This great idea, then, is the backbone of all folk-lore—­the idea that all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one negative.  Now, it is obvious that there are many philosophical and religious ideas akin to or symbolised by this; but it is not with them I wish to deal here.  It is surely obvious that all ethics ought to be taught to this fairy-tale tune; that, if one does the thing forbidden, one imperils all the things provided.  A man who breaks his promise to his wife ought to be reminded that, even if she is a cat, the case of the fairy-cat shows that such conduct may be incautious.  A burglar just about to open some one else’s safe should be playfully reminded that he is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora:  he is about to lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown.  The boy eating some one’s apples in some one’s apple tree should be a reminder that he has come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of all others.  This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far from being lawless, go to the root of all law.  Instead of finding (like common books of ethics) a rationalistic basis for each Commandment, they find the great mystical basis for all Commandments.  We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world.  The vetoes are indeed extraordinary, but then so are the concessions.  The idea of property, the idea of some one else’s apples, is a rum idea; but then the idea of there being any apples is a rum idea.  It is strange and weird that I cannot with safety drink ten bottles of champagne; but then the champagne itself is strange and weird, if you come to that.  If I have drunk of the fairies’ drink it is but just I should drink by the fairies’ rules.  We may not see the direct logical connection between three beautiful silver spoons and a large ugly policeman; but then who in fairy tales ever could see the direct logical connection between three bears and a giant, or between a rose and a roaring beast?  Not only can these fairy-tales be enjoyed because they are moral, but morality can be enjoyed because it puts us in fairyland, in a world at once of wonder and of war.

TOM JONES AND MORALITY

The two hundredth anniversary of Henry Fielding is very justly celebrated, even if, as far as can be discovered, it is only celebrated by the newspapers.  It would be too much to expect that any such merely chronological incident should induce the people who write about Fielding to read him; this kind of neglect is only another name for glory.  A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.  This is not in itself wholly unjust; it merely implies a certain respect for the realisation and fixed conclusions of the mass of mankind.  I have never read Pindar (I mean I have never read the Greek Pindar; Peter