It would be better always to have known that one was poor. A child may early be accustomed to the conception of the infinite; it makes up its account with it as with the notion of the antipodes, or of the absence of an absolute up and down in the universe. The first sensation one experiences when one learns that the earth is spherical is of terror, a fear of the void, of tumbling off into the abyss of open space. The same naïve fear lies at the bottom of the religious sentiment in certain minds, and is due to factitious associations of ideas which are a matter of education wholly. A fish born in an aquarium becomes accustomed to its habitat, as the ancients were accustomed to the inverted crystal ball of the heavens; it would be lost in the ocean. Birds reared in the cage often die if they are abruptly given their liberty. A period of transition is always necessary, one needs time to become accustomed to intellectual expanses as well as to expanses of air and water. If mankind is to live without religion it must receive a non-religious education, and this education will spare it a great deal of the suffering that those who have been educated in the faith and have subsequently broken away by their own efforts have undergone. The wood-cutter’s child experiences no sentiment of fear in the solitude and obscurity of the forest, in the arched lanes and alleys, among the trees among which it was born. A town-born child would feel lost in such a place and would begin to cry. The world of science, with its shadowy labyrinths and limitless extent and its numberless obstacles which must be removed one at a time, is such a forest; the child who is born in it will not be frightened, will live in it always happily. * * * * * [Sidenote: What to say to the child about death. M. Louis Ménard’s position.]