Doubtless she has given the advice to many champions, and has seen many
castles fall, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason.
She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental
connection between a horn and a falling tower. But the scientific
men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental
connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching
the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only
a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts.
They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically
connected them philosophically. They feel that because one
incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible
thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing.
Two black riddles make a white answer.

In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science
they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting
conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet,
Grimm's Law. But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than
Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales;
while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature
of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed
some of the effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go
to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection
between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets.
And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty
from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can
turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn
into a fairy prince. As IDEAS, the egg and the chicken are further
off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in
itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears.