Thus, even from the birth of the infant, our problem is not precisely that of the old educationalists; and this primary congenital difference between the children of two generations has been, and is being, exaggerated in the nurseries of the independent classes both in England and America. (Doubtless in other countries of Europe the same effects are being produced, but I prefer to speak only of that which I have observed and closely studied for myself.) There is still a tendency to take all responsibility and initiative away from the child of wealthy parents. Nurses first and governesses later perform every possible act of service that shall relieve the child of trouble. It is not even allowed to invent its own games. Toys are supplied in endless quantities, expensive, ingenious toys, that need no imaginative act to transform them into reduced models of the motors, trains, or animals they are manufactured to represent, and some one, some adult, is always at hand to amuse the child and _teach him how to play_. I must italicise the absurdity of that last sentence. For what does this teaching mean, if it does not mean that it is seeking to substitute the adult idea of play for the childish one? In my day, any old brick played the part of a train or a horse, and in the mental act required to see the reality under so uncompromising a guise my imagination was exercised. Then I, and the other children of my time, grew dissatisfied with so poor a substitute, and as we progressed in experience, the stimulated imaginations found expression in _inventing_ and in _making_ better replicas of the realities of our childish experience. And we grew with the exercise. We had our little responsibilities and we taught ourselves not only how to play but how presently to adapt our play to the great business of social life. But what equipment is furnished to the child who never has an independent moment throughout its nursery career? How can such a child hope to succeed in life, should the fortune it hopes to inherit from its parents be suddenly lost or diverted? Every one knows the answer. We can see the results in any great city of modern civilisation, in London slums and in the Bowery of New York. A few generations of such teaching as this and we should have had a differentiated race as helpless as the slave-keeping ants.