There is another side of life grasped by means of this new world of experience, and that is, the spiritual side that lies between conduct and ideals; children have always accepted the supernatural quite readily and it is not to be wondered at, for all the world is new and therefore supernatural to them.  Magic is done daily in children’s eyes, and there is no line between what is understandable and what is not, until adults try to interpret it for them.

They are curious about birth and death and all origins:  thunder is terrifying, the sea is enthralling, the wind is mysterious, the sky is immense, and all suggest a power beyond:  in this the children are reproducing the race experience as expressed in myths, when power was embodied in a god or goddess.  Therefore the fairy world or the giant world, or the wood full of dwarfs and witches’ houses, is as real to them, and as acceptable, as any part of life.  It is their recognition of a world of spirits which later on mingles itself with the spiritual life of religion.  That life is behind all matter, is the main truth they hold, and while it is difficult here to disentangle morality from religion, it is supremely evident that a very great and significant side of a child’s education is before us.

It is by means of the divine gift of imagination, probably the most spiritual of a child’s gifts, that he can lay hold of all that the world of literature has to offer him.  Because of imagination he is independent of poverty, monotony, and the indifference of other people; he has a world of his own in which nothing is impossible.  Edwin Pugh says of a child of the slums who was passionately fond of reading cheap literature:—­“It was by means of this penny passport to Heaven that she escaped from the Hell of her surroundings.  It was in the maudlin fancies of some poor besotted literary hack maybe, that she found surcease from the pains of weariness, the carks and cares of her miserable estate.”

A teacher realising this, should feel an almost unspeakable sense of responsibility in having to select and present matter:  but the problem should be solved on the one hand by her own high standard of story material, and on the other by her knowledge of the child’s needs.  According to his experiences of life the interpretation of the story will differ:  for example, it was found that the children of a low slum neighbourhood translated Jack the Giant-killer into terms of a street fight:  to children living by a river or the sea, the Water-Babies would mean very much, while Jan of the Windmill would be more familiar ground for country children.  Fairy stories of the best kind have a universal appeal.