EARTH.—Children can gradually be assisted to realise the earth as an enormous globe of matter, with vast continents and oceans on its surface and with a clinging atmosphere, the whole moving very rapidly (nineteen miles each second) through space, and constituting one of a number of other planets all revolving round the sun. They may also be led to realise that from the distance of a million miles it would appear as an object in the sky rather like the moon; that from a greater distance it would look like any of the other planets; while from a vastly greater distance neither it nor any other planet is large or luminous enough to be visible—nothing but the sun would then be seen, looking like a star. It is occasionally helpful to realise that the earth, with all its imperfections, is one of the heavenly bodies. BEING.—The mystery of existence may be lightly touched upon. The fact that anything whatever—even a stone—exists, raises unanswerable questions of whence and why. It is instructive to think of some rocks as agglomerations of sand, and of sand as water-worn fragments of previous rock; so that, even here, there arises a sense of infinitude. ALIVE.—The nature of life and, consequently, of death is unknown, but life is associated with rapid chemical changes in complex molecules, and is characterised by the powers or faculties of assimilation, growth, and reproduction. It is a property we share with all animals and also with plants. Children should not be told this in bald fashion, but by judicious questioning should be led to perceive the essence of it for themselves. Soon after they realise what is meant by life, some of them will perceive that it has an enormous range of application, and will think of flowers as possessing it also: being subject like all living things to disease and death. What plants do not possess is the specifically animal power of purposed locomotion, of hunting for food and comfort, with its associated protective penalty of pain.