Lecture IV

We may feel convinced that the more we overcome the materialistic sentiments belonging to our age, the more we shall realise that we must learn to take into account the adapting of the etheric body to the sequence of time. There will come a time when it will be considered curious that in school a subject should be studied in the morning which makes special claims on the powers of the imagination. In the future this will be considered just as strange as it would be to-day if anyone should put on a fur coat in August and a thin coat in mid-winter. It is true, we are still a long way off this to-day; but it will come sooner than people really think. There will come a day when it will be the usual custom (there will again be a difference between summer and winter), a time will come when people will see that it is foolish to organise school-hours otherwise than to arrange for several hours' work in the morning, leaving several hours free in the middle of the day, and then devoting several hours again to work in the evening. Perhaps this may not be considered practical according to our present division of time: but it will be some day when attention is paid to the requirements of human nature. The morning hours will be devoted to mathematics, the evening hours to poetry. We are now living in an age when—by reason of the materialistic view which is now at its height—the understanding of these things is completely overwhelmed; so that at the present time that which one day when the whole nature of man is borne in mind, must appear to be the most reasonable thing, now seems to be most foolish.