If the above explanation of the child’s fear of the dark is a sound one Rousseau’s prescription for curing it is not enough. Children may be encouraged to explore dark rooms, and by touching blind-like their various objects rendered familiar with the fact that things remain unchanged even when enveloped in darkness, that the dark is nothing but our temporary inability to see things; and this may no doubt be helpful in checking the fear when calm reflexion becomes possible. But a radical cure must go farther, must aim at checking the activity of morbid imagination—and here what Locke says about the effects of the terrifying stories of nurses is very much to the point—and in extreme cases must set about strengthening shaky nerves. Mothers would do well to remember that even religious instruction when injudiciously presented may add to the terrors of the dark for these wee tremulous organisms. One observation sent me strongly suggests that a child may take a strong dislike to being shut up in the dark with the terrible all-seeing God. _Fears and their Palliatives._ I have probably illustrated the first fears of children at sufficient length. Without trying to exhaust the subject I have, I think, shown that fear of a well-marked and intense kind is a common feature of the first years of life, and that it assumes a Protean variety of shapes. Much more will no doubt have to be done in the way of methodical observation, and more particularly statistical inquiry into the comparative frequency of the several fears, the age at which they commonly appear, and so forth, before we can build up a theory of the subject. One or two general observations may, however, be hazarded even at this stage.