with a finer
inventiveness. It was, I believe, many years ago pointed out by Ziller
that fairy-tales ought to play a very important part in the education of
young children, and since then B. Hartmann, Stanley Hall and many others
of the most conspicuous educational authorities have emphasized the same
point. Fairy tales are but the final and transformed versions of
primitive myths, creative legends, stories of old gods. In purer and
less transformed versions the myths and legends of primitive peoples are
often scarcely less adapted to the child's mind. Julia Gayley argues
that the legends of early Greek civilization, the most perfect of all
dreams, should above all be revealed to children; the early traditions
of the East and of America yield material that is scarcely less fitted
for the child's imaginative uses. Portions of the Bible, especially of
Genesis, are in the strict sense fairy tales, that is legends of early
gods and their deeds which have become stories. In the opinion of many
these portions of the Bible may suitably be given to children (though it
is curious to observe that a Welsh Education Committee a few years ago
prohibited the reading in schools of precisely the most legendary part
of Genesis); but it must always be remembered, from the Christian point
of view, that nothing should be given at this early age which is to be
regarded as essential at a later age, for the youth turns against the
tales of his childhood as he turns against its milk-foods. Some day,
perhaps, it may be thought worth while to compile a Bible for childhood,
not a mere miscellaneous assortment of stories, but a collection of
books as various in origin and nature as are the books of the
Hebraic-Christian Bible, so that every kind of child in all his moods
and stages of growth might here find fit pasture. Children would not
then be left wholly to the mercy of the thin and frothy literature which
the contemporary press pours upon them so copiously; they would possess
at least one great and essential book which, however fantastic and
extravagant it might often be, would yet have sprung from the deepest
instincts of the primitive soul, and furnish answers to the most
insistent demands of primitive hearts. Such a book, even when finally
dropped from the youth's or girl's hands, would still leave its vague
perfume behind.

It may be pointed out, finally, that the fact that it is impossible to
teach children even the elements of adult re