The Ethics of Elfland

It is important to recognize this in any sort of myth, fairy tale, or other work of the imagination, because one will use myth subconsciously within the narrative’s world and worldview to find common ground and find answers to their preemptive questions within it - which is the very magic that keeps readers longing after the heroic stories of their childhood. This kind of logic is explained by Chesterton, who in “The Ethics of Elfland” calls those in fairyland “the most reasonable of all creatures” and expounds on the upside-down means that myth uses to help young readers understand the world here:

There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable....I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened—dawn and death and so on—as if THEY were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail.