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The Younger Generation
GA 217

12 October 1922, Dornach

Lecture X

Yesterday I wanted to show how we must come to an education, steeped in artistic form. I drew attention to how in earlier times the teacher took his start from the artistic, which he did in higher education by treating as arts what today has become entirely abstract and scientific, namely, grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. This was done in such a way that the young human being started by recognizing in his teacher: This man can do something which I cannot do. And through this alone the right relationship was established between the younger and the older generations. For this relationship, my dear friends, can never develop along the path of intellectuality. As soon as one stands consciously on the ground of the intellect or without the ideas inwardly revealed in the intellectual or mind soul, there is no possibility of differentiating between human beings. For human nature is so constituted that when it is a matter of making something clear through the consciousness soul, everyone thinks that the moment he has concepts he is capable of discussing them with anyone. Thus it is, with the intellect. For the intellect neither man's maturity nor his experience comes into consideration; they only do so when it is a question of ability. But when their elders have ability the young quite as a matter of course pay tribute to maturity and experience.

Now, in order to understand these things thoroughly we must consider from a different point of view the course taken by mankind's evolution. Let me tell you what spiritual science has discovered about the course of history, with regard to the intercourse between men.

External documentary history can go back only a few thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha and what is to be found can never be estimated rightly because spiritual achievements, even in the time of ancient Greece, cannot be grasped by modern concepts. Even for the old Grecian times quite other concepts must be used. Nietzsche felt this. Hence the charm of his brief, unfinished essay on Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, where he deals with philosophy in connection with the general development of Greek culture up to the time of Socrates. In Socrates he saw the first flicker of pure intellectuality; everything philosophical in the tragic age of Greek development proceeded from wide human foundations for which, when expressed in concepts, these were only the language through which to convey what was experienced. In the earliest times philosophy was quite different from what it later became. But I only want to mention this in passing.

I really want to point out that with spiritual Imagination, and especially with Inspiration, we can look back much further into human evolution and, above all, into men's souls. Then we find when we go very far back, some seven or eight thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, that the young had a natural veneration for great age. This was a matter of course. Why? Because what exists today only in earliest youth existed then for the whole evolution of man.

If we look at the human being with less superficiality than is often done today, we find that the whole evolution of the human soul changes at about the change of teeth, during the sixth, seventh or eighth year. Man's soul becomes different, and again it changes at the time of puberty. I have discussed this fully in my book The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science. On occasion it is noticed that man's soul becomes different in the seventh year and again in the fourteenth or fifteenth. But what people no longer notice is that changes still take place at the beginning of the twenties, at the end of the twenties, in the middle of the thirties, and so on.

Whoever is able to observe the life of soul in a more intimate way knows such transitions in man, that human life runs its course in rhythms. Try to perceive this, let us say, in Goethe. Goethe records how he was cured of certain childlike religious ideas by the Lisbon earthquake, thus about the time when he was changing his teeth, and how puzzling everything was for him. He tells how as a small child he began to reflect: Is there a good God ruling the world, when one sees that countless people have been swept away through these terrible fiery forces in the earth?—Especially in these decisive moments of his life, Goethe was prone to let external events work upon his soul so as to be conscious of its changes. And he says concerning this period of his life that he became a strange kind of pantheist, how he could no longer believe in the ideas imparted by the older people in his home and by his parents. He tells how he took his father's music-stand on which he set out minerals, placing on top a little candle that he lit by holding a burning-glass to catch the first rays of the morning sun. In later life he explained that he had wanted to bring an offering to the great God of Nature by lighting a sacrificial fire, kindled from Nature herself.

Take the first period of Goethe's life, then the following one, and so on till you piece together this whole life out of parts of about the length of his childlike episode, and you will find that with Goethe something always happened during such times fundamentally to change his soul. It is extraordinarily interesting to see that the fact of Schiller's urging Goethe to continue Faust only found fruitful soil in Goethe because at the end of the eighteenth century, he happened to be at a transitional period of this kind. It is interesting too that Goethe re-wrote Faust at the beginning of a following life-period. Goethe began Faust in his youth in such a way that he makes Faust open the book of Nostradamus. There we have the great scene:

“What powers celestial, lo! ascend, descend
Each unto each the golden vessels giving!”

But turn the page and there we find:
“Thou, Spirit of the Earth, to me art nearer.”

Goethe rejects for Faust the great tableau of the macrocosm and allows only the earth-spirit to approach him. And when at the beginning of the nineteenth century he was persuaded by Schiller to revise Faust he wrote the “Prologue in Heaven.” Anyone who observes his own life inwardly will discover that these changes hold good. Nowadays we only notice them when we deliberately train ourselves to look deeply into our own life.

In ancient times, six thousand, seven thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, these changes were so noticeable that they were experienced in the life of soul as the change of teeth or puberty is today. And, indeed, approximately up to the middle of life, up to the thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth year, life was on the up-grade. But then it began to decline. People experienced the drying-up of life. But while certain products of metabolism become deposited through sluggishness in the organism and the physical organism becomes increasingly heavy and lethargic, it was also felt that up to the greatest age the soul and spirit were on the ascent, how the soul is set free with the drying up of the body. And people in olden days would not have spoken with such ardour of the patriarchs—the word itself only arose later—had they not noticed externally in men: True, he is getting physically old, but he has to thank his physical aging for lighting-up his spirit. He is no longer dependent on the body. The body withers, but the soul becomes free.

In this modern age it is most unusual that such a thing happens, for instance, as occurred at the Berlin University. Two philosophers were there, the one was Zeller—the famous Greek scholar—and the other Michelet. Zeller was seventy years old and thought he ought to be pensioned off. Michelet was ninety and lectured with tremendous vivacity. Eduard von Hartmann told me this himself. Michelet is supposed to have said: “I don't understand why that young man doesn't want to lecture any more.” Michelet was, as I said, ninety years old!

Today people seldom keep their freshness to such a degree. But in those times it was so, especially among those who concerned themselves with spiritual life. What did the young say when they looked at the Patriarchs? They said: It is beautiful to get old. For then one learns something through one's own development that one cannot know before. It was perfectly natural to speak in this way. Just as a little boy with a toy horse wants to be big and get a real horse, so, at that time, there was the desire to get old because it was felt that something is then revealed from within.

Then came the following millennia. It was still experienced up to a considerable age, but no longer as in the old Indian epoch—in the terminology of my Occult Science. At the zenith of Greek culture, man still had living experience of the change occurring in life in the middle of the thirties. Men still knew how to distinguish between body and spirit, and said: At the age of thirty, the physical begins to decline, but then the spiritual begins to blossom forth. This was experienced by the soul and spirit in the immediate presence of men. The original feeling of the Greeks was based upon this, not upon that phantasy of which modern science speaks. To understand the fullness of Greek culture, we should bear in mind that the Greeks were still able in consciousness to come to thirty, five-and-thirty, six-and-thirty years, whereas a more ancient humanity grew in consciousness to a far greater age. Herein consists the evolution of humanity. Man has more and more to experience out of Nature unconsciously what is for a later time; this requires him to experience it consciously for consciously it must again be experienced. Whoever observes himself can recognize the seven-yearly changes; the length of time is not pedantically exact, but approximate. A man who looks back to the period of his forty-ninth, forty-second, thirty-fifth years can recognize quite well: At that time something happened in me by which I learnt something which out of my own nature I could not previously have done, just as I should not have been able to bite with my second teeth before I had them. To experience life concretely is something that has been lost in the course of man's evolution. And today if anyone does not inwardly train himself to observe, these epochs from the thirtieth year onwards are completely blurred. Comparatively speaking, an inner transformation can still be noticed at the beginning of the twenties—even up to the end of the twenties, though it is then rather less noticeable. But with the present human organization man receives something from his natural evolution only up to his twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh year, and this limit will recede more and more. In earlier times men were not free in their organization, destined as they were to have these experiences out of their own nature. Freedom has become possible only by the withdrawal of Nature. To the extent Nature ceases freedom becomes possible. Through his own striving, through his own powers, man must arrive at finding the spiritual, whereas formerly, the older he became the more did the spiritual thrive.

Today emphasis is no longer placed on what the old become merely by growing older. Intellectualism is left which, between the eighteenth and nineteenth years, can develop so that from then onwards one can know with the intellect. But as far as intellectuality is concerned, one can at most reach a greater degree of proficiency but make no qualitative progress. If one has fallen a victim to the desire to prove or to refute everything intellectually, one cannot progress. If someone puts forward what is the result of decades of experience but wants to prove it intellectually, an eighteen-year-old could refute him intellectually. For whatever is possible intellectually at sixty is equally possible at nineteen, since intellectuality is a stage during the epoch of the consciousness soul which in the sense of deepening is of no help to progress, but only to proficiency. The young may say: “I am not yet as clever as you are; you can still take me in.” But he will not believe the other to be his superior in the sphere of intellect.

These things must be emphasized to become intelligible. I do not wish to criticize. I am saying this only because it is part of the natural evolution of humanity; we should be clear about the following characteristic of our age, namely, that if man does not strive out of inner activity for development and maintain it consciously, then with mere intellectualism at his twentieth year he will begin to get rusty. He then receives stimuli only from outside, and through these external stimuli keeps himself going. Do you think that if things were not like that people would flock to the cinema? This longing for the cinema, this longing to see everything externally, depends on the human being becoming inwardly inactive, on his no longer wanting inner activity.

The only way to listen to lectures on Spiritual Science, as meant here, is for those present to do their share of the work. But today that is not to people's liking. They flock to lectures or meetings with lantern slides so that they can sit and do as much as possible without thinking. Everything just passes before them. They can remain perfectly passive.

But our system of teaching is ultimately of this character, too, and anyone who on educational grounds objects to the triviality of the modern object lesson is said to be behind the times. But one has to oppose it, for man is not a mere apparatus for observing, an apparatus that wants simply to look at things. Man can live only by inner activity. To listen to Spiritual Science means to invite the human being to co-operate with his soul. People do not want this today. Spiritual Science is an invitation to this inner activity, that is to say, it must lead all studies to the point where there is no more support in external sense-perception because then the inner play of forces must begin to move freely. Not before thinking moves freely in this inner play of forces can Imagination be reached. Thus the basis for all Anthroposophy is inner activity, the challenge to inner activity, the appeal to what can be active when all the senses are silent and only the activity of thinking is astir.

Here there lies something of extraordinary significance. Just suppose you were capable of this. I will not flatter you by saying that you are. I only want to ask you first to assume that you are capable of it, that you can think in such a way that your thoughts are only an inner flow of thoughts. What I called pure thinking in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was certainly not well named when judged by outer cultural conditions. For Eduard von Hartmann said to me: “There is no such thing, one can only think with the aid of external observation.” And all I could say in reply was: “It has only to be tried and people will soon learn to be able to make it a reality.” Thus take it as a hypothesis that you could have thoughts in a flow of pure thought. Then there begins for you the moment when you have led thinking to a point where it need not be called thinking any longer, because in a twinkling—in the twinkling of a thought—it has become something different. This rightly named pure thinking has at the same time become pure will, for it is willing, through and through. If you have advanced so far in your life of soul that you have freed thinking from outer perception, it has become at the same time pure will. You hover with your soul, so to speak, in a pure flight of thought. But this pure flight of thought is a flight of will. Then the exercise or the striving for the exercise of pure thought begins to be not an exercise in thinking only but also an exercise of the will, indeed an exercise of the will that goes right to the center of the human being. For you will make the following remarkable observation. It is only now, for the first time, that you can speak of thinking, as it is in ordinary life, as an activity of the head. Before this you really have no right to speak of thinking as an activity of the head, for you know this only as external fact from physiology, anatomy, and so on. But now you feel inwardly that you are no longer thinking so high up, you begin for the first time to think with the heart. You actually interweave your thought with the breathing process. You actually set going of itself what the Yoga exercises have striven for artificially. You notice that as thinking becomes more and more an activity of the will it wrenches itself free first from the breast and then from the whole human body. It is as though you were to draw forth this thinking from the extremity of your big toe! And if with inner participation you study what has appeared with many imperfections—for I make no claims for my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—if you let it work upon you and feel what this pure thinking is, you will experience that a new man is born within you who can bring out of the spirit an unfolding of the will.

Does man know before this that he has a will? He really has no will, for he is given up to instincts connected with his organic development. He often dreams that he does this or that out of an impulse of the soul, but he really does it because of the good or bad condition of his stomach. But now you know that you have permeated the physical organism with what fills it with consciousness. You do not need to be a clairvoyant for this. All you need do is to be interested in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and let it work upon you. For this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity cannot be read as other books are today. It must really be read so that once you get into the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity you have the feeling that it is an organism, one member developing out of another, that you have found your way into something living. People immediately say: Something is going to get into me which will take away my freedom. Something is entering me that I do not want to have.

People who entertain such thoughts are like those who were to say that if the human being at two or three years has to get used to speaking a certain language, he will thereby lose his freedom. The human being ought to be warned against language for he will no longer be free when brought into this chance association of ideas. He ought to be able to speak at will now Chinese, now French, now German. Nobody says this because it would be too absurd, and life itself refutes such nonsense. On the other hand there are people who either hear or see something of Eurythmy and say that it, too, rests upon the chance association of the ideas of individuals. But one should be able to assume that philosophers would say: One must look into this Eurythmy and see if in evoking gestures we may not have the foundations of a higher freedom and find that it is only an unfolding at a higher level of what is in speech.

So one need not be surprised—for really nothing that goes beyond intellectualism is regarded without prejudice today—that people get goose-flesh when one tells them that a certain book must be read quite differently from other books, that it must be read in such a way that from it something is really experienced. What is it that must be experienced? It is the awakening of the will out of the spiritual. In this respect my book was intended as a means of education. The intention was not only to give it content but to make it work educationally. Hence you find in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity an exposition on the art of forming concepts, a description of what takes place in the soul when one does not keep with one's concepts to the impressions from outside, but lives within the free flow of thoughts.

That, my dear friends, is an activity which aims at knowledge in a far deeper sense than the external knowledge of Nature, but it is at the same time artistic, wholly identical with artistic activity. So that the moment pure thinking is experienced as will, man's attitude becomes that of an artist.

And this, my dear friends, is like-wise the attitude we need today in the teacher if he is to guide and lead the young from the time of the change of teeth to puberty, or even beyond puberty. The mood of soul should be so that out of the inner life of soul one comes to a second man, who cannot be known as is the outer physical body, which can be studied physiologically or anatomically, but who must be livingly experienced and may rightly be called, in accordance with the real meaning of the terms, “life body” or “ether body”. This cannot be known through external perception but must be inwardly experienced. To know this second man a kind of artistic activity must be unfolded. Hence there is this mood in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity which most people never discover—everywhere it touches the level of the artistic. Only most people do not discover this because they look for the artistic in the trivial, in the naturalistic and not in free activity. Only out of this free activity can education really be experienced as art, and the teacher can become an artist in education when he finds his way into this mood. Then in our epoch of the consciousness soul all teaching will be so arranged as to create an artistic atmosphere between teacher and pupil. And within this artistic atmosphere there can develop that relation between led and leader which is an inclining towards the leader, because he can do something which he is able to show forth artistically, and one feels that what he can do one would like to be able to do oneself. Thus no opposition is aroused because it is felt that one would destroy oneself by opposing.

Because of the way writing is taught today, it often happens that even as a child—for in the child there is always a being who is cleverer than the teacher—one asks: Why should I be bothered to write? I have no kind of relationship to writing—which is really what the North American Indians felt when they saw European script. They felt the black signs to be witchcraft. The feeling of the child is very similar. But let us awaken in the child what it means to look at black, red, green, yellow, white. Let us call up in him what it is when we surround a point by a circle. Let us call up the great experience contained in the difference there is when we draw two green circles and in each of them three red circles, then two red and in each of them three green, two yellow with three blue ones in them, then two blue containing three yellow circles. We let the children experience in the colors what the colors as such are saying to the human being, for in the world of color lives a whole world. But we also let the children experience what the colors have to say to one another, what green says to red, what blue says to yellow, blue to green and red to blue—here we have the most wonderful relation between the colors. We shall not do this by showing the child symbols or allegories, but we shall do it in an artistic way. Then we shall see how out of this artistic feeling the child gradually puts down figures out of which the letters then develop as writing once developed from picture-script. How foreign to the child today are B, G, or any other sign that has developed through inner necessity to its present form. What is a G, K, or U to a seven-year old? He really has not the slightest kinship with it. it has taken the human being thousands of years to acquire this relationship. The child must acquire an aesthetic relation to it. Everything is exterminated in the child because the written characters are not human; and the child wants to remain human.

In order to understand youth in its relation to the older generation we must go right into the art of education. The cleft between age and youth must be bridged not by hollow phrases but by education that is an art, education which is not afraid to find its support in real spiritual-scientific knowledge. That is why I said a few days ago: Where does this art lead to? It leads to experience of the real spiritual. And where goes what the age has gradually developed in such a way that it believes it must be given as a matter of course to the young? Where does that lead? It does not lead to the Spirit but to that which is devoid of Spirit. It is regarded a sin to bring the Spirit into what goes by the name of knowledge and science.

Science does not leave the human being alone even in earliest childhood. It cannot very well be otherwise. For the teacher is so drilled in systematized botany (and many books are entirely given over to systematized botany) that he believes he is committing a sin if he speaks to the children about botany in a way that is not scientific. But what is found in a botanical textbook cannot mean anything to a child before he is ten, and it is not until he is at least eighteen or nineteen that it can acquire any real significance for him.

Such is the situation. Now I have no intention of creating another intellectual theory about education. The aim is to create an artistic atmosphere between the older and the younger. But when this comes about, something happens which must occur if young people are to grow into the world in a healthy way. What the human being of today grows into can be described quite concretely. Between the ninth and tenth years an undefined feeling lives in the soul of every human being who is not a psychopath. There need not necessarily exist either a clear or unclear concept of this. But it begins to live within the human being from his ninth or tenth year. Up till then what is called the astral body alone is concerned with man's life of soul. But from that time onwards the force of the ego nature first begins to stir. It is not formulated in concepts. But in the life of feeling, deep within the soul, there lives unconsciously a question in the heart of the growing human being. This question takes different forms in different people. But a question arises which put in the form of a concept might be expressed as follows: Up to now the astral body has believed in other human beings; now I need something that somebody says to me so that I may believe in him or in others in my environment. Those who as children have most resisted this are those who need it most. Between the ninth and tenth years the human being, to strengthen his ego, begins to be dependent on an older person in whom he can trust—without this trust needing to be drummed in—in whom he can believe with the help of the artistic atmosphere that has been created. And woe betide it if this question which may still be one for many children up to their sixteenth or seventeenth year and sometimes even to the years I mentioned yesterday, the eighteenth or nineteenth—woe betide it if nothing happens to enable this question of the young to be answered by the old so that the young say: I am grateful that I have learnt from the old what I can learn only from the old; what he can tell me, he alone can tell me, for it will be different if I learn it when I am old.

Through this can be created something in an educational way which, applied in the right way, can be of the greatest significance for the epoch of the consciousness soul, which, in fact, in the earliest times of the Patriarchs, was already alive between young and old. Then, every young person said to himself: The old man with his snow-white hair has experiences which can only come when one is as old as he. Before then the necessary organs are not there. Therefore he must tell his experiences to us. We are dependent on what he relates because he alone can relate it. Certainly I shall one day be as old as he. But I shall not experience what he tells for thirty-five or forty years. The times will have progressed by then and I shall experience something different. But what I want to learn is only to be learnt from him.

Here is something in the spiritual realm which may be compared with feeding at the mother's breast. Just as the infant might say: “I too shall one day give the breast to a child, but now it is my mother who must give it to me”—so it is in the spiritual life. In the foundations of the spirit life of the world it is as though a chain were there, reaching from the past over into the future, which must be received by each generation into itself, must be carried onwards, re-forged, perfected. This chain has been broken in the age of intellectualism. This was generally felt among those growing up about the turn of the nineteenth century. Try to feel that you did experience something of the kind, even if at the time you were not able to express it. Try to sense that by feeling this, you were feeling about it in the right way. And if you sense this you will realize the true significance of the youth movement today, the youth movement which has, and must have, a Janus-head, because it is directed towards experience of the spiritual—an experience of the spiritual which carries thought so far that it becomes will, that it becomes the innermost human impulse.

We have been seeking now for will at its abstract pole where it is thought. In the days to follow we will seek it in the deeper spheres of man's being.

Zehnter Vortrag

[ 1 ] Ich wollte Ihnen gestern begreiflich machen, wie man zu einer Erziehung, beziehungsweise zu einer Führung der jungen Menschen dadurch kommen müsse, daß die Erziehung in künstlerischer Art gestaltet wird. Ich habe darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß der Erzieher in früheren Zeitaltern in einem gewissen Sinne vom Künstlerischen ausgegangen ist. Das geschah für die sogenannte höhere Schulbildung, indem man, was heute schon ganz die Form des Abstrakten, Wissenschaftlichen angenommen hat, das Grammatische, Dialektische und Rhetorische als Künste betrachtete und handhabte, so daß der junge Mensch an seinem Führer zuerst etwas kennenlernte, das ihn sich sagen ließ: Der kann etwas, was ich nicht kann. — Und dadurch allein stellte sich das richtige Verhältnis zwischen den jüngeren und den älteren Generationen her, denn dieses Verhältnis kann sich niemals auf dem Wege der Intellektualität entwickeln. Sobald man nicht mit der Gemüts- und Verstandesseele die innerlich geoffenbarten Ideen hat, sondern sich mit der Bewußtseinsseele auf den Boden des Verstandes stellt, gibt es keine Möglichkeit, unter den Menschen irgendwie noch zu differenzieren. Denn die menschliche Natur ist so veranlagt, wenn es sich darum handelt, irgend etwas mit der Bewußtseinsseele begrifflich auszumachen, wenn der Mensch überhaupt nur zu Begriffen kommt, daß jeder glaubt, mit jedem über diese Begriffe diskutieren zu können. So ist es beim Intellekt, bei dem ja die Reife, die Erfahrung des Menschen gar nicht in Betracht kommt. Reife und Erfahrung des Menschen kommen erst beim Können in Betracht. Das Können eines älteren Menschen wird von der Jugend auch ganz selbstverständlich anerkannt.

[ 2 ] Um nun diese Dinge aus dem Fundamente heraus zu verstehen, müssen wir uns noch einmal von einem anderen Gesichtspunkte aus ein wenig vor die Seele stellen, wie dieMenschheitsentwickelung eigentlich in bezug auf den Verkehr von Mensch zu Mensch verlaufen ist. Die äußere Geschichte, die sich an Dokumente hält, kann ja nur einige Jahrtausende vor das Mysterium von Golgatha zurückgehen, und sie kann das, was sie da erkundet, nicht einmal in der richtigen Weise bewerten, weil schon die geistigen Erzeugnisse der alten Griechenzeit mit den Begriffen von heute gar nicht mehr erfaßt werden können. Man muß schon für die alte Griechenzeit ganz andere Begriffe anwenden. Das hat unter anderen Nietzsche gefühlt. Daher ist so reizvoll seine nicht beendete kleine Schrift «Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen», wo er die Philosophie der Griechen im Zusammenhange mit der allgemeinen griechischen Kulturentwickelung bis zu Sokrates behandelt. In Sokrates findet er das erste Aufleuchten der bloßen Intellektualität, während alles Philosophische in dem sogenannten tragischen Zeitalter der griechischen Entwickelung aus umfassenden menschlichen Untergründen hervorgegangen ist, für die, wenn sie begrifflich ausgedrückt werden, das Begriffliche eben nur eine Sprache ist, um Erlebtes auszudrücken. Philosophie ist ja in den ältesten Zeiten etwas ganz anderes, als was sie später geworden ist. Aber darauf will ich jetzt nur hinweisen.

[ 3 ] Wovon ich hier eigentlich sprechen will, das ist, daß man mit geistiger Imagination und besonders Inspiration viel weiter zurückschauen kann, auch auf die Details der menschlichen Entwickelung, vor allen Dingen hineinschauen kann in die Seelen der Menschen. Und da zeigt sich, daß wenn wir sehr weit, etwa in das siebente, achte Jahrtausend vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha zurückgehen, es da sogar eine ganz selbstverständliche Verehrung der Jugend für das hohe Alter gab. Warum war diese Verehrung selbstverständlich? Weil in jenen ältesten Zeiten dasjenige, was heute nur für die ersten Jugendjahre vorhanden ist, noch für die ganze Menschheitsentwickelung vorhanden war.

[ 4 ] Wenn man nicht in so grober Weise auf die menschliche Wesenheit hinschaut, wie man es heute oft tut, so wird man schon finden, daß die ganze seelische Entwickelung des Menschen ungefähr um die Zeit des Zahnwechsels, um das sechste, siebente, achte Jahr herum, eine andere wird. Die Seele des Menschen wird eine andere, und sie wird wiederum eine andere mit der Geschlechtsreife. Ich habe das ausführlich auseinandergesetzt in meinem Büchelchen «Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft». Das bemerken die Leute zur Not noch, daß die Seelenentwickelung des Menschen eine andere wird im siebenten, eine andere wird im vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Jahr. Was sie aber gar nicht mehr bemerken, ist, daß weitere Übergänge in der Seelenentwickelung stattfinden im Anfange der zwanziger, am Ende der zwanziger, in der Mitte der dreißiger Jahre und so weiter.

[ 5 ] Wer intimer das seelische Leben zu betrachten vermag, weiß gut, daß solche Übergänge beim Menschen stattfinden, daß sich das menschliche Leben überhaupt in rhythmischer Art abspielt. Versuchen Sie nur, sich das beispielsweise bei Goethe anschaulich zu machen. Goethe verzeichnet ja selber, wie er es aus gewissen kindlichen religiösen Vorstellungen, aus dem ganzen Vorstellungskomplex, den er bis dahin hatte, durch das Erdbeben von Lissabon, also ungefähr zur Zeit seines Zahnwechsels herausgehoben wurde, und wie er schon als Kind an allem irre wurde. Er beschreibt, wie er über die Frage nachzudenken anfing, ob es denn eine Güte Gottes in der Wirksamkeit der Welt geben könne, wenn durch die fürchterlichen Feuerkräfte der Erde unzählige Menschen dahingerafft werden. Goethe war eben, ganz besonders in solchen Übergangsmomenten seines Lebens, sehr empfänglich dafür, äußere Ereignisse auf seine Seele wirken zu lassen, so daß er sich seiner seelischen Umgestaltung bewußt wurde. Und ungefähr für diese Zeit verzeichnet Goethe bei sich selber, wie er zu einer Art «sonderlichem Pantheisten» geworden ist, wie er an die Vorstellungen, die ihm von den älteren Leuten seines Hauses und von den Eltern überliefert wurden, nicht mehr glauben konnte. Er beschreibt, wie er sich ein Notenpult seines Vaters nahm, Mineralien darauf legte, obenauf ein Räucherkerzchen, das er beim ersten Hereinleuchten der Morgensonne durch ein Brennglas entzündete. Er drückte das im späteren Leben dadurch aus, daß er sagte, er habe dem großen Gotte der Natur ein Opfer darbringen wollen durch die Entzündung dieses Opferfeuers, das er an der Natur selber entzündet hatte.

[ 6 ] Nehmen Sie diese erste Periode von Goethes Leben, dann die folgende und immer weiter, indem Sie sein ganzes Leben aus Zeitabschnitten zusammensetzen, für die diese kindliche Epoche die ungefähre Länge angibt: Sie werden finden, daß bei Goethe in solchen Zeitabschnitten immer etwas geschieht, was seine Seelegründlich umändert. Es ist außerordentlich interessant zu sehen, wie selbst jenes Ereignis, daß Schiller Goethe angeregt hat, den «Faust» fortzusetzen, bei Goethe nur dadurch einen so fruchtbaren Boden fand, weil er am Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts in einer epochalen Periode seines Lebens stand. Es ist interessant, daß Goethe seinen «Faust» umgedichtet hat am Anfange eines neuen Lebensabschnittes. In Goethes Jugend wird «Faust» so begonnen, daß Faust dasBuch des Nostradamus aufschlägt, wo geschildert wird, «wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen und sich die goldenen Eimer reichen». Dann wird aber das Blatt umgeschlagen und gesagt: «Du Geist der Erde bist mir näher.» Goethe weist das große Tableau des Makrokosmos zurück und läßt nur den Erdgeist an seinen Faust herankommen. Als er dann im Anfange des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts von Schiller veranlaßt wurde, den «Faust» umzudichten, schuf er den «Prolog im Himmel».

[ 7 ] Wer in dieser intimen Art sein eigenes Leben beobachten kann, wird auch bei sich solche Umschwünge finden. Wir bemerken sie aber heute nur, wenn wir uns geradezu dahin trainieren, intim auf unser eigenes, Leben hinzuschauen.

[ 8 ] Im sechsten, siebenten, achten Jahrtausend vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha waren diese Umschwünge für die Menschen so stark bemerkbar, daß sie als seelische Empfindung erlebt wurden, wie heute der Zahnwechsel oder die Geschlechtsreife. Und zwar war es so, daß ungefähr bis zur Mitte des Lebens, bis zum fünfunddreißigsten, sechsunddreißigsten Jahre, diese Umschwünge so empfunden wurden, daß man das Leben bis dahin als aufsteigend betrachtete. Dann aber ging es abwärts. Man empfand sozusagen das Verdorren des Lebens. Aber indem man fühlte: da im Organismus lagern sich mit einer gewissen Trägheit Stoffwechselprodukte ab - indem man fühlte, daß der physische Organismus immer schwerer und unlebendiger wird, wurde man zugleich bis in das höchste Alter hinein gewahr, wie gerade dasSeelischGeistige aufgeht. Man fühlte, wie beim Verdorren des Leibes die Seele sich befreite. Und man hätte in alten Zeiten nicht mit solcher Inbrunst von gewissen Menschen als von Patriarchen gesprochen — das Wort selber ist ja erst später gekommen -, wenn man nicht äußerlich an den Menschen bemerkt hätte: Der wird zwar physisch alt, aber er verdankt seinem physischen Älterwerden ein Aufleuchten des Geistes. Er ist nicht mehr vom Körper abhängig. Der Körper verdorrt, die Seele wird frei.

[ 9 ] In der neueren Zeit ist außerordentlich seiten, was einmal an der Berliner Universität vorgekommen ist. Es waren da zwei Philosophen, der eine hieß Zeller- es war der berühmte Griechen-Zeller -, der andere Michelet. Zeller war siebzig Jahre alt und wollte sich pensionieren lassen. Michelet war neunzig und trug mit ungeheurer Lebendigkeit vor. Eduard von Hartmann hat mir erzählt, daß Michelet gesagt haben soll: «Ich begreife nicht, warum der Jüngling nicht mehr vortragen will.»

[ 10 ] Selten erhalten sich Menschen heute in solcher Frische. Aber damals war es so, besonders bei denen, die sich mit wirklich geistigem Leben abgaben.Was sagte sich die Jugend, wenn sie die Patriarchen anschaute? Sie sagte sich: Es ist doch schön, alt zu werden! Da erfährt man etwas durch seine eigene Entwickelung, was man früher nicht wissen kann. — Und das sagte man sich auf eine ganz natürliche Weise. Gerade so, wie sich ein kleiner Junge, der ein Spielpferd hat, wünscht groß zu werden, um ein wirkliches Pferd zu bekommen, so wünschte man sich dazumal, alt zu werden, weil man empfand, daß einem dann von innen heraus etwas geoffenbart wird.

[ 11 ] Dann kamen die folgenden Jahrtausende. Da empfand man dieses zwar noch bis in ein höheres Alter hinauf, aber nicht mehr so lange, wie in dem urindischen Zeitalter, nach der Terminologie, die ich in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß» gebrauche. In der Blütezeit des Griechentums empfand der Mensch noch ganz lebendig den Umschwung des Lebens in der Mitte der dreißiger Jahre. Da wußte man noch den Unterschied zwischen Leiblichem und Geistigem anzugeben, indem man sich sagte: Wenn man dreißig Jahre alt ist, geht es mit dem Physischen abwärts, aber das Geistige sprießt dann erst recht hervor. — Das empfand man geistig-seelisch in unmittelbarer menschlicher Gegenwart. Darauf beruht das Urempfinden des Griechentums, nicht auf jener Phantasie, von der die heutige Wissenschaft spricht. Will man verstehen, worauf das Lebensvolle des Griechentums beruht, so muß man wissen, daß die Griechen noch mit Bewußtsein dreißig, fünfunddreiBig, sechsunddreißig Jahre alt werden konnten, während eine ältere Menschheit mit Bewußtsein noch viel älter wurde. Darin besteht die Entwickelung der Menschheit. Dann mußte die Menschheit von Natur aus das Älterwerden immer mehr unbewußt erleben; und nun entsteht die Anforderung, das wiederum bewußt zu durchleben, denn bewußt muß es wieder durchlebt werden.

[ 12 ] Wer sich selbst beobachtet, kann diesen siebenjährigen Umschwung erkennen. Die Länge ist nicht pedantisch genau, aber approximativ. Wer zurückschaut auf die Zeit seines neunundvierzigsten, zweiundvierzigsten, fünfunddreißigsten Jahres, der kann ganz gut wissen: dazumal ist mit dir etwas vorgegangen, wodurch du etwas erfahren oder empfinden gelernt hast, was du vorher aus deiner Natur heraus einfach nicht hättest erreichen können, geradesowenig, wie du mit den zweiten Zähnen hättest beißen können, bevor du sie gehabthast.- Die Fähigkeit, das Menschenleben als etwas Konkretes zu erleben, ist im Verlauf der Menschheitsentwickelung verlorengegangen. Und wenn man sich heute nicht innerlich trainiert, um das an sich zu beobachten, so verwischen sich diese Epochen vom dreißigsten Jahre an vollständig. Im Beginne der zwanziger, auch noch am Ende der zwanziger Jahre, hier jedoch schon weniger, ist noch etwas zu bemerken von einem innerlichen Anderswerden. Aber die menschliche Organisation ist heute so geworden, daß der Mensch von seiner natürlichen Entwickelung eigentlich nur bis zu seinem sechsundzwanzigsten, siebenundzwanzigsten Jahre getragen wird, und diese Grenze wird immer mehr nach unten verschoben werden. Die Menschen waren in früheren Zeiten dadurch unfrei in ihrer Organisation, daß sie prädestiniert waren, dies aus ihrer Natur heraus durchzumachen. Freiheit ist nur dadurch möglich geworden, daß diese Naturbestimmtheit aufgehoben wurde. In dem Maße, in dem sie aufhört, wird Freiheit möglich. Der Mensch muß durch seine eigene innere Anstrengung dahin kommen, das Geistige zu finden, während dieses früher, von Jahr zu Jahr, je älter man wurde, naturgemäß hervorsproß.

[ 13 ] So stehen wir heute vor der Situation, daß aus all den Gründen, die ich in den letzten Tagen auseinandergesetzt habe, von den älteren Leuten das nicht mehr betont wurde, was sie einfach durch ihr Ältersein geworden sind. Man blieb stehen bei jenem Intellektualismus, der ungefähr zwischen dem achtzehnten, neunzehnten Jahre schon so weit entwickelt ist, daß man von da ab intellektualistisch wissen kann. Aber in bezug auf das Intellektualistische kann man höchstens zu größerer Übung, nicht aber zu einem qualitativen Fortschritt kommen. Hat man überhaupt einmal von dieser Sünde gegessen, intellektualistisch alles beweisen oder widerlegen zu wollen, so erlebt man in diesem Beweisen oder Widerlegen keinen Fortschritt mehr. Daher kommt es, daß, wenn jemand aus jahrzehntelanger Erfahrung heraus etwas bringt und es intellektualistisch beweisen will, ein Achtzehnjähriger ihn intellektuell widerlegen kann. Denn was man intellektualistisch kann im sechzigsten Lebensjahre, das kann man auch schon im neunzehnten. Der Intellektualismus ist eben eine Etappe, die einmal während der Bewußtseinsseelenzeit erreicht wird, aber keinen Fortschritt mehr erfährt im Sinne einer Vertiefung, sondern nur im Sinne der Übung. Der junge Mensch kann wohl sagen: Ich bin noch nicht so gescheit wie du, du kannst mich noch übertölpeln, — aber er wird nicht glauben, daß der andere auf dem Gebiete des Intellektualismus mehr vermag als er.

[ 14 ] Man muß diese Dinge radikal aussprechen, damit sie deutlich werden. Ich will nicht kritisieren, sondern schildere nur, was eine naturgemäße Entwickelung der Menschheit ist. Wir müssen uns klar darüber sein, wie das heutige Zeitalter beschaffen ist: Wenn der Mensch heute nicht aus innerer Aktivität heraus eineEntwickelung anstrebt und diese Entwickelung wach erhält, so rostet er mit dem bloßen Intellektualismus von den zwanziger Jahren an ein. Dann erhält er sich nur noch künstlich durch Anregungen von außen. Wenn die Sache nicht so wäre, glauben Sie, daß die Leute so viel ins Kino laufen würden? Diese Sehnsucht nach dem Kino, überhaupt diese Sehnsucht, alles auf eine äußerliche Weise zu sehen, beruht ja darauf, daß der Mensch innerlich inaktiv, untätig geworden ist, daß er gar keine innere Aktivität will. Geisteswissenschaftliche Vorträge, wie sie hier gemeint sind, können ja nur so angehört werden, daß diejenigen, die dabei sind, immerfort mitarbeiten. Aber das liebt man ja heute nicht. Heute läuft man vor allem zu den Vorträgen oder Veranstaltungen, wenn dasteht: «mit Lichtbildern», damit man dasitzen und die Denktätigkeit möglichst in Ruhe lassen kann. Alles läuft da nur so an einem vorbei. Man kann ganz in Passivität sein.

[ 15 ] Aber schließlich ist ja auch unser ganzer Unterricht darauf abgestimmt, und man könnte jeden einen rückständigen Menschen nennen, der sich aus pädagogischen Gründen gegen die Trivialität des heutigen Anschauungsunterrichtes aufbäumt. Aber das muß man; denn der Mensch ist nicht bloß ein Anschauungsapparat, ein Apparat, der anschauen will. Der Mensch kann nur in innerer Aktivität leben. Etwas Geisteswissenschaftliches vorbringen heißt, den Menschen einladen, seelisch mitzuarbeiten. Das wollen die Menschen heute nicht. Alle Geisteswissenschaft muß zu einer solchen inneren Aktivität einladen, dasheißt, sie muß alle Betrachtungen bis zu dem Punkte hinführen, wo man keine Anhaltspunkte mehr hat an dem äußerlich-sinnlichen Anschauen und sich das innere Kräftespiel frei bewegen muß. Erst wenn das Denken sich frei im inneren Kräftespiel bewegen kann, kann man zur Imagination kommen, nicht vorher. Die Grundlage für alle anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft ist also die innere Aktivität, das Aufrufen zu innerer Aktivität, das Appellieren an das im Menschen, was noch tätig sein kann, wenn alle Sinne schweigen, und nur die Denktätigkeit dann in Regsamkeit ist.

[ 16 ] Da liegt aber etwas außerordentlich Bedeutsames vor. Stellen Sie sich jetzt einmal vor, Sie könnten das. Ich will Ihnen nicht schmeicheln und Ihnen etwa sagen: Sie können es. — Aber setzen Sie zunächst einmal die Hypothese, Sie könnten so denken, daß Ihre Gedanken nur ein innerer Gedankenfluß wären. Wenn ich in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» vom reinen Denken spreche, so war diese Bezeichnung für die damaligen Kulturverhältnisse schon deplaciert; denn Eduard von Hartmann sagte mir einmal: «Das gibt es gar nicht; man kann nur an Hand der äußeren Anschauung denken!» Ich konnte ihm darauf nur antworten: «Man muß es probieren; man wird es dann schon lernen und zuletzt auch wirklich können.» — Nehmen Sie also an, Sie könnten Gedanken im reinen Gedankenflusse haben. Dann beginnt für Sie der Moment, wo Sie das Denken bis zu einem Punkte geführt haben, an dem es gar nicht mehr Denken genannt zu werden braucht. Es ist im Handumdrehen - sagen wir im Denkumdrehen -— etwas anderes geworden. Es ist nämlich dieses mit Recht «reines Denken» genannte Denken reiner Wille geworden; es ist durch und durch Wollen. Sind Sie im Seelischen so weit gekommen, daß Sie das Denken befreit haben von der äußeren Anschauung, dann ist es damit zugleich reiner Wille geworden. Sie schweben, wenn ich so sagen darf, mit Ihrem Seelischen im reinen Gedankenverlauf. Dieser reine Gedankenverlauf ist ein Willensverlauf. Damit aber beginnt das reine Denken, ja sogar die Anstrengung nach seiner Ausübung, nicht nur eine Denkübung zu sein, sondern eine Willensübung, und zwar eine solche, die bis in das Zentrum des Menschen eingreift. Denn Sie werden die merkwürdige Beobachtung machen: Erst jetzt können Sie davon sprechen, daß das Denken, wie man es im gewöhnlichen Leben hat, eine Kopftätigkeit ist. Sie haben ja vorher gar kein Recht, davon zu sprechen, daß das Denken eine Kopftätigkeit ist, denn das wissen Sie nur äußerlich aus der Physiologie, Anatomie und so weiter. Aber jetzt spüren Sie innerlich, daß Sie nicht mehr so hoch oben denken, sondern daß Sie beginnen, mit der Brust zu denken. Sie verweben tatsächlich Ihr Denken mit dem Atmungsprozesse. Sie regen damit an, was die Jogaübungen künstlich angestrebt haben. Sie merken, indem das Denken immer mehr und mehr eine Willensbetätigung wird, daß es sich zuerst der Menschenbrust und dann dem ganzen Menschenkörper entringt. Es ist, als ob Sie aus der letzten Zellfaser Ihrer großen Zehe dieses Denken hervorziehen würden. Und wenn Sie mit innerlichem Anteile so etwas studieren, was mit allen Unvollkommenheiten in die Welt getreten ist - ich will nicht meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» verteidigen —, wenn Sie so etwas auf sich wirken lassen und fühlen, was dieses reine Denken ist, so fühlen Sie, daß ein neuer innerer Mensch in Ihnen geboren ist, der aus dem Geiste heraus Willensentfaltung bringen kann.

[ 17 ] Woher weiß denn der Mensch sonst, daß er einen Willen hat? Er «hat» ihn ja nicht! Denn er ist hingegeben an Instinkte, die mit seiner organischen Entwickelung zusammenhängen. Er träumt oftmals, daß er dies oder jenes aus einem seelischen Antrieb heraus tut. Er tut es jedoch, weil sein Magen gut oder schlecht gestimmt ist. Jetzt aber wissen Sie, daß Sie den physischen Organismus mit demjenigen durchdrungen haben, was ihn auch mit Bewußtsein ausfüllt. Dazu brauchen Sie kein Hellseher zu werden. Sie brauchen lediglich mit innerem Anteil die «Philosophie der Freiheit» auf sich wirken zu lassen. Denn diese «Philosophie der Freiheit» kann nicht so gelesen werden, wie sonst Bücher gelesen werden. Sie muß schon so gelesen werden, daß man das Gefühl hat, sie ist ein Organismus: ein Glied entwickelt sich aus dem anderen und man gerät damit in etwas Lebendiges hinein. Wenn ihnen so etwas zugemutet wird, kriegen die Leute gleich eine Art von Gänsehaut: Da kommt ein gewisses Etwas in mich hinein, was ich nicht haben will; da werde ich ja gerade unfrei!

[ 18 ] Das ist nicht anders, als wenn man behaupten wollte, ein Mensch würde unfrei, wenn er sich bequemen muß, in zwei, drei Jahren sich in einer bestimmten Sprache auszudrücken. Man sollte ihn, um ihn nicht in diese zufällige Ideenassoziation hineinzubringen, vor der Sprache bewahren, denn durch sie werde er unfrei! Er müsse beliebig bald chinesisch oder französisch, bald deutsch sprechen können. — Das sagt kein Mensch, weil es zu absurd ist, und weil das Leben diesen Unsinn widerlegen würde. Dagegen gibt es Leute, die hören oder sehen einmal etwas von Eurythmie und sagen dann, sie beruhe auf zufälliger Ideenassoziation einzelner Menschen. Man sollte doch bei Philosophen soviel Fähigkeit voraussetzen, daß sie sich sagen könnten: Bei dieser Eurythmie muß man erst untersuchen, ob es da nicht gerade so ist, daß mit dem Hervorholen dieser Gebärden erst die Begründung einer höheren Freiheit erfolgt, daß das nur eine Entfaltung eines Sprachlichen auf einem höheren Niveau ist.

[ 19 ] Man braucht sich also nicht zu wundern — da ja nichts, was über das Intellektualistische hinausgeht, heute unbefangen betrachtet werden kann-, daß die Leute eine Gänsehaut bekommen, wenn man ihnen sagt, ein Buch müsse ganz anders gelesen werden als andere Bücher; es müsse so gelesen werden, daß man dabei etwas erlebt. Und was muß erlebt werden? Das Erwachen des Willens aus dem Geistigen heraus! In dieser Beziehung sollte mein Buch ein Erziehungsmittel sein. Es wollte nicht bloß einen Inhalt vermitteln, sondern es wollte in einer ganz bestimmten Art sprechen, so daß es als Erziehungsmittel hätte wirken können. Daher finden Sie in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» eine Auseinandersetzung über Begriffskunst, das heißt eine Schilderung dessen, was im menschlichen Seelenleben vorgeht, wenn man sich mit seinen Begriffen nicht bloß an die äußeren Eindrücke hält, sondern im freien Gedankenstrome leben kann.

[ 20 ] Das aber, meine lieben Freunde, ist eine Tätigkeit, die zwar auf Erkenntnisse in einem viel tieferen Sinne abzielt als die äußere Naturerkenntnis, und die zu gleicher Zeit künstlerisch ist, ganz identisch ist mit der künstlerischen Tätigkeit. In dem Augenblick, wo das reine Denken als Wille erlebt wird, ist der Mensch in künstlerischer Verfassung. Und diese künstlerische Verfassung ist es auch, die der heutige Pädagoge braucht, um die Jugend zu leiten vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, oder sogar darüber hinaus. Es ist dies die Stimmung, die man hat, wenn man aus dem Innerlich-Seelischen heraus zu einem zweiten Menschen gekommen ist, der nicht so erkannt werden kann wie der äußere physische Leib, den man physiologisch oder anatomisch studieren kann, sondern der erlebt werden muß, daher er mit Recht «Lebensleib» oder «Ätherleib» genannt werden kann, wenn man die Ausdrücke nur nicht wieder im alten Sprachgebrauche nimmt. Dieser Lebensleib kann nicht äußerlich angeschaut werden. Er muß innerlich erlebt werden; es muß, um ihn zu erkennen, eine Art künstlerischer Tätigkeit entfaltet werden. Daher ist jene Stimmung in der «Philosophie der Freiheit» — die meisten entdecken sie gar nicht —, die überall an das künstlerische Element anschlägt. Die meisten Menschen bemerken das nicht, weil sie das Künstlerische im Trivialen, Natürlichen suchen und nicht in der freien Betätigung. Erst aus dieser freien Betätigung aber kann man die Pädagogik als Kunst erleben, und der Lehrer kann dadurch zum pädagogischen Künstler werden, daß er sich in diese Stimmung hineinfindet. Dann wird in diesem unserem Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele der ganze Unterricht wirklich darauf angelegt, eine künstlerische Atmosphäre zwischen den geführten Menschen und den Führenden zu schaffen. Und innerhalb dieser künstlerischen Atmosphäre kann sich jenes Verhältnis des Geführten zum Führenden ausbilden, das ein Anlehnen, ein Hinneigen ist, weil man weiß: Der kann etwas, was er einem künstlerisch zeigen kann, und was er kann — das fühlt man — möchte man auch können. — Man bäumt sich dann nicht auf, weil man fühlt, daß man sich vernichten würde, wenn man sich aufbäumte.

[ 21 ] So wie heute Schreiben gelehrt wird, geschieht es oft so, daß man schon als Kind - es steckt ja schon immer ein Gescheiterer im Kinde als der Lehrer einer ist — das Gefühl hat: Warum soll man sich mit Schreiben quälen, man hat ja gar keine Beziehung dazu! — So ähnlich ging es den nordamerikanischen Indianern, als sie die europäische Schrift sahen: Sie haben die schwarzen Zeichen als Zauberei empfunden, und so ist auch oft die Empfindung des Kindes. Aber man rufe im Kinde einmal wach, was es heißt: Schwarz, Rot, Grün, Gelb, Weiß anzuschauen! Man rufe im Kinde ein Gefühl dafür hervor, was es heißt, wenn ein Punkt von einem Kreise umlaufen wird. Das ganz ungeheure Empfinden von den Unterschieden rufe man hervor, die bestehen, wenn man zwei grüne Kreise und in jedem drei rote, dann zwei rote und in jedem drei grüne, zwei gelbe und in jedem drei blaue, dann zwei blaue und in jedem drei gelbe Kreise macht. Man läßt die Kinder an dem Farbigen empfinden, was die Farben vor allen Dingen zu den Menschen sprechen; denn in den Farben liegt eine ganze Welt. Aber man läßt sie auch empfinden, was die Farben einander selbst zu sagen haben. Man läßt sie empfinden, was Grün dem Rot, was Blau dem Gelb, was Blau dem Grün und Rot dem Blau sagt - das sind ja die wunderbarsten Verhältnisse, die die Farben zueinander haben. Man zeigt einem Kinde nicht Symbole oder Allegorien, sondern man macht es künstlerisch. Dann wird man sehen, wie das Kind allmählich aus diesem künstlerischen Empfinden heraus Figurales auf die Fläche bringt, aus dem sich die Buchstaben dann so entwickeln, wie sich die Schrift einmal aus der Bilderschrift entwickelt hat. Wie fremd ist heute für das Kind ein B oder ein G oder irgendein anderes solches Zeichen, das sich aus innerlicher Notwendigkeit zu der heutigen Gestalt entwickelt hat! Was ist heute für ein Kind mit sieben Jahren ein G,K oder U? Es hat doch nicht das geringste Verhältnis dazu. Der Mensch hat ja erst durch Jahrtausende hindurch dieses Verhältnis gewonnen. Das Kind muß auf ästhetische Weise ein Verhältnis dazu gewinnen. Es wird ja alles aus dem Kinde ausgerottet, weil die Schriftzeichen unmenschlich sind. Das Kind aber will menschlich bleiben.

[ 22 ] Das geht in die Intimitäten der pädagogischen Kunst, was heute gesagt werden muß, wenn man die Jugend gegenüber dem Alter verstehen will. Nicht mit Phrasen, sondern aus einer pädagogischen Kunst heraus, die sich nicht scheut, sich auf wirkliche geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnis zu stützen, muß man die Kluft zwischen dem Alter und der Jugend überbrücken. Daher sagte ich vor einigen Tagen: Worauf geht diese Kunst? Sie geht auf ein Erleben des realen Geistigen. Und worauf geht dasjenige, was das Zeitalter allmählich so entwickelt hat, daß es glaubt, es selbstverständlicherweise an die Jugend heranbringen zu müssen? Nicht auf den Geist, sondern auf das Geistlose! Da wird es als eine Sünde betrachtet, den Geist heranzutragen an das, was man Wissen und Wissenschaft nennt.

[ 23 ] Diese Wissenschaft läßt ja die Menschen schon in der ersten Kindheit nicht ungeschoren. Es kann ja auch nicht viel anders sein; denn wenn man so dressiert wird in botanischer Systematik und es Bücher gibt, die nur in botanischer Systematik leben, dann glaubt der Lehrer, daß er eine Sünde begeht, wenn er in einer andern Weise zu den Kindern spricht als wie es in der wissenschaftlichen Botanik steht. Aber das, was in einer Botanik steht, kommt für ein Kind vor dem zehnten Jahre nicht in Frage; ein Verhältnis dazu kann man höchstens nach dem achtzehnten, neunzehnten Jahre gewinnen.

[ 24 ] Nun soll durch dasjenige, was ich sagte, nicht wieder eine intellektuelle Theorie über Erziehung geschaffen werden, sondern es soll eine künstlerische Atmosphäre geschaffen werden zwischen Älteren und Jüngeren. Nur wenn das geschieht, tritt ein, was eintreten muß, damit der heutige junge Mensch in gesunder Weise in die Welt hineinwachsen kann. In was die heutigen Menschen hineinwachsen, kann ganz konkret beschrieben werden. Zwischen dem neunten und zehnten Jahre lebt in der Seele eines jeden Menschen, der nicht Psychopath ist, ein unbestimmtes Gefühl. Es braucht kein deutlicher, nicht einmal ein undeutlicher Begriff davon vorhanden zu sein, aber es beginnt vom neunten, zehnten Lebensjahre an im Menschen zu leben. Bis dahin hat das, was man Astralleib nennt, im Menschen allein sein Seelenleben besorgt. Von da ab regt sich die Ichkraftnatur im Menschen. Dieses Sichregen der Ichkraftnatur im Menschen lebt nicht in Begriffen formuliert; aber in der Empfindung, tief unbewußt in der Seele, lebt sich eine Frage in das Gemüt des heranwachsenden Menschen ein. Sie lautet bei dem einen so und bei dem anderen anders. In einen Begriff gefaßt, würde sie vielleicht so lauten: Bisher hat der astralische Leib an die anderen Menschen geglaubt; jetzt brauche ich irgend etwas, was mir einer sagt, so daß ich an ihn oder mehrere in meiner Umgebung glauben kann. Diejenigen, die sich als Kinder am meisten gegen so etwas auflehnen, die brauchen es am allermeisten. Zwischen dem neunten und zehnten Jahre beginnt man, darauf angewiesen zu sein, sein Ich durch den Glauben an einen älteren Menschen befestigen zu können. An diesen Menschen muß man glauben können, ohne daß einem dieser Glaube eingebleut zu werden braucht; man muß an ihn glauben können durch die künstlerische Atmosphäre, die geschaffen worden ist. Und wehe, wenn nichts von seiten eines Älteren geschieht, um diese Frage, die sich bei manchen Kindern bis zum sechzehnten, siebzehnten Jahre, ja bei manchen sogar bis zu dem achtzehnten, neunzehnten Jahr erhalten kann, in richtiger Weise zu beantworten, damit der Junge sich sagen kann: Ich bin dankbar dafür, daß ich von dem Alten habe erfahren können, was nur von ihm erfahren werden kann. Was er mir sagen kann, kann nur er mir sagen, denn wenn ich es in meinem Alter erfahren werde, wird es schon anders sein.

[ 25 ] Dadurch kann in pädagogischer Weise wiederum etwas geschaffen werden, was, in richtiger Weise angewendet, für das Bewußtseinsseelenzeitalter von größter Bedeutung werden kann und was im urältesten Patriarchenzeitalter schon webte zwischen Jung und Alt. Da sagte sich jeder junge Mensch: Der Alte mit seinem Schnee auf dem Haupte hat Erfahrungen, die man nur dann machen kann, wenn man so alt geworden ist wie er. Vorher hat man nicht die Organe dazu. Daher muß er einem seine Erfahrungen mitteilen. Daher ist man mit seinen Angaben verknüpft, weil nur er sie einem sagen kann. Gewiß werde ich ebenso alt werden wie er. Aber ich werde es erst fünfunddreißig bis vierzig Jahre später erfahren. Da ist die Zeit weitergeschritten und da werde ich etwas anderes erfahren.

[ 26 ] In den Untergründen des Geisteslebens der Welt liegt gleichsam eine Kette, die von der Vergangenheit in die Zukunft hinüberreicht und welche die Generationen aufnehmen, forttragen, schmieden, fortbilden müssen. Diese Kette ist im intellektualistischen Zeitalter unterbrochen worden. Das ist im weitesten Umfange von dem heranwachsenden Menschen um die Wende des neunzehnten, zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts gefühlt worden. Fühlen Sie, daß Sie so etwas gefühlt haben, wenn Sie es damals auch nicht haben ausdrücken können! Fühlen Sie, daß, indem Sie das so fühlen, Sie in der richtigen Weise darüber fühlen! Und wenn Sie das fühlen, werden Sie die richtige Bedeutung der heutigen Jugendbewegung erleben, die einen Januskopf hat und haben muß, weil sie hingewiesen wird auf das Erleben des Geistigen, ein Erleben des Geistigen, das den Gedanken so weit verfolgt, daß er zum Willen, zum innersten Menschenimpulse wird.

[ 27 ] Jetzt haben wir den Willen an seinem abstraktesten Ende, beim Gedanken, aufgesucht. Wir wollen ihn nun an den folgenden Tagen noch in den tieferen Gebieten des Menschen aufsuchen.

Tenth lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, I wanted to explain to you how education, or rather the guidance of young people, must be achieved by shaping education in an artistic manner. I pointed out that in earlier times, educators proceeded in a certain sense from the artistic. This was done in so-called higher education by treating what today has taken on a completely abstract, scientific form, namely grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric as arts and treated them as such, so that young people first encountered something in their guides that made them say: He can do something I cannot do. And this alone established the right relationship between the younger and older generations, for this relationship can never develop through intellectuality. As soon as one does not have the ideas revealed within oneself through the soul of feeling and understanding, but instead stands on the ground of the intellect with the conscious soul, there is no longer any possibility of differentiating between people in any way. For human nature is so constituted that when it comes to comprehending anything conceptually with the consciousness soul, when human beings arrive at concepts at all, everyone believes that they can discuss these concepts with everyone else. This is the case with the intellect, where the maturity and experience of human beings do not come into play at all. Maturity and experience only come into play with ability. The ability of an older person is also recognized as a matter of course by young people.

[ 2 ] In order to understand these things from their foundations, we must once again take a step back and consider from a different perspective how human development has actually progressed in terms of human interaction. External history, which is based on documents, can only go back a few millennia before the mystery of Golgotha, and it cannot even evaluate what it finds in the right way, because the spiritual achievements of ancient Greece can no longer be grasped with today's concepts. One must use entirely different concepts for the ancient Greek period. Nietzsche, among others, sensed this. This is why his unfinished little work, “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,” is so fascinating, in which he deals with Greek philosophy in connection with the general development of Greek culture up to Socrates. In Socrates, he finds the first glimmer of pure intellectuality, whereas everything philosophical in the so-called tragic age of Greek development arose from comprehensive human foundations, for which, when expressed conceptually, the conceptual is merely a language for expressing experience. Philosophy in the earliest times was something completely different from what it later became. But I only want to point that out now.p>

[ 3 ] What I actually want to talk about here is that with spiritual imagination and especially inspiration, one can look back much further, even into the details of human development, and above all, one can look into the souls of human beings. And there it becomes apparent that when we go back very far, say to the seventh or eighth millennium before the mystery of Golgotha, there was even a completely natural reverence for old age among young people. Why was this reverence natural? Because in those earliest times, what today is only present in the first years of youth was still present throughout the entire development of humanity.

[ 4 ] If we do not look at the human being in such a crude way as is often done today, we will find that the whole soul development of the human being changes around the time of the change of teeth, around the sixth, seventh, or eighth year. The soul of the human being becomes different, and it becomes different again with sexual maturity. I have discussed this in detail in my little book “The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science.” People still notice, if necessary, that the soul development of human beings changes at the age of seven and again at the age of fourteen or fifteen. But what they no longer notice at all is that further transitions in soul development take place at the beginning of the twenties, at the end of the twenties, in the middle of the thirties, and so on.

[ 5 ] Those who are able to observe the soul life more intimately know well that such transitions take place in human beings, that human life in general unfolds in a rhythmic manner. Just try to visualize this in Goethe, for example. Goethe himself records how he was lifted out of certain childish religious ideas, out of the whole complex of ideas he had had up to that point, by the earthquake in Lisbon, at about the time he was losing his teeth, and how, even as a child, he became confused about everything. He describes how he began to ponder the question of whether there could be any goodness in God in the workings of the world when countless people were being swept away by the terrible forces of fire on earth. Goethe was, especially in such transitional moments of his life, very receptive to allowing external events to affect his soul, so that he became aware of his spiritual transformation. Around this time, Goethe notes that he has become a kind of “peculiar pantheist,” no longer able to believe in the ideas handed down to him by the older people in his household and by his parents. He describes how he took his father's music stand, placed minerals on it, and on top of them a small incense burner, which he lit with a burning glass when the first rays of the morning sun shone through. He expressed this later in life by saying that he wanted to offer a sacrifice to the great God of nature by lighting this sacrificial fire, which he had kindled from nature itself.

[ 6 ] Take this first period of Goethe's life, then the next, and so on, piecing together his entire life from periods of time for which this childhood era indicates the approximate length: You will find that during such periods of time, something always happens to Goethe that fundamentally changes his soul. It is extremely interesting to see how even the event that inspired Schiller to continue “Faust” found such fertile ground in Goethe only because he was at the end of the eighteenth century, at an epochal period of his life. It is interesting that Goethe rewrote his Faust at the beginning of a new phase of his life. In Goethe's youth, Faust begins by opening the book of Nostradamus, which describes “how heavenly powers ascend and descend and pass golden buckets to one another.” But then the page is turned and it is said: “You spirit of the earth are closer to me.” Goethe rejects the great tableau of the macrocosm and allows only the earth spirit to approach his Faust. When, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Schiller prompted him to rewrite Faust, he created the “Prologue in Heaven.”

[ 7 ] Those who can observe their own lives in this intimate way will also find such upheavals within themselves. However, we only notice them today if we train ourselves to look intimately at our own lives.

[ 8 ] In the sixth, seventh, and eighth millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, these upheavals were so strongly noticeable to people that they were experienced as emotional sensations, like the changing of teeth or sexual maturity today. Until about the middle of life, until the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, these changes were felt in such a way that life up to that point was regarded as ascending. But then it went downhill. One felt, so to speak, the withering of life. But in feeling that metabolic products were accumulating in the organism with a certain sluggishness — in feeling that the physical organism was becoming increasingly heavy and lifeless — one became aware, even into the highest age, of how the soul and spirit were rising. One felt how, as the body withered, the soul was liberated. And in ancient times, one would not have spoken with such fervor of certain people as patriarchs — the word itself came later — if one had not noticed outwardly in these people that although they were growing old physically, they owed a shining of the spirit to their physical aging. They were no longer dependent on the body. The body withers, the soul becomes free.

[ 9 ] In more recent times, something extraordinary happened at the University of Berlin. There were two philosophers, one named Zeller—the famous Greek Zeller—and the other Michelet. Zeller was seventy years old and wanted to retire. Michelet was ninety and lectured with tremendous vitality. Eduard von Hartmann told me that Michelet is supposed to have said: “I don't understand why the young man no longer wants to lecture.”

[ 10 ] Rarely do people today retain such freshness. But that was how it was back then, especially among those who were engaged in truly intellectual pursuits. What did young people say to themselves when they looked at the patriarchs? They said: It's wonderful to grow old! You learn things through your own development that you couldn't have known before. — And they said this in a completely natural way. Just as a little boy who has a toy horse wishes to grow up so he can have a real horse, so people in those days wished to grow old because they felt that something would be revealed to them from within.

[ 11 ] Then came the following millennia. People still felt this into old age, but not as long as in the primordial Indian age, according to the terminology I use in my “Outline of Secret Science.” In the heyday of Greek civilization, people still felt very vividly the turning point of life in their mid-thirties. People still knew how to distinguish between the physical and the spiritual, saying to themselves: When you are thirty years old, the physical begins to decline, but the spiritual springs forth all the more. This was felt spiritually and emotionally in the immediate human presence. This is the basis of the primordial feeling of Greek culture, not the fantasy of which modern science speaks. If one wants to understand what the vitality of Greek culture is based on, one must know that the Greeks could still consciously live to be thirty, thirty-five, thirty-six years old, while an older humanity could consciously live to be much older. This is the development of humanity. Then, by nature, humanity had to experience aging more and more unconsciously; and now the demand arises to live through this consciously again, for it must be lived through consciously again.

[ 12 ] Those who observe themselves can recognize this seven-year transition. The length is not pedantically exact, but approximate. Those who look back on the time of their forty-ninth, forty-second, and thirty-fifth years can know quite well: something happened to you back then that taught you something or helped you feel something that you simply could not have achieved before, just as you could not have bitten with your second teeth before you had them. The ability to experience human life as something concrete has been lost in the course of human development. And if you don't train yourself internally to observe this, these epochs become completely blurred from the age of thirty onwards. At the beginning of the twenties, and even at the end of the twenties, although less so here, there is still something noticeable of an inner change. But human organization has become such today that human beings are actually only carried by their natural development until the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven, and this limit will be pushed lower and lower. In earlier times, people were unfree in their organization because they were predestined to go through this by their very nature. Freedom has only become possible because this natural predetermination has been removed. To the extent that it ceases, freedom becomes possible. Man must come to find the spiritual through his own inner effort, whereas in earlier times it naturally sprang forth with each passing year as one grew older.

[ 13 ] So today we are faced with the situation that, for all the reasons I have discussed in recent days, older people no longer emphasize what they have simply become through their age. They have remained stuck in the intellectualism that is already so well developed between the ages of eighteen and nineteen that from then on one can know things intellectually. But with regard to intellectualism, one can at best achieve greater practice, but not qualitative progress. Once one has tasted the sin of wanting to prove or disprove everything intellectually, one no longer experiences any progress in this proving or disproving. This is why, when someone brings something out of decades of experience and wants to prove it intellectually, an eighteen-year-old can refute them intellectually. For what one can do intellectually at the age of sixty, one can already do at the age of nineteen. Intellectualism is simply a stage that is reached once during the consciousness soul stage, but it does not progress in the sense of deepening, only in the sense of practice. Young people may well say, “I'm not as smart as you yet, you can still fool me,” but they will not believe that the other person is capable of more than they are in the realm of intellectualism.p>

[ 14 ] These things must be stated radically in order to make them clear. I do not wish to criticize, but only to describe what is a natural development of humanity. We must be clear about the nature of the present age: if people today do not strive for development out of inner activity and keep this development alive, they will rust with the mere intellectualism of the 1920s. Then they will only maintain themselves artificially through external stimuli. If this were not the case, do you think people would go to the movies so much? This longing for the movies, this longing to see everything in an external way, is based on the fact that people have become inwardly inactive, inactive, that they do not want any inner activity at all. Lectures on the humanities, as we mean them here, can only be listened to if those who are present are constantly participating. But people don't like that today. Today, people mainly go to lectures or events when it says “with slides,” so that they can sit there and leave their thinking alone as much as possible. Everything just passes them by. One can be completely passive.

[ 15 ] But after all, our entire education system is geared toward this, and one could call anyone who rebels against the triviality of today's visual education for pedagogical reasons backward. But one must do so, for man is not merely an observation apparatus, an apparatus that wants to observe. Man can only live in inner activity. To present something spiritual means to invite people to participate spiritually. People today do not want that. All spiritual science must invite people to engage in such inner activity, that is, it must lead all observations to the point where there are no longer any points of reference in external, sensory perception and the inner forces must be allowed to move freely. Only when thinking can move freely in the inner forces can one arrive at imagination, not before. The basis for all anthroposophical spiritual science is therefore inner activity, the call to inner activity, the appeal to that in human beings which can still be active when all the senses are silent and only the thinking activity is then in motion.

[ 16 ] But there is something extremely significant here. Imagine for a moment that you could do this. I do not want to flatter you and tell you that you can. But first, let us assume that you could think in such a way that your thoughts were only an inner flow of thoughts. When I speak of pure thinking in my Philosophy of Freedom, this term was already out of place in the cultural context of the time, for Eduard von Hartmann once said to me: “That does not exist; one can only think on the basis of external perception!” I could only reply: “One must try it; then one will learn it and ultimately be able to do it.” — Suppose, then, that you could have thoughts in a pure stream of thought. Then the moment begins for you when you have led thinking to a point where it no longer needs to be called thinking. In the blink of an eye — let us say, in the blink of a thought — it has become something else. This thinking, rightly called “pure thinking,” has become pure will; it is will through and through. If you have progressed so far in your soul that you have freed thinking from external perception, then it has simultaneously become pure will. You float, if I may say so, with your soul in the pure flow of thought. This pure flow of thought is a flow of will. But with this, pure thinking, even the effort to practice it, begins to be not just a mental exercise, but an exercise of the will, and one that reaches into the very center of the human being. For you will make the remarkable observation that only now can you say that thinking, as we experience it in ordinary life, is an activity of the head. Before, you had no right to say that thinking is an activity of the head, because you only knew this externally from physiology, anatomy, and so on. But now you feel inwardly that you are no longer thinking so high up, but that you are beginning to think with your chest. You are actually interweaving your thinking with the breathing process. In doing so, you are stimulating what the yoga exercises have artificially sought to achieve. You notice that as thinking becomes more and more an act of will, it first breaks free from the human chest and then from the entire human body. It is as if you were drawing this thinking out of the last cell fiber of your big toe. And when you study something like this with inner participation, something that has entered the world with all its imperfections—I do not want to defend my “Philosophy of Freedom”—when you allow something like this to affect you and feel what this pure thinking is, you feel that a new inner human being is born within you, who can bring about the unfolding of the will out of the spirit.

[ 17 ] How else does a person know that they have a will? He does not “have” it! For he is devoted to instincts that are connected with his organic development. He often dreams that he is doing this or that out of a spiritual impulse. However, he does it because his stomach is in a good or bad mood. But now you know that you have permeated the physical organism with that which also fills it with consciousness. You do not need to become a clairvoyant to do this. You need only allow the Philosophy of Freedom to work on you with inner participation. For this Philosophy of Freedom cannot be read in the same way as other books. It must be read in such a way that one has the feeling that it is an organism: one limb develops from another and one enters into something alive. When people are asked to do something like this, they immediately get a kind of goose bumps: something comes into me that I don't want; it makes me feel unfree!

[ 18 ] This is no different from claiming that a person becomes unfree when he has to make the effort to express himself in a certain language within two or three years. In order not to bring him into this random association of ideas, one should protect him from language, because it makes him unfree! He would have to be able to speak Chinese or French or German at will. No one says that, because it is too absurd and because life would prove this nonsense wrong. On the other hand, there are people who hear or see something about eurythmy and then say that it is based on random associations of ideas of individual people. One should expect philosophers to have enough ability to say to themselves: With this eurythmy, one must first investigate whether it is not precisely the case that the bringing forth of these gestures is what establishes a higher freedom, that it is only the unfolding of language on a higher level.

[ 19 ] It is therefore not surprising — since nothing that goes beyond the intellectual can be viewed impartially today — that people get goose bumps when they are told that a book must be read in a completely different way from other books; it must be read in such a way that one experiences something. And what must be experienced? The awakening of the will from the spirit! In this respect, my book was intended to be an educational tool. It did not merely want to convey content, but wanted to speak in a very specific way so that it could have an educational effect. That is why you will find in my Philosophy of Freedom a discussion of conceptual art, that is, a description of what goes on in the human soul when one does not merely stick to external impressions with one's concepts, but can live in the free stream of thought.

[ 20 ] But this, my dear friends, is an activity that aims at knowledge in a much deeper sense than the external knowledge of nature, and which is at the same time artistic, completely identical with artistic activity. At the moment when pure thinking is experienced as will, man is in an artistic state. And it is this artistic state of mind that today's educators need in order to guide young people from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, or even beyond. This is the mood one has when one has come from one's inner soul to a second human being who cannot be recognized as the outer physical body that can be studied physiologically or anatomically, but who must be experienced, and therefore it can rightly be called the “life body” or “etheric body,” if only we do not use the terms in their old sense. This life body cannot be seen externally. It must be experienced internally; in order to recognize it, a kind of artistic activity must be developed. This is why there is a mood in The Philosophy of Freedom — which most people do not even notice — that strikes at the artistic element everywhere. Most people do not notice this because they seek the artistic in the trivial and natural, and not in free activity. But it is only through this free activity that pedagogy can be experienced as art, and the teacher can become an artistic pedagogue by finding himself in this mood. Then, in this age of the consciousness soul, all teaching will truly be aimed at creating an artistic atmosphere between the guided and the guiding. And within this artistic atmosphere, that relationship between the guided and the guiding can develop, which is one of leaning, of inclining, because one knows: he can do something, he can show it to you artistically, and what he can do — you feel it — you want to be able to do too. — You don't rebel, because you feel that you would destroy yourself if you rebelled.

[ 21 ] The way writing is taught today, it often happens that even as a child — there is always more intelligence in a child than in a teacher — one has the feeling: Why should one torment oneself with writing when one has no relationship to it whatsoever? The North American Indians felt much the same when they saw European writing: they perceived the black symbols as magic, and this is often how children feel. But try to awaken in a child what it means to look at black, red, green, yellow, and white! Awaken in the child a feeling for what it means when a dot is surrounded by a circle. Awaken the tremendous feeling for the differences that exist when you make two green circles with three red circles inside each, then two red circles with three green circles inside each, two yellow circles with three blue circles inside each, then two blue circles with three yellow circles inside each. Let the children feel what the colors say to them above all else, for there is a whole world in colors. But let them also feel what the colors have to say to each other. Let them feel what green says to red, what blue says to yellow, what blue says to green and red to blue – these are the most wonderful relationships that colors have with each other. One does not show a child symbols or allegories, but rather makes it artistic. Then one will see how the child gradually brings figurative elements onto the surface out of this artistic feeling, from which the letters then develop in the same way that writing once developed from pictographic writing. How foreign is a B or a G or any other such sign to a child today, which has developed into its present form out of inner necessity! What is a G, K, or U to a seven-year-old child today? It has not the slightest relationship to it. It is only through thousands of years that human beings have acquired this relationship. The child must acquire a relationship to it in an aesthetic way. Everything is eradicated from the child because the written characters are inhuman. But the child wants to remain human.

[ 22 ] What must be said today if we want to understand young people in relation to old age goes to the heart of the art of education. The gap between old age and youth must be bridged not with phrases, but with an art of education that is not afraid to rely on genuine spiritual scientific knowledge. That is why I said a few days ago: What is this art all about? It is about experiencing the real spiritual. And what is the aim of what the age has gradually developed to the point where it believes it must naturally bring to youth? Not the spirit, but the spiritless! It is considered a sin to bring the spirit to what is called knowledge and science.

[ 23 ] This science does not leave people unharmed even in early childhood. It cannot be otherwise, for when one is trained in botanical systematics and there are books that exist only in botanical systematics, then the teacher believes he is committing a sin if he speaks to children in any other way than is prescribed by scientific botany. But what is written in a botany book is out of the question for a child under the age of ten; one can only gain an understanding of it after the age of eighteen or nineteen.

[ 24 ] Now, what I have said is not intended to create another intellectual theory of education, but rather to create an artistic atmosphere between older and younger people. Only when this happens will what must happen occur, so that today's young people can grow up in a healthy way. What people today are growing into can be described in very concrete terms. Between the ages of nine and ten, an indefinite feeling lives in the soul of every human being who is not a psychopath. There need not be a clear or even vague concept of it, but it begins to live in human beings from the age of nine or ten. Until then, what is called the astral body has been solely responsible for the soul life within the human being. From then on, the ego force nature within the human being begins to stir. This stirring of the ego force nature within the human being does not live in terms formulated in concepts; but in the feeling, deep in the unconscious soul, a question lives its way into the mind of the growing human being. It is different for each individual. If we were to put it into words, it might be something like this: Until now, the astral body has believed in other people; now I need something that someone tells me so that I can believe in him or several people around me. Those who rebel most against this as children are the ones who need it most. Between the ages of nine and ten, one begins to depend on being able to strengthen one's ego through faith in an older person. One must be able to believe in this person without this belief being drummed into one; one must be able to believe in him through the artistic atmosphere that has been created. And woe betide if nothing is done by an older person to answer this question, which can remain unanswered in some children until they are sixteen or seventeen, and in some even until they are eighteen or nineteen, in such a way that the young person can say to himself: I am grateful that I was able to learn from the old person what only he could teach me. What he can tell me, only he can tell me, because when I learn it at my age, it will already be different.

[ 25 ] In this way, something can be created in an educational manner which, when applied correctly, can become of the utmost importance for the age of consciousness and which already existed in the most ancient patriarchal age between young and old. Every young person said to themselves: The old man with snow on his head has experiences that can only be gained when one has grown as old as he is. Before that, one does not have the organs for it. Therefore, he must share his experiences with us. Therefore, we are bound to his information, because only he can tell us. I will certainly grow as old as he is. But I will only experience it thirty-five to forty years later. Time will have moved on and I will experience something different.

[ 26 ] In the depths of the world's spiritual life there is, as it were, a chain that stretches from the past into the future and which generations must take up, carry forward, forge and develop. This chain has been broken in the intellectual age. This was felt to the fullest extent by young people at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Feel that you felt something like this, even if you were unable to express it at the time! Do you feel that, in feeling this way, you are feeling about it in the right way? And if you feel this, you will experience the true meaning of today's youth movement, which has and must have a Janus face, because it points to the experience of the spiritual, an experience of the spiritual that pursues the thought so far that it becomes will, the innermost impulse of the human being.

[ 27 ] Now we have sought the will at its most abstract end, in thought. In the following days, we will seek it in the deeper realms of the human being.