At a later date, Rousseau, who, like Luther, was on the side of religion, realized, as Luther failed to realize, the disastrous results of attempting to teach it to children. In _La Nouvelle Heloise_, Saint-Preux writes that Julie had explained to him how she sought to surround her children with good influences without forcing any religious instruction on them: "As to the Catechism, they don't so much as know what it is." "What! Julie, your children don't learn their Catechism?" "No, my friend, my children don't learn their Catechism." "So pious a mother!" I exclaimed; "I can't understand. And why don't your children learn their Catechism?" "In order that they may one day believe it. I wish to make Christians of them."[170] Since Rousseau's day this may be said to be the general attitude of nearly all thinkers who have given attention to the question, even though they may not have viewed it psychologically. It is an attitude by no means confined to those who are anxious that children should grow up to be genuine Christians, but is common to all who consider that the main point is that children should grow up to be, at all events, genuine men and women. "I do not think," writes John Stuart Mill, in 1868, "there should be any _authoritative_ teaching at all on such subjects. I think parents ought to point out to their children, when the children begin to question them or to make observations of their own, the various opinions on such subjects, and what the parents themselves think the most powerful reasons for and against. Then, if the parents show a strong feeling of the importance of truth, and also of the difficulty of attaining it, it seems to me that young people's minds will be sufficiently prepared to regard popular opinion or the opinion of those about them with respectful tolerance, and may be safely left to form definite conclusions in the course of mature life."[171]