Lecture VI

It is different when we think of individual human lives. As you all know, we also divide human life into successive, recurring periods. We distinguish one such period from birth to the coming of the second teeth, or about the seventh year, then a period from the seventh to the fourteenth year, to puberty, then one from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and so on. In short, we distinguish successive seven-year periods in individual human lives; and it is quite true to say that in these seven-year periods certain things recur. But far more striking than the mere recurrence is something else, the constant changing, the progress that is actually made. For human nature is quite different in the second period of seven years from what it was in the first period; and again in the third period it is different. We cannot say that in the case of man the first seven-year period repeats itself in the second, as we can say that the plant repeats itself in another plant. We can see that time as it passes plays a real role in human life. It has a meaning.