V--The Ethics of Elfland

WHEN the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is

commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young,

one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in

middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief

in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with

the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men

now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But

since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropicold men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly theopposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should losemy ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians.Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals isexactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith inpractical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle ofArmageddo n; but I am not so much concerned about the GeneralElection. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at themere mentionof it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always afact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I e ver did, morethan I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time ofinnocence when I believed in Liberals.

I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because, having now totrace the roots of my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think,as the only positive bias. I was brought up a Liberal, and have alwaysbelieved in democracy, in the elemen tary liberal doctrine of a

self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or

threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle ofdemocracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first isthis: that the things common to all men are more important than the

things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than

extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is

something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of

the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than

any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on

two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than

any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic

even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than

having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men

are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately.

And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or

desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love

is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is

that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love,

and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous

to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North

Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal,

and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he

does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's

own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a

man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns areasking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon beasking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merelysay that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, andthat democracy classes government among them. In short, thedemocratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must beleft to ordinary men themselv es -- the mating of the sexes, the rearing ofthe young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I havealways believed.

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to

understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the

idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obviousthat tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to aconsensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated orarbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian againstthe tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing toaristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated,and oug ht to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. Thelegend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, whoare sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the villagewho is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past wereignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statementthat voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attachgreat importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity whenwe are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we shoulddisregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may bedefined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the demo cracy of thedead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy ofthose who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to

men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to theirbeing disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not toneglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinio n, even if he is our father. I, at any

rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seemsevident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at ourcouncils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by

tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, likemost ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a

bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come

to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that

personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck

of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome

literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudicesof the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the oldwives' fables against the old m aids' facts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.

Now, I have to put together a general position, and I pretend to no

training in such things. I propose to do it, therefore, by writing down

one after another the three or four fundamental ideas which I have foundfor myself, pretty much in the way that I found them. Then I shall

roughly synthesise them, summing up my personal philosophy or

natural religion; then shall describe my startling discovery that the wholething had been discovered before. It had been discovered by

Christianity. But of these profound persuasions which I have to recount

in order, the earliest was concerned with this element of popular

tradition. And without the foregoing explanation touching tradition and

democracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear. As it is, I

do not know whether I can make it clear, but I now propose to try.

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken

certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that

is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy

and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most

now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirelyreasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are

both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism

abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of

common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elflandthat criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tastedbeans; I was sure of the Ma n in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the g odsof brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say thatthe ancients did not "appreciate Nature," because they said that Naturewas divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about thefairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the treesfor the dryads.

But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on

fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble

and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous

lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because

they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the

rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition

than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same

as that of the Magnificat -- exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. The human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfand, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of look ing at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since beenmeekly ratified by the mere facts.

It might be stated this way. There are certain sequences or developments

(cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of

the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word,

necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in

fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason

and that necessity. For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than

Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awful sense) necessary that Cinderella is

younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it. Haeckel

may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases: it really must be.

If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack. Cold reason

decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit. If the three

brothers all ride horses, there are six animals and eighteen legs involved:

that is true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. But as I put my head

over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world,

I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in

spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened -- dawn and

death and so on -- as if they were rational and inevitable. They talked as

if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two

and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference

by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot

imagine two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees

not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or

tigers hanging on by the tail. These men in spectacles spoke much of a

man named Newton, who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a

law. But they could not be got to see the distinction between a true law,

a law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling. If the apple hit

Newton's nose, Newton's nose hit the apple. That is a true necessity:

because we cannot conceive the one occurring without the other. But we

can quite well conceive the apple not falling on his nose; we can fancy it

flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose, of which it had a

more definite dislike. We have always in our fairy tales kept this sharp

distinction between the science of mental relations, in which there really

are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there are no laws,

but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles, but not in

mental impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk climbed up to

Heaven; but that does not at all confuse our convictions on the

philosophical question of how many beans make five.

Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the nursery tales. The

man of science says, "Cut the stalk, and the apple will fall"; but he says

it calmly, as if the one idea really led up to the other. The witch in the

fairy tale says, "Blow the horn, and the ogre's castle will fall"; but she

does not say it as if it were something in which the effect obviously

arose out of the cause. Doubtless she has given the advice to many

champions, and has seen many castles fall, but she does not lose either

her wonder or her reason. She does not muddle her head until it

imagines a necessary mental connection between a horn and a falling

tower. But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a

necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an

apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not

only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts. They

do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically connected

them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing

constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together

somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a

white answer.

In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science they are

singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting conjecture

about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm's Law. But

Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales

are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies

that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely

that we have noticed some of the effects. If there is a law that

pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable

mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking

pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty

from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn

into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a

fairy prince. As ideas, the egg and the chicken are further off from each

other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a

chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that

certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard

them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic

manner of science and the "Laws of Nature." When we are asked why

eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the

fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned

to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer

that it is magic. It is not a "law," for we do not understand its general

formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening

practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no

argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we count on the

ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk

the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake

or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of account, not because it

is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle,

and therefore an exception. All the terms used in the science books,

"law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really

unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not

possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are

the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment."

They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows

fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is

bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.

I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have

some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is

simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words

my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from

another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying

eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who

is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist.

He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept

away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs

that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between

the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to

dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to

dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection,

except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears

at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his

own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor

(though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark

association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the

cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the

apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his

country.

This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the

fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from

this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we

all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient

instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are

very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere

life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that

Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited

by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but

babies like realistic tales -- because they find them romantic. In fact, a

baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern

realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even

nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and

amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the

forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make

rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment,

that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and

even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher

agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientific

books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has

forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and

appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every

man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One

may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self more distant than

any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know

thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten

our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call

common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means

that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten.

All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful

instant we remember that we forget.

But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the

streets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It is

admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin. The wonder has

a positive element of praise. This is the next milestone to be definitely

marked on our road through fairyland. I shall speak in the next chapter

about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual aspect, so far as they

have one. Here am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which

cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as

precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because it was an

adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The

goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be

more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test

of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to

whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings

gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he

put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people

for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the

birthday present of birth?

There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable.

The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a

surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were

exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The

question was, "What did the first frog say?" And the answer was,

"Lord, how you made me jump!" That says succinctly all that I am

saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping. But

when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of

the fairy philosophy.

Any one can see it who will simply read "Grimm's Fairy Tales" or the

fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure of pedantry I will

call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy. Touchstone talked of much virtue

in an "if"; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an "if." The note of the

fairy utterance always is, "You may live in a palace of gold and

sapphire, if you do not say the word `cow"'; or "You may live happily

with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion." The vision

always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded

depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things

that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. Mr. W. B.

Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as

lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the

air --

"Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide, And dance

upon the mountains like a flame."