We will not, therefore, lose our time praying to an imaginary God for things which our own exertions alone can procure. On the other hand, our teaching has nothing to do with politics. It is our work to form individuals in the full possession of all their faculties, while politics would subject their faculties to other men. While religion has, with its divine power, created a positively abusive power and retarded the development of humanity, political systems also retard it by encouraging men to depend for everything on the will of others, on what are supposed to be men of a superior character—on those, in a word, who, from tradition or choice, exercise the profession of politics. It must be the aim of the rational schools to show the children that there will be tyranny and slavery as long as one man depends upon another, to study the causes of the prevailing ignorance, to learn the origin of all the traditional practices which give life to the existing social system, and to direct the attention of the pupils to these matters. We will not, therefore, lose our time seeking from others what we can get for ourselves. In a word, our business is to imprint on the minds of the children the idea that their condition in the social order will improve in proportion to their knowledge and to the strength they are able to develop; and that the era of general happiness will be the more sure to dawn when they have discarded all religious and other superstitions, which have up to the present done so much harm. On that account there are no rewards or punishments in our schools; no alms, no medals or badges in imitation of the religious and patriotic schools, which might encourage the children to believe in talismans instead of in the individual and collective power of beings who are conscious of their ability and knowledge. Rational and scientific knowledge must persuade the men and women of the future that they have to expect nothing from any privileged being (fictitious or real); and that they may expect all that is reasonable from themselves and from a freely organised and accepted social order. I then appealed in the Bulletin and the local press to scientific writers who were eager for the progress of the race to supply us with text-books on these lines. They were, I said, “to deliver the minds of the pupils from all the errors of our ancestors, encourage them in the love of truth and beauty, and keep from them the authoritarian dogmas, venerable sophisms, and ridiculous conventionalities which at present disgrace our social life.” A special note was added in regard to the teaching of arithmetic:—