ly get the beauty of Siegfried? What
can he make out of the incestuous love of Siegmund and Sieglinda? And of
Siegfried's naive passion on his first glimpse of a woman? What do we
want him to make of it? Is that the way we wish to introduce him to sex?
And as for the rest, the allegory of the ring itself, the sword, the
dragon's blood, what do little children get from this except the
excitement of magic? What _we_ get because of what we have to put into
it, is a different matter and should never be confused with the straight
question of what children get. Outgrown adult thinking in social matters
is no more suitable to children than outgrown thinking on physical
facts. We do not teach that the world is flat because grown-ups once
believed it was. We are not afraid of a round earth so we tell the
truth about it. But we come near to teaching "spontaneous generation"
with our endless evasions. We are afraid of a reproducing world, and so
we fall back on curious mixtures of sex fables,--on storks and fairy
godmothers and leave the mysteries of sex to be interpreted by Achilles
and Siegfried and Guinevere! To emasculate these tales is to insult
them,--to strip them of their significance and individuality. Is it not
wiser to wait until children will not be confused by all their straight
vigor and beauty?

There is other folk-lore less gripping in its human intensity. Through
this may not children safely gain their needed adventures? And here we
come again to the real "Maerchen,"--the fairy tales. They take us into a
lovely world of unreality where magic and luck hold sway and where the
child is safe from human problems and from scientific laws alike. I have
already said in talking of the younger children that I feel it unsafe
to loose a child in this unsubstantial world before he is fairly well
grounded in a sense of reality. Once he has his bearings there is a good
deal he will enjoy without confusion. The common defense that the
mystery of fairy tales answers to a legitimate need in children, I
believe holds good for children of six or seven, or even five, who have
had opportunities for rational experiences. We all know how children
revel in a secret. They like to live in a world of surprises. To give
the children this sense of mystery I do not believe it is at all
necessary to turn to vicious tales of giants, of ogres, and Bluebeards,
or to the no less vicious pictures of the beautiful princess and the
wicked stepmother. E