I have in the above used the word habits advisedly. The morality of the young child assumes the concrete form of habits; abstract principles are still beyond its grasp. Habits are acquired by imitation and repetition. Good examples must be so persistently presented and so often copied that the line of moral conduct may become the line of least resistance. The example of parents and teachers is indeed specially important in this respect. But after all it is not sufficient. For the temptations of adults differ in many ways from those of children, and on the other hand in the lives of older persons occasions are often wanting for illustrating just the peculiar virtues of childhood. On this account it is necessary to set before the child ideal examples of the virtues of children and of the particular temptations, against which they need to be warned. Of such examples we find a large stock ready to hand in the literature of fairy tales, fables, and stories. In our next lecture therefore we shall begin to consider the use of fairy tales, fables, and stories as means of creating in children those habits which are essential to the safe guarding and unfolding of their moral life.
[7] So important is environment in supporting self-consciousness, that even adults, when suddenly transported into entirely new surroundings, often experience a momentary doubt as to their identity.
There has been and still is considerable difference of opinion among educators as to the value of fairy tales. I venture to think that, as in many other cases, the cause of the quarrel is what logicians call an _undistributed middle_--in other words, that the parties to the dispute have each a different kind of fairy tale in mind. This species of literature can be divided broadly into two classes--one consisting of tales which ought to be rejected because they are really harmful, and children ought to be protected from their bad influence, the other of tales which have a most beautiful and elevating effect, and which we can not possibly afford to leave unutilized.
The chief pedagogic value they possess is that they exercise and cultivate the imagination. Now, the imagination is a most powerful auxiliary in the development of the mind and will. The familiar anecdote related of Marie Antoinette, who is said to have asked why the people did not eat cake when she was told that they were in want of bread, indicates a deficiency of imagination. Brought up amid the splendor of courts, surrounded by luxury, she could not put herself in the place of those who lack the very necessaries. Much of the selfishness of the world is due not to actual hard-heartedness, but to a similar lack of imaginative power. It is difficult for the happy to realize the needs of the miserable. Did they realize those needs, they would in many cases be melted to pity and roused to help. The faculty of putting one's self in the place of others is therefore of great, though indirect, service to the cause of morality, and this faculty may be cultivated by means of fairy tales. As they follow intently the progress of the story, the young listeners are constantly called upon to place themselves in the situations in which they have never been, to imagine trials, dangers, difficulties, such as they have never experienced, to reproduce in themselves, for instance, such feelings as that of being alone in the wide world, of being separated from father's and mother's love, of being hungry and without bread, exposed to enemies without protection, etc. Thus their sympathy in a variety of forms is aroused.