History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension

PHILOSOPHERS have always betrayed a certain scorn for both history and romance. I knew the delicacy of enlivens the mind, said Descartes, explaining how he had liberated himself from the errors of the schools, and that famous deeds of history ennoble it. But in the end, he concluded, these are negligible merits, because fiction makes us imagine a number of events as possible which are really impossible, and even the most faithful histories, if they do not alter or embroider things to make them more worth reading, almost always omit the meanest and least illustrious circumstances, so the remainder is distorted.' This was Descartes's first and final word on all the tales and stories