Aesop embodies an epigram not uncommon in human history; his fame is all the more deserved because he never deserved it... In the earliest human history whatever is authentic is universal: and whatever is universal is anonymous. In such cases there is always some central man who had first the trouble of collecting them, and afterwards the fame of creating them... There must have been something great and human, something of the human future and the human past, in such a man: even if he only used it to rob the past and deceive the future.

-G.K. Chesterton, introduction in a 1912 edition of Aesop's Fables.


I just picked up Aesop's Fables and began reading it a couple of days ago. This introduction reminded me of our discussion about Marx and the impossibility of forgetting the mother tongue.