Is Dawkins's Outlook on Fairy Tales Flawed?

Dear Mr. Dawkins,
You’ve said lately that fairy tales are quite harmful. Your reason for thinking this is simple, and true: you told attendees at the Cheltenham Science Festival, “I think it’s rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism … Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princesses turning into frogs or whatever it was. There’s a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog – it’s statistically too improbable.”
But shortly after, you did add a caveat to those statements – you noted that you do not “condemn fairy tales. My whole life has been given over to stimulating the imagination, and in childhood years, fairy stories can do that.” But you still wondered, understandably, if fairy tales “inculcate into a child’s mind supernaturalism … that would be pernicious. The question is whether fairy stories actually do that and I’m now thinking they probably don’t.”
A Different Valuation of Fantasy
There are two reasons I think fairy tales are important, and I wonder if you’d consider them – especially the first reason. I don’t know if you’ll like the second reason – because I think it could bring life to your worst.

The first reason is one that C.S. Lewis (I know you’re probably not a fan of his, but bear with me) first posited. In a longer essay on writing for children, he suggests that fairy stories present important – and very real – courage to their readers, through a metaphorical means:

… Since it is so likely that [children] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end the book. … It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing, or thinking he hears, a sound, were ever at all frightened. But if he is going to be frightened, I think it better that he should think of giants and dragons than merely of burglars. And I think St. George, or any bright champion in armour, is a better comfort than the idea of the police.

Fairy tale’s metaphorical power gives real strength to children as they grow.

Lewis saw a potent metaphorical force in the fairy tale: it helped children battle the pains and frustrations of reality through its images of valor and heroism. None of us ought to read children news stories about serial killers and tragic accidents. These things are too graphic and frightening for their young minds. But by reading them stories of evil monsters, and by telling them of knights and heroes who bravely stood up to such monsters, they receive greater mental and moral strength. When they grow older, they’ll have to fight their own real-life villains and calamities. The fairy tale’s metaphorical power gives real strength to them as they grow.

Of course it’s statistically improbable that any child will ever be required to carry a magic ring across a perilous land ravaged by monsters, toward an evil, all-seeing eye and its dark kingdom, in order to save all of humanity. But how many of the children who read The Lord of the Rings will grow up to fight injustice and oppression in its real forms? Might some of them become doctors on the frontlines of fighting cancer, teachers willing to work in the most troubled school districts, social workers eager to combat corruption and manipulation in the foster care system?

Is Fiction Avoidable?
I can understand your objection to Santa Claus stories, when portrayed as real: this is a mixing of fact with fantasy that can be very disillusioning to some children. But Santa Claus stories also have their benefits, it can’t be ignored – the proper sorts of stories, ones that capture the spirit of the real St. Nicholas, teach us generosity and kindness.

You could also note the observations of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the aforementioned fantasy trilogy, one of the greatest masters of fantasy fiction. In a fascinating essay on fairy tales, he wrote the following:

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.
Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors’ own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice.

Interestingly, Tolkien’s argument suggests that even you, Mr. Dawkins, could fall prey to fantasy of a sort: could it be that you worship statistical probability to some excess, to a degree that necessitates the disposal (or at least shackling) of creative imagination?

Tolkien goes on, suggesting that fantasy actually reinvigorates us to the real:

We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses—and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.
Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness.
… And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be “free with” Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.

This reminded me of the first time I read The Phantom Tollbooth as a child – I don’t know if you’ve read it, but I almost think you’d like it. It’s about a boy named Milo, who’s grown bored of the real world. He’s tired of toys and trinkets. Then he finds a phantom tollbooth, and journeys through it into a world in which numbers, letters, sounds and shapes all have a synesthetic or anthropomorphized beauty. Milo leaves this world – but its creative power returns home with him. His toys will never be the same: they are re-enchanted by the myth. The world of the Phantom Tollbooth taught me to appreciate the beauty and pattern of numbers, the texture and color of sounds, the depth and precision of words. It showed me the interrelated fabric in nature, the way our imaginations can connect and color various empirical materials. Our world is full of enchanting metaphor, and fairy tales help us see the magic. Lewis notes this in his observations, as well:

Does anyone suppose that [a child] really and prosaically longs for all the dangers and discomforts of a fairy tale?—really wants dragons in contemporary England? It is not so. It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.

And this is the argument for fairy tales that I don’t think you’ll like – because the more you appreciate the pattern and beauty, the magic and charm of the empirical world, the less likely you are to chalk such things up to statistical probabilities. When you see the wonder of nature and people, the potency of words, the luminosity of our world, it’s very hard to return to a merely statistical, empirical vision. Things do become enchanted and mysterious. We begin to consider visions and miracles.

These things are very dangerous, so I can understand why you’re alarmed by them. Perhaps you’re right – perhaps it’s better for us to just abandon the tales and fantasies. After all, the more we dabble in “creating worlds,” the more likely we are to consider whether our own world had a Creator. The more we construct and tell stories, the more likely we are to ponder the possibility of our own Storyteller.

So let’s throw out the fairy stories and fantasies, and stick to the facts, the statistically probable realities. Let’s dispose ofHarry Potter, and read our children Diary of a Wimpy Kid. That’ll better equip them to face reality.
Sincerely,
Gracy Olmstead
Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout

Gracy Olmstead

Gracy Olmstead is an associate editor at The American Conservative. She is a graduate of Patrick Henry College and an Idaho native. In addition to The American Conservative, she has written for The Washington Times, the Idaho Press Tribune, The Federalist, and Acculturated.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Book Review: Earth in the Balance by Al Gore

 I confess that my mind was too closed to political rhetoric, and my wallet too thinned by involuntary taxation, to fork over nearly twenty-three dollars to a then-member of the wealthiest club in America—the U.S. Senate—for a book. My daughter, however, a recently crowned lawyer, purchased Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance with the reckless abandon of the nouveau riche, and gave it to me for my birthday, along with a comment that the author was a man of brilliant intellect, and a pointed remark that “Not all things are subject to economic analysis.”

I rightly deduced from that remark what was in store for me, but I read the book anyway because I dearly love my daughter. (She is, regardless of weird ideas on political economy acquired at expensive schools that don’t teach classical economics, the best daughter ever entrusted to the blundering care of an unworthy father.) I only read Gore’s book because my darling Jenny gave it to me, but I’m glad now that I did.

If I could have but two books to read the rest of my life, one would be the Bible and the other would be Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises’ magnus opus, Human Action. I’d choose the Bible to enlighten me on spiritual matters; Human Action on matters economic. Together, these two books can save me from brilliant intellects.

Gore professes to be a Christian. “I am a Baptist,” he says. But thanks to Matthew, Mark, and Mises, I am not deceived by Al Gore. I deduce from his book and his voting record in the United States Senate that Vice President Gore is a devout practitioner of statolatry. “The state,” wrote Mises, who coined statolatry, “[that] new deity of the dawning age of statolatry, [that] eternal and superhuman institution beyond the reach of human frailties.” Jesus said, “Be on your guard against false prophets . . . . You will know them by their deeds” (Matthew 7:15-16).

Gore’s votes in the Senate, his deeds, so to speak, by which Jesus said we could know him, reveal much. This is a man who never met a government spending initiative he couldn’t approve. The National Taxpayers Union has ranked Senator Gore as the Senate’s leading tax-and-spender for the last two years.

Although the author laboriously denies it, Earth in the Balance is a cunning warrant for the establishment of the equivalent of world government through “a framework of global agreements that obligate all nations to act in concert.” Gore proposes a “Global Marshall Plan” incorporating broad governmental powers to save the environment, forcibly taxing and regulating people’s lives and restraining individual liberty in the process. A clever polemicist, Gore never refers to the unique attribute of government that imparts to it the illusion of being beyond human frailties: its monopoly on the use of force.

Mises, on the other hand, bluntly depicts the state as “the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion” whose role is “to beat people into submission” to its dictates. Jesus of Nazareth preached the futility of relying on force in the conduct of human affairs, and he taught us how to do without it.

Gore disarmingly argues that resolving the “global ecological crisis” caused by “humankind’s assault on the earth” is essentially a spiritual challenge. Whether his moralizing on man’s spiritual inadequacies is sincere or sanctimonious, the recommendations embodied in his Global Marshall Plan are entirely material and amenable to economic analysis.

Gore establishes the reality of a crisis primarily by the rhetorical devices of incessant incantation and vivid metaphor. He repetitiously refers to a “grave crisis,” “environmental crisis,” “ungodly crisis,” “deep crisis,” “population explosion,” “catastrophe at hand,” “catastrophe in the making,” “crumbling ecological system,” “ravenous civilization,” “destruction of the earth’s surface,” “garbage imperialism,” “destructive cycle,” “rapidly emerging dilemma,” and “ecological holocaust.”

Gore’s Earth in the Balance indicts classical economics and laissez-faire capitalism for the problem of environmental degradation. Why? Because if classical economics can be discredited, environmentalists can safely ignore the economists who warn that their utopian plans won’t work.
Gore pledges to reform his insatiable spending habit. But his sincerity is suspect, for he renounces only one ecologically disastrous government program among the multitude he has long supported. “I myself,” he confesses, “have supported sugar price supports and—until now—have always voted for them without appreciating the full consequence [in damage to the environment] of my vote . . . . I have followed the general rule that I will vote for the established farm programs of others in farm states . . . in return for their votes on behalf of the ones important to my state . . . . But change is possible: I, for one, have decided as I write this book that I can no longer vote in favor of sugarcane subsidies.” Hallelujah! A vote-trading, tax-and-spend junkie is willing to skip one little agricultural fix in order to overdose on a kilo of environmentally correct spending.

Although Gore pays lip service to the contributions of economics and praises laissez-faire capitalism faintly, their demise is his ultimate objective. He endorses “modified free markets.” Of course a slave is a person whose freedom has been modified merely by the addition of shackles. As classical economist Frederic Bastiat pointed out, one cannot be both free and not free at the same time.
Throughout Earth in the Balance, Gore confuses economics (a science) with capitalism (a social system), statistics, and accounting. His problems with semantics are not inconsequential and should not necessarily be attributed to ignorance. Mises warned us in Human Action that faulty nomenclature becomes understandable if we realize that pseudo-economists and the politicians who apply it want to prevent people from knowing what the market economy really is. They want to make people believe that all the repulsive manifestations of restrictive government policies are produced by “capitalism.” Blaming economics for environmental degradation is akin to blaming mathematics for the size of the federal deficit.

In Human Action Mises identified two primary causes of environmental degradation; namely, the failure of legislators to fully implement private-property rights; and the propensity of government to limit the liability and indemnification that would otherwise be imposed by the common law on the owners of property. If there is a “global ecological crisis,” and if it is the product of “humankind’s assault on the earth,” the science of human action is the only branch of human knowledge capable of understanding the problem, which is a prerequisite to avoiding an “ecological holocaust.”

Years before Rachel Carson launched the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, Ludwig von Mises had considered the problem of mankind’s abuse of his environment, identified the etiology of environmental degradation, and prescribed the only practical defense against “humankind’s assault on the earth.” If Al Gore sincerely cared about the environment he would repudiate his plan to spend vast sums of other people’s money and embrace classical economics and laissez-faire capitalism as the keys to environmental salvation.

Preservation of Earth cannot be entrusted to any government--not the U.S., not the U.N., nor to any supranational coalition. To put the matter in perspective: Would you trust the people who gave you the post office, the House Bank scandal, the savings and loan debacle, and the national debt with the survival of the human race?
If Earth is in the balance, let us not entrust it to the wisdom of governments.
Jim Russell is a free-lance writer living in Ohio.

Jim Russell

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The Russian Tale of the Plague

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A Russian peasant sat out in the field. The sun was shining fiercely. In the distance the man saw something coming to him. It came nearer, and then he saw it was a woman. She was clad in a large cloak, and strode along with great strides. The man felt much afraid, and would have run away, but the phantom held him with its bare arms.

“Do you know the Plague?” said she. “I am it. Take me on your shoulders and carry me through all Russia. Miss no village or town, for I must go everywhere. For yourself fear nothing. You shall live in the midst of death.”

She wrapt her long arms round the neck of the fearful peasant. The man went on, and was astonished to find that he felt no weight. He turned his head, and saw that the Plague was on his back.

He first took her to a town, and when they came there, there was joy in all the streets, dancing, music, and jollity. The peasant went on and stood in the market-place, and the woman shook her cloak. Soon the dance, joy, and merriment ceased. Wherever the man looked he saw terror. People carried coffins, the bells tolled, the burial-ground was full; there was at length no room for more to be buried in it.

Then the people brought the dead to the market-place and left them there, having no place in which to bury them.

The wretched man went on. Whenever he came to a village the houses were left deserted, and the peasants fled with white faces, and trembling with fear. On the roads, in the woods, and out in the fields, could be heard the groans of the dying.

Upon a high hill stood the man’s own village, the place in which he was born, and to this place the Plague began to direct his steps. There were the man’s wife, his children, and his old parents.

The man’s heart was bleeding! When he came near his own village, he laid hold of the Plague so that she should not escape him, and held her with all his might.

He looked before him and saw the blue Pruth flowing past, and beyond it were the green hills, and afar off the dark mountains with snow-capped tops.

He ran quickly to the stream and leaped under its waters, wishing to destroy himself and his burden together, and so free his land from sorrow and the Plague.

He himself was drowned, but the Plague, being as light as a feather, slipped off his shoulders, and so escaped. She was, however, so alarmed by this brave deed that she fled away and hid herself in the mountain forests.

So the man saved his village, his parents, his wife, and his little children, and all that part of fair Russia through which the Plague had not passed.

Boycott Nike: Alternatives to the Popular Monarch Air IV

I love my Nike Air Monarch IV shoes. They are just so comfortable. However, there are so many reasons to hate Nike as a company. So I decided to move away from Nike and my beloved Air Monarchs. The Air Monarchs are their best-selling shoe and I am the Air Monarchs' target demographic: a middle-aged dad.

So what is the best alternative to the Air Monarch IV. What other shoe has the same comfort for picky feet? I've spent the past several months in shoe stores trying to figure this out. I need the arch support the Air Monarch has, so basically I needed to look for "walking shoes" or "training shoes" or "cross trainers."

I bought some Skechers with the memory foam, which my wife really likes. They feel comfortable, but they didn't live up to what I needed for my feet. Even though they feel comfortable, they don't have the arch support that I need, and within a few steps I feel pain in the arch of my feet.

I then discovered the Crocs Swiftwater Leather Fisherman Sandal. These do not look comfortable at all. There is no memory foam...and they're kinda ugly. But, they are amazingly comfortable. I love walking around in them. How can something so basic and prehistoric looking feel so good? I believe it is because the foot needs a certain type of structure, not necessarily a lot of foam or padding. These Crocs are also a conversation starter because of their unique look.

However, the Crocs aren't practical on rainy days.

I went into an Academy Sports store and discovered the Brooks Ghost shoes. They felt amazing. However I balked at at the price tag: $138.00 (I've mentioned this to my wife as a possible anniversary gift).

I had some time to kill one weekend in Charlotte and I did something I never did before. I went into a Dick's Sporting Goods. There I discovered the ASICS GEL-Contend shoes on sale for $39. I bought a pair and I walked in them all over the parking lot and fell in love. After a week I went back and bought another pair to take advantage of the sale.

Another pair of shoes I liked at Rack Room Shoes was the Adidas Questar Flow Running Shoe, however I have not had a chance to test them out thoroughly over time.

I'm sure that there are other shoes out there that are comparable to the comfort of the Nike Air Monarch IV, but I hope that this article has given you a few options for your feet.

metatron3@gmail.com

From the Tomb, by Guy de Maupassant

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From the Tomb, by Guy de Maupassant

The guests filed slowly into the hotel’s great dining-hall and took their places, the waiters began to serve them leisurely, to give the tardy ones time to arrive and to save themselves the bother of bringing back the courses; and the old bathers, the yearly habitues, with whom the season was far advanced, kept a close watch on the door each time it opened, hoping for the coming of new faces.

New faces! the single distraction of all pleasure resorts. We go to dinner chiefly to canvass the daily arrivals, to wonder who they are, what they do and what they think. A restless desire seems to have taken possession of us, a longing for pleasant adventures, for friendly acquaintances, perhaps, for possible lovers. In this elbow-to-elbow life our unknown neighbors become of paramount importance. Curiosity is piqued, sympathy on the alert and the social instinct doubly active.

We have hatreds for a week, friendships for a month, and view all men with the special eyes of watering-place intimacy. Sometimes during an hour’s chat after dinner, under the trees of the park, where ripples a healing spring, we discover men of superior intellect and surprising merit, and a month later have wholly forgotten these new friends, so charming at first sight.

There, too, more specially than elsewhere, serious and lasting ties are formed. We see each other every day, we learn to know each other very soon, and in the affection that springs up so rapidly between us there is mingled much of the sweet abandon of old and tried intimates. And later on, how tender are the memories cherished of the first hours of this friendship, of the first communion in which the soul came to light, of the first glances that questioned and responded to the secret thoughts and interrogatories the lips have not dared yet to utter, of the first cordial confidence and delicious sensation of opening one’s heart to someone who has seemed to lay bare to you his own! The very dullness of the hours, as it were, the monotony of days all alike, but renders more complete the rapid budding and blooming of friendship’s flower.

That evening, then, as on every evening, we awaited the appearance of unfamiliar faces.

There came only two, but very peculiar ones, those of a man and a woman—father and daughter. They seemed to have stepped from the pages of some weird legend; and yet there was an attraction about them, albeit an unpleasant one, that made me set them down at once as the victims of some fatality.

The father was tall, spare, a little bent, with hair blanched white; too white for his still young countenance, and in his manner and about his person the sedate austerity of carriage that bespeaks the Puritan. The daughter was, possibly, some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was very slight, emaciated, her exceedingly pale countenance bearing a languid, spiritless expression; one of those people whom we sometimes encounter, apparently too weak for the cares and tasks of life, too feeble to move or do the things that we must do every day. Nevertheless the girl was pretty, with the ethereal beauty of an apparition. It was she, undoubtedly, who came for the benefit of the waters.

They chanced to be placed at table immediately opposite to me; and I was not long in noticing that the father, too, had a strange affection, something wrong about the nerves it seemed. Whenever he was going to reach for anything, his hand, with a jerky twitch, described a sort of fluttering zig-zag, before he was able to grasp what he was after. Soon, the motion disturbed me so much, I kept my head turned in order not to see it. But not before I had also observed that the young girl kept her glove on her left hand while she ate.

Dinner ended, I went out as usual for a turn in the grounds belonging to the establishment. A sort of park, I might say, stretching clear to the little station of Auvergne, Chatel-Guyon, nestling in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, from which flowed the sparkling, bubbling springs, hot from the furnace of an ancient volcano. Beyond us there, the domes, small extinct craters—of which Chatel-Guyon is the starting point—raised their serrated heads above the long chain; while beyond the domes came two distinct regions, one of them, needle-like peaks, the other of bold, precipitous mountains.

It was very warm that evening, and I contented myself with pacing to and fro under the rustling trees, gazing at the mountains and listening to the strains of the band, pouring from the Casino, situated on a knoll that overlooked the grounds.

Presently, I perceived the father and daughter coming toward me with slow steps. I bowed to them in that pleasant Continental fashion with which one always salutes his hotel companions. The gentleman halted at once.

“Pardon me, sir,” said he, “but may I ask if you can direct us to a short walk, easy and pretty, if possible?”

“Certainly,” I answered, and offered to lead them myself to the valley through which the swift river flows—a deep, narrow cleft between two great declivities, rocky and wooded.

They accepted, and as we walked, we naturally discussed the virtue of the mineral waters. They had, as I had surmised, come there on his daughter’s account.

“She has a strange malady,” said he, “the seat of which her physicians cannot determine. She suffers from the most inexplicable nervous symptoms. Sometimes they declare her ill of a heart disease; sometimes of a liver complaint; again of a spinal trouble. At present they attribute it to the stomach—that great motor and regulator of the body—this Protean disease of a thousand forms, a thousand modes of attack. It is why we are here. I, myself, think it is her nerves. In any case it is sad.”

This reminded me of his own jerking hand.

“It may be hereditary,” said I, “your own nerves are a little disturbed, are they not?”

“Mine?” he answered, tranquilly. “Not at all, I have always possessed the calmest nerves.” Then, suddenly, as if bethinking himself:

“For this,” touching his hand, “is not nerves, but the result of a shock, a terrible shock that I suffered once. Fancy it, sir, this child of mine has been buried alive!”

I could find nothing to say, I was dumb with surprise.

“Yes,” he continued, “buried alive; but hear the story, it is not long. For some time past Juliette had seemed affected with a disordered action of the heart. We were finally certain that the trouble was organic and feared the worst. One day it came, she was brought in lifeless—dead. She had fallen dead while walking in the garden. Physicians came in haste, but nothing could be done. She was gone. For two days and nights I watched beside her myself, and with my own hands placed her in her coffin, which I followed to the cemetery and saw placed in the family vault. This was in the country, in the province of Lorraine.

“It had been my wish, too, that she should be buried in her jewels, bracelets, necklace and rings, all presents that I had given her, and in her first ball dress. You can imagine, sir, the state of my heart in returning home. She was all that I had left, my wife had been dead for many years. I returned, in truth, half mad, shut myself alone in my room and fell into my chair dazed, unable to move, merely a miserable, breathing wreck.

“Soon my old valet, Prosper, who had helped me place Juliette in her coffin and lay her away for her last sleep, came in noiselessly to see if he could not induce me to eat. I shook my head, answering nothing. He persisted:

“‘Monsieur is wrong; this will make him ill. Will monsieur allow me, then, to put him to bed?’

“‘No, no,’ I answered. ‘Let me alone.’

“He yielded and withdrew.

“How many hours passed I do not know. What a night! What a night! It was very cold; my fire of logs had long since burned out in the great fireplace; and the wind, a wintry blast, charged with an icy frost, howled and screamed about the house and strained at my windows with a curiously sinister sound.

“Long hours, I say, rolled by. I sat still where I had fallen, prostrated, overwhelmed; my eyes wide open, but my body strengthless, dead; my soul drowned in despair. Suddenly the great bell gave a loud peal.

“I gave such a leap that my chair cracked under me. The slow, solemn sound rang through the empty house. I looked at the clock.

“It was two in the morning. Who could be coming at such an hour?

“Twice again the bell pulled sharply. The servants would never answer, perhaps never hear it. I took up a candle and made my way to the door. I was about to demand: “‘Who is there?’ but, ashamed of the weakness, nerved myself and drew back the bolts. My heart throbbed, my pulse beat, I threw back the panel brusquely and there, in the darkness, saw a shape like a phantom, dressed in white.

“I recoiled, speechless with anguish, stammering:

“‘Who—who are you?’

“A voice answered:

“‘It is I, father.’

“It was my child, Juliette.

“Truly, I thought myself mad. I shuddered, shrinking backward before the specter as it advanced, gesticulating with my hand to ward off the apparition. It is that gesture which has never left me.

“Again the phantom spoke:

“‘Father, father! See, I am not dead. Someone came to rob me of my jewels—they cut off my finger—the—the flowing blood revived me.’

“And I saw then that she was covered with blood. I fell to my knees panting, sobbing, laughing, all in one. As soon as I regained my senses, but still so bewildered I scarcely comprehended the happiness that had come to me, I took her in my arms, carried her to her room, and rang frantically for Prosper to rekindle the fire, bring a warm drink for her, and go for the doctor.

“He came running, entered, gazed a moment at my daughter in the chair—gave a gasp of fright and horror and fell back—dead.

“It was he who had opened the vault, who had wounded and robbed my child, and then abandoned her; for he could not efface all trace of his deed; and he had not even taken the trouble to return the coffin to its niche; sure, besides, of not being suspected by me, who trusted him so fully. We are truly very unfortunate people, monsieur.”

He was silent.

Meanwhile the night had come on, enveloping in the gloom the still and solitary little valley; a sort of mysterious dread seemed to fall upon me in presence of these strange beings—this corpse come to life, and this father with his painful gestures.

“Let us return,” said I, “the night has grown chill.”

And still in silence, we retraced our steps back to the hotel, and I shortly afterward returned to the city. I lost all further knowledge of the two peculiar visitors to my favorite summer resort.

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Bastiat on Foreign Trade

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There Are No Absolute Principles

From ECONOMIC SOPHISMS By Frederic Bastiat

We cannot wonder enough at the facility with which men resign themselves to continue ignorant of what it is most important that they should know; and we may be certain that such ignorance is incorrigible in those who venture to proclaim this axiom: There are no absolute principles.

You enter the legislative precincts. The subject of debate is whether the law should prohibit international exchanges, or proclaim freedom.

A deputy rises, and says:

If you tolerate these exchanges, the foreigner will inundate you with his products: England with her textile fabrics, Belgium with coals, Spain with wools, Italy with silks, Switzerland with cattle, Sweden with iron, Prussia with corn; so that home industry will no longer be possible.

Another replies:

If you prohibit international exchanges, the various bounties which nature has lavished on different climates will be for you as if they did not exist. You cannot participate in the mechanical skill of the English, in the wealth of the Belgian mines, in the fertility of the Polish soil, in the luxuriance of the Swiss pastures, in the cheapness of Spanish labour, in the warmth of the Italian climate; and you must obtain from a refractory and misdirected production those commodities which, through exchange, would have been furnished to you by an easy production.

Assuredly, one of these deputies must be wrong. But which? We must take care to make no mistake on the subject; for this is not a matter of abstract opinion merely. You have to choose between two roads, and one of them leads necessarily to poverty.

To get rid of the dilemma, we are told that there are no absolute principles.

This axiom, which is so much in fashion nowadays, not only countenances indolence, but ministers to ambition.

If the theory of prohibition comes to prevail, or if the doctrine of free trade comes to triumph, one brief enactment will constitute our whole economic code. In the first case, the law will proclaim that all exchanges with foreign countries are prohibited; in the second, that all exchanges with foreign countries are free; and many grand and distinguished personages will thereby lose their importance.

But if exchange does not possess a character which is peculiar to it,—if it is not governed by any natural law,—if, capriciously, it be sometimes useful and sometimes detrimental,—if it does not find its motive force in the good which it accomplishes, its limit in the good which it ceases to accomplish,—if its consequences cannot be estimated by those who effect exchanges;—in a word, if there be no absolute principles, then we must proceed to weigh, balance, and regulate transactions, we must equalize the conditions of labour, and try to find out the average rate of profits—a colossal task, well deserving the large emoluments and powerful influence awarded to those who undertake it.

On entering Paris, which I had come to visit, I said to myself, Here are a million of human beings, who would all die in a short time if provisions of every kind ceased to flow towards this great metropolis. Imagination is baffled when it tries to appreciate the vast multiplicity of commodities which must enter to-morrow through the barriers in order to preserve the inhabitants from falling a prey to the convulsions of famine, rebellion, and pillage. And yet all sleep at this moment, and their peaceful slumbers are not disturbed for a single instant by the prospect of such a frightful catastrophe. On the other hand, eighty departments have been labouring to-day, without concert, without any mutual understanding, for the provisioning of Paris. How does each succeeding day bring what is wanted, nothing more, nothing less, to so gigantic a market? What, then, is the ingenious and secret power which governs the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated, a regularity in which everybody has implicit faith, although happiness and life itself are at stake? That power is an absolute principle, the principle of freedom in transactions. We have faith in that inward light which Providence has placed in the heart of all men, and to which He has confided the preservation and indefinite amelioration of our species, namely, a regard to personal interest—since we must give it its right name—a principle so active, so vigilant, so foreseeing, when it is free in its action. In what situation, I would ask, would the inhabitants of Paris be, if a minister should take it into his head to substitute for this power the combinations of his own genius, however superior we might suppose them to be—if he thought to subject to his supreme direction this prodigious mechanism, to hold the springs of it in his hands, to decide by whom, or in what manner, or on what conditions, everything needed should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? Truly, there may be much suffering within the walls of Paris—poverty, despair, perhaps starvation, causing more tears to flow than ardent charity is able to dry up; but I affirm that it is probable, nay, that it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of government would multiply infinitely those sufferings, and spread over all our fellow-citizens those evils which at present affect only a small number of them.

This faith, then, which we repose in a principle, when the question relates only to our home transactions, why should we not retain, when the same principle is applied to our international transactions, which are undoubtedly less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated? And if it is not necessary that the prefecture should regulate our Parisian industries, weigh our chances, balance our profits and losses, see that our circulating medium is not exhausted, and equalize the conditions of our home labour, why should it be necessary that the Customhouse, departing from its fiscal duties, should pretend to exercise a protective action over our external commerce?

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Books which have Influenced Me by Robert Louis Stevenson

THE most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they classify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change — that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. . . . Kent's brief speech over the dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so overpowering in expression.

Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan — the elderly D'Artagnan of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I know not a more human soul, nor, in his way a finer. I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim's Progress, a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.

But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It is in books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the Essais of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have their "linen decencies" and excited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their contemporaries.

The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is perhaps better to be silent.

I come next to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank — I believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. He who cannot judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he will get little harm, and, in the first at least, some good.