I. Introduction—Aphoristic remarks on Artistic Activity, Arithmetic, Reading, and Writing

I am now going to say something unusual, we must go back to the principles of human nature if we wish to be teachers in the true sense to-day. There are exceptions, when an individual can still recover some omitted experience. But then he must have been through a severe illness, or must have suffered some deformation or other, have broken a leg, for instance, which is then not properly set; that is, he must have suffered a certain loosening of the etheric body from the physical body. That is, of course, dangerous. If it happens through Karma it must be accepted. But we cannot treat it as a calculable quantity, or give any guarantee for public life that a person can recover some thing thus missed—not to mention other things. The development of the individual is mysterious, and the aim of instruction and education must never be concerned with the abnormal, but always with the normal. Teaching is always a social matter. The problem must always be: In what year must the development of certain forces take place, so that this development establishes the individual securely in life? So we must reckon with the fact that it is only between the seventh and fourteenth year that certain abilities can be cultivated in such a way that the individual can stand his ground in the battle of life. If these abilities are not cultivated at this time, the individual concerned will not be equal to the battle of life, but will have to succumb to it, as most people do to-day.