how _not to know_. That is,
how not to _interfere_. That is, how to live dynamically, from the
great Source, and not statically, like machines driven by ideas and
principles from the head, or automatically, from one fixed desire. At
last, knowledge must be put into its true place in the living
activity of man. And we must know deeply, in order even to do that.

So a new conception of the meaning of education.

Education means leading out the individual nature in each man and
woman to its true fullness. You can't do that by stimulating the mind.
To pump education into the mind is fatal. That which sublimates from
the dynamic consciousness into the mental consciousness has alone any
value. This, in most individuals, is very little indeed. So that most
individuals, under a wise government, would be most carefully
protected from all vicious attempts to inject extraneous ideas into
them. Every extraneous idea, which has no inherent root in the dynamic
consciousness, is as dangerous as a nail driven into a young tree. For
the mass of people, knowledge _must_ be symbolical, mythical, dynamic.
This means, you must have a higher, responsible, conscious class: and
then in varying degrees the lower classes, varying in their degree of
consciousness. Symbols must be true from top to bottom. But the
interpretation of the symbols must rest, degree after degree, in the
higher, responsible, conscious classes. To _those who cannot divest_
themselves again of mental consciousness and definite ideas, mentality
and ideas are death, nails through their hands and feet.

CHAPTER VII

FIRST STEPS IN EDUCATION

The first process of education is obviously not a mental process. When
a mother talks to a baby, she is not encouraging its little mind to
think. When she is coaxing her child to walk, she is not making a
theoretic exposition of the science of equilibration. She crouches
before the child, at a little distance, and spreads her hands. "Come,
baby--come to mother. Come! Baby, walk! Yes, walk! Walk to mother!
Come along. A little walk to its mother. Come! Come then! Why yes, a
pretty baby! Oh, he can toddle! Yes--yes--No, don't be frightened, a
dear. No--Come to mother--" and she catches his little pinafore by the
tip--and the infant lurches forward. "There! There! A beautiful walk!
A beautiful walker, yes! Walked all the way to mother, baby did. Yes,
he did--"

Now who will tell me that this talk has any rhyme or reason? Not a