The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy
GA 34
Translated by George and Mary Adams
[ 1 ] Much that the man of to-day 0The following study forms the substance of a lecture which I gave at various places in Germany. In response to a wish—expressed in many quarters—that it should also be available in print, I have here re-cast it in essay form.
Account should be taken of the remarks which have been added as footnotes. inherits from generations of the past is called in question by his present life. Hence the numerous ‘problems of the hour’ and ‘demands of the age.’ How many of these are occupying the attention of the world—the Social Question, the Women's Question, the various educational questions, hygienic questions, questions of human rights, and so forth! By the most varied means, men are endeavouring to grapple with these problems. The number of those who come on the scene with this or that remedy or programme for the solution—or at any rate for the partial solution—of one or other of them, is indeed past counting. In the process, all manner of opinions and shades of opinion make themselves felt—Radicalism, which carries itself with a revolutionary air; the Moderate attitude, full of respect for existing things, yet endeavouring to evolve out of them something new; Conservatism, which is up in arms whenever any of the old institutions are tampered with. Beside these main tendencies of thought and feeling there is every kind of intermediate position.
[ 2 ] Looking at all these things of life with deeper vision, one cannot but feel—indeed the impression forces itself upon one—that the men of our age are in the position of trying to meet the demands involved in modern life with means which are utterly inadequate. Many are setting about to reform life, without really knowing life in its foundations. But he who would make proposals as to the future must not content himself with a knowledge of life that merely touches life's surface. He must investigate its depths.
[ 3 ] Life in its entirety is like a plant. The plant contains not only what it offers to external life; it also holds a future state within its hidden depths. One who has before him a plant only just in leaf, knows very well that after some time there will be flowers and fruit also on the leaf-bearing stem. In its hidden depths the plant already contains the flowers and fruit in embryo; yet by mere investigation of what the plant now offers to external vision, how should one ever tell what these new organs will look like? This can only be told by one who has learnt to know the very nature and being of the plant.
[ 4 ] So, too, the whole of human life contains within it the germs of its own future; but if we are to tell anything about this future, we must first penetrate into the hidden nature of the human being. And this our age is little inclined to do. It concerns itself with the things that appear on the surface, and thinks it is treading on unsafe ground if called upon to penetrate to what escapes external observation.
In the case of the plant the matter is certainly more simple. We know that others like it have again and again borne fruit before. Human life is present only once; the flowers it will bear in the future have never yet been there. Yet they are present within man in the embryo, even as the flowers are present in a plant that is still only in leaf. [ 5 ] And there is a possibility of saying something about man's future, if once we penetrate beneath the surface of human nature to its real essence and being. It is only when fertilized by this deep penetration into human life, that the various ideas of reform current in the present age can become fruitful and practical.
[ 6 ] Anthroposophy, by its inherent character and tendency, must have the task of providing a practical conception of the world—one that comprehends the nature and essence of human life. Whether what is often called so is justified in making such a claim, is not the point; it is the real essence of Anthroposophy—and what, by virtue of its real essence, Anthroposophy can be—that here concerns us. For Anthroposophy is not intended as a theory remote from life, one that merely caters for man's curiosity or thirst for knowledge. Nor is it intended as an instrument for a few people, who for selfish reasons would like to attain a higher level of development for themselves. No, it can join and work at the most important tasks of present-day humanity, and further their development for the welfare of mankind.1It is not to be inferred that Anthroposophy has only to do with the greater questions of life. Anthroposophy, as the passage would express, is destined to afford a basis on which the solution of the greater questions may be sought; at the same time it is no less true that Anthroposophy is able to bring help to each individual person wherever he may find himself placed in life, that it can be a source whence he may draw the answers to the most everyday questions, whence he may draw comfort, strength, confidence for life and work. Anthroposophy can give strength for meeting the great life-problems, and just as surely also for meeting the immediate needs of the moment, even in the seemingly most insignificant matters of daily life.
[ 7 ] It is true that in taking on this mission, Anthroposophy must be prepared to face all kinds of scepticism and opposition. Radicals, Moderates and Conservatives in every sphere of life will be bound to meet it with scepticism. For in its beginnings it will scarcely be in a position to please any party. Its premises lie far beyond the sphere of party movements, [ 8 ] being founded, in effect, purely and solely on a true knowledge and perception of life. If a man has knowledge of life, it is only out of life itself that he will be able to set himself his tasks. He will draw up no arbitrary programmes, for he will know that no other fundamental laws of life can prevail in the future than those that prevail already in the present. The spiritual investigator will therefore of necessity respect existing things. However great the need for improvement he may find in them, he will not fail to see, in existing things themselves, the embryo of the future. At the same time, he knows that in all things ‘becoming’ there must be growth and evolution. Hence he will perceive in the present the seeds of transformation and of growth. He invents no programmes; he reads them out of what is there. What he thus reads becomes in a certain sense itself a programme, for it bears in it the essence of development. [ 9 ] For this very reason an anthroposophical insight into the being of man must provide the most fruitful and the most practical means for the solution of the urgent questions of modern life.
[ 10 ] In the following pages we shall endeavour to prove this for one particular question—the question of Education. We shall not set up demands nor programmes, but simply describe the child-nature. From the nature of the growing and evolving human being, the proper point of view for Education will, as it were, spontaneously result.
[ 11 ] If we wish to perceive the nature of the evolving man, we must begin by considering the hidden nature of man as such. [ 12 ] What sense-observation learns to know in man, and what the materialistic conception of life would consider as the one and only element in man's being, is for spiritual investigation only one part, one member of his nature: it is his Physical Body. This physical body of man is subject to the same laws of physical existence, and is built up of the same substances and forces, as the whole of that world which is commonly called lifeless. Anthroposophical Science says, therefore: man has a physical body in common with the whole of the mineral kingdom. And it designates as the ‘Physical Body’ that alone in man, which brings the substances into mixture, combination, form, and dissolution by the same laws as are at work in the same substances in the mineral world as well.
[ 13 ] Now over and above the physical body, Anthroposophical Science recognizes a second essential principle in man. It is his Life-Body or Etheric Body. The physicist need not take offence at the term ‘Etheric Body.’ The word ‘Ether’ in this connection does not mean the same as the hypothetical Ether of Physics. It must be taken simply as a designation of what will here and now be described. [ 14 ] In recent times it was considered a highly unscientific proceeding to speak of such an ‘Etheric Body’; though this had not been so at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century. In that earlier time people had said to themselves: the substances and forces which are at work in a mineral cannot of their own accord form the mineral into a living creature. In the latter there must also be inherent a peculiar ‘force.’ This force they called the ‘Vital Force,’ and they thought of it somewhat as follows: the Vital Force is working in the plant, in the animal, in the human body, and produces the phenomena of life, just as the magnetic force is present in the magnet producing the phenomena of attraction. In the succeeding period of materialism, this idea was set aside. People began to say: the living creature is built up in the same way as the lifeless creation. There are no other forces at work in the living organism than in the mineral; the same forces are only working in a more complicated way, and building a more complex structure.
To-day, however, it is only the most rigid materialists who hold fast to this denial of a life-force or vital force. There are a number of natural scientists and thinkers whom the facts of life have taught, that something like a vital force or life-principle must be assumed. [ 15 ] Thus modern science, in its later developments, is in a certain sense approaching what Anthroposophical Science has to say about the life-body. There is, however, a very important difference. From the facts of sense-perception, modern science arrives, through intellectual considerations or reflections, at the assumption of a kind of vital force. This is not the method of genuine spiritual investigation which Anthroposophy adopts and from the results of which it makes its statements. It cannot often enough be emphasized how great is the difference, in this respect, between Anthroposophy and the current science of to-day. For the latter regards the experiences of the senses as the foundation for all knowledge. Anything that cannot be built up on this foundation, it takes to be unknowable. From the impressions of the senses it draws deductions and conclusions. What goes on beyond them it rejects, as lying ‘beyond the frontiers of human knowledge.’
From the standpoint of Anthroposophical Science, such a view is like that of a blind man, who only admits as valid things that can be touched and conclusions that result by deduction from the world of touch—a blind man who rejects the statements of seeing people as lying outside the possibility of human knowledge. Anthroposophy shows man to be capable of evolution, capable of bringing new worlds within his sphere by the development of new organs of perception. Colour and light are all around the blind man. If he cannot see them, it is only because he lacks the organs of perception. In like manner Anthroposophy asserts: there are many worlds around man, and man can perceive them if only he develops the necessary organs. As the blind man who has undergone a successful operation looks out upon a new world, so by the development of higher organs man can come to know new worlds—worlds altogether different from those which his ordinary senses allow him to perceive.
Now whether one who is blind in body can be operated on or not, depends on the constitution of his organs. But the higher organs whereby man can penetrate into the higher worlds, are present in embryo in every human being. Everyone can develop them who has the patience, endurance, and energy to apply in his own case the methods described in the volume, ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.’
Anthroposophical Science, then, would never say that there are definite frontiers to human knowledge. What it would rather say is that for man those worlds exist, for which he has the organs of perception. Thus Anthroposophy speaks only of the methods whereby existing frontiers may be extended; and this is its position with regard to the investigation of the life-body or etheric body, and of all that is specified in the following pages as the yet higher members of man's nature. Anthroposophy admits that the physical body alone is accessible to investigation through the bodily senses, and that—from the point of view of this kind of investigation—it will at most be possible by intellectual deductions to surmise the existence of a higher body. At the same time, it tells how it is possible to open up a world wherein these higher members of man's nature emerge for the observer, as the colour and the light of things emerge after operation in the case of a man born blind. For those who have developed the higher organs of perception, the etheric or life-body is an object of perception and not merely of intellectual deduction.
Man has this etheric or life-body in common with the plants and animals. The life-body works in a formative way upon the substances and forces of the physical body, thus bringing about the phenomena of growth, reproduction, and inner movement of the saps and fluids. It is therefore the builder and moulder of the physical body, its inhabitant and architect. The physical body may even be spoken of as an image or expression of the life-body. In man the two are nearly, though by no means wholly, equal as to form and size. In the animals, however, and still more so in the plants, the etheric body is very different, both in form and in extension, from the physical.
[ 16 ] The third member of the human body is what is called the Sentient or Astral Body. It is the vehicle of pain and pleasure, of impulse, craving, passion, and the like—all of which are absent in a creature consisting only of physical and etheric bodies. These things may all be included in the term: sentient feeling or sensation. The plant has no sensation. If in our time some learned men, seeing that plants will respond by movement or in some other way to external stimulus, conclude that plants have a certain power of sensation, they only show their ignorance of what sensation is. The point is not whether the creature responds to an external stimulus, but whether the stimulus is reflected in an inner process—as pain or pleasure, impulse, desire, or the like. Unless we held fast to this criterion, we should be justified in saying that blue litmus-paper has a sensation of certain substances, because it turns red by contact with them.2It is necessary to lay stress on this point, for there is in our time a great want of clearness on such matters. Many people obscure the distinction between a plant and a sentient being, because they are not clear themselves as to the real nature of sensation. If a being or thing acts in some way in response to an impression, that is made on it from without, one is not therefore justified in saying that it has a sensation of the impression. It can only be said to have sensation if it experiences the impression in its inner life, that is to say, if there is a kind of inward reflection of the outer stimulus. The great advances of Natural Science in our time, for which the true spiritual investigator has the highest admiration, have none the less brought about a lack of clearness with regard to higher concepts. Some biologists do not know what sensation is, and hence they ascribe it to a being that has none. What they understand by sensation, they may well ascribe even to non-sentient beings. What the Anthroposophical Science must understand by sensation is altogether different.
[ 17 ] Man has therefore a sentient body in common with the animal kingdom only, and this sentient body is the vehicle of sensation or of sentient life.
[ 18 ] We must not fall into the error of certain theosophical circles, and imagine the etheric and sentient bodies as consisting simply of finer substances than are present in the physical body. For that would be a materialistic conception of these higher members of man's nature. The etheric body is a force-form; it consists of active forces, and not of matter. The astral or sentient body is a figure of inwardly moving, coloured, luminous pictures. [ 19 ] The astral body deviates, both in shape and size, from the physical body. In man it presents an elongated ovoid form, within which the physical and etheric bodies are embedded. It projects beyond them—a vivid, luminous figure—on every side.4A distinction must be drawn between the experience man has of the sentient body within himself, and the perception of the sentient body by a trained seer. It is what lies open to the sentient body by a trained seer that is here referred to.
[ 20 ] Now man possesses a fourth member of his being; and this fourth member he shares with no other earthly creature. It is the vehicle of the human ‘ I ,’ of the human Ego. The little word ‘ I ’—as used, for example, in the English language—is a name essentially different from all other names. To anyone who ponders rightly on the nature of this name, there is opened up at once a way of approach to a perception of man's real nature. All other names can be applied, by all men equally, to the thing they designate. Everyone can call a table ‘table,’ and everyone can call a chair ‘chair’; but it is not so with the name ‘ I .’ No one can use this name to designate another. Each human being can only call himself ‘ I ’; the name ‘ I ’ can never reach my ear as a designation of myself. In designating himself as ‘ I ,’ man has to name himself within himself. A being who can say ‘ I ’ to himself is a world in himself. Those religions which are founded on spiritual knowledge have always had a feeling for this truth. Hence they have said: With the ‘ I ,’ the ‘God’—who in the lower creatures reveals himself only from without, in the phenomena of the surrounding world—begins to speak from within. The vehicle of this faculty of saying ‘ I ,’ of the Ego-faculty, is the ‘Body of the Ego,’ the fourth member of the human being.5The reader must not take offence at the expression ‘Body of the Ego.’ It is certainly not used in any grossly material sense. But in Anthroposophical Science there is no other possibility than to use the words of ordinary language; and as these are ordinarily applied to material things, they must, in their application to a spiritual science, first be translated into the spiritual.
[ 21 ] This ‘Body of the Ego’ is the vehicle of the higher soul of man. Through it man is the crown of all earthly creation. Now in the human being of the present day the Ego is by no means simple in character. We may recognize its nature if we compare human beings at different stages of development. Look at the uneducated savage beside the average European, or again, compare the latter with a lofty idealist. Each one of them has the faculty of saying ‘ I ’ to himself; the ‘Body of the Ego’ is present in them all. But the uneducated savage, with his Ego, follows his passions, impulses, and cravings almost like an animal. The more highly developed man says to himself, ‘Such and such impulses and desires you may follow,’ while others again he holds in check or suppresses altogether. The idealist has developed new impulses and new desires in addition to those originally present. All this has taken place through the Ego working upon the other members of the human being. Indeed, it is this which constitutes the special task of the Ego. Working outward from itself, it has to ennoble and purify the other members of man's nature.
[ 22 ] In the human being who has reached beyond the condition in which the external world first placed him, the lower members have become changed to a greater or lesser degree under the influence of the ‘Ego.’ When man is only beginning to rise above the animal, when his ‘Ego’ is only just kindled, he is still like an animal so far as the lower members of his being are concerned. His etheric or life-body is simply the vehicle of the formative forces of life, the forces of growth and reproduction. His sentient body gives expression to those impulses, desires, and passions only, which are stimulated by external nature. As man works his way up from this stage of development, through successive lives or incarnations, to an ever higher evolution, his ‘Ego’ works upon the other members and transforms them. In this way his sentient body becomes the vehicle of purified sensations of pleasure and pain, refined wishes and desires. And the etheric or life-body also becomes transformed. It becomes the vehicle of the man's habits, of his more permanent bent or tendency in life, of his temperament and of his memory. A man whose Ego has not yet worked upon his life-body, has no memory of the experiences he goes through in life. He just lives out what Nature has implanted in him.
[ 23 ] This is what the growth and development of civilization means for man. It is a continual working of his Ego upon the lower members of his nature. The work penetrates right down into the physical body. Under the influence of the Ego, the whole appearance and physiognomy, the gestures and movements of the physical body, are altered. It is possible, moreover, to distinguish the way in which the different means of culture or civilization work upon the several members of man's nature. The ordinary factors of civilization work upon the sentient body and imbue it with pleasures and pains, with impulses and cravings, of a different kind from what it had originally. Again, when the human being is absorbed in the contemplation of a great work of art, his etheric body is being influenced. Through the work of art he divines something higher and more noble than is offered by the ordinary environment of his senses, and in this process he is forming and transforming his life-body. Religion is a powerful means for the purification and ennobling of the etheric body. It is here that the religious impulses have their mighty purpose in the evolution of mankind.
[ 25 ] What we call ‘conscience’ is nothing else than the outcome of the work of the Ego on the life-body through incarnation after incarnation. When man begins to perceive that he ought not to do this or that, and when this perception makes so strong an impression on him that the impression passes on into his etheric body, ‘conscience’ arises.
[ 26 ] Now this work of the Ego upon the lower members may either be something that is proper to a whole race of men; or else it may be entirely individual, an achievement of the individual Ego working on itself alone. In the former case, the whole human race collaborates, as it were, in the transformation of the human being. The latter kind of transformation depends on the activity of the individual Ego alone and of itself. The Ego may become so strong as to transform, by its very own power and strength, the sentient body. What the Ego then makes of the Sentient or Astral Body is called ‘Spirit-Self’ (or by an Eastern expression, ‘Manas’). This transformation is wrought mainly through a process of learning, through an enriching of one's inner life with higher ideas and perceptions.
Now the Ego can rise to a still higher task, and it is one that belongs quite essentially to its nature. This happens when not only is the astral body enriched, but the etheric or life-body transformed. A man learns many things in the course of his life; and if from some point he looks back on his past life, he may say to himself: ‘I have learned much.’ But in a far less degree will he be able to speak of a transformation in his temperament or character during life, or of an improvement or deterioration in his memory. Learning concerns the astral body, whereas the latter kinds of transformation concern the etheric or life-body. Hence it is by no means an unhappy image if we compare the change in the astral body during life with the course of the minute hand of a clock, and the transformation of the life-body with the course of the hour hand.
[ 27 ] When man enters on a higher training—or, as it is called, occult training—it is above all important for him to undertake, out of the very own power of his Ego, this latter transformation. Individually and with full consciousness, he has to work out the transformation of his habits and his temperament, his character, his memory ... In so far as he thus works into his life-body, he transforms it into what is called in anthroposophical terminology, ‘Life-Spirit’ (or, as the Eastern expression has it, ‘Budhi’).
[ 28 ] At a still higher stage man comes to acquire forces whereby he is able to work upon his physical body and transform it (transforming, for example, the circulation of the blood, the pulse). As much of the physical body as is thus transformed is ‘Spirit-Man’ (or, in the Eastern term, ‘Atma’).
[ 29 ] Now as a member of the whole human species or of some section of it—for example, of a nation, tribe, or family—man also achieves certain transformations of the lower parts of his nature. In Anthroposophical Science the results of this latter kind of transformation are known by the following names. The astral or sentient body, transformed through the Ego, is called the Sentient Soul; the transformed etheric body is called the Intellectual Soul; and the transformed physical body the Spiritual Soul. We must not imagine the transformations of these three members taking place one after another in time. From the moment when the Ego lights up, all three bodies are undergoing transformation simultaneously. Indeed, the work of the Ego does not become clearly perceptible to man until a part of the Spiritual Soul has already been formed and developed.
[ 30 ] From what has been said, it is clear that we may speak of four members of man's nature: the Physical Body, the Etheric or Life-Body, the Astral or Sentient Body, and the Body of the Ego. The Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul, and the Spiritual Soul, and beyond these the still higher members of man's nature—Spirit-Self, Life-Self, Spirit-Man—appear in connection with these four members as products of transformation. Speaking of the vehicles of the qualities of man, it is in fact the first four members only which come into account.
[ 31 ] It is on these four members of the human being that the educator works. Hence, if we desire to work in the right way, we must investigate the nature of these parts of man. It must not be imagined that they develop uniformly in the human being, so that at any given point in his life—the moment of birth, for example—they are all equally far developed. This is not the case; their development takes place differently in the different ages of a man's life. The right foundation for education, and for teaching also, consists in a knowledge of these laws of development of human nature.
[ 32 ] Before physical birth, the growing human being is surrounded on all sides by the physical body of another. He does not come into independent contact with the physical world. The physical body of his mother is his environment, and this body alone can work upon him as he grows and ripens. Physical birth indeed consists in this, that the physical mother-body, which has been as a protecting sheath, sets the human being free, thus enabling the environment of the physical world thenceforward to work upon him directly. His senses open to the external world, and the external world thereby gains that influence on the human being which was previously exercised by the physical envelope of the mother-body.
[ 33 ] A spiritual understanding of the world, as represented by Anthroposophy, sees in this process the birth of the physical body, but not as yet of the etheric or life-body. Even as man is surrounded, until the moment of birth, by the physical envelope of the mother-body, so until the time of the change of teeth—until about the seventh year—he is surrounded by an etheric envelope and by an astral envelope. It is only during the change of teeth that the etheric envelope liberates the etheric body. And an astral envelope remains until the time of puberty, when the astral or sentient body also becomes free on all sides, even as the physical body became free at physical birth and the etheric body at the change of teeth.6To raise the objection that the child has memory and so forth before the change of teeth, or that he has the faculties connected with the astral body before puberty, would argue a misunderstanding of this passage. We must clearly understand that the etheric body, and the astral body too, are present from the beginning, only that they are within their protecting envelopes. It is, indeed, the protecting envelope which enables the etheric body, for example, to evolve and manifest the qualities of memory very evidently before the change of teeth. But the physical eyes, too, are already present before birth, beneath the protecting envelope of the mother's womb. In the embryo the eyes are protected, and the external physical sunlight must not work upon their development. In exactly the same sense, external education must not endeavour to effect a training, or influence the moulding, of the memory before the change of teeth. If, however, we simply give it nourishment and do not try as yet to develop it by external measures, we shall see how the memory unfolds in this period, freely and of its own accord.
>It is the same with those qualities of which the astral body is the bearer. Before the age of puberty one must supply them with nourishment, always bearing in mind, however, that the astral body, as explained above, still lies beneath a protecting envelope. It is one thing before puberty to nurture the seeds of development already inherent in the astral body; it is another thing after puberty to expose the now independent astral body to those influences in the outer world which it can receive and work upon, unprotected by the surrounding envelope. The distinction is certainly a subtle one; but without entering into it one cannot understand what education really is.
[ 33 ] Thus, Anthroposophical Science has to speak of three births of the human being. Until the change of teeth, certain impressions intended for the etheric body can as little reach it as the light and air of the physical world can reach the physical body so long as this latter is resting in the mother's womb.
[ 34 ] Before the change of teeth takes place, the free life-body is not yet at work in man. As in the body of the mother the physical body receives forces which are not its own, while at the same time it gradually develops its own forces within the protecting sheath of the mother's womb, [ 35 ] so it is with the forces of growth until the change of teeth. During this first period the etheric body is only developing and moulding its own forces, con jointly with those—not its own—which it has inherited. Now while the etheric body is thus working its way into liberation, the physical body is already independent. The etheric body, as it liberates itself, develops and works out what it has to give to the physical body. The ‘second teeth,’ i.e. the human being's own teeth, taking the place of those which he inherited, represent the culmination of this work. They are the densest things embedded in the physical body, and hence they appear last, at the end of this period.
[ 36 ] From this point onward, the growth of man's physical body is brought about by his own etheric body alone. But this etheric body is still under the influence of an astral body which has not yet escaped from its protecting sheath. At the moment when the astral body too becomes free, the etheric body concludes another period of its development; and this conclusion finds expression in puberty. The organs of reproduction become independent because from this time onward the astral body is free, no longer working inwards, but openly and without integument meeting the external world.
[ 37 ] Now just as the physical influences of the external world cannot be brought to bear on the yet unborn child—so until the change of teeth one should not bring to bear on the etheric body those forces which are, for it, what the impressions of the physical environment are for the physical body. And in the astral body the corresponding influences should not be given play until after puberty.
[ 38 ] Vague and general phrases—‘the harmonious development of all the powers and talents in the child,’ and so forth—cannot provide the basis for a genuine art of education. Such an art of education can only be built up on a real knowledge of the human being. Not that these phrases are incorrect, but that at bottom they are as useless as it would be to say of a machine that all its parts must be brought harmoniously into action. To work a machine you must approach it, not with phrases and truisms, but with real and detailed knowledge. So for the art of education it is a knowledge of the members of man's being and of their several development which is important. We must know on what part of the human being we have especially to work at a certain age, and how we can work upon it in the proper way. There is of course no doubt that a truly realistic art of education, such as is here indicated, will only slowly make its way. This lies, indeed, in the whole mentality of our age, which will long continue to regard the facts of the spiritual world as the vapourings of an imagination run wild, while it takes vague and altogether unreal phrases for the result of a realistic way of thinking. Here, however, we shall unreservedly describe what will in time to come be a matter of common knowledge, though many to-day may still regard it as a figment of the mind.
[ 39 ] With physical birth the physical human body is exposed to the physical environment of the external world. Before birth it was surrounded by the protecting envelope of the mother's body. What the forces and fluids of the enveloping mother-body have done for it hitherto, must from now onward be done for it by the forces and elements of the external physical world. Now before the change of teeth in the seventh year, the human body has a task to perform upon itself which is essentially different from the tasks of all the other periods of life. In this period the physical organs must mould themselves into definite shapes. Their whole structural nature must receive certain tendencies and directions. In the later periods also, growth takes place; but throughout the whole succeeding life, growth is based on the forms which were developed in this first life-period. If true forms were developed, true forms will grow; if misshapen forms were developed, misshapen forms will grow. We can never repair what we have neglected as educators in the first seven years. Just as Nature brings about the right environment for the physical human body before birth, so after birth the educator must provide for the right physical environment. It is the right physical environment alone, which works upon the child in such a way that the physical organs shape themselves aright.
[ 40 ] There are two magic words which indicate how the child enters into relation with his environment. They are: Imitation, and Example. The Greek philosopher Aristotle called man the most imitative of creatures. For no age in life is this more true than for the first stage of childhood, before the change of teeth. What goes on in his physical environment, this the child imitates, and in the process of imitation his physical organs are cast into the forms which then become permanent. ‘Physical environment’ must, however, be taken in the widest imaginable sense. It includes not only what goes on around the child in the material sense, but everything that takes place in the child's environment—everything that can be perceived by his senses, that can work from the surrounding physical space upon the inner powers of the child. This includes all the moral or immoral actions, all the wise or foolish actions, that the child sees.
[ 41 ] It is not moral talk or prudent admonitions that influence the child in this sense. Rather is it what the grown-up people do visibly before his eyes. The effect of admonition is to mould the forms, not of the physical, but of the etheric body; and the latter, as we saw, is surrounded until the seventh year by a protecting etheric envelope, even as the physical body is surrounded before physical birth by the physical envelope of the mother-body. All that has to evolve in the etheric body before the seventh year—ideas, habits, memory, and so forth—all this must develop ‘of its own accord,’ just as the eyes and ears develop within the mother-body without the influence of external light ... What we read in that excellent educational work—Jean Paul's ‘Levana’ or ‘Science of Education’—is undoubtedly true. He says that a traveler will have learned more from his nurse in the first years of his life, than in all his journeys round the world. The child, however, does not learn by instruction or admonition, but by imitation. The physical organs shape their forms through the influence of the physical environment. Good sight will be developed in the child if his environment has the right conditions of light and colour, while in the brain and blood-circulation the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy moral sense if the child sees moral actions in his environment. If before his seventh year the child sees only foolish actions in his surroundings, the brain will assume such forms as adapt it also to foolishness in later life.
[ 42 ] As the muscles of the hand grow firm and strong in performing the work for which they are fitted, so the brain and other organs of the physical body of man are guided into the right lines of development if they receive the right impression from their environment. An example will best illustrate this point. You can make a doll for a child by folding up an old napkin, making two corners into legs, the other two corners into arms, a knot for the head, and painting eyes, nose and mouth with blots of ink. Or else you can buy the child what they call a ‘pretty’ doll, with real hair and painted cheeks. We need not dwell on the fact that the ‘pretty’ doll is of course hideous, and apt to spoil the healthy aesthetic sense for a lifetime. The main educational question is a different one. If the child has before him the folded napkin, he has to fill in from his own imagination all that is needed to make it real and human. This work of the imagination moulds and builds the forms of the brain. The brain unfolds as the muscles of the hand unfold when they do the work for which they are fitted. Give the child the so-called ‘pretty’ doll, and the brain has nothing more to do. Instead of unfolding, it becomes stunted and dried up. If people could look into the brain as the spiritual investigator can, and see how it builds its forms, they would assuredly give their children only such toys as are fitted to stimulate and vivify its formative activity. Toys with dead mathematical forms alone, have a desolating and killing effect upon the formative forces of the child. On the other hand everything that kindles the imagination of living things works in the right way. Our materialistic age produces few good toys. What a healthy toy it is, for example, which represents by movable wooden figures two smiths facing each other and hammering an anvil. The like can still be bought in country districts. Excellent also are the picture-books where the figures can be set in motion by pulling threads from below, so that the child itself can transform the dead picture into a representation of living action. All this brings about a living mobility of the organs, and by such mobility the right forms of the organs are built up.
[ 43 ] These things can of course only be touched on here, but in future Anthroposophy will be called upon to give the necessary indications in detail, and this it is in a position to do. For it is no empty abstraction, but a body of living facts which can give guiding lines for the conduct of life's realities.
[ 44 ] A few more examples may be given. A ‘nervous,’ that is to say excitable child, should be treated differently as regards environment from one who is quiet and lethargic. Everything comes into consideration, from the colour of the room and the various objects that are generally around the child, to the colour of the clothes in which he is dressed. One will often do the wrong thing if one does not take guidance from spiritual knowledge. For in many cases the materialistic idea will hit on the exact reverse of what is right. An excitable child should be surrounded by and dressed in the red or reddish-yellow colours, whereas for a lethargic child one should have recourse to the blue or bluish-green shades of colour. For the important thing is the complementary colour, which is created within the child. In the case of red it is green, and in the case of blue orange-yellow, as may easily be seen by looking for a time at a red or blue surface and then quickly directing one's gaze to a white surface. The physical organs of the child create this contrary or complementary colour, and it is this which brings about the corresponding organic structures that the child needs. If the excitable child has a red colour around him, he will inwardly create the opposite, the green; and this activity of creating green has a calming effect. The organs assume a tendency to calmness.
[ 45 ] There is one thing that must be thoroughly and fully recognized for this age of the child's life. It is that the physical body creates its own scale of measurement for what is beneficial to it. This it does by the proper development of craving and desire. Generally speaking, we may say that the healthy physical body desires what is good for it. In the growing human being, so long as it is the physical body that is important, we should pay the closest attention to what the healthy craving, desire and delight require. Pleasure and delight are the forces which most rightly quicken and call forth the physical forms of the organs.
In this matter it is all too easy to do harm by failing to bring the child into a right relationship, physically, with his environment. Especially may this happen in regard to his instincts for food. The child may be overfed with things that completely make him lose his healthy instinct for food, whereas by giving him the right nourishment the instinct can be so preserved that he always wants what is wholesome for him under the circumstances, even to a glass of water, and turns just as surely from what would do him harm. Anthroposophical Science, when called upon to build up an art of education, will be able to indicate all these things in detail, even specifying particular forms of food and nourishment. For Anthroposophy is realism, it is no grey theory; it is a thing for life itself.
[ 46 ] Thus the joy of the child, in and with his environment, must be reckoned among the forces that build and mould the physical organs. Teachers he needs with happy look and manner, and above all with an honest unaffected love. A love which as it were streams through the physical environment of the child with warmth may literally be said to ‘hatch out’ the forms of the physical organs.
[ 47 ] The child who lives in such an atmosphere of love and warmth and who has around him really good examples for his imitation, is living in his right element. One should therefore strictly guard against anything being done in the child's presence that he must not imitate. One should do nothing of which one would then have to say to the child, ‘You must not do that.’ The strength of the child's tendency to imitate can be recognized by observing how he will paint and scribble written signs and letters long before he understands them. Indeed, it is good for him to paint the letters by imitation first, and only later learn to understand their meaning. For imitation belongs to this period when the physical body is developing; while the meaning speaks to the etheric, and the etheric body should not be worked on till after the change of teeth, when the outer etheric envelope has fallen away. Especially should all learning of speech in these years be through imitation. It is by hearing that the child will best learn to speak. No rules or artificial instruction of any kind can be of good effect.
[ 48 ] For early childhood it is important to realize the value of children's songs, for example, as means of education. They must make a pretty and rhythmical impression on the senses; the beauty of sound is to be valued more than the meaning. The more living the impression made on eye and ear, the better. Dancing movements in musical rhythm have a powerful influence in building up the physical organs, and this too should not be undervalued.
[ 49 ] With the change of teeth, when the etheric body lays aside its outer etheric envelope, there begins the time when the etheric body can be worked upon by education from without. We must be quite clear what it is that can work upon the etheric body from without, The formation and growth of the etheric body means the moulding and developing of the inclinations and habits, of the conscience, the character, the memory and temperament. The etheric body is worked upon through pictures and examples—i.e. by carefully guiding the imagination of the child. As before the age of seven we have to give the child the actual physical pattern for him to copy, so between the time of the change of teeth and puberty we must bring into his environment things with the right inner meaning and value. For it is from the inner meaning and value of things that the growing child will now take guidance. Whatever is fraught with a deep meaning that works through pictures and allegories, is the right thing for these years. The etheric body will unfold its forces if the well-ordered imagination is allowed to take guidance from the inner meaning it discovers for itself in pictures and allegories—whether seen in real life or communicated to the mind. It is not abstract conceptions that work in the right way on the growing etheric body, but rather what is seen and perceived—not indeed with the outward senses, but with the eye of the mind. This seeing and perceiving is the right means of education for these years.
For this reason it matters above all that the boy and girl should have as their teachers persons who can awaken in them, as they see and watch them, the right intellectual and moral powers. As for the first years of childhood Imitation and Example were, so to say, the magic words for education, so for the years of this second period the magic words are Discipleship and Authority. What the child sees directly in his educators, with inner perception, must become for him authority—not an authority compelled by force, but one that he accepts naturally without question. By it he will build up his conscience, habits and inclinations; by it he will bring his temperament into an ordered path. He will look out upon the things of the world as it were through its eyes. Those beautiful words of the poet, ‘Every man must choose his hero, in whose footsteps he will tread as he carves out his path to the heights of Olympus,’ have especial meaning for this time of life. Veneration and reverence are forces whereby the etheric body grows in the right way. If it was impossible during these years to look up to another person with unbounded reverence, one will have to suffer for the loss throughout the whole of one's later life. Where reverence is lacking, the living forces of the etheric body are stunted in their growth.
Picture to yourself how such an incident as the following works upon the character of a child. A boy of eight years old hears tell of someone who is truly worthy of honour and respect. All that he hears of him inspires in the boy a holy awe. The day draws near when for the first time he will be able to see him. With trembling hand he lifts the latch of the door behind which will appear before his sight the person he reveres. The beautiful feelings such an experience calls forth are among the lasting treasures of life. Happy is he who, not only in the solemn moments of life but continually, is able to look up to his teachers and educators as to his natural and unquestioned authorities.
[ 50 ] Beside these living authorities, who as it were embody for the child intellectual and moral strength, there should also be those he can only apprehend with the mind and spirit, who likewise become for him authorities. The outstanding figures of history, stories of the lives of great men and women: let these determine the conscience and the direction of the mind. Abstract moral maxims are not yet to be used; they can only begin to have a helpful influence, when at the age of puberty the astral body liberates itself from its astral mother-envelope.
In the history lesson especially, the teacher should lead his teaching in the direction thus indicated. When telling stories of all kinds to little children before the change of teeth, our aim cannot be more than to awaken delight and vivacity and a happy enjoyment of the story. But after the change of teeth, we have in addition something else to bear in mind in choosing our material for stories; and that is, that we are placing before the boy or girl pictures of life that will arouse a spirit of emulation in the soul.
The fact should not be overlooked that bad habits may be completely overcome by drawing attention to appropriate instances that shock or repel the child. Reprimands give at best but little help in the matter of habits and inclinations. If, however, we show the living picture of a man who has given way to a similar bad habit, and let the child see where such an inclination actually leads, this will work upon the young imagination and go a long way towards the uprooting of the habit. The fact must always be remembered: it is not abstract ideas that have an influence on the developing etheric body, but living pictures that are seen and comprehended inwardly. The suggestion that has just been made certainly needs to be carried out with great tact, so that the effect may not be reversed and turn out the very opposite of what was intended. In the telling of stories everything depends upon the art of telling. Narration by word of mouth cannot, therefore, simply be replaced by reading.
[ 51 ] In another connection too, the presentation of living pictures, or as we might say of symbols, to the mind, is important for the period between the change of teeth and puberty. It is essential that the secrets of Nature, the laws of life, be taught to the boy or girl, not in dry intellectual concepts, but as far as possible in symbols. Parables of the spiritual connections of things should be brought before the soul of the child in such a manner that behind the parables he divines and feels, rather than grasps intellectually, the underlying law in all existence. ‘All that is passing is but a parable,’ must be the maxim guiding all our education in this period. It is of vast importance for the child that he should receive the secrets of Nature in parables, before they are brought before his soul in the form of ‘natural laws’ and the like. An example may serve to make this clear. Let us imagine that we want to tell a child of the immortality of the soul, of the coming forth of the soul from the body. The way to do this is to use a comparison, such for example as the comparison of the butterfly coming forth from the chrysalis. As the butterfly soars up from the chrysalis, so after death the soul of man from the house of the body. No man will rightly grasp the fact in intellectual concepts, who has not first received it in such a picture. By such a parable, we speak not merely to the intellect but to the feeling of the child, to all his soul. A child who has experienced this, will approach the subject with an altogether different mood of soul, when later it is taught him in the form of intellectual concepts. It is indeed a very serious matter for any man, if he was not first enabled to approach the problems of existence with his feeling. Thus it is essential that the educator have at his disposal parables for all the laws of Nature and secrets of the World.
[ 52 ] Here we have an excellent opportunity to observe with what effect the spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy must work in life and practice. When the teacher comes before a class of children, armed with parables he has ‘made up’ out of an intellectual materialistic mode of thought, he will as a rule make little impression upon them. For he has first to puzzle out the parables for himself with all his intellectual cleverness. Parables to which one has first had to condescend have no convincing effect on those who listen to them. For when one speaks in parable and picture, it is not only what is spoken and shown that works upon the hearer, but a fine spiritual stream passes from the one to the other, from him who gives to him who receives. If he who tells has not himself the warm feeling of belief in his parable, he will make no impression on the other. For real effectiveness, it is essential to believe in one's parables as in absolute realities. And this can only be when one's thought is alive with spiritual knowledge. Take for instance the parable of which we have been speaking. The true student of Anthroposophy need not torment himself to think it out. For him it is reality. In the coming forth of the butterfly from the chrysalis he sees at work on a lower level of being the very same process that is repeated, on a higher level and at a higher stage of development, in the coming forth of the soul from the body. He believes in it with his whole might; and this belief streams as it were unseen from speaker to hearer, carrying conviction. Life flows freely, unhindered, back and forth from teacher to pupil. But for this it is necessary that the teacher draw from the full fountain of spiritual knowledge. His words and all that comes from him must receive feeling, warmth and colour from a truly anthroposophic way of thought.
A wonderful prospect is thus opened out over the whole field of education. If it will but let itself be enriched from the well of life that Anthroposophy contains, education will itself be filled with life and understanding. There will no longer be that groping which is now so prevalent. All art and practice of education that is not continually receiving fresh nourishment from such roots as these is dry and dead. The spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy has for all the secrets of the world appropriate parables—pictures taken from the very being of the things, pictures not first made by man, but laid by the forces of the world within the things themselves in the very act of their creation. Therefore this spiritual knowledge must form the living basis for the whole art of education.
[ 53 ] A force of the soul on which particular value must be set during this period of man's development, is memory. The development of the memory is bound up with the moulding of the etheric body. Since the latter takes place in such a way that the etheric body becomes liberated between the change of teeth and puberty, so too this is the tune for a conscious attention from without to the growth and cultivation of the memory. If what is due to the human being at this time has been neglected, his memory will ever after have less value than it might otherwise have had. It is not possible later to make up for what has been left undone.
[ 54 ] In this connection many mistakes may be made by an intellectual materialistic way of thought. An art of education based on such a way of thought easily arrives at a condemnation of what is mastered merely by memory. It will often set itself untiringly and emphatically against the mere training of the memory, and will employ the subtlest methods to ensure that the boy or girl commits nothing to memory that he does not intellectually understand. Yes, and after all, how much has really been gained by such intellectual understanding? A materialistic way of thought is so easily led to believe that any further penetration into things, beyond the intellectual concepts that are as it were extracted from them, simply does not exist; and only with great difficulty will it fight its way through to the perception that the other forces of the soul are at least as necessary as the intellect, if we are to gain a comprehension of things. It is no mere figure of speech to say that man can understand with his feeling, his sentiment, his inner disposition, as well as with his intellect. Intellectual concepts are only one of the means we have to understand the things of this world, and it is only to the materialistic thinker that they appear as the sole means. Of course there are many who do not consider themselves materialists, who yet regard an intellectual conception of things as the only kind of understanding. Such people profess perhaps an idealistic or even a spiritual outlook. But in their soul they relate themselves to it in a materialistic way. For the intellect is in effect the instrument of the soul for understanding what is material.
[ 55 ] We have already alluded to Jean Paul's excellent book on education; and a passage from it, bearing on this subject of the deeper foundations of the understanding, may well be quoted here. Jean Paul's book contains, indeed, many a golden word on education, and deserves far more attention than it receives. It is of greater value for the teacher than many of the educational works that are held in highest regard to-day. The passage runs as follows:—
‘Have no fear of going beyond the childish understanding, even in whole sentences. Your expression and the tone of your voice, aided by the child's intuitive eagerness to understand, will light up half the meaning, and with it in course of time the other half. It is with children as with the Chinese and people of refinement; the tone is half the language. Remember, the child learns to understand his own language before ever he learns to speak it, just as we do with Greek or any other foreign language. Trust to time and the connections of things to unravel the meaning. A child of five understands the words “yet,” “even,” “of course,” “just”; but now try to give an explanation of them—not to the child, but to his father! In the one word “of course” there lurks a little philosopher! If the eight-year-old child, with his developed speech, is understood by the child of three, why do you want to narrow down your language to the little one's childish prattle? Always speak to the child some years ahead—do not the men of genius speak to us centuries ahead in books? Talk to the one-year-old as if he were two, to the two-year-old as if he were six, for the difference in development diminishes in inverse ratio with the age. We are far too prone to credit the teachers with everything the children learn. We should remember that the child we have to educate bears half his world within him all there and ready taught, namely the spiritual half, including, for example, the moral and metaphysical ideas. For this very reason language, equipped as it is with material images alone, cannot give the spiritual archetypes; all it can do is to illumine them. The very brightness and decision of children should give us brightness and decision when we speak to them. We can learn from their speech as well as teach them through our own. Their word-building is bold, yet remarkably accurate! For instance, I have heard the following expressions used by three- or four-year-old children:—“the barreler” (for the maker of barrels)—“the sky-mouse” (for the bat)—“I am the seeing-through man” (standing behind the telescope)—“I'd like to be a ginger-bread-eater”—“he joked me down from the chair”—“See how one o'clock it is!” ...’
[ 56 ] Our quotation refers, it is true, to a different subject from that with which we are immediately concerned; but what Jean Paul says about speech has its value in the present connection also. Here too there is an understanding which precedes the intellectual comprehension. The little child receives the structure of language into the living organism of his soul, and does not require the laws of language-formation in intellectual concepts for the process. Similarly the older boy and girl must learn for the cultivation of the memory much that they are not to master with their intellectual understanding until later years. Those things are afterwards best grasped in concepts, which have first been learned simply from memory in this period of life, even as the rules of language are best learned in a language one is already able to speak. So much talk against ‘unintelligent learning by heart’ is simply materialistic prejudice. The child need only, for instance, learn the essential rules of multiplication in a few given examples—and for these no apparatus is necessary; the fingers are much better for the purpose than any apparatus,—then he is ready to set to and memorize the whole multiplication table. Proceeding in this way, we shall be acting with due regard to the nature of the growing child. We shall, however, be offending against his nature, if at the time when the development of the memory is the important thing we are making too great a call upon the intellect.
The intellect is a soul-force that is only born with puberty, and we ought not to bring any influence to bear on it from outside before this period. Up to the time of puberty the child should be laying up in his memory the treasures of thought on which mankind has pondered; afterwards is the time to penetrate with intellectual understanding what has already been well impressed upon the memory in earlier years. It is necessary for man, not only to remember what he already understands, but to come to understand what he already knows—that is to say, what he has acquired by memory in the way the child acquires language. This truth has a wide application. First there must be the assimilation of historical events through the memory, then the grasping of them in intellectual concepts; first the faithful committing to memory of the facts of geography, then the intellectual grasp of the connections between them. In a certain respect, the grasping of things in concepts should proceed from the stored-up treasures of the memory. The more the child knows in memory before he begins to grasp in intellectual concepts, the better.
There is no need to enlarge upon the fact that what has been said applies only for that period of childhood with which we are dealing, and not later. If at some later age in life one has occasion to take up a subject for any reason, then of course the opposite may easily be the right and most helpful way of learning it, though even here much will depend on the mentality of the person. In the time of life, however, with which we are now concerned, we must not dry up the child's mind and spirit by cramming it with intellectual conceptions.
[ 57 ] Another result of a materialistic way of thought is to be seen in the lessons that rest too exclusively on sense-perception. At this period of childhood, all perception must be spiritualized. We ought not to be satisfied, for instance, with presenting a plant, a seed, a flower to the child merely as it can be perceived with the senses. Everything should become a parable of the spiritual. In a grain of corn there is far more than meets the eye. There is a whole new plant invisible within it. That such a thing as a seed has more within it than can be perceived with the senses, this the child must grasp in a living way with his feeling and imagination. He must, in feeling, divine the secrets of existence. The objection cannot be made that the pure perception of the senses is obscured by this means; on the contrary, by going no further than what the senses see, we are stopping short of the whole truth. For the full reality consists of the spirit as well as the substance; and there is no less need for faithful and careful observation when one is bringing all the faculties of the soul into play, than when only the physical senses are employed. Could men but see, as the spiritual investigator sees, what desolation is wrought in soul and body by an instruction that rests on external sense-perception alone, they would never insist upon it so strongly as they do. Of what good is it in the highest sense, that children should have shown to them all possible varieties of minerals, plants and animals, and all kinds of physical experiments, if something further is not bound up with the teaching of these things; namely, to make use of the parables which the sense-world gives, in order to awaken a feeling for the secrets of the spirit?
Certainly a materialistic way of thought will have little use for what has here been said; and this the spiritual investigator understands only too well. But he also knows that the materialistic way of thought will never give rise to a really practical art of education. Practical as it appears to itself, materialistic thought is unpractical when the need is to enter into life in a living way. In face of actual reality, materialistic thought is fantastic,—though indeed to the materialistic thinker the anthroposophical teachings, adhering as they do to the facts of life, cannot but appear fantastic. There will no doubt be many an obstacle yet to overcome before the principles of Anthroposophy, which are indeed born out of life itself, can make their way into the art of education. It cannot be otherwise. The truths of this spiritual science cannot but seem strange as yet, and unaccustomed to many people. None the less, if they are true indeed, they will become part of our life and civilization.
[ 58 ] Only the teacher who has a conscious and clear understanding of how the several subjects and methods of education work upon the growing child, can have the tact to meet every occasion that offers, in the right way. He has to know how to treat the several faculties of the soul—Thinking, Feeling and Willing,—so that their development may react on the etheric body, which in this period between the change of teeth and puberty can attain more and more perfect form under the influences that affect it from without.
[ 59 ] By a right application of the fundamental educational principles, during the first seven years of childhood, the foundation is laid for the development of a strong and healthy Will. For a strong and healthy will must have its support in the well-developed forms of the physical body. Then, from the time of the change of teeth onwards, the etheric body which is now developing must bring to the physical body those forces whereby it can make its forms firm and inwardly complete. Whatever makes the strongest impression on the etheric body, works also most powerfully towards the consolidation of the physical body. The strongest of all the impulses that can work on the etheric body, come from the feelings and thoughts by which man divines and experiences in consciousness his relation to the Everlasting Powers. That is to say, they are those that come from religious experience. Never will a man's will, nor in consequence his character, develop healthily, if he is not able in this period of childhood to receive religious impulses deep into his soul. How a man feels his place and part in the universal Whole,—this will find expression in the unity of his life of will. If he does not feel himself linked by strong bonds to a Divine-spiritual, his will and character must needs remain uncertain, divided and unsound.
[ 60 ] The world of Feeling is developed in the right way through the parables and pictures we have spoken of, and especially through the pictures of great men and women, taken from History and other sources, which we bring before the children. A correspondingly deep study of the secrets and beauties of Nature is also important for the right formation of the world of feeling. Last but not least, there is the cultivation of the sense of beauty and the awakening of the artistic feeling. The musical element must bring to the etheric body that rhythm which will then enable it to sense in all things the rhythm otherwise concealed. A child who is denied the blessing of having his musical sense cultivated during these years, will be the poorer for it the whole of his later life. If this sense were entirely lacking in him, whole aspects of the world's existence would of necessity remain hidden from him. Nor are the other arts to be neglected. The awakening of the feeling for architectural forms, for moulding and sculpture, for lines and for design, for colour harmonies—none of these should be left out of the plan of education. However simple life has to be under certain circumstances, the objection can never hold that the circumstances do not allow of anything being done in this direction. Much can be done with the simplest means, if only the teacher himself has the right artistic feeling. Joy and happiness in living, a love of all existence, a power and energy for work—such are among the lifelong results of a right cultivation of the feeling for beauty and for art. The relationship of man to man, how noble, how beautiful it becomes under this influence! Again, the moral sense, which is also being formed in the child during these years through the pictures of life that are placed before him, through the authorities to whom he looks up,—this moral sense becomes assured, if the child out of his own sense of beauty feels the good to be at the same time beautiful, the bad to be at the same time ugly.
[ 61 ] Thought in its proper form, as an inner life lived in abstract concepts, must remain still in the background during this period of childhood. It must develop as it were of itself, uninfluenced from without, while life and the secrets of nature are being unfolded in parable and picture. Thus between the seventh year and puberty, thought must be growing, the faculty of judgement ripening, in among the other experiences of the soul; so that after puberty is reached, the youth may become able to form quite independently his own opinions on the things of life and knowledge. The less the direct influence on the development of judgement in earlier years, and the more a good indirect influence is brought to bear through the development of the other faculties of soul, the better it is for the whole of later life.
[ 62 ] The spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy affords the true foundations, not only for spiritual and mental education, but for physical. This may be illustrated by reference to children's games and gymnastic exercises. Just as love and joy should permeate the surroundings of the child in the earliest years of life, so through physical exercises the growing etheric body should experience an inner feeling of its own growth, of its ever increasing strength. Gymnastic exercises, for instance, should be of such a nature that each movement, each step, gives rise to the feeling within the child: ‘I feel growing strength in me.’ This feeling must take possession of the child as a healthy sense of inner happiness and ease. To think out gymnastic exercises from this point of view requires more than an intellectual knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. It requires an intimate intuitive knowledge of the connection of the sense of happiness and ease with the positions and movements of the human body—a knowledge that is not merely intellectual, but permeated with feeling. Whoever arranges such exercises must be able to experience in himself how one movement and position of the limbs produces a happy and easy feeling of strength, another, as it were, an inner loss of strength. ... To teach gymnastics and other physical exercises with these things in view, the teacher will require what Anthroposophy alone—and above all, the anthroposophical habit of mind—can give. He need not himself see into the spiritual worlds at once, but he must have the understanding to apply in life only what springs from spiritual knowledge. If the knowledge of Anthroposophy were applied in practical spheres like education, the idle talk that this knowledge has first to be proved would quickly disappear. Whoever applies it correctly, will find that the knowledge of Anthroposophy proves itself in life by making life strong and healthy. He will see it to be true in that it holds good in life and practice, and in this he will find a proof stronger than all the logical and so-called scientific arguments can afford. Spiritual truths are best recognized in their fruits and not by what is called a proof, be this ever so scientific; such proof can indeed hardly be more than logical skirmishing.
[ 63 ] With the age of puberty the astral body is first born. Henceforth the astral body in its development is open to the outside world. Only now, therefore, can we approach the child from without with all that opens up the world of abstract ideas, the faculty of judgement and independent thought. It has already been pointed out, how up to this time these faculties of soul should be developing—free from outer influence—within the environment provided by the education proper to the earlier years, even as the eyes and ears develop, free from outer influence, within the organism of the mother. With puberty the time has arrived when the human being is ripe for the formation of his own judgements about the things he has already learned. Nothing more harmful can be done to a child than to awaken too early his independent judgement. Man is not in a position to judge until he has collected in his inner life material for judgement and comparison. If he forms his own conclusions before doing so, his conclusions will lack foundation. Educational mistakes of this kind are the cause of all narrow one-sidedness in life, all barren creeds that take their stand on a few scraps of knowledge and are ready on this basis to condemn ideas experienced and proved by man often through long ages.
In order to be ripe for thought, one must have learned to be full of respect for what others have thought. There is no healthy thought which has not been preceded by a healthy feeling for the truth, a feeling for the truth supported by faith in authorities accepted naturally. Were this principle observed in education, there would no longer be so many people, who, imagining too soon that they are ripe for judgement, spoil their own power to receive openly and without bias the all-round impressions of life. Every judgement that is not built on a sufficient foundation of gathered knowledge and experience of soul throws a stumbling-block in the way of him who forms it. For having once pronounced a judgement concerning a matter, we are ever after influenced by this judgement. We no longer receive a new experience as we should have done, had we not already formed a judgement connected with it. The thought must take living hold in the child's mind, that he has first to learn and then to judge. What the intellect has to say concerning any matter, should only be said when all the other faculties of the soul have spoken. Before that time the intellect has only an intermediary part to play: its business is to grasp what takes place and is experienced in feeling, to receive it exactly as it is, not letting the unripe judgement come in at once and take possession. For this reason, up to the age of puberty the child should be spared all theories about things; the main consideration is that he should simply meet the experiences of life, receiving them into his soul. Certainly he can be told what different men have thought about this and that, but one must avoid his associating himself through a too early exercise of judgement with the one view or the other. Thus the opinions of men he should also receive with the feeling power of the soul. He should be able, without jumping to a decision or taking sides with this or that person, to listen to all, saying to himself: ‘This man said this, and that man that.’ The cultivation of such a mind in a boy or girl certainly demands the exercise of great tact from teachers and educators; but tact is just what anthroposophical thought can give.
[ 64 ] All we have been able to do is to unfold a few aspects of education in the light of Anthroposophy. And this alone was our intention,—to indicate how great a task the anthroposophical spiritual impulse must fulfil in education for the culture of our time. Its power to fulfil the task will depend on the spread of an understanding for this way of thought in ever wider and wider circles. For this to come about, two things are, however, necessary. The first is that people should relinquish their prejudices against Anthroposophy. Whoever honestly pursues it, will soon see that it is not the fantastic nonsense many to-day hold it to be. We are not making any reproach against those who hold this opinion; for all that the culture of our time offers must tend on a first acquaintance to make one regard the followers of Anthroposophy as fantastic dreamers. On a superficial consideration no other judgement can be reached, for in the light of it Anthroposophy, with its claim to be a spiritual Science, will seem in direct contradiction to all that modern culture gives to man as the foundation of a healthy view of life. Only a deeper consideration will discover that the views of the present day are in themselves deeply contradictory and will remain so, as long as they are without the anthroposophical foundation. Indeed, of their very nature they call out for such foundation and cannot in the long run be without it.
The second thing that is needed concerns the healthy cultivation of Anthroposophy itself. Only when it is perceived, in anthroposophical circles everywhere, that the point is not simply to theorize about the teachings, but to let them bear fruit in the most far-reaching way in all the relationships of life,—only then will life itself open up to Anthroposophy with sympathy and understanding. Otherwise people will continue to regard it as a variety of religious sectarianism for a few cranks and enthusiasts. If, however, it performs positive and useful spiritual work, the Anthroposophical Movement cannot in the long run be denied intelligent recognition.
[ 1 ] Das gegenwärtige Leben stellt mancherlei in Frage, was der Mensch von seinen Vorfahren ererbt hat. Deshalb zeitigt es so viele « Zeitfragen » und « Zeitforderungen ». Was für «Fragen » durchschwirren doch heute die Welt: die soziale Frage, die Frauenfrage, die Erziehungs- und Schulfragen, die Rechtsfragen, die Gesundheitsfragen usw. usw. Mit den mannigfaltigsten Mitteln sucht man diesen Fragen beizukommen. Die Zahl derer, welche mit diesem oder jenem Rezepte auftauchen, um diese oder jene Frage zu «lösen», oder wenigstens etwas zu ihrer Lösung beizutragen, ist eine unermeßlich große. Und alle möglichen Schattierungen in der menschlichen Stimmung machen sich dabei geltend: der Radikalismus, der sich revolutionär gebärdet, die gemäßigte Stimmung, welche, mit Achtung des Bestehenden, ein Neues daraus entwickeln möchte, und der Konservativismus, der sogleich in Aufregung gerät, wenn irgend etwas von alten Einrichtungen und Traditionen angetastet wird. Und neben diesen Hauptstimmungen treten alle möglichen Zwischenstufen auf.
[ 2 ] Wer einen tieferen Blick ins Leben zu werfen vermag, der wird sich allen diesen Erscheinungen gegenüber Eines Gefühls nicht erwehren können. Es besteht darinnen, daß unsere Zeit den Anforderungen, welche an die Menschen gestellt werden, vielfach mit unzulänglichen Mitteln gegenübertritt. Viele möchten das Leben reformieren, ohne es in seinen Grundlagen wirklich zu kennen. Wer Vorschläge machen will, wie es in der Zukunft geschehen soll, der darf sich nicht damit begnügen, das Leben nur an seiner Oberfläche kennenzulernen. Er muß es in seinen Tiefen erforschen.
[ 3 ] Das ganze Leben ist wie eine Pflanze, welche nicht nur das enthält, was sie dem Auge darbietet, sondern auch noch einen Zukunftszustand in ihren verborgenen Tiefen birgt. Wer eine Pflanze vor sich hat, die erst Blätter trägt, der weiß ganz gut, daß nach einiger Zeit an dem blättertragenden Stamm auch Blüten und Früchte sein werden. Und im Verborgenen enthält schon jetzt diese Pflanze die Anlagen zu diesen Blüten und Früchten. Wie aber soll jemand sagen können, wie diese Organe aussehen werden, der nur das an der Pflanze erforschen wollte, was sie gegenwärtig dem Auge darbietet. Nur der kann es, der sich mit dem Wesen der Pflanze bekannt gemacht hat.
[ 4 ] Auch das ganze menschliche Leben enthält die Anlagen seiner Zukunft in sich. Um aber über diese Zukunft etwas sagen zu können, muß man in die verborgene Natur des Menschen eindringen. Unsere Zeit hat aber dazu keine rechte Neigung. Sie beschäftigt sich mit dem, was an der Oberfläche erscheint und glaubt ins Unsichere zu kommen, wenn sie zu demjenigen vordringen soll, das sich der äußeren Beobachtung entzieht. Bei der Pflanze ist die Sache allerdings wesentlich einfacher. Der Mensch weiß, daß ihresgleichen so und so oft Blüten und Früchte getragen haben. Das Menschenleben ist nur einmal vorhanden; und die Blüten, welche es in der Zukunft tragen soll, waren noch nicht da. Dessenungeachtet sind sie im Menschen ebenso als Anlagen vorhanden wie die Blüten in einer gegenwärtig erst blättertragenden Pflanze.
[ 5 ] Und es gibt eine Möglichkeit, über diese Zukunft etwas zu sagen, wenn man unter die Oberfläche der Menschennatur bis zu ihrem Wesen vordringt. Die verschiedenen Reformideen der Gegenwart können erst wirklich fruchtbar und praktisch werden, wenn sie aus einer solchen tieferen Erforschung des Menschenlebens heraus gemacht werden.
[ 6 ] Die Aufgabe, eine das Wesen des Menschenlebens umfassende praktische Weltauffassung zu geben, muß ihrer ganzen Anlage nach die Geisteswissenschaft haben. Ob das, was heute vielfach so genannt wird, berechtigt ist, einen solchen Anspruch zu erheben, darauf kommt es nicht an. Es handelt sich vielmehr um das Wesen der Geisteswissenschaft, und darum, was sie diesem Wesen nach sein kann. Nicht eine graue Theorie soll sie sein, welche der bloßen Erkenntnisneugierde entgegenkommt, und auch nicht ein Mittel für einige Menschen, welche aus Selbstsucht für sich eine höhere Stufe der Entwickelung haben möchten. Sie kann sein ein Mitarbeiter an den wichtigsten Aufgaben der gegenwärtigen Menschheit, an der Entwickelung zu deren Wohlfahrt.1Dieser Satz sollte nicht so gedacht werden, als ob die Geisteswissenschaft nur mit den umfassenden Fragen des Lebens zu tun haben wollte. So wahr es ist, daß sie im Sinne des oben Ausgeführten berufen ist, die Grundlagen zu liefern für Lösungsversuche dieser Fragen, so wahr ist es auch, daß sie für jeden einzelnen, an welcher Stelle im Leben er stehen mag, die Quelle sein kann, aus der er Antwort auf die alltäglichsten Lebensfragen, Trost, Kraft, Zuversicht im Dasein und Arbeiten zu schöpfen vermag. Sie kann sein die Stütze für die großen Lebensrätsel, aber ebenso für die unmittelbarsten Bedürfnisse des Augenblicks, auch in den-scheinbar - untergeordnetsten Lagen des Tageslebens.
[ 7 ] Sie wird allerdings damit rechnen müssen, mancherlei Anfechtungen und Zweifel zu erfahren, wenn sie sich gerade eine solche Mission zuerkennt. Radikale und Gemäßigte, sowie Konservative auf allen Gebieten des Lebens werden ihr solche Zweifel entgegenbringen müssen. Denn sie wird es zunächst keiner Partei recht machen können, weil ihre Voraussetzungen weit jenseits alles Parteigetriebes liegen.
[ 8 ] Diese Voraussetzungen wurzeln nämlich einzig und allein in der wahren Lebenserkenntnis. Wer das Leben erkennt, der wird nur aus dem Leben selbst heraus sich seine Aufgaben stellen können. Er wird keine Willkürprogramme aufstellen; denn er weiß, daß in der Zukunft keine anderen Grundgesetze des Lebens herrschen werden als in der Gegenwart. Der Geistesforschung wird daher notwendigerweise die Achtung vor dem Bestehenden zukommen. Mag sie in demselben noch so viel Verbesserungsbedürftiges finden: sie wird nicht ermangeln, in diesem Bestehenden selbst die Keime zur Zukunft zu sehen. Aber sie weiß auch, daß in allem Werden ein Wachsen und eine Entwickelung ist. Deshalb werden ihr in dem Gegenwärtigen die Keime zu einer Umwandlung, zu einem Wachstum erscheinen. Sie erfindet keine Programme, sie liest sie ab aus dem, was ist. Aber, was sie so liest, wird in gewissem Sinne selbst Programm, denn es trägt eben die Natur der Entwickelung in sich.
[ 9 ] Gerade deshalb muß die geisteswissenschaftliche Vertiefung in das Wesen des Menschen die fruchtbarsten und am meisten praktischen Mittel liefern bei der Lösung der wichtigsten Lebensfragen der Gegenwart.
[ 10 ] Hier soll dies für eine solche Frage gezeigt werden, für die Erziehungsfrage. Nicht Forderungen und Programme sollen aufgestellt, sondern die Kindesnatur soll einfach beschrieben werden. Aus dem Wesen des werdenden Menschen heraus werden sich wie von selbst die Gesichtspunkte für die Erziehung ergeben.
[ 11 ] Will man dieses Wesen des werdenden Menschen erkennen, so muß man ausgehen von einer Betrachtung der verborgenen Natur des Menschen überhaupt.
[ 12 ] Das, was die Sinnesbeobachtung am Menschen kennenlernt, und was die materialistische Lebensauffassung als das Einzige im Wesen des Menschen gelten lassen will, ist für die geistige Erforschung nur ein Teil, ein Glied der Menschennatur, nämlich sein physischer Leib. Dieser physische Leib unterliegt denselben Gesetzen des physischen Lebens, er setzt sich aus denselben Stoffen und Kräften zusammen wie die ganze übrige sogenannte leblose Welt. Die Geisteswissenschaft sagt daher: der Mensch habe diesen physischen Leib mit dem ganzen Mineralreich gemeinsam. Und sie bezeichnet am Menschen nur als physischen Leib, was dieselben Stoffe nach denselben Gesetzen zur Mischung, Verbindung, Gestaltung und Auflösung bringt, die auch in der mineralischen Welt als Stoffe nach eben diesen Gesetzen wirken.
[ 13 ] Über diesen physischen Leib hinaus erkennt nun die Theosophie noch eine zweite Wesenheit im Menschen an: den Lebensleib oder Ätherleib. Der Physiker möge sich an der Bezeichnung « Ätherleib » nicht stoßen. « Äther» bezeichnet hier etwas anderes, als den hypothetischen Äther der Physik. Man nehme die Sache einfach als Bezeichnung für das hin, was indemFolgenden beschrieben wird.
[ 14 ] Es ist vor einiger Zeit als ein im höchsten Sinne unwissenschaftliches Beginnen aufgefaßt worden, von einem solchen « Ätherleib » zu sprechen. Am Ende des achtzehnten und in der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts war es allerdings nicht «unwissenschaftlich». Da sagte man sich, die Stoffe und Kräfte, die in einem Mineral wirken, können aus sich selbst heraus nicht sich zum Lebewesen gestalten. Diesem muß noch eine besondere «Kraft» innewohnen, die man als «Lebenskraft» bezeichnete. Man stellte sich etwa vor, daß in einer Pflanze, in dem Tier, im Menschenleibe eine solche Kraft wirke und die Lebenserscheinungen hervorbringe, wie die magnetische Kraft in dem Magneten die Anziehung bewirkt. In der nachfolgenden Zeit des Materialismus ist eine solche Vorstellung beseitigt worden. Man sagte da, ein lebendiges Wesen baue sich in derselben Art auf wie ein sogenanntes lebloses; es herrschen im Organismus keine anderen Kräfte als im Mineral; sie wirken nur komplizierter; sie bauen ein zusammengesetzteres Gebilde auf. Gegenwärtig halten nur noch die starrsten Materialisten an dieser Ableugnung der «Lebenskraft» fest. Einer Reihe von Naturdenkern haben die Tatsachen gelehrt, daß man doch so etwas annehmen müsse wie Lebenskraft oder Lebensprinzip.
[ 15 ] So kommt auf diese Art die neuere Wissenschaft in einem gewissen Sinne dem nahe, was die Geisteswissenschaft in bezug auf den Lebensleib sagt. Doch ist ein erheblicher Unterschied zwischen beiden. Die gegenwärtige Wissenschaft kommt aus den Tatsachen der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung durch Verstandesetwägungen zu der Annahme einer Art Lebenskraft. Dies ist aber nicht der Weg einer wirklichen Erforschung, von welcher die Geisteswissenschaft ausgeht, und aus deren Ergebnissen die letztere ihre Mitteilungen macht. — Es kann nicht oft genug darauf hingewiesen werden, wie sich in diesem Punkte die Geisteswissenschaft unterscheidet von der landläufigen Wissenschaft der Gegenwart. Diese betrachtet die Sinneserfahrung als die Grundlage allen Wissens, und was nicht auf dieser Grundlage aufgebaut werden kann, hält sie nicht für wißbar. Sie zieht aus den Eindrücken der Sinne Schlüsse und Folgerungen. Was aber darüber hinausgeht, das lehnt sie ab und sagt davon, es liege jenseits der Grenzen des menschlichen Erkennens. Für die Geisteswissenschaft gleicht eine solche Ansicht derjenigen eines Blinden, der nur dasjenige gelten lassen will, was man tasten kann, und was aus dem Getasteten durch Schlußfolgerung sich ergibt, und der die Aussagen der Sehenden als jenseits des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögens ablehnt. Denn die Geisteswissenschaft zeigt, daß der Mensch entwickelungsfähig ist, daß er sich neue Welten durch Entfaltung neuer Organe erobern kann. Wie Farben und Licht um den Blinden sind, und dieser sie nur nicht wahrnehmen kann, weil er keine Organe dazu hat, so erklärt die Geisteswissenschaft: es gibt viele Welten um den Menschen herum, und dieser kann sie wahrnehmen, wenn er nur die notwendigen Organe dazu ausbildet. Wie der Blinde in eine neue Welt blickt, sobald er operiert ist, so kann der Mensch durch Entfaltung höherer Organe noch ganz andere Welten erkennen als diejenigen sind, die ihm zunächst die gewöhnlichen Sinne wahrnehmen lassen. Ob nun ein leiblich Blinder operierbar ist oder nicht, das hängt von der Beschaffenheit der Organe ab; jene höheren Organe aber, durch welche der Mensch in übergeordnete Welten eindringen kann, sind im Keime bei jedem Menschen vorhanden. Jeder kann sie entwickeln, der Geduld, Ausdauer und Energie dazu hat, jene Methoden auf sich anzuwenden, welche in den Aufsätzen: «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» beschrieben worden sind.2Man findet diese Aufsätze in dem Buche: «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse höherer Welten?» So spricht die Geisteswissenschaft überhaupt nicht: der Mensch habe durch seine Organisation Grenzen der Erkenntnis; sondern sie sagt: es gibt für den Menschen diejenigen Welten, für die er Wahrnehmungsorgane hat. Sie spricht nur von den Mitteln, die jeweiligen Grenzen zu erweitern. — So stellt sie sich auch zu der Erforschung des Lebens- oder Ätherleibes und alles dessen, was in dem folgenden noch als die höheren Glieder der Menschennatur angegeben wird. Sie gibt zu, daß der Erforschung der leiblichen Sinne nur der physische Leib zugänglich sein kann, und daß man von ihrem Gesichtspunkte aus höchstens durch Schlußfolgerungen auf einen höheren verfallen kann. Aber sie teilt mit, wie man sich eine Welt erschließen kann, in welcher diese höheren Glieder der menschlichen Natur vor dem Beobachter in ähnlicher Art auftauchen, wie vor dem operierten Blindgeborenen die Farben und das Licht der Gegenstände. Für diejenigen, welche ihre höheren Wahrnehmungsorgane entwickelt haben, ist der Äther- oder Lebensleib ein Gegenstand der Beobachtung, nicht der Verstandestätigkeit und Schlußfolgerung. Diesen Äther- oder Lebensleib hat der Mensch mit Pflanzen und Tieren gemeinsam. Er bewirkt, daß die Stoffe und Kräfte des physischen Leibes sich zu den Erscheinungen des Wachstums, der Fortpflanzung, der inneren Bewegung der Säfte usw. gestalten. Er ist also der Erbauer und Bildner des physischen Leibes, dessen Bewohner und Architekt. Man kann daher auch den physischen Leib ein Abbild oder einen Ausdruck dieses Lebensleibes nennen. In bezug auf Form und Größe sind beide beim Menschen annähernd, doch keineswegs ganz gleich. Bei den Tieren und noch mehr bei den Pflanzen unterscheidet sich aber der Ätherleib in bezug auf die Gestalt und Ausdehnung erheblich von dem physischen Leibe.
[ 16 ] Das dritte Glied der menschlichen Wesenheit ist der sogenannte Empfindungs- oder Astralleib. Er ist der Träger von Schmerz und Lust, von Trieb, Begierde und Leidenschaft usw. Alles dies hat ein Wesen nicht, welches bloß aus physischem Leib und Ätherleib besteht. Man kann alles das Genannte zusammenfassen unter dem Ausdrucke: Empfindung. Die Pflanze hat nicht Empfindung. Wenn in unserer Zeit mancher Gelehrte aus der Tatsache, daß manche Pflanzen auf Reize mit Bewegungen oder in anderer Art antworten, schließt: die Pflanzen haben ein gewisses Empfindungsvermögen, so zeigt er damit bloß, daß er das Wesen der Empfindung nicht kennt. Es kommt dabei nämlich nicht darauf an, daß das betreffende Wesen eine Antwort gibt auf einen äußeren Reiz, sondern vielmehr darauf, daß der Reiz sich durch einen inneren Vorgang, wie Lust, oder Schmerz, Trieb, Begierde usw. abspiegelt. Hielte man dies nicht fest, so wäre man auch berechtigt, zu sagen, daß blaues Lakmuspapier eine Empfindung habe von gewissen Substanzen, weil es sich beim Berühren mit denselben rötet.3Man muß auf das hier Gesagte mit besonderer Deutlichkeit hinweisen, weil gerade in unserer Zeit eine große Unklarheit in dieser Richtung besteht. Viele verwischen gegenwärtig den Unterschied zwischen Pflanze und Empfindungswesen, weil sie sich nicht klar sind über den eigentlichen Charakter der Empfindung. Wenn ein Wesen (oder Ding) auf einen Eindruck, der auf dasselbe von außen gemacht wird, in irgendeiner Weise eine Wirkung äußert, so ist man noch nicht berechtigt, zu sagen, es empfindet diesen Eindruck. Das kann man nur sagen, wenn es in sich den Eindruck erlebt, wenn also eine Art innerer Spiegelung des äußeren Reizes vorhanden ist. Die großen Fortschritte unserer Naturwissenschaft, die der Geistesforscher gewiß aufs höchste bewundert, haben eine Unklarheit in bezug auf höhere Begriffe gebracht. Gewisse Biologen wissen nicht, was Empfindung ist; deshalb schreiben sie eine solche auch empfindungslosen Wesen zu. Was sie — diese Biologen - unter Empfindung verstehen, das dürfen sie auch den empfindungslosen Wesen zuschreiben. Aber etwas ganz anderes ist, was die Geisteswissenschaft unter Empfindung verstehen muß.
[ 17 ] Den Empfindungsleib hat der Mensch nur noch mit der Tierwelt gemeinsam. Er ist also der Träger des Empfindungslebens.
[ 18 ] Man darf nicht in den Fehler gewisser theosophischer Kreise verfallen, und sich den Äther- und Empfindungsleib einfach aus feineren Stoffen bestehend denken, als sie im physischen Leib vorhanden sind. Das hieße diese höheren Glieder der menschlichen Natur vermaterialisieren. Der Ätherleib ist eine Kraftgestalt; er besteht aus wirkenden Kräften, nicht aber aus Stoff; und der Astral- oder Empfindungsleib ist eine Gestalt aus in sich beweglichen, farbigen, leuchtenden Bildern.4Man muß unterscheiden zwischen dem Erleben des Empfindungsleibes in sich und dem Wahrnehmen desselben durch den geschulten Hellseher. Das, was dem erschlossenen geistigen Auge des letzteren vorliegt, ist mit obigem gemeint.
[ 19 ] Der Empfindungsleib ist in Form und Größe von dem physischen Leibe abweichend. Er zeigt beim Menschen die Gestalt eines länglichen Eies, in dem der physische und der Ätherleib eingebettet sind. Er ragt an allen Seiten über die beiden als eine Lichtbildgestalt hervor.
[ 20 ] Nun hat der Mensch ein viertes Glied seiner Wesenheit, das er nicht mit anderen Erdenwesen teilt. Dieses ist der Träger des menschlichen «Ich». Das Wörtchen «Ich», wie es zum Beispiel in der deutschen Sprache angewendet wird, ist ein Name, der sich von allen anderen Namen unterscheidet. Wer über die Natur dieses Namens in zutreffender Weise nachdenkt, der eröffnet sich damit zugleich den Zugang zur Erkenntnis der menschlichen Natur. Jeden anderen Namen können alle Menschen in der gleichen Art auf das ihm entsprechende Ding anwenden. Den Tisch kann jeder «Tisch», den Stuhl ein jeder «Stuhl» nennen. Bei dem Namen «Ich» ist dies nicht der Fall. Es kann ihn keiner anwenden zur Bezeichnung eines anderen; jeder kann nur sich selbst «Ich» nennen. Niemals kann der Name «Ich» an mein Ohr klingen als Bezeichnung für mich. Indem der Mensch sich als «Ich» bezeichnet, muß er in sich selbst sich benennen. Ein Wesen, das zu sich «Ich » sagen kann, ist eine Welt für sich. Diejenigen Religionen, welche auf Geisteswissenschaft gebaut sind, haben das immer empfunden. Sie haben daher gesagt: Mit dem «Ich» beginne der «Gott», der sich bei niedrigeren Wesen nur von außen in den Erscheinungen der Umgebung offenbart, im Innern zu sprechen. Der Träger der hier geschilderten Fähigkeit ist nun der «Ich-Leib», das vierte Glied der menschlichen Wesenheit.5Man stoße sich nicht an dem Ausdruck «Ich-Leib». Es ist dabei natürlich nichts Grobmaterielles gemeint. Es ist aber nur möglich, in der Geisteswissenschaft die Worte der gewöhnlichen Sprache zu verwenden. Und da diese für Materielles angewendet werden, so muß man bei Anwendung in der Geisteswissenschaft sie selbst erst ins Geistige übersetzen.
[ 21 ] Dieser «Ich-Leib» ist der Träger der höheren Menschenseele. Durch ihn ist der Mensch die Krone der Erdenschöpfung. Das «Ich » ist aber in dem gegenwärtigen Menschen keineswegs eine einfache Wesenheit. Man kann seine Natur erkennen, wenn man die Menschen verschiedener Entwickelungsstufen miteinander vergleicht. Man blicke auf den ungebildeten Wilden und den europäischen Durchschnittsmenschen, und vergleiche diesen wieder mit einem hohen Idealisten. Sie haben alle die Fähigkeit, zu sich «Ich» zu sagen; der «Ich-Leib» ist bei allen vorhanden. Der ungebildete Wilde folgt aber seinen Leidenschaften, Trieben und Begierden mit diesem «Ich» fast wie das Tier. Der höher Entwickelte sagt sich gegenüber gewissen Neigungen und Lüsten: diesen darfst du folgen, andere zügelt er und unterdrückt sie. Der Idealist hat zu den ursprünglichen Neigungen und Leidenschaften höhere hinzugebildet. Dies ist alles dadurch geschehen, daß das «Ich » an den andern Gliedern der menschlichen Wesenheit gearbeitet hat. Ja darinnen liegt gerade die Aufgabe des «Ich», daß es die anderen Glieder von sich aus veredelt und läutert.
[ 22 ] So sind bei demjenigen Menschen, der hinausgelangt ist über den Zustand, in den ihn die äußere Welt versetzt hat, die niederen Glieder unter dem Einfluß des Ich mehr oder weniger verändert worden. In dem Zustande, in dem sich der Mensch über das Tier eben erhebt, indem sein «Ich» aufblitzt, gleicht er in bezug auf die niederen Glieder noch dem Tiere. Sein Äther- oder Lebensleib ist lediglich der Träger der lebendigen Bildungskräfte, des Wachstums und der Fortpflanzung. Sein Empfindungsleib drückt nur solche Triebe, Begierden und Leidenschaften aus, welche durch die äußere Natur angeregt werden. Indem der Mensch von dieser Bildungsstufe aus durch die aufeinanderfolgenden Leben oder Verkörperungen zu immer höherer Entwickelung sich hindurchringt, arbeitet sein Ich die anderen Glieder um. So wird der Empfindungsleib der Träger geläuterter Lust- und Unlustgefühle, verfeinerter Wünsche und Begierden. Und auch der Äther- oder Lebensleib gestaltet sich um. Er wird der Träger der Gewohnheiten, der bleibenden Neigungen, des Temperamentes und des Gedächtnisses. Ein Mensch, dessen Ich noch nicht gearbeitet hat an seinem Lebensleib, hat keine Erinnerung an die Erlebnisse, die er macht. Er lebt sich so aus, wie es die Natur ihm eingepflanzt hat.
[ 23 ] Die ganze Kulturentwickelung drückt sich für den Menschen in solcher Arbeit des Ich an seinen untergeordneten Gliedern aus. Diese Arbeit geht bis in den physischen Leib hinunter. Unter dem Einflusse des Ich ändert sich die Physiognomie, ändern sich die Gesten und Bewegungen, das ganze Aussehen des physischen Leibes.
[ 24 ] Man kann auch unterscheiden, wie die verschiedenen Kultur- und Bildungsmittel auf die einzelnen Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit verschieden wirken. Die gewöhnlichen Kulturfaktoren wirken auf den Empfindungsleib; sie bringen diesem andere Arten von Lust und Unlust, von Trieben usw. bei, als er vom Ursprunge aus hatte. Die Versenkung in die Werke der Kunst wirkt auf den Ätherleib. Indem der Mensch durch das Kunstwerk die Ahnung eines Höheren, Edleren erhält als das ist, was die Sinnesumgebung darbietet, gestaltet er seinen Lebensleib um. Ein mächtiges Mittel zur Läuterung und Veredelung des Ätherleibes ist die Religion. Die religiösen Impulse haben dadurch ihre großartige Mission in der Menschheitsentwickelung.
[ 25 ] Das, was man Gewissen nennt, ist nichts anderes als das Ergebnis der Arbeit des Ich an dem Lebensleib durch eine Reihe von Verkörperungen hindurch. Wenn der Mensch einsieht, daß er dies oder jenes nicht tun soll, und wenn durch diese Einsicht ein so starker Eindruck auf ihn gemacht wird, daß sich dieser bis in seinen Ätherleib fortpflanzt, so entsteht eben dasGewissen.
[ 26 ] Nun kann diese Arbeit des «Ich» an den untergeordneten Gliedern entweder eine solche sein, die mehr dem ganzen. Menschengeschlechte eigen ist, oder sie kann ganz individuell eine Leistung des einzelnen Ich an sich selbst sein. An der ersteren Umwandlung des Menschen arbeitet gewissermaßen die ganze menschliche Gattung mit; die letztere muß auf der eigensten Tätigkeit des Ich beruhen. Wenn nun das «Ich» so stark wird, daß es nur durch die eigenste Kraft den Empfindungsleib umarbeitet, so nennt man dasjenige, was das Ich auf diese Art aus diesem Empfindungs- oder Astralleibe macht: das Geistselbst (oder mit einem morgenländischen Ausdrucke: Manas). Diese Umgestaltung beruht im wesentlichen auf einem Lernen, auf einem Bereichern des Innern mit höheren Ideen und Anschauungen. — Es kann aber das Ich noch zu einer höheren ureigensten Arbeit an der eigenen Wesenheit des Menschen kommen. Dies geschieht, wenn nicht bloß der Astralleib bereichert, sondern der Äther- oder Lebensleib umgestaltet wird. Der Mensch lernt so manches im Leben; und wenn er von irgendeinem Punkte aus auf dieses Leben zurückblickt, so kann er sich sagen: ich habe vieles gelernt; aber er wird in einem viel geringeren Maße von einer Umwandlung von’Temperament, Charakter, von einem Besser- oder Schlechterwerden des Gedächtnisses während des Lebens sprechen können. Das Lernen betrifft den Astralleib; die letzteren Umwandlungen dagegen betreffen den Äther- oder Lebensleib. Es ist daher kein unzutreffendes Bild, wenn man die Veränderung des Astralleibes im Leben mit dem Gang des Minutenzeigers der Uhr, die Umwandlung des Lebensleibes mit demjenigen des Stundenzeigers vergleicht.
[ 27 ] Wenn der Mensch in die höhere oder sogenannte Geheimschulung eintritt, so kommt es vor allem darauf an, daß er diese letztere Umwandlung aus der ureigensten Macht des Ich heraus vornimmt. Er muß ganz bewußt und individuell an der Verwandlung von Gewohnheiten, Temperament, Charakter, Gedächtnis usw. arbeiten. Soviel er auf diese Art in den Lebensleib hineinarbeitet, so viel verwandelt er diesen, im Sinne der geisteswissenschaftlichen Ausdrucksweise, in Lebensgeist (oder, wie der morgenländische Ausdruck lautet, in Budhi).
[ 28 ] Auf einer noch höheren Stufe gelangt der Mensch dazu, Kräfte zu erlangen, durch die er auf seinen physischen Leib umgestaltend wirken kann (zum Beispiel Blutkreislauf, Puls verwandeln). Soviel auf diese Art vom physischen Leib umgestaltet ist, wird Geistmensch (morgenländisch Atma) genannt.
[ 29 ] Die Umwandlungen, welche der Mensch an seinen niederen Gliedern mehr im Sinne der ganzen menschlichen Gattung, oder eines Teiles derselben, zum Beispiel eines Volkes, Stammes, einer Familie, vollführt, führen folgende Namen in der Geisteswissenschaft. Es heißt der vom Ich aus umgewandelte Astral- oder Empfindungsleib die Empfindungsseele, der umgewandelte Ätherleib wird Verstandesseele, und der umgewandelte physische Leib Bewußtseinsseele genannt. Man darf sich aber nicht etwa vorstellen, daß die Umwandlung dieser drei Glieder nacheinander erfolge. Sie geschieht an allen drei Leibern vom Aufblitzen des Ich an gleichzeitig. Ja, die Arbeit des Ich wird dem Menschen überhaupt nicht früher deutlich wahrnehmbar, bis ein Teil der Bewußtseinsseele ausgestaltetist.
[ 30 ] Man sieht aus dem Vorhergehenden, daß man beim Menschen von vier Gliedern seiner Wesenheit sprechen kann: dem physischen Leib, dem Äther- oder Lebensleib, dem Astral- oder Empfindungsleib und dem Ichleib. - Empfindungsseele, Verstandesseele, Bewußtseinsseele, ja auch die noch höheren Glieder der menschlichen Natur: Geistselbst, Lebensgeist, Geistesmensch treten als Umwandlungsprodukte an diesen vier Gliedern auf. Wenn von den Trägern der Eigenschaften des Menschen die Rede ist, so kommen in der Tat nur jene vier Glieder in Betracht.
[ 31 ] Als Erzieher arbeitet man an diesen vier Gliedern der menschlichen Wesenheit. Will man in der rechten Art arbeiten, so muß man die Natur dieser Teile des Menschen erforschen. Nun darf man sich keineswegs vorstellen, daß diese Teile sich so am Menschen entwickeln, daß sie in irgendeinem Zeitpunkte seines Lebens, etwa bei seiner Geburt, alle gleichmäßig weit wären. Ihre Entwickelung geschieht vielmehr in den verschiedenen Lebensaltern in einer verschiedenen Art. Und auf der Kenntnis dieser Entwickelungsgesetze der menschlichen Natur beruht die rechte Grundlage der Erziehung und auch des Unterrichtes.
[ 32 ] Vor der physischen Geburt ist der werdende Mensch allseitig von einem fremden physischen Leib umschlossen. Er tritt nicht selbständig mit der physischen Außenwelt in Berührung. Der physische Leib der Mutter ist seine Umgebung. Nur dieser Leib kann auf den reifenden Menschen wirken. Die physische Geburt besteht eben darinnen, daß die physische Mutterhülle den Menschen entläßt, und daß dadurch die Umgebung der physischen Welt unmittelbar auf ihn wirken kann, Die Sinne öffnen sich der Außenwelt. Diese erhält damit den Einfluß auf den Menschen, den vorher die physische Mutterhülle gehabt hat.
[ 33 ] Für eine geistige Weltauffassung, wie sie von der Geistesforschung vertreten wird, ist damit wohl der physische Leib geboren, noch nicht aber der Äther- oder Lebensleib. Wie der Mensch bis zu seinem Geburtszeitpunkte von einer physischen Mutterhülle, so ist er bis zur Zeit des Zahnwechsels, also etwa bis zum siebenten Jahre von einer Ätherhülle und einer Astralhülle umgeben. Erst während des Zahnwechsels entläßt die Ätherhülle den Ätherleib. Dann bleibt noch eine Astralhülle bis zum Eintritt der Geschlechtsreife.6Man würde das Obige nicht in seiner vollen Deutlichkeit verstehen, wenn man den Einwand machen wollte, daß doch das Kind auch vor dem Zahnwechsel Gedächtnis usw. habe und vor der Geschlechtsreife die Fähigkeiten, die an den Astralleib gebunden sind. Man muß sich da doch klarmachen, daß sowohl der Ätherleib wie der Astralleib vom Anfange an vorhanden sind, nur eben unter der oben besprochenen schützenden Hülle. Gerade diese schützende Hülle befähigt zum Beispiel den Ätherleib, bis zum Zahnwechsel die Eigenschaften des Gedächtnisses ganz besonders zum Vorschein zu bringen. Aber es sind ja doch auch die physischen Augen am Kindeskeime schon vorhanden unter dessen schützender physischer Mutterhülle. Genau in dem Sinne, wie auf diese geschützten Augen nicht das äußere physische Sonnenlicht entwickelnd wirken soll, so nicht die äußere Erziehung auf die Ausbildung des Gedächtnisses vor dem Zahnwechsel. Man wird vielmehr bemerken, wie sich in dieser Zeit das Gedächtnis durch sich selbst frei entfaltet, wenn man ihm Nahrung gibt und noch nicht auf seine Entwickelung durch Äußeres sieht. So ist es auch mit den Eigenschaften, deren Träger der Astralleib ist, vor der Geschlechtsreife. Man muß ihnen Nahrung geben, aber immer im Bewußtsein der obigen Ausführungen, daß der Astralleib unter einer schützenden Hülle liegt. Es ist eben etwas anderes, die im Astralleib schon liegenden Entwickelungskeime vor der Geschlechtsreife zu pflegen und den selbständig gewordenen Astralleib nach der Geschlechtsreife demjenigen in der Außenwelt auszusetzen, was er ohne Hülle verarbeiten kann. Dieser Unterschied ist sicherlich ein subtiler; aber ohne auf ihn einzugehen, kann man das Wesen der Erziehung nicht verstehen. In diesem Zeitpunkt wird auch der Astral- oder Empfindungsleib nach allen Seiten frei, wie es der physische Leib bei der physischen Geburt, der Ätherleib beim Zahnwechsel geworden sind.
[ 34 ] So muß die Geisteswissenschaft von drei Geburten des Menschen reden. Bis zum Zahnwechsel können Eindrücke, die an den Ätherleib kommen sollen, diesen ebenso wenig erreichen, wie das Licht und die Luft der physischen Welt den physischen Leib erreichen können, solange dieser im Schoße der Mutter ruht.
[ 35 ] Bevor der Zahnwechsel eintritt, arbeitet am Menschen nicht der freie Lebensleib. Wie im Leibe der Mutter der physische Leib die Kräfte empfängt, die nicht seine eigenen sind, und innerhalb der schützenden Hülle allmählich die eigenen entwickelt, so ist es mit den Kräften des Wachstums der Fall bis zum Zahnwechsel. Der Ätherleib arbeitet da erst die eigenen Kräfte aus im Verein mit den ererbten fremden. Während dieser Zeit des Freiwerdens des Ätherleibes ist der physische Leib aber schon selbständig. Es arbeitet der sich befreiende Ätherleib das aus, was er dem physischen Leib zu geben hat. Und der Schlußpunkt dieser Arbeit sind die eigenen Zähne des Menschen, die an die Stelle der vererbten treten. Sie sind die dichtesten Einlagerungen in dem physischen Leib, und treten daher in dieser Zeitperiode zuletzt auf.
[ 36 ] Nach diesem Zeitpunkt besorgt das Wachstum der eigene Lebensleib allein. Allein, dieser steht jetzt noch unter demEinflusse eines umhüllten Astralleibes. In dem Augenblicke, wo auch der Astralleib frei wird, schließt der Ätherleib eine Periode ab. Dieser Abschluß drückt sich in der Geschlechtsreife aus. Die Fortpflanzungsorgane werden selbständig, weil nunmehr der freie Astralleib nicht mehr nach innen wirkt, sondern hüllenlos der Außenwelt unmittelbar entgegentritt.
[ 37 ] Wie man nun auf das noch ungeborene Kind nicht die Einflüsse der Außenwelt, als physische, wirken lassen kann, so sollte man auch auf den Ätherleib vor dem Zahnwechsel nicht diejenigen Kräfte wirken lassen, welche ihm dasselbe sind, wie dem physischen Leibe die Eindrücke der physischen Umgebung. Und auf den Astralleib sollte man die entsprechenden Einflüsse erst vom Augenblicke der Geschlechtsreife an spielen lassen.
[ 38 ] Nicht allgemeine Redensarten, wie etwa «harmonische Ausbildung aller Kräfte und Anlagen» und dergleichen, können die Grundlage einer echten Erziehungskunst sein, sondern nur auf einer wirklichen Erkenntnis der menschlichen Wesenheit kann eine solche aufgebaut werden. Es soll nicht etwa behauptet werden, daß die angedeuteten Redensarten unrichtig wären, sondern nur, daß sich mit ihnen ebensowenig anfangen läßt, wie wenn man etwa einer Maschine gegenüber behaupten wollte, man müsse alle ihre Teile harmonisch in Wirksamkeit bringen. Nur wer nicht mit allgemeinen Redensarten, sondern mit wirklicher Kenntnis der Maschine im einzelnen an sie herantritt, kann sie handhaben. So handelt es sich auch für die Erziehungskunst um eine Kenntnis der Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit und deren Entwickelung im einzelnen ... Man muß wissen, auf welchen Teil der menschlichen Wesenheit man in einem bestimmten Lebensalter einzuwirken hat, und wie solche Einwirkung sachgemäß geschieht. Es ist ja kein Zweifel, daß sich eine wirklich realistische Erziehungskunst, wie sie hier angedeutet wird, nur langsam Bahn brechen kann. Das liegt in der Anschauungsweise unserer Zeit, die noch lange die Tatsachen der geistigen Welt als den Ausfluß einer tollen Phantastik ansehen wird, während ihr allgemeine, völlig unwirkliche Redensarten als das Ergebnis einer realistischen Denkungsart erscheinen werden. Hier soll rückhaltlos gezeichnet werden, was gegenwärtig von vielen als Phantasiegemälde genommen werden wird, was aber einmal als selbstverständlich gelten wird.
[ 39 ] Mit der physischen Geburt wird der physische Menschenleib der physischen Umgebung der äußeren Welt ausgesetzt, während er vorher von der schützenden Mutterhülle umgeben war. Was vorher die Kräfte und Säfte der Mutterhülle an ihm getan haben, das müssen jetzt die Kräfte und Elemente der äußeren physischen Welt an ihm tun. Bis zum Zahnwechsel im siebenten Jahre hat der Menschenleib eine Aufgabe an sich zu verrichten, die wesentlich verschieden von den Aufgaben aller anderen Lebensepochen ist. Die physischen Organe müssen in dieser Zeit sich in gewisse Formen bringen; ihre Strukturverhältnisse müssen bestimmte Richtungen und Tendenzen erhalten. Später findet Wachstum statt, aber dieses Wachstum geschieht in aller Folgezeit auf Grund der Formen, die sich bis zu der angegebenen Zeit herausgebildet haben. Haben sich richtige Formen herausgebildet, so wachsen richtige Formen, haben sich Mißformen herausgebildet, so wachsen Mißformen. Man kann in aller Folgezeit nicht wieder gutmachen, was man in der Zeit bis zum siebenten Jahre als Erzieher versäumt hat. Wie die Natur vor der Geburt die richtige Umgebung für den physischen Menschenleib herstellt, so hat der Erzieher nach der Geburt für die richtige physische Umgebung zu sorgen. Nur diese richtige physische Umgebung wirkt auf das Kind so, daß seine physischen Organe sich in die richtigen Formen prägen.
[ 40 ] Es gibt zwei Zauberworte, welche angeben, wie das Kind in ein Verhältnis zu seiner Umgebung tritt. Diese sind: Nachahmung and Vorbild. Der griechische Philosoph Aristoteles hat den Menschen das nachahmendste der Tiere genannt; für kein Lebensalter gilt dieser Ausspruch mehr als für das kindliche bis zum Zahnwechsel. Was in der physischen Umgebung vorgeht, das ahmt das Kind nach, und im Nachahmen gießen sich seine physischen Organe in die Formen, die ihnen dann bleiben. Man muß die physische Umgebung nur in dem denkbar weitesten Sinne nehmen. Zu ihr gehört nicht etwa nur, was materiell um das Kind herum vorgeht, sondern alles, was sich in des Kindes Umgebung abspielt, was von seinen Sinnen wahrgenommen werden kann, was vom physischen Raum aus auf seine Geisteskräfte wirken kann. Dazu gehören auch alle moralischen oder unmoralischen, alle gescheiten und törichten Handlungen, die es sehen kann.
[ 41 ] Nicht moralische Redensarten, nicht vernünftige Belehrungen wirken auf das Kind in der angegebenen Richtung, sondern dasjenige, was die Erwachsenen in seiner Umgebung sichtbar vor seinen Augen tun. Belehrungen wirken nicht formenbildend auf den physischen Leib, sondern auf den Ätherleib, und der ist ja bis zum siebenten Jahre ebenso von einer schützenden Äthermutterhülle umgeben, wie der physische Leib bis zur physischen Geburt von der physischen Mutterhülle umgeben ist. Was sich in diesem Ätherleibe vor dem siebenten Jahre an Vorstellungen, Gewohnheiten, an Gedächtnis usw. entwickeln soll, das muß sich in ähnlicher Art «von selbst » entwickeln, wie sich die Augen und die Ohren im Mutterleibe ohne die Einwirkung des äußeren Lichtes entwickeln ... Es ist ohne Zweifel richtig, was man in einem ausgezeichneten pädagogischen Buche lesen kann, in Jean Pauls «Levana» oder «Erziehlehre », daß ein Weltreisender mehr von seiner Amme in den ersten Jahren lernt, als auf allen seinen Weltreisen zusammen. Aber das Kind lernt eben nicht durch Belehrung, sondern durch Nachahmung. Und seine physischen Organe bilden sich ihre Formen durch die Einwirkung der physischen Umgebung. Es bildet sich ein gesundes Sehen aus, wenn man die richtigen Farben- und Lichtverhältnisse in des Kindes Umgebung bringt, und es bilden sich in Gehirn und Blutumlauf die physischen Anlagen für einen gesunden moralischen Sinn, wenn das Kind Moralisches in seiner Umgebung sieht. Wenn vor dem siebenten Jahre das Kind nur törichte Handlungen in seiner Umgebung sieht, so nimmt das Gehirn solche Formen an, die es im späteren Leben auch nur zu Torheiten geeignet machen.
[ 42 ] Wie die Muskeln der Hand stark und kräftig werden, wenn sie die ihnen gemäße Arbeit verrichten, so wird das Gehirn und werden die anderen Organe des physischen Menschenleibes in die richtigen Bahnen gelenkt, wenn sie die richtigen Eindrücke von ihrer Umgebung erhalten. Ein Beispiel wird am besten anschaulich machen, um was es sich handelt. Man kann einem Kinde eine Puppe machen, indem man eine alte Serviette zusammenwindet, aus zwei Zipfeln Beine, aus zwei anderen Zipfeln Arme fabriziert, aus einem Knoten den Kopf, und dann mit Tintenklecksen Augen und Nase und Mund malt. Oder man kann eine sogenannte «schöne » Puppe mit echten Haaren und bemalten Wangen kaufen und sie dem Kinde geben. Es braucht hier gar nicht einmal davon gesprochen zu werden, daß diese Puppe natürlich doch scheußlich ist und den gesunden ästhetischen Sinn für Lebenszeit zu verderben geeignet ist. Die Haupterziehungsfrage dabei ist eine andere. Wenn das Kind die zusammengewickelte Serviette vor sich hat, so muß es sich aus seiner Phantasie heraus das ergänzen, was das Ding erst als Mensch erscheinen läßt. Diese Arbeit der Phantasie wirkt bildend auf die Formen des Gehirns. Dieses schließt sich auf, wie sich die Muskeln der Hand aufschließen durch die ihnen angemessene Arbeit. Erhält das Kind die sogenannte «schöne Puppe », so hat das Gehirn nichts mehr zu tun. Es verkümmert und verdorrt, statt sich aufzuschließen ... Könnten die Menschen wie der Geisteswissenschafter hineinschauen in das sich in seinen Formen aufbauende Gehirn, sie würden sicher ihren Kindern nur solche Spielzeuge geben, welche geeignet sind, die Bildungstätigkeit des Gehirns lebendig anzuregen. Alle Spielzeuge, welche nur aus toten mathematischen Formen bestehen, wirken verödend und ertötend auf die Bildungskräfte des Kindes, dagegen wirkt in der richtigen Art alles, was die Vorstellung des Lebendigen erregt. Unsere materialistische Zeit bringt nur wenig gute Spielzeuge hervor. Was für ein gesundes Spielzeug ist zum Beispiel das, welches durch zwei verschiebbare Hölzer zwei Schmiede zeigt, die einander zugekehrt einen Gegenstand behämmern. Man kann dergleichen noch auf dem Lande einkaufen. Sehr gut sind auch jene Bilderbücher, deren Figuren durch Fäden von unten gezogen werden können, so daß sich das Kind selbst das tote Bild in die Abbildung von Handlungen umsetzen kann. Das alles schafft innere Regsamkeit der Organe, und aus dieser Regsamkeit baut sich die richtige Form der Organe auf.
[ 43 ] Diese Dinge können ja natürlich hier nur angedeutet werden, aber die Geisteswissenschaft wird künftig berufen sein, im einzelnen das Nötige anzugeben, und das vermag sie. Denn sie ist nicht eine leere Abstraktion, sondern eine Summe lebensvoller Tatsachen, welche Leitlinien für die Wirklichkeit abzugeben vermögen.
[ 44 ] Nur ein paar Beispiele mögen noch angeführt werden. Anders muß im Sinne der Geisteswissenschaft ein sogenanntes nervöses, ein aufgeregtes, anders ein lethargisches, unregsames Kind in bezug auf seine Umgebung behandelt werden. Alles kommt da in Betracht, von den Farben des Zimmers und der anderen Gegenstände, welche das Kind gewöhnlich umgeben, bis zu den Farben der Kleider, die man ihm anzieht. Man wird da oft das Verkehrte tun, wenn man sich nicht von der Geisteswissenschaft leiten läßt, denn der materialistische Sinn wird in vielen Fällen gerade zum Gegenteile vom richtigen greifen. Ein aufgeregtes Kind muß man mit roten oder rotgelben Farben umgeben und ihm Kleider in solchen Farben machen lassen, dagegen ist bei einem unregsamen Kinde zu den blauen oder blaugrünen Farben zu greifen. Es kommt nämlich auf die Farbe an, die als Gegenfarbe im Inneren erzeugt wird. Das ist zum Beispiel bei Rot die grüne, bei Blau die orangegelbe Farbe, wie man sich leicht überzeugen kann, wenn man eine Weile auf eine entsprechend gefärbte Fläche blickt, und dann rasch das Auge auf eine weiße Fläche richtet. Diese Gegenfarbe wird von den physischen Organen des Kindes erzeugt und bewirkt die entsprechenden dem Kinde notwendigen Organstrukturen. Hat das aufgeregte Kind eine rote Farbe in seiner Umgebung, so erzeugt es in seinem Inneren das grüne Gegenbild. Und die Tätigkeit des Grünerzeugens wirkt beruhigend, die Organe nehmen die Tendenz der Beruhigung in sich auf.
[ 45 ] Durchgreifend ist für dieses Lebensalter eines zu berücksichtigen: nämlich, daß der physische Leib sich den Gradmesser schafft für das, was ihm zuträglich ist. Er tut das durch die entsprechende Ausgestaltung der Begierde. Man kann im allgemeinen sagen, daß der gesunde physische Leib nach dem Verlangen trägt, was ihm frommt. Und solange es auf den physischen Leib bei dem heranwachsenden Menschen ankommt, soll man intim hinsehen auf das, was das gesunde Verlangen, die Begierde, die Freude haben wollen. Freude und Lust sind die Kräfte, welche die physischen Formen der Organe in der richtigsten Art herauslocken. Man kann in dieser Richtung allerdings schwer sündigen, indem man das Kind nicht in die entsprechenden physischen Verhältnisse zur Umgebung setzt. Das kann insbesondere in bezug auf die Nahrungsinstinkte geschehen. Man kann das Kind mit solchen Dingen überfüttern, daß es seine gesunden Nahrungsinstinkte vollständig verliert, während man sie ihm durch die richtige Ernährung so erhalten kann, daß es genau bis auf das Glas Wasser alles verlangt, was ihm unter gewissen Verhältnissen zuträglich ist und alles zurückweist, was ihm schaden kann. Die Geisteswissenschaft wird bis auf die einzelnen Nahrungs- und Genußmittel alles anzugeben wissen, was hier in Betracht kommt, wenn sie zum Aufbau einer Erziehungskunst aufgerufen wird. Denn sie ist eine realistische Sache für das Leben, nicht eine graue Theorie, als was sie allerdings heute noch nach den Verirrungen mancher Theosophen erscheinen könnte.
[ 46 ] Zu den Kräften, welche bildsam auf die physischen Organe wirken, gehört also Freude an und mit der Umgebung. Heitere Mienen der Erzieher, und vor allem redliche, keine erzwungene Liebe. Solche Liebe, welche die physische Umgebung gleichsam warm durchströmt, brütet im wahren Sinn des Wortes die Formen der physischen Organe aus.
[ 47 ] Wenn die Nachahmung gesunder Vorbilder in solcher Atmosphäre der Liebe möglich ist, dann ist das Kind in seinem richtigen Elemente. Strenge sollte daher darauf gesehen werden, daß in der Umgebung des Kindes nichts geschieht, was das Kind nicht nachahmen dürfte. Man sollte nichts tun, wovon man dem Kinde sagen müßte, das darfst du nicht tun ... Wie das Kind auf die Nachahmung aus ist, davon kann man sich überzeugen, wenn man beobachtet, daß es Schriftzeichen nachmalt, lange bevor es sie versteht. Es ist sogar ganz gut, wenn das Kind zuerst die Schriftzeichen nachmalt, und dann erst später ihren Sinn verstehen lernt. Denn die Nachahmung gehört der Entwickelungsepoche des physischen Leibes an, während der Sinn zu dem Ätherleib spricht, und auf diesen sollte man erst nach dem Zahnwechsel einwirken, wenn seine äußere Ätherhülle von ihm gefallen ist. Besonders sollte alles Sprechenlernen im Sinne der Nachahmung in diesen Jahren geschehen. Hörend lernt das Kind am besten sprechen. Alle Regeln und alle künstliche Belehrung können nichts Gutes wirken.
[ 48 ] Im frühen Kindesalter ist insbesondere wichtig, daß solche Erziehungsmittel wie zum Beispiel Kinderlieder möglichst einen schönen rhythmischen Eindruck auf die Sinne machen. Weniger auf den Sinn als vielmehr auf den schönen Klang ist der Wert zulegen. Je erfrischender etwas auf Auge und Ohr wirkt, desto besser ist es. Man sollte nicht unterschätzen, was zum Beispieltanzende Bewegungen nach musikalischem Rhythmus für eine organbildende Kraft haben.
[ 49 ] Mit dem Zahnwechsel streift der Ätherleib die äußere Ätherhülle ab, und damit beginnt die Zeit, in der von außen erziehend auf den Ätherleib eingewirkt werden kann. Man muß sich klarmachen, was von außen auf den Ätherleib wirken kann. Die Umbildung und das Wachstum des Ätherleibes bedeutet Umbildung beziehungsweise Entwickelung der Neigungen, Gewohnheiten, des Gewissens, des Charakters, des Gedächtnisses, der Temperamente. Auf den Ätherleib wirkt man durch Bilder, durch Beispiele, durch geregeltes Lenken der Phantasie. Wie man dem Kinde bis zum siebenten Jahre das physische Vorbild geben muß, das es nachahmen kann, so muß in die Umgebung des werdenden. Menschen zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife alles das gebracht werden, nach dessen innerem Sinn und Wert es sich richten kann. Das Sinnvolle, das durch das Bild und Gleichnis wirkt, ist jetzt am Platze. Der Ätherleib entwickelt seine Kraft, wenn eine geregelte Phantasie sich richten kann nach dem, was sie sich an den lebenden oder dem Geiste vermitteltenBildern und Gleichnissen enträtseln und zu seiner Richtschnur nehmen kann. Nicht abstrakte Begriffe wirken in der richtigen Weise auf den wachsenden Ätherleib, sondern das Anschauliche, nicht das Sinnlich-, sondern das Geistig-Anschauliche. Die geistige Anschauung ist das richtige Erziehungsmittel in diesen Jahren. Daher kommt es vor allen Dingen darauf an, daß der junge Mensch in diesen Jahren in seinen Erziehern selbst Persönlichkeiten um sich hat, durch deren Anschauung in ihm die wünschenswerten intellektuellen und moralischen Kräfte erweckt werden können. Wie für die ersten Kindesjahre Nachahmung und Vorbild die Zauberworte der Erziehung sind, so sind es für die jetzt in Rede stehenden Jahre: Nachfolge und Autorität. Die selbstverständliche, nicht erzwungene Autorität muß die unmittelbare geistige Anschauung darstellen, an der sich der junge Mensch Gewissen, Gewohnheiten, Neigungen herausbildet, an der sich sein Temperament in geregelte Bahnen bringt, mit deren Augen er die Dinge der Welt betrachtet. Das schöne Dichterwort, «ein jeglicher muß seinen Helden wählen, dem er die Wege zum Olymp hinauf sich nacharbeitet», es gilt insbesondere von diesem Lebensalter. Verehrung und Ehrfurcht sind Kräfte, durch welche der Ätherleib in der richtigen Weise wächst. Und wem es unmöglich war, in der in Rede stehenden Zeit zu jemand in unbegrenzter Verehrung hinaufzuschauen, der wird dieses in seinem ganzen späteren Leben zu büßen haben. Wo diese Verehrung fehlt, da verkümmern die lebendigen Kräfte des Ätherleibes. Man male sich das Folgende in seiner Wirkung auf das jugendliche Gemüt aus: Einem achtjährigen Knaben wird von einer ganz besonders ehrenwerten Persönlichkeit gesprochen. Alles, was er von ihr hört, flößt ihm eine heilige Scheu ein. Es naht der Tag, wo er zum ersten Male die verehrte Persönlichkeit sehen kann. Ein Zittern der Ehrfurcht befällt ihn, da er die Klinke der Türe drückt, hinter welcher der Verehrte sichtbar werden wird ... Die schönen Gefühle, die ein solches Erlebnis hervorbringt, gehören zu bleibenden Errungenschaften des Lebens. Und glücklich ist derjenige Mensch zu preisen, der nicht nur in Feieraugenblicken des Lebens, sondern fortwährend zu seinen Lehrern und Erziehern als zu seinen selbstverständlichen Autoritäten aufzuschauen vermag.
[ 50 ] Zu diesen lebendigen Autoritäten, zu diesen Verkörperungen der sittlichen und intellektuellen Kraft müssen die geistig aufzunehmenden Autoritäten treten. Die großen Vorbilder der Geschichte, die Erzählung von vorbildlichen Männern und Frauen müssen das Gewissen, müssen die Geistesrichtung bestimmen, nicht so sehr abstrakte sittliche Grundsätze, die erst dann ihre richtige Wirkung tun können, wenn sich mit der Geschlechtsreife der astrale Leib seiner astralen Mutterhülle entledigt. Man muß insbesondere den Geschichtsunterricht in eine Richtung lenken, welche durch solche Gesichtspunkte bestimmt ist. Vor dem Zahnwechsel werden die Erzählungen, Märchen usw., die man an das Kind heranbringt, Freude, Erfrischung, Heiterkeit allein zum Ziele haben können. Nach dieser Zeit wird man bei dem zu erzählenden Stoff außer diesem darauf Bedacht zunehmen haben, daß Bilder des Lebens zur Nacheiferung vor die Seele des jungen Menschen treten. Nicht außer acht wird zu lassen sein, daß schlechte Gewohnheiten durch entsprechende abstoßende Bilder aus dem Felde geschlagen werden können. Wenig helfen zumeist Ermahnungen gegenüber solchen schlechten Gewohnheiten und Neigungen; läßt man aber das lebensvolle Bild eines entsprechend schlechten Menschen auf die jugendliche Phantasie wirken, und zeigt man, wozu eine in Frage kommende Neigung in der Wirklichkeit führt, so kann man viel zur Ausrottung wirken. Immer ist eben festzuhalten, daß nicht abstrakte Vorstellungen auf den sich entwickelnden Ätherleib wirken, sondern lebensvolle Bilder in ihrer geistigen Anschaulichkeit. Allerdings muß das zuletzt Erwähnte mit dem größten Takte ausgeführt werden, damit die Sache nicht in das Gegenteil umschlage. Bei Erzählungen kommt alles auf die Art des Erzählens an. Es kann daher nicht ohne weiteres die mündliche Erzählung etwa durch Lektüre ersetzt werden.
[ 51 ] Das Geistig-Bildhafte, oder wie man auch sagen könnte, das sinnbildliche Vorstellen kommt auch noch in einer anderen Weise für die Zeit zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife in Betracht. Es ist notwendig, daß der junge Mensch die Geheimnisse der Natur, die Gesetze des Lebens möglichst nicht in verstandesmäßig nüchternen Begriffen, sondern in Symbolen in sich aufnehme. Gleichnisse für geistige Zusammenhänge müssen so an die Seele herantreten, daß die Gesetzmäßigkeit des Daseins hinter den Gleichnissen mehr geahnt und empfunden wird, als in verstandesmäßigen Begriffen erfaßt wird. «Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis», das muß geradezu ein durchgreifender Leitspruch für die Erziehung in dieser Zeit sein. Es ist unendlich wichtig für den Menschen, daß er die Geheimnisse des Daseins in Gleichnissen empfängt, bevor sie in Form von Naturgesetzen usw. ihm vor die Seele treten. Ein Beispiel möge dies veranschaulichen. Man nehme an, man wolle einem jungen Menschen von der Unsterblichkeit der Seele, von ihrem Hervorgehen aus dem Leibe sprechen. Man soll es so tun, daß man zum Beispiel den Vergleich heranzieht von dem Hervorgehen des Schmetterlings aus der Puppe. Wie sich der Falter aus der Puppe erhebt, so nach dem Tode die Seele aus dem Gehäuse des Leibes. Kein Mensch wird den richtigen Tatbestand in Verstandesbegriffen entsprechend erfassen, der nicht vorher ihn in einem solchen Bilde empfangen hat. Durch ein solches Gleichnis spricht man nämlich nicht bloß zum Verstande, sondern zu Gefühl, Empfindung, zur ganzen Seele. Ein junger Mensch, der durch alles das hindurchgegangen ist, tritt dann in ganz anderer Stimmung an die Sache heran, wenn sie ihm in Verstandesbegriffen später vermittelt wird. Es ist sogar recht schlimm für den Menschen, wenn er nicht zuerst mit dem Gefühle an die Rätsel des Daseins herantreten kann. Es ist eben notwendig, daß für alle Naturgesetze und Weltgeheimnisse dem Erzieher Gleichnisse zur Verfügung stehen.
[ 52 ] Außerordentlich gut kann man an dieser Sache sehen, wie befruchtend die Geisteswissenschaft auf das praktische Leben wirken muß. Wenn jemand, der aus einer materialistisch verstandesmäßigen Vorstellungsart heraus sich Gleichnisse bildet, mit diesen Gleichnissen an junge Leute herantritt, so wird er in der Regel recht wenig Eindruck auf sie machen. Ein solcher muß sich nämlich die Gleichnisse selbst erst mit aller Verstandesmäßigkeit ausklügeln. Solche Gleichnisse, zu denen man sich selbst erst herabgebändigt hat, wirken nicht überzeugend auf den, dem man sie mitteilt. Wenn man nämlich in Bildern zu jemand spricht, dann wirkt auf diesen nicht bloß, was man sagt oder zeigt, sondern es geht von dem, der mitteilt, ein feiner geistiger Strom hinüber zu dem, dem die Mitteilung gemacht wird. Wenn der Mitteilende selbst nicht das warme gläubige Gefühl zu seinem Gleichnisse hat, so wird er keinen Eindruck auf den machen, an den er sich richtet. Man muß, um recht zu wirken, eben selbst an seine Gleichnisse als an Wirklichkeiten glauben. Das kann man nur, wenn man die geisteswissenschaftliche Gesinnung hat und die Gleichnisse selbst aus der Geisteswissenschaft heraus geboren sind. Der echte Geisteswissenschafter braucht sich das obige Gleichnis der aus dem Leibe hervorgehenden Seele nicht abzuquälen, denn für ihn ist es Wahrheit. Für ihn ist indem Hervorgehen des Schmetterlings aus der Puppe wirklich auf einer niedrigeren Stufe des Naturdaseins derselbe Vorgang gegeben, der auf einer höheren Stufe in höherer Ausbildung sich wiederholt in dem Hervorgehen der Seele aus dem Leibe. Er glaubt mit voller Kraft selbst daran. Und dieser Glaube strömt wie in geheimnisvollen Strömungen vom Sprechenden zu dem Hörenden hinüber und bewirkt Überzeugung. Unmittelbares Leben gießt sich dann hinüber und herüber vom Erzieher zum Zögling. Aber zu diesem Leben ist eben notwendig, daß der Erzieher aus dem vollen Quell der Geisteswissenschaft heraus schöpft und daß sein Wort und alles was von ihm ausgeht, Empfindung, Wärme und Gefühlsfarbe erhält durch die echte geisteswissenschaftliche Gesinnung. Eine herrliche Perspektive eröffnet sich damit auf das ganze Erziehungswesen. Wird es sich einmal befruchten lassen von dem Lebensquell der Geisteswissenschaft, dann wird es selbst voll verständnisvollen Lebens sein. Es wird aufhören das Tasten, das auf diesem Gebiete gang und gäbe ist. Alle Erziehungskunst, alle Pädagogik ist dürr und tot, die nicht aus solcher Wurzel immer frische Säfte zugeführt erhält. Die Geisteswissenschaft hat für alle Weltgeheimnisse die zutreffenden Gleichnisse, die aus dem Wesen der Dinge genommenen Bilder, die nicht erst der Mensch schafft, sondern die von den Kräften der Welt selbst beim Schaffen zugrunde gelegt werden. Deshalb muß die Geisteswissenschaft die lebensvolle Grundlage aller Erziehungskunst sein.
[ 53 ] Eine Seelenkraft, auf welche in dieser Zeit der menschlichen Entwickelung besonderer Wert gelegt werden muß, ist das Gedächtnis. Die Entwickelung des Gedächtnisses ist eben an die Umbildung des Ätherleibes gebunden. Da dessen Ausbildung so erfolgt, daß er gerade zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife frei wird, so ist diese Zeit auch diejenige, in der von außen bewußt auf die Fortentwickelung des Gedächtnisses gesehen werden muß. Das Gedächtnis wird bleibend einen geringeren Wert haben, als es hätte für den betreffenden Menschen haben können, wenn in dieser Zeit das Entsprechende versäumt wird. Das Vernachlässigte kann später nicht mehr nachgeholt werden.
[ 54 ] Eine verstandesmäßig-materialistische Denkweise kann in dieser Richtung viele Fehler machen. Eine aus ihr entsprungene Erziehungskunst kommt leicht zu Vorurteilen gegen das bloß gedächtnismäßig Angeeignete. Sie wird zuweilen nicht müde, sich mit aller Schärfe gegen das bloße Trainieren des Gedächtnisses zu wenden, und wendet die spitzfindigsten Methoden an, damit der junge Mensch nur ja nichts gedächtnismäßig aufnehme, was er nicht begreift. Ja, was es überhaupt mit diesem Begreifen auf sich hat! Ein materialistisch-verstandesmäßiges Denken gibt sich so leicht dem Glauben hin, daß es kein Eindringen in die Dinge gibt außer dem in abgezogenen Begriffen; es wird sich nur schwer zu der Erkenntnis durchringen, daß die anderen Seelenkräfte zum Erfassen der Dinge zum mindesten ebenso notwendig sind wie der Verstand. Nicht etwa nur bildlich ist es gesprochen, wenn man sagt, man kann ebenso mit dem Gefühle, mit der Empfindung, mit dem Gemüte verstehen wie mit dem Verstande. Begriffe sind nur eines der Mittel, um die Dinge dieser Welt zu verstehen. Und nur der materialistischen Gesinnung erscheinen sie als das einzige. Es gibt natürlich viele Menschen, die nicht glauben werden, Materialisten zu sein, und die dennoch ein verstandesmäßiges Begreifen für die einzige Art des Verstehens halten. Solche Menschen bekennen sich vielleicht zu einer idealistischen, vielleicht sogar zu einer spirituellen Weltauffassung. Aber sie verhalten sich zu derselben in ihrer Seele auf materialistische Art. Denn der Verstand ist nun einmal das Seeleninstrument für das Begreifen des Materiellen.
[ 55 ] Bezüglich der tieferen Grundlagen des Verstehens soll hier eine Stelle aus dem schon erwähnten ausgezeichneten Erziehungsbuche von Jean Paul angeführt werden. Überhaupt birgt dieses Werk goldene Anschauungen über die Erziehung und verdiente viel mehr berücksichtigt zu werden, als es geschieht. Es ist für den Erzieher viel wichtiger als manche der angesehensten Schriften auf diesem Gebiete. Die hier in Betracht kommende Stelle lautet: «Fürchtet keine Unverständlichkeit, sogar ganzer Sätze; eure Miene und euer Akzent und der ahnende Drang, zu verstehen, hellet die eine Hälfte, und mit dieser und der Zeit die andere auf. Der Akzent ist bei Kindern, wie bei den Chinesen und den Weltleuten, die halbe Sprache. — Bedenkt, daß sie ihre Sprache so gut, wie wir die griechische oder irgendeine fremde früher verstehen als reden lernen. — Vertrauet auf die Entzifferkanzlei der Zeit und des Zusammenhanges. Ein Kind von fünf Jahren versteht die Wörter «doch, zwar nun, hingegen, freilich»; versucht aber einmal von ihnen eine Erklärung zu geben, nicht dem Kinde, sondern dem Vater! - Im einzigen «zwar» steckt ein kleiner Philosoph. Wenn das achtjährige Kind mit seiner ausgebildeten Sprache vom dreijährigen verstanden wird, warum wollt ihr eure zu seinem Lallen einengen? Sprecht immer einige Jahre voraus (sprechen doch Genies in Büchern mit uns Jahrhunderte voraus); mit dem Einjährigen sprecht als sei es ein Zweijähriges, mit diesem als sei es ein Sechsjähriges, da die Unterschiede des Wachstums im umgekehrten Verhältnis der Jahre abnehmen. Bedenke doch der Erzieher, welcher überhaupt zu sehr alles Lernen den Lehren zuschreibt, daß das Kind seine halbe Welt, nämlich die geistige (zum Beispiel die sittlichen und metaphysischen Anschaugegenstände) ja schon fertig und bekehrt in sich trage, und daß eben daher die nur mit körperlichen Ebenbildern gerüstete Sprache die geistigen nicht geben, bloß erleuchten könne. Freude wie Bestimmtheit bei Sprachen mit Kindern sollte uns schon von ihrer eignen Freude und Bestimmtheit gegeben werden. Man kann von ihnen Sprache lernen, sowie durch Sprache sie lehren; kühne und doch richtige Wortbildungen, zum Beispiel solche, wie ich von drei- und vierjährigen Kindern gehört: der Bierfässer, Saiter, Fläscher (der Verfertiger von Fässern, Saiten, Flaschen) — die Luftmaus (gewiß besser als unser Fledermaus) — die Musik geigt — das Licht ausscheren (wegen der Lichtschere) — dreschflegeln, drescheln - ich bin der Durchsehmann (hinter dem Fernrohrstehend)-ich wollte, ich wäre als Pfeffernüßchenesser angestellt, oder als Pfeffernüßler - am Ende werd’ ich gar zu klüger — er hat mich von dem Stuhle heruntergespaßt - sieh, wie eins (auf der Uhr) es schon ist - und so weiter.»
[ 56 ] Zwar spricht diese Stelle von dem Verstehen vor dem verstandesmäßigen Begreifen auf einem anderen Gebiet als auf dem, wovon hier gerade die Rede ist, allein für das eben Besprochene gilt genau das, was Jean Paul von der Sprache sagt. Wie das Kind das Gefüge der Sprache in seinen Seelenorganismus aufnimmt, ohne die Gesetze des Sprachbaues dazu in verstandesmäßigen Begriffen zu brauchen, so muß der junge Mensch zur Pflege des Gedächtnisses Dinge lernen, von denen er sich erst später das begriffliche Verstehen aneignen soll. Man lernt sogar das am besten hinterher in Begriffen fassen, was man in diesem Lebensalter erst rein gedächtnismäßig sich angeeignet hat, wie man die Regeln der Sprache am besten an der Sprache lernt, die man bereits spricht. Die Rede vom unverstandenen Gedächtnisstoff ist weiter nichts als ein matertalistisches Vorurteil. Der junge Mensch braucht zum Beispiel nur die notwendigsten Gesetze des Multiplizierens an einigen Beispielen zu lernen, zu denen man keine Rechenmaschine braucht, sondern wozu die Finger viel besser sind, dann soll er das Einmaleins sich ordentlich gedächtnismäßig aneignen. Wenn man so vorgeht, berücksichtigt man die Natur des werdenden Menschen. Man versündigt sich aber gegen diese, wenn man in der Zeit, in der es auf die Bildung des Gedächtnisses ankommt, den Verstand zu sehr in Anspruch nimmt. Der Verstand ist eine Seelenkraft, die erst mit der Geschlechtsreife geboren wird, auf die man daher vor diesem Lebensalter gar nicht von außen wirken sollte. Bis zur Geschlechtsreife soll sich der junge Mensch durch das Gedächtnis die Schätze aneignen, über welche die Menschheit gedacht hat, nachher ist die Zeit, mit Begriffen zu durchdringen, was er vorher gut dem Gedächtnis eingeprägt hat. Der Mensch soll sich also nicht etwa bloß merken, was er begriffen hat, sondern er soll begreifen die Dinge, die er weiß, das heißt wovon er gedächtnismäßig so Besitz genommen hat, wie das Kind von der Sprache. In einem weiten Umfange gilt das. Zuerst rein gedächtnismäßiges Aneignen geschichtlicher Ereignisse, dann Erfassen derselben in Begriffen. Zuerst gutes gedächtnismäßiges Einprägen geographischer Dinge, dann Begreifen des Zusammenhanges derselben usw. In gewisser Beziehung sollte alles Erfassen in Begriffen aus dem aufgespeicherten Gredächtnisschatze genommen werden. Je mehr der junge Mensch schon gedächtnismäßig weiß, bevor es ans begriffliche Erfassen geht, desto besser ... Es braucht wohl nicht ausdrücklich ausgeführt zu werden, daß dieses alles eigentlich nur gilt für das Lebensalter, von dem hier die Rede ist, nicht für später. Lernt man nachholend, oder sonstwie in einem späteren Lebensalter etwas, so kann natürlich der umgekehrte Weg der richtige und wünschenswerte sein, obwohl auch da noch manches von der Geisteskonstitution des Betreffenden abhängig gemacht werden muß. In dem besprochenen Lebensalter aber darf man den Geist nicht ausdörren durch die Überfüllung mit verstandesmäßigen Begriffen.
[ 57 ] Auch ein zu weitgehender rein sinnlicher Anschauungsunterricht entspringt einer materialistischen Vorstellungsart. Alle Anschauung muß für dieses Lebensalter vergeistigt werden. Man soll sich zum Beispiel nicht damit begnügen, eine Pflanze, ein Samenkorn, eine Blüte bloß in sinnlicher Anschauung vorzuführen. Alles soll zum Gleichnis des Geistigen werden. Ein Samenkorn ist eben nicht bloß dasjenige, als was es den Augen erscheint. Es steckt unsichtbar die ganze neue Pflanze darinnen. Daß ein solches Ding mehr ist, als was die Sinne sehen, das muß mit der Empfindung, mit der Phantasie, mit dem Gemüte lebendig erfaßt werden. Die Ahnung der Geheimnisse des Daseins muß gefühlt werden. Man kann nicht einwenden, daß durch ein solches Vorgehen die reine sinnliche Anschauung getrübt werde: im Gegenteil, durch das Stehenbleiben bei der bloßen Sinnesanschauung kommt die Wahrheit zu kurz. Denn die ganze Wirklichkeit eines Dinges besteht aus Geist und Stoff, und die treue Beobachtung braucht nicht weniger sorgfältig betrieben zu werden, wenn man die sämtlichen Seelenkräfte, nicht bloß die physischen Sinne in Wirksamkeit bringt. Könnten doch die Menschen sehen, was alles an Seele und Leib verödet durch einen bloß sinnlichen Anschauungsunterricht, wie der Geisteswissenschafter das kann, sie würden weniger auf einem solchen bestehen. Was nützt es im höchsten Sinne, wenn jungen Menschen alle möglichen Mineralien, Pflanzen, Tiere, physikalischen Versuche gezeigt werden, wenn das nicht damit verbunden wird, die sinnlichen Gleichnisse zum Ahnenlassen der geistigen Geheimnisse zu verwenden. Sicherlich wird mit dem hier Gesagten ein materialistischer Sinn nicht viel anzufangen wissen; und das ist dem Geisteswissenschafter nur zu verständlich. Aber ihm ist auch klar, daß eine wirklich praktische Erziehungskunst nie aus dem materialistischen Sinn erwachsen kann. So praktisch sich dieser Sinn dünkt, so unpraktisch ist er in Wirklichkeit, wenn es darauf ankommt, das Leben lebensvoll zu erfassen. Der wahren Wirklichkeit gegenüber ist die materialistische Gesinnung phantastisch, während dieser allerdings die sachgemäßen Auseinandersetzungen der Geisteswissenschaft notwendig phantastisch erscheinen müssen. Zweifellos wird auch noch manches Hindernis zu überwinden sein, bis die durchaus aus dem Leben geborenen Grundsätze der Geisteswissenschaft in die Erziehungskunst eindringen. Aber das ist ja natürlich. Deren Wahrheiten müssen gegenwärtig noch für viele ungewohnt sein. Sie werden sich aber der Kultur einverleiben, wenn sie wirklich die Wahrheit sind.
[ 58 ] Nur durch ein deutliches Bewußtsein davon, wie die einzelnen Erziehungsmaßnahmen auf den jungen Menschen wirken, kann der Erzieher immer den richtigen Takt finden, um im einzelnen Falle das Richtige zu treffen. So muß man wissen, wie die einzelnen Seelenkräfte, nämlich: Denken, Fühlen und Wollen, zu behandeln sind, damit deren Entwickelung wieder auf den Ätherleib zurückwirkt, während dieser sich zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife durch die Einflüsse von außen immer vollkommener gestalten kann.
[ 59 ] Zu der Entwickelung eines gesunden kraftvollen Willens wird der Grund gelegt durch die richtige Handhabung der betrachteten Erziehungsgrundsätze während der ersten sieben Lebensjahre. Denn ein solcher Wille muß seine Stütze in den vollentwickelten Formen des physischen Leibes haben. Vom Zahnwechsel angefangen handelt es sich darum, daß der nun sich entwickelnde Ätherleib dem physischen Leib diejenigen Kräfte zuführt, durch welche dieser seine Formen gediegen und in sich fest machen kann. Das, was die stärksten Eindrücke auf den Ätherleib macht, das wirkt auch am kräftigsten auf die Festigung des physischen Leibes zurück. Die allerstärksten Impulse werden aber auf den Ätherleib durch diejenigen Empfindungen und Vorstellungen hervorgerufen, durch die der Mensch seine Stellung zu den ewigen Urgründen des Weltalls fühlt und erlebt, das heißt durch die religiösen Erlebnisse. Niemals wird sich der Wille eines Menschen und damit sein Charakter gesund entwickeln, wenn er nicht tiefeindringende religiöse Impulse in der in Rede stehenden Lebensepoche durchmachen kann. In der einheitlichen Willensorganisation kommt es zum Ausdruck, wie der Mensch sich eingegliedert fühlt in das Weltganze. Fühlt sich der Mensch nicht mit sicheren Fäden angegliedert an ein Göttlich-Geistiges, so müssen Wille und Charakter unsicher, uneinheitlich und ungesund bleiben.
[ 60 ] Die Gefühlswelt entwickelt sich in der rechten Art durch die beschriebenen Gleichnisse und Sinnbilder, insbesondere durch alles das, was aus der Geschichte und sonstigen Quellen an Bildern charakteristischer Menschen vorgeführt wird. Auch die entsprechende Vertiefung in die Geheimnisse und Schönheiten der Natur ist für die Heranbildung der Gefühlswelt wichtig. Und hier kommt insbesondere in Betracht die Pflege des Schönheitssinnes und das Wachrufen des Gefühls für das Künstlerische. Das Musikalische muß dem Ätherleib jenen Rhythmus zuführen, der ihn dann befähigt, den in allen Dingen auch sonst verborgenen Rhythmus zu empfinden. Einem jungen Menschen wird viel für das ganze spätere Leben entzogen, dem in dieser Zeit nicht die Wohltat einer Pflege des musikalischen Sinnes zuteil wird. Ihm müßten, wenn ihm dieser Sinn ganz mangelte, geradezu gewisse Seiten des Weltendaseins ganz verborgen bleiben. Dabei sollen aber ja die andern Künste nicht vernachlässigt werden. Die Erweckung des Sinnes für architektonische Stilformen, desjenigen für plastische Gestalten, für Linie und Zeichnerisches, für die Harmonie der Farben, nichts davon sollte im Erziehungsplan fehlen. So einfach vielleicht das alles unter gewissen Verhältnissen gestaltet werden muß, der Einwand kann nie gelten, daß die Verhältnisse gar nichts nach dieser Richtung hin gestatteten. Mit den einfachsten Mitteln kann man viel leisten, wenn in dieser Richtung bei dem Erzieher selbst der richtige Sinn herrscht. Freude am Leben, Liebe zum Dasein, Kraft zur Arbeit, alles das erwächst für das ganze Dasein aus der Pflege des Schönheits- und Kunstsinnes. Und das Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch, wie wird es veredelt, verschönt durch diesen Sinn. Das moralische Gefühl, das ja auch in diesen Jahren herangebildet wird durch die Bilder des Lebens, durch die vorbildlichen Autoritäten, es erhält seine Sicherheit, wenn durch den Schönheitssinn das Gute zugleich als schön, das Schlechte als häßlich empfunden wird.
[ 61 ] Das Denken in seiner eigenen Gestalt als inneres Leben in abgezogenen Begriffen muß in der in Frage kommenden Lebensperiode noch zurücktreten. Es muß sich wie unbeeinflußt, gleichsam von selbst entwickeln, während die Seele die Gleichnisse und Bilder des Lebens und der Naturgeheimnisse vermittelt erhält. So muß inmitten der anderen Seelenerlebnisse zwischen dem siebenten Jahre und der Geschlechtsreife das Denken heranwachsen, die Urteilskraft muß so reifen, damit dann, nach erfolgter Geschlechtsreife, der Mensch fähig werde, den Dingen des Lebens und Wissens gegenüber sich in voller Selbständigkeit seine Meinungen zu bilden. Je weniger man vorher unmittelbar auf die Entwickelung der Urteilskraft einwirkt und je besser man es mittelbar durch die Entwickelung der andern Seelenkräfte tut, um so besser ist es für das ganze spätere Leben des betreffenden Menschen.
[ 62 ] Nicht nur für den geistigen Teil der Erziehung, sondern auch für den physischen liefert die Geisteswissenschaft die rechte Grundlage. Um auch hier ein charakteristisches Beispiel anzuführen, sei auf das Turnen und die Jugendspiele hingewiesen. Wie Liebe und Freude die Umgebung der ersten Kinderjahre durchdringen muß, so muß der heranwachsende Ätherleib in sich durch die körperlichen Übungen das Gefühl seines Wachstums, der stets sich steigernden Kraft in sich wirklich erleben. Die Turnübungen zum Beispiel müssen so ausgebildet werden, daß bei jeder Bewegung, bei jedem Schritte sich im Innern des jungen Menschen das Gefühl einstellt: «Ich fühle wachsende Kraft in mir.» Und dieses Gefühl muß sich des Innern als eine gesunde Lust, als Wohlbehagen bemächtigen. Um Turnübungen in diesem Sinne auszudenken, dazu gehört freilich mehr als eine verstandesmäßige anatomische und physiologische Kenntnis des menschlichen Leibes. Es gehört dazu eine intime, intuitive, ganz gefühlsmäßige Erkenntnis von dem Zusammenwirken von Lust und Behagen mit den Stellungen und Bewegungen des menschlichen Leibes. Der Ausgestalter solcher Übungen muß in sich erleben können, wie eine Bewegung, eine Stellung der Glieder ein lustvolles behagliches Kraftgefühl erzeugt, etwas anderes eine Art Kraftverlust usw. Daß Turnen und Leibesübungen in dieser Richtung gepflegt werden können, dazu gehört dasjenige bei dem Erzieher, was ihm nur die Geisteswissenschaft und vor allem eine geisteswissenschaftliche Gesinnung geben kann. Man braucht dazu nicht etwa gleich das Hineinschauen in die geistigen Welten, sondern nur den Sinn dafür, im Leben das anzuwenden, was sich aus der Geisteswissenschaft ergibt. Wenn insbesondere in solchen praktischen Gebieten, wie bei der Erziehung, die geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse angewendet würden, dann würde bald auch das völlig unnütze Reden darüber aufhören, daß diese Erkenntnisse doch erst bewiesen werden müssen. Wer sie richtig anwendet, dem werden sie sich im Leben dadurch beweisen, daß sie dieses gesund und stark machen. Er wird gerade dadurch, daß sie sich in der Praxis bewähren, ersehen, daß sie wahr sind, und dadurch muß er sie besser bewiesen finden, als durch alle «logischen » und sogenannten «wissenschaftlichen Gründe». Die geistigen Wahrheiten erkennt man am besten an ihren Früchten, nicht durch einen angeblich noch so wissenschaftlichen Beweis, der doch kaum viel anderes sein kann, als ein logisches Geplänkel.
[ 63 ] Mit der Geschlechtsreife wird erst der Astralleib geboten. Mit seiner nach außen freien Entwickelung wird auch erst von außen an den Menschen alles das herantreten können, was die abgezogene Vorstellungswelt, die Urteilskraft, den freien Verstand entfaltet. Es ist schon erwähnt worden, daß diese Seelenfähigkeiten vorher unbeeinflußt innerhalb der richtigen Handhabung der andern Erziehungsmaßnahmen sich entwickeln sollen, wie sich unbeeinflußt im mütterlichen Organismus Augen und Ohren entwickeln. Mit der Geschlechtsreife ist die Zeit gekommen, in der der Mensch auch dazu reif ist, sich über die Dinge, die er vorher gelernt hat, ein eigenes Urteil zu bilden. Man kann einem Menschen nichts Schlimmeres zufügen, als wenn man zu früh sein eigenes Urteil wachruft. Erst dann kann man urteilen, wenn man in sich erst Stoff zum Urteilen, zum Vergleichen aufgespeichert hat. Bildet man sich vorher selbständige Urteile, so muß diesen die Grundlage fehlen. Alle Einseitigkeit im Leben, alle öden «Glaubensbekenntnisse », die sich auf ein paar Wissensbrocken gründen, und von diesen aus richten möchten über oft durch lange Zeiträume bewährte Vorstellungserlebnisse der Menschheit, rühren vonFehlern der Erziehung in dieser Richtung her. Bevor man reif zum Denken ist, muß man sich die Achtung vor dem angeeignet haben, was andere gedacht haben. Es gibt kein gesundes Denken, dem nicht ein auf selbstverständlichen Autoritätsglauben gestütztes gesundes Empfinden für die Wahrheit vorangegangen wäre. Würde dieser Erziehungsgrundsatz befolgt, man müßte es nicht erleben, daß Menschen zu jung sich reif dünken zum Urteilen und sich dadurch die Möglichkeit nehmen, allseitig und unbefangen das Leben auf sich wirken zu lassen. Denn ein jedes Urteil, das nicht auf der gehörigen Grundlage von Seelenschätzen aufgebaut ist, wirft dem Urteiler Steine in seinen Lebensweg. Denn hat man einmal über eine Sache ein Urteil gefällt, so wird man durch dieses immer beeinflußt, man nimmt ein Erlebnis dann nicht mehr so auf, wie man es aufgenommen hätte, wenn man sich nicht ein Urteil gebildet hätte, das mit dieser Sache zusammenhängt. In dem jungen Menschen müß der Sinn leben, zuerst zu lernen und dann zu urteilen. Das, was der Verstand über eine Sache zu sagen hat, sollte erst gesagt werden, wenn alle andren Seelenkräfte gesprochen haben; vorher sollte der Verstand nur eine vermittelnde Rolle spielen. Er sollte nur dazu dienen, das Gesehene und Gefühlte zu erfassen, es so in sich aufzunehmen, wie es sich gibt, ohne daß das unreife Urteil sich gleich der Sache bemächtigt. Deshalb sollte der junge Mensch vor dem angedeuteten Lebensalter mit allen Theorien über die Dinge verschont werden, und der Hauptwert darauf gelegt werden, daß er sich den Erlebnissen des Daseins gegenüberstellt, um sie in seine Seele aufzunehmen. Man kann gewiß den heranwachsenden Menschen auch mit dem bekannt machen, was Menschen über dies und jenes gedacht haben, aber man soll vermeiden, daß er sich für eine Ansicht durch ein verfrühtes Urteil engagiere. Er soll auch die Meinungen mit dem Gefühle aufnehmen, er soll, ohne gleich für das eine oder das andere sich zu entscheiden und Partei zu ergreifen, hören können: der hat das gesagt, der andere jenes. Es wird zur Pflege eines solchen Sinnes von Lehrern und Erziehern allerdings ein großer Takt verlangt, aber geisteswissenschaftliche Gesinnung ist gerade imstande, diesen Takt zu geben.
[ 64 ] Es konnten hier nur einige Gesichtspunkte entwickelt werden für die Erziehung im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinne. Es sollte aber auch nur der Hinweis darauf gegeben werden, welche Kulturaufgabe diese Vorstellungsatt in dieser Richtung zu erfüllen hat. Daß sie solches vermag, wird davon abhängen, daß sich in immer weiteren Kreisen der Sinn verbreitet für diese Vorstellungsart. Daß dies geschehen könne, dazu ist allerdings zweierlei notwendig: erstens, daß man die Vorurteile gegenüber der Geisteswissenschaft aufgibt. Wer sich wirklich auf sie einläßt, der wird schon sehen, daß sie nicht das phantastische Zeug ist, als was sie viele heute noch ansehen. Solchen wird hier kein Vorwurf gemacht, denn alles, was an Bildungsmitteln unsere Zeit bietet, muß die Meinung zunächst erzeugen, als ob die Geisteswissenschafter Phantasten und Träumer wären. Bei oberflächlicher Betrachtung kann man sich ein anderes Urteil gar nicht bilden, denn es scheint sich da der vollkommenste Widerspruch zu ergeben zwischen der als Geisteswissenschaft auftretenden Anthroposophie und allem, was die Bildung der heutigen Zeit dem Menschen als Grundlage zu einer gesunden Lebensauffassung an die Hand gibt. Erst einer tieferen Betrachtung enthüllt sich, wie tief widerspruchsvoll die Ansichten der Gegenwart ohne diese Grundlage der Geisteswissenschaft bleiben müssen, ja, wie sie diese Grundlage durch sich selbst geradezu herausfordern und auf die Dauer ohne sie gar nicht bleiben können. Das zweite, was notwendig ist, hängt mit einer gesunden Entwickelung der Geisteswissenschaft selbst zusammen. Erst dann, wenn in anthroposophischen Kreisen überall die Erkenntnis durchgedrungen sein wird, daß es darauf ankommt, die Lehren in der weitgehendsten Art für alle Verhältnisse des Lebens fruchtbar zu machen, nicht bloß über sie zu theoretisieren, dann wird sich auch das Leben verständnisvoll der Geisteswissenschaft erschließen. Sonst aber wird man fortfahren, die Anthroposophie für eine Art religiösen Sektierertums einzelner sonderbarer Schwärmer zu halten. Wenn sie aber positive nützliche Geistesarbeit leistet, dann kann der geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung die verständnisvolle Zustimmung auf die Dauer nicht versagt werden.
[ 1 ] Present-day life calls into question many things that man has inherited from his ancestors. That is why it gives rise to so many “contemporary questions” and “demands of the time”. What a multitude of questions are buzzing through the world today: the social question, the woman's question, the educational and school questions, the legal questions, the health questions, etc. etc. The most diverse means are being employed to deal with these questions. The number of those who appear with this or that recipe for “solving” this or that question, or at least for contributing something to its solution, is immeasurably great. And all possible shades of human sentiment are brought to bear: radicalism, which behaves in a revolutionary manner, the moderate mood, which, with respect for the existing, would like to develop something new from it, and conservatism, which immediately becomes agitated when anything is touched by old institutions and traditions. And alongside these main moods, all kinds of intermediate stages appear.
[ 2 ] Anyone who is able to take a deeper look at life will not be able to resist one feeling in the face of all these phenomena. It consists in the fact that our time meets the demands made on people with inadequate means in many cases. Many would like to reform life without really knowing its foundations. Those who want to make suggestions as to how it should be in the future must not be content with knowing life only on its surface. He must explore its depths.
[ 3 ] The whole of life is like a plant, which not only contains what it presents to the eye, but also harbors a future state in its hidden depths. Anyone who has a plant in front of them that only has leaves knows very well that after some time, the leaf-bearing stem will also have flowers and fruits. And in its hidden depths, this plant already contains the seeds of these blossoms and fruits. But how can someone who only wanted to study what the plant currently presents to the eye say what these organs will look like? Only he who has familiarized himself with the nature of the plant can do so.
[ 4 ] The whole of human life also contains the seeds of its future. But in order to be able to say something about this future, one must penetrate into the hidden nature of man. Our time, however, has no real inclination to do so. It is concerned with what appears on the surface and believes it would be venturing into the uncertain if it were to penetrate to that which eludes external observation. With plants, however, the matter is much simpler. Man knows that their kind have borne flowers and fruit so and so often. Human life is only present once; and the blossoms that it is to bear in the future have not yet been there. Nevertheless, they are present in the human being just as much as the blossoms in a plant that is only just beginning to bear leaves.
[ 5 ] And there is a possibility of saying something about this future if one penetrates below the surface of human nature to its essence. The various reform ideas of the present can only become truly fruitful and practical when they are based on such a deeper investigation of human life.
[ 6 ] The task of providing a practical world view that encompasses the essence of human life must, by its very nature, be the task of spiritual science. Whether what is often called spiritual science today is justified in making such a claim is not the point. It is rather a matter of the nature of spiritual science and of what it can be according to this nature. It should not be a gray theory that merely satisfies a curiosity for knowledge, nor should it be a means for some people who, out of selfishness, would like to have a higher level of development for themselves. It can be a collaborator in the most important tasks of present-day humanity, in the development of its welfare.1This sentence should not be understood as if spiritual science only wanted to deal with the comprehensive questions of life. As true as it is that it is called upon to provide the basis for attempts to solve these questions, as true is it that it can be the source from which each individual can draw answers to the most everyday questions of life, comfort, strength, confidence in existence and work, no matter what their situation in life. It can be a support for the great mysteries of life, but also for the most immediate needs of the moment, even in the seemingly most subordinate situations of daily life.
[ 7 ] However, it will have to reckon with various challenges and doubts if it chooses to pursue such a mission. Radicals and moderates, as well as conservatives in all areas of life, will have to face such doubts. For it will not be able to please any party, because its premises lie far beyond all party politics.
[ 8 ] These premises are rooted solely in true knowledge of life. Those who recognize life will only be able to set themselves tasks from life itself. He will not set up arbitrary programs, for he knows that in the future no other fundamental laws of life will prevail than those of the present. Spiritual research will therefore necessarily respect that which exists. No matter how much it may find in it that needs improvement, it will not fail to see in that which exists the seeds of the future. But it also knows that in all becoming there is growth and development. Therefore, in the present, the seeds of a transformation, of growth, will appear to it. She does not invent programs, she reads them from what is. But what she reads in this way becomes, in a sense, a program in itself, because it bears the nature of development within itself.
[ 9 ] For this very reason, the spiritual-scientific deepening of the essence of the human being provide the most fruitful and practical means for solving the most important questions of life in the present day.
[ 10 ] This shall be shown here for such a question, for the educational question. Not demands and programs shall be set up, but the child's nature shall simply be described. The aspects of education will emerge from the nature of the developing human being as if by themselves.
[ 11 ] If we want to recognize the nature of the developing human being, we must start by considering the hidden nature of the human being in general.
[ 12 ] What sensory observation learns about human beings, and what the materialistic view of life wants to accept as the only thing in the nature of human beings, is for spiritual research only a part, a limb of human nature, namely its physical body. This physical body is subject to the same laws of physical life, and is composed of the same substances and forces as the rest of the so-called inanimate world. Spiritual science therefore says that man has this physical body in common with the whole mineral kingdom. And it describes only that part of the human being as a physical body which brings the same substances together, combines them, forms them and dissolves them according to the same laws as those which also act in the mineral world as substances according to precisely these laws.
[ 13 ] Beyond this physical body, theosophy recognizes a second entity in the human being: the life body or ether body. The physicist should not be offended by the term “etheric body”. “Ether” here denotes something other than the hypothetical ether of physics. One should simply take it as a term for what is described below.
[ 14 ] It was considered a highly unscientific beginning to speak of such an “etheric body” some time ago. At the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, it was not “unscientific”. It was said that the substances and forces that act in a mineral cannot, of themselves, form a living being. A special “power” must still be inherent in it, which was called “vital force”. It was imagined, for example, that such a force was at work in a plant, in an animal, in the human body, and that it brought about the phenomena of life, just as the magnetic force causes attraction in a magnet. In the subsequent period of materialism, such a concept was eliminated. It was said that a living being is built up in the same way as a so-called inanimate one; no other forces prevail in the organism than in the mineral; they only act in a more complicated way; they build up a more complex structure. At present, only the most rigid materialists still adhere to this denial of the “life force”. A series of thinkers on nature have been taught by facts that something like a life force or life principle must be assumed.
[ 15 ] In this way, modern science comes close in a certain sense to what spiritual science says about the life body. But there is a significant difference between the two. Modern science arrives at the assumption of a kind of life force through the facts of sensory perception and the reasoning of the intellect. This is not the path of real research, however, which is the starting point of spiritual science, and from the results of which the latter makes its communications. It cannot be emphasized enough how spiritual science differs from the current science of the present in this point. The latter regards sensory experience as the basis of all knowledge, and what cannot be built on this foundation it does not consider knowable. It draws conclusions and inferences from the impressions of the senses. But it rejects anything that goes beyond this and says that it lies beyond the limits of human knowledge. For spiritual science, such a view is like that of a blind person who only wants to accept what can be felt and what can be concluded from what is felt, and who rejects the statements of the seeing as beyond human cognitive ability. For spiritual science shows that man is capable of development, that he can conquer new worlds by developing new organs. Just as colors and light are around the blind man, and he cannot perceive them because he has no organs for it, so spiritual science explains: there are many worlds around man, and he can perceive them if he only develops the necessary organs for it. Just as the blind man can see a new world as soon as he has been operated on, so can man, through the development of higher organs, recognize quite different worlds from those which his ordinary senses enable him to perceive. Whether a physically blind person can be operated on or not depends on the nature of the organs; but those higher organs through which man can penetrate into super-sensible worlds are present in germ in every human being. Anyone who has the patience, perseverance and energy to apply the methods described in the essays “How to attain knowledge of the higher worlds” can develop them.2These essays can be found in the book: “How to Know Higher Worlds?” Spiritual science does not speak in this way at all: that man has limits to his knowledge through his organization; but it says: there are for man those worlds for which he has organs of perception. It speaks only of the means of extending the respective boundaries. Thus it also stands in relation to the investigation of the life body or ether body and everything else that is indicated in the following as the higher members of human nature. It admits that the physical body alone can be accessible to the investigation of the bodily senses, and that from its point of view one can at most fall into a higher one by means of conclusions. But she does tell us how we can open up a world in which these higher members of human nature appear before the observer in a similar way to the colors and light of objects before the operated blind-born. For those who have developed their higher organs of perception, the etheric or life body is an object of observation, not of intellectual activity and deduction. This etheric or life body is something that humans share with plants and animals. It causes the substances and forces of the physical body to take on the form of growth, reproduction, the inner movement of the juices, etc. It is therefore the builder and shaper of the physical body, its inhabitant and architect. The physical body can therefore also be called an image or expression of this life body. In terms of form and size, the two are approximately the same in humans, but by no means identical. In animals, and even more so in plants, the etheric body differs considerably from the physical body in terms of shape and size.
[ 16 ] The third limb of the human being is the so-called sentient or astral body. It is the bearer of pain and pleasure, of instinct, desire and passion, etc. A being that consists only of a physical body and an etheric body does not have any of these. All of the above can be summarized under the term: sensation. Plants do not have sensation. If, in our time, some scholars conclude from the fact that some plants respond to stimuli with movements or in other ways that plants have a certain capacity for sensation, they are merely showing that they do not know the nature of sensation. What matters is not that the being in question responds to an external stimulus, but rather that the stimulus is reflected by an internal process, such as pleasure, pain, instinct, desire, etc. If this were not the case, then one would also be justified in saying that blue litmus paper has a sensation of certain substances, because it turns red when it comes into contact with them.3It is necessary to emphasize what has been said here, because there is a great deal of confusion in this regard, particularly in our time. Many people nowadays confuse the difference between plants and sentient beings because they are not clear about the actual nature of sensation. If a being (or thing) expresses an effect in some way to an impression made on it from the outside, then one is not yet justified in saying that it feels this impression. One can only say this if it experiences the impression within itself, if there is a kind of inner reflection of the external stimulus. The great advances in our natural science, which the spiritual researcher certainly admires to the highest degree, have brought a lack of clarity with regard to higher concepts. Certain biologists do not know what sensation is; that is why they also ascribe it to non-sentient beings. What they – these biologists – understand by sensation, they may also ascribe to non-sentient beings. But what spiritual science must understand by sensation is something quite different.
[ 17 ] The human being shares the sentient body only with the animal world. It is therefore the bearer of the life of feeling.
[ 18 ] One must not fall into the error of certain theosophical circles and simply think of the etheric and feeling bodies as consisting of finer substances than those present in the physical body. That would be to materialize these higher members of human nature. The etheric body is a force-form; it consists of active forces, but not of matter; and the astral or sentient body is a form made up of colored, luminous images that are mobile in themselves. 4A distinction must be made between the experience of the sentient body in itself and the perception of it by the trained clairvoyant. What is presented to the spiritual eye of the latter is meant by the above.
[ 19 ] The sentient body differs from the physical body in form and size. In humans, it takes the form of an elongated egg in which the physical and etheric bodies are embedded. It protrudes on all sides over the two as a light-image form.
[ 20 ] Now, humans have a fourth limb of their being that they do not share with other earthly beings. This is the bearer of the human “I”. The word “I”, as it is used in the German language, for example, is a name that differs from all other names. Anyone who reflects on the nature of this name in an appropriate way will at the same time gain access to an understanding of human nature. All other names can be applied by all people in the same way to the thing that corresponds to it. Everyone can call a table a “table” and a chair a “chair”. This is not the case with the name “I”. No one can use it to refer to another person; everyone can only call themselves “I”. The name “I” can never sound in my ear as a designation for me. By calling himself “I”, a person must name himself within himself. A being that can say “I” to itself is a world unto itself. Those religions that are based on spiritual science have always felt this. They have therefore said that with the “I” the “God” begins, who, with lower beings, only reveals himself from the outside in the phenomena of the environment, to speak within. The bearer of the ability described here is the “I-body”, the fourth limb of the human being.5Do not be put off by the expression “I-body”. Of course, it does not mean anything grossly material. However, it is only possible to use the words of ordinary language in spiritual science. And since these are used for material things, they must first be translated into the spiritual when used in spiritual science.
[ 21 ] This “I-body” is the bearer of the higher human soul. Through it, the human being is the crown of earthly creation. However, the “I” is by no means a simple entity in the present human being. One can recognize its nature by comparing people at different stages of development. Look at the uneducated savage and the average European, and compare them with a high idealist. They all have the ability to say “I” to themselves; the “I-body” is present in all of them. However, the uneducated savage follows his passions, drives and desires with this “I” almost like an animal. The more highly developed person says to himself in the face of certain inclinations and desires: you may follow these, others he restrains and suppresses. The idealist has developed higher inclinations and passions in addition to the original ones. This has all happened because the “I” has worked on the other limbs of the human being. Yes, therein lies the task of the “I”, that it ennobles and purifies the other limbs of itself.
[ 22 ] Thus, in the case of a person who has progressed beyond the state into which the external world has placed him, the lower limbs have been more or less changed under the influence of the “I”. In the state in which man rises above the animal, in which his “I” flashes up, he still resembles the animal in regard to the lower limbs. His etheric or life body is merely the vehicle of the living formative forces, of growth and reproduction. His sentient body expresses only those instincts, desires and passions that are stimulated by external nature. As man progresses from this stage of development through the successive lives or embodiments to ever higher development, his I transforms the other limbs. Thus the sentient body becomes the vehicle of purified feelings of pleasure and pain, of refined desires and cravings. And the etheric or life body also undergoes a transformation. It becomes the vehicle of habits, of permanent inclinations, of temperament and of memory. A person whose I has not yet worked on his life body has no memory of the experiences he has had. He lives out his life as nature has implanted it in him.
[ 23 ] The whole development of culture is expressed for man in such work of the I on its subordinate members. This work goes down into the physical body. Under the influence of the I, the physiognomy changes, the gestures and movements change, the whole appearance of the physical body changes.
[ 24 ] One can also distinguish how the various cultural and educational means have different effects on the individual limbs of the human being. The usual cultural factors have an effect on the sentient body; they teach it different kinds of pleasure and displeasure, of drives, etc., than it had from its origin. Immersion in the works of art has an effect on the etheric body. By receiving through the work of art a sense of something higher and nobler than what the sensory environment offers, the human being transforms his life body. A powerful means for the purification and ennoblement of the etheric body is religion. The religious impulses thereby fulfill their great mission in the evolution of humanity.
[ 25 ] That which is called conscience is nothing other than the result of the work of the I on the life body through a series of embodiments. When a person realizes that he should not do this or that, and when this realization makes such a strong impression on him that it is transmitted to his etheric body, then the conscience arises.
[ 26 ] Now this work of the “I” on the subordinate members can either be one that is more characteristic of the whole. human race, or it may be a wholly individual achievement of the single I upon itself. The first transformation of the human being is, so to speak, worked on by the whole human race; the latter must be based on the most individual activity of the I. When the “I” becomes so strong that it can only transform the sentient body through its own power, that which the I makes out of this sentient or astral body in this way is called the spiritual self (or, in an oriental expression: manas). This transformation is essentially based on learning, on enriching the inner being with higher ideas and views. But the I can also come to a higher, very own work on the human being's own being. This happens when not only the astral body is enriched, but the etheric or life body is transformed. Man learns many things in life; and when he looks back on this life from any point, he can say to himself: I have learned much; but he will be able to speak to a much lesser extent of a transformation of temperament, character, of a better or worse memory during life. Learning concerns the astral body; the latter transformations, on the other hand, concern the etheric or life body. It is therefore not an inaccurate image to compare the change of the astral body in life with the movement of the minute hand of the clock, the transformation of the life body with that of the hour hand.
[ 27 ] When a person enters the higher or so-called secret training, it is particularly important that he undertakes this latter transformation from the innermost power of the I. He must work quite consciously and individually on the transformation of habits, temperament, character, memory, etc. As much as he works in this way into the life body, so much does he transform it, in the sense of spiritual scientific expression, into life spirit (or, as the oriental expression goes, into Budhi).
[ 28 ] On an even higher level, the human being attains powers through which he can transform his physical body (for example, transform the blood circulation, the pulse). A human being who has been transformed in this way is called a spiritual being (in the East, an Atma).
[ 29 ] The transformations that a person carries out on his lower limbs, more in the sense of the whole human race or a part of it, for example a people, tribe or family, are given the following names in spiritual science. The astral or sentient body transformed from the I is called the sentient soul, the etheric body transformed is called the intellectual soul, and the physical body transformed is called the consciousness soul. But one must not imagine that the transformation of these three members takes place successively. It happens at all three bodies at the same time from the flashing of the I. Yes, the work of the I does not become clearly perceptible to the human being at all until a part of the consciousness soul is formed.
[ 30 ] One can see from the foregoing that in the human being we can speak of four members of his being: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral or feeling body and the ego body. - The sentient soul, the rational soul, the consciousness soul, and even the higher members of human nature: the spirit self, the life spirit, the spirit human being, appear as transformation products of these four members. When we speak of the bearers of the qualities of man, then indeed only these four members come into consideration.
[ 31 ] As educators, we work on these four members of the human being. If one wants to work in the right way, one must study the nature of these parts of the human being. Now one must not imagine that these parts develop in the human being in such a way that at some point in his life, for example at birth, they are all equally developed. Rather, their development takes place in different ways at different ages. And the right basis of education and also of teaching is based on the knowledge of these laws of development of human nature.
[ 32 ] Before physical birth, the developing human being is enclosed on all sides by a foreign physical body. He does not come into contact with the physical world independently. The physical body of the mother is his environment. Only this body can have an effect on the maturing human being. Physical birth consists precisely in the fact that the physical mother's body releases the human being, and that through this the environment of the physical world can have a direct effect on him. The senses open to the outside world. The environment thus gains the influence over the human being that the physical mother's shell had previously had.
[ 33 ] For a spiritual conception of the world, as it is represented by spiritual research, the physical body is thus born, but not yet the etheric or life body. Just as the human being is surrounded by a physical mother's shell until the moment of birth, so he is surrounded by an etheric shell and an astral shell until the time of the change of teeth, that is, until about the seventh year. It is only during the change of teeth that the etheric sheath releases the etheric body. Then an astral sheath remains until the onset of sexual maturity.6The above would not be understood in its full clarity if one were to object that the child also has memory, etc. before the change of teeth and the abilities that are bound to the astral body before sexual maturity. It must be realized that both the etheric body and the astral body are present from the beginning, only under the protective covering discussed above. It is precisely this protective covering that enables the etheric body, for example, to bring out the properties of memory in a particularly pronounced way until the change of teeth. But the physical eyes are also present in the child's germ under its protective physical mother's shell. Just as the outer physical sunlight should not have a developing effect on these protected eyes, so external education should not have an effect on the development of the memory before the change of teeth. One will rather notice how the memory develops freely through itself during this time, if one gives it nourishment and does not yet look at its development through the outside. It is the same with the qualities that the astral body carries before sexual maturity. One must give them nourishment, but always in the awareness of the above statements that the astral body lies under a protective shell. It is quite a different matter to cultivate the germs of development that are already present in the astral body before puberty and to expose the astral body, which has become independent, after puberty to that which it can process without a shell in the external world. This difference is certainly a subtle one; but without going into it, one cannot understand the nature of education. At this point, the astral or sentient body also becomes free in all directions, as the physical body did at physical birth, and the etheric body did at the change of teeth.
[ 34 ] Thus spiritual science must speak of three births of the human being. Until the change of teeth, impressions that are to reach the etheric body can reach it just as little as light and air from the physical world can reach the physical body while it is still in the womb of the mother.
[ 35 ] Before the change of teeth occurs, the free life body does not work in the human being. As in the womb of the mother, the physical body receives forces that are not its own, and gradually develops its own within the protective shell, so it is with the forces of growth until the change of teeth. The etheric body is then working out its own forces in conjunction with the inherited foreign ones. During this time of the liberation of the etheric body, however, the physical body is already independent. The liberating etheric body works out what it has to give to the physical body. And the final point of this work is the person's own teeth, which take the place of the inherited ones. They are the densest deposits in the physical body and therefore appear last in this period of time.
[ 36 ] After this point in time, the growth of the life body is taken care of by itself. However, this is still under the influence of an enveloped astral body. The moment the astral body also becomes free, the etheric body completes a period. This completion is expressed in sexual maturity. The reproductive organs become independent because the free astral body no longer has an inward effect, but instead directly confronts the external world without a covering.
[ 37 ] Just as one cannot not allow the influences of the external world to act on the unborn child as physical influences, so one should not allow those forces to act on the etheric body before the change of teeth which are the same for it as the impressions of the physical environment are for the physical body. And the corresponding influences should only be allowed to play on the astral body from the moment of sexual maturity.
[ 38 ] Not general phrases such as “harmonious development of all powers and talents” and the like can be the basis of a genuine art of education, but only a real knowledge of the human being can be built on such a basis. It is not to be maintained that the phrases indicated are incorrect, but only that they are as little to be begun with as if one wanted to maintain, for instance, in relation to a machine, that one must harmoniously bring all its parts into activity. Only those who approach the machine not with general phrases but with real knowledge of its individual parts can handle it. Thus, the art of education also involves a knowledge of the individual parts of the human being and their development... One must know which part of the human being one has to influence at a particular age, and how such influence is properly exercised. There is no doubt that a truly realistic art of education, as indicated here, can only slowly make its way. This is due to the way of thinking of our time, which will continue to regard the facts of the spiritual world as the product of wild fantasy for a long time, while general, completely unreal phrases will appear to it as the result of a realistic way of thinking. Here we shall draw without reserve what many will at present take as a fantasy, but which will one day be taken for granted.
[ 39 ] With physical birth, the physical human body is exposed to the physical environment of the outer world, whereas before it was surrounded by the protective mother's shell. What the forces and juices of the mother's body did to him before, the forces and elements of the external physical world must now do to him. Until the change of teeth in the seventh year, the human body has a task to perform that is essentially different from the tasks of all other periods of life. During this time, the physical organs must take on certain forms; their structural relationships must take on certain directions and tendencies. Later on, growth takes place, but this growth occurs in all subsequent periods on the basis of the forms that have developed up to the specified time. If correct forms have developed, then correct forms grow; if incorrect forms have developed, then incorrect forms grow. In all subsequent periods, it is not possible to make up for what one has neglected as an educator in the period up to the seventh year. Just as nature provides the right environment for the physical human body before birth, so the educator must ensure the right physical environment after birth. Only this right physical environment has the effect on the child that its physical organs are shaped into the right forms.
[ 40 ] There are two magic words that indicate how the child relates to its environment. These are: imitation and model. The Greek philosopher Aristotle called man the most imitative of animals; this saying applies to no age more than to the child's until the change of teeth. What goes on in the physical environment, the child imitates, and in imitating, its physical organs pour themselves into the forms that then remain with them. The physical environment must be taken in the broadest sense. It includes not only what is materially going on around the child, but everything that takes place in the child's environment, that can be perceived by its senses, that can have an effect on its mental powers from the physical space. This includes all moral or immoral, all clever and foolish actions that it can see.
[ 41 ] Not moral sayings, not sensible teachings have an effect on the child in the indicated direction, but rather what the adults in its environment visibly do before its eyes. Teaching does not have a formative effect on the physical body, but on the etheric body, and until the age of seven, the etheric body is surrounded by a protective etheric mother-shell, just as the physical body is surrounded by the physical mother-shell until physical birth. What is to develop in this etheric body before the seventh year in the form of ideas, habits, memory, etc., must develop in a similar way “by itself”, just as the eyes and ears develop in the womb without the influence of external light... It is undoubtedly true, as can be read in an excellent pedagogical book, Jean Paul's “Levana” or “Erziehlehre”, that a world traveler learns more from his nurse in the first few years than on all his travels around the world put together. But the child does not learn through instruction, but through imitation. And its physical organs form their shapes through the influence of the physical environment. A healthy vision develops when the right color and light conditions are brought into the child's environment, and the physical predispositions for a healthy moral sense develop in the brain and blood circulation when the child sees morality in its environment. If, before the age of seven, the child only sees foolish actions in its environment, the brain takes on forms that make it suitable for foolishness in later life as well.
[ 42 ] Just as the muscles of the hand become strong and powerful when they perform the work for which they are suited, so the brain and the other organs of the physical human body are steered in the right direction when they receive the right impressions from their environment. An example will best illustrate what is meant. You can make a doll for a child by winding an old napkin together, making legs out of two corners, arms out of two other corners, a head out of a knot, and then painting eyes, nose and mouth with ink blots. Or you can buy a so-called “beautiful” doll with real hair and painted cheeks and give it to the child. It is not even necessary to mention that this doll is of course hideous and is likely to spoil the child's healthy aesthetic sense for life. The main educational question here is a different one. When the child has the rolled-up napkin in front of him, he must use his imagination to complete it, so that it appears to be a person. This work of the imagination has a formative effect on the brain. The brain opens up, just as the muscles of the hand open up through the appropriate work. If the child is given a so-called “beautiful doll”, the brain has nothing more to do. It withers and shrivels instead of opening up... If people could see into the brain as the spiritual scientist does, they would certainly only give their children toys that are suitable for stimulating the brain's formative activity. All toys that consist only of dead mathematical forms have a desolating and killing effect on the child's formative powers, whereas everything that arouses the imagination of the living has the opposite effect. Our materialistic age produces few good toys. What kind of healthy toy, for example, is one that shows two blacksmiths facing each other, hammering an object, by means of two movable pieces of wood? You can still buy such toys in the country. Picture books in which the figures can be moved by threads from below are also very good, so that the child can transform the dead picture into an illustration of actions. All this creates inner activity of the organs, and from this activity the correct form of the organs is built up.
[ 43 ] These things can of course only be hinted at here, but spiritual science will in future be called upon to give the necessary details, and it is able to do so. For it is not an empty abstraction, but a sum of facts full of life, which are able to give guidelines for reality.
[ 44 ] Just a few more examples may be given. A so-called nervous, an excited child, and a lethargic, inactive child must be treated differently in the sense of spiritual science in relation to their environment. Everything must be taken into consideration, from the colors of the room and the other objects that usually surround the child to the colors of the clothes that are put on it. One will often do the wrong thing if one is not guided by spiritual science, because in many cases the materialistic sense will lead to the opposite of what is right. An excited child should be surrounded by red or reddish-yellow colors and dressed in clothes of these colors, whereas a sluggish child should be surrounded by blue or blue-green colors. It is the color that is produced as a counter-color in the inner being that matters. For example, the green color is the counter-color to red, and the orange-yellow color is the counter-color to blue. This can easily be seen by looking at a surface of the corresponding color for a while and then quickly turning the gaze to a white surface. This counter-color is produced by the physical organs of the child and causes the corresponding organ structures that are necessary for the child. If the excited child has a red color in its environment, it produces the green counter-image in its interior. And the activity of generating green has a calming effect; the organs absorb the tendency to calmness within themselves.
[ 45 ] One thing must be taken into account for this age: namely, that the physical body creates a gauge for what is beneficial to it. It does this by shaping its desires accordingly. In general, it can be said that a healthy physical body craves what is good for it. And as long as the physical body is important to the growing person, one should look closely at what the healthy desires, the cravings, the joys want. Joy and pleasure are the forces that elicit the physical forms of the organs in the most correct way. It is, however, difficult to sin in this regard by not placing the child in the appropriate physical conditions in relation to its environment. This can happen in particular with regard to the instincts of nutrition. One can overfeed the child with such things that it completely loses its healthy instincts for food, whereas one can maintain them through the right nutrition so that it demands everything that is beneficial to it under certain circumstances, and rejects everything that can harm it. Spiritual science will be able to indicate everything that is relevant here, down to the individual foodstuffs and stimulants, when it is called upon to develop an art of education. For it is a realistic matter for life, not a grey theory, as it might appear today after the aberrations of some theosophists.
[ 46 ] The forces that have a formative effect on the physical organs include joy in and with the environment. Cheerful expressions on the faces of educators, and above all sincere, not forced love. Such love, which warms the physical environment, so to speak, breeds the forms of the physical organs in the true sense of the word.
[ 47 ] If imitation of healthy role models is possible in such an atmosphere of love, then the child is in its proper element. Strict care should therefore be taken to ensure that nothing happens in the child's environment that the child should not imitate. One should not do anything that one would have to say to the child, “You must not do that...” One can see how the child is bent on imitation by observing that it copies characters long before it understands them. It is even quite good if the child first copies the characters and only later learns their meaning. For imitation belongs to the developmental period of the physical body, while the meaning speaks to the etheric body, and one should only influence this after the change of teeth, when its outer etheric shell has fallen away from it. In particular, all learning to speak should take place in the sense of imitation during these years. The child learns to speak best by listening. All rules and all artificial instruction can do no good.
[ 48 ] In early childhood it is particularly important that such educational means as children's songs, for example, make as beautiful a rhythmic impression on the senses as possible. The value is to be placed less on the sense than on the beautiful sound. The more refreshing something is to the eye and ear, the better it is. One should not underestimate the power of, for example, dancing movements to musical rhythm for the formation of organs.
[ 49 ] With the change of teeth, the etheric body sheds its outer etheric envelope, and thus begins the time in which the etheric body can be influenced from the outside. It must be realized what can have an effect on the etheric body from the outside. The transformation and growth of the etheric body means the transformation or development of inclinations, habits, conscience, character, memory, and temperament. The etheric body is influenced by pictures, examples, and the regulated guidance of the imagination. Just as a child up to the age of seven must be given physical models to imitate, so everything that can be imitated in its inner meaning and value must be brought into the environment of the growing human being between the change of teeth and puberty. What is meaningful and effective through images and similes is now the right thing. The etheric body develops its strength when a regulated imagination can be directed towards what it can unravel from the pictures and parables imparted to the living or the spirit and take as its guiding principle. Not abstract concepts have the right effect on the growing etheric body, but the concrete, not the sensual, but the spiritual-concrete. The spiritual view is the right educational tool in these years. Therefore, it is most important that the young person has personalities around him in his educators during these years, through whose view the desirable intellectual and moral forces can be awakened in him. Just as imitation and example are the magic words of education for the first years of childhood, so following and authority are for the years under discussion. The authority that is natural and not forced must be the immediate spiritual view, by which the young person's conscience, habits and inclinations are formed, by which his temperament is brought into regulated channels, with whose eyes he looks at the things of the world. The beautiful saying of the poet, “Each man must choose his hero, to whom he works his way up the paths to Olympus,” applies especially to this age of life. Veneration and reverence are forces through which the etheric body grows in the right way. And he who was unable to look up to someone in unlimited veneration during the time in question will have to atone for this in his whole later life. Where this veneration is lacking, the vital forces of the etheric body wither. Imagine the following in its effect on the youthful mind: an eight-year-old boy is told about a particularly honorable person. Everything he hears about him instills a sacred awe in him. The day approaches when he can see the revered person for the first time. A tremor of reverence overcomes him as he pushes the door handle behind which the revered person will appear... The beautiful feelings that such an experience brings forth are among the lasting achievements of life. And happy is the person who is able to look up to his teachers and educators as his natural authorities, not only at festive moments in life, but continually.
[ 50 ] These living authorities, these embodiments of moral and intellectual strength, must be joined by those authorities that are to be spiritually assimilated. The great examples of history, the stories of exemplary men and women must determine the conscience, the direction of the mind, not so much abstract moral principles, which can only have their proper effect when the astral body has shed its astral mother's shell with sexual maturity. In particular, history lessons must be steered in a direction determined by such points of view. Before the change of teeth, the stories, fairy tales, etc. that are brought to the child can only have the goal of joy, refreshment and cheerfulness. After this time, in addition to this, care must be taken that images of life are presented to the soul of the young person to emulate. It should not be forgotten that bad habits can be driven out by corresponding repulsive images. Warnings against such bad habits and inclinations are of little help; but if the vivid image of a correspondingly bad person is allowed to work on the young person's imagination, and if it is shown what a given inclination leads to in reality, then much can be done to eradicate it. It must always be remembered that it is not abstract ideas that have an effect on the developing etheric body, but vivid pictures in their spiritual clarity. However, the latter must be carried out with the greatest tact, so that the matter does not turn out the opposite. In stories, everything depends on the way in which they are told. Therefore, the oral narrative cannot simply be replaced by reading, for example.
[ 51 ] The spiritual-pictorial, or as one might also say, the symbolic imagination, also comes into consideration in another way for the time between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. It is necessary that the young person should absorb the secrets of nature, the laws of life, not in rationally sober concepts, but in symbols. Parables of spiritual connections must approach the soul in such a way that the legitimacy of existence behind the parables is more sensed and felt than grasped in rational concepts. “All that is transient is but a parable” must be the guiding principle for education in this age. It is of infinite importance for the human being to receive the secrets of existence in parables before they appear before the soul in the form of natural laws, etc. An example may illustrate this. Let us suppose that we wish to speak to a young person about the immortality of the soul, about its emergence from the body. We should do so by drawing a comparison, for example, with the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis. Just as the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, so the soul emerges from the body after death. No one will grasp the facts correctly in terms of the intellect unless he has previously received them in such a picture. For by means of such a simile one speaks not only to the intellect but to feeling, to sensation, to the whole soul. A young person who has gone through all this will approach the subject in quite a different mood if it is later imparted to him in terms of the intellect. It is even very bad for a person if he cannot approach the riddles of existence with feeling first. It is necessary that the educator have parables at his disposal for all the laws of nature and the secrets of the world.
[ 52 ] This is an excellent example of how spiritually scientific knowledge can have a beneficial effect on practical life. If someone who forms analogies out of a materialistic, rational way of thinking approaches young people with these analogies, he will usually make very little impression on them. Such a person must first of all work out the parables for himself with all his intellectual powers. Such parables, which one has first of all brought down to one's own level, do not have a convincing effect on the person to whom they are imparted. When one speaks to someone in pictures, then it is not only what one says or shows that has an effect on the other person, but a fine spiritual current goes from the one who imparts the message to the one to whom the message is given. If the person who is communicating does not have a warm, believing feeling for his parable, he will not make an impression on the person to whom he is speaking. In order to have the right effect, one must believe in one's own parables as realities. This is only possible if one has a spiritual scientific attitude and the parables themselves are born out of spiritual science. The genuine spiritual scientist does not need to agonize over the above parable of the soul emerging from the body, for it is truth for him. For him, the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis is really the same process at a lower level of natural existence, which is repeated at a higher level in a higher form of development in the emergence of the soul from the body. He believes in it with all his might. And this faith flows like a mysterious current from the speaker to the listener, and brings conviction. Direct life then flows from teacher to pupil. But for this life to be possible, the teacher must draw from the full source of spiritual science, and his words and everything that emanates from him must be imbued with feeling, warmth and color through the genuine spiritual-scientific attitude. A wonderful perspective opens up for the whole educational system. If it is once allowed to be fertilized by the source of life of spiritual science, then it will itself be full of understanding life. The groping that is common in this field will cease. All art of education, all pedagogy, is dry and dead if it does not receive fresh sap from such a root. Spiritual science has the appropriate similes for all the secrets of the world, the images taken from the essence of things, which are not created by man but are laid down by the forces of the world itself in creation. Therefore, spiritual science must be the vital basis of all art of education.
[ 53 ] A soul-power to which particular value must be attached in this time of human evolution is the memory. The development of the memory is precisely bound up with the transformation of the etheric body. Since the development of the etheric body takes place in such a way that it becomes free precisely between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, this is also the time when the further development of the memory must be consciously observed from the outside. The memory will permanently have less value than it could have had for the person concerned if the appropriate measures are neglected during this time. The neglected part cannot be made up for later.
[ 54 ] A rationalistic-materialistic way of thinking can make many mistakes in this direction. An educational system that has its roots in this way of thinking easily leads to prejudices against what has merely been memorized. It never tires of vehemently opposing the mere training of the memory, and it uses the most subtle methods to ensure that the young person does not absorb anything by memory that he does not understand. Yes, what is the matter with this understanding? A materialistic-intellectual way of thinking so easily gives in to the belief that there is no penetration into things except in abstract concepts; it will only be with difficulty that it will come to recognize that the other soul forces are at least as necessary for grasping things as the intellect. It is not merely a figure of speech when we say that we can understand things just as well with feeling, with sensation, with the emotions, as with the intellect. Concepts are only one of the means by which we understand the things of this world. And only to the materialistic mind do they appear to be the only means. There are, of course, many people who do not believe themselves to be materialists, and yet who consider rational understanding to be the only way of understanding. Such people may profess an idealistic, or even a spiritual, view of the world. But they relate to it in a materialistic way in their souls. For the mind is the soul's instrument for understanding the material world.
[ 55 ] With regard to the deeper foundations of understanding, a passage from the already mentioned excellent book on education by Jean Paul should be cited here. In general, this work contains golden insights into education and deserves to be considered much more than it is. It is much more important for educators than many of the most highly regarded works in this field. The passage in question reads: “Do not fear incomprehensibility, even of whole sentences; your expression and your accent and the intuitive urge to understand will illuminate half of it, and with this and time the other half. The accent is half the language for children, as it is for the Chinese and worldly people. Remember that they understand their language as well as we understand Greek or any other foreign language before they learn to speak it. Trust in the deciphering office of time and context. A child of five years understands the words “but, indeed, now, however, of course”; but try to explain them, not to the child, but to the father! - There is a little philosopher in the single “indeed”. If the eight-year-old child with its fully developed language is understood by the three-year-old, why do you want to restrict your language to his babbling? Always speak a few years ahead (after all, geniuses speak to us centuries ahead in books); speak to the one-year-old as if he were two years old, to the two-year-old as if he were six years old, since the differences in growth decrease in inverse proportion to the years. The educator, who ascribes all learning to teaching, should consider that the child already carries half of its world, namely the spiritual (for example, the moral and metaphysical objects of perception), already complete and converted within itself, and that language, which is equipped only with physical images, can therefore only illuminate the spiritual ones, not give them. The joy and certainty of language with children should be given to us by their own joy and certainty. We can learn language from them, as well as teach them through language; bold and yet correct word formations, for example, such as I have heard from three- and four-year-old children: the Bierfässer, Saiter, Fläscher (the maker of barrels, strings, bottles) — the Luftmaus (certainly better than our Fledermaus) — die Musik geigt — das Licht (because of the light scissors) — flail, flail - I am the Durchsehmann (standing behind the telescope)-I wish I were employed as a pepper nut eater, or as a pepper nut eater - in the end I'll be too clever for my own good — he made me laugh off the chair - look how late it (on the clock) it is already - and so on.»
[ 56 ] This passage speaks of understanding before rational comprehension in a field other than the one under discussion here, but what Jean Paul says about language applies precisely to the subject under discussion. Just as a child assimilates the structure of language into its soul without needing to understand the laws of language in rational terms, so must a young person learn things in order to cultivate his memory, things that he will only later acquire in conceptual terms. It is even easier to grasp in terms of concepts what one has only acquired in a purely mnemonic way at this age, just as it is easier to learn the rules of language from the language that one already speaks. The talk of incomprehensible material for the memory is nothing more than a materialistic prejudice. For example, a young person only needs to learn the most important multiplication rules using a few examples, for which you don't need a calculator, but rather your fingers are much better suited. If you proceed in this way, you take into account the nature of the developing human being. But one sins against this nature if one makes too great demands on the intellect at the time when the formation of the memory is important. The intellect is a power of the soul that is not born until sexual maturity, and therefore one should not influence it from the outside before this age. Until puberty, the young person should acquire the treasures of humanity through memory; afterwards, it is time to penetrate with concepts what he has previously memorized well. Man should not merely memorize what he has understood, but he should understand the things he knows, that is, what he has taken possession of in his memory, as a child takes possession of language. This applies to a wide range of things. First, the purely memorization of historical events, then the comprehension of these in terms of concepts. First, the good memorization of geographical facts, then the comprehension of their interrelationships, etc. In a certain sense, all comprehension in terms of concepts should be taken from the stored memory. The more the young person already knows by heart before he begins to grasp concepts, the better... It goes without saying that all this only applies to the age group under discussion here, not to later life. If one learns something at a later age, then the reverse approach can of course be the right and desirable one, although here too, much will depend on the mental constitution of the person concerned. At the age under discussion, however, one must not dry out the mind by overfilling it with intellectual concepts.
[ 57 ] An over-extensive purely sensual visual instruction also arises from a materialistic way of thinking. All visual instruction must be spiritualized for this age. For example, one should not be content with merely presenting a plant, a seed, a flower in a sensual way. Everything should become a parable of the spiritual. A seed is not just what it appears to the eyes. The whole new plant is hidden within it. That such a thing is more than what the senses see must be grasped with feeling, with the imagination, with the soul. The sense of the mysteries of existence must be felt. It cannot be objected that such an approach clouds pure sensory perception: on the contrary, truth is neglected by merely relying on sensory perception. For the whole reality of a thing consists of spirit and matter, and faithful observation does not need to be carried out any less carefully if all the powers of the soul, not just the physical senses, are brought into play. If people could see what a waste of soul and body a purely sensual approach to learning can be, as the spiritual scientist can, they would insist less on such an approach. What is the use, in the highest sense, of showing young people all kinds of minerals, plants, animals, and physical experiments, if this is not combined with the use of sensory analogies to give an inkling of spiritual mysteries? A materialistic mind will certainly not be able to make much of what has been said here; and this is only too understandable to the spiritual scientist. But it is also clear to him that a truly practical art of education can never arise from the materialistic mind. However practical this mind may seem, it is in reality impractical when it comes to grasping life in a vital way. The materialistic attitude is fantastic in the face of true reality, while this attitude must necessarily appear fantastic to the appropriate discussions of spiritual science. No doubt many obstacles will have to be overcome before the principles of spiritual science, which are born out of life, can penetrate the art of education. But that is natural. Its truths must still be unfamiliar to many people. But they will become part of culture if they are truly the truth.
[ 58 ] Only through a clear awareness of how the individual educational measures affect the young person can the educator always find the right tact to do the right thing in each individual case. Thus one must know how to treat the individual soul forces, namely: thinking, feeling and willing, so that their development will react back to the etheric body, while the latter, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, can be shaped more and more perfectly shaped by external influences.
[ 59 ] The foundations for the development of a healthy, strong will are laid by the correct application of the educational principles discussed above during the first seven years of life. For such a will must have its support in the fully developed forms of the physical body. From the change of teeth onwards, the point is that the etheric body, which is now developing, supplies the physical body with those forces by which the latter can make its forms sound and firm within itself. That which makes the strongest impressions on the etheric body also has the strongest effect on the stabilization of the physical body. The strongest impulses, however, are those which are caused by those feelings and ideas through which man feels and experiences his position in relation to the eternal foundations of the universe, that is, through religious experiences. The will of a man, and with it his character, will never develop healthily if he cannot undergo deep religious impulses in the epoch of life in question. The way in which a person feels integrated into the whole of the world is expressed in the unified organization of the will. If a person does not feel connected to a divine spiritual reality by secure threads, then his will and character must remain uncertain, inconsistent and unhealthy.
[ 60 ] The world of feeling develops in the right way through the parables and symbols described, in particular through everything that is presented from history and other sources in the form of images of characteristic people. A corresponding deepening of the secrets and beauties of nature is also important for the development of the world of feeling. And here, in particular, the cultivation of the sense of beauty and the awakening of the feeling for the artistic are to be considered. The musical element must supply the etheric body with that rhythm which enables it to feel the rhythm that is otherwise hidden in all things. A great deal is taken away from a young person for the whole of his later life if he does not receive the benefit of cultivating the musical sense during this time. If this sense were completely lacking, certain aspects of the world would remain completely hidden to him. However, the other arts should not be neglected. The awakening of the sense for architectural styles, for plastic forms, for lines and drawings, for the harmony of colors, none of this should be missing from the educational plan. However simple all this may have to be in certain circumstances, the objection that the circumstances do not permit anything in this direction can never be valid. With the simplest means, much can be achieved if the educator himself has the right sense in this direction. A joy in life, a love of existence, the strength to work, all these things grow for the whole of existence from the cultivation of the sense of beauty and art. And the relationship between people, how is it ennobled, beautified by this sense. The moral sense, which is also formed in these years through the images of life, through the exemplary authorities, it receives its certainty when the good is felt to be beautiful and the bad to be ugly at the same time through the sense of beauty.
[ 61 ] Thinking in its own form as an inner life in abstract terms must still take a back seat in the period of life in question. It must develop as if uninfluenced, as if of its own accord, while the soul receives the parables and images of life and the secrets of nature. Thus, in the midst of the other soul experiences between the seventh year and puberty, thinking must grow, the power of judgment must mature, so that then, after puberty, the human being will be able to form his opinions about the things of life and knowledge in full independence. The less one influences the development of the power of judgment directly beforehand, and the better one does it indirectly through the development of the other powers of the soul, the better it is for the whole later life of the person concerned.
[ 62 ] Not only for the spiritual part of education, but also for the physical, spiritual science provides the right foundation. To give a characteristic example, we may refer to gymnastics and games for young people. Just as love and joy must permeate the environment of the first years of childhood, so the growing etheric body must really experience within itself, through physical exercises, the feeling of its growth, of the ever-increasing strength within itself. The gymnastics exercises, for example, must be designed in such a way that with every movement, with every step, the young person feels within himself: “I feel growing strength within me.” And this feeling must take possession of the inner being as a healthy pleasure, as a feeling of well-being. To devise gymnastic exercises in this sense, of course, requires more than a rational, anatomical and physiological knowledge of the human body. It requires an intimate, intuitive, entirely emotional knowledge of the interaction of pleasure and well-being with the positions and movements of the human body. The person who designs such exercises must be able to experience within himself how a movement, a position of the limbs, produces a pleasurable, comfortable feeling of strength, how something else produces a kind of loss of strength, etc. The fact that gymnastics and physical exercises can be cultivated in this direction requires that the educator have something that only spiritual science and, above all, a spiritual scientific attitude can give him. One does not need to be able to look into the spiritual worlds, but only to have the sense to apply in life what results from spiritual science. If spiritual-scientific knowledge were applied in practical areas such as education, then the completely unnecessary talk about the fact that this knowledge must first be proven would soon cease. Those who apply them correctly will see that they prove themselves in life by making it healthy and strong. It is precisely by seeing them prove themselves in practice that one will recognize that they are true, and in this way one must find them better proven than by all the “logical” and so-called “scientific reasons”. Spiritual truths are best recognized by their fruits, not by any supposedly scientific proof, which can hardly be much more than a logical skirmish.
[ 63 ] The astral body is not offered until puberty. With its outwardly free development, everything that unfolds the abstract world of ideas, the power of judgment, the free mind, will also be able to approach the human being from the outside. It has already been mentioned that these soul abilities should develop uninfluenced within the correct handling of the other educational measures, just as eyes and ears develop uninfluenced in the maternal organism. With sexual maturity, the time has come when the human being is also mature enough to form his own judgment about the things he has learned before. There is nothing worse that can be done to a human being than to awaken his own judgment too early. Only then can one judge when one has stored up material for judging and comparing within oneself. If one forms independent judgments before this, then these must lack a basis. All one-sidedness in life, all barren “creeds” that are based on a few scraps of knowledge and from these would like to judge over experiences of the imagination of humanity that have often been proven over long periods of time, stem from errors in education in this direction. Before one is mature enough to think, one must have acquired respect for what others have thought. There is no healthy thinking that has not been preceded by a healthy sense of truth based on a natural belief in authority. If this educational principle were followed, we would not have to experience people who think they are mature enough to judge things too young, thereby depriving themselves of the opportunity to let life affect them in a comprehensive and unbiased way. For every judgment that is not based on the proper foundation of soul treasures throws stones in the path of the judge. For once a judgment has been passed on a matter, one is always influenced by it; one no longer takes in an experience in the same way as one would have done if one had not formed a judgment that is connected with this matter. In the young person, the sense must live to learn first and then to judge. What the intellect has to say about a matter should only be said when all the other powers of the soul have spoken; before that, the intellect should only play a mediating role. It should only serve to grasp what has been seen and felt, to take it in as it is, without the immature judgment immediately taking possession of the matter. Therefore, before the age indicated, the young person should be spared all theories about things, and the main emphasis should be placed on his facing the experiences of existence in order to absorb them into his soul. One can certainly acquaint the growing person with what people have thought about this or that, but one should avoid his committing himself to a view through a premature judgment. He should also absorb the opinions with the feeling, he should be able to hear: this one said that, the other said this. Teachers and educators are indeed required to exercise great tact in cultivating such a mind, but a spiritual scientific attitude is precisely capable of giving this tact.
[ 64 ] Only a few aspects of education in the spiritual-scientific sense could be developed here. However, it should only be pointed out what cultural task this way of thinking has to fulfill in this direction. That it is able to do so will depend on the fact that the sense for this way of thinking spreads in ever wider circles. For this to happen, however, two things are necessary: firstly, that one gives up the prejudices against spiritual science. Anyone who really engages with it will see that it is not the fantastic stuff that many still regard it as today. No reproach is made here to such people, for everything that our time offers in the way of educational means must initially create the opinion that spiritual scientists are fantasists and dreamers. A superficial view cannot help but form a different judgment, for it seems to reveal the most complete contradiction between anthroposophy, which presents itself as a spiritual science, and everything that contemporary education offers as a basis for a healthy view of life. Only a deeper consideration reveals how deeply contradictory the views of the present must remain without this basis of spiritual science, indeed, how they virtually challenge this basis through themselves and in the long run cannot do without it. The second thing that is necessary is connected with a healthy development of spiritual science itself. Only when the realization has penetrated everywhere in anthroposophical circles that it is important to make the teachings fruitful in the broadest way for all circumstances of life, not merely to theorize about them, will life also open up to spiritual science in an understanding way. Otherwise, people will continue to regard anthroposophy as a kind of religious sectarianism of a few strange enthusiasts. But if it does positive and useful spiritual work, then the spiritual scientific movement cannot be denied sympathetic approval in the long run.