IV. The Connection of the Spirit with Bodily Organs

Up to the fourteenth or fifteenth years, this astral body works through the physical organism and, at the fourteenth or fifteenth year, becomes independent. Thus there devolves upon the teacher a most significant task, namely to help the development to independence of this being of soul and spirit which lies hidden in the depths of the organism up to the seventh or eight years and then gradually frees itself. It is this gradual process of detachment that we must assist, if we have the child to teach between the ages of seven and fourteen. And then, if we have acquired the kind of knowledge of which I have spoken, we notice how the child's speech becomes quite a different thing. The crude science of to-day—if I may call it so—concerns itself merely with the obvious soul qualities of the human being and speaks of the other phenomena as secondary sexual characteristics. To spiritual observation, however, the secondary phenomena are primary and vice versa.