"As we survey this vast mass of popular fiction, hastily produced and voraciously devoured, we confess to a feeling of astonishment that no learned professor has written a book on the one serious omission in the Darwinian theory — the fact that what chiefly distinguishes man from the rest of creation is the faculty for telling stories. Many animals resort to deception from necessity, and act a lie to trap their dinner or to save their skins ; man alone tells stories for pleasure and profit. Great is the truth, and it shall prevail, cries the preacher ; but so conscious was the moralist of the weakness of the flesh that he had to lead up to his adage by telling one of the best stories in Hebrew literature. Man respects the truth, and generally stones the truth-teller ; but he loves and honours the maker of stories from the cradle to the tombstone. The thesis could easily be defended that man is a story-telling animal." -- A. Wyatt Tilby, "The Best-Seller Problem", The Edinburg Review: Or Critical Journal, Vol 236 No. 481 (July 1922) p 96.