Some people, however, have thought that from an educational point of view, a belief in this imaginary world must be mischievous. I doubt it, and it would be easy to show that originally these stories and fables were really meant to inculcate right and good principles. Luther declared that he would not lose these wonderful stories of his tender childhood for any sum of money, and Camerarius (_Fabulae Aesopeae_, p. 406, Lipsiae, 1570) speaks of these German fables as filling the minds of the people, and particularly of children, with terror, hope, and religion. The oldest collections in which some of these Aesopean fables occur, the Pantschatantra and Hitopadesa in Sanskrit, were distinctly intended for the education of princes, and though they may make the young listeners inclined to be superstitious, such superstitiousness is not likely to last long. Children delight in _Märchen_ as in a kind of pantomime, and when the curtain has fallen on that fairy world they often think of it as of a beautiful dream that has passed away. The stories are certainly more impressive than the proverbs and wise saws which many of them were meant to illustrate, without always saying, _haec fabula docet_. Even if some of these stories touch sometimes on what may not seem to us quite correct, it is done to make children laugh rather at the silliness than cry at the downright wickedness of some of the heroes. It is by no means uncommon, for instance, that a good-for-nothing fellow succeeds, while his virtuous companions fail. But there is either a reason for it, or the injustice provokes the indignation of children, long before they have learnt that in real life also virtue does not always receive its reward, while falsehood often prospers, at least for a time. There is no harm, I think, in a certain dreaminess in children. I remember that I have often laughed with all my heart at Rumpelstilzchen, and shed bitter tears at Brüderchen and Schwesterchen. I seemed to see brother and sister driven into the wood, the brother being changed into a deer, and the sister sleeping with her head on his warm fur, till at last the deer was killed by a huntsman, and the little sister had to travel on quite alone in the forest. Of course in the end she became a princess, and the brother a prince who married a queen, and all ended in great joy and jubilation in which we all joined. How good for children that they should for a time at least have lived in such a dreamland, in which truthfulness was as a rule rewarded, and falsehood punished in the end.