ric body, but living pictures in their spiritual clearness, and, of course, these latter must be applied with the utmost tact, for otherwise the opposite to what is desired will be the result. In the matter of stories it is always a question of the way in which they are told. The verbal narration of a tale can therefore not be successfully replaced by a reading of it.

During the time between the second teeth and puberty, the spiritually pictorial, or, as one might also call it, the symbolical representation ought to be considered, in yet another way. It is necessary that the young person should learn to know the secrets of nature, the laws of life, as far as possible through symbols and not by the means of dry and intellectual ideas. Allegories about the spiritual relation of things ought so to reach the soul that the lawfulness of existence underlying the allegories is rather perceived and divined, than grasped by the means of intellectual ideas. The saying that "all things transient are only symbols" ought to form an all-important motto for the education during this period. It is very important for a person to receive the secrets of nature in allegories, before they appear to his soul in the form of natural laws, etc. An example will make this clear. Supposing one wished to speak to a young person of the immortality of the soul, of its going forth from the body, one might as an instance make the comparison of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. As the butterfly comes forth from the chrysalis, so the soul comes forth from the shell of the body after death. No one who has not previously received them by means of some such image, will adequately grasp the right facts in the abstract ideas. For by such a simile, one speaks not only to the intellect, but also to the sensations and feelings, to the whole soul. The young person having gone through all this, approaches the affair in quite a different mood when it is given to him later in intellectual conceptions. Indeed the man who cannot first approach the riddle of existence with this feeling is much to be pitied. It is necessary that the teacher should have similes at his disposal for all natural laws and secrets of the world.

In this matter it is quite clear what an enriching effect occult science must have upon practical life. Any one constructing from a materialistic and intellectual mode of representation, similes for himself and then propounding them to young people, will usually

make but little impression upon them. For such a person ought first to puzzle out the similes himself with all his mental capacities. Those similes which one has not first applied for oneself, do not have a convincing effect on those to whom they are imparted. When one talks to somebody in parables, then he is not only influenced by what one says or shows, but there runs a fine spiritual stream from the speaker to the hearer. Unless the speaker himself has an ardent feeling of belief about his similes, he will make no impression on the one to whom he gives them. In order to create a right influence, one must believe in one's similes oneself as if in realities; and that can only be done when one possesses the mystical tendency, and when the similes themselves are born of occult science. The real occultist does not need to worry about the above-mentioned simile of the soul going forth from the body, because for him it is a truth. To him the butterfly evolving from the chrysalis represents the same experience on a lower stage of nature's existence, as the going forth of the soul from the body at a higher stage of development. He believes in it with all his might, and this belief flows forth as if in invisible streams from the speaker to the listener, and produces conviction. Direct life-streams then flow forth from teacher to pupil. But for this end it is necessary for the teacher to draw from the full source of occult science; it is necessary that his word and all that goes forth from him, should be clothed with feeling, warmth and glowing emotion from the true occult view of life. For this reveals a magnificent perspective on the whole subject of education. Once the latter allows itself to be enriched from the life source of occult science, it will itself become permeated with a profound vitality. It will give up groping in the dark, so common in this particular domain of thought. All arts of education, all educational sciences, that do not continuously receive a supply of fresh sap from such roots, are dried up and dead. For all world-secrets, occult science has fitting similes; similes not rising from the mind of man but drawn from the essence of things, having been laid down as a basis by the forces of the world at their creation. Occult science must therefore be the basis for any art of education.

A power of the soul to which particular attention ought to be given at this period of development, is that of memory. For the cultivation of the memory is connected with the transformation of

the etheric body. This has its effect in the fact that precisely during the time between the coming of the second teeth and that of puberty it becomes free, so that this is also the period in which the further development of the memory should be looked after from outside. The memory will be permanently of less value to the person in question, than it might have been, if at this period what is necessary to it is neglected. That which has thus been neglected cannot afterwards be retrieved.

An intellectual and materialistic way of thinking is liable to bring about many mistakes in this direction. An art of education arising from this way of thinking is easily prejudiced against that which is acquired merely by the memory. It will not tire at times of directing itself with the greatest ardor against the mere training of the memory, and rather makes use of the most ingenious methods that the young person may not mechanically absorb what he does not really understand. An opinion merely intellectual and materialistic is so easily persuaded that there is no means of penetrating into things except by abstract ideas; it is only with difficulty that thinkers of this kind come to the conclusion that the other subjective powers are at least just as necessary to the comprehension of things, as the intellect itself. It is not merely a figure of speech to say that one can understand just as well with the feelings, the emotions, the mind, as with the intellect. Ideas are only one of the means by which to understand the things of this world, and only to materialists do they appear the only means. There are of course many people who do not imagine that they are materialists, but who nevertheless consider an intellectual conception to be the only means of comprehension. Such men profess perhaps to hold an idealistic, perhaps even a spiritual conception of the world and of life. But the attitude of their souls toward both is materialistic. For the intellect is, as a matter of fact, the soul's instrument for the comprehension of material things.

DR. RUDOLF STEINER.

(To be concluded.)

CONCERNING PRACTICAL POLITICS.

Two are better far than one

For council or for fight.

O the rhyme runs, and in its advice is the germ of all true policy

or politics. That "it takes two to make a fight" has been generally accepted as a self-evident fact, but history has been written as a consequence of the evolution of the idea that two are better for council than one. In early times, one, the Chief or King, constituted the whole council; he was autocrat ; he decided for all; no second voice was needed; no second voice was at the time demanded. But with the growth of self-consciousness, of individuality, in the units of the ruled masses, there arose in the most advanced a strong and urgent desire to take a part in coming to conclusions and issuing commands, the result being the co-operation in council, first of the nobility, and later, as the power of the middle class grew, of the common people'. The struggle for a share in the management of the State by both these 'Lords and Commons' was accompanied by a rapidly diminishing power in the person of the King, consequent on the increasing understanding which each unit had of its own legitimate status. This naturally caused each to think less highly of a power which stood on no greater right than heredity. Hence in these days we find the newest and most advanced countries have abolished the office of Kingship entirely.

Further, men's minds are beginning to grow more conscious of the unity and brotherhood of all men. Since science has begun to preach the evolution of man, of each and every man, from the same lowest form of life, and through the same media, a levelling down on one side, and an ennobling on the other side, of class distinctions, is rapidly taking place in all thinking men's minds, and this at a time. when the advantages of compulsory education are making it possible for a continually increasing number of people to formulate their thoughts, and to give them adequate expression. Not for much longer can mankind allow itself to be divided merely into the two classes of the rich and the poor, the nobility and the commons, the exploiters and the exploited. The time is fast coming when no man shall be called common, for each equally possesses the divine right of Kingship in his own person. This phase of self-consciousness is bringing in its train true reconstructive schemes of government; it is

making possible socialistic propaganda, the teachings of which could not take root and grow as they are doing, were the soil not ready. Many signs now indicate the diminishing power of such an arbitrary 'two in council' as is produced by separating those who have a 'handle' to their name from those who have not; or, in the newer countries, those who have made great piles of money at the expense of their brothers and sisters, from those who are only the workersplutocracy versus democracy.

This is the rationale of the present movement in England towards the abolition of the House of Lords, and it is significant that it is at the same time that a new voice is being raised as claimant to that place as second in council which will eventually be vacated by the aristocracy as such. Movements like these always overlap one another in point of time, and it will be only pari passu with the diminution of power in the older force that the increase in the new will take place.

In modern history, till these days, the western world has been under the dominion of the power of force. Kingdoms have been annexed by force of arms, victories have been gained by sheer physical force of numbers, by strength in the art of butchery. But now there are signs in the times that diplomacy not physical force, the pen not the sword, the mind not the body, is to be the weapon of offence and defence in the campaigns of the nations.

This is really indicative of the change of plane of the whole field of practical politics, and it is another proof that an Age is coming to an end, and that a New Age is beginning, though the transition period must necessarily be an extended one in the protracted yugas through which the world is now passing. When force reigned, it could be wielded only by those who were physically strong enough to do so, and as Nature has made one sex-the masculine-more powerful bodily than the other-the feminine-all council, all law-making, all the art of government, was administered by men, to the entire exclusion of women.

But while force pertains specially to the male, mind is a common property of both men and women; and in this new government by mind, both can demand an equal share. Now this is just what is happening; the time is ripe, the world's thought is softening, the minds of men are uniting so as to band their one sex into a unity of