crises of conscience and the spontaneous religious
sentiment of children. It is true that of late years, during the
remarkable religious movement which took place in England, most
surprising instances of religiosity in children occurred; it was after
the little Nelly, aged five, asked for the Eucharist on her death-bed
that Pius X allowed it to be administered to children, irrespective of
their age. But the subject forms a very inconsiderable part of the
positive studies of to-day.

The solitary study of this kind which has been brought forward in
public congresses on psychology was that which was considered during
the Premier Congres International de Pedologie, Bruxelles, aout, 1911:
_Quelques observations sur le developpement de l'emotion morale et
religieuse chez un enfant_, Ghidionescu, Doct. en Philosophie
(Bucharest). The child who was the subject of observation had received
no religious education whatever. One day he was seen to burst into a
sudden fit of weeping, for no apparent reason. When his mother asked
why he was crying, the child replied: "Because I remember how I saw a
puppy ill-treated two months ago, and at this moment I _feel_ it." A
year and a half later a similar crisis took place. He was looking at
the moon one evening from the window, when he suddenly burst into
tears. "Do not scold me," said the child in great agitation; "while I
was looking at the moon I felt how often I had grieved you, and I
understood that I had offended God."

This interesting study reveals successive phases of a spontaneous
phenomenon of moral consciousness: the first was the revelation of the
lively feeling which provoked a fit of weeping two months after the
event which distressed the child: he _felt_ the sufferings of the
cruelly treated puppy. And a long time after this activity of the
conscience had been initiated comes the establishment of order: the
child distinguishes between good and evil actions, and recognizes the
fact that he has incurred the displeasure of his parents; this
displeasure was probably not very serious, indeed it was so slight
that the child had been unconscious of it at the time; but at the
moment when he is purging himself of these trivial impurities he feels
God: "I understood that I had offended God," he said, and he knew well
that he had not offended his parents. Now, no one had ever talked to
him about God, or trained him to examine his conscience.

During my experience I have had no oppor