To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken.
And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some last idol triumphantly surviving us.

For--and this is the third lesson from that tree of Truth--we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their creator.

And it would seem that this is quite as it should be.

So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful dust.

Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself--but this is mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper.
To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers--as if we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a better one.
Not all one's idols are shattered in a day.