Poems and poetic tales tend to be a little alike, not because Hebrews were really Chaldeans, nor because Christians were really Pagans, but because men are really men. Because there is, in spite of all the trend of modern thought, such a thing as man and the brotherhood of men. Anyone who has really looked at the moon might have called the moon a virgin and a huntress without ever having heard of Diana. Anyone who had ever looked at the sun might call it the god of oracles and of healing without having heard of Apollo. A man in love, walking about in a garden, compares a woman to a flower, and not to an earwig; though an earwig also was made by God, and has many superiorities to flowers in point of education and travel. To hear some people talk, one would think that the love of flowers had been imposed by some long priestly tradition, and the love of earwigs forbidden by some fearful tribal taboo.
Chesterton, "Monsters and the Middle Ages," from The Common Man. This short essay is actually a rather interesting one, arguing that a curious feature of the Middle Ages is that it baptized even the monsters: bizarre, fantastic beasts like dragons and griffins and unicorns, which could well be and sometimes originally were beasts to hate and kill, became things to love as emblems of cunning, or courage, or chastity, or other sacred things.
