The peculiar quality of the “joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth … The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.… This story begins and ends in joy.… There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.
