Exactly because when my
mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did
come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me
a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in
some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went
out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me,
precisely because I had a clue to it: if I had held no clue it would
not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is
not even impressive. But the garden of childhood was fascinating,
exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found
out in its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object
of the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture
as to why my parents kept a cat.
So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not
merely as a chance example, I have found Europe and the world
once more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic
shapes of cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish
ignorance and expectancy. This or that rite or doctrine may look
as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience
that such things end somehow in grass and flowers.
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