Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy II
GA 304a
1 July 1923, Dornach
VII. Why Base Education on Anthroposophy II
Last night I tried to show how the deep gulf between practical life and spiritual-cultural life (the latter being very theoretical at this point) hinders modern teachers from discovering a true art of teaching. The effects of this contemporary phenomenon are not generally taken seriously enough because the intellect is unaware of the true situation, a situation revealed to the human mind and soul only over the course of life. There is a strong tendency these days to remain deaf to all that the human sensibility would tell us. We are more easily prepared to listen to the voice of the intellect.
People today feel compelled to grant unlimited and infallible authority to science, which is actually only a science of physical nature and not a science of the soul and spirit. This is true, because in every connection the intellect has been set up to judge everything, including things that do not proceed from the intellect alone, but from the whole human being. Teachers, no less than other people, are the products of our whole civilization’s approach to cultural-spiritual life, and the feelings and sensibility they bring to their work in the schools come directly from what they themselves had to endure in school. Yet, when they are with their children in a classroom situation, they are very keenly and intensely aware of the influence of the gulf I already mentioned.
Teachers have learned all kinds of things about the human soul and how it works. Their own feeling and will impulses have been shaped accordingly, as well as the whole tone and frame of mind brought to their work as teachers. And beyond all of this, they are expected to base their work on extremely theoretical notions of mind and soul.
It is not very useful to say: Theory? Certainly a teacher’s work in school comes from the whole human heart! Of course it does, in an abstract sense. It is very easy to make such a statement abstractly. You might as well suggest that a person jump into the water without getting wet. We have the same chance of jumping into the water and not getting wet as we have of finding help in meeting the fresh souls of children within today’s academic institutional teachings about the human soul and spirit. Just as certain as you will get wet if you jump into water, so will the teacher, having assimilated the academic learning of today, be a stranger to everything that belongs to soul and spirit. This is a simple fact. And the primary concern of all who would practice the art of teaching should be the recognition of this fact in its full human significance.
Teachers who have gone through a modern academic education may be prepared to meet the child with sincere human feelings, with sympathies and an earnest desire to work with and for humanity; but when they have a little child before them—the “becoming” human being—they feel as if everything they have assimilated theoretically has failed to warm their hearts and strengthen their will for spiritual activity. At best, all of that theory will enable them merely to “hover around the child,” as it were, instead of providing an opening for them to meet the child.
Thus, teachers enter their classrooms as if surrounded by a wall they cannot cross to reach the children’s souls; they busy themselves with the air around the children, and cannot accompany, with their own souls, the in-breathing process through which the air enters the child. They feel like outsiders to the children, splashing about, as it were, in an ill-defined theoretical element outside the child. Or again, when teachers stand in front of children, they feel that everything they learned intellectually from our excellent natural science (which gives us such strong and clear understanding of the mineral world) does not help them at all to find their way to the child. It tells them something about the bodily nature of the child, but even this is not fully understood unless they reach down to the underlying spiritual element, because the spiritual element is the foundation of all corporeality.
Thus it happens that those who wish to approach the child in a pedagogical way are led to engage in external physical experiments. They use trial-and-error methods, testing for things related to the child’s body so that the memory forces are developed properly; they try to find out how to treat the child’s physical body in order to exercise the child’s powers of concentration and so on. The teacher begins to feel like one who, instead of being led into the light, is given dark glasses that almost cut out the light completely, for science manages to make even the physical nature of the human being opaque. It does not and cannot enable a teacher to reach the real being of children with their natural spirit-filled soul life.
These things are not yet discussed rationally in our present civilization. Where else will you hear what I have been saying—that without a proper and true knowledge of the human being, and despite our remarkable knowledge of physical phenomena, we simply bypass the child, who remains alien? And because no one else can say this, anything that could be said on the matter finds expression in feelings and sentiments instead of in human speech. Consequently, teachers go away from almost every lesson with a certain feeling of inner dissatisfaction. This feeling may not be very pronounced, but it accumulates and tends to harden them, causing them to be, not just strangers to the child, but strangers to the world, with their hearts and minds growing cold and prosaic.
And so we see freshness, life, and mobility vanishing because of a lack of intimate human contact between the adult teacher and the growing child. These things need to be considered and understood intellectually, but also with the teacher’s full humanity. Today’s intellectual understanding, schooled only in outer, sense phenomena, has become too coarse to get a hold on these more intimate soul connections in all their refinement and tenderness.
When the art of teaching is discussed, we hear the old demands echoing again and again; as you well know, pedagogy is derived on the one hand from psychology, from the science of the soul, and on the other from ethics, the science of human, moral responsibility. Educational theorists, when speaking of the art of teaching, tell us that education should be based on two main pillars: the science of the soul and the science of ethics. But all we really have is something that falls between the two. It is a complete illusion to believe that a true science of the soul exists today. We need to remind ourselves repeatedly of the phrase, “a soulless science of the soul,” coined in the nineteenth century, because human beings no longer have the power to penetrate the soul. For what is our present science of the soul? I may sound paradoxical if I say what it really is.
In the past, human beings had a science of the soul that sprang from original instincts, from clairvoyant knowledge then common to all humanity. This clairvoyant knowledge of ancient times was primitive, pictorial, mythical; nonetheless, it deeply penetrated the human soul. Ancient people possessed such a science of the soul; they had a feeling, an intuitive sense for what a soul is. And they coined words that bear a true relation to the human soul, for example, the words thinking, feeling, and willing. Today, however, we no longer have the inner life that can truly animate these words.
What does anthroposophy show us about thinking? As human beings, thinking equips us with thoughts. But the thoughts we have today in our ordinary civilized life appear as if, instead of looking at the face of someone we meet, we look at that person only from behind. When we speak of thoughts today, we see only the “rear view,” as it were, of what really lives in thought. Why is this so?
When you look at a person from behind, you see, of course, a certain shape and form, but you do not learn about the person’s physiognomy. You do not see the side where the soul life is outwardly expressed. If you learn to know thoughts the usual way in this scientific age, you come to know the rear view only, not the inner human being. If, however, you look at thoughts from the other side, they retain their life and remain active forces.
What are these thoughts? They are the same as the forces of growth in the human being. Seen externally, thoughts are abstract; seen internally, we find the same forces in them by which the little child grows bigger, whereby a child receives form and shape in the limbs, in the body, in the physiognomy. These are the thought forces. When we look externally, we see only dead thoughts; in a similar way, when we view a person’s back, we do not see that individual’s living character. We must go to the other side of the life of thoughts, as it were, and then these same forces reveal themselves as working day by day from within outward, as the little child transforms an undefined physiognomy more and more into an expression of soul. They are the same forces that pass into the child’s facial expressions, giving them warmth and inner fire; they are the forces that change the shape of its nose, because the nose, too, continues to change its form after birth. These same forces introduce order and purpose into the first erratic movements of a baby’s limbs. Indeed, they are responsible for all that lives and moves inwardly during the entire time that physical growth continues in the young human being. When we begin to look at the life of thoughts from the point of view of anthroposophy, it is as if we are now looking into a person’s face, having previously learned to know that person only from behind. Everything dead begins to live; the whole life of thought becomes alive when we start to view it internally.
In earlier times this was not consciously recognized as is now possible through anthroposophy, but it was felt and expressed in the language of myth. Today we can recognize it directly, and thus carry it into practical life. If we enter into these things in a deep and living way, therefore, we can educate the child artistically, we can make pedagogy into an art.
If you know thinking only from behind, only from its “dead” side, you will understand the child only intellectually. If you learn to know thinking from the front, from its living side, you can approach children so that you do not merely understand them, but can also enter into all of their feelings and impulses so that you pour love into all of the children’s experiences.
In general, nothing that lives has survived all these things. Current civilization has only the word for thought; it no longer holds the substance that the word represents. When we speak of the science of the soul, we no longer speak of reality. We have become accustomed to using the old words, but the words have lost their substance. Language has lost its content in connection with the life of feeling, and with the life of the will—even more than with the life of thought. Feelings push their way up from the subconscious. The human being lives in them but cannot look down into the subconscious depths. And when it is done, it is done in an amateurish way through the eyes of a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst does not reach or find the soul element that lives and moves in the subconscious of a person’s feelings. So for feelings, too, only the words remain; and this loss of substance applies even more to the will sphere. If we wanted to describe what we know about these things today, we should not speak of the human will at all, because will has become a mere word in our present civilization. When we see a person writing, for example, we can only describe how the hand begins to move, how the hand holds the pen, and how the pen moves over the paper; we are justified only in describing the external facts that are displayed in movement. These are still facts today, but the inherent will in the activity of writing is no longer experienced. It has become a mere word.
Anthroposophy’s job is to restore real substance and meaning to the words of our so-called science of the soul. For this reason, anthroposophy can offer a true knowledge of the human being, whereas in our present civilization, verbosity spreads like a veil over the true facts of psychology. It is interesting to note that the late Fritz Mauthner wrote Critique of Language because he found that when people speak of things pertaining to soul and spirit today, they speak in mere words.1 He pointed out that today people have only words devoid of true meaning; but he should have gone further in drawing attention to the necessity for finding again the true content in words.
From a general scientific perspective, Mauthner’s Critique of Language is, of course, nonsensical; for I would like to know if anyone who grasps a hot iron could possibly be unable to distinguish the fact from the word. If someone merely says the words, “The iron is hot,” the iron does not burn the speaker. Only if touched does it burn. Those who stand amid life know very well how to discriminate between physical reality and the words that natural science uses to designate it—that is, assuming they haven’t been completely ruined by too much theorizing.
Psychology, however, stops at this point; only words are left. And someone like Mauthner, with the best of intentions, says that we should do away with the word soul altogether. (Here we see something inwardly arising to the surface, which will find outer expression later.) Therefore, according to Mauthner, we should not speak of the soul, but coin a new abstraction to avoid the erroneous view that we are referring to a concrete reality when speaking of the human soul. Mauthner is perfectly correct as far as contemporary civilization is concerned. Today a new penetration into the soul’s true nature is necessary, so that the word soul may again be filled with inner meaning.
It is indeed devastating to see people merely playing around with words when it comes to knowledge of the soul—if it can be called knowledge at all—whereas, the true nature of the soul remains untouched. As a result, people puzzle over problems, such as, whether the soul affects the body or the body affects the soul, or whether these two phenomena are parallel to each other. As far as such matters are concerned, there is no insight to be found anywhere, and therefore any discussion and argument is bound to remain abstract and arbitrary. Yet, if these things are habitually discussed only from an external viewpoint, one loses all the enthusiasm and inner warmth that the teacher, as an artist, should bring to the classroom. Parents also, by the way, should have been able to acquire these qualities simply by virtue of living in a vital culture, so they could have the right relationship with their growing children.
What we are saying is this: one pillar of the art of education is psychology, the science of the soul. But in this culture, we have no science of the soul. And even worse, we lack the honesty to admit it, because we cater to the authority of the physical sciences. So we talk about the soul without having any knowledge of it. This falsehood is carried into the most intimate recesses of human life. On the other hand, it must be said that there is undoubtedly much sincere good will among those who today speak about the ideals of education, and who supply the world so liberally with ideas of reform. There is plenty of good will, but we lack the courage to acknowledge that we must first come up with a true science of the human soul before we may so much as open our lips to speak about educational reform, about the art of education. To begin with, we must recognize that we do not have the first of the two main pillars on which we rely—that is, true insight into the life of the soul. We have the words for it, words that have been coined in far-distant antiquity, but we no longer have an experience of the living soul.
The second pillar is represented by the sum of our moral principles. If on the one hand our psychology consists of mere words, a “psychology without a psyche,” so on the other hand, our moral teaching is bereft of divine inspiration. True, the old religious teachings have been preserved in the form of various traditions. But the substance of the old religious teachings lives as little in the people today as does the science of the soul, which has shriveled into words. People confess to what is handed down to them in the form of religious dogma or rituals, because it corresponds to old habits, and because, over the course of evolution, they have grown accustomed to what is offered to them. But the living substance is no longer there. So there is a psychology without a soul and ethics without real contact with the divine and spiritual world.
When people speak theoretically or want to satisfy emotional needs, they still use words that are relics of ancient moral teachings. These words were used at one time to accomplish the will of the gods; we still speak in words coined in those distant times, when humans knew that the forces working in moral life were potent forces like the forces of nature or the forces of divine beings. They knew that divine spiritual beings gave reality to these ethical impulses, to these moral forces. To this day, people express these origins in various ways, inasmuch as their daily lives are lived in the words handed down from earlier religions. But they have lost the ability to see the living divine spirituality that gives reality to their ethical impulses.
Dear friends, can people today honestly say that they understand, for example, the epistles of Saint Paul, when he says that in order not to die, human beings need to awaken to the living Christ within? Is it possible for people to feel, in the fullest sense of the word, that immoral conduct cannot possibly be associated with the moral duties of the soul, just as health and illness have to do with life and death of the body? Is there still a spiritual understanding of how the soul dies in the spirit unless it remains in touch with the moral forces of life? Do Saint Paul’s words still live when he says that, unless you know that the Christ has arisen, your faith, your soul, is dead? And that when you pass through physical death your soul becomes infected by physical death, and begins to die in the spirit? Does an understanding of these things, an inner, living understanding, still exist?
Worse yet, our civilization has not the courage to admit this lack of inner, living understanding. It is satisfied with natural science, which can speak only about what is dead, but not about the living human soul. It is strictly through habit that this civilization of ours accepts what is said about the immortality of the soul and about the resurrection of the Christ on Earth. Hasn’t this materialistic spirit pervaded even theology itself?
Let us look at the most modern form of theology. People have lost the insight that the Christ event stands in earthly world history as something spiritual and can be judged only on spiritual grounds; they have lost the insight that one cannot understand the resurrection with natural-scientific concepts, but only through spiritual science. Even the theologians have lost this insight. They speak only of the man Jesus and can no longer reach a living comprehension of the resurrected, living Christ; basically, they fall under Saint Paul’s verdict: “Unless you know that Christ has arisen, your faith is dead.”
Unless we succeed in calling to life between the ages of seven and fourteen the living Christ in the inner being of the child, with the help of the kind of pedagogy that anthroposophy describes, unless we succeed in doing this, human beings will step into later life unable to gain an understanding of the living Christ. They will have to deny Christ, unless they choose, somewhat dishonestly, to hold on to the traditional Christian beliefs, while lacking the inner means of soul to understand that Christ has risen insofar as the person experiences the resurrection, and insofar as the teacher experiences with the child the living Christ in the heart, in the soul. Christ can be awakened in the soul, and through this union with Christ, immortality can be restored to the soul.
In order that immortality be given back to the soul, there must first be a spiritual understanding of what immortality really is. One must first come to the point where one can say: When we look at nature by itself, we are faced with natural laws that teach us that our Earth will die by heat one day, that the time will come when everything on Earth will die away. But unless we have some insight into the living spirituality of the world, we are bound to believe that our moral ideas and principles will also die in the general heat; that death will befall the Earth and that everything will end up as one great cemetery.
If we do have insight into the living spirit, however, we will realize that the moral impulses welling up from the soul are received by the divine spiritual beings, just as we receive the oxygen in the air that keeps life going. Then we know that what we do in the moral sphere is received by the divine spiritual beings of the world, and consequently our soul itself is borne out into other worlds, beyond the destruction of the physical Earth.
We must be able to make this knowledge an intrinsic part of our view of life, and take it into our thinking life and into our feelings, just as today we integrate what we learn about X-rays, telephones, and electromagnetism. People believe in all these because their senses experience a direct inner connection with them. To have a true and living relation to these matters, we must experience a living connection with them; we must live with them. Otherwise, in connection with the things of the soul, we would be like the artist who knows what is beautiful and the rules for making a work of art beautiful, but who knows it in dry, abstract, intellectual concepts without being able to wield a brush, use colors, knead clay, or otherwise handle any artist’s materials. If we want to find our way to the living human being, we must seek the power to do so in the living spiritual life itself. Spirituality, however, is lacking in our present civilization. And yet, spirituality has to be the second pillar on which the art of teaching rests.
Teachers today who should be artists of education confront the students with a purely natural-scientific attitude. The realm of the human soul has fallen away to become a mere collection of words; and the spiritual world, the moral world, has itself sunk to the level of a collection of ceremonies. We would begin an art of education based on science of the soul and on morality; but we are faced with a “soulless science of the soul” and an ethics devoid of the spiritual. We would speak of Christ, but to be able to speak of Him properly, it is necessary to have absorbed the quality of soul, something of the divine and spiritual. If we have neither, we can speak only of Jesus the man—that is, we speak only of the man who walked among people in a physical body like any other human being.
If we want to recognize the Christ and put the power of the Christ to work in schools, we need more than a science of the soul and an ethics made only of words. We need living insight into the life and work of the soul, into the working and weaving of moral forces, similar to the weaving and working of natural forces. We must know moral forces as realities, not merely a form of conventional morality. Instead of accepting them out of habit, we should see that we must live in these moral forces, for we know that unless we do so, we die in the spirit, even as we die in the body when our blood solidifies.
Such contemplations in all their liveliness must become a kind of life-capital, especially for the art of education. An enlivening and mobile force, bringing to life what is dead, needs to permeate the teacher’s whole being when endeavoring to educate and teach.
Whether educated or not, people today talk about the soul in lifeless words. When speaking about the spirit today, we live only in dead words. We do not live in the living soul, and so merely splash about and hover around the child, for we have lost the key to the soul of childhood. We try to understand the child’s body by engaging in all manner of experimental methods, but it remains dark and silent for us, because behind everything physical lives the spiritual. If we wish to lead the spiritual into an art and if we wish to avoid remaining with a merely intellectual conception of it, using abstract thoughts that have lost their power, then the spiritual has to be apprehended in its living manifestations.
As mentioned earlier, one hears it said everywhere that the art of teaching should be built on two main pillars—that is, on ethics and on the science of the soul. At the same time, one hears bitter doubts expressed as to how one should go about educating children. It was pointed out that, in earlier times, the child was seen as a future adult, and educated accordingly. This is true; for example, how did the Greeks educate their children? They did not really pay much attention to the life and experience of children during their childhood. Children who would obviously never grow into proper Greek adults, were simply left to die. The child as such was of no consequence; only the adult was considered important. In all their education of the young, the Greeks considered only future adults.
Today we have reached a stage in our civilization where children no longer respond unless we attend to their needs. Those with experience in such matters know what I mean. If we do not give them their due, children will resist inwardly; they do not cooperate unless the adults allow them to be themselves and do not consider them only from the adult viewpoint. This brings many problems with it concerning education. Should our education aim to satisfy the child’s specific needs, or should we consider how to awaken what the child must become one day as an adult?
Such questions arise if one observes the child only from the outside, as it were—when one no longer perceives the inner human being. Certainly, we will not come near children at all if we educate them with an understanding that has arisen from experimental psychology, or with one that sees things from a viewpoint that would lead logically to experimental psychology. The inner soul being of a child is not carried outwardly on the surface so that one only needs to understand them in a way that might be sufficient for understanding an adult. Merely to understand the child, however, is not enough; we must be able to live inwardly with it. What is essentially human must have entered us directly enough that we can truly live with the child. Mere understanding of the child is completely useless.
If we can enter the child’s life livingly, we are no longer faced with the contradictory alternatives of either educating the child as a child or educating the child as a potential grown-up. Then we know that, whatever we have to offer the child, we must bring it so that it accords with the child’s own will; we know also that, at the same time, we are educating the future adult in the child. Do children in their inmost nature really want to be only children? If this were so, they would not play with dolls, in this way imitating the ways of the grown-up world. Nor would children experience such delight in “working” with craftsmen when there is a workshop nearby. In reality, of course, children play, but to children such imitative play is serious work.
Children truly long to develop, in their own way, the forces that adults develop. If we understand the human being and thereby also the child, we know that the child, through play, is always striving toward adulthood, except that a child will play with a doll instead of a living baby. We also know that children experience the greatest joy when, as part of what we bring them in education, we educate the future adults in them. This must be done properly, not in the dry and prosaic way that reflects our frequent attitude toward work as an irksome and troublesome task, but so that work itself becomes second nature to the human being. In the eyes of a child, work thus assumes the same quality as its own earnest and serious play.
When we have a living understanding of this way of educating—and not merely an abstract idea of it—we are no longer beset by doubt about whether we should educate the grownup person in the child, or the child as such. We then see in the child the seed of adulthood, but we do not address this seed in the way we would address an adult. We speak in the child’s own language. And so, unless we can come very close to the nature of the young human being, wherever we turn we find ideas that are nothing but empty words. It is the task of anthroposophy to lead people away from, and beyond, these empty words.
Today, there is an ongoing conflict between materialism and a spiritual view of the world. You hear people say that we must overcome materialism, we must come back again to a spiritual viewpoint. But for anthroposophy, the concept of matter, in the form that haunts the thoughts of people today like a ghost, has lost all meaning; because, if one comes to know matter as it really is, it begins to grow transparent and dissolves into spirit, to speak pictorially. If one understands matter properly, it becomes transformed into spirit. And if one understands spirit properly, it becomes transformed into matter before the eye of the soul, so that matter becomes the outward revelation of spirit in its creative power.
The words matter and spirit, used in a one-sided way, no longer have any meaning. If we begin to speak from the standpoint of this deeper perception, however, we may still talk about spirit and matter; after all, these words have been coined, but we use them in a very different way. When we say the words matter or material substance, we give them yet another coloring with our feeling if we have behind us the anthroposophical knowledge I have just described. The word matter or material takes on another, more hidden timbre, and it is this hidden timbre that works upon the child and not the content of the word matter.
Reflect for a moment about how much human understanding and feeling live in the word when used with full comprehension! Suppose someone had felt, as Fritz Mauthner did, that we have no more than words for what refers to the soul, and that it would be truer, in fact, not to speak any longer of the soul (Seele), but to speak of a generic soul (Geseel). This may raise a smile. But suppose we were to carry this same attitude into the sphere of the religious and the ethical, into the moral sphere, where our accomplishments and activity take effect—suppose that, out of the same feeling, someone were to make up the appropriate word in this sphere; what would we get then? Ado (Getue) [rather than Tue, or “to do”]. As you see, I have formed the words Geseel and Getue according to the same syntactical principle. Geseel will at most produce a smile; Getue will be felt to be an outrageous word, for if all one’s action and conduct were to become nothing but abstract ado (Getue), this word would indeed be annoying. This is not due to the content of the word, however, but arises from what we feel when the word is spoken. The experience in our feeling is quite different according to whether we are coining words that have to do with the soul nature—Geseel, for example—or whether we are coining words to indicate what brings us into the external world, what brings us to where our actions themselves become events in nature. If one uses the word Getue in this context, it will arouse indignation.
Consider how indifferently words are now used, one next to another, as it were, and one even running into one another. We speak in the same neutral way of matter, spirit, and body; of soul or of the human brain; or again, of the limbs, and so on. The ideal of natural-scientific knowledge seems to be that we should express everything neutrally without letting any human element enter into our speech, into our naming of things.
But if we no longer pour the human element into our words, they die. The abstract words of natural science die unless we infuse them with our human participation. In physics we speak, for example, of the theory of impact. At best, we write down a mathematical equation, which we don’t understand when we speak of impact without the living sensation experienced when we ourselves push or hit something. Words can only be translated into life if we bring human beings back into our culture.
This is what anthroposophy wishes to do—restore the human element into our civilization. Things are still all right as long as we go through life in a lazy, indifferent way, simply allowing externals run their course by means of technology, the child of our wonderfully advanced physical sciences. But if we move into the spheres where one person has to help a fellow human being, as physician, teacher, or educator, then it becomes a different matter. Then we feel the need for a real, living and consciously assumed knowledge of the human being that is revealed in the art of teaching. If we talk about the need for this knowledge to fulfill the still unconscious or subconscious demands of present-day education, it is not due to any wilfulness on our part, but to a necessity of our civilization.
However many organizations may be founded to bring about educational reforms, they will be of no avail unless we first have groups of men and women ready to work at rediscovering a living knowledge of the human being—that is, a science of the soul that really has a soul and a teaching of morality that really springs from the divine and the spiritual.
Such groups must lead the way. Others may then follow that would build again on the two main pillars supporting the edifice that still needs to be built out of a true science of the soul and a true ethics—a science of the soul that doesn’t merely talk in words and an ethics that knows how human moral conduct is anchored in the divine spiritual worlds. Then we shall have teachers and educators who work artistically and are thus able to at least approach the very soul of the child in whatever they say and do, even by the invisible workings of their mere presence on the child. They will find the way back to the human soul. And when they set out to educate the child ethically, they will know that they are integrating the child into a divine and spiritual world order. They will be working out of the supersensible element, both in a true psychology and in a true spirituality—that is, from genuine knowledge of the human soul; and they will introduce what belongs to the realm of the supersensible into a true spiritual life.
These things will serve as genuine supporting pillars for the art of education. They have to be explored, and anthroposophy seeks to do this. That is why we have an anthroposophical method of education, not from personal desire or opinion, but because of the need of the times in which we live.
Warum Eine Anthroposophische Pädagogik?
Gestern abend versuchte ich zu zeigen, wie die tiefe Kluft, welche zwischen unserem ganz theoretisch gewordenen Geistesleben und der Lebenspraxis ist, den Zugang zu einer wirklichen pädagogischen Kunst für den Menschen der Gegenwart verhindert. Man nimmt die Dinge, die mit dieser Zeiterscheinung zusammenhängen, gewöhnlich nicht ernst genug, weil sie sich eigentlich gar nicht dem Verstande mitteilen, sondern weil sie sich mitteilen im Verlaufe des Lebens dem Gemüte. Unsere Zeit ist aber so sehr geneigt, immer die Kundgebungen des menschlichen Gemütes, der menschlichen Empfindungen verstummen zu machen vor den Ansprüchen des Verstandes.
Alles was den Menschen der Gegenwart so stark zwingt, die Wissenschaft der Gegenwart, die eigentlich nur eine Naturwissenschaft ist, keine Seelen- und keine Geisteswissenschaft, als eine unbeschränkte, unfehlbare Autorität anzuerkennen, besteht eigentlich darin, daß der Mensch heute immerzu seinen Verstand zum Richter einsetzt gegenüber allem, was sonst aus der vollen Menschheit herauskommt. Der Lehrer aber, der ja auch herauswächst aus dem, was die ganze heutige Bildung geben kann über das Geistesleben, der also in allen seinen Empfindungen, in seinen Gefühlen, in der Schule wiederum aus demjenigen Schulleben heraus wirken muß, das er durchgemacht hat, der fühlt schon, wenn er mit seinen Kindern zusammen ist, in seiner Seele, wie stark, wie intensiv der gestern abend angedeutete Abgrund wirkt.
Der Lehrer hat zunächst verschiedenes aufgenommen über die menschliche Seele, über die Art und Weise, wie die menschliche Seele wirkt. Darnach haben sich seine eigenen Empfindungen, ja seine Willensimpulse gestaltet. Namentlich aber hat sich darnach gestaltet die ganze Lebensstimmung, mit der er sein Lehramt antritt. Und dann muß er aus dem, was ihm heute ganz theoretisch über den Geist in seine Seele hineinergossen ist, wirken.
Man sage nicht: Ach was, Theorie! Man wirkt aus seinem vollen menschlichen Herzen heraus, wenn man in der Schule steht. - Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, das ist abstrakt ganz richtig. Das kann man auch abstrakt in Worten aussprechen. Aber geradeso wie niemand sagen kann: Ich will mich ins Wasser hineinbegeben und trocken bleiben -, weil das ein innerer Widerspruch ist, ebensowenig kann heute dasjenige, was man auch in den Lehrerbildungsanstalten über die Seele, über den Geist durchmacht, so für die Seele wirken, daß diese Seele einen frischen, einen vollen Zugang zu den Kinderseelen hat. Denn wie man naß werden muß, wenn man ins Wasser hineinspringt, so muß man seelenfremd, geistfremd werden, wenn man sich die heutige Schulbildung aneignet.
Das ist eine Tatsache. Und gerade denjenigen, die die pädagogische Kunst üben wollen, müßte es heute eigentlich die erste Angelegenheit sein, diese Tatsache in ihrer vollen menschlichen Bedeutung zu durchschauen.
Wenn der Lehrer mit dem, was er heute angeregt hat an Menschheitsgefühl, an Wille, mit den Menschen zu wirken und zu tun, aus seinen eigenen Bildungsstätten herauskommt und das nun anwenden will auf den werdenden Menschen, auf das Kind, dann fühlt er, als wenn das alles, was er in einer so theoretischen Weise sich angeeignet hat, was sein Herz nicht warm, seinen Willen nicht tatkräftig im Geiste gemacht hat, als wenn das alles ein Herumflattern um das Kind herum wäre, nicht etwas, was den Zugang zum Kind findet.
Und so geht eigentlich der Lehrer in die Klasse hinein, indem er, man möchte sagen, eine Scheidewand um sich aufrichtet, durch diese Scheidewand nicht hindurchdringt bis zu den Seelen der Kinder, und nun gewissermaßen sich in der Luft betätigt, die außerhalb der Kinder ist, nicht mitfolgen kann in seiner Seele dem eingezogenen Atem, durch den die Luft in das Innere der Kinder kommt. Er fühlt sich außerhalb des Kindes stehend, gewissermaßen herumplätschernd in einem unbestimmten theoretischen Elemente außerhalb des Kindes.
Und wiederum, wenn der Lehrer alles das, was er heute durch unsere ausgezeichnete Naturwissenschaft lernt, das ihn in einer so gediegenen Weise hineinführt in die äußeren Naturdinge und Naturtatsachen, wenn er das alles nun in seinen Verstand, in seinen Kopf aufgenommen hat, dann fühlt er, daß er mit diesem erst recht nicht an das Kind herankommt, denn das sagt ihm etwas über die Leiblichkeit des Kindes. Aber die Leiblichkeit, die Körperlichkeit, wir verstehen sie nicht, wenn wir nicht durch sie hindurchdringen zu dem Geist. In aller Körperlichkeit, in aller Leiblichkeit ist das Zugrundeliegende geistig.
Und so kommt es, daß der Mensch, der heute an das Kind herankommen will mit pädagogischer Kunst, äußerlich experimentierend an dem Leibe herumprobiert: Wie muß man den Leib behandeln, damit das Gedächtnis in der richtigen Weise ausgebildet wird? Wie muß man den Leib behandeln, damit die Aufmerksamkeit in der richtigen Weise geübt wird? - und so weiter. Und da fühlt sich dann der Lehrer so ungefähr, wie wenn man jemandem, den man ins Licht führen wollte, zunächst vollständig die Augen verdeckende Brillen vor die Augen setzte. Wie etwas Undurchsichtiges wird die Menschenleiblichkeit selber durch diese Naturwissenschaft. Und so fühlt sich der Lehrer mit aller Naturwissenschaft gerade nicht fähig, an das durchgeistigte natürliche Leben des Kindes heranzukommen.
Das wird heute noch nicht in der allgemeinen Zivilisation verstandesmäßig erörtert. Wo wird heute so gesprochen, wie ich eben jetzt gesprochen habe, über die Fremdheit, mit der wir um das Kind herumgehen, ohne eine wirkliche Menschenkenntnis, mit einer ausgezeichneten Naturerkenntnis, wo wird so gesprochen? Und weil nicht so gesprochen wird, lädt sich das alles, was so in Worte gekleidet werden kann, in Gefühlen und Empfindungen ab. Und der Lehrer geht fast jede Stunde mit einem ganz kleinen Quantum von unbefriedigter Empfindung aus seiner Klasse heraus. Und diese kleinen Quanten von unbefriedigter Empfindung verhärten ihn, die machen ihn nicht nur kinderfremd, sondern weltfremd, die lassen sein eigenes Gemüt kalt und nüchtern werden.
So sehen wir, wie Frische und Leben und Beweglichkeit gerade aus jenem intimen Verkehr des Menschen mit dem Menschen schwindet, der zur Offenbarung kommt in dem Verkehr zwischen dem erwachsenen Lehrenden und Erziehenden und dem zu erziehenden, dem heranwachsenden Kinde. Diese Dinge muß man mit dem Gemüte auch verstehen, weil heute der Verstand, der nur an den äußeren Naturerscheinungen geschult ist, ich möchte sagen, noch zu grob ist, um diese intimen Dinge in all ihrer Feinheit zu begreifen.
Und so sehen wir, daß alte Forderungen immer und immer wiederholt werden, wenn von pädagogischer Kunst gesprochen wird. Sie wissen ja, wie die Pädagogik auf der einen Seite hergeleitet wird aus der Psychologie, aus der Seelenkunde, und Sie wissen, wie auf der anderen Seite die Pädagogik hergeleitet wird aus der Ethik, aus der Erkenntnis der sittlichen Menschenpflichten. Überall kann man, wo von pädagogischer Kunst geredet wird, heute hören, wie auf diesen zwei Grundsäulen begründet werden soll die pädagogische Kunst: auf einer Seelenkunde und auf einer Sittenkunde. Aber wir haben ja nur dasjenige, was zwischen den beiden drinnen steht. Es gibt sich der Mensch einer schier unbegrenzten Illusion hin, wenn er glaubt, daß heute eine wirkliche Seelenkunde vorhanden sei. Immer wieder muß erinnert werden an das Wort, welches schon im 19. Jahrhundert geprägt worden ist: Seelenkunde ohne Seele, weil die Menschen einfach nicht mehr zum Seelischen durchdringen. Was ist denn unsere heutige Seelenkunde? Es wird paradox klingen, wenn ich zum Ausdruck bringe, was eigentlich unsere heutige Seelenkunde ist. Die Menschen haben aus ursprünglichen Instinkten heraus, aus einer in aller Menschheit in Urzeiten ausgebreiteten hellsichtigen Erkenntnis der Geschichte, die primitiv bildlich, mythisch war, die aber trotz ihrer Primitivität, trotz ihres mythischen Charakters eben in das Seelische hineindrang, eine Seelenkunde gehabt, sie haben gefühlt und empfunden, was das Seelische ist. Und in jener alten Zeit sind Worte geprägt worden, die sich auf das Seelische beziehen: Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Aber heute’haben wir nicht mehr jenes innere Leben, das uns diese Worte, Denken, Fühlen und Wollen, wirklich belebt.
Was zeigt uns Anthroposophie gegenüber dem Denken? Nun, das Denken stattet uns als Menschen eben mit Gedanken aus. Aber die Gedanken, die wir im gewöhnlichen Leben heute innerhalb unserer gegenwärtigen Zivilisation haben, diese Gedanken zeigen sich uns so, wie wenn wir einem Menschen, den wir antreffen, nicht von vorne ins Antlitz sähen, sondern wie wenn wir ihn nur von hinten anschauten. Es ist ja nur die Rückseite desjenigen, was im Denken lebt, wenn wir so von Gedanken sprechen, wie wir heute innerhalb unserer Kulturzivilisation von Gedanken sprechen. Warum?
Wenn Sie einen Menschen vor sich haben und Sie schauen ihn von hinten an, dann haben Sie eine gewisse Gestaltung. Aber Sie lernen ihn nicht erkennen von derjenigen Seite, in der er seinen eigentlichen physiognomischen Ausdruck hat. Sie lernen ihn nicht erkennen von der Seite, in der er nach außen offenbarend sein Seelenleben lebt. Wenn Sie die Gedanken so kennenlernen, wie es dem heutigen naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalter möglich ist, so lernen Sie das innere Menschenwesen von hinten kennen. Schauen Sie die Gedanken von der anderen Seite an, dann behalten die Gedanken Leben, dann sind die Gedanken Kräfte.
Und was sind denn diese Gedanken? Sie sind diejenigen Kräfte, die die Wachstumskräfte des Menschen sind. Nach außen sind die Gedanken abstrakt, nach innen, nach dem Menschen hin, sind dasjenige, wodurch das ganz kleine Kind größer wird, wodurch es aus seinen unbestimmten Gliedmaßen heraus bestimmte macht, die Gedankenkräfte. Nach außen sehen wir nur tote Gedanken, wie dasjenige, was der Mensch nach rückwärts zeigt, nicht sein lebendiges Wesen offenbart. Wir müssen uns sozusagen auf die andere Seite des Gedankenlebens begeben, dann offenbart sich uns im Gedankenleben dasjenige, was von Tag zu Tag, indem das Kind seinen unbestimmten Gesichtsausdruck immer mehr und mehr zum Ausdruck seiner Seele macht, von innen nach außen wirkt, was in den Blick übergeht, den Blick warm und feurig macht, was in die gerade ja noch im Leben vor sich gehende Formung der Nase übergeht, was aber auch die ganzen ungeordneten Bewegungen des Kindes zu geordneten macht, was innerlich lebt und sich regt, was wirkt und lebt in der ganzen Zeit, solange der Mensch überhaupt wächst.
Und wenn man anfängt also anthroposophisch das Gedankenleben anzuschauen, so ist es wirklich so, wie wenn man einen Menschen, den man bisher nur von hinten kennengelernt hat, nun beginnt von vorne anzuschauen. Alles Tote wird lebendig, das ganze Gedankenleben wird lebendig, wenn man anfängt, es nach innen hin anzuschauen.
Das hat man früher zwar nicht so erkannt, wie es heute der Anthroposophie möglich ist, aber man hat es gefühlt, man hat es mythisch zum Ausdrucke gebracht. Heute kann man es erkennen. Daher kann man es auch in die Lebenspraxis überführen. Daher kann man eine Kunst daraus machen, wenn man das Kind zu behandeln hat, wenn man richtig lebendig in diese Dinge eindringt.
Kennt man das Denken nur von seiner hinteren, von seiner toten Seite, dann kann man das Kind nur verstehen; lernt man das Denken von seiner vorderen, von seiner lebendigen Seite kennen, dann kann man dem Kinde so gegenüberstehen, daß man es nicht nur versteht, sondern daß man alle seine Regungen miterlebt, daß man Liebe hineingießt in alles, was das Kind darlebt.
Von all dem ist ja nichts Lebendiges geblieben. Unsere heutige Zivilisation hat nur das Wort Gedanke, nicht mehr die Sache. Wir sprechen ja nicht mehr von dem Inhalte der Seelenkunde; wir haben uns nur gewöhnt, die alten Worte weiter zu gebrauchen, und die Worte haben ihren Inhalt verloren.
Noch mehr aber als für das Gedankliche hat in unserer Zeit die Sprache den Inhalt verloren für das Gefühlsmäßige oder gar für das Willensmäßige. Die Gefühle dringen aus dem Unterbewußten des Menschen herauf. Der Mensch lebt in ihnen. Aber er schaut nicht in diese unterbewußten Tiefen hinunter; oder wenn er es tut, sieht er hinunter psychoanalytisch, dilettantisch. Er wird nicht gewahr, was da als Seelisches in den Untergründen lebt, wenn er Gefühle hat. Auch für die Gefühle sind nur die Worte geblieben, und erst recht für das Wollen.
Wir müßten heute, wenn wir das bezeichnen wollten, was wir wissen von diesen Dingen, eigentlich gar nicht vom Willen reden, denn Wille ist für die heutige Zivilisation nur ein Wort; wir müßten sagen, wenn wir den Menschen sehen, er fängt an, seine Hand zu bewegen, seine Hand nimmt die Schreibfeder, die Schreibfeder wird über das Papier geschleift: wir müßten die äußeren Tatsachen der Bewegung beschreiben. Das ist heute noch so. Was da drinnen als Wille steckt, wird ja nicht mehr erlebt, das ist nur ein Wort.
Zu diesen Worten, aus denen das heute besteht, was man Seelenkunde nennt, wiederum die Sache zu finden, wiederum die Vorgänge zu finden, das ist die Aufgabe der Anthroposophie. Daher kann die Anthroposophie eine wirkliche Menschenerkenntnis liefern, während heute für unsere gegenwärtige Zivilisation das, was nur in Worten erlebt ist, sich wie ein Schleier hinbreitet über die wirkliche Tatsache der Psychologie. Und interessant ist es, daß der eben verstorbene Fritz Mauthner eine «Kritik der Sprache» geschrieben hat, weil er gefunden hat, wenn die Menschen heute von seelischen Dingen, von geistigen Dingen sprechen, so haben sie doch bloß Worte. Fritz Mauthner hat nur den Fehler gemacht, daß er nur darauf aufmerksam gemacht hat: Die Gegenwartsmenschen haben bloß Worte, sie haben nicht Sachen, wenn sie über die Seele sprechen, und daß er nicht aufmerksam darauf gemacht hat, daß wiederum die Sachen gefunden werden müssen, weil bloß die Worte vorhanden sind.
Natürlich ist Mauthners «Kritik der Sprache» für die Naturwissenschaft ein Unsinn, denn ich möchte einmal wissen, wenn einer ein heißes Bügeleisen angreift, ob er nicht die Tatsache vom Worte unterscheiden kann! Wenn er bloß ausspricht: Das Bügeleisen ist heiß, so brennt es nicht; wenn er es anrührt, da brennt es. In bezug auf alles Naturwissenschaftliche weiß der Mensch - allerdings vielleicht nicht, wenn er durch Theorien ruiniert ist —, aber wenn er im vollen Leben steht, weiß er die Sachen von den Worten zu unterscheiden.
Für die Psychologie hat das aufgehört. Die Menschen haben nur noch die Worte. Und solch ein Mensch wie Fritz Mauthner, der nun in dieser Beziehung ehrlich zu Werke gehen will, sagt: Verbannen wir doch überhaupt das Wort Seele. Wir sehen, daß da innerlich etwas zum Vorschein kommt, das sich dann äußerlich offenbart. Sprechen wir also nicht von Seele, sondern, so meint Fritz Mauthner, sprechen wir, so wie man vom «Gewissen» spricht oder von «Geschwistern», von «Geseel», damit gar nicht mehr der Irrtum hervorgerufen werde, daß man es da mit etwas Realem zu tun hat, wenn man von der Seele spricht.
Für die Gegenwartszivilisation hat Mauthner vollständig recht. Aber was wir brauchen, ist, wieder einzudringen in dasjenige, was Seele ist, für die Worte wiederum einen Inhalt zu bekommen.
Es ist trostlos, wie herumgeplätschert wird in diesen bloß in Worten lebenden Seelenerkenntnissen — wenn man da von Erkenntnissen sprechen will -, wie da nicht berührt wird das Seelische, und wie daher die Leute sich den Kopf zerbrechen: Wirkt das Seelische auf den Körper? Wirkt der Körper auf das Seelische? Oder verlaufen beide Erscheinungen nur parallel miteinander? In solchen Dingen ist heute keine Einsicht vorhanden, daher wird in einer ganz äußerlichen Weise herumdiskutiert.
Wenn man sich aber angewöhnt, in einer solch äußerlichen Weise über die Dinge herumzudiskutieren, dann verliert man den herzhaften Sinn, das enthusiastische Gemüt, das man als pädagogischer Künstler in die Schule hineintragen soll, ja, das man aus der Lebendigkeit der Zivilisation heraus schon haben soll, wenn man als Eltern dem heranwachsenden Kinde gegenübersteht.
Und so sagen wir: Pädagogische Kunst soll sich gründen auf die eine Säule, auf die Psychologie, auf die Seelenkunde. Aber wir haben keine Seelenkunde in der gegenwärtigen Zivilisation. Und was das Schlimmste ist, wir sind, weil wir keuchen unter der Autorität der bloßen Naturwissenschaft, nicht ehrlich genug, uns das einzugestehen. Wir reden immerfort vom Seelischen und haben es nicht mehr. Wir tragen diese Lebenslüge in die intimsten menschlichen Beschäftigungen hinein. Wir haben auf der anderen Seite den guten Willen, das soll voll anerkannt werden, bei allen denen, die heute von Erziehungs- und Uhterrichtsidealen sprechen, die so reichlich die Welt mit Reformgedanken auf diesem Gebiete versehen. Aber wir haben nicht den großen Mut, uns zuzugestehen, daß wir erst zu einer wirklichen menschlichen Seelenkunde vordringen müssen, bevor wir heute den Mund aufmachen dürfen, um über Erziehungsreformen, über Erziehungskunst zu sprechen. Denn wir entbehren — zunächst müssen wir es einsehen - der einen Grundsäule einer wirklichen Einsicht in das Seelenleben. Wir haben vom Seelenleben die Worte, die in grauen Vorzeiten geprägt worden sind, wir haben aber nicht mehr ein Erlebnis von der lebendigen Seele.
Und die andere Grundsäule ist die Summe der Sittengebote. Hat man aber auf der einen Seite eine Psychologie in Worten, eine Psychologie ohne Seele, so hat man auf der anderen Seite eine Sittenlehre ohne göttliche Geistigkeit. Gewiß, den Leuten sind vielfach die alten Religionslehren traditionell erhalten. Aber dasjenige, was die alten Religionslehren haben, das lebt ja gerade so in den Menschen der Gegenwart, wie die in Worten totgewordene Seelenkunde lebt. Die Menschen bekennen sich zu dem, was ihnen als Dogmen oder als anderer religiös-geistiger Inhalt gegeben wird, weil das den alten Gewohnheiten entspricht, weil man hineingewachsen ist im Laufe der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit in das, was so gegeben wird. Aber der lebendige Inhalt fehlt.
Und so haben wir eine Psychologie ohne Seele, so haben wir eine Ethik ohne göttlich-geistige Verbindlichkeit. Die Menschen sprechen zwar noch, wenn sie theoretisch sprechen, oder wenn sie ihre Gemütsbedürfnisse befriedigen wollen, in den Worten, die geblieben sind aus jenen alten Sittenlehren, durch die der Mensch die Absichten der Götter ausführen wollte, indem er ein sittliches Leben auf Erden führen wollte; die Menschen sprechen noch in Worten, die in jenen Zeiten geprägt worden sind, wo der Mensch gewußt hat: Was er in seinem sittlichen Leben auswirkt, das sind Kräfte wie die Naturkräfte, und die göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten sind es, die diesen ethischen Impulsen, diesen sittlichen Kräften Realität geben. Das sagt der Mensch heute noch vielfach, indem er gewohnheitsmäßig in den Worten, die ihm frühere Religionen überliefert haben, lebt, aber indem er nicht mehr aufschauen kann zu der lebendig-göttlichen Geistigkeit, die den sittlichen Impulsen ihre Realität gibt.
Oh, meine lieben Freunde, wenn der Mensch heute ehrlich ist, versteht er denn noch dasjenige, was zum Beispiel in den Briefen des Paulus enthalten ist, wo ja geredet werden kann, daß der Mensch die Erwekkung des lebendigen Christus in sich braucht, damit er nicht stirbt? Kann ein Mensch heute im vollen Umfange des Wortes fühlen, daß Unsittlichsein, keinen inneren Seelenzusammenhang haben mit den sittlichen Pflichten, ebenso etwas zu tun hat mit Tod und Leben der Seele, wie Gesundheit und Krankheit etwas zu tun haben mit Tod und Leben des Körpers? Versteht man heute noch geistig, daß die Seele sich nicht das Leben im Geiste, sondern den Tod im Geiste erwirbt, wenn sie nicht sich eingliedert in die Kräfte des sittlichen Lebens? Ist das noch ein lebendiges Wort, wenn Paulus davon spricht: Wenn ihr nicht habet das Wissen, die Erkenntnis von der Auferstehung Christi, so ist euer Glaube, eure Seele tot. Und indem ihr durch den Tod des Physischen geht, wird eure Seele angesteckt von dem Sterben des Physischen und fängt selber an, im Geistigen zu sterben? - Ist davon ein Verständnis vorhanden, ein inneres lebendiges Verständnis?
Und was das noch Schlimmere ist - wiederum hat unsere Zivilisation nicht den Mut, sich diesen Mangel an innerem lebendigem Verständnis zu gestehen. Sie gibt sich zufrieden mit einer Naturwissenschaft, die nur vom Tod reden kann, die nicht von dem Leben der Seele reden kann, und hält aus bloßer Gewohnheit dasjenige aufrecht, was sich auf die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, auf die Auferstehung des Christus auf Erden bezieht. Und ist nicht selbst in die Theologie dieser materialistische Geist eingezogen?
Sehen wir uns die modernste Form der Theologie an. Dasjenige, was die Menschen begreifen sollen: daß das Christus-Ereignis so in der irdischen Weltgeschichte drinnensteht, daß da ein Geistiges geistig beurteilt werden muß, daß man nicht die Auferstehung nach dem Sinne der Naturwissenschaft verstehen kann, sondern nur nach dem Sinne einer Geisteswissenschaft, diese Einsicht haben die Menschen verloren, haben auch die Theologen verloren; sie sprechen nur von dem Menschen Jesus und können nicht mehr zu einem lebendigen Begreifen von dem lebendig auferstandenen Christus gelangen, und verfallen im Grunde genommen dem Verdikt des Paulus: So ihr nicht wisset, daß der Christus auferstanden ist, so ist euer Glaube tot. - Selbst der Glaube der modernsten Theologie ist tot nach den eigenen Worten des Paulus.
Wenn es uns aber nicht gelingt, ungefähr zwischen dem siebenten und vierzehnten Jahre in dem Menschen durch jene Pädagogik, von der in der Anthroposophie gesprochen wird, den lebendigen Christus innerlich zu beleben, dann tritt der Mensch in das spätere Leben hinaus, ohne mehr sich ein Verständnis für diesen lebendigen Christus erwerben zu können. Dann muß er entweder ein Leugner des Christus werden oder ein solcher, der innerlich nicht ganz wahr ist, indem er den Christus traditionell festhält, aber eigentlich gar nicht die inneren Seelenmittel hat, um zu begreifen, wie durch das, daß der Christus auferstanden ist, indem der Mensch es miterlebt, indem es der Erzieher mit dem Kinde miterlebt, wie da der lebendige Christus im Herzen, in der Seele erweckt wird. Da kann er erweckt werden, und dadurch kann der Seele die Unsterblichkeit durch ihre Verbindung mit dem Christus gegeben werden. Da muß man aber erst ein geistiges Verständnis für die Unsterblichkeit haben. Da muß man erst dazu kommen, sich sagen zu können: Ja, wenn wir bloß die Natur anschauen, dann kommen wir zu Naturgesetzen, die uns lehren, wie einstmals unsere Erde dem Wärmetod verfallen wird, wie einstmals alles auf Erden ersterben wird. Aber haben wir nicht den Einblick in die lebendige göttliche Geistigkeit, dann müssen wir glauben, daß unsere sittlichen Ideale mitsterben mit dem Wärmetod der Erde, daß sich alles in einen großen Friedhof verwandelt. Haben wir die Einsicht in die lebendige Geistigkeit, dann wissen wir, daß dasjenige, was als sittliche Impulse aus unserer Seele quillt, aufgenommen wird von der göttlichen Geistigkeit. Wie von uns der Sauerstoff der Luft aufgenommen wird zu unserem Leben, so wird das, was wir sittlich tun, von der in der Welt lebenden göttlichen Geistigkeit aufgenommen und unsere Seele selber hinausgetragen über den Untergang der Erde in andere Welten hinein.
Das aber muß man lebendig aufnehmen können in seine Anschauung, in sein ganzes Seelenleben, wie man heute aufnimmt die Lehre von den Röntgenstrahlen, die Lehre von der Telephonie, die Lehre von dem Magnetismus und der Elektrizität; an die glaubt man, weil man innerlich lebendig damit lebt durch die äußeren Sinne. Man muß, damit man das richtige lebendige Verhältnis dazu hat, in diesen Dingen drinnen auch lebendig leben, sonst ist man in diesen Dingen wie ein Künstler, der weiß, was schön ist, der in trockenen abstrakten Verstandesbegriffen alles beisammen hat, was ein Kunstwerk schön machen soll, der aber keine Farben behandeln kann, der niemals den Lehm kneten kann und so weiter. Wollen wir herankommen an den lebendigen Menschen, so müssen wir die Kräfte zu diesem Herankommen suchen in der lebendigen Geistigkeit selbst. Unserer gegenwärtigen Zivilisation fehlt aber die Geistigkeit. Das soll die zweite Säule der pädagogischen Kunst sein.
Und so stehen wir heute als pädagogische Künstler vor dem Menschen mit einer bloßen naturwissenschaftlichen Gesinnung. Auf der einen Seite ist uns entfallen in eine bloße Summe von Worten die Seelenwelt, auf der anderen Seite ist uns entfallen wiederum in einer bloßen Summe von Worten die geistige Welt, die sittliche Welt, die höchstens noch in einer Summe von Zeremonien vorhanden ist. Wir wollen pädagogische Kunst auf Seelenkunde und Ethik gründen und haben nur eine Seelenkunde ohne Seele, eine Ethik ohne göttlich-geistige Verbindlichkeit. Wir wollen vom Christus sprechen und müßten gerade, um richtig von Christus sprechen zu können, ein Seelisches haben, müßten, um richtig von ihm sprechen zu können, ein Göttlich-Geistiges haben. Denn haben wir beide nicht, so sprechen wir nur von dem Menschen Jesus, das heißt von dem, der im physischen Leibe unter den Menschen gewandelt hat, wie andere Menschen herumwandeln.
Will man den Christus erkennen, will man aus der Christus-Kraft heraus auch in der Schule wirken, dann braucht man nicht eine Seelenkunde in Worten, nicht eine Ethik in Worten, dann braucht man die lebendige Einsicht in das Leben und Wirken des Seelischen, dann braucht man die lebendige Einsicht in das Weben und Wirken der ethischen Kräfte in dem Sinne, wie die Naturkräfte wirken, als Realitäten, nicht bloß als konventionelle Gebote, denen man sich fügt aus Gewohnheit, sondern als Kräfte, in denen man leben will, weil man weiß, daß man stirbt im Geiste, wenn man nicht darinnen lebt, so wie man stirbt im Leibe, wenn einem das Blut erstarrt.
Diese Anschauungen in aller Lebendigkeit, sie müssen eben Lebensgut werden gerade für die pädagogische Kunst. Sie müssen als etwas, was belebt, was innerlich bewegt, was aus einem Toten ein Lebendiges bildet, dasjenige durchdringen, was der Lehrer in seinem Gemüte zu tragen hat, wenn er erziehen, wenn er unterrichten will.
Wir sprechen heute von der Seele, ob wir Gebildete oder Ungebildete sind, in toten Worten, das heißt, wir leben nicht in dem seelischen Leben, wir plätschern herum um das Kind, denn wir haben keinen Zugang zu seiner Seele. Wir leben heute in den toten Worten, wenn wir vom Geiste reden. Wir suchen mit allen möglichen experimentellen Mitteln an den Leib des Kindes heranzudringen. Er bleibt uns finster und stumm, weil hinter allem Leiblichen das Geistige ist. Aber das Geistige müssen wir in Lebendigkeit ergreifen, wenn wir es in Kunst überführen sollen, wenn es nicht bloß in abstrakten Gedanken erfaßt werden soll, die keine Wirkungskraft haben.
Geradeso wie überall gehört werden kann, die pädagogische Kunst ist auf den beiden Grundsäulen zu errichten, der Ethik auf der einen Seite, der Seelenkunde auf der anderen Seite, so hört man heute vielfach herbe Zweifel darüber äußern, wie eigentlich das Kind erzogen werden soll. Man weist darauf hin, frühere Zeiten haben das Kind so erzogen, daß sie schon im Kinde den erwachsenen Menschen gesehen haben. Man hat recht. Wie haben die Griechen noch ihre Kinder erzogen? Sie haben eigentlich nicht viel Rücksicht darauf genommen, wie die Kinder, da sie noch Kinder waren, sich eigentlich darlebten. Hat man gesehen, daß sie nicht richtige erwachsene Griechen werden konnten, so setzte man sie Ja in älteren Zeiten sogar aus. Das Kind als solches hatte überhaupt nicht eine Bedeutung, nur der erwachsene Mensch hatte eine Bedeutung. Und indem man das Kind erzog, handelte es sich darum, den erwachsenen Menschen nur zu berücksichtigen, alles am Kinde zu machen, was nur den erwachsenen Menschen berücksichtigt.
Heute ist man angelangt in einer Zivilisation, wo, wenn man es so ausdrücken darf - diejenigen, die auf diesem Gebiete Erfahrungen haben, werden das schon wissen -, wo die Kinder nicht mehr mitmachen, wenn man sie nicht berücksichtigt, wo die Kinder innerlich sich sträuben, wenn man beabsichtigt, sie eigentlich nicht gelten zu lassen, sondern nur den Erwachsenen berücksichtigen will.
Daher treten heute die Zweifel auf: Soll man so erziehen und unterrichten, daß man vor allem das Kind in der unmittelbaren Gegenwart als Kind behandelt, daß man das Kind unmittelbar ansieht, und nun dem Kinde eine solche Erziehung, einen solchen Unterricht angedeihen läßt, daß das Kind sich dabei befriedigt fühlt, oder soll man mehr Rücksicht darauf nehmen, in dem Kinde das zu erwecken, was das Kind einmal als Erwachsener sein muß?
Ja, sehen Sie, solche Fragen treten auf, wenn man nur noch in der Lage ist, den Menschen von außen zu beachten, wenn man gar nicht mehr darauf kommt, in das menschliche Innere hineinzuschauen. Freilich, wenn man mit einem Verstande, der entweder schon an experimenteller Psychologie herangebildet ist, oder schon nur die Gesinnung hat, die dann zu experimenteller Psychologie kommt, wenn man mit einem solchen Verstande erzieht, ja, dann kommt man eben nicht an das Kind heran. Denn das Kind trägt noch nicht sein seelisches Sein an der äußeren Oberfläche, daß man es nur zu verstehen hat. Beim Erwachsenen genügt es, wenn wir ihn bloß verstehen. Beim Kinde genügt es nicht, wenn wir es bloß verstehen. Mit dem Kinde müssen wir innerlich zusammenleben können. Wir müssen so das Menschliche lebendig in uns aufgenommen haben, daß wir mit dem Kinde lebendig zusammenleben können. Bloßes Verstehen des Kindes nützt gar nichts.
Aber wenn wir das können, wenn wir innerlich lebendig mit dem Kinde leben können, dann besteht für uns der Widerspruch nicht mehr, das Kind als Kind zu erziehen, oder den Erwachsenen im Kinde zu erziehen; dann wissen wir lebendig, daß wir dasjenige, was wir an das Kind heranbringen wollen, so heranbringen müssen, wie es das Kind selbst will, und dennoch den Erwachsenen im Kinde erziehen. Will denn das Kind in seinem innersten Wesen ein Kind sein? Dann würde es ja nicht mit der Puppe spielen, um nachzuahmen, wie der erwachsene Mensch zu dem Kinde eine Beziehung hat, dann würde ja das Kind nicht mit größter Freude, wenn irgendwo eine Werkstätte in seiner Nähe ist, mit den Arbeitern mitarbeiten in seiner Art, das heißt, mitspielen, aber das Spiel ist ihm ja rechter Ernst. Das Kind lechzt ja nur darnach, auf seine Art schon die Kräfte zu entwickeln, die die Erwachsenen entwikkeln, aber eben auf seine Art.
Verstehen wir den Menschen und verstehen wir dadurch auch das Kind, dann kennen wir auch die Art und Weise, wie das Kind in sein Erwachsensein hineinstrebt, nur daß es statt des wirklichen Kindes nun die Puppe nimmt. Wir wissen dann auch in bezug auf alles das, was wir heranzuerziehen, heranzuunterrichten haben, wie wir dem Kinde die größte Freude machen, wenn wir in der richtigen Weise in ihm den Erwachsenen erziehen, aber nicht auf unsere nüchterne, trockene Weise, wo uns selber die Arbeit zuwider ist, wo wir ächzen unter der Arbeit, sondern wenn wir in der richtigen Weise in ihm den Erwachsenen erziehen, so, daß die Arbeit innerlich wie ein zweiter Mensch entsteht, was beim Kinde macht, daß die Arbeit noch in das ernste Spiel hineinergossen ist. Wenn wir dies verstehen, innerlich lebendig verstehen, nicht in abstrakten Begriffen, dann lernen wir, überhaupt einen solchen Zweife] nicht mehr zu haben, ob wir nun den Erwachsenen im Kinde erziehen sollen, oder ob wir im Kinde das Kind erziehen sollen, dann schauen wir in dem jungen Kinde, wie der Keim des Erwachsenen in ihm ist. Aber wir reden jetzt mit diesem Keim des Erwachsenen nicht, wie wir mit einem Erwachsenen reden, wir reden eben, wie wir mit einem Kinde reden.
Dadurch ist es so, daß wenn wir nicht an die Menschennatur herankommen, sich uns überall auf der einen Seite die Begriffe hinstellen, die eigentlich nur Worte sind, und auf der anderen Seite die anderen Begriffe, die eigentlich nur Worte sind. Darüber soll eben gerade die Anthroposophie hinwegführen. Sehen Sie, man streitet heute über Materialismus und Geistigkeit. Man sagt: Ja, den Materialismus muß man überwinden, man muß wieder zur Geistigkeit kommen. Aber Anthroposophie ist etwas, für das überhaupt der Begriff der Materie, wie er heute in den Menschen spukt, allen Sinn verloren hat. Denn lernt man die Materie wirklich kennen, dann fängt sie an, bildlich gesprochen, durchsichtig zu werden und löst sich ganz in Geist auf.
Lernt man den Geist wirklich kennen, dann fängt er an, nicht bloß das abstrakte tote Gebilde zu sein, das heute der intellektualistische Mensch in sich hat, sondern ein innerlich Tätiges zu werden. Der Geist fängt an, selber die Summe der Wachstumskräfte zum Beispiel in dem werdenden Menschen zu sein. Alles wird innerlich regsamer und tätig. Der Geist wird schöpferisch, wird so dicht wie die Materie.
Lernt man die Materie richtig kennen, so verwandelt sie sich in Geist. Lernt man den Geist richtig kennen, verwandelt er sich vor unserem Seelenauge in Materie, die dasjenige ist, was der Geist in seiner Schöpferkraft nach außen hin offenbart. Und die Worte Materie und Geist, einseitig gebraucht, hören auf einen Sinn zu haben. Wenn wir aber anfangen, aus einer solchen Gesinnung heraus zu sprechen, dann reden wir vielleicht auch noch von Materie und Geist, weil die Worte einmal geprägt sind, aber wir reden ganz anders, indem wir das Wort Materie oder Stoff aussprechen, weil wir es gefühlsmäßig anders färben, wenn wir diese anthroposophische Erkenntnis haben, die ich gerade charakterisiert habe. Das Wort Materie und Stoff bekommt einen anderen, geheimen Klang. Dieser geheime Klang aber wirkt dann auf das Kind, nicht der Inhalt des Wortes Materie.
Fühlen Sie einmal, wie in dem vollergriffenen Worte das menschliche Gemüt darinnen lebt! Nehmen Sie einen Menschen wie Fritz Mauthner, der gefühlt hat, daß eigentlich für das Seelenhafte nur noch Worte da sind, der wollte, daß man von «Geseel» sprechen soll. Nun, darüber lacht man vielleicht. Aber nehmen Sie an, dieselbe Methode setze man fort in das religiös-ethische, sittliche Gebiet hinein, wo unsere Taten wirken, und ein Mensch macht aus derselben Gesinnung heraus eine Wortbildung - was kommt heraus? «Getue!» Sehen Ste, nach demselben Sprachgesetze wie das Wort Geseel habe ich Getue gebildet. Über das Wort Geseel wird man höchstens lachen; das Wort Getue empört. Denn wenn unser ganzer Handlungsinhalt ein Getue wird, so wird er etwas, was eigentlich empörend ist. Dies rührt nicht her von dem Inhalt des Wortes, dies rührt her von dem, was wir empfindend erleben beim Worte. Wir erleben empfindend ganz etwas anderes, wenn es sich darum handelt, Worte zu bilden, die ins Innere der Seele hineinführen: Geseel, oder ob es sich darum handelt, Worte zu bilden, die das bezeichnen, was den Menschen hinaus in die Außenwelt führt, was den Menschen dahin führt, wo die Taten des Menschen selber Naturereignisse werden. Spricht man da von Getue, dann wird die Sache empörend.
Aber jetzt bedenken Sie, wie auf der einen Seite die Worte so ineinanderlaufend liegen. Man spricht mit derselben Neutralität Stoff, Geist, Leib, mit derselben Neutralität Seele, man spricht mit derselben Neutralität Gehirn, die zwei Beine und so weiter. Es ist ja sozusagen geradezu das Ideal naturwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis, daß wir alles ohne menschlichen Anteil sagen.
Wenn wir aber zu Worten kommen, die ohne menschlichen Anteil sind, dann werden die Worte tot. Die abstrakten naturwissenschaftlichen Worte werden tot, wenn wir nicht mehr den menschlichen Anteil in sie hineingießen. Wir sprechen zum Beispiel in der Physik von einer Lehre vom Stoß. Wir können höchstens noch eine mathematische Formel aufschreiben, die wir aber auch nicht verstehen, wenn wir vom Stoß sprechen, ohne jene lebendigen Empfindungen, die wir haben, wenn wir selber stoßen. Dadurch bekommt allein das Wort Leben, daß wir wiederum das Menschliche in unsere Zivilisation hineintragen.
Dieses Menschliche hineintragen in unsere Zivilisation, das möchte Anthroposophie. Geht man durchs Leben lässig, gleichgültig, indem man einfach die äußeren Ereignisse durch die Technik ablaufen läßt, die ein Kind der so großartig fortgeschrittenen Naturwissenschaft ist, so geht es noch. Kommt man aber in diejenigen Gebiete herauf, wo der Mensch dem Menschen helfen soll als Arzt, als Lehrer, als Erzieher, dann geht es nicht. Dann wird die Notwendigkeit empfunden, wirkliche, lebendig gefühlte, gewollte Menschenerkenntnis zu haben, diese in der pädagogischen Kunst - man braucht sie nicht umzuwandeln - sich selber offenbaren zu lassen.
Deshalb ist es nicht irgendein Eigensinn, von dem wir sprechen, sondern es ist innere Zivilisationsnotwendigkeit, erst zu einer Menschenkunde zu kommen, und dann von dem zu sprechen, was man braucht, um die heute noch unbewußten oder unterbewußten Erziehungsforderungen zu erfüllen.
Und wenn sich noch so viele Erziehungs-Reformvereine bilden, sie helfen nichts, wenn ihnen nicht vorangehen diejenigen Vereinigungen, diejenigen Menschengemeinschaften, die erst wiederum hinarbeiten auf eine lebendige Menschenerkenntnis, das heißt auf eine Seelenkunde mit einer wirklichen Seele, auf eine Sittenlehre mit einer wirklichen göttlich-geistigen Verbindlichkeit.
Diese Vereinigungen müssen das Banner vorantragen. Dann mögen hinten nachfolgen diejenigen, die wiederum auf den beiden Grundsäulen bauen wollen, die pädagogischen Vereinigungen, die da bauen wollen auf dem, was erst erbaut werden muß auf den Grundfesten einer realen Seelenkunde, einer realen Ethik, einer Seelenkunde, die nicht bloß in Worten redet, und einer Ethik, die weiß, daß dasjenige, was der Mensch sittlich vollbringt, in der göttlich-geistigen Welt verankert ist. Dann wird er auch als künstlerischer Erzieher, Unterrichter durch dasjenige, was er spricht, tut, ja selbst durch das, was er unsichtbar wirkt, durch seine bloße Anwesenheit als Erzieher, als Unterrichtender, an die Seele herankommen. Er wird wiederum den Zugang haben zur menschlichen Seele. Und er wird, wenn er das Kind ethisch erziehen will, wissen, daß er dann das Kind eingliedert in eine göttlich-geistige Weltenordnung; er wird aus dem, was auf der einen Seite übersinnlich ist, aus einer wirklichen Seelenkunde herausarbeiten und in dasjenige, was auf der anderen Seite übersinnlich ist, in eine wirkliche Geistigkeit hineinarbeiten.
Das, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, gibt der pädagogischen Kunst die wirklichen, die echten Grundsäulen. Die müssen erobert werden. Anthroposophie möchte sie erobern. Darum eine anthroposophische Pädagogik, nicht aus Willkür heraus, sondern aus einer Zeitnotwendigkeit heraus.
Why Anthroposophical Education?
Yesterday evening I tried to show how the deep divide between our intellectual life, which has become entirely theoretical, and practical life prevents people today from accessing a true art of education. People usually do not take the things associated with this contemporary phenomenon seriously enough, because they do not actually communicate with the intellect, but rather communicate with the soul in the course of life. However, our age is so inclined to always silence the manifestations of the human soul, of human feelings, in favor of the demands of the intellect.
Everything that compels people today to recognize contemporary science, which is actually only a natural science and not a science of the soul or spirit, as an unlimited, infallible authority, consists in the fact that people today constantly use their intellect as a judge of everything that otherwise comes from the fullness of humanity. But the teacher, who also grows out of what today's education can offer in terms of spiritual life, who must therefore act in all his feelings and emotions at school on the basis of the school life he has gone through, already feels in his soul, when he is with his children, how strong and intense the abyss hinted at yesterday evening is.
The teacher has first absorbed various things about the human soul, about the way the human soul works. His own feelings, even his impulses of will, have been shaped by this. In particular, the whole mood with which he takes up his teaching position has been shaped by this. And then he must work from what has been poured into his soul today, quite theoretically, about the spirit.
Let us not say: Oh, theory! One acts from one's full human heart when one stands in school. - My dear audience, that is quite correct in the abstract. One can also express this abstractly in words. But just as no one can say, “I want to go into the water and stay dry” — because that is an internal contradiction — so too can what one experiences in teacher training colleges about the soul and the spirit not work for the soul in such a way that this soul has a fresh, full access to the souls of children. For just as one must get wet when one jumps into water, so one must become alien to one's soul and spirit when one acquires today's school education.
That is a fact. And especially for those who want to practice the art of education, it should actually be the first priority today to understand this fact in its full human significance.
When the teacher comes out of his own educational institutions with what he has stimulated today in terms of human feeling and the will to work and interact with people, and now wants to apply this to the developing human being, to the child, then he feels as if everything he has acquired in such a theoretical way, which has not warmed his heart has not made his will active in spirit, as if all this were fluttering around the child, not something that finds access to the child.
And so the teacher actually enters the classroom by, one might say, erecting a partition around himself, not penetrating through this partition to the souls of the children, and now, in a sense, acting in the air that is outside the children, unable to follow in his soul the inhaled breath through which the air enters the children's inner being. He feels himself standing outside the child, splashing around, as it were, in an indefinite theoretical element outside the child.
And again, when the teacher learns everything that he learns today through our excellent natural science, which introduces him in such a solid way to the external things of nature and the facts of nature, when he has now taken all this into his mind, into his head, then he feels that he cannot approach the child with this at all, because it tells him something about the physicality of the child. But we do not understand physicality, corporeality, unless we penetrate through it to the spirit. In all physicality, in all corporeality, the underlying basis is spiritual.
And so it happens that the person who wants to approach the child today with pedagogical artistry experiments externally with the body: How must the body be treated so that memory is trained in the right way? How must the body be treated so that attention is exercised in the right way? And so on. And then the teacher feels something like someone who, wanting to lead someone into the light, first puts glasses completely covering the eyes in front of their eyes. Human physicality itself becomes something opaque through this natural science. And so the teacher, with all his natural science, feels incapable of approaching the spiritualized natural life of the child.
This is not yet discussed intellectually in general civilization today. Where is there talk today, as I have just spoken, about the strangeness with which we treat children, without any real knowledge of human nature, with an excellent knowledge of nature? And because there is no such talk, everything that can be put into words is discharged in feelings and sensations. And the teacher leaves his class almost every hour with a tiny amount of dissatisfaction. And these tiny amounts of dissatisfaction harden him, making him not only alien to children, but also alien to the world, leaving his own mind cold and sober.
Thus we see how freshness, life, and mobility disappear precisely from that intimate interaction between human beings that comes to light in the interaction between the adult teacher and educator and the child being educated, the growing child. These things must also be understood with the heart, because today the mind, which is trained only in external natural phenomena, is, I would say, still too coarse to comprehend these intimate things in all their subtlety.
And so we see that old demands are repeated over and over again when people talk about the art of education. You know how pedagogy is derived on the one hand from psychology, from the study of the soul, and you know how, on the other hand, pedagogy is derived from ethics, from the knowledge of moral human duties. Wherever the art of education is discussed today, one hears how this art should be based on these two pillars: psychology and ethics. But we only have what lies between the two. People indulge in a virtually unlimited illusion when they believe that a true psychology exists today. We must constantly remind ourselves of the phrase coined in the 19th century: psychology without soul, because people simply no longer penetrate to the soul. What is our psychology today? It will sound paradoxical when I express what our psychology actually is today. Out of their original instincts, out of a clairvoyant knowledge of history that was widespread throughout humanity in primeval times, which was primitive and mythical but which, despite its primitiveness and mythical character, penetrated into the soul, people had a psychology of the soul; they felt and sensed what the soul is. And in those ancient times, words were coined that refer to the soul: thinking, feeling, and willing. But today we no longer have that inner life that truly animates these words, thinking, feeling, and willing.
What does anthroposophy show us in contrast to thinking? Well, thinking equips us as human beings with thoughts. But the thoughts we have in everyday life today within our present civilization appear to us as if we were not looking at a person we meet from the front, but only from behind. It is only the reverse side of what lives in thinking when we speak of thoughts as we do today within our cultural civilization. Why?
When you have a person in front of you and you look at them from behind, you have a certain image. But you do not learn to recognize them from the side where they have their actual physiognomic expression. You do not learn to recognize them from the side where they reveal their soul life to the outside world. If you get to know thoughts in the way that is possible in today's scientific age, you get to know the inner human being from behind. Look at thoughts from the other side, then thoughts retain life, then thoughts are forces.
And what are these thoughts? They are the forces that are the growth forces of the human being. Outwardly, thoughts are abstract; inwardly, toward the human being, they are what make the very small child grow larger, what make its indeterminate limbs become definite: the forces of thought. Outwardly, we see only dead thoughts, like what a person shows backward, not revealing their living essence. We must, so to speak, go to the other side of thought life, then what works from the inside out, day by day, as the child's undefined facial expression becomes more and more an expression of their soul, what passes into the gaze, makes the gaze warm and fiery, which is reflected in the formation of the nose that is still taking place in life, but which also makes all the disordered movements of the child orderly, which lives and stirs inwardly, which works and lives throughout the entire time that the human being grows.
And when one begins to look at the life of thought from an anthroposophical perspective, it is really as if one were beginning to look at a person whom one had previously only known from behind, now looking at them from the front. Everything that was dead comes to life, the whole life of thought comes to life when one begins to look at it from within.
In the past, this was not recognized in the way that anthroposophy makes possible today, but it was felt and expressed in mythical form. Today we can recognize it. Therefore, we can also translate it into practical life. Therefore, we can turn it into an art when we have to treat a child, when we really penetrate these things in a living way.
If you only know thinking from its backward, dead side, then you can only understand the child; if you get to know thinking from its forward, living side, then you can face the child in such a way that you not only understand it, but that you experience all its emotions, that you pour love into everything the child lives out.
Nothing living remains of all this. Our civilization today has only the word “thought,” no longer the thing itself. We no longer speak of the contents of psychology; we have simply become accustomed to continuing to use the old words, and the words have lost their content.
Even more than for the intellectual, language in our time has lost its content for the emotional or even for the volitional. Feelings rise up from the subconscious of the human being. The human being lives in them. But he does not look down into these subconscious depths; or if he does, he looks down psychoanalytically, amateurishly. They do not become aware of what lives there as soul life in the depths when they have feelings. Only words remain for feelings, and even more so for the will.
Today, if we wanted to describe what we know about these things, we should not really talk about the will at all, for the will is only a word for today's civilization; we would have to say, when we see a person begin to move their hand, their hand takes the pen, the pen is dragged across the paper: we would have to describe the external facts of the movement. That is still the case today. What lies within as will is no longer experienced, it is only a word.
To find the thing behind these words, which today constitute what is called psychology, to find the processes behind them, that is the task of anthroposophy. That is why anthroposophy can provide a real understanding of human beings, whereas today, for our present civilization, what is only experienced in words spreads like a veil over the real facts of psychology. And it is interesting that Fritz Mauthner, who has just passed away, wrote a “Critique of Language” because he found that when people today speak of spiritual things, of mental things, they have only words. Fritz Mauthner's only mistake was that he merely pointed out that people today have only words, they do not have things, when they talk about the soul, and that he did not point out that the things must be found again, because only the words are available.
Of course, Mauthner's “critique of language” is nonsense for natural science, because I would like to know whether someone who touches a hot iron can distinguish between fact and word! If he merely says, “The iron is hot,” it does not burn; if he touches it, it burns. When it comes to everything scientific, people know—perhaps not if they are ruined by theories—but if they are living life to the full, they know how to distinguish things from words.
This is no longer the case in psychology. People only have words. And someone like Fritz Mauthner, who wants to be honest in this regard, says: Let's banish the word “soul” altogether. We see that something emerges internally, which then manifests itself externally. So let's not talk about the soul, but, according to Fritz Mauthner, let's talk about it as we talk about “conscience” or “siblings,” about “Geseel,” so that the misconception that we are dealing with something real when we talk about the soul is no longer evoked.
Mauthner is absolutely right about contemporary civilization. But what we need is to penetrate once again into what the soul is, so that words can regain their meaning.
It is disheartening to see how these insights into the soul, which exist only in words—if one wants to call them insights—are bandied about, how the soul is not touched, and how people rack their brains: Does the soul affect the body? Does the body affect the soul? Or do both phenomena simply run parallel to each other? There is no insight into such matters today, which is why they are discussed in a completely superficial way.
But if one gets into the habit of discussing things in such an external way, one loses the hearty spirit, the enthusiastic mind that one should bring into the school as an educational artist, indeed, that one should already have from the liveliness of civilization when one faces one's growing child as a parent.
And so we say: pedagogical art should be based on one pillar, on psychology, on the study of the soul. But we have no study of the soul in our present civilization. And what is worst, because we groan under the authority of mere natural science, we are not honest enough to admit this to ourselves. We talk constantly about the soul, but we no longer have it. We carry this life lie into the most intimate human activities. On the other hand, we have the good will, and this should be fully recognized, of all those who today speak of educational and teaching ideals, who so richly provide the world with reform ideas in this area. But we do not have the great courage to admit to ourselves that we must first advance to a real human psychology before we can open our mouths today to talk about educational reforms, about the art of education. For we lack — we must first recognize this — the one fundamental pillar of a real insight into the life of the soul. We have words about the life of the soul that were coined in ancient times, but we no longer have an experience of the living soul.
And the other fundamental pillar is the sum of moral precepts. But if, on the one hand, we have a psychology in words, a psychology without soul, then on the other hand we have a moral code without divine spirituality. Certainly, the old religious teachings have been preserved in many ways through tradition. But what the old religious teachings have is just as alive in the people of the present as the psychology that has died in words. People profess what is given to them as dogma or other religious-spiritual content because it corresponds to old habits, because in the course of the historical development of humanity they have grown into what is given to them. But the living content is missing.
And so we have a psychology without a soul, we have an ethic without divine-spiritual commitment. When people speak theoretically, or when they want to satisfy their emotional needs, they still speak in the words that have remained from those ancient moral teachings through which human beings wanted to carry out the intentions of the gods by leading a moral life on earth; people still speak in words that were coined in those times when people knew that what they effected in their moral life were forces like the forces of nature, and that it was the divine-spiritual beings who gave reality to these ethical impulses, these moral forces. People still say this today in many ways, living habitually in the words handed down to them by earlier religions, but no longer able to look up to the living divine spirituality that gives reality to moral impulses.
Oh, my dear friends, if people today are honest, do they still understand what is contained, for example, in the letters of Paul, where it can be said that people need the awakening of the living Christ within themselves so that they do not die? Can a person today feel in the fullest sense of the word that immorality, having no inner soul connection with moral duties, has as much to do with the death and life of the soul as health and sickness have to do with the death and life of the body? Is it still understood spiritually today that the soul does not acquire life in the spirit, but death in the spirit, if it does not integrate itself into the forces of moral life? Is it still a living word when Paul says: If you do not have the knowledge, the recognition of the resurrection of Christ, then your faith, your soul, is dead. And as you go through the death of the physical, your soul is infected by the dying of the physical and begins to die itself in the spiritual? Is there an understanding of this, an inner, living understanding?
And what is even worse – once again, our civilization does not have the courage to admit this lack of inner, living understanding. It is content with a natural science that can only speak of death, that cannot speak of the life of the soul, and out of mere habit upholds that which refers to the immortality of the soul, to the resurrection of Christ on earth. And has not this materialistic spirit itself crept into theology?
Let us look at the most modern form of theology. What people should understand: that the Christ event is so embedded in earthly world history that something spiritual must be judged spiritually, that resurrection cannot be understood in the sense of natural science, but only in the sense of spiritual science. People have lost this insight, and so have theologians; they speak only of the man Jesus and can no longer arrive at a living understanding of the living, risen Christ, and basically fall prey to Paul's verdict: If you do not know that Christ is risen, your faith is dead. Even the faith of the most modern theology is dead according to Paul's own words.
But if we do not succeed in bringing the living Christ to life within the human being between the ages of seven and fourteen through the pedagogy spoken of in anthroposophy, then the human being enters later life without being able to acquire an understanding of this living Christ. Then they must either become a denier of Christ or someone who is not entirely true inwardly, holding on to Christ in a traditional way but not actually having the inner soul resources to understand how, through Christ's resurrection, through the human being experiencing it, through the educator experiencing it with the child, the living Christ is awakened in the heart and soul. There he can be awakened, and through this the soul can be given immortality through its connection with Christ. But first one must have a spiritual understanding of immortality. First one must come to be able to say to oneself: Yes, if we only look at nature, we come to the laws of nature that teach us how our earth will one day succumb to heat death, how everything on earth will one day perish. But if we do not have insight into living divine spirituality, then we must believe that our moral ideals will die with the heat death of the earth, that everything will be transformed into a great cemetery. If we have insight into living spirituality, then we know that what springs from our soul as moral impulses is taken up by divine spirituality. Just as we take in the oxygen in the air for our life, so what we do morally is taken up by the divine spirituality living in the world, and our soul itself is carried out beyond the destruction of the earth into other worlds.
But we must be able to take this in vividly in our perception, in our entire soul life, just as we take in today the teachings about X-rays, the teachings about telephony, the teachings about magnetism and electricity; we believe in these because we live with them vividly through our outer senses. In order to have the right living relationship to these things, one must also live vividly within them; otherwise, one is like an artist who knows what is beautiful, who has everything that makes a work of art beautiful in dry, abstract intellectual concepts, but who cannot handle colors, who can never knead clay, and so on. If we want to approach the living human being, we must seek the forces for this approach in living spirituality itself. But our present civilization lacks spirituality. This should be the second pillar of the art of education.
And so today, as pedagogical artists, we stand before human beings with a purely scientific attitude. On the one hand, we have reduced the world of the soul to a mere sum of words; on the other hand, we have reduced the spiritual world, the moral world, to a mere sum of words, which at most still exists in a sum of ceremonies. We want to base the art of education on psychology and ethics, but we only have a psychology without a soul, an ethics without divine-spiritual commitment. We want to speak of Christ, and in order to speak correctly of Christ, we must have a soul; in order to speak correctly of him, we must have a divine-spiritual element. For if we have neither, we speak only of the man Jesus, that is, of the one who walked among men in a physical body, as other men walk around.
If one wants to recognize Christ, if one wants to work in school out of the power of Christ, then one does not need a study of the soul in words, nor ethics in words; then one needs a living insight into the life and work of the soul, then one needs a living insight into the weaving and working of ethical forces in the same sense as the forces of nature work, as realities, not merely as conventional commandments to which one conforms out of habit, but as forces in which one wants to live because one knows that one dies in spirit if one does not live in them, just as one dies in body when one's blood congeals.
These views, in all their liveliness, must become part of the educational art. They must permeate the teacher's mind as something that enlivens, that moves inwardly, that transforms the dead into the living, when he wants to educate and teach.
Today, whether we are educated or uneducated, we speak of the soul in dead words, which means that we do not live in the life of the soul; we splash around the child because we have no access to its soul. Today, we live in dead words when we speak of the spirit. We try to get close to the child's body with all kinds of experimental means. It remains dark and silent to us, because behind everything physical is the spiritual. But we have to grasp the spiritual in its liveliness if we want to translate it into art, if it is not to be understood merely in abstract thoughts that have no effect.
Just as it can be heard everywhere that the art of education must be built on two pillars, ethics on the one hand and psychology on the other, so today we often hear harsh doubts expressed about how children should actually be educated. It is pointed out that in earlier times children were educated in such a way that adults were already seen in them. They are right. How did the Greeks educate their children? They did not really take much account of how the children, since they were still children, actually lived. If it was seen that they could not become proper adult Greeks, they were even abandoned in earlier times. The child as such had no significance at all; only the adult human being had significance. And in raising the child, the aim was to take only the adult human being into account, to do everything to the child that took only the adult human being into account.
Today, we have arrived at a civilization where, if I may put it this way—those who have experience in this area will already know this—children no longer participate if they are not taken into account, where children inwardly resist if the intention is not to accept them, but only to take adults into account.
This is why doubts arise today: Should we educate and teach in such a way that we treat the child in the immediate present as a child, that we look directly at the child and give the child such an education and such teaching that the child feels satisfied, or should we take more care to awaken in the child what the child must one day be as an adult?
Yes, you see, such questions arise when one is only able to observe people from the outside, when one no longer thinks to look into the human interior. Of course, if one educates with a mind that is either already trained in experimental psychology or already has the disposition that leads to experimental psychology, then one cannot reach the child. For the child does not yet carry its soul life on the outer surface, so that one only has to understand it. With adults, it is enough if we simply understand them. With children, it is not enough if we simply understand them. With children, we must be able to live together inwardly. We must have absorbed the human nature so vividly within ourselves that we can live together with the child in a lively way. Merely understanding the child is of no use at all.
But if we can do that, if we can live inwardly with the child, then the contradiction of educating the child as a child or educating the adult in the child no longer exists for us; then we know vividly that we must bring to the child what we want to bring in the way the child itself wants, and yet educate the adult in the child. Does the child want to be a child in its innermost being? Then it would not play with dolls to imitate how adults relate to children, then the child would not take the greatest pleasure, when there is a workshop somewhere near it, in working with the workers in its own way, that is, playing along, but the game is quite serious for it. The child is just eager to develop, in its own way, the powers that adults develop, but in its own way.
If we understand human beings and thereby also understand children, then we also know the way in which children strive toward adulthood, except that instead of real children, they now take dolls. We then also know, with regard to everything we have to raise and teach, how to give the child the greatest joy when we educate the adult in them in the right way, but not in our sober, dry way, where we ourselves dislike the work, where we groan under the work, but when we educate the adult in the child in the right way, so that the work arises inwardly like a second person, which in the child means that the work is still poured into serious play. If we understand this, understand it inwardly and vividly, not in abstract terms, then we learn to no longer have such doubts at all, whether we should educate the adult in the child or whether we should educate the child in the child, then we see in the young child how the seed of the adult is within them. But we do not talk to this seed of the adult as we talk to an adult; we talk as we talk to a child.
As a result, if we cannot approach human nature, we are confronted everywhere on the one hand with concepts that are really only words, and on the other hand with other concepts that are really only words. Anthroposophy is intended to lead us beyond this. You see, today there is a debate about materialism and spirituality. People say: Yes, materialism must be overcome, we must return to spirituality. But anthroposophy is something for which the concept of matter, as it haunts people today, has lost all meaning. For when one really gets to know matter, it begins, figuratively speaking, to become transparent and dissolves completely into spirit.
When one really gets to know the spirit, it begins to be not merely the abstract, dead construct that intellectualistic people have within themselves today, but becomes something that is active within. The spirit itself begins to be the sum of the forces of growth, for example in the developing human being. Everything becomes more active and dynamic within. The spirit becomes creative, as dense as matter.
If we learn to know matter properly, it transforms into spirit. If we learn to know spirit properly, it transforms before our soul's eye into matter, which is what spirit reveals outwardly in its creative power. And the words matter and spirit, used one-sidedly, cease to have any meaning. But when we begin to speak from such a mindset, we may still talk about matter and spirit because the words have already been coined, but we speak quite differently when we utter the word matter or substance, because we color it differently emotionally when we have this anthroposophical insight that I have just characterized. The word matter and substance takes on a different, secret sound. This secret sound then has an effect on the child, not the content of the word matter.
Feel how the human mind lives in the fully grasped word! Take a person like Fritz Mauthner, who felt that only words are actually available for the soul, who wanted people to speak of “Geseel.” Well, you might laugh at that. But suppose the same method were continued into the religious-ethical, moral realm where our actions have an effect, and a person were to form a word from the same sentiment – what would come out? “Getue!” You see, I have formed Getue according to the same linguistic law as the word Geseel. At most, people will laugh at the word Geseel; the word Getue is outrageous. For if the whole content of our actions becomes Getue, it becomes something that is actually outrageous. This does not stem from the content of the word, it stems from what we experience emotionally when we hear the word. We experience something completely different when it comes to forming words that lead into the inner soul: Geseel, or when it comes to forming words that describe what leads people out into the outside world, what leads people to where their actions themselves become natural events. If one speaks of Getue in this context, then the matter becomes outrageous.
But now consider how, on the one hand, the words are so intertwined. We speak with the same neutrality of matter, spirit, body, with the same neutrality of soul, we speak with the same neutrality of brain, the two legs, and so on. It is, so to speak, the ideal of scientific knowledge that we say everything without human involvement.
But when we come to words that have no human involvement, then the words become dead. Abstract scientific words become dead when we no longer pour human involvement into them. In physics, for example, we speak of a theory of collision. At most, we can write down a mathematical formula, but we do not understand it when we speak of collision without the living sensations we have when we ourselves collide. The word alone comes to life when we bring the human element into our civilization.
Anthroposophy wants to bring this human element into our civilization. If you go through life casually, indifferently, simply letting external events run their course through technology, which is a child of such magnificently advanced science, then it's still okay. But when you enter those areas where human beings are supposed to help other human beings as doctors, teachers, or educators, then it doesn't work. Then you feel the need to have a real, vividly felt, deliberate understanding of human nature, to let this understanding reveal itself in the art of education—you don't need to transform it.
Therefore, it is not a matter of stubbornness, but rather an inner necessity of civilization to first arrive at an understanding of human nature and then to speak of what is needed to fulfill the educational requirements that are still unconscious or subconscious today.
And no matter how many educational reform associations are formed, they will be of no help unless they are preceded by those associations, those communities of people who are working towards a living knowledge of the human being, that is, towards a study of the soul with a real soul, towards a moral teaching with a real divine-spiritual commitment.
These associations must carry the banner forward. Then those who want to build on the two fundamental pillars may follow behind: the educational associations that want to build on what must first be built on the foundations of a real psychology of the soul, a real ethics, a psychology of the soul that does not merely speak in words, and an ethics that knows that what human beings accomplish morally is anchored in the divine-spiritual world. Then, as an artistic educator, as a teacher, he will also reach the soul through what he says, through what he does, even through what he does invisibly, through his mere presence as an educator, as a teacher. He will in turn have access to the human soul. And if he wants to educate the child ethically, he will know that he is then integrating the child into a divine-spiritual world order; he will work out of what is supersensible on the one hand, out of a real knowledge of the soul, and work into what is supersensible on the other hand, into a real spirituality.
This, ladies and gentlemen, gives the art of education its real, genuine foundations. These must be conquered. Anthroposophy wants to conquer them. That is why anthroposophical education is not arbitrary, but a necessity of our time.