sociological theory, it can illustrate economic principle, it can even
picture politics; but the drama which does these things only, has no
breath of its real life in its being, and dies when the wind of popular
tendency veers from its direction. So, you can teach a child interesting
facts about bees and butterflies by telling him certain stories, and you
can open his eyes to colours and processes in nature by telling certain
others; but unless you do something more than that and before that, you
are as one who should use the Venus of Milo for a demonstration in
anatomy.

The message of the story is the message of beauty, as effective as that
message in marble or paint. Its part in the economy of life is _to give
joy_. And the purpose and working of the joy is found in that quickening
of the spirit which answers every perception of the truly beautiful in the
arts of man. To give joy; in and through the joy to stir and feed the life
of the spirit: is not this the legitimate function of the story in
education?

Because I believe it to be such, not because I ignore the value of other
uses, I venture to push aside all aims which seem secondary to this for
later mention under specific heads. Here in the beginning of our
consideration I wish to emphasise this element alone. A story is a work of
art. Its greatest use to the child is in the everlasting appeal of beauty
by which the soul of man is constantly pricked to new hungers, quickened
to new perceptions, and so given desire to grow.

The obvious practical bearing of this is that story-telling is first of
all an art of entertainment; like the stage, its immediate purpose is the
pleasure of the hearer,--his pleasure, not his instruction, first.