outrage would result in death, because the babe
has not yet arrived at a maturity sufficient to endure impacts of the
Physical World. In the three septenary periods which follow birth, the
invisible vehicles are still in the womb of mother nature. If we teach a
child of tender years to memorize, or to think, or if we arouse its
feelings and emotions, we are in fact opening the protecting womb of
nature and the results are equally as disastrous in other respects as a
forced premature birth. Child prodigies usually become men and women of
less than ordinary intelligence. We should not hinder the child from
learning or thinking of _his own volition_, but we should not goad them on
as parents often do to nourish their own pride.

When the vital body is born at the age of seven a period of growth begins
and a new motto, or relation rather, is established between parent and
child. This may be expressed in the two words _Authority_ and
_Discipleship_. In this period the child is taught certain lessons which
it takes upon faith in the authority of its teachers, whether at home or
at school, and as memory is a faculty of the vital body it can now
memorize what is learned. It is therefore eminently teachable;
particularly because it is unbiased by pre-conceived opinions which
prevent most of us from accepting new views. At the end of this second
period: from about twelve to fourteen, the vital body has been so far
developed that puberty is reached. At the age of fourteen we have the
birth of the desire body, which marks the commencement of self-assertion.
In earlier years the child regards itself more as belonging to a family
and subordinate to the wishes of its parents than after the fourteenth
year. The reason is this: In the throat of the foetus and the young child
there is a gland called the thymus gland, which is largest before birth,
then gradually diminishes through the years of childhood and finally
disappears at ages which vary according to the characteristics of the
child. Anatomists have been puzzled as to the function of this organ and
have not yet come to any settled conclusion, but it has been suggested
that before development of the red marrow bones, the child is not able to
manufacture its own blood, and that therefore the thymus gland contains an
essence, supplied by the parents, upon which the child may draw during
infancy and childhood, till able to manufacture its own blood. That theory
is approximately true, a