the heir of civilisation.

Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories are
good ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems ever to
have for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one of
the media through which we elders may transmit some very slight share of
the benefit received by us, in turn, from actual or transmitted
experience.

The second kind has no preconceived moral to offer, makes no attempt to
affect judgment or to pass on a standard. It simply presents a picture
of life, usually in fable or poetic image, and says to the hearer,
"These things are." The hearer, then, consciously or otherwise, passes
judgment on the facts. His mind says, "These things are good"; or, "This
was good, and that, bad"; or, "This thing is desirable," or the
contrary.

The story of _The Little Jackal and the Alligator_ (page 100) is a good
illustration of this type. It is a character-story. In the naive form of
a folk tale, it doubtless embodies the observations of a seeing eye, in
a country and time when the little jackal and the great alligator were
even more vivid images of certain human characters than they now are.
Again and again, surely, the author or authors of the tales must have
seen the weak, small, clever being triumph over the bulky,
well-accoutred, stupid adversary. Again and again they had laughed at
the discomfiture of the latter, perhaps rejoicing in it the more because
it removed fear from their own houses. And probably never had they
concerned themselves particularly with the basic ethics of the struggle.
It was simply one of the things they saw. It was life. So they made a
picture of it.

The folk tale so made, and of such character, comes to the child
somewhat as an unprejudiced newspaper account of to-day's happenings
comes to us. It pleads no cause, except through its contents; it
exercises no intentioned influence on our moral judgment; it is there,
as life is there, to be seen and judged. And only through such seeing
and judging can the individual perception attain to anything of power or
originality. Just as a certain amount of received ideas is necessary to
sane development, so is a definite opportunity for first-hand judgments
essential to power.

In this epoch of well-trained minds we run some risk of an inundation of
accepted ethics. The mind which can make independent judgments, can look
at new facts with fresh vision, and reach conclusions