I. Inner Evolution and Outer Possibilities for Development

When we say that a person develops in a very definite way up to the age of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one, then we must realize that this applies more or less, and indeed on average, to all people. We can consider these rules, which are given for example in the small writing mentioned, to be correct for all people. These rules are correct for the education of a person in our time who has few talents and abilities, but they are also correct for geniuses, for all people, because they are a law according to which the human being develops. What lies in this line of development therefore applies more or less to all people, but it is not unimportant what these people have gone through in their previous embodiments. One person has experienced many clever, beautiful, and good things. His abilities are shaped by this, his destiny is shaped by this; the actual inner core of the person is shaped by this, and this is now individual for each person. What runs alongside the outer one like an inner developmental current is, so to speak, what constitutes the particular shade of a person's nature. As a result, it may happen that, although the general division into seven-year periods applies to all human beings, the secrets of development are different for different people. Someone may come into the world with great, developed abilities. In that case, although he will also have to wait until his seventh year for the complete formation of the form of his physical body, and until his fourteenth year for the complete development of his etheric body, yet what works within is quite different from that in someone with fewer abilities.