alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily
and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear
the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it--
because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible
for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear;
fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly;
that is in the child already, because it is in the world already.
Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey.
What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea
of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known
the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination.
What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to
kill the dragon.

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him
for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless
terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies
in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe
more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.
When I was a child I have stared at the darkness until the whole
black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller than heaven.
If there was one star in the sky it only made him a Cyclops.
But fairy tales restored my mental health, for next day I read
an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite
equal dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself
(of similar inexperience and even lower social status)
by means of a sword, some bad riddles, and a brave heart.
Sometimes the sea at night seemed as dreadful as any dragon.
But then I was acquainted with many youngest sons and little
sailors to whom a dragon or two was as simple as the sea.