The religious education given to children by the priest possesses defects and even dangers which it is important to set in a clear light, and which explain the gradual decline in secular education. An opinion regarded as divine is an opinion which is as unfit for purposes of education as for purposes of science. The great opposition which obtains between religion and philosophy—in spite of their outward resemblances—is that the one is seeking and that the other declares that it has found; the one is anxious to hear, the other has already heard; the one weighs evidence, the other puts forth assertions and condemnations; the one recognizes it as its duty to raise objections and to reply to them; the other to shut its eyes to objections and to difficulties. From these differences result corresponding differences in methods of instruction. A philosopher, a metaphysician, aims to convince, the priest inculcates; the former instructs, the latter reveals; the former endeavours to stimulate and to train the reasoning, the latter to suppress it or at least to turn it aside from primitive and fundamental dogmas; the former awakens the intelligence, the latter in some measure lays it asleep. It is inevitable that revelations should be opposed to spontaneity and liberty of mind. When God has spoken man should be silent, in especial when the man is a child. And errors, which are often inoffensive if taught by a philosopher, are grave and dangerous if taught by a priest who speaks in the name and with the authority of God. In the first instance the remedy lies always at hand: an insufficient reason may always be made to give way before a sufficient reason; the child holds the standards of weight and measure in his own hands. And indeed it is not always easy to teach error at all by reason and reasoning: to attempt to give reasons for a prejudice is an excellent means of making its essential untruth prominent. It has always been some attempt on the part of humanity to demonstrate its beliefs that has resulted in their disproof. Whoever endeavours to examine a dogma is close upon the point of contradicting it, and the priest, who regards contradiction as a failure in faith, is always obliged, in the nature of things, to avoid an examination of it, to interdict a certain number of questions, to take refuge in mystery. When a priest has filled a brain with faith he seals it. Doubt and investigation, which are the life of philosophy, the priest regards as a mark of distrust and suspicion, as a sin, as an impiety; he lifts his eyes to Heaven at the bare notion of anybody’s thinking for himself. God is both judge and party in every discussion; at the very time when you are endeavouring to find reasons for believing in his existence, He commands you to affirm it. The believer who hesitates at a dogma is a little in the position of the sheep in the fable, who wished to reason with the wolf and to prove to