. This notion does seem to be supported get some support from the fable of the lazy horse. It also, at least if we share Lincoln's evident assumption that Chase's secret ambition is far more likely to result in heightened activity than in a presidential nomination, supports his characterization of Chase as fundamentally benign - which, of course, constitutes the second case.

In the story Aristotle tells, the first case is the tale of the unfortunate fox, together with the notion that what she says in declining the hedgehog's offer is true. What connects this case with the second one, about Aesop's client, at least in Aesop's understanding, seems to be the notion that the truth of what the fox is saying is explained by the principle that actual present parasites displace potential future parasites. Since an embezzler is a sort of parasite, this principle does seem support the second case by logical entailment, at least if the second case is properly formulated. The result, however, is a bad argument, since the principle is not supported by the first case: the truth that it is supposed to explain is not true.

As most pet owners know, fleas do not work as the fox thinks they do. In fact, the principle seems patently false.⁽⁴⁾ Nonetheless, if the interpretation I have just given of what the speaker is doing is correct, then the putative connection between the two cases is just the sort of connection that makes an argument of them.

I think it is important to notice that this use of fable, in which the narrative is being used in an explicit analogical argument, is far from unusual. In the most complete surviving Life of Aesop from the ancient world, most of the fables that are actually put into Aesop's mouth are of precisely this sort.⁽⁵⁾ In each of these cases, Aesop is in the midst of some practical situation in which some people disagree about what is to be done. There is an issue at stake, such as whether the Samians should accede to King Croesus' demands for tribute, whether Croesus should execute Aesop, whether the Delians should execute him, and so forth. As in the story told by Aristotle, the second case, explicitly indicated by the speaker, includes the position he is taking on the issue at hand.⁽⁶⁾

The same seems to be true of all the fables reportedly used by Lincoln. Lincoln often told recognizably Aesopian fables, but never, as nearly as I can determine, simply as entertainment, nor to provide gratuitous "edification." He was trying to convince others to accept his solutions to practical issues, including the greatest and gravest issues of the time: "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures...."⁽⁷⁾

One might object at this point that, while it is natural enough that this is how such stories will be used among adults when speaking to one another, it may not indicate anything about their nature in themselves, as literature.

As a matter of fact, the first known collection of Aesopian fables, written in prose and dating from the fourth century B. C., was apparently not intended to be taken as literature, in any familiar sense, at all. It was evidently meant as a reference work (with entries arranged alphabetically by the first word in the story) for writers and public speakers. Its function was similar to that of Roget's Thesaurus or the now-familiar books of "podium humor."⁽⁸⁾

It seems likely that the "moral," which seems to us now so definitively Aesopian, was introduced as advice to the writer or speaker as to how the fable might be used.⁽⁹⁾ The very wording of some of the morals makes this more or less obvious, as, for instance: "One might use this fable of an insignificant man who is of no harm or help whether present or absent." "This fable would apply to men who fall into greater perils in trying to extricate themselves from minor dangers." "This fable is appropriate for [meaning, to judge by context, appropriate for denouncing] a greedy man."⁽¹⁰⁾ When authors like Babrius and Phaedrus came along and versified Aesop, they included the morals - the ones that were not obviously mere advice to the user - into their verses, as if they were, not mere apparatus, actually but part the story. This may have meant that they misunderstood the old fables to some extent, but it was a genuine contribution to literary history. It made the fables superbly suited for a use that was far from the intentions of the original authors: as children's literature.

Of course, these historical speculations do not by themselves show what the the present function of the literary fable is. However, they do, I think, vividly suggest a clue to the nature of fable which is worth pursuing. Consider the fable of "The North Wind and the Sun":

"Between the North Wind and the Sun, they say, a contest of this sort arose, to wit, which of the two would strip the goatskin from a farmer plodding on his way. The North Wind first began to blow as he does when he blows from Thrace, thinking by sheer force to rob the wearer of his cloak. And yet no more on that account did he, the man, relax his hold; instead he shivered, drew the borders of his garment tight about him every way, and rested with his back against a spur of rock. Then the Sun peeped forth, welcome at first, bringing the man relief from the cold, raw wind. Next, changing, he turned the heat on more, and suddenly the farmer felt too hot and of his own accord threw off the cloak, and so was stripped. Thus was the North Wind beaten in the contest. And the story means [ µ]: 'Cultivate gentleness, my son; you will get results oftener by persuasion than by the use of force.'"⁽¹¹⁾

Here the first case, obviously, is the narrative portion of the fable, in which both characters try to get the man's cloak off. It includes the North Wind's failed attempt to blow the garment off with brute force and the Sun's success, by getting the man to take it off himself. Before saying what the second case might be, I would like to comment briefly on what the intermediary principle is.

Faced with the two very different methods used by the Sun and the North Wind, and our strong impression that the two different results are indeed the sort that these methods would produce, it is very natural to seek an explanation for those results. The explanation would more or less have to be based on the differences between the methods since, except for the results themselves, they are virtually the only information contained in the narrative. Even before the Aesopian moral rears its patronizing head, the average reader has probably moved in the direction of an explanation: it obviously has something to do with the fact that the North Wind's methods cause the man to cling all the more tightly to the cloak, turning the man's desires and efforts into increasingly powerful obstacle, while the Sun's methods have the opposite characteristic. Such thoughts would seem to lead us a to principle that in some way or other asserts the general superiority of giving people an incentive to do something themselves over using some sort of physical force to make the action happen.

However, the portion of the stated moral that seems most concerned with explaining the results involved is more narrow than this: "you will get results oftener by persuasion than by the use of force." By speaking of what "you" will get rather than what "one" will get, it seems to arbitrarily restrict the scope of the principle. Perhaps more importantly, the actual principle as I have adumbrated it, vague though it is, is clearly broader than a statement of the efficacy of persuasion. It would seem to apply just as well to trickery. It applies strikingly well to the most famous trick of all, in which, after the Greeks tried for ten years to breach the wall of Troy using the North Wind's methods, Odysseus gets the Trojans to open it themselves. The principle supported by the narrative is considerably more sweeping than what is asserted in the explicit moral.

Nonetheless, it seems inevitable that the moral would lean toward greater particularity in something like this way. The actual principle is considerably too broad to be readily applied in practice by most individuals. As to the scope of the rule, it is, after all, "you" - that is, the individual reader, who must apply it. For this, application in practice, is constitutes the interest and value of this fable. One can imagine an author starting with an incident much like this one and writing a story with rich theoretical interest. The author could explore the actual psychological mechanisms by with the principle works as it does and, perhaps by drawing a number of additional characters, show whether there are actually a number of quite different sorts of causes at work here, or whether the mechanism is actually a simple one. This fable, however, does not involve details of this sort - and cannot, without entering into a completely different literary genre.

I submit that what I have just said about this Aesopian fable can be applied, with minor changes that do not affect the main point, of the entire genre. Because of the limitations of this genre - that is, that it must be a short, simple narrative making a clear and memorable point - its interest tends to be overwhelmingly practical. It is very difficult for such a tale to have a point with much theoretical interest, but it can express rough practical maxims suitable for application to many of the problems of life. Of course, such a tale has not yet achieved its point - its value is merely potential - unless it is actually applied to action. However, the author of a book cannot say what particular problems the tale will apply to as I read it. I, the reader, must find this for myself.

What this means is that the "literary fable," the fable, as written in a book, is in a certain way dependent on the fable as employed by the legendary Aesop and the historical Lincoln. In the oral instances of the fable that I have described, the fable is a more or less explicit analogical argument, with both cases explicitly stated. In the literary form, the second case is omitted, but needed. As such, the literary fable is an incomplete analogical argument, to be completed by the reader, as they use the fable to guide their own conduct or persuade others.

1. 1. Not surprisingly, the idea that fables are analogies has of course been expressed before. It is, for instance, Stebbing's view. She speaks of "parables" rather than fables, but there does not seem to be any difference between what I am calling fables and what she calls parables. However, though she that the stories she discusses are analogies, she denies that they are analogical arguments, and assigns to them a more or less emotive sort of function. See Thinking to Some Purpose, p. 116.

2. 2. Rhetoric 1393b24-34. In Basic Works of Aristotle ed. by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 1413.

3. James C. Humes, The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 160.

4. 4. Incidentally, the standard accounts of argument by analogy, such as that of Stebbing, cannot readily explain why this argument is a bad one. Such accounts generally say that the way to test an analogical argument for flaws is to try to find where the analogy "breaks down" by finding dissimilarities (or relevant dissimilarities) between the two things being compared. That is not the problem with this argument. The two cases are extremely similar, and they are similar in all ways that are at all relevant to the issue to be decided by the Samian assembly.

5. The Book of Xanthus the Philosopher and Aesop His Slave or The Career of Aesop in Lloyd W. Daly, Aesop Without Morals (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961), pp. 29-90.

6. In all the other cases, Aesop is using a fable to illustrate, rather than argue for, some point he is making in the course of some practical dispute. Incidentally, as long as Aesop is a slave, he tells no fables at all. He only finds a use for them when he becomes a free man and, consequently, a participant in the political process of the world around him. Further, he only uses them when an actual controversy is raging.

7. Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom and Wit ed. by Louise Bachelder, (Mount Vernon, New York: The Peter Pauper Press, 1965), p. 32.

8. 8. Babrius and Phaedrus, "Introduction," p. xiii.

9. 9. Aesop Without Morals, p. 18.

10. 10. These morals are from the appendix to Aesop Without Morals numbers 137, 131, and 133.

11. 11.. Babrius and Phaedrus, ed. and trans. by Ben Edwin Perry (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (Loeb Library, 1965), p. 29. I have altered the translation somewhat.