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.