proceeding from the known similarities between the animal revolution and the real revolution to this further similarity? If Orwell had changed the ending, for example, so that Napoleon governed as an enlightened philosopher king and the animals lived happily ever after, why couldn't we conclude that Stalin governed as an enlightened philosopher king and Russians lived happily ever after? The answer is that given the already known similarities between the animal revolution and the Russian Revolution, it is impossible, or very improbable, for the story to end in any other way. I will argue in the next section that the reader can learn from Animal Farm that it is impossible for the story to end in any other way, because the reader cannot imagine the story ending in any other way. And if the reader already knows the novel is similar to the Russian Revolution in the respects which necessitate its ending, then the reader can infer that the end of the Russian Revolution was necessitated in the same way. So although learning from Animal Farm is learning from fiction in the relevant sense, it is also a case of learning from the imagination. 8 In general, allegorical novels work by exploiting similarities between events in the novel and corresponding events in actuality. But to proceed from known similarities between the novel and actuality to further similarities between the novel and actuality, there must be a necessary or probable connection between the known similarities and the further similarities. That necessary or probable connection, I will argue in the next section, can be learnt from fiction in the relevant sense, but only because it can be learnt from imagination. 2. All knowledge from imagination is modal knowledge The premise that all knowledge from imagination is modal knowledge is motivated by the maxim that imaginability is a guide to possibility. I know that a golden mountain is possible, for example, because I have imagined a golden mountain. After reading The Dispossessed I knew than an anarchist utopia