Sethos: History or Life Taken from the Private Monuments of Ancient Egypt

P R E F A C E.

often seen, from the outside, as nothing
but a series of failed projects and un-
punished crimes. The spectacle of what
has happened in the world is, strictly
speaking, no different from the spectacle of
what happens in a public square: nei-
ther of these two spectacles is moral
except through the reflections of the
Spectator or the Narrator The original French "Relateur" refers to the person who reports or relates the history to an audience.. In a word,
History, taken by itself, is an object
of study rather than a doctrine The author suggests History is raw data ("an object") that requires interpretation to become a teaching ("a doctrine")..

    It is not so with a work
of fiction. The moral Author, if
he adopts the form of narration, or-
dinarily proposes to indicate and
represent all the virtues proper
to the status or condition of his He-
ro. He places him in all the con-
junctures Circumstances or turning points. that can give rise to
the exercise of his virtues. He op-
poses him not only to wicked men,
but to men of a weak and waver-
ing virtue; so that their
comparison with him gives a...