the sensibility. The child must not be encouraged to feel too strongly. To subject it to vain fears such as those of hell and the devil, or to beatific visions and mystic enthusiasms such as young girls experience at the time of the first communion, is to do it much greater harm than to teach it to reason justly and to develop in it a certain intelligent virility. Races become effeminate by excess of sensibility, never by excess of scientific and philosophic power. [Sidenote: Impossible to leave the child in ignorance.] It will perhaps be said, with Rousseau, that if the child is not to be trammelled with religious prejudice it may at least wait for reasoned instruction on religion until it has attained its intellectual maturity. We reply that it is impossible to do so in the present state of society. If the father does not teach his child it will absorb the prejudices of those it associates with, and to disabuse it of them afterward will demand a veritable crisis, which is always painful and often the cause of permanent suffering. The great art of education should consist precisely in avoiding crises of this sort in the orderly growth of the intellect. The father who postpones the decisive moment will be the first person to be surprised at the amount of pain he will be obliged to subject his child to in order to root up the error which he has placidly permitted to grow under his very eyes. [Sidenote: One must begin early.] M. Littré has given an account of a case of conscience of this kind; after having voluntarily held aloof from the religious education of his daughter till she had reached years of discretion, he found her at last so sincerely convinced, so completely fashioned by religion for religion, that he recoiled before so thorough-going a change; like a surgeon whose hand should tremble at the thought of an operation upon a body that love had rendered sacred to him; like an oculist who should feel that light was not worth the pain that he would have to inflict on eyes that were dear to him. The intellectual operator has not at his command even the resource of chloroform; he must practise his surgery upon a subject who is fully conscious and even excited by attention and reflection. Prevention is better than expectant treatment, which allows the disease to develop in the hopes of curing it afterward. The competent educator, like the competent physician, may be known by his ability in avoiding the necessity of operations. It is a mistake to allow a child to grow up in complete belief in religious legends, with the intention of undeceiving it afterward. It will be undeceived not without regret nor without effort. And often the effort put forth will itself be too great, will overshoot itself, and from excess of faith the child will pass at a bound to sceptical indifference and will suffer for it. Treasures in heaven are treasures in fiat money; the disappointment which must some day come, when one learns the truth, will be bitter.