The Younger Generation
GA 217
13 October 1922, Dornach
Lecture XI
During the epoch of the consciousness soul the most abstract elements come consciously to life in the inner being of man, yet also in the subconscious, in what man desires of life, most concrete things are seeking to find their way into existence.
The human being who is growing into the epoch of the consciousness soul is held fast today in the abstract ideas of the head. But there lives outside man's head, if I may so express myself, the desire to experience more than the head is able to. To begin with man has only a connection with Nature formed between her and his head. Everything he absorbs in science, so far as he regards it as valid, is acquired from Nature through the head. Between man and Nature today there always stands man's head. It is as though everything that comes to the human being from the world were to pour itself into the head, as though the head were entirely choked up so that it lets nothing through its dense layers that could bring about a relation with the world. Everything remains stuck fast in the head. Man thinks everything through only with his head. But he cannot, after all, live merely as a head. For joined to the head there is always the rest of the organism. The life of the rest of the organism remains dull, unconscious, because everything is directed towards the head. Everything stops short there. The rest of man receives nothing from the world because the head allows nothing to reach it. The head has gradually become an insatiable glutton. It wants everything that comes from the world outside, and man is obliged to live, where his heart and the rest of his organism is concerned, as if he had nothing whatever to do with the surrounding world.
But these other parts of the organism develop wish, will, capacity for desire; they feel themselves isolated. For instance, the eyes catch colors and allow only scanty remains to be experienced in the head, so that the colors cannot work down, they cannot reach the blood nor the nervous system in the rest of the body. It is only in his head that man still knows something about the world. But he has all the more capacity for intensely desiring with the rest of his organism to meet the outside world. This again is something living in the maturing human being—this desire to find some kind of connection with the world not only with the head but with the rest of the organism; to learn to think not only with the head but with the whole man; to learn to experience the world with the whole man and not only with the head.
Now human beings today still have the capacity of learning to experience the world with the whole man at an early age. For what I have just been saying refers to the grown man. Before the change of teeth a child still has the faculty of grasping the world with his whole being. This is shown, for example, in the fact that it would be a mistake to suppose that the baby's experience when sucking milk is as abstract as an adult's. When we drink milk we taste it on our tongue, and perhaps round our tongue. But we lose the experience of taste when the milk has passed our throat. People ought to ask why their stomach should be less capable of tasting than the palate—it is not less but equally capable of tasting; only the head is a glutton. In the grown man the head claims all taste for itself. The child, however, tastes with its entire organism and therefore with its stomach. The infant is all sense-organ. There is nothing in him that is not sense-organ. The infant tastes with his whole being. Later this is forgotten by man; and this tasting is impaired by the child learning to speak. For then the head which has to take part in learning to speak begins to stir and develops the first stage of insatiability. The head in return for giving itself up to learning to speak reserves for itself the pleasures of tasting. Even as regards “tasting the world,” connection with the world is very soon lost. Now this “tasting the world” is of no particular importance, but the relation of the whole human being with the world is.
You see, we can get to know an important philosopher such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, in various ways. Every way is right. I do not wish to stress any one of the following in particular. It is wonderful to go deeply into the philosophy of Fichte—which not many people do nowadays because they find it too difficult—and much is gained from it, yet they would have gained far more if with strong feeling they had walked behind Fichte and had seen him appear, planting the whole sole of his foot and especially his heels firmly on the ground. The experience of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's walk, the curious way he stumped his heel on the ground, is something of tremendous power. For those able to experience each step with the whole being, this would have been a more intensive philosophy than all Fichte was able to say from the platform. It may seem grotesque, but perhaps you will feel what I am trying to say.
Today such things have been entirely lost. At most a man, who not twenty but fifty years ago was a boy, can remember how some philosophy of this kind still existed among the country folk. In the country people still got to know each other in this way and many expressions with the wonderful plasticity of dialect reveal that what today is seen only with the head was then seen with the whole man.* (An incident is quoted here which is untranslatable because of the Austrian idiom.)
As I have said, these things have been lost. Human beings have reduced themselves to their head and have forced themselves to believe that the head is their most valuable part. But this has not brought them to an ideal condition, because the rest of human nature asserts its claims in the subconscious. Experiencing through something other than the head is lost today with the change of teeth in early childhood. If you have an eye for these things you can see the walk of the father or the mother in the son or daughter decades later. So exactly has the child lived itself into the adults around him that what he has felt becomes part of his own nature. But this living ourselves into something no longer spells culture with us. Culture is what the head observes and what can be worked out by means of the head. Sometimes people dispense with the head, and then they write down everything and put it in the archives! Then it goes out of the head into the hair where it cannot be retained because at thirty they no longer have any hair!
But really I am not saying this as a joke, nor for the sake of being critical, for this is all part of the necessary development of humanity. Men had to become like this to find through inner effort, inner activity, what they can no longer find in a natural way; in other words, to experience freedom.
And so today, after the change of teeth, we must simply pass over to a different way of experiencing the surrounding world from the way of the child who experiences it with his whole being. Therefore primary school education in future must proceed by way of the artistic I described yesterday, so that through the outer man the soul-nature of another human being is experienced. If you educate the human being by what is abstract and scientific, he experiences nothing of your soul. He only experiences your soul if you approach him through art. For in the realm of the artistic everyone is individual, each one is a different person. It is the ideal of science that everyone should be alike. It would be quite a thing—so say people today—were everyone to teach a different science. But that could not be, for science confines itself to what is the same for all human beings. In the realm of the artistic each human being is an individuality in himself. But because of this there can come about an individual, personal relation of the child to the man who is alive and active artistically, and this should be so. True, one does not come to the feeling for the whole man as outer physical being as in the first years of childhood, but to a feeling for the whole man in the soul of the one who is to lead.
Education must have soul, and as scientist one cannot have soul. We can have soul only through what we are artistically. We can have soul if we give science an artistic form through the way it is presented, but not through the content of science as science is understood today. Science is not an individual affair. Hence during the primary school age it establishes no relation between teacher and pupil. All instruction must therefore be permeated by art, by human individuality, for of more value than any thought-out curriculum is the individuality of the teacher and educator. It is individuality that must work in the school. What grows between teacher and pupil from the change of teeth to puberty—what is the link between them?
What binds them together is solely what man brings with him into his earthly existence from super-sensible, spiritual worlds, from his pre-earthly existence. My dear friends, it is never the head that recognizes what man brings with him out of his pre-earthly life. The head is made for the purpose of grasping what is on the earth. And on the earth there is only the physical part of man. The head understands nothing of what confronts one as the other human being and comes from pre-earthly existence. In the particular coloring the artistic impulse gives to the human soul there lives and weaves what the human being has brought down from pre-earthly existence; and between the period of the change of teeth and puberty the child is particularly disposed to feel in his heart what meets him in the teacher as coming out of pre-earthly existence. A young child has the tendency to feel the outer human form in its earthly shape; from his seventh to his fourteenth or fifteenth year he seeks—not through theoretical concepts but through the living-together with human beings—what does not lend it self to be grasped in concepts but is manifested in the teacher; and it resists conceptual form. Concepts have form, that is to say, external limits. But human individuality in the sense described has no external limits, only intensity, quality; it is experienced as quality, as intensity, very particularly in the period of life referred to. It is experienced, however, through no other atmosphere than that of art.
But we are now living in the epoch of the consciousness soul. The first treasures we acquire for the soul in this epoch consist in intellectual concepts, in abstractions. Today even the farmer loves abstractions. How could it be otherwise, for he indulges in the most abstract reading—the village newspaper and much else besides! Our riches consist really in abstractions. And therefore we must free ourselves from this kind of thinking, through developing what I spoke of yesterday. We must purify our thinking and mould it, into will. To this end we must make our individuality stronger and stronger, and this happens when we work our way through to pure thinking. I do not say this out of idle vanity, but because that is how I see it. Whoever works his way through to pure thinking as I have described in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity will find that this does not bring him simply to the possession of a few concepts which make up a philosophic system, but that it lays hold of his own individuality, of his pre-earthly existence.
He need not suddenly become clairvoyant; that will only happen when he is able to behold the pre-earthly. But he can confirm it by gaining the strength of will that is acquired in the flow of pure thoughts. Then the individuality comes forth. Then one does not feel happy with a philosophic system in which one concept proceeds from another and everything has rigid outlines. But one feels compelled to have one's being in a living and weaving world. We acquire a special kind of life of soul when we experience in the right way what is meant by the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.
Thus it is a bringing down of pre-earthly existence into the life of the human being. But it is also the preparation for the vocation of teacher, of educator. Through study we cannot become teachers. We cannot drill others into being teachers, because each one of us is already a teacher. Every human being is a teacher, but he is sleeping and must be awakened, and Art is the awakener. When this is developed it brings the teacher, as a human being, nearer to those whom he would educate. And as a human being he must come near to them. Those who are to be educated must get something from him as a human being. It would be terrible if anyone were to believe it possible to teach just because he knows a great deal. This leads to absolute absurdity. This absurdity will be apparent to you if you think about the following picture.
Now take a class in a school. There are perhaps thirty pupils in the class. Among these pupils there are, let us say, two geniuses, or only one, for that is enough. If we have to organize a school we cannot always give the post of teacher to a genius just for a future genius to be able to learn all he should be able to learn. You will say that this would not matter in the primary school. If the child is a genius he will go on to a higher school and there certainly find geniuses as teachers. You would not say this because experience does not bear it out—but you must admit the case may arise that the teacher is faced with a class in which there are children predestined to become cleverer than he is himself. Now our task of teacher consists in bringing the children not merely to our degree of cleverness, but to the full development of their own powers.
As teachers, therefore, we may come into the position of having to educate somebody who will be greater than we. It is impossible to provide schools with enough teachers unless one holds to the principle that it does not matter if the teacher is not as clever as the pupil will be some day. Nevertheless he will still be a good teacher because it does not depend on the giving out of knowledge but on activating the individuality of the soul, upon the pre-earthly existence. Then it is really the child who educates himself through us. And that is the truth. In reality we do not educate at all. We only disturb the process of education when we intervene too energetically. We only educate when we behave in such a way that through our own behavior the child can educate himself. We send the child to primary school in order to rid him of troublesome elements. The teacher should see to it that the troublesome elements are got rid of, that the child escapes conditions under which he cannot develop. So we must be quite clear upon this point: we cannot cram anything into a human being through teaching and education. What we can do is to see to it that the human being, as he grows up, should succeed in developing the abilities within him. That we can do, but not through what we know but through what stirs inwardly within us in an artistic way. And even if the rare thing should happen that as teachers we are not particularly endowed with genius—one should not say this, but in spite of your youth movement you are old enough for me to say it—if the teacher has only a kind of instinctive artistic sense he will offer less hindrance to the growth of the child's soul than the teacher who is inartistic and tremendously learned. To be tremendously learned is not difficult.
These things must for once be said most emphatically. For even when spoken clearly, our age does not hear them. Our age is terribly unreceptive for such things. And regarding those who assure one that they have understood everything, after thirty years it is often apparent that they have understood nothing whatever. Thus the configuration of soul in the human being is what is essential in practical pedagogy, in instruction and education, during the child's life between the change of teeth and puberty. And after this the human being enters a period of life in which, in this age of the consciousness soul, still deeper forces must work up out of human nature if men are to give anything to one another.
You see, the feeling with which one man meets another is tremendously complicated. If you wanted to describe the whole round of sympathies and antipathies, and the interworking of sympathies and antipathies with which you meet another man, you would never come to an actual definition. In fifty years you would not succeed in defining what you can experience in five minutes as the relations of life between man and man. Before puberty it is pre-eminently an experience of the pre-earthly. The pre-earthly sheds its light through every movement of the hands, every look, through the very stressing of words. Actually it is the quality of the gesture, the word, the thought, of the teacher that works through to the child and which the child is seeking.
And when as grown-up people—so grown-up that we have reached the age of fifteen or sixteen or even beyond!—we meet other human beings, then the matter is still more complicated. Then, what attracts or repels others in a human being actually veils itself in a darkness impenetrable to the world of abstract concepts. But if, with the help of Anthroposophy, we investigate what one can really experience in five minutes but cannot describe in fifty years, we find that it is what rises up from the previous earth-life or series of earth-lives into the present life of the soul, and what is exchanged. This indefinite, indefinable element that comes upon us when we meet as adults is what shines through from earlier lives on earth into the present. Not only the pre-earthly existence but everything the human being has passed through in the way of destiny in his successive earth-lives.
And if we study what is working upon the human being we find how today, in the epoch of the consciousness soul—because everything is pushed into the head and what we take in from the outer world cannot get through to man as a whole—our head culture sets itself against what alone can work from man to man. Human beings pass one another by because they stare at each other only with the head, with the eyes—I will not say, because they knock their heads together! Human beings pass one another by because only what plays over from repeated earth-lives can work between man and man, and modern culture does nothing to develop a sense for this. But this must also be brought into our education; we should be able to experience what is deeper down in man, what plays over from previous earth-lives. This will not be achieved unless we draw into our education the whole life of man as it is lived out on earth.
Today there is only a feeling for the immediate present. Therefore all that is asked of education is that it shall benefit the child. But if this is the only thing that is asked, very little service is rendered to life. Firstly, because the question is put one-sidedly, one gets a one-sided answer; and secondly, the child should be educated for the whole of life, not only for the schoolroom or the short period after school so that he does not disgrace us. But we need an understanding for the imponderable things in life, an understanding for the unity in man's life as a whole as it unfolds on earth.
There are human beings whose very presence, at a certain age, is felt by those around them as a benediction. There are such human beings. If we were to look for the reason why such people, not through their acts but through their being, have become a blessing to those around them, we would find that as children they were fortunate to have been able in a natural way to look up to someone in authority whom they could revere. They had this experience at the right time of life. And because they were able to revere, after many years they become a blessing to the world around them. It can be expressed concisely by saying: There are human beings who can bless. There are not many who can bless. But it is a question of the power to bless. There are men who certainly have the power to bless. They acquire it in later life, because in their childhood they have learnt to pray. Two human gestures are causally connected: the gestures of praying and blessing; the second develops from the first. No one learns to bless who does not learn it from prayer. This must not be understood sentimentally or with the slightest tinge of mysticism, but rather as a phenomenon of Nature is observed—except that this phenomenon is nearer to us in a human way.
Now we have to care for a child hygienically so that he can grow in accordance with nature. If you were to devise an apparatus for a child that would keep him a certain size so that he could not grow, so that even the size of his arm would not change and the young human being would remain as he is all his life, this would be terrible. The human being must be treated in such a way that he can grow. What would it be like were the little child not to change, were he to look no different ten years hence? It would be dreadful were he to remain as he is at four or five. But in school we supply the children with concepts and cherish the notion that they should remain unchanged for the whole of the children's lives. The child is supposed to preserve them in memory; fifty years hence they are to be the same as they are today. Our school text-books ensure that the child remains a child. We should educate the child so that all his concepts are capable of growth, that his concepts and will-impulses are really alive. This is not easy. But the artistic way of education succeeds in doing it. And the child has a different feeling when we offer him living concepts instead of dead ones, for unconsciously he knows that what he is given grows with him just as his arms grow with his body.
It is heart-breaking to witness children being educated to define a concept, so that they have the concept as a definition only. It is just the same as if we wanted to confine a limb in an apparatus. The child must be given pictures capable of growth, pictures which become something quite different in ten or twenty years. If we give him pictures that are capable of growth, we stimulate in him the faculty through feeling to find his way into what is often hidden in the depths of the human individuality. And so we see how complicated are the connections We learn to come to a deeper relation to human beings through the possibility being given us in our youth for growth in our life of soul.
For what does it mean to experience another human being? We cannot experience other people with dead concepts. We can comprehend them only if we meet them in such a way that they become for us an experience which takes hold of us inwardly, which is something for our own inner being. For this, however, activity in the inner being is needed. Otherwise our culture will reach the point which it is fast approaching. People go out to luncheons, dinners and teas, without knowing much about one another. Yet it is about themselves that, relatively speaking, modern people know most. And what do they instinctively make of their experiences? Suppose they go about among the people they meet at lunch or dinner. At most they think—Is he like me or is he different? And if we believe him to be like ourselves, we consider him a fine fellow; if he is not like ourselves, then he is not a fine fellow and we do not trouble ourselves about him any longer. And as most men are not the same as ourselves, the most we can do is sometimes to believe—because really it would be too boring to find no fine fellow anywhere—that we have found someone like ourselves. But in this way we do not really find another human being but always ourselves. We see ourselves in everyone else. For many people this is relatively good. For if they were to meet somebody who in their opinion was not altogether, but yet to a certain extent, a fine fellow, and were really to comprehend him, this would be so overwhelming an experience that it would quite drown their own manhood, and by a second encounter their ego would be drowned still more deeply. In the case of a third or fourth there would be no approaching him at all, for by that time he would certainly have lost himself! There is too little inner strength and activity, too little kernel, too little inner individuality developed, so that people for fear of losing themselves dare not experience the other human being. Thus men pass one another by.
The most important thing is to establish an education through which human beings learn once again how to live with one another. This cannot be done through hollow phrases. It can be done only through an art of education founded upon a true knowledge of the human being, that art of education referred to here. But our intellectualistic age has plunged the whole of life into intellectuality. In our institutions we actually live very much as if no longer among human beings at all, we live in an embodied intellect in which we are entangled, not like a spider in its own web, but like countless flies which have got themselves caught.
When we meet anyone, do we feel in any sense what this human being can become for us? Do we judge today as humanly as this? No, for the most part we do not—present company is always excepted—for the most part we do not but we ask—well, perhaps on the door of a certain man's house there will be a little plate with an inscription “Counselor at Law,” conveying a concept of some kind. So now we know something about this man. In another case the inscription is “Medical Practitioner.” Now we know that the man can cure us. In another case the inscription is “Professor of English.” And now we know something about him—and so on and so forth. If we want to know something about chemistry, how do we set about it? We have no other means than to enquire if somewhere there is a man who is a qualified chemist. What he can tell us then is chemistry. And so we go on. We are really caught up in this spider's web of concepts. We do not live among human beings. We trouble ourselves very little about human beings. We only concern ourselves with what is on paper. For many people that is their only essential fact. How else should they know what kind of man I am unless it is written down somewhere on paper!
This, of course, is all rather an overstatement, and yet it does characterize our epoch. Intellectuality is no longer merely in our heads but it is woven around us everywhere. We are guided by concepts and not by human impulses.
When I was still fairly young, at Baden near Vienna I got to know the Austrian poet Hermann Rollett, long since dead. He was convinced that the right thing was development towards intellectualism, that one must develop more and more towards the intellectual. At the same time, however, he had an incurable dread of this, for he felt that intellectualism only takes hold of man's head. And once when I visited him with Schröer, we were talking with him and he began to speak in poetical fashion about his incurable fear in regard to culture. He said: When one looks at human beings today, they cannot use their fingers properly; many of them cannot write; they get writer's cramp, their fingers atrophy. When it is a question of sewing on trouser buttons, only tailors can do that! It is dreadful; the limbs are atrophying. The fingers and the limbs will not only get less skillful but they will also get smaller, they will wither away and heads will get larger and larger. That is how he described his poet's dream and then he said he thought the time would come when only balls, balls which are heads, would be rolling about over the surface of the earth.
That was the cultural dread I met with in this man in the last third of the nineteenth century. Now he was also a child of his age, that is to say, he was a materialist, and that was why he had so great a dread that at some point in the future such living heads would be rolling about on the earth. Physical heads will not do this. But to a serious extent the etheric and astral heads do it already today. And a healthy education of the young must preserve human beings from this, must set human beings upon their legs again, and lead them to the point where, if they are pondering over something, they will feel the beating of their heart again and not merely add something to their knowledge. With this we must reckon if in preparation for man's future, we penetrate ourselves with the art that must enter education. What more there is to be said on this subject I shall try to develop for you tomorrow.
Elfter Vortrag
[ 1 ] Wenn auch auf der einen Seite im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseelenentwickelung im Inneren des Menschen bewußt das allerabstrakteste Element zum Leben kommt, so besteht auf der anderen Seite doch wiederum die Tatsache, daß im Unterbewußten, in den Sehnsuchten, in demjenigen, was der Mensch vom Leben begehrt, das Allerkonkreteste sich zum Dasein herausarbeiten will.
[ 2 ] Auf der einen Seite steckt heute der Mensch, der in das Bewußtseinsseelenzeitalter hineinwächst, in seinen abstrakten Kopfideen darinnen. Auf der andern Seite aber lebt —- wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf außerhalb des Kopfes das Begehren, mehr zu erleben, als was der Kopf erleben kann. Mit der Natur hat der Mensch ja zunächst nur ein Verhältnis, das sich eben zwischen seinem Kopfe und der Natur bildet: alles, was der Mensch heute in seiner Wissenschaft von der Natur aufnimmt, ist für ihn nur insofern gültig, als er es durch den Kopf erworben hat. Es steht heute eigentlich immer zwischen dem Menschen und der Natur der Kopf des Menschen. Es ist, als ob alles, was von der Welt an den Menschen herankommt, sich zusammenschoppen würde im Kopfe, als ob der Kopf ganz verstopft wäre — verzeihen Sie den harten Ausdruck -, so daß er durch seine dicken Schichten nichts durchläßt von dem, was Verhältnis zur Welt werden könnte. Es bleibt alles im Kopfe stecken, man denkt alles nur mit dem Kopfe durch. Aber man kann doch nicht als bloßer Kopf leben, man hat ja an den Kopf angewachsen noch den übrigen Organismus. Das Leben dieses übrigen Organismus bleibt dumpf, unbewußt, weil der Mensch alles nach dem Kopfe hinleitet. Und da stockt alles. Der übrige Mensch hat nichts von der Welt, weil der Kopf ihm nichts zukommen läßt. Der Kopf ist allmählich ein Nimmersatt geworden. Er will alles von der Außenwelt haben und der Mensch muß dann mit seinem Herzen, mit seinem übrigen Organismus so leben, als ob er überhaupt gar nicht in diese Welt hereingekommen wäre, als ob er gar nichts mit dieser Umwelt zu tun hätte.
[ 3 ] Aber dieser übrige Organismus entwickelt eben Wunsch, Wille, Begehrungsvermögen, und die fühlen sich dann vereinsamt. Weil zum Beispiel die Augen alle Farben auffangen und im Kopfe nur noch einen spärlichen Rest davon erleben lassen, so können die Farben nicht hinunter, sie können nicht ins Blut, nicht in das außerhalb des Kopfes befindliche Nervensystem. Der Mensch weiß nur noch in seinem Kopfe etwas von der Welt. Ein um so intensiveres Begehrungsvermögen hat er aber, auch mit seinem übrigen Organismus mit der Welt in irgendeiner Weise zusammenzukommen. In dem aufwachsenden Menschen lebt das Begehren, nicht nur mit dem Kopfe, sondern auch mit dem übrigen Organismus sich irgendwie mit der Welt zusammenzufinden, denken zu lernen, die Welt erfahren zu lernen nicht nur mit dem Kopfe, sondern mit dem ganzen Menschen.
[ 4 ] Dieses Vermögen, die Welt mit dem ganzen Menschen kennenzulernen, hat man heute eigentlich nur noch in dem Lebensalter, das man früh verlassen muß. Denn alles, was ich jetzt gesprochen habe, bezieht sich auf den erwachsenen Menschen. Das Kind vor dem Zahnwechsel hat noch die Fähigkeit, mit seinem ganzen Menschen die Welt aufzufassen. Man würde sich zum Beispiel sehr irren, wenn man glaubte, daß das Kind so abstrakt wie der erwachsene Mensch erlebt, wenn es als Säugling die Milch bekommt. Wenn heute der Erwachsene Milch trinkt, so schmeckt er sie eben auf seiner Zunge, vielleicht noch in einiger Umgebung von der Zunge, aber er verliert das Geschmackserlebnis, wenn die Milch durch die Kehle gegangen ist. Der Mensch müßte sich zwar fragen, warum sein Magen weniger sollte schmecken können als sein Gaumen. Er kann auch nicht weniger schmecken, er kann ebensogut schmecken, nur ist der Kopf ein Nimmersatt, der beim erwachsenen Menschen alle «Geschmäcke» in Anspruch nimmt. Das Kind aber schmeckt mit seinem ganzen Organismus, es schmeckt auch mit dem Magen. Der Säugling ist ganz Sinnesorgan. In ihm ist nichts, was nicht Sinnesorgan wäre. Durch und durch schmeckt der Säugling. Das vergißt der Mensch nur später, und dieses Schmecken mit dem ganzen Organismus wird schon beeinträchtigt, wenn man sprechen lernt, denn da regt sich der Kopf, der sich beteiligen muß am Sprechenlernen, und entwickelt das erste Stadium seiner Unersättlichkeit. Dafür, daß er sich dazu hergibt, sprechen zu lernen, behält er sich auch das Wohltuende des Schmeckens zurück. Also selbst in bezug auf dieses «Die-WeltSchmecken» geht einem das totale Verhältnis zur Welt schon sehr frühzeitig verloren. Nun kommt es ja auf dieses «Die-Welt-Schmecken» nicht so besonders an; aber in anderer Beziehung kommt eben auf ein totales menschliches Verhältnis zur Welt wirklich außerordentlich viel an.
[ 5 ] Sehen Sie, man kann zum Beispiel einen bedeutenden Philosophen, wie Johann Gottlieb Fichte, auf verschiedene Art kennenlernen. Jede Art ist richtig; ich will von denen, die ich aufzählen werde, nicht eine besonders hervorheben. Aber wenn es auch etwas außerordentlich Schönes ist und man sehr viel davon hat, sich in die Philosophie Fichtes zu vertiefen — was ja heute nicht sehr viele Leute mehr tun, weil es ihnen zu schwer ist —, mehr noch hätten die Menschen von ihr haben können, die einmal jenem Fichte mit totaler menschlicher Empfindung nachgegangen wären und gesehen hätten, wie er stets mit seiner ganzen Fußsohle, besonders mit der Ferse, aufgetreten ist. In diesem Auftreten Johann Gottlieb Fichtes, diesem eigentümlichen Aufstellen der Ferse auf die Erde, liegt eine ungeheure Kraft. Für Menschen, die jeden Schritt miterleben können, wäre Fichtes Art des Auftretens eine intensivere Philosophie gewesen als alles, was er den Leuten vom Katheder herab hat sagen können. Es nimmt sich grotesk aus, aber vielleicht werden Sie fühlen, was ich damit sagen will.
[ 6 ] Solche Dinge sind den Menschen heute ganz verlorengegangen. Wenn man nicht gerade vor zwanzig, sondern vor fünfzig Jahren klein gewesen ist, so kann man sich noch erinnern, wie eine solche Philosophie bei den Leuten auf dem Lande durchaus noch vorhanden war. Da lernten die Leute einander noch so kennen, und mancher Dialektausdruck verrät in seiner ungeheuren Plastik, wie man dasjenige, was heute die Menschen nur im Kopfe sehen, im ganzen Menschen gesehen hat. So hieß es zum Beispiel von irgendeiner «Dame» auf dem Lande, ich will mich einmal so ausdrücken: «Die schneuzt daher». Ja, unter uns Kopfmenschen bedeutet schneuzen sich die Nase putzen, vielleicht auf eine nicht ganz stubenreine Weise. Das hat es damals nicht geheißen. Da «schneuzte» der ganze Mensch. Die Art und Weise, wie er ging, wie er sich hielt, wie er seine Füße voreinander setzte, sein ganzes Gehaben, das war «schneuzen». Ein «Schneuzen» am ganzen Menschen, das man verwandt fand mit jenem nicht ganz stubenreinen Sich-dieNase-Putzen.
[ 7 ] Wie gesagt, das ist verlorengegangen. Die Menschen haben sich auf die Köpfe reduziert, und man hat sich zu dem Glauben hindurchgerungen, daß der Kopf das Allerwertvollste am Menschen ist. Nur ist man damit nicht am allerglücklichsten geworden, weil die übrige Menschennatur im Unterbewußten ihre Ansprüche durchaus weiter geltend macht. Aber das Miterleben durch etwas anderes als durch den Kopf geht eben heute dem Menschen mit seiner ersten Kindheit, mit dem Zahnwechsel ganz verloren. Wenn Sie ein Auge dafür haben, werden Sie bei einem Menschen den Schritt des Vaters oder der Mutter nach zwei bis drei Jahrzehnten noch bei Sohn oder Tochter wiederfinden können. So genau hat sich das Kind in die Erwachsenen seiner Umgebung eingelebt, daß das, was es da empfunden hat, zu seiner eigenen Natur geworden ist. Aber dieses Einleben wird ja nicht mehr Kultur bei uns. Kultur wird bei uns, was der Kopf beobachtet und was man mit Hilfe des Kopfes ausarbeiten kann. Manchmal dispensieren die Leute auch noch den Kopf; dann schreiben sie sich alles auf und legen es in die Archive. Da geht es aus dem Kopfe heraus in die Haare und da können sie es nicht erhalten, weil sie mit dreißig Jahren schon keine mehr haben.
[ 8 ] Das alles sage ich aber wirklich nicht zum Spaß, auch nicht, um irgend etwas zu kritisieren, denn das liegt in der notwendigen Entwickelung der Menschheit. Die Menschen mußten so werden, um das, was sie auf eine natürliche Weise nicht mehr finden können, durch innere Anstrengung, durch innere Aktivität zu finden, mit anderen Worten, um zur Möglichkeit des Freiheitserlebnisses zu kommen.
[ 9 ] Daher müssen wir heute nach dem Zahnwechsel zu einem anderen Erleben der Umwelt übergehen als dieses «mit dem ganzen Menschen erleben», das bei den Kindern noch vorhanden ist, und die Volksschulerziehung der Zukunft muß darauf beruhen, daß auf dem Umwege über das Künstlerische, wie ich es gestern charakterisiert habe, die jungen Menschen die Fähigkeit erwerben, durch den äußeren Menschen hindurch das ganze Seelische des anderen Menschen empfinden zu können.Wenn man den Menschen mit abstraktem wissenschaftlichem Inhalt erziehen -will, so erlebt er nichts von Ihrer Seele. Von Ihrer Seele erlebt er nur dann etwas, wenn Sie ihm künstlerisch entgegentreten, denn im Künstlerischen muß jeder individuell sein, im Künstlerischen ist jeder ein anderer. Das wissenschaftliche Ideal ist ja gerade, daß jeder so wie der andere ist. Es wäre eine schöne Geschichte — so sagt man heutzutage -—, wenn jeder eine andere Wissenschaft lehrte, Das kann ja nicht sein, weil die Wissenschaft reduziert ist auf dasjenige, was für alle Menschen gleich ist. Im Künstlerischen ist aber jeder Mensch eine Individualität. Durch das Künstlerische kann daher auch ein individuelles Verhältnis desKindes zu dem sich regenden und betätigenden Menschen zustandekommen, und das ist notwendig. Zwar hat man dadurch nicht, wie in den ersten Kinderjahren, ein totales physisches Empfinden des anderen Menschen, wohl aber die totale Empfindung von der Seele desjenigen, der einem als Führer gegenübersteht.
[ 10 ] Die Erziehung muß Seele haben, aber als Wissenschafter kann man nicht Seele haben. Seele kann man nur haben durch dasjenige, was man künstlerisch ist. Seele kann man haben, wenn man die Wissenschaft künstlerisch gestaltet durch die Art des Vorbringens, aber nicht durch den Inhalt der Wissenschaft, so wie sie heute aufgefaßt wird. Die Wissenschaft ist keine individuelle Angelegenheit. Daher begründet sie kein Verhältnis zwischen Führendem und Geführtem im volksschulpflichtigen Alter. Da muß der ganze Unterricht von Kunst,von menschlicher Individualität durchdrungen sein, und mehr als alles ausgedachte Programmatische bedeutet eben die Individualität des Unterrichtenden und Erziehenden. Diese ist es, die in der Schule wirken muß.
[ 11 ] Was bildet sich da eigentlich zwischen dem Führenden und dem Geführten, wenn wir die Zeit ins Auge fassen zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife, was bindet da die beiden aneinander? Lediglich dasjenige bindet die beiden aneinander, was der Mensch aus übersinnlichen geistigen Welten, aus seinem vorirdischen Dasein in das irdische mitbringt. Meine lieben Freunde, der Kopf erkennt das niemals an, was man als Mensch aus seinem vorirdischen Dasein mitbringt. Der Kopf ist daraufhin veranlagt, nur dasjenige zu erfassen, was auf der Erde ist, und auf der Erde ist eben der physische Mensch. Der Kopf begreift nichts von demjenigen im anderen Menschen, was aus dessen vorirdischem Dasein stammt. In jener besonderen menschlichen Nuance jedoch, die der künstlerische Einschlag der menschlichen Seele gibt, west und webt dasjenige, was der Mensch aus dem vorirdischen Dasein heruntergebracht hat, und das Kind ist ganz besonders zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife dazu veranlagt, in seinem Herzen das zu empfinden, was ihm im Lehrer als aus diesem vorirdischen Dasein stammend gegenübersteht. So wie das kleine Kind daraufhin veranlagt ist, die äußere menschliche Gestalt, wie sie sich innerhalb des Erdenlebens gebildet hat, zu empfinden, so sucht das Kind vom siebenten bis zum vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Jahre durch das Zusammenleben mit den Menschen etwas, was sich, ohne daß es sich in Begriffe fassen läßt, in dem führenden Menschen darlebt; was sich so darlebt, daß es, wenn man es in Begriffe fassen wollte, sich gegen die konturierten Begriffe sträuben würde. Begriffe haben Konturen, das heißt äußerliche Begrenzungen. Was aber in der eben geschilderten Art menschliche Individualität ist, hat nicht äußere Begrenzungen, hat nur Intensität, Qualität, und wird als Qualität, als Intensität erlebt. Man erlebt es ganz besonders in dem angegebenen Lebensalter, und man erlebt es durch keine andere Atmosphäre als die künstlerische.
[ 12 ] Aber wir leben eben im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele. Der erste Reichtum, den wir in diesem Zeitalter für unsere Seelen erwerben, besteht in intellektuellen Begriffen, besteht eigentlich in Abstraktionen. Heute ist ja schon der Bauer ein Abstraktling. Wie sollte es auch anders sein, da er sich der allerabstraktesten Lektüre hingibt, der Dorfzeitung und manchem anderen. Unser Reichtum besteht eben in Abstraktionen. Daher müssen wir aus diesem Denken durch die Entwickelung, die ich gestern angedeutet habe, heraus, indem wir das Denken ganz reinigen und es zum Willen machen, zum Willen gestalten. Wir müssen uns dazu durchringen, unsere Individualität immer kräftiger zu machen, und das erreichen wir nur, wenn wir uns zu diesem reinen Denken durcharbeiten. Ich sage das nicht aus einer eitlen Albernheit heraus, sondern weil mir das so erscheint. Wer sich zu einem solchen reinen Denken durcharbeitet, wie ich es in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» angedeutet habe, wird finden, daß man es da ganz und gar nicht bringt zu einem Haben von einigen Begriffen, die ein philosophisches System ausmachen, sondern daß es sich um ein Ergreifen der menschlichen Individualität und ihres vorirdischen Daseins handelt.
[ 13 ] Man braucht ja nicht gleich ein Hellseher zu werden. Das wäre man erst, wenn man das vorirdische Dasein schauen könnte. Aber bestätigen kann man die Richtigkeit des Gesagten, indem man jene Willensstärke gewinnt, die im reinen Gedankenflusse erworben wird. Da geht die Individualität heraus. Da fühlt man sich auch gar nicht wohl mit einem philosophischen System, wo ein Begriff in den andern eingreift und alles feste Konturen hat; sondern man fühlt sich gedrängt, in einem Lebenden und Webenden darinnen zu wesen. Es ist eine besondere Art des Seelenlebens, die man sich aneignet, wenn man in der richtigen Weise das durchlebt, was mit der «Philosophie der Freiheit» gemeint ist.
[ 14 ] Es ist wirklich das Hereinziehen des vorirdischen Daseins in das Leben des Menschen, was dadurch bewirkt werden kann, und so ist es die Vorbereitung zu dem Berufe des Lehrers, des Unterrichters, des Erziehers. Wir können nicht durch Studium Erzieher werden. Wir können andere zum Erzieher nicht dressieren, schon aus dem Grunde nicht, weil jeder von uns einer ist. In jedem Menschen ist ein Erzieher; aber dieser Erzieher schläft, er muß aufgeweckt werden, und das Künstlerische ist das Mittel zum Aufwecken. Wenn das entwickelt wird, bringt es den Erziehenden als Menschen denjenigen näher, die er führen will. Menschlich muß der zu Erziehende dem Erzieher nahekommen, er muß menschlich etwas von ihm haben. Es wäre gräßlich, wenn jemand glauben wollte, er könne dadurch ein Erzieher sein, daß er viel weiß oder im Sinne des Wissens — was man heute ja sogar auch schon sagen kann — viel «kann». Das führt zu einer ungeheuren Absurdität, die Ihnen klar werden kann, wenn Sie folgendes Bild bedenken.
[ 15 ] Sie haben eine Schulklasse mit vielleicht dreißig Schülern. Unter diesen seien, sagen wir, zwei Genies, oder nur eines, das genügt ja schon. Nun können wir nicht immer, wenn wir eine Schule zu versehen haben, just ein solches Genie als Lehrer hinstellen, damit das künftige Genie so viel von dem Lehrer lernen kann, wie es können muß. Sie werden zwar sagen, in der Volksschule mache das nichts, denn ein Genie komme ja doch in die höhere Schule und da finde es ganz gewiß diese Genies als Lehrer, die es brauche. Das könnten Sie aber nicht aufrechterhalten, denn die Erfahrung spricht dagegen. Man muß also schon zugeben, daß durchaus der Fall eintreten kann, daß der Lehrer Kindern gegenübersteht, die prädestiniert sind, gescheiter zu werden als er selber ist. Die pädagogische Aufgabe besteht nun darin, die Kinder nicht nur zu dem Grade der Gescheitheit zu bringen, den wir selber haben, sondern zu dem, der in ihnen veranlagt ist.
[ 16 ] So können wir also als Erzieher durchaus in dieLage kommen, etwas heranziehen zu müssen, was uns überragt, und es ist unmöglich, die Schulen mit genügend Lehrern zu versorgen, wenn man nicht auf dem Standpunkt steht, daß es nichts macht, wenn der Lehrer nicht so gescheit ist, wie es der Schüler einmal sein wird. Er wird gleichwohl ein guter Lehrer sein können, weil es nicht auf die Übermittlung von Wissen ankommt, sondern auf die Individualität, auf das Lebendigmachen des vorirdischen Daseins. Dann erzieht sich eigentlich das Kind selber an uns, und das ist auch richtig; denn in Wirklichkeit sind nicht wir es, die erziehen. Wir stören nur die Erziehung, wenn wir unmittelbar zu stark in sie eingreifen. Wir erziehen, indem wir uns so benehmen, daß durch unser Benehmen das Kind sich selber erziehen kann. Wir schicken dasKind in dieVolksschule, damit wir die störenden Dinge wegschaffen. Der Lehrer soll dafür sorgen, daß das Kind wegkommt von den Umständen, unter denen es sich nicht entwickeln kann. Deshalb müssen wir uns klar sein: hineinpfropfen können wir in den Menschen nichts durch Unterricht und Erziehung. Aber wir können uns so verhalten, daß der Mensch dazu kommt, als Aufwachsender die in ihm vorhandenen Anlagen hervorzuholen. Das können wir aber nicht durch das, was wir wissen, sondern nur durch das, was auf künstlerische Art in uns regsam ist. Und selbst wenn einmal der seltene Fall eintritt, daß wir als Lehrer und Erzieher nicht besonders genial wären — man darf das ja nicht sagen, aber trotz Ihrer Jugendbewegung sind Sie schon so alt, daß ich das sagen darf -, dann kann ein Lehrer, der sogar bloß eine Art instinktiv-künstlerischen Sinn in sich hat, dem Kinde weniger Hindernisse bieten zum Heranwachsen in seiner Seele als der Lehrer, der unkünstlerisch und dabei ein ungeheurer Gelehrter ist. Ein ungeheuer Gelehrter zu sein ist ja nicht schwer.
[ 17 ] Man muß diese Dinge einmal mit aller Deutlichkeit aussprechen. Denn wenn man sie nur mit Deutlichkeit ausspricht, hört sie unser Zeitalter nicht. Unser Zeitalter ist für solche Dinge furchtbar unempfänglich. Und bei denjenigen, die einem versichern, sie haben das alles verstanden, zeigt sich oftmals nach dreißig Jahren, daß sie gar nichts verstanden haben. Es handelt sich also darum, daß die seelische Konfiguration des Menschen das Wesentliche des pädagogischen Wirkens, des Unterrichtens und Erziehens für dasLebensalter des Kindes vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife ausmacht. Nachher tritt der Mensch in ein Lebensalter ein, wo gerade im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele noch tiefereKräfte aus der Menschennatur heraufwirken müssen, wenn die Menschen etwas aufeinander geben sollen.
[ 18 ] Sehen Sie, die Art und Weise der Empfindung, die ein Mensch dem andern entgegenbringt, ist ja etwas ungeheuer Kompliziertes. Und wenn Sie definieren wollten den Kreis von Sympathien und Antipathien und das Zusammenwirken der Sympathien und Antipathien, die Sie einem andern Menschen entgegenbringen, Sie würden mit dem Definieren überhaupt nicht fertig werden. Nicht einmal in fünfzig Jahren würden Sie fertig werden, eine Definition auszubilden für das, was Sie in fünf Minuten an Lebensbeziehungen von Mensch zu Mensch erleben können. Vor der Geschlechtsreife ist es vorzüglich das Erleben des Vorirdischen. Durch jede Handbewegung, jeden Blick, durch die Betonung der Worte schimmert es hindurch. Im Grunde ist es das Timbre, das durch Geste, Worte, Gedanke des Erziehers zu dem Kinde hindurchwirkt, und was von dem Kinde gesucht wird.
[ 19 ] Und wenn wir nun als erwachsene Menschen - so erwachsen, daß wir das fünfzehnte, sechzehnte Jahr erreicht haben oder darüber hinaus sind in das Unbegrenzte — andern Menschen gegenübertreten, so ist die Sache noch komplizierter. Dann hüllt sich dasjenige, was in einem Menschen andere abstößt oder anzieht, wirklich in ein für die abstrakte Begriffswelt undurchdringliches Dunkel. Erforscht man aber mit Hilfe anthroposophischer Geisteswissenschaft, was das eigentlich ist, was man da in fünf Minuten erleben kann und in fünfzig Jahren nicht zu beschreiben vermag, dann ist es das, was aus dem früheren oder einer Reihe von früheren Erdenleben in das gegenwärtige Leben der Seele hineinragt und was in den Seelen ausgetauscht wird. Dieses Unbestimmte, Undefinierbare, das über uns kommt, wenn wir als Erwachsener dem Erwachsenen gegenüberstehen, das ist dasjenige, was aus dessen früheren Erdenleben in unsere früheren Erdenleben hereinleuchtet, und umgekehrt. Da wirkt nicht nur das vorirdische Dasein, sondern alles, was der Mensch schicksalsmäßig in den aufeinanderfolgenden Erdenleben jemals durchgemacht hat.
[ 20 ] Und betrachten wir diese gegenseitigen Wirkungen, so sehen wir, daß — weil heute im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele alles, was wir von der Umwelt aufnehmen, sich im Kopfe anschoppt und nicht zum ganzen Menschen gelangt — unsere heutige «Kopf»-Kultur sich dem entgegenstellt, was allein von Mensch zu Mensch wirken kann. Die Menschen gehen aneinander vorbei, weil sie sich nur mit den Köpfen oder, sagen wir, mit den Augen angucken - ich will nicht sagen, weil sie sich die Köpfe einschlagen. Die Menschen gehen aneinander vorbei, weil von Mensch zu Mensch nur dasjenige wirken kann, was aus den wiederholten Erdenleben herüberspielt, die heutige Kultur aber nichts tut, um einen Sinn für dieses Herüberspielende zu entwickeln. Das muß in unsere Erziehung, in unseren Unterricht aufgenommen werden: daß wir als erwachsene Menschen den Sinn haben, jenes Tiefere im Menschen zu erfühlen, zu empfinden, was aus früheren Erdenleben herüberspielt. Das wird nicht erreicht, wenn wir in die Erziehung nicht einbeziehen lernen das ganze menschliche Leben, so wie es sich auf der Erde abspielt.
[ 21 ] Heute hat man eigentlich nur Sinn für die unmittelbare Gegenwart. Daher frägt man auch bei der Erziehung nur, was dem Kinde frommt. Aber mit dieser Frage ist dem Leben wenig gedient. Erstens wird man, weil die Frage einseitig gestellt ist, nur eine einseitige Antwort bekommen. Zweitens soll man das Kind erziehen für das ganze Leben, nicht nur für das Schulzimmer oder für die kurze Zeit nach der Schule, damit es uns keine Schande macht. Da muß der Mensch aber Verständnis haben für gewisse Imponderabilien des Lebens, für die Einheit des ganzen Menschenlebens, so wie es sich auf der Erde abspielt.
[ 22 ] Sie wissen, es gibt Menschen, die, wenn sie ein gewisses Alter erreicht haben, durch ihre Gegenwart so wirken, daß diese Gegenwart von ihrer Umwelt als ein Segen empfunden wird. Solche Menschen gibt es. Wenn man erforschte, wodurch diese Menschen dazu gekommen sind, nicht durch ihr Tun, sondern durch ihr Wesen für ihre Umwelt zum Segen zu werden, dann würde man darauf kommen, daß solche Menschen einmal selber das Wohltätige erlebt haben, als Kinder zu einer verehrten Autorität in selbstverständlicher Weise aufzuschauen, sie verehren zu können. Das haben sie durchgemacht im richtigen Lebensalter. Dadurch, daß sie selber einmal haben verehren können, werden sie nach vielen Jahren zum Segen für ihre Umwelt. Man kann das, ich möchte sagen, paradigmatisch ausdrücken, indem man sagt: Es gibt Menschen, die segnen können. Viele sind es ja nicht, aber es gibt Menschen, die im späteren Alter dieKraft des Segnens erlangen. Das kommt daher, daß sie in ihrer Kindheit beten gelernt haben. Da haben Sie zwei Gesten, die kausal miteinander verknüpft sind: Beten und Segnen. Niemand lernt segnen, der es nicht aus dem Beten heraus lernt. Man muß das nicht sentimental verstehen, sondern ganz ohne mystischen Beigeschmack, wie man eine Naturerscheinung betrachtet, nur daß einem diese Erscheinung menschlich näher steht.
[ 23 ] Ein Kind muß ja seiner Natur gemäß wachsen können. Wenn Sie einen Apparat ersinnen würden, der es in einer bestimmten Größe erhielte, der es am Wachsen verhindern und es zwingen würde, sein Leben lang so zu bleiben wie es ist, so würden Sie etwas ungeheuerlich Schlechtes tun. Der Mensch muß wachsen können. In der Schule bringen wir aber den Kindern Begriffe bei, bei denen wir das Ideal haben: die sollen so bleiben das ganze Leben hindurch. Das Kind soll sie gedächtnismäßig behalten, und sie sollen nach fünfzig Jahren noch immer so sein wie heute. Durch unsere Lehrbücher wird die Seele des Kindes so bearbeitet, daß sie klein bleiben muß. Das Richtige ist, das Kind so zu erziehen, daß alle seine Begriffe wachsen können, daß seine Begriffe, seine Willensimpulse lebendig sind. Es ist nicht sehr bequem, aber der künstlerischen Erziehungsgesinnung gelingt es. Und das Kind empfindet es anders, wenn wir ihm lebendige statt toter Begriffe beibringen, denn unbewußt weiß es: Was der mir beibringt, das wächst mit mir, wie meine Arme mit mir wachsen.
[ 24 ] Es ist herzzerbrechend, wenn ein Kind so erzogen wird, daß es einen Begriff definieren und ihn dann in einer Definition besitzen soll. Das ist wirklich, wie wenn man seine Glieder in einen Apparat einschnüren wollte. Das Kind muß wachstumsfähige Bilder bekommen, die ganz etwas anderes werden nach zehn bis zwanzig Jahren. Nur wenn man ihm solche wachstumsfähigen Bilder überliefert, regt man es an, sich empfindend einzuleben in das, was in den Tiefen einer anderen menschlichen Individualität oft verborgen ist. Sie sehen, wie kompliziert die Zusammenhänge sind: Wir lernen zu den Menschen ein tieferes Verhältnis dadurch gewinnen, daß uns in der Jugend das seelische Wachsen möglich gemacht wird.
[ 25 ] Was heißt denn: den anderen Menschen erleben? Einen anderen Menschen kann man nicht erleben mit toten Begriffen. Man kann einen anderen Menschen nur begreifen, wenn man ihm gegenübertritt und einem dies zum Erlebnis wird, was einen selber innerlich ergreift. Dazu braucht man aber innere Regsamkeit. Heute gehen die Menschen durch Frühstücke, Diners zu Tees, ohne viel übereinander zu wissen. Über sich selber wissen die heutigen Menschen allerdings verhältnismäßig noch am meisten. Aber wie richten sie ihre Erfahrungen instinktiv ein? Wie urteilen sie über die vielen Menschen, die sie bei Frühstücken oder Diners finden? Sie urteilen höchstens so: Ist er so wie ich selber, oder ist er etwas anderes? - Und wenn man glaubt, er ist so wie man selber, dann ist der andere ein rechter Kerl. Ist er aber nicht so, wie man selber ist, dann ist er kein rechter Kerl, dann beschäftigt man sich nicht mit ihm. Und da die meisten Menschen nicht so sind, wie man selber ist, kann man höchstens manchmal glauben — weil es einem schließlich zu fad wird, gar keinen rechten Kerl zu finden -, man finde einen Menschen, der so ist, wie man selber. Aber eigentlich findet man auf diese Art keinen anderen Menschen, sondern immer nur sich selber. Man sieht sich in jedem anderen Menschen. Für viele Menschen ist das noch ganz gut, denn wenn sie jemandem entgegentreten würden, der für sie zwar nicht vollständig, aber doch bis zu einem gewissen Grade ein richtiger Kerl ist, und sie würden ihn erfassen, so würde das ein so starkes Erleben sein, daß es ihren eigenen Menschen ganz übertönen würde. Beim zweiten würde ihr Ich noch mehr übertönt, und beim dritten und vierten kämen sie schon gar nicht mehr heran, da hätten sie sich schon verloren. Es wird eben zu wenig innere Stärke und Aktivität, zu wenig Kern, zu wenig Individualität entwickelt, so daß die Menschen aus Furcht, sich selber zu verlieren, den anderen Menschen nicht erleben mögen. Und so gehen sie aneinander vorüber.
[ 26 ] Deshalb ist das Wichtigste, daß wir eine Erziehung ausprägen, durch welche die Menschen wiederum miteinander leben lernen. Das kann man nicht durch Phrasen. Man kann das nur durch eine Erziehungskunst, die auf wahrer Menschenkenntnis begründet ist, eben die Erziehungskunst, von der hier gesprochen wird. Aber im großen und ganzen hat eben das intellektualistische Zeitalter das ganze Leben in Intellektualität getaucht. Wir leben eigentlich, in bezug auf unsere Institutionen, vielfach gar nicht mehr unter Menschen, sondern wir leben in einem verkörperten Intellekt, indem wir darinnen eingesponnen sind, nicht wie eine Spinne in ihrem eigenen Netze, sondern wie unzählige Fliegen, die sich in einem Spinnennetze verfangen haben.
[ 27 ] Haben wir denn überhaupt eineEmpfindung, wenn wir einem Menschen gegenübertreten, was uns dieser Mensch sein kann? Urteilen wir heute überhaupt so menschlich? Nein, das tun wir ja zumeist nicht, sondern wir fragen, ob nicht vielleicht an der Türe dieses Menschen ein Täfelchen angebracht ist, worauf irgendein Begriff steht, zum Beispiel «Gerichtsadvokat», wie es in Wien heißt, oder in Deutschland «Rechtsanwalt», oder bei einem anderen heißt es «Praktischer Arzt». Von dem wissen wir, daß er uns heilen kann! Bei einem anderen heißt es «Professor für die englische Sprache». Jetzt wissen wir, was wir an ihm haben. Wenn wir etwas über Chemie wissen wollen, so haben wir keine andere Wahl, als zu fragen, ob irgendwo ein Mensch lebt, dem ein Diplom erteilt worden ist als Chemiker. Was der uns dann sagt, das ist Chemie. Und so geht es weiter. Wir sind wirklich in dieses Spinnennetz von Begriffen eingesponnen. Wir leben nicht unter Menschen. Was einen kümmert, ist das, was auf dem Papier steht; das ist für viele Menschen der einzige Anhaltspunkt. Wie wüßten sie denn auch sonst, was ich für ein Mensch bin, wenn es nicht auf irgendeinem Papier stünde!
[ 28 ] Es ist das alles etwas radikal gesprochen, aber es charakterisiert eben doch unser Zeitalter. Die Intellektualität ist nicht mehr bloß in unserem Kopfe, sondern sie umspinnt uns in der Tat schon überall. Wir richten uns nur nach Begriffen. Wir richten uns nicht nach menschlichen Impulsen.
[ 29 ] Ich war noch ziemlich jung, da lernte ich in Baden bei Wien den österreichischen Dichter Hermann Rollett kennen, der jetzt schon lange gestorben ist. Der war der Ansicht, daß das Richtige eine Entwickelung zum Intellektualismus hin sei. Gleichzeitig aber hatte er eine heillose Angst davor, denn er spürte, daß das nur den menschlichen Kopf ergreift. Und als ich ihn einmal mit Schröer besuchte, kam er in dichterischer Art auf seine heillose Kulturangst zu sprechen. Er sagte: Wenn man heute die Menschen ansieht: ihre Finger können sie gar nicht ordentlich gebrauchen, viele können nicht schreiben, sie kriegen Schreibkrampf, die Finger verkümmern. Wenn es darauf ankommt, nicht einmal Hosenknöpfe können sie annähen, das können nur die Schneider. Und nicht nur werden die Finger und Gliedmaßen ungeschickter werden, sondern sie werden auch kleiner werden, sie werden verkümmern, die Köpfe aber werden immer größer werden. — So schilderte er seinen Dichtertraum und meinte dann, es würde die Zeit kommen, wo nur noch Kugeln von Köpfen über die Erde hinrollen.
[ 30 ] Das trat mir dazumal als eine Kulturangst bei diesem Manne entgegen. Er war ein Kind seiner Zeit, das heißt ein Materialist, und deshalb hatte er eine so große Angst gehabt, daß in der Zukunft solche Köpfe über die Erde hinrollen werden. Das werden ja die physischen Köpfe nicht tun; aber die ätherischen und astralischen Köpfe tun es schon heute in ganz bedenklicher Weise. Davor muß eine gesunde Jugenderziehung die Menschen bewahren. Sie muß die Menschen wieder auf ihre Beine stellen und sie so führen, daß sie wieder ihren Herzschlag verspüren, wenn sie über etwas nachdenken, nicht bloß etwas für ihr Wissen haben. Das sind die Dinge, die wir durchaus berücksichtigen müssen, wenn wir uns hineinleben wollen in das, was Einschlag werden muß für die pädagogische Kunst, für die Erziehungskunst, gegen die Zukunft der Menschheit hin. Was dazu noch Ergänzendes zu sagen ist, werde ich versuchen, morgen vor Ihnen zu entwickeln.
Eleventh Lecture
[ 1 ] Even though, on the one hand, in the age of consciousness soul evolution, the most abstract element comes to life consciously within human beings, on the other hand, there is the fact that in the subconscious, in the longings, in what human beings desire from life, the most concrete element wants to work its way out into existence.
[ 2 ] On the one hand, human beings today, growing into the age of consciousness, are stuck in their abstract ideas in their heads. On the other hand, however, there lives — if I may express it this way — outside the head, the desire to experience more than the head can experience. Initially, human beings have only one relationship with nature, which is formed between their minds and nature: everything that human beings today absorb in their science of nature is only valid for them insofar as they have acquired it through their minds. Today, the human mind actually always stands between human beings and nature. It is as if everything that comes to man from the world were to pile up in his head, as if his head were completely blocked—forgive the harsh expression—so that nothing that could become a relationship with the world could pass through its thick layers. Everything remains stuck in the head; everything is thought through with the head alone. But you can't live as a mere head; the rest of your organism is attached to your head. The life of this rest of the organism remains dull, unconscious, because man directs everything to the head. And there everything comes to a standstill. The rest of man has nothing of the world, because the head lets nothing reach him. The head has gradually become insatiable. It wants everything from the outside world, and the human being must then live with his heart, with the rest of his organism, as if he had never entered this world at all, as if he had nothing to do with this environment.
[ 3 ] But this rest of the organism develops desire, will, and the capacity for desire, and these then feel isolated. Because, for example, the eyes capture all colors and allow only a sparse remnant of them to be experienced in the head, the colors cannot descend, they cannot enter the blood, they cannot enter the nervous system outside the head. Man knows something of the world only in his head. However, they have an even more intense capacity for desire to come into contact with the world in some way, even with the rest of their organism. In growing human beings, there is a desire not only in the head but also in the rest of the organism to somehow come together with the world, to learn to think, to learn to experience the world not only with the head but with the whole human being.
[ 4 ] This ability to get to know the world with one's whole being is actually only found today at an age that we must leave behind early. For everything I have said so far refers to the adult human being. Children before they lose their baby teeth still have the ability to perceive the world with their whole being. It would be a great mistake, for example, to believe that a child experiences milk as abstractly as an adult does when it is fed as an infant. When an adult drinks milk today, he tastes it on his tongue, perhaps also in the area around his tongue, but he loses the taste sensation once the milk has passed down his throat. One might well ask why the stomach should be less capable of tasting than the palate. It is not that it tastes less; it tastes just as well, but the head is insatiable and claims all the “tastes” for itself in the adult human being. The child, however, tastes with its whole organism; it also tastes with its stomach. The infant is entirely a sensory organ. There is nothing in it that is not a sensory organ. The infant tastes through and through. People only forget this later, and this tasting with the whole organism is already impaired when one learns to speak, because then the head, which must participate in learning to speak, becomes active and develops the first stage of its insatiability. In exchange for allowing itself to learn to speak, it also reserves for itself the pleasure of tasting. So even in relation to this “tasting the world,” the total relationship to the world is lost very early on. Now, this “tasting the world” is not particularly important; but in other respects, a total human relationship with the world is extremely important.
[ 5 ] You see, one can get to know an important philosopher such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte in different ways. Every way is correct; I do not want to single out any of those I am about to mention. But even if it is something extraordinarily beautiful and one gains a great deal from immersing oneself in Fichte's philosophy — which not many people do today because they find it too difficult — people could have gained even more from it if they had once followed Fichte with total human sensitivity and seen how he always walked with his whole foot, especially his heel. There is tremendous power in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's gait, in the peculiar way he placed his heel on the ground. For people who could witness every step he took, Fichte's manner of walking would have been a more intense philosophy than anything he could have said to people from his lectern. It seems grotesque, but perhaps you will understand what I mean.p>
[ 6 ] Such things have been completely lost to people today. If you were not just twenty but fifty years old when you were a child, you can still remember how such a philosophy was still very much alive among people in the countryside. People still knew each other well, and many dialect expressions reveal in their tremendous plasticity how people saw what we today see only in our minds. For example, there was a certain “lady” in the countryside who, let me put it this way, “schneuzt daher” (blows her nose). Yes, among us intellectuals, schneuzen means to blow one's nose, perhaps in a not entirely clean manner. That's not what it meant back then. The whole person “schneuzt.” The way he walked, the way he carried himself, the way he placed one foot in front of the other, his whole demeanor, that was “schneuzen.” A “schneuzen” of the whole person, which was considered similar to the not entirely clean habit of blowing one's nose.
[ 7 ] As I said, that has been lost. People have reduced themselves to their heads, and we have come to believe that the head is the most valuable thing about a human being. But this has not made us very happy, because the rest of human nature continues to assert its claims in the subconscious. But today, experiencing life through something other than the head is completely lost to people with their early childhood, with the change of teeth. If you have an eye for it, you will be able to see the footsteps of the father or mother in their son or daughter after two or three decades. The child has become so accustomed to the adults around them that what they have felt there has become their own nature. But this settling in is no longer becoming culture for us. Culture for us is what the mind observes and what can be worked out with the help of the mind. Sometimes people dispense with the mind altogether; then they write everything down and put it in the archives. There it goes from the mind into the hair, and there they cannot keep it, because by the age of thirty they no longer have any hair.
[ 8 ] I am not saying all this for fun, nor to criticize anything, because it is part of the necessary development of humanity. People had to become this way in order to find what they can no longer find in a natural way, through inner effort, through inner activity, in other words, in order to attain the possibility of experiencing freedom.
[ 9 ] Therefore, after the change of teeth, we must now move on to a different experience of the environment than the “whole-person experience” that is still present in children, and the elementary school education of the future must be based on the idea that, through the detour via the artistic, as I characterized it yesterday, young people acquire the ability to feel the whole soul of another person through the outer human being.If you want to educate people with abstract scientific content, they will experience nothing of your soul. They only experience something of your soul when you approach them artistically, because in art everyone must be individual; in art, everyone is different. The scientific ideal is precisely that everyone is the same as everyone else. It would be a beautiful story — as they say nowadays — if everyone taught a different science. But that cannot be, because science is reduced to that which is the same for all human beings. In art, however, every human being is an individual. Through art, therefore, an individual relationship between the child and the active and energetic human being can come about, and this is necessary. This does not give one a total physical perception of the other person, as in the first years of childhood, but it does give one a total perception of the soul of the person who stands before one as a guide.
[ 10 ] Education must have soul, but as a scientist one cannot have soul. One can only have soul through what one is artistically. One can have soul if one shapes science artistically through the manner of presentation, but not through the content of science as it is understood today. Science is not an individual matter. Therefore, it does not establish a relationship between the leader and the led at the age of compulsory schooling. All teaching must be imbued with art and human individuality, and more than any contrived programmatic approach, it is the individuality of the teacher and educator that is important. It is this that must have an effect in school.
[ 11 ] What actually develops between the leader and the led when we consider the period between the change of teeth and sexual maturity? What binds the two together? The only thing that binds the two together is what human beings bring with them from the supersensible spiritual worlds, from their pre-earthly existence into the earthly world. My dear friends, the head never recognizes what a human being brings with them from their pre-earthly existence. The head is predisposed to grasp only what is on earth, and on earth there is only the physical human being. The head understands nothing of what comes from another human being's pre-earthly existence. However, in that special human nuance given by the artistic influence of the human soul, that which the human being has brought down from its pre-earthly existence weaves and flows, and the child is particularly predisposed between the change of teeth and sexual maturity to feel in its heart that which it encounters in the teacher as originating from this pre-earthly existence. Just as the small child is predisposed to feel the outer human form as it has been formed within earthly life, so the child from the age of seven to fourteen or fifteen seeks, through living together with people, something that lives in the leading human being without being capable of being grasped in concepts; something that lives in such a way that, if one wanted to grasp it in concepts, it would resist the contours of concepts. Concepts have contours, that is, external limitations. But what is human individuality in the manner just described has no external limitations, has only intensity, quality, and is experienced as quality, as intensity. One experiences it particularly at the age indicated, and one experiences it through no other atmosphere than the artistic.
[ 12 ] But we live in the age of the consciousness soul. The first wealth we acquire for our souls in this age consists of intellectual concepts, consists actually of abstractions. Today, even the farmer is an abstract thinker. How could it be otherwise, since he devotes himself to the most abstract reading material, the village newspaper and many other things. Our wealth consists precisely in abstractions. Therefore, we must emerge from this way of thinking through the development I indicated yesterday, by purifying our thinking completely and transforming it into will, into will-form. We must bring ourselves to make our individuality ever stronger, and we can only achieve this by working our way through to this pure thinking. I am not saying this out of vain foolishness, but because this is how it appears to me. Anyone who works their way through to such pure thinking, as I have indicated in my Philosophy of Freedom, will find that it does not lead to the acquisition of a few concepts that make up a philosophical system, but rather to a grasp of human individuality and its pre-earthly existence.
[ 13 ] One does not need to become a clairvoyant. One would only be clairvoyant if one could see pre-earthly existence. But one can confirm the truth of what has been said by gaining the strength of will that is acquired in the pure flow of thought. That is where individuality emerges. One does not feel comfortable with a philosophical system where one concept interferes with another and everything has fixed contours; instead, one feels compelled to be part of something living and weaving. It is a special kind of soul life that one acquires when one experiences in the right way what is meant by the “philosophy of freedom.”
[ 14 ] It is really the drawing of pre-earthly existence into human life that can be achieved in this way, and thus it is the preparation for the profession of teacher, instructor, educator. We cannot become educators through study. We cannot train others to be educators, if only because each of us is one. There is an educator in every human being, but this educator is asleep and must be awakened, and art is the means of awakening. When this is developed, it brings the educator as a human being closer to those he wants to guide. Humanly speaking, the person being educated must come close to the educator; they must have something human in common with them. It would be terrible if someone wanted to believe that they could be an educator simply because they know a lot or, in the sense of knowledge—which can even be said today—can do a lot. This leads to a tremendous absurdity, which you can see clearly if you consider the following image.
[ 15 ] You have a school class with perhaps thirty pupils. Among them, let's say, there are two geniuses, or just one, that's enough. Now, when we have a school to staff, we cannot always appoint just such a genius as a teacher so that the future genius can learn as much as possible from the teacher. You will say that this does not matter in elementary school, because a genius will go on to higher education, where they will certainly find the teachers they need. But you cannot maintain that, because experience speaks against it. One must therefore admit that it is entirely possible that a teacher may be faced with children who are predestined to become more intelligent than he is himself. The pedagogical task now consists in bringing the children not only to the level of intelligence that we ourselves have, but to the level that is inherent in them.
[ 16 ] As educators, we may therefore find ourselves in a position where we have to bring out something that surpasses us, and it is impossible to provide schools with enough teachers unless we take the view that it does not matter if the teacher is not as intelligent as the student will one day be. He will nevertheless be able to be a good teacher, because it is not the transmission of knowledge that matters, but individuality, bringing pre-earthly existence to life. Then the child actually educates itself through us, and that is also right; for in reality it is not we who educate. We only interfere with education when we intervene too strongly. We educate by behaving in such a way that the child can educate itself through our behavior. We send the child to elementary school so that we can remove the disruptive elements. The teacher should ensure that the child is removed from circumstances in which it cannot develop. Therefore, we must be clear: we cannot graft anything into people through teaching and education. But we can behave in such a way that, as they grow up, people come to bring out the potential that is within them. However, we cannot do this through what we know, but only through what is artistically active within us. And even if the rare case arises that we as teachers and educators are not particularly gifted — one must not say that, but despite your youth movement, you are already old enough that I can say this — then a teacher who has even just a kind of instinctive artistic sense in him will offer the child fewer obstacles to growing up in his soul than a teacher who is unartistic and at the same time an immense scholar. It is not difficult to be an immense scholar.
[ 17 ] These things must be said clearly. For if they are only said clearly, our age does not hear them. Our age is terribly unreceptive to such things. And those who assure us that they have understood everything often reveal after thirty years that they have understood nothing at all. The point is that the spiritual configuration of the human being determines the essence of educational work, of teaching and upbringing, for the age of the child from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. After that, human beings enter an age in which, precisely in the age of the conscious soul, even deeper forces from human nature must come to the fore if people are to interact with one another.
[ 18 ] You see, the way one person feels toward another is something incredibly complicated. And if you wanted to define the circle of sympathies and antipathies and the interaction of the sympathies and antipathies you feel toward another person, you would never be able to define it. Not even in fifty years would you be able to formulate a definition for what you can experience in five minutes of human interaction. Before puberty, it is primarily the experience of the pre-earthly. It shines through every hand movement, every glance, every emphasis of words. Basically, it is the timbre that shines through the gestures, words, and thoughts of the educator to the child, and it is what the child seeks.
[ 19 ] And when we as adults—so adult that we have reached the age of fifteen or sixteen or beyond, into the infinite—encounter other people, the matter is even more complicated. Then what repels or attracts us in another person is truly shrouded in a darkness that is impenetrable to the abstract world of concepts. But if we use anthroposophical spiritual science to explore what it is that we can experience in five minutes and cannot describe in fifty years, then it is what protrudes into the present life of the soul from a previous life or a series of previous lives on earth, and what is exchanged in the souls. This indefinable, indefinable thing that comes over us when we face adults as adults is what shines from their previous earthly lives into our previous earthly lives, and vice versa. It is not only the pre-earthly existence that has an effect, but everything that a person has ever gone through in successive earthly lives as part of their destiny.
[ 20 ] And when we consider these mutual influences, we see that — because today, in the age of the consciousness soul, everything we take in from our environment accumulates in our heads and does not reach the whole human being — our present-day “head” culture stands in opposition to what alone can work from human being to human being. People pass each other by because they only look at each other with their heads or, let us say, with their eyes — I do not want to say because they bash each other's heads in. People pass each other by because only that which carries over from repeated earthly lives can have an effect from person to person, but today's culture does nothing to develop a sense for this carrying over. This must be incorporated into our education, into our teaching: that we as adults have the sense to feel, to sense, that which is deeper in human beings, which carries over from previous earthly lives. This will not be achieved if we do not learn to include the whole of human life, as it unfolds on earth, in our education.
[ 21 ] Today, people really only have a sense of the immediate present. That is why, in education, the only question asked is what is good for the child. But this question is of little use to life. Firstly, because the question is one-sided, you will only get a one-sided answer. Secondly, you should educate children for their whole life, not just for the classroom or for the short time after school, so that they do not disgrace us. But then people must have an understanding of certain imponderables of life, of the unity of the whole human life as it unfolds on earth.
[ 22 ] You know, there are people who, when they reach a certain age, have such an effect on those around them that their presence is perceived as a blessing. Such people exist. If one were to investigate how these people came to be a blessing to their environment, not through their actions but through their very nature, one would come to the conclusion that such people themselves once experienced the beneficial effect of looking up to a revered authority figure as children, of being able to revere them as a matter of course. They went through this at the right age in their lives. Because they were able to revere someone themselves, they become a blessing to their environment after many years. I would say that this can be expressed paradigmatically by saying: There are people who can bless. There are not many of them, but there are people who attain the power to bless in later life. This comes from having learned to pray in childhood. There are two gestures that are causally linked: praying and blessing. No one learns to bless unless they learn it from praying. This should not be understood in a sentimental way, but without any mystical connotations, like observing a natural phenomenon, except that this phenomenon is closer to us as human beings.
[ 23 ] A child must be able to grow according to its nature. If you were to devise a device that would keep it at a certain size, prevent it from growing, and force it to remain as it is for the rest of its life, you would be doing something terribly wrong. Human beings must be able to grow. But at school we teach children concepts based on the ideal that they should remain the same throughout their lives. The child is supposed to remember them, and they should still be the same in fifty years as they are today. Our textbooks shape the child's soul in such a way that it must remain small. The right thing to do is to educate children in such a way that all their concepts can grow, that their concepts and their impulses of will are alive. It is not very convenient, but the artistic approach to education succeeds in doing this. And children feel differently when we teach them living concepts instead of dead ones, because they know unconsciously: What he teaches me grows with me, just as my arms grow with me.
[ 24 ] It is heartbreaking when a child is educated in such a way that it has to define a concept and then possess it in a definition. It is really like trying to tie its limbs to an apparatus. The child must be given images that are capable of growth, images that will become something completely different in ten or twenty years. Only by passing on such images capable of growth can we stimulate the child to empathically identify with what is often hidden in the depths of another human individuality. You can see how complicated the connections are: we learn to gain a deeper relationship with people by allowing ourselves to grow spiritually in our youth.
[ 25 ] What does it mean to experience another person? You cannot experience another human being with dead concepts. You can only understand another human being when you stand face to face with them and experience what moves you inwardly. But this requires inner liveliness. Today, people go through breakfasts, dinners, and teas without knowing much about each other. However, people today know relatively more about themselves. But how do they instinctively organize their experiences? How do they judge the many people they meet at breakfast or dinner? At most, they judge as follows: Is he like me, or is he different? And if you think he is like you, then the other person is a decent fellow. But if he's not like you, then he's not a decent person, and you don't bother with him. And since most people aren't like you, you can at best sometimes believe — because it eventually becomes too boring not to find a decent person — that you've found someone who is like you. But in reality, you don't find another person this way, you only ever find yourself. You see yourself in every other person. For many people, that's quite good, because if they were to encounter someone who is not completely, but to a certain extent, a real person for them, and they were to grasp him, it would be such a powerful experience that it would completely drown out their own person. With the second, their ego would be drowned out even more, and with the third and fourth, they would no longer be able to approach them at all, because they would have already lost themselves. Too little inner strength and activity, too little core, too little individuality is developed, so that people, out of fear of losing themselves, do not want to experience other people. And so they pass each other by.
[ 26 ] That is why it is so important that we develop an education through which people learn to live together again. This cannot be achieved through empty phrases. It can only be achieved through an art of education based on true knowledge of human nature, the art of education we are talking about here. But on the whole, the intellectual age has immersed all of life in intellectuality. In terms of our institutions, we no longer live among human beings, but rather in an embodied intellect, entangled in it, not like a spider in its own web, but like countless flies caught in a spider's web.
[ 27 ] Do we even have a sense of what a person can be to us when we meet them? Do we even judge so humanely today? No, we usually don't. Instead, we ask whether there is perhaps a small sign on this person's door with some title on it, such as “court attorney,” as it is called in Vienna, or ‘lawyer’ in Germany, or “general practitioner” in another country. We know that this person can heal us! Another might say “Professor of English.” Now we know what we can expect from him. If we want to know something about chemistry, we have no choice but to ask if there is anyone around who has been awarded a degree in chemistry. What they tell us is chemistry. And so it goes on. We are truly entangled in this web of concepts. We do not live among people. What matters to us is what is written on paper; for many people, that is their only point of reference. How else would they know what kind of person I am if it weren't written on some piece of paper!
[ 28 ] This is all somewhat radical, but it does characterize our age. Intellectuality is no longer just in our heads, but actually surrounds us everywhere. We are guided only by concepts. We are not guided by human impulses.
[ 29 ] I was still quite young when I met the Austrian poet Hermann Rollett in Baden near Vienna, who has long since passed away. He believed that the right thing was to develop toward intellectualism. At the same time, however, he was terribly afraid of it, because he sensed that it only gripped the human mind. And when I once visited him with Schröer, he spoke poetically about his terrible fear of culture. He said: When you look at people today: they can't even use their fingers properly, many can't write, they get writer's cramp, their fingers are wasting away. When it comes down to it, they can't even sew on trouser buttons; only tailors can do that. And not only will fingers and limbs become clumsier, they will also become smaller, they will atrophy, but heads will become larger and larger." This is how he described his poetic dream, and then he said that the time would come when only balls of heads would roll across the earth.
[ 30 ] At the time, this struck me as a cultural fear on the part of this man. He was a child of his time, that is, a materialist, and that is why he was so afraid that such heads would roll across the earth in the future. Physical heads will not do that, but etheric and astral heads are already doing so today in a very alarming way. A healthy education of young people must protect them from this. It must put people back on their feet and guide them so that they feel their heartbeat again when they think about something, not just have something for their knowledge. These are the things we must take into account if we want to understand what must happen in the art of education, in the art of upbringing, for the future of humanity. I will try to develop further thoughts on this tomorrow.