ABSTRACT
Perhaps there is no domain of childish thought and feeling that is more remote from our older experience, and consequently less easily understood by us, than that of religion. Their first ideas about the supernatural are indeed supplied by us, but they are not controlled by us. This chapter explores how oddly children twist the religious ideas of their elders, materialising and anthropomorphising, is known to all who have had anything to do with the juvenile mind. Poor little Aurore’s religious difficulties and experiments at solution can only be understood in the light of her confusing surroundings. Madame Dupin well knew the risk she was running with so inflammable a material, but she counted on her own sufficiency as a prompt extinguisher of any inconveniently attaching spark of devotion. The history of the following and last year of the convent life shows us Aurore gradually feeling her way to a less intoxicating and more manageable form of religious sentiment.
