So was it even with the priests of one of our ancient religions, who had the custody of great secrets intended for good. During a time extending over some generations, they practised the virtues they inculcated, and used their power for a beneficial end. They increased their power by their virtue and goodness; but their successors, from whose natures the minute germs of physical and mental perversity had not been removed, used their increased might for evil purposes, enervating to the governing will, and to the directing powers necessary to guide an irresistible force. It is known that the results of every act, whether good or evil, will be felt for all time. The result of evil was likened in Montalluyah to a virulent disease, which had its beginning in a minute germ; a good act to an ear of nourishing corn, that goes on propagating till it has supplied nations with food. It was not enough that my laws worked with the beauty, regularity, and unity of a well-balanced machine, the parts of which assisted each other in attaining the immediate object of its construction. The political and social machine possessed also the faculty of acquiring at every movement increased powers of production. I had satisfied myself that amongst the numerous precautions to be taken to secure the highest degree of beauty, power, and intelligence in adults, on which so much depended, was the care of the infant, and that this should commence from the earliest period, before the features, form, and organization had received the first approaches of enduring outline, since then all would be in a malleable or plastic state, ready to take any impressions caused by accident or design, whether tending to good or evil, to beauty or deformity. RIDICULE ATTACHING TO THE SUBJECT OF BABIES. Before my reign eminent men, statesmen, legislators, and philosophers, scarcely _condescended_ to notice such "trifles" as were comprised in the nurture and care of infants. Perhaps in a worldly sense they were right, for those who had attempted to instruct others in these all-pregnant "trifles" had been invariably ridiculed for the interest they took in "babies," and such-like "trivialities," which, in spite of many lessons, the people would not regard as possibly prolific of serious results.