ABSTRACT
The pleasure it affords is not the sole benefit of fiction. When it reaches only the reader's eyes, it can do nothing but amuse, but when it moves the heart, it can have a great influence upon all human conceptions. Fiction may be divided into three groups: supernatural or allegorical inventions, inventions based upon historical events, events at once entirely invented and imitated, in which nothing is true but everything is believable. The great historians, and especially Tacitus, certainly try to attach a moral significance to the events they relate, for example, to make us envy Germanicus as he is dying and to detest Tiberius at the pinnacle of success. The capacity to affect us emotionally is the great power of fiction. Virtually all moral truths can be made perceptible by putting them into action. There is always a great objection to novels about love.
