the calumny against the child, who is considered by all as on a level
with the beasts, and whose "pleasure" is supposed to lie solely in
gluttony and idleness, and worse. But none of these could keep the
child's "pleasure" alive for hours and days and years. It is only when
he has laid hold on "humane pleasure" that he persists in it, and
lives with a joy which is comparable to that of the young girl who ran
to her father to proclaim the end of the darkness in which she had
languished for years.

May it not perhaps be that those "crises," which are to-day but the
intellectual illuminations of genius when it discovers a truth,
represent a natural phenomenon of psychical life? May not the
manifestation of the genius be but the manifestation of a "vigorous
life," saved from perils by its exceptional individuality, and
therefore itself alone capable of revealing the true nature of man?
His type would then be the common one, and all men, in a greater or
less degree, would seem to be of the same "species." The paths the
child follows in the active "construction" of his individuality are
indeed identical with those followed by the genius. His
characteristics are absorbed attention, a profound concentration which
isolates him from all the stimuli of his environment, and corresponds
in intensity and duration to the development of spiritual activities.
As in genius, this concentration is not without results, but is the
source of intellectual crises, of rapid internal developments, and,
above all, of an "external activity" which expresses itself in work.

We may say, then, that the genius is the man who has burst his bonds
asunder, who has maintained his liberty, and who has upheld before the
eyes of the multitude the standard of the humanity conquered by him.

Nearly all the manifestations of those men who liberated themselves
from the external bondage of their times are to be noted in our
children. Such, for instance, is that sublime "spiritual obedience,"
at present still unknown to the majority of mankind, with the
exception of monks, who, however, often recognize it only in theory,
and contemplate it only in the examples given by the saints; such
again are those means necessary to the construction of a strong
internal life which form part of the preparation for the cloistered
life in the methodical "meditations" of those about to enter upon it.
No persons, with the exception of monks, practise meditation. We can
hardly dis