Apart from such considerations, however, the artistic types referred to belong to the _forecourt_ of artistic symbolism, inasmuch as they are generally incomplete, and to that extent _merely_ a search after art in its truth. Such a movement no doubt presents the essential ingredients of a genuine mode of configuration, but it lays hold of them in their aspect of finitude, separation, and purely relative propinquity; it fails consequently to rank on the same level. When we discuss, therefore, the fable, apologue, and the rest we must treat these forms not as though they belonged to _poetry_ in the specific sense, as it differs among other things from music no less than the plastic arts, but only with the view of pointing out the relation in which they stand to the _generic_ types of art. It is only thus their specific character can be elucidated. To such an object the notion of the genuine types of the art of poetry, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic, will not assist us.
We propose now to differentiate these forms in the following order; we shall begin with the _fable_, proceed after that to discuss the _parable_, _apologue_, and _proverb_, and conclude our inquiry with the _metamorphosis._
Hitherto we have throughout merely dwelt upon the formal aspect of the relation of an expressed significance to its embodiment; we have now furthermore to elucidate the content, which declares its suitability for such a mode.