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About
Fairy Tales
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fairy tale is a poetic recording of the facts of life, an interpretation
by the imagination of its hard conditions, an effort to reconcile the spirit
which loves freedom and goodness and beauty with its harsh, bare and disappointing
conditions. It is, in its earliest form, a spontaneous and instinctive
endeavor to shape the facts of the world to meet the needs of the imagination,
the cravings of the heart. It involves a free, poetic dealing with realities
in accordance with the law of mental growth; it is the naïve activity
of the young imagination of the race, untrammeled by the necessity of rigid
adherence to the fact. |
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| The
oldest fairy stories constitute a fascinating introduction to the book
of modern science, curiously predicting its discoveries, its uncovering
of the resources of the earth and air, its growing control of the tremendous
forces which work in earth and air. It is significant that the recent progress
of science is steadily toward what our ancestors would have considered
fairy land; for in all the imaginings of the childhood of the race there
was nothing more marvelous or more audaciously improbable than the transmission
of accents and modulations of familiar voices through long distances, and
the power of communication across leagues of sea without mechanical connections
of any kind. |
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| In a word, the fairy stories
have come true; they are historical in the sense that they faithfully report
a stage of spiritual growth and predict a higher order of realities through
a deeper knowledge of actualities. They were poetic renderings of facts
which science is fast verifying, chiefly by the use of the same faculty
which enriched early literature with the myth and the fairy tale. The scientist
has turned poet in these later days, and the imagination which once expressed
itself in a free handling of facts so as to make them answer the needs
and demands of the human spirit, now expresses itself in that breadth of
vision which reconstructs an extinct animal from a bone and analyzes the
light of a sun flaming on the outermost boundaries of space. |
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| The myths record the earliest
attempt at an explanation of the world and its life; the fairy tale records
the free and joyful play of the imagination, opening doors through hard
conditions to the spirit, which craves power, freedom, happiness; righting
wrongs and redressing injuries; defeating base designs; rewarding patience
and virtue; crowning true love with happiness; placing the powers of darkness
under control of man and making their ministers his servants. In the fairy
story, men are not set entirely free from their limitations, but, by the
aid of fairies, genii, giants and demons, they are put in command of unusual
powers and make themselves masters of the forces of nature. |
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| The faculty which created
the fairy tale is the same faculty which, supplemented by a broader observation
and based on more accurate knowledge, has broadened the range and activities
of modern man, made the world accessible to him, enabled him to live in
one place but to speak and act in places thousands of miles distant, given
him command of colossal forces, and is fast making him rich on a scale
which would have seemed incredible to men of a half-century ago. There
is nothing in any fairy tale more marvelous and inherently improbable than
many of the achievements of scientific observation and invention, and we
are only at the beginning of the wonders that lie within the reach of the
human spirit! |
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