It is not by moral texts, nor by rational precepts, but by what is done visibly before the child by the grown-up people around him, that he is influenced in the manner indicated. Instruction produces effects only upon the etheric body, not upon the physical, and up to the age of seven the etheric body is surrounded by a protective etheric shell, just as the physical body until physical birth is surrounded by the body of the mother. That which ought to be developed in this etheric body in the way of ideas, habits, memory, etc., before the age of seven, must develop itself “spontaneously,” in the same way as the eyes and ears develop themselves in the womb of the mother without the influence of the external light. It is written in an excellent educational book, Jean Paul’s _Levana_ or _Pedagogics_, that a world-traveller learns more from his nurse in his early years than in all of his travels put together. This is undoubtedly true, but the child does not learn by instruction, but by imitation. And his physical organs form themselves through the influence of his physical surroundings. A healthy vision is formed when the right colors and conditions of light are brought into the child’s environment, and the physical foundations for a healthy moral nature are formed in the brain and in the circulation of the blood, when the child sees moral things in his environment. When the child, up to the age of seven, sees only foolish actions taking place around him, his brain assumes such forms as to make him also, in later life, capable only of foolishness.