Lecture I

Concerning these things we really must reach clarity. You see, dear Friends, along the accustomed way of approach to Nature we have three things to begin with—things that are really exercised by man before he actually reaches Nature. The first is common or garden Arithmetic. In studying Nature nowadays we do a lot of arithmetic—counting and calculating. Arithmetic—we must be clear on this—is something man understands on its own ground, in and by itself. When we are counting it makes no difference what we count. Learning arithmetic, we receive something which, to begin with, has no reference to the outer world. We may count peas as well as electrons. The way we recognize that our methods of counting and calculating are correct is altogether different from the way we contemplate and form conclusions about the outer processes to which our arithmetic is then applied.