is purified by this charming excess.

* * * * *

And the Tree! What an excess of the fantastic to pretend that all those
glittering balls, those coloured candles and those variegated parcels
are the blossoms of the absurd tree! How excessively grotesque to tie
all those parcels to the branches, in order to take them off again!
Surely, something less medieval, more ingenious, more modern than this
could be devised--if symbolism is to be indulged in at all! Can you
devise it, O sceptical one, revelling in disillusion? Can you invent a
symbol more natural and graceful than the symbol of the Tree? Perhaps
you would have a shop-counter, and shelves behind it, so as to instill
early into the youthful mind that this is a planet of commerce! Perhaps
you would abolish the doggerel of crackers, and substitute therefor
extracts from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin! Perhaps you would
exchange the caps for blazonry embroidered with chemical formula, your
object being the advancement of science! Perhaps you would do away with
the orgiastic eating and drinking, and arrange for a formal conversation
about astronomy and the idea of human fraternity, upon strictly
reasonable rations of shredded wheat! You would thus create an original
festival, and eliminate all fear of a dyspeptic morrow. You would
improve the mind. And you would avoid the ridiculous. But also, in
avoiding the ridiculous, you would tumble into the ridiculous, deeply
and hopelessly! And think how your very original festival would delight
the participators, how they would look forward to it with joy, and back
upon it with pleasurable regret; how their minds would dwell sweetly
upon the conception of shredded wheat, and how their faith would be
encouraged and strengthened by the intellectuality of the formal
conversation!

* * * * *

He who girds at an ancient established festival should reflect upon
sundry obvious truths before he withers up the said festival by the
sirocco of his contempt. These truths are as follows:--First, a
festival, though based upon intelligence, is not an affair of the
intellect, but an affair of the emotions. Second, the human soul can
only be reached through the human body. Third, it is impossible to
replace an ancient festival by a new one. Robespierre, amongst others,
tried to do so, and achieved the absurd. Reformers, heralds of new
faiths, and rejuvenators of old faith