Early interest in origins and in destinies is one of the conspicuous symptoms of intellectual acumen. "Where did the moon come from?" "Who made the world?" "What is the very end of autumn leaves?" "Where did I come from?" "What will become of me when I die?" "Why did I come into the world?" Although these questions rise vaguely and intermittently in the minds of children in general, they do not begin to require logically coherent answers until about the mental age of twelve or thirteen years. Then they begin to press for more or less systematic accounts. From these circumstances of mental development, the erroneous idea has long been promulgated, even by psychologists, that _puberty_ in some mysterious manner leads to the rise of religious needs and convictions. Since among the generality a "mental age" of thirteen years is, roughly, coincident with the age of pubescence, the two developments have been assumed to be casually related. When we observe young gifted children, we discover that religious ideas and needs originate in them _whenever they develop to a mental level_ past "twelve years mental age." Thus they show these needs when they are but eight or nine years old, or earlier. The higher the IQ the earlier does the pressing need for an explanation of the universe occur, the sooner does the demand for a concept of the origin and destiny of the self appear. In the cases of children who test above 180 IQ observed by the present writer, definite demand for a systematic philosophy of life and death developed when they were but six or seven years old. Similar phenomena appear in the childhood histories of eminent persons where data of childhood are available. Goethe, for example, at the age of nine constructed an altar and devised a religion of his own, in which God could be worshiped without the help of priests. Much could be said of the special problems of the young gifted child in this period of immaturity when his intellectual needs are those of an adolescent while his emotional control and physical powers are still but those of a child. It would be of great interest to study the reactions of older persons to the insistent questions and searchings of these young children. "You are too young to understand." "You can't know all that till you grow older." "You unnatural child!" These are responses that have been heard incidentally, falling from the lips of undiscerning parents. A girl of eight years, of IQ 150, recently was heard to express a determination to join the "Agnostic Church," because she had asked, "What is it called when you can't make up your mind whether there is a God or not?" and had been told that this would be agnosticism.