[For NS.]

The teacher must always be ready to step down. It is a humility particular though (not exclusive) to teaching, which is the art of stepping down.

This is not how teaching is commonly understood—but when have we had use for common understandings?! But let us see together what is meant by teaching, by learning, by knowing, and what the humility of the teacher means for it all.

"If you want to learn I cannot stop you; if you do not, I cannot make you."

Knowledge, unlike instinct, is acquired as a result of living. Its content, however ramified and intricate, is the moments of our experience and our recollection of them. Knowledge, once earned, and unlike thought, comes unbidden: it is not a burden in its use (though it might be a burden in maintenance). Its action is to provide meaning.

For knowledge to yield meaning requires the habit or practice of use: a new moment or experience extends, augments, interprets, elaborates an earlier moment. At the same instant, the older knowledge is renewed and the habit of its use grows stronger.

To learn is to strengthen the habit of using our knowledge. Being in the habit of using it has the consequence of adding to it.

What, in this, is the teacher to the student?

The teacher constructs with the student a context, motivated perhaps by circumstance, perhaps by desire, perhaps by curiosity, perhaps by design. The context is constructed from whatever is at hand—questions from handy memories, shared perceptions, mutual relations.

In this context, the student reaches to formulate a thought, when they enclose in words an affect, a sentiment, tying that moment to all previous moments. The teacher can step down and let the moment be the student's.

On doubt

Your doubt comes from you, though it is no less real for that.