Set yourselves free from all bonds and all measurements and lay hold of the one thing needful: to be alive, to feel; this was the revelation made by Christ when, like Moses, He went up into the mountain, but without hiding Himself from the people, calling the crowd indeed to follow Him, and openly expounding all the secrets of truth: Blessed are those who feel, even if they suffer, for to suffer is to feel, to live. Blessed are those who weep, blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, blessed are the persecuted, blessed are those whose hearts are pure and free from darkness. For he who feels shall be satisfied; but he who cannot feel is lost; woe to those who lie down in comfort, woe to those who are full, woe to those who laugh--they have lost their "sensibility." And then all is vanity. What is the use of knowing all the moral laws, and even practising them, if the heart be dead? It is as if we should whiten the tomb of a corpse. The moral, self-satisfied man, without a heart, is a tomb. * * * * * =The education of the moral sense=.--Thus the conception of moral education, like that of intellectual education, must include a basis of feeling, and be built up thereupon, if we are not to lead the child towards illusion, falsity and darkness. The education of the senses, and liberty to raise the intelligence according to its own laws on the one hand; the education of feeling, and spiritual liberty to raise oneself, on the other--these are two analogous conceptions and two parallel roads. Consider our position in relation to children. We are their "stimuli," by which their feeling, which is developing so delicately, should be exercised. For the intellect, we have the various objects, colors, forms, etc.; but for the spirit, the objects are ourselves. The pure souls of children must derive nourishment from us; they should fix themselves on us with their hearts, as their attention is fixed upon some favorite stimulus; and by loving us they should exalt themselves in their intimate spiritual creation. When interest leads the child to take the box of colors, and keeps him absorbed in them, the objects lend themselves passively to his manipulation, but the colors reflect the luminous rays of the sun, which then strike the virgin retinae of eyes not as yet completely matured and adapted. So, too, when the child's heart turns to us, and fixes itself, asking nourishment from our souls, we ought to be always ready, like passive objects, inasmuch as we should never, through our egotism, fail to respond to the child's needs; we should respond with all our intimate energies, to reflect upon him the luminous rays required by his pure soul, as yet unadapted to life.