Why did one [as a child]
find it so hard to feel as one was told one
ought to feel about God or about the
sufferings of Christ? I thought
the chief reason was that one was told one
ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harmÉ But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought
one could. Of Other Worlds, 37.