PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS
Looking back to those days of old, ere the gate shut behind me, I can
see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these things
would have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest were
aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They
treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh, but
after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the result of a
certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction that your
child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a
quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity, and its
tremendous influence in the world; while there grew up in me, as in the
parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense of a ruling power........