"This," I said, "looks like a concise and logical statement of the natural law, but how do you apply it to the present conditions which exist in my own country? We have a civilization and many very intelligent, well meaning and well to do people who might be greatly benefited by a better understanding of the influences of pre-natal conditions." "Doubtless that is true," she replied, "but your duty as a teacher is to take the whole people into consideration and not a part, and in your work for their enlightenment begin at the bottom of the scale. Your present civilization was developed along the lines of unconscious growth, jest as the child grows from birth to maturity. But your work as a teacher and civilizer is to work along conscious lines and lay your plans with due deliberation. Having, as it were, reached the top, you are able to give instruction to those who are lower down and help them to climb higher. The place of the teacher is one which demands that you should understand the natural law of growth, so that you may work to the best advantage. Hence your work is to begin with the outer environment, the physical, and that which pertains to the higher will take care of itself. It is not the whole, but the sick, who need the physician, so it is not the wise, but the ignorant who need the teacher. For these reasons I advise you to confine your present work more to the economic, as that would prepare the field for the higher, and that, just where it is most needed, among the poor." "I think I comprehend your meaning," I said, "and shall act accordingly in the preparation of my first volume on Altrurian civilization. Oqua's advice was very similar, but situated as I am here, these numerous lines of thought press in upon me all at once, and there is so much to learn, that I often find it difficult to make a selection. I am sure that the people of my own native land are passing through their Transition Period, and I am anxious to give them that which will do them the most good." "Then," interposed Norrena, who had joined us, "show them how to get rid of poverty. Without economic independence, political independence and personal liberty, under the law, are a hollow mockery. There can be no progress without freedom, and there can be no freedom as long as a people are driven to their work by the stern lash of necessity." "But how is it," I asked, "that you have such a realizing sense of the horrors of poverty, when you have always had an abundance?" "Because it is the one great object," said Norrena, "of our educational training and of our Altrurian civilization to provide against want, and to relieve distress wherever found. Every student in our schools is required to make a careful study of our Transition Period, the helpless, hopeless condition of the poverty stricken masses, and the methods by which they got out, and which must be continued in order to stay out."