e in
themselves all the vibrations of internal sensibility, waiting for the
thirsty soul to choose among them.

It may be asked: And how shall we make the child love us; how shall we
make the child "feel"?

If a child could not see colors he would be blind; and no one could
give him sight. And so if the child could not feel, no one could give
him sensibility; but since Nature has united mother and child not only
by the flesh, but even more closely by love, it is indubitable that at
birth the child brings with him not only flesh but love. Now he who
loves, even though it be only a single object, has in himself a sense
which is capable of receiving impressions _ad infinitum_; he who sees
an object possesses sight, therefore he who sees an object will see.
He who loves a mother or a son, "loves"; that internal sense vibrates,
and certainly not only to the object present to it at the moment.

Even that poor spider, artificially deposited in the bag of another
mother, adopted and defended the alien eggs, because the spider is
capable of maternal love.

Therefore the child whom his mother has loved and who was helped by
that love, has that "internal sense" by means of which he is capable
of love. The "human objects" which present themselves to that sense
have reflections from it.

We should "wait to be seen" by him; the day will come when, among all
the intellectual objects, the child will perceive our spirit, and will
come to us to take his ease within us. It will be to him a new birth,
akin to that other awakening, when some one of the objects first
attracted him and held him. It is impossible that that day, that
moment, should not arrive. We have performed a delicate work of love
towards the child, presenting to him the means which satisfy his
intellectual needs, without making ourselves felt, keeping ourselves
in the background, but always present and ready to help. We have given
great satisfaction to the child by succoring him; when he needed to
clarify the order of his mind still further by language, we offered
him the names of things, but only these, retiring at once without
asking anything from him, without putting forward anything from
ourselves. We have revealed to him the sounds of the alphabet, the
secret of numbers, we have put him into relation with things but
restricting ourselves to what was useful to him, almost concealing our
body, our breathing, our person.

When he felt a desire to choose, he never