Apparently the infant, and certainly the child, is extraordinarily sensitive to subtle forces. Acting upon this supposition the Christian Church from the beginning, by a symbolic and sacramental act, has aimed to thrust children deep into the bosom of God by the rite of baptism, and claimed for them not only a place but a place of chief importance in the spiritual society. Instinctively the mother, with exquisite solicitude, whispers her ideals for the future of her offspring into the ears of the babe at her breast, talking as though to one whose consciousness were awake. In this way Samuels have been raised to Israel. At the close of each day the mother bids her child sleep by singing lullabies and hanging mystic poppies over wide-awake eyes. She speaks in the highest type of language, in poetry adorned with song, to this little unconscious scrap of humanity. In other words her mystic sense is pressing upon the mystic sense of her child as naturally and fittingly as her arms fold the infant body and her lips touch its cheek. Unless positive proof to the contrary is adduced, it is safe to believe that it makes a great difference to the child’s after life of what sort its psychic environment is during its first years on earth, whether the minds about it are healthy, expressing themselves healthily, whether the tone of family life is hopeful and spiritual. Though it cannot finally determine the course that the child’s life will take, at any rate it affords the best opportunity for making it a worthy course. My conviction is, that the difference between good and bad psychic environment for a baby is the same as that between healthy and unhealthy vegetable environment for a young plant. An infant abandoned by its mother to the care of nurses and servants, be the provision for its animal comfort and safety what it may, begins life with a minimum of opportunity. Man is not born mere animal but man from the first breath. Therefore from the first breath he needs man’s surroundings. In order that his latent character may have its best chance, he ought to be given the most congenial human environment available. If there is no conscious self, at any rate there is a subconscious self, struggling at a very early moment by baby smiles and frets, gropings and babblings to utter itself. Psychology seems to have reached at least this conclusion—that the subconscious is, that it is the fundamental part of man, that it is his most sensitive self, never relinquishing that which it grasps and grasping everything that touches it.