During the first days when a new school is opened, we may consider a certain initial disorder as characteristic, especially if the teacher is making her first experiment, and consequently is handicapped by her over-sanguine expectations. The immediate response of the child to the material does not take place; the teacher is perhaps discomfited by the fact that the children do not throw themselves, as she had hoped, upon the objects, choosing them according to their individual taste. If, indeed, the pupils are very poor children, this phenomenon does nearly always happen at once; but if they are well-to-do children, already sated by the variety of their possessions, and by the most costly toys, they are very rarely attracted at first by the stimuli presented to them. This naturally leads to disorder when the mistress makes a kind of chain of that "liberty" she is to respect, and a dogma of the correlation existing between the stimulus and the childish soul. Experienced teachers, on the other hand, understand better that _liberty_ begins when the _life_ that must be developed in the child is initiated, and they possess a tact which greatly facilitates orientation in the initial period. However, an experience under the most difficult conditions, as between a teacher making her first experiment, and a class of wealthy children, is more instructive, and gives us a clearer picture of the fundamental psychical phenomenon, which may be compared to the order which springs up out of chaos. I quote, in this connection, various descriptions, some of which already have been published, among them that given by Miss George, of her first school in the United States, and that of Mlle. Dufresne in England. The initial disorder is eloquently set forth by Miss George: "They (the children) at first snatched the objects out of each other's hands; if I tried to show an object to any particular pupil, the others dropped what they themselves were holding and gathered aimlessly and noisily round us. When I had finished explaining the nature of an object, all the children snatched at it and quarreled for its possession. The children showed no interest in the material: they passed from one object to another without persevering in the use of any.... One of the children was so incapable of keeping still that he could not remain seated long enough to run his fingers round one of the little circular objects we give the children. In many cases, the movements of the children were quite aimless, they ran round the room without any apparent object. During these movements, they made no attempt to respect the objects about them; indeed, they stumbled against the table, upset the chairs and stepped upon the material; sometimes they began an occupation at one spot, and then ran off in another direction; they took up the objects and cast them aside capriciously."