There exists a certain prejudice against novels on account that they are mere fictions, make-believe instead of fact. If the reader wants facts, he should read history or science. While these strictures against the novel may have an element of truth if we have in mind novels by popular fictionists like Steven King and John Grisham, they have no merit at all in regards to the great novels of Western Literature. The fact that novels are fictional is quite beside the point.
Fiction is a necessary adjunct to the truth.
Factual reality must be reduced to the human level before it can be grasped by man s mind. Human cognition, as Santayana pointed out, is essentially poetical. We perceive reality in terms of metaphors, symbols, and tropes. The novel studies human nature and society. This is not to imply that history or the sciences don t study these things as well.