I find that there really are human beings who think fairy tales bad
for children. I do not speak of the man in the green tie, for him I can
never count truly human. But a lady has written me an earnest letter
saying that fairy tales ought not to be taught to children even if
they are true. She says that it is cruel to tell children fairy tales,
because it frightens them. You might just as well say that it is cruel
to give girls sentimental novels because it makes them cry. All this
kind of talk is based on that complete forgetting of what a child is
like which has been the firm foundation of so many educational schemes.
If you keep bogies and goblins away from children they would make them
up for themselves. One small child in the dark can invent more hells
than Swedenborg. One small child can imagine monsters too big and
black to get into any picture, and give them names too unearthly and
cacophonous to have occurred in the cries of any lunatic. The child, to
begin with, commonly likes horrors, and he continues to indulge in them
even when he does not like them. There is just as much difficulty in
saying exactly where pure pain begins in his case, as there is in ours
when we walk of our own free will into the torture-chamber of a great
tragedy. The fear does not come from fairy tales; the fear comes from
the universe of the soul.
.....
The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are
alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They
dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be
alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics
worship it--because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible
for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy
tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is
in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales
do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the
child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby
has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What
the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series
of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit,
that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that
there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and
stronger than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the
darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant
taller than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only made him a
Cyclops. But fairy tales restored my mental health, for next day I read
an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal
dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar
inexperience and even lower social status) by means of a sword, some
bad riddles, and a brave heart. Sometimes the sea at night seemed as
dreadful as any dragon. But then I was acquainted with many youngest
sons and little sailors to whom a dragon or two was as simple as the
sea.
Take the most horrible of Grimm’s tales in incident and imagery, the
excellent tale of the “Boy who Could not Shudder,” and you will see what
I mean. There are some living shocks in that tale. I remember specially
a man’s legs which fell down the chimney by themselves and walked about
the room, until they were rejoined by the severed head and body which
fell down the chimney after them. That is very good. But the point
of the story and the point of the reader’s feelings is not that these
things are frightening, but the far more striking fact that the hero was
not frightened at them. The most fearful of all these fearful wonders
was his own absence of fear. He slapped the bogies on the back and asked
the devils to drink wine with him; many a time in my youth, when stifled
with some modern morbidity, I have prayed for a double portion of his
spirit. If you have not read the end of his story, go and read it; it is
the wisest thing in the world. The hero was at last taught to shudder
by taking a wife, who threw a pail of cold water over him. In that one
sentence there is more of the real meaning of marriage than in all the
books about sex that cover Europe and America.
.....
At the four corners of a child’s bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd
and St. George. If you withdraw the guard of heroes you are not making
him rational; you are only leaving him to fight the devils alone. For
the devils, alas, we have always believed in. The hopeful element in the
universe has in modern times continually been denied and reasserted; but
the hopeless element has never for a moment been denied. As I told “H.
N. B.” (whom I pause to wish a Happy Christmas in its most superstitious
sense), the one thing modern people really do believe in is damnation.
The greatest of purely modern poets summed up the really modern attitude
in that fine Agnostic line--
“There may be Heaven; there must be Hell.”
The gloomy view of the universe has been a continuous tradition; and the
new types of spiritual investigation or conjecture all begin by being
gloomy. A little while ago men believed in no spirits. Now they are
beginning rather slowly to believe in rather slow spirits.
.....
Some people objected to spiritualism, table rappings, and such things,
because they were undignified, because the ghosts cracked jokes or
waltzed with dinner-tables. I do not share this objection in the least.
I wish the spirits were more farcical than they are. That they should
make more jokes and better ones, would be my suggestion. For almost all
the spiritualism of our time, in so far as it is new, is solemn and sad.
Some Pagan gods were lawless, and some Christian saints were a little
too serious; but the spirits of modern spiritualism are both lawless and
serious--a disgusting combination. The specially contemporary spirits
are not only devils, they are blue devils. This is, first and last, the
real value of Christmas; in so far as the mythology remains at all it
is a kind of happy mythology. Personally, of course, I believe in Santa
Claus; but it is the season of forgiveness, and I will forgive others
for not doing so. But if there is anyone who does not comprehend the
defect in our world which I am civilising, I should recommend him, for
instance, to read a story by Mr. Henry James, called “The Turn of the
Screw.” It is one of the most powerful things ever written, and it is
one of the things about which I doubt most whether it ought ever to
have been written at all. It describes two innocent children gradually
growing at once omniscient and half-witted under the influence of the
foul ghosts of a groom and a governess. As I say, I doubt whether Mr.
Henry James ought to have published it (no, it is not indecent, do not
buy it; it is a spiritual matter), but I think the question so doubtful
that I will give that truly great man a chance. I will approve the thing
as well as admire it if he will write another tale just as powerful
about two children and Santa Claus. If he will not, or cannot, then the
conclusion is clear; we can deal strongly with gloomy mystery, but not
with happy mystery; we are not rationalists, but diabolists.
.....
I have thought vaguely of all this staring at a great red fire that
stands up in the room like a great red angel. But, perhaps, you have
never heard of a red angel. But you have heard of a blue devil. That is
exactly what I mean.