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 with simplicity,
is the perennial power in the world. And this is the mind we are not
noticeably successful in developing, in our system of schooling. Let us
at least have its needs before our consciousness, in our attempts to
supplement the regular studies of school by such side-activities as
story-telling. Let us give the children a fair proportion of stories
which stimulate independent moral and practical decisions.

And now for a brief return to our little black friend. _Epaminondas_