One of the established conjuring tricks of a discussion of this sort is to flatter your audience by pretending that they fully understand the meaning of your central concepts. This way, you exonerate yourself from explaining them, and perhaps thereby conduct the rest of the inquiry in a dark cloud of unknowing. Therefore, to change the figure, in order not to be pulling mythical rabbits from hitherto concealed hats, I propose to put my rabbits on the table ab initio and to reveal my sleeves as empty of all but my arms, by setting before you in a fit of generosity, if not also of madness, a definition. It is a definition of religious education, one from which I shall endeavour to extract what I have to say on the theme. Here it is: