umbles from age or is
shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with
doubt. This is why we fade and wither as the leaf. Could we but sweep
aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing
certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree
in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword.
But this may not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new
creation--deeming that _here_, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond
the end of time. To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are
meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken.

And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and,
learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some
last idol triumphantly surviving us. For--and this is the third lesson
from that tree of Truth--we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our
idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is
quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his
creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful
dust. Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself--but this is
mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last
fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange
and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper.

To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be
apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol
blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish
caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers--as if
we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to
this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt
for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol
go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a
better one.

Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that
might wrench even youth's divine credulity.

Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and
its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that
Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins
of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place
something unseen and un