The Little Girl reads very little--not nearly so much as I do. She carries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would sicken me of the whole business. This growth and development which I speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the young minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is plenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should handle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think, so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres. Any strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from outside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development of the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two processes are alike--for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve Itself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the one perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from without, its product is a mere standard at best. I have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle encouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is stiff brainwork for a time--stiff because the brain must be mastered. But the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master within, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have written before, the children master the distractions more easily than developed personalities. One must learn how to think obediently before one can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the Soul, but one must _be_ the Soul to silence the brain. Intellectual children have been brought to me several times. They lack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know; their parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race type that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my hands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous utterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of to-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you a hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions, and by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences, an intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were. ... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public schools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to brush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them become as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the master-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have learned how to become as little children. * * * * * 17 BEAUTY We develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of the Little Girl's for which there is no place here: * * * * *