r.
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 con