ame. 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 is 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
ecstasy 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 I 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 ecstasy 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 j