Miss Dufresne describes the initial disorder of her first attempt as follows: "I must confess that the first four weeks were disheartening; the children could not settle to a task for more than a few moments; they showed no perseverance, no initiative; at times they followed one another like a flock of lambs; when one child took up an object, all the others wanted to imitate him, sometimes they rolled on the floor and overturned the chairs." From an experiment with rich children here in Rome, we get the following laconic description: "The greatest difficulty was the question of discipline. The children showed a complete lack of attraction to their work, and seemed disinclined to begin upon it." These persons, who were all working independently, are all agreed later in their accounts of the initiation of order: the phenomenon is identical; at a given moment, a child begins to show an intense interest in one of the exercises. It is by no means necessary that it should be that exercise pertaining to the object determined as the first series; it may be any other object that fixes the attention of the child so deeply; the important factor is not the external object, but the internal action of the soul, responding to a stimulus, and arrested by it. Now when a child once shows this deep interest in any one of the objects we present to him as something answering to his psychical needs, he goes on to show a like interest in all the objects, and begins to develop activities as by a natural phenomenon. When once the initiation has taken place, it leads to progression which goes on steadily, and develops of its own accord. Moreover, the phenomenon is not that of the slow and gradual progression that might be produced by a measured and systematic external action; rather it has the "explosive" character of unsuspected facts that establish themselves suddenly, and make us think of the crises of physiological life, so characteristic in the period of growth. Thus it is from one day to another that the baby cuts a tooth, from one day to another that he utters his first word, from one day to another that he takes his first step; and when the first tooth has been cut, the whole set of teeth will come; when the first word has been uttered, language will be developed; when the first step has been taken, the power of walking has been established once for all. Similar crises occur in the first achievement of psychic order, which is the beginning of progressive evolution in the inner life. I quote the following sentences from Miss George's description of the advent of discipline: