s, harmonizing with the situation that the tale presents. (On
the contrary frog is usually penis.) The toad's big box (= mother) is also
the womb. From it indeed the female symbols, in this connection, sisters,
are produced for the simpleton. The box is, however, also the domestic
cupboard,--food closet, parcel, bandbox, chamber, bowl, etc.,--from which
the good mother hands out tasty gifts, toys, etc. Just as the father in
childish phantasy can do anything, so the mother has a box out of which
she takes all kinds of good gifts for the children. Down among the toads
an ideal family episode is enacted. The mother's inexhaustible box (with
the double meaning) even delivers the desired woman for the simpleton.

The woman--for whom? Doubtless for the simpleton, psychologically. The tale
says for the king, because the female symbols, carpet, ring, the king
desires for himself, in so many words, and the inference is that the woman
also belongs to him. The conclusion of the tale, however, turns out true
to the psychological situation, as it does away with the king and lets the
simpleton live on, apparently with the same woman. It is clear as day that
the simpleton identifies himself with his father, places himself in his
place. The image, which possesses him from the first is the father's
woman, the mother. And the father's death--that is considerately
ignored--which brings queen and crown, is a wish of the simpleton. So again
we find ourselves at the center of the OEdipus complex. As
mother-substitute figures the sister, one of the little toads.

We have regarded the story first from the point of view of the
inefficiency of the hero, and have thereupon stumbled upon erotic
relations, finally upon the OEdipus complex. The psychological connection
results from the fact that those images on which the OEdipus complex is
constructed appear calculated to produce an inefficiency in the erotic
life.

The anagogic interpretation of Hitchcock (l. c., pp. 175 ff.) is as
follows, though somewhat abridged:

The king plainly means man. He has three sons; he is an image of the
Trinity, which in the sense of our presentation we shall think of as body,
soul and spirit. Two of the sons were wise in the worldly sense, but the
third, who represents spirit and in the primitive form, is called
conscience, is simple in order to typify the straight and narrow path of
truth. The spirit leads in sacred silence those who meekly follow it and
dies in