that the child will answer with a laugh--or at least that it will make you understand the doll has no soul. Upon this foundation, and by means of these simple illustrations, enforced at different times, you may accustom the child, by degrees, to attribute both to the body and the soul, that which is peculiar to each--provided you do not indiscreetly propose to her consideration, certain actions which are common to the one and the other. All subtilty must be avoided, as it perplexes truth; and we must content ourselves to point out, with care and correctness, those circumstances that mark distinctly the difference between the body and soul. Sometimes one meets with such stupid characters, whom even the help of a good education will not assist in the comprehension of these truths: however, they may be sometimes clearly _conceived_, without being perspicuously expressed. God sees better than we do into the spirit of man, what is there placed for the knowledge of his mysteries. With respect to those children in whom we discover a mind capable of further researches, one may, without throwing them into a study which savours too much of philosophy, make them conceive, according to their inclination, what is meant when it is said that God is a spirit, and that the soul is also a spirit. I think that the best and most simple method of making them conceive this spirituality of God and of the soul, is, to make them remark the difference between a dead and living man: in the one, there is nothing but a body; in the other, the soul is united with the body. Afterwards you may shew them that that which is capable of reasoning, is more perfect than that which has mere form and motion. Then illustrate, by various examples, that no body perishes--that it is only separated: thus, pieces of burnt wood fall into charcoal, or evaporate in smoke. If then, you will add, that which is of itself only charcoal (incapable of knowing and thinking) perishes not--how much more shall the soul, which is capable of both knowledge and thought, endure for ever! The body may die--that is to say, may quit the soul and shrink into dust--but the soul will live; for it will always have the faculty of thinking.