Insofar as it does not recount an actual event a  fable is “probable” rather than “true.” But  for Gottsched probability depends upon the consistency of the  fictional event with the actual laws of nature, in particular the  laws of human nature, even though the circumstances of the fictional  world differ in some regard from those of the actual world. In this  regard even the fable must still be an imitation of nature with all  its perfections. Of course Gottsched’s rider that the fable must  contain a hidden moral truth means that it must also be consistent  with the real rules of moral perfection, and indeed that the point of  poetic indulgence in fable or fiction is precisely to make a moral  truth alive and forceful to us by showing that it holds even in a  possible world that differs from the actual world in certain of its  facts but not in its principles.