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Human Values in Education
GA 310

20 July 1924, Arnheim

IV. Three Epochs of Childhood

Arising out of yesterday's lecture a further question has been put to me in connection with our subject and I should like to deal with it here. The question is this: “With reference to the law of imitation in a child's movements I regard as important an explanation of the following fact. My grandfather died when my father was between eighteen months and two years old. When he was about forty-five my father visited one of my grandfather's friends who was astonished at the similarity of all my father's movements and gestures with those of my grandfather. What was the cause of this, seeing that owing to my grandfather's early death there could hardly be any question of imitation!”

So a man died when his son was between eighteen months and two years old and long afterwards, when the latter was in his 45th year, he heard from this friend, who was in a position to know, that as late as his 45th year he still imitated, or rather had the same gestures as his father.

Of course we are dealing here with matters of such a nature that it is scarcely possible to do more than give certain guiding lines, omitting detailed explanations. Unfortunately our courses of lectures are short, and the theme, if it were to be gone into fully, would need many lectures and ample time, six months for instance, or even a whole year. Very many questions are therefore likely to arise, and it may well be possible to answer these if they are brought forward. I must however point out that owing to the limited time at our disposal a certain lack of clarity will inevitably arise and this could only be cleared up if it were possible to enter fully into every detail. With reference to the question which has been put I should like to interpolate the following remarks.

If we take the first epoch of a child's life, that is, the time between birth and the change of teeth, the organisation of the child is working and developing in such a way that those predispositions are incorporated into the organism which I described yesterday as consisting of walking, which includes the general orientation of the human being, of speaking and thirdly of thinking.

Now this is how things follow one another. Between the first and seventh year of life the child is so organised that he is mainly concerned with gesture; between approximately the seventh and fourteenth year he is concerned with speech, as I explained yesterday; and, again speaking approximately, between his fourteenth and twenty-first year he is so organised that he is mainly concerned with thinking. What thus makes its appearance in the course of twenty-one years is however already taking shape as predisposition in the first period of life, between birth and the change of teeth. In so far as the assimilation of gesture is concerned, and this includes walking freely in space without need of support, so that the arms and also the muscles of the face can move in an expressive way—in other words a general orientation, finding a living relationship with gesture and movement—all this is developed mainly in the first third of these years, that is to say in the first 2⅓ years. The main development of the child during this time lies in the unfolding and building up of gesture. The gestures then continue to develop, but in addition something more intimate and inward is now impressed into the speech organism. Although the child has already uttered a few words nevertheless the experience of speech as predisposition takes place after 2⅓ years. The actual experience and feeling for speech is fully developed between the seventh and fourteenth year, but as predisposition it is there between 2⅓ and 4⅔ years old. Naturally all this must be taken as an average. From then on the child develops the faculty of experiencing inwardly the first beginnings of thought. What unfolds and blossoms later, between the 14th and 21st year is already developing germinally between 4⅔ and 7 years old. The forming of gestures continues of course throughout these years, but other faculties enter in. We see therefore that in the main we have to place the time for the unfolding and forming of gestures right back to the first 2½ years. What is gained during this time lies deepest. This is only natural, for we can well imagine how fundamentally the principle of imitation works in the very first years of life.

If you take all this together you will no longer find anything astonishing in what gave rise to the question that has been put here. The grandfather died when the father was between 1½ and 2 years old. Now this is precisely the time in which the forming of gesture is working most deeply. If the grandfather died then, the gestures the child imitated from him made by far the deepest impression. That is in no way altered by what may have been imitated later from other people. So just this particular case is extraordinarily significant when we consider it in detail.

We tried yesterday to explain how in the second period of life, between the change of teeth and puberty, the child in the course of his development experiences everything that finds its expression through speech, in which the self-understood authority of the teacher and educator must play its part. The intercourse between teacher and child must be of such a kind that it works in a pictorial, imaginative way. And I pointed out how at this age one cannot approach the child with moral precepts but can only work effectively on his moral nature by awakening in him such feelings as can be awakened by pictures: so that the child receives pictures described by his teacher and educator, who is also his model. These work in such a way that what is good pleases him and what is bad gives him a feeling of distaste. Therefore at this preparatory or elementary school age morality must be instilled in pictorial form by way of the feelings.

I explained further how writing must be brought to the child in a pictorial way and I showed how the forms of the letters must be developed out of the drawing-painting and the painting-drawing. Of all the arts this must be cultivated first, for it leads the child into civilisation. Everything which introduces the child at the very outset into the forms of the letters, which are completely strange to him, is quite wrong from an educational point of view; for the finished forms of the letters used in our present day civilisation work on the child like little demons.

Now in an education built up on a knowledge of man, learning to write must precede learning to read. If you want to come near to a child of this age, immediately after the change of teeth, you must as far as possible approach the whole being of the child. The child when occupied in writing does at least bring the whole of the upper part of the body into activity; there is an inner mobility which is quite different from when only the head is kept busy learning the forms of the letters. The emancipated, independent faculties of the head can only be made use of at a later age. For this reason we can make a transition by allowing the child also to read what he has written. In this way an impression is made on him.

By carrying out our teaching in this way at the Waldorf School it transpired that our children learn to read somewhat later than others; they even learn to write the letters a little later than children in other schools. It is necessary however, before forming a judgment in regard to this to be able really to enter into the nature of man with understanding. With the limited perception and feeling for a knowledge of man usual at the present day, people do not notice at all how detrimental it is for the general development of the human being if, as a child, he learns too early things so remote from him as reading and writing. Certainly nobody will experience any deficiency in his capacity to read and write, whose proficiency in these arts is attained somewhat later than others; on the other hand everyone who learns to read and write too early will suffer in this very respect. An education based on a knowledge of man must from the very beginning, proceed out of this ability to read human evolution and by understanding the conditions of life help the child in furthering the development of his own nature. This is the one and only way to a really health-giving education.

To gain deeper insight we must enter somewhat into the being of man. In man we have in the first place his physical body which is most intensively developed in the first epoch of life. In the second epoch the higher, finer body, the etheric body, develops predominantly. Now it is a matter of great importance that in this study of man we should proceed in a truly scientific way, and we must conjure up the same courage as is shown today in other branches of science. A substance showing a definite degree of warmth, can be brought into a condition in which that warmth, hitherto bound up with substance, becomes freed. It is liberated and then becomes “free” warmth. In the case of mineral substances we have the courage to speak scientifically when we say that there is “bound” warmth and “free” warmth. We must acquire the same courage when we study the world as a whole. If we have this courage then the following reveals itself to us in regard to man.

We can ask: Where are the forces of the etheric body in the first epoch of life? During this time they are bound up with the physical body and are active in its nourishment and growth. In this first epoch the child is different from what he becomes later. The entire forces of the etheric body are at first bound up with the physical body. At the end of the first epoch they are freed to some extent, just as warmth becomes free from the substances with which it was formerly bound up. What takes place now? Only a part of the etheric body is working after the change of teeth in the forces of growth and nourishment; the freed part becomes the bearer of the more intensive development of the memory, of qualities of soul. We must learn to speak of a soul that is “bound” during the first seven years of life and of a soul that has become free after the 7th year. For it is so. What we use as forces of the soul in the second seven years of life is imperceptibly bound up with the physical body during the first seven years; this is why nothing of a psychic nature becomes body free. A knowledge of how the soul works in the first seven years of life must be gained from observation of the body. And only after the change of teeth can any direct approach be made to what is purely of a soul nature.

This is a way of looking at things which leads directly from the physical to the psychological. Just think of the many different approaches to psychology today. They are based on speculation pure and simple. People think things over and discover that on the one hand we have the soul and on the other hand the body. Now the following question arises: Does the body work on the soul as its original cause, or is it the other way round? If they get no further either way, they discover something so extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical parallelism, the idea of which is that both manifestations run parallel, side by side. In this way no explanation is given for the interaction of one with the other, but one speaks only of parallelism. This is a sign that nothing is known about these things out of experience. Out of experience one would have to say: In the first seven years of a child's life one perceives the soul working in the body. How it works must be learned through observation, not through mere speculation. Anthroposophy as a means of knowledge rejects all speculation and proceeds everywhere from experience, but of course from physical and spiritual experience.

So in the second period of life, in the time between the change of teeth and puberty the etheric body of man is our chief concern in education. Both teacher and child need above all those forces which are working in the etheric body, for these release the feeling life of the child, not yet judgment and thought. Deeply embedded in the nature of the child between the change of teeth and puberty is the third member of the human being, the astral body, which is the bearer of all feeling life and sensation. During this second period of life the astral body is still deeply embedded in the etheric body. Therefore, because the etheric body is now relatively free, we have the task to develop it in such a way that it can follow its own tendencies, helped and not hindered by education. When can it be so helped? This can happen when in the widest possible sense we teach and educate the child by means of pictures, when we build up imaginatively and pictorially everything that we wish him to absorb. For the etheric body is the body of formative forces; it models the wonderful forms of the organs, heart, lungs, liver and so on. The physical body which we inherit acts only as a model; after the first seven years, after the change of teeth, it is laid aside, and the second physical body is fashioned by the etheric body. This is why at this age we must educate in a way that is adapted to the plastic formative forces of the etheric body.

Now, just as we teach the child by means of pictures, just as, among other things, he learns to write by a kind of painting-drawing—and we cannot introduce the child too early to what is artistic, for our entire teaching must be permeated with artistic feeling—so must we also bear the following in mind. Just as the etheric body is inseparably associated with what is formative and pictorial, so the astral body, which underlies the life of feeling and sensation, tends in its organisation towards the musical nature of man. To what then must we look when we observe the child? Because the astral body between the change of teeth and puberty is still embedded in the physical and etheric bodies every child whose soul life is healthy is inwardly deeply musical. Every healthy child is inwardly deeply musical. We have only to call up this musicality by making use of the child's natural liveliness and sense of movement. Artistic teaching therefore must, from the very beginning of school life, make use both of the plastic and pictorial arts and also of the art of music. Nothing abstract must be allowed to dominate; it is the artistic approach which is all-important, and out of what is artistic the child must be led to a comprehension of the world.

But now we must proceed in such a way that the child learns gradually to find his own orientation in the world. I have already said that it is most repugnant to me if I see scientific text books brought into school and the teaching carried out along those lines. For today in our scientific work, which I fully recognise, we have deviated in many respects from a conception of the world which is in accordance with nature. We will now ask ourselves the following question, bearing in mind that in the course of discussion other things may have to be added. At about what age can one begin to teach children about the plant world?

This must be done neither too late nor too early. We must be aware that a very important stage in a child's development is reached between the 9th and 10th year. Those who see with the eye of a teacher observe this in every child. There comes a time in which the child, although he does not usually express it in words, nevertheless shows in his whole behaviour that he has a question, or a number of questions, which betray an inner crisis in his life. This is an exceptionally delicate experience in the child and an exceptionally delicate sense for these things is necessary if one is to perceive it. But it is there and it must be observed. At this age the child learns quite instinctively to differentiate himself from the outer world. Up to this time the “I” and the outer world interpenetrate each other, and it is therefore possible to tell the child stories about animals, plants and stones in which they all behave as though they were human beings. Indeed this is the best approach, for we should appeal to the child's pictorial, imaginative sense, and this we do if we speak about the kingdoms of nature in this way. Between the 9th and 10th year however the child learns to say “I” in full consciousness. He learns this earlier of course, but now he does so consciously. These years, therefore, when the consciousness of the child is no longer merged with the outer world, but when he learns to differentiate himself from it, are the time when we can begin, without immediately renouncing the pictorial element, to lead the child to an understanding of the plant world, but to an understanding imbued with feeling.

Today we are accustomed to look at one plant alongside of another, we know their names and so on; we do this as though the single plant was there for itself. But when we study the plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pull out a hair, and forgetting that it was on your head examine it for itself, in the belief that you can know something about its nature and life-conditions without considering it as growing out of your head. The hair only has meaning when it is growing on the head; it cannot be studied for itself. It is the same with the plant. One cannot pull it up and study it separately, but one must consider the whole earth as an organism to which the plants belong. This is actually what it is. The plants belong to the entire growth of the earth, in the same way as the hairs belong to our head. Plants can never be studied in an isolated way, but only in connection with the whole nature of the earth. The earth and the world of plants belong together.

Let us suppose that you have a herbaceous plant, an annual, which is growing out of the root, shooting up into stalk, leaves and flowers, and developing the fruit which is sown again in the following year. Then you have the earth underneath, in which the plant is growing. But now, think of a tree. The tree lives longer, it is not an annual. It develops around itself the mineralised bark which is of such a nature that pieces of it can be broken off. What is this in reality? The process is as follows: If you were to pile up around a plant the surrounding earth with its inherent forces, if you were more or less to cover it with earth, then you would bring this about in an external, mechanical way, through human activity. Nature however does the same thing by wrapping the tree round with the bark; only in this case it is not completely earth. In the bark there is a kind of hill of earth, the earth heaps itself up. We can see the earth flourishing and growing when we see the growing tree. This is why what surrounds the root of the plant must most certainly be reckoned as belonging to it. We must regard the soil as belonging to the plant.

Anyone who has trained himself to observe such things and happens to travel in a district where he notices many plants with yellow flowers will at once look to see what kind of soil it is. In such a case, where specifically many yellow flowers are to be seen, one is likely to find, for instance, a soil which is somewhat red in colour. You will never be able to think about the plant without taking into consideration the earth in which it grows. Both belong together. And one should lose no time in accustoming oneself to this; as otherwise one destroys in oneself a sense for realities.

A deep impression was made on me recently, when at the request of certain farmers, I gave an agricultural course, at the end of which a farmer said: Today everybody knows that our vegetables are dying out, are becoming decadent and this with alarming rapidity. Why is this? It is because people no longer understand, as they understood in bygone days, as the peasants understood, that earth and plants are bound together and must be so considered. If we want to foster the well-being of our vegetables so that they flourish again we must understand how to treat them in the right way, in other words, we must give them the right kind of manure. We must give the earth the possibility of living rightly in the environment of the plant roots. Today, after the failure of agricultural methods of development, we need a new impulse in agriculture based on Spiritual Science. This will enable us to make use of manure in such a way that the growth of plants does not degenerate. Anyone as old as I am can say: I know how potatoes looked 50 years ago in Europe—and how they look today! Today we have not only the decline of the West in regard to its cultural life, but this decline penetrates deeply also into the kingdoms of nature, for example, in regard to agriculture.

It really amounts to this, that the sense for the connection between the plant and its environment should not be destroyed, that on school outings and similar occasions die plants should not be uprooted and put into specimen containers and then brought into the classroom in the belief that thereby something has been achieved. For the uprooted plant can never exist just for itself. Today people indulge in totally unreal ideas. For instance they look upon a piece of chalk and a flower as having reality in the same sense. But what nonsense this is! The mineral can exist for itself, it can really do this. So the plant also (they say) should have an independent existence;

but it cannot, it ceases to be when it is uprooted from the ground. It only has earthly existence when it is attached to something other than itself, and that other only has existence in so far as it is part of the whole earth. We must study things as they are in their totality, not tear them out of it.

Almost all our knowledge based on observation teems with unrealities of this kind. This is why Nature Study has become completely abstract, although this is partly justified, as with the theory of relativity. Anyone, however, who can think in a realistic way cannot allow abstract concepts to run on and on, but notices when they cease to have any relationship with what is real. This is something he finds painful. Naturally you can follow the laws of acoustics and say: When I make a sound, the transmission of this sound has a definite speed. When I hear a sound anywhere, at any particular place, I can calculate the exact time its transmission will take. If now I move, no matter at what speed, in the direction the sound is travelling, I shall hear it later. Should my speed exceed the speed of the sound I shall not hear it at all; but if I move towards the sound I shall hear it earlier. The theory of relativity has its definite justification. According to this, however, we can also come to the following conclusion: If I now move towards the sound more quickly than the sound travels, I shall finally go beyond it, so that I shall hear the sound before it is made! This is obvious to anyone able to think realistically. Such a person also knows that logically it is absolutely correct, wonderfully thought out, to say that a clock (to take the famous comparison of Einstein) thrown with the speed of light into universal space and returning from thence, will not have changed in any respect. This can be wonderfully thought out. But for a realistic thinker the question must necessarily arise: What will the clock look like on its return? for he does not separate his thinking from reality, he remains always in the sphere of reality.

This is the essential characteristic of Spiritual Science. It never demands a merely logical approach, but one in accordance with reality. That is why people today, who carry abstractions even to the splitting of hairs, reproach us anthroposophists with being abstract, just because our way of thinking seeks everywhere the absolute reality, never losing the connection with reality, although here certainly the spiritual reality has to be included and understood. This is why it is possible to perceive so clearly how unnatural it is to connect plant study with specimens in a container.

It is therefore important when introducing the child to plant study that we consider the actual face of the earth and deal with the soil and plant growth as a whole, so that the child will never think of the plant as something detached and separate. This can be unpleasant for the teacher, for now he cannot take the usual botany books into class with him, have a quick glance at them during the lesson and behave as though he knew it all perfectly. I have already said that today there are no suitable botany text-books. But this sort of teaching takes on another aspect when one knows the effect of the imponderable and when one considers that in the child the subconscious works still more strongly than in older people. This subconscious is terribly clever and anyone able to perceive the spiritual life of the child knows that when a class is seated facing the teacher and he walks up and down with his notes and wants to impart the content of these notes to the children, they always form a judgment and think; Well, why should I know that? He doesn't even know it himself! This disturbs the lesson tremendously, for these feelings rise up out of the subconscious and nothing can be expected of a class which is taught by someone with notes in his hand.

We must always look into the spiritual side of things. This is particularly necessary when developing the art of education, for by doing so we can create in the child a feeling of standing firmly and safely in the world. For (in lessons on the plant) he gradually grasps the idea that the earth is an organism. And this it actually is and when it begins to become lifeless we must help it by making the right use of manure. For instance, it is not true that the water contained in the air is the same as that in the earth below. The water below has a certain vitality; the water above loses this vitality and only regains it when it descends. All these things are real, absolutely real. If we do not grasp them we do not unite ourselves with the world in a real way. This then is what I wished to say in regard to the teaching about the world of plants.

Now we come to the animal world and we cannot consider the animals as belonging to the earth in the same way. This is apparent from the mere fact that the animals can move about; in this respect they are independent. But when we compare the animals with man we find something very characteristic in their formation. This has always been indicated in an older, instinctive science, the after-effects of which still remained in the first third of the 19th century. When however a modern man with his way of looking at things reads the opinions expressed by those philosophers of nature who, following old traditions, still regarded the animal world in its relation to the human world, these strike him as being utterly foolish. I know that people have hardly been able to contain their laughter when in a study circle, during the reading from the nature philosopher, Oken, the following sentence occurred: “The human tongue is a cuttlefish.” Whatever could he have meant? Of course in actual fact this statement of Oken's can no longer be regarded as correct, but it contains an underlying principle which must be taken into account. When we observe the different animal forms, from the smallest protozoa up to the fully developed apes, we find that every animal form represents some part of the human being, a human organ, or an organic system, which is developed in a one-sided way. You need only look at these things quite crudely. Imagine that the human forehead were to recede enormously that the jaw were to jut right out, that the eyes were to look upwards instead of forwards, that the teeth and their whole nexus were also to be formed in a completely one-sided way. By imagining such an exaggerated, one-sided development you could get a picture of a great variety of mammals. By leaving out this or that in the human form you can change it into the form of an ox, a sheep and so on. And when you take the inner organs, for instance those which are connected with reproduction, you come into the region of the lower animals. The human being is a synthesis, a putting together of the single animal forms, which becomes softer, gentler, when they are united. The human being is made up of all the animal forms moulded into one harmonious structure. Thus when I trace back to their original forms all that in man is merged together I find the whole animal world. Man is a contraction of the whole animal world.

This way of looking at things places us with our soul life once more in a right relationship to the animal world. This has been forgotten, but it is nevertheless true; and as it belongs fundamentally to the principles of evolution it must again be brought to life. And, after having shown the child how the plant belongs to the earth, we must, in so far as it is possible today, proceed at about the nth year to a consideration of the animal world; and we must do this in such a way that we realise that in its various forms the animal world belongs, strictly speaking, to man himself. Think how the young human being will then stand in his relation to animal and plant. The plants go to the earth, become one with the earth; the animals become one with him! This gives the basis for a true relationship to the world; it places man in a real relationship to the world. This can always be brought to the child in connection with the teaching matter. And if this is done artistically, if we approach the subject in a living way, so that it corresponds with what the child in his inner being is able to grasp, then we give him living forces with which to establish a relationship to life. Otherwise we may easily destroy this relationship. But we must look deeply into the whole human being.

What really is the etheric body? Well, if it were possible to lift it out of the physical body and so impregnate it that its form were to become visible—then there would be no greater work of art than this. For the human etheric body through its own nature and through what man creates within it, is at one and the same time both work of art and artist. And when we introduce the formative element into the child's artistic work, when we let him model in the free way I described yesterday, we bring to him something that is deeply related to the etheric body. This enables the child to take hold of his own inner being and thereby place himself as man in a right relationship to the world.

By introducing the child to music we form the astral body. But when we put two things together, when we lead what is plastic over into movement, and when we form movements that are plastic, then we have eurythmy, which follows exactly the relationship of the child's etheric body to his astral body. And so now the child learns eurythmy, speech revealing itself in articulated gestures, just as he learned to speak quite naturally in his earlier years. A healthy child will find no difficulty in learning eurythmy, for in eurythmy he simply expresses his own being, he has the impulses to make his own being a reality. This is why, in addition to gymnastics, eurythmy is incorporated into the curriculum as an obligatory subject from the first school years right up into the highest classes.

So you see, eurythmy has arisen out of the whole human being, physical body, etheric body and astral body; it can only be studied by means of an anthroposophical knowledge of man. Gymnastics today are directed physiologically in a one-sided way towards the physical body; and because physiology cannot do otherwise, certain principles based on life-giving processes are introduced. By means of gymnastics, however, we do not educate the complete human being, but only part of him. By saying this nothing is implied against gymnastics, only in these days their importance is over-estimated. Therefore in education today eurythmy should stand side by side with gymnastics. I would not go as far as a famous physiologist did, who once happened to be in the audience when I was speaking about eurythmy. On that occasion I said that as a means of education gymnastics are over-rated at the present time, and that a form of gymnastics calling on the forces of soul and spirit, such as is practised in eurythmy side by side with the study of eurythmy as an art, must be introduced in addition to gymnastics as usually understood. At the end of my lecture the famous physiologist came up to me and said: Do you say that gymnastics may have their justification as a means of education because physiologists say so? I, as a physiologist, must say that gymnastics as a means of education are nothing less than barbarism! You would certainly be very astonished if I were to tell you the name of this physiologist. At the present time such things are already apparent to people who have some right to speak; and we must be careful not to advocate certain things in a fanatical way without a full knowledge of what is involved. To stand up fanatically for certain things is utterly out of place in connection with the art of education, because here we are dealing with the manifold aspects of life.

When we approach the other subjects which children have to be taught and do so from the various points of view which have here been considered, we come first to the years during which the child can only take in the pictorial through his life of feeling. History and geography, for instance, must be taught in this way. History must be described pictorially; we must paint and model with our words. This develops the child's mind. For during the first two stages of the second main epoch of life there is one thing above all to which the child has no relationship and this is what may be termed the concept of causation. Before the 7th year the child should most certainly not go to school. [i.e. to school as distinguished from a kindergarten.] If we take the time from 7 to 9⅓ years old we have the first subdivision of the second main epoch; from 9⅓ to 11⅔ years old we have the second stage and from 11⅔ until approximately the age of 14 we have the third stage. During the first stage of this second main epoch the child is so organised that he responds immediately to what is pictorial. At this age therefore we must speak as one does in fairy-tales, for everything must still be undifferentiated from the child's own nature. The plants must speak with one another, the minerals must speak with one another; the plants must kiss one another, they must have father and mother, and so on. At about 9⅓ years old the time has come which I have already characterised, when the ego begins to differentiate itself from the outer world. Then we can make a more realistic approach in our teaching about plants and animals. Always, however, in the first years of life history must be treated in fairy-tale, mythical mood. In the second subdivision of this longer epoch, that is to say, from 9⅓ until 11⅔ years old, we must speak pictorially. And only when the child approaches the age of 12 can one introduce him to the concept of causation, only then can one lead over to abstract concepts, whereby cause and effect can be allowed to enter in. Before this time the child is as inaccessible to cause and effect as anyone colour blind is to colours; and as an educator one often has absolutely no idea how unnecessary it is to speak to the child about cause and effect. It is only after the age of 12 that we can speak to him about things which today are taken for granted when looked at from a scientific point of view.

This makes it essential to wait until about the 12th year before dealing with anything that has to do with the lifeless, for this involves entering into the concept of causation. And in the teaching of history we must also wait until about this age before passing over from a pictorial presentation to one which deals with cause and effect, where the causes underlying historical events have to be sought. Before this we should only concern ourselves with what can be brought to the child as having life, soul-imbued life.

People are really very strange. For instance, in the course of cultural development a concept has arisen which goes by the name of animism. It is maintained that when a child knocks himself against a table he imagines the table to be alive and hits it. He dreams a soul into the table, and it is thought that primitive people did the same. The idea is prevalent that something very complicated takes place in the soul of the child. He is supposed to think that the table is alive, ensouled, and this is why he hits it when he bumps up against it. This is a fantastic notion. On the contrary those who study the history of culture are the ones who do actually “ensoul” something, for they “ensoul” this imaginative capacity into the child. But the soul qualities of the child are far more deeply embedded in the physical body than they are later, when they are emancipated and can work freely. When the child bumps against a table a reflex action is set up without his imagining that the table is alive. It is purely a reflex movement of will, for the child does not yet differentiate himself from the outer world. This differentiation first makes its appearance at about the 12th year when a healthy child can grasp the concept of causation. But when this concept is brought to the child too early, especially if it is done by means of crude external methods, really terrible conditions are set up in the child's development. It is all very well to say that one should take pains to make everything perfectly clear to a child. Calculating machines already exist in which little balls are pushed here and there in order to make the operations of arithmetic externally obvious. The next thing we may expect is that those of the same frame of mind will make moral concepts externally visible by means of some kind of machine in which by pushing something about one will be able to see good and evil in the same way as with the calculating machines one can see that 5 plus 7 equals 12. There are, however, undoubtedly spheres of life in which things cannot be made externally apparent and which are taken up and absorbed by the child in ways that are not at all obvious; and we greatly err if we try to make them so. Hence it is quite wrong to do as is often attempted in educational books and make externally apparent what by its very nature cannot be so treated. In this respect people often fall into really frightful trivialities.

In the years between the change of teeth and puberty we are not only concerned with the demonstrably obvious, for when we take the whole of human life into consideration the following becomes clear. At the age of 8 I take in some concept, I do not yet understand it fully; indeed I do not understand it at all as far as its abstract content is concerned. I am not yet so constituted as to make this possible. Why then do I take in the concept at all? I do so because it is my teacher who is speaking, because the authority of my teacher is self-understood and this works upon me. But today we are not supposed to do this; the child is to be shown what is visual and obvious. Now let us take a child who is taught everything in this way. In such a case what a child experiences does not grow with his growth, for by these methods he is treated as a being who does not grow. But we should not awaken in the child ideas which cannot grow with him, for then we should be doing the same thing as if we were to have a pair of shoes made for a three-year-old child and expect him to wear them when he is 12. Everything in the human being grows, including his power of comprehension; and so the concepts must grow with him. We must therefore see to it that we bring living concepts to the child, but this we can only do if there is a living relationship to the authority of the teacher. It is not achieved if the teacher is an abstract pedant who stands in front of the child and presents him with concepts which are as yet totally foreign to him. Picture two children. One has been taught in such a way that he takes in concepts and at the age of 45 he still gives things the same explanation that he learned when he was 8 years old. The concept has not grown with the child; he paid careful attention to it all, and at 45 can still explain it in the same way. Now let us take a second child who has been educated in a living way. Here we shall find that just as he no longer wears the same size shoes as he did when he was 8 years old, so at a later age he no longer carries around with him the same concepts that he learned when he was 8. On the contrary; these concepts have expanded and have become something quite different. All this reacts on the physical body. And if we look at these two people in regard to their physical fitness we find that the first man has sclerosis at the age of 45, while the second has remained mobile and is not sclerotic. How great do you think the differences are which come to light between human beings? In a certain place in Europe there were once two professors of philosophy. One was famous for his Greek philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, an adherent of the school of Hegel, where people were still accustomed to take in living concepts, even after the age of 20. Both were lecturers at the same university. At the age of 70 the first decided to exercise his right to retire on a pension, he felt unable to continue. The second, the Hegelian professor, was 91 and said: “I cannot understand why that young fellow is settling down to retirement already.” But the conceptual life of this second professor had retained its mobility. People criticised him for this very reason and accused him of being inconsistent. The other man was consistent, but he suffered from sclerosis!

There exists a complete unity in the child between the spiritual and the bodily, and we can only deal rightly with him when we take this into consideration. Today people who do not share the views of materialists say that materialism is a bad thing. Why? Many will say that it is bad because it understands nothing of the spiritual. This, however, is not the worst, for little by little people will become aware of this lack, and as a result of the urge to get the better of it they will come to the spiritual. The worst thing about materialism is that it understands nothing of matter! Look into it yourselves and see what has become of the knowledge of the living forces of man in lung, liver and so on under the influences of materialism. Nothing is known about how these things work. A portion is removed from the lung, the liver and so forth and this is prepared and examined, but by means of present-day scientific methods nothing is learned of the spirit working actively in the human organs. Such knowledge can only be gained through spiritual science. The material reveals its nature only when studied from the aspect of spiritual science. Materialism has fallen sick, and the cause of this sickness is above all because the materialist understands nothing of matter. He wants to limit himself to what is material but he cannot penetrate to any knowledge of what is material in a real sense. In saying this I do not mean the “thought-out” material, where so and so many atoms are supposed to dance around a central nucleus: for things of this kind are not difficult to construct. In the earlier days of the Theosophical Society there were theosophists who constructed a whole system based on atoms and molecules; but it was all just thought out. What we have to do now is to approach reality once again. And if one actually does this one has a feeling of discomfort when one is supposed to grasp some concept which is entirely devoid of reality. One experiences pain when, for instance, someone propounds a theory such as this: Fundamentally it is one and the same thing whether I drive my car to a town, or whether the car stands still and the town comes to me. Certainly things of this kind are justified when looked at from a certain point of view. But drawn out to the extent that occurs today among those who hold completely abstract opinions, they impoverish the entire life of the human soul. And anyone who has a sense for such things experiences great pain in regard to much of what people think today, which works so destructively on teaching methods. For instance, I see the tendencies of certain methods applied already to little children in the kindergarten, who are given ordinary cut-out letters and then learn to pick them out of a heap and put them together to form words. By occupying the child in this way at such an early age we are bringing him something to which as yet he has absolutely no relationship. When this happens to him the effect is the same as if in real thinking one were to say: I was once a man who still had muscles, skin and so on; now I am merely a skeleton. So it is today under the influence of this propensity for abstractions in the spiritual life of mankind: one sees oneself suddenly as a skeleton. With such an outlook, however, which is the bare skeleton of reality, we cannot approach the child in education.

Because of this I wanted to show today how everything depends on the teacher approaching life in a true and living way.

Vierter Vortrag

Es ist im Anschlusse an den gestrigen Vortrag noch eine Frage gestellt worden, die ich hier im Zusammenhange behandeln möchte. Die Frage heißt: «Mit Bezug auf das Nachahmungsgesetz in den Bewegungen des Kindes wäre mir die Erklärung des folgenden Tatbestandes wichtig. Mein Großvater starb, als mein Vater 1'/2 bis 2 Jahre alt war. Etwa fünfundvierzigjährig besuchte mein Vater eine Bekannte des Großvaters, die überrascht war über die Ähnlichkeit aller Bewegungen und Gesten des Vaters. Was wirkte hier, da wohl in Hinsicht auf den früh verstorbenen Großvater von einer Nachahmung nicht die Rede sein konnte?»

Also ein Mann starb, als der Sohn 1?/a bis 2 Jahre alt war, und man konnte später von seiten einer Bekannten, die über die Sache gut unterrichtet sein konnte, die Bemerkung erfahren, daß dieser Sohn noch in seinem 45. Jahre die Gesten des Großvaters nachmachte, also dieselben Gesten hatte wie sein Vater.

Nun handelt es sich darum, daß man bei Auseinandersetzungen wie solchen, die jetzt hier gepflogen werden, immer nur die Richtlinien angeben kann, und daß man also Detailauseinandersetzungen kaum berücksichtigen kann. Unsere Kurse sind leider kurz, und das Thema, das eigentlich hier zu besprechen wäre, würde reichlich Vorträge für ein halbes oder selbst ein ganzes Jahr ausfüllen können. Daher ergeben sich im Anschluß an die Auseinandersetzungen natürlich sehr viele Fragen, die, wenn sie gestellt werden, ja beantwortet werden könnten; aber ich mache darauf aufmerksam, daß zuweilen Unklarheiten selbstverständlich durch die Kürze unterlaufen könnten, die sich nur aufklären lassen, wenn man ganz in die Einzelheiten eingehen kann. In bezug auf die gestellte Frage möchte ich nun heute dazu das Folgende einflechtend bemerken.

Wenn man die erste Lebensepoche des Kindes nimmt, also den Zeitraum von der Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel, dann arbeitet die Organisation des Kindes, sich entwickelnd in dieser Zeit so, daß die ersten Anlagen desjenigen sich in die Organisation eingliedern, was ich gestern erörtert habe als das, was man zusammenfassen kann in Gehen, das aber ein Gesamtorientieren des Menschen ist, dann in Sprechen und drittens in Denken. Nun liegen die Dinge folgendermaßen. In der Hauptsache, im wesentlichen organisiert sich das Kind zwischen dem 1. und 7. Lebensjahre hinsichtlich der Gesten; zwischen dem 7. und 14. Lebensjahre, approximativ, hinsichtlich der Sprache, wie ich es gestern auseinandergesetzt habe; und in bezug auf das Denken organisiert es sich zwischen dem 14. und 21. Jahre, wiederum annähernd ausgedrückt. Aber was so in einem Zeitraume von 21 Jahren hervortritt, das bildet sich in der Anlage eben auch schon in der ersten Lebensepoche, zwischen der Geburt und dem Zahnwechsel aus. Was also die eigentliche Aneignung der Gesten betrifft, die sich im Orientieren, im Gehen, aber auch im freien Orientieren, ohne aufzustützen, wie im Bewegen der Arme und auch der Gesichtsmuskeln zum Ausdruck bringt, was also ein Gesamtorientieren, ein Einleben in die Gesten und Gebärden ist, das entwickelt sich der Hauptsache nach rein im ersten Drittel dieser 7 Jahre, das heißt also in den ersten 21/3 Jahren. In diesem Zeitraume liegt die Hauptentwickelung des Kindes in der Herausbildung der Gesten. Die Entwickelung in den Gesten geht dann weiter; aber es kommt dazu die Anlageentwickelung zum inneren Einprägen des Sprachlichen im Intimeren. Wenn das Kind auch früher schon Laute hervorbringt, das Einleben in die Sprache geschieht dann, nach 2Y3 Jahren, in der Anlage. Das Durchfühlen der Sprache bildet sich aus zwischen dem 7. und 14. Jahre, aber in der Anlage haben wir es zwischen 2!/3 und 4?/s Jahren. Das alles natürlich durchschnittlich. Und danach entwickelt das Kind die Fähigkeit, in der ersten Anlage Gedanken innerlich zu erleben. Was später erst, zwischen dem 14. und dem 21. Jahre herauskommt und blüht, das entwickelt sich in der Keimanlage zwischen 42/3 und 7 Jahren. — Die Gestenbildung dauert natürlich fort, aber das andere schiebt sich hinein; so daß wir die Zeit, die Ausdruck der Ausbildung der Gesten in der Hauptsache ist, zu verlegen haben in die ersten 2!/s Jahre. Was während dieser Zeit erworben wird, das sitzt natürlich am allertiefsten; denn wir müssen uns nur vorstellen, wie gründlich das Imitationsprinzip gerade in der allerersten Lebenszeit wirkt.

Wenn Sie das zusammenhalten, werden Sie nichts Wunderbares mehr finden in dem, was hier gefragt wird. Der Großvater ist gestorben, als der Vater 11/2 bis 2 Jahre alt war. Das ist aber gerade die Zeit, in der die Gestenbildung am allertiefsten sitzt. Stirbt der Großvater jetzt, so hat sich das, was von ihm nachgeahmt wird, am allertiefsten eingeprägt. Das wird nicht mehr durch das verändert, was später von andern an Gesten imitierend angenommen wird. Daher ist dieser Fall gerade, wenn man ihn im Detail betrachtet, außerordentlich signifikant. Das ist in Kürze darüber zu sagen.

Wir haben gestern auseinanderzusetzen versucht, wie das Kind in dem zweiten Lebensalter, zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife, alles das erlebt, was es seiner Entwickelung einverleibt durch die Sprache, in der die selbstverständliche Autorität des Erziehenden, des Unterrichtenden wirken muß. Was da zwischen dem Erziehenden und dem Kinde wirken kann, das muß auf bildhafte Weise wirken. Und ich setzte auseinander, wie man in diesem Lebensalter mit Moralgeboten an das Kind nicht herankommen kann, sondern lediglich dadurch für seine Moralität wirken kann, daß man in ihm solche Gefühle erweckt, wie sie eben an Bildern erweckt werden; so daß dasKind Bilder bekommt, die ihm durch sein Vorbild, den Erziehenden, den Lehrenden, vorgestellt werden, die so wirken, daß das Gute ihm gefällt, das Böse ihm mißfällt. Also auf bildhaft-gefühlsmäßige Weise muß auch in bezug auf dieMoralität in diesem volksschulpflichtigen Lebensalter erzogen werden.

Dann habe ich auseinandergesetzt, wie das Schreiben bildhaft an das Kind herangebracht werden muß, wie aus dem zeichnenden Malen, aus dem malenden Zeichnen die Buchstabenformen herausgeholt werden müssen. Dies malende Zeichnen und zeichnende Malen muß von all den Künsten, die das Kind in die Zivilisation hineinführen, zuallererst gepflegt werden. Alles was schon von vornherein auf die dem Kinde ja ganz fremden Buchstabenformen hinweist, ist eigentlich pädagogisch ein Unfug; denn die fertigen Buchstabenformen einer heutigen Zivilisation wirken wie kleine Dämonen auf das Kind.

Nun muß im Sinne einer auf Menschenerkenntnis gebauten Pädagogik das Schreibenlernen vorausgehen dem Lesenlernen. Warum? Nun, im Schreibenlernen wird ein gutes Stück von dem ganzen Menschen arbeitend in Anspruch genommen, nicht bloß einseitig der Kopf, wie es beim Lesenlernen ist. Wenn Sie an das Kind wirklich heran wollen, so müssen Sie in diesem Lebensalter, unmittelbar nach dem Zahnwechsel noch, an das ganze Kind womöglich herankommen. Das Kind, das beim Schreiben sich so betätigt, daß wenigstens der ganze Oberkörper daran beteiligt ist, das ist in ganz anderer Weise in innerer Regsamkeit, als wenn man beginnt mit der Anschauung von Formen, die nur den Kopf beschäftigen. Die emanzipierte, selbständige Anwendung von Kopffähigkeiten ist erst in späteren Lebensaltern möglich. Daher kann man nur den Übergang machen, daß das Kind, wenn es geschrieben hat, sich auch das Geschriebene lesend einprägt.

Indem wir diese Art, den Unterricht fortzuführen, in der Waldorfschule gepflegt haben, hat sich herausgestellt, daß unsere Kinder etwas später als sonst Lesen lernen, sogar etwas später erst zum Schreiben von Buchstaben kommen als die Kinder anderer Schulen. Da muß man aber wirklich wieder in die Menschennatur erkennend hineinschauen, wenn man das beurteilen will. Bei dem heute mangelnden Sinn für Menschenerkenntnis bemerken die Menschen eben durchaus nicht, wie nachteilig es für die Gesamtentwickelung des Menschen ist, wenn er zu früh so abgelegene Beschäftigungen lernt wie Lesen und Schreiben. Und niemand wird im späteren Leben einen Mangel in seiner Lese- und Schreibekunst zu haben brauchen, der etwas später als sonst mit dem Lesen und Schreiben fertig wird; dagegen wird jeder einen großen Mangel in dieser Beziehung haben, der zu früh Lesen und Schreiben lernt. Eine auf Menschenerkenntnis gebaute Pädagogik muß durchaus davon ausgehen, die Entwickelung, die Lebensbedingungen der Menschennatur abzulesen und im Sinne dieses Ablesens der Lebensbedingungen so dem Kinde zu helfen, daß die eigene Natur des Kindes herauskommt. Einzig und allein dann ist die Erziehungskunst wirklich gesund.

Um alles weitere einzusehen, ist es nötig, daß wir uns ein wenig auf die Wesenheit des Menschen einlassen. Wir haben im Menschen zunächst seinen physischen Leib, der sich in der Entwickelung vorzugsweise betätigt in der ersten Lebensepoche. In der zweiten Lebensepoche kommt der höhere, feinere Leib des Menschen, sein ätherischer Leib namentlich zur Entwickelung. Hier handelt es sich nun wirklich darum, daß man bei der Menschenbetrachtung im echten Sinne wissenschaftlich vorgehen kann und denselben Mut hat, wie man ihn sonst in der Wissenschaft heute aufbringen muß. Wenn man irgendeine Substanz hat, die einen bestimmten Wärmegrad zeigt, so kann es sein, daß man die Substanz in Verhältnisse bringt, wodurch Wärme - von der man sagt, daß sie an die Substanz gebunden ist — frei wird. Sie kommt heraus, sie wird dann freie Wärme. Für Substanzen der mineralischen Welt haben wir den Mut, wissenschaftlich davon zu sprechen, daß wir sagen, gebundene Wärme und freie Wärme ist da. Diesen Mut müssen wir für die Gesamtbetrachtung der Welt bekommen. Haben wir ihn, so zeigt sich uns für den Menschen das Folgende.

Wir können fragen: Wo sind denn die Kräfte des ätherischen Leibes des Menschen in der ersten Lebensepoche? — Sie sind während dieser Zeit gebunden an den physischen Leib, sind in seiner Ernährung und in seinem Wachstum beschäftigt. Das Kind ist in dieser ersten Epoche anders als später. Die gesamten Kräfte des ätherischen Leibes sind da an den physischen Leib gebunden; sie werden mit dem Ablauf der ersten Epoche zum Teil frei, wie die Wärme in den Substanzen frei wird, die vorher gebunden war. Was aber tritt damit ein? Nur ein Teil des ätherischen Leibes wirkt nach dem Zahnwechsel im Wachstum und in den Ernährungskräften; der andere Teil wird frei und wird nun der Träger des sich ausbildenden intensiveren Gedächtnisses, des Seelenhaften. Wir müssen sprechen lernen von der gebundenen Seele für die Zeit der ersten 7 Lebensjahre, und von der freigewordenen Seele für die Zeit nach dem 7. Jahre. Denn so ist es. Was wir als Seelenkräfte in den zweiten 7 Lebensjahren anwenden, das ist in den ersten 7 Lebensjahren gebunden an den physischen Leib, unwahrnehmbar; daher tritt es nicht psychisch hervor. Wie die Seele in den ersten 7 Lebensjahren wirkt, das muß man dem Leibe abschauen. Und erst vom Zahnwechsel an kann man in das Seelische hinein.

Das ist eine Betrachtungsweise, die unmittelbar von der Physik sogar in die Psychologie hineinführt. Bedenken Sie, was man heute als Seelenlehren hat; man hat Seelenlehren, die rein auf Spekulation beruhen. Man denkt nach und findet, das Seelische sei da, das Körperliche sei da. Nun fragt man: Wirkt das Körperliche auf das Seelische verursachend oder wirkt das Seelische auf das Körperliche verursachend? -— Kommt man mit beiden nicht zurecht, so erfindet man so etwas außerordentlich Groteskes wie den psychophysischen Parallelismus, wo man sich vorstellt, daß die beiden Äußerungen, Körperliches und Seelisches, parallel gehen, nebeneinander. Man erklärt aber damit nicht das Zusammenwirken der beiden, sondern spricht nur von einem Parallelismus. Es ist das nur ein Zeichen dafür, daß man aus der Erfahrung nichts über diese Dinge weiß. Würde man Erfahrungen haben, so würde man sagen: In den ersten 7 Lebensjahren des Kindes sieht man ja das Seelische im Körperlichen wirken. — Wie es da wirkt, das muß man durch Anschauung kennenlernen, nicht durch philosophische Spekulationen oder dergleichen. Die Anthroposophie als Erkenntnismethode weist alle Spekulationen zurück und geht überall auf Erfahrung, allerdings auf physische und geistige Erfahrung.

So wird für die zweite Lebensepoche, für die Zeit vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, für die Erziehung vorzugsweise der ätherische Leib des Menschen in Betracht kommen. In ihm sind für den Lehrer und das Kind vor allem die Kräfte wirksam, die im Kinde vorzugsweise Gefühle auszulösen haben, noch nicht Urteile und Gedanken. Denn tief drinnen in der kindlichen Natur steckt noch, zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife, das dritte Glied der menschlichen Wesenheit, der astralische Leib, der der Träger des gesamten Gefühls- und Empfindungslebens ist. Er steckt noch, auch während dieser zweiten Lebensepoche, tief im ätherischen Leibe. Daher haben wir die Aufgabe, den ätherischen Leib - weil er etwas frei wird - so zu entwickeln, daß er seinen eigenen Neigungen bei der Erziehung nachgehen kann. Wann kann er das? Das kann er dann, wenn wir das Kind im ganzen Umfange unterrichten und erziehen durch Bildlichkeit, wenn wir alles bildlich an das Kind heranbringen. Denn der ätherische Leib ist ja der Bildekräfteleib; er bildet die wunderbaren Formen der Organe, Herz, Lungen, Leber und so weiter. Der physische Leib, den wir vererbt bekommen, ist nur wie ein Modell; er wird in den ersten 7 Lebensjahren abgelegt. Nach dem Zahnwechsel wird von diesem ätherischen Leib dann der zweite physische Leib ausgebildet. Da müssen wir jetzt in der Erziehung diesem Plastisch-Bildhaften des ätherischen Leibes entgegenkommen.

So, wie wir an das Kind heranbringen Bilder, beim Schreibenlernen als zeichnendes Malen und so weiter — aber wir können nicht bald genug das Künstlerische an das Kind heranbringen, denn der ganze Unterricht muß ein künstlerisch durchdrungener sein —, so müssen wir beachten: wie der ätherische Leib auf Bildhaftigkeit berechnet ist, so ist der astralische Leib, der dem Gefühls- und Empfindungsleben zugrunde liegt, hinorganisiert auf die musikalische Natur des Menschen. Worauf müssen wir also schauen, wenn wir das Kind beobachten? Ein seelisch gesundes Kind ist, weil der astralische Leib zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife noch drinnensteckt im physischen und ätherischen Leib, tief innerlich musikalisch. Jedes gesunde Kind ist tief innerlich musikalisch. Wir müssen nur aus der Bewegung und aus der Regsamkeit des Kindes das Musikalische hervorrufen. Daher ist der künstlerische Unterricht, sowohl in den bildenden Künsten wie in den musikalischen Künsten, von Anfang an in der Schule zu pflegen. Nicht das Abstrakte darf da herrschen, sondern es muß das Künstlerische herrschen, und aus dem Künstlerischen muß das Kind hineingeführt werden in das Begreifen der Welt.

Aber da müssen wir wirklich so vorgehen, daß das Kind allmählich sich in die Welt hineinstellen lernt. Ich habe schon gesagt, es ist mir immer ein zuwiderer Anblick, wenn man die heutigen, nach der Wissenschaft orientierten Lehrbücher in die Schule hineinträgt und danach den Unterricht einrichtet. Denn wir sind heute in unserem Wissenschaftsbetriebe, den ich voll anerkenne, vielfach von der naturgemäßen Weltbetrachtung abgekommen. Wir werden, indem wir anderes im Verlaufe der Besprechung nachholen werden, uns jetzt fragen: Wann kann ungefähr das einsetzen, was man an die Kinder heranbringen wird zum Beispiel in bezug auf die Kenntnis des Pflanzlichen?

Zu spät nicht und nicht zu früh darf es vorgebracht werden. Man muß sich darüber klar sein, daß so zwischen dem 9. und 10. Lebensjahr für das Kind ein sehr wichtiger Entwickelungspunkt ist. Wer pädagogische Augen hat, beobachtet das bei jedem Kinde. Da kommt ein Zeitpunkt, wo das Kind meistens nicht, indem es spricht, sondern in seinem ganzen Verhalten zeigt: es hat eine Frage oder eine Summe von Fragen, die eine innere Krisis des Lebens verraten. Es ist ein außerordentlich zartes Erlebnis beim Kinde, und es muß außerordentlich zart sein, wenn man es bei ihm bemerken will. Aber da ist es und es muß beobachtet werden. In diesem Lebensalter lernt nämlich das Kind ganz instinktiv, sich von der Außenwelt zu unterscheiden. Vorher fließen Ich und Außenwelt ineinander. Man kann vorher dem Kind erzählen von Tieren und Pflanzen und Steinen, wie wenn sie sich benehmen würden wie Menschen; und man kommt am besten zurecht, wenn man an das bildliche Auffassen des Kindes sich wendet und in dieser Weise über die ganze Natur spricht. Aber zwischen dem 9. und 10. Jahre lernt das Kind mit vollem Bewußtsein zu sich «Ich» zu sagen. Es lernt dies schon früher, aber jetzt mit vollem Bewußtsein. In diesen Jahren, wo das Kind nicht mehr mit seinem Bewußtsein mit der Außenwelt verfließt, sondern sich von ihr unterscheiden lernt, da ist der Zeitpunkt, wo wir auch anfangen können, ohne die Bildhaftigkeit gleich zu verleugnen, Verständnis für die Pflanzenwelt — aber gefühlsmäßiges Verständnis für die Pflanzenwelt dem Kinde beizubringen.

Nun sind wir heute gewohnt, die eine Pflanze neben der andern anzuschauen, denn wir wissen, wie sie heißen und so weiter, und tun so, wie wenn eine Pflanze eben für sich wäre. Aber wenn man in dieser Weise die Pflanze betrachtet, dann ist es eben so, wie wenn Sie sich ein Haar ausreißen und, indem Sie vergessen, daß es auf Ihrem Kopfe war, es für sich betrachten und glauben würden, daß Sie von dem Haar etwas über seine Lebensbedingungen und sein Wesen wissen können, wenn Sie es nicht als einen Auswuchs des Kopfes betrachten. Das Haar hat nur einen Sinn, wenn es auf dem Kopfe wächst; man kann es nicht für sich betrachten. So ist es auch mit der Pflanze. Man kann sie in der Betrachtung nicht ausreißen, sondern man muß die ganze Erde als einen Organismus betrachten, zu dem die Pflanzen dazugehören. Sie ist es auch. Die Pflanzen gehören so zum gesamten Erdenwachstum, wie die Haare zu unserem Kopfe. Man kann niemals die Pflanzen abgesondert betrachten, sondern nur im Zusammenhange mit der ganzen Natur der Erde. Erde und Pflanzenwelt gehören zusammen.

Nehmen Sie an, Sie haben eine krautartige, einjährige Pflanze, die aus der Wurzel aufwächst, Stengel, Blätter und Blüten treibt, die Frucht entwickelt und im nächsten Jahre wieder weiter ausgesät wird. Dann haben Sie unten Erde, in der wächst die Pflanze. Jetzt nehmen Sie aber einen Baum an. Der dauert, der ist nicht einjährig. Er entwickelt um sich herum die sich mineralisierende, daher auch abborkende Rinde. Was ist denn das eigentlich in Wirklichkeit? Was da vorgeht, ist dieses: Wenn Sie bei einer Pflanze die herum befindliche Erde ihren Kräften nach etwas heraufschieben auf die Pflanze, sie etwas mit Erde bedecken würden, so würden Sie dies äußerlich-mechanisch durch menschliche Tätigkeit zustande bringen. Dasselbe aber tut die Natur, indem sie den Baum in die Baumrinde einhüllt; nur wird es da nicht ganz Erde. Es ist in der Baumrinde gewissermaßen ein Erdhügel da, die Erde stülpt sich auf. Wir können die Erde mitgedeihen, mitwachsen sehen, indem wir den Baum wachsen sehen. Daher ist das, was in der Umgebung der Wurzel ist, durchaus dem zuzurechnen, was zur Pflanze gehört. Wir müssen den Erdboden als zur Pflanze gehörig ansehen.

Wer sich dafür einen Blick angeeignet hat und durch eine Gegend fährt, wo er Pflanzen sieht, die oben eine gelbe Blüte haben, der schaut sogleich nach, was dort für ein Erdboden ist: da werden Sie, wenn Sie ganz bestimmte Blüten finden, unten zum Beispiel rotliegende Erde finden. Sie werden sich niemals die Pflanze ohne die Erde denken können. Beide gehören zusammen. Und man gewöhne sich möglichst zeitig daran, sonst ertötet man sich den Sinn für Wirklichkeiten.

Wie sehr ging mir das zu Herzen, als ich, aufgefordert von Landwirten, kürzlich einen landwirtschaftlichen Kursus zu halten hatte, wo gleich nachher ein Landwirt sagte: Heute weiß es jeder, daß unsere Vegetabilien absterben, in die Dekadenz kommen, und zwar mit einer furchterregenden Schnelligkeit. - Warum ist das? Weil es die Menschen nicht mehr verstehen, wie es die Menschen ursprünglich, wie es die Bauern verstanden haben, den Erdboden in Verbindung mit den Pflanzen anzusehen. Will man aber die Vegetabilien wieder in ihrem Gedeihen fördern, so muß man sie auch in der richtigen Weise zu behandeln verstehen, das heißt, man muß richtig düngen können. Man muß dem Erdboden die Möglichkeit geben, daß er wirklich in der Umgebung der Pflanzenwurzel richtig leben kann. — Wir brauchen heute nach der Mißentwickelung, die gerade die Landwirtschaft erfahren hat, eine geisteswissenschaftlich angeregte Landwirtschaft, die uns die Düngemittel so verwenden läßt, daß nicht das Pflanzenwachstum in die Dekadenz kommt. Wer so alt geworden ist wie ich, der kann sagen: Ich weiß, wie die Kartoffeln vor 50 Jahren in Europa ausgesehen haben - und wie sie jetzt aussehen! Wir haben heute nicht nur den Untergang des Abendlandes in bezug auf die Kultur der Seelen, sondern auch tief hineingehend in die andern Naturreiche, zum Beispiel in bezug auf die Agrikultur.

So handelt es sich also darum, daß nicht der Sinn ertötet werden darf für die Zusammengehörigkeit von Pflanze und ihrer Umgebung, daß man nicht bei Schulausflügen und dergleichen die Pflanzen ausreißt, in die Botanisiertrommel steckt, dann in die Klasse bringt und nun glaubt, damit sei etwas getan. Denn die ausgerissene Pflanze kann ja nicht für sich bestehen. - Die Menschen geben sich heute ganz irrealen Betrachtungen hin. Sie sehen zum Beispiel ein Stück Kreide und eine Blume für ein Reales im gleichen Sinne an. Die Philosophen betrachten heute beide Dinge im gleichen Sinne als etwas Seiendes. Aber was ist das für ein Unsinn! Das Mineral kann für sich bestehen, und es kann das tatsächlich. Die Pflanze soll irgend etwas Abgeschlossenes sein; aber sie kann es nicht, sie hört auf zu sein, wenn man sie aus dem Boden herausreißt. Sie hat nur ein Erdensein, indem sie an etwas anderem ist; und das andere hat nur ein Sein, indem es an der ganzen Erde ist. Man muß die Dinge so betrachten, wie sie in der Totalität sind, darf sie nicht herausreißen aus der Totalität.

Fast unsere ganze Erkenntnisanschauung wimmelt. heute von solchen irrealen Anschauungen. Daher sind wir in Naturbetrachtungen hineingekommen, die ganz abstrakt sind, die in ihrer Abstraktheit zum Teil auch berechtigt sind, wie zum Beispiel die Relativitätstheorie. Aber wer real denken kann, der kann Begriffe nicht bloß in der Abstraktion so fortlaufen lassen, sondern er merkt, wo die Begriffe anfangen sich nicht mehr auf eine Realität zu beziehen. Das tut ihm dann weh. - Sie können natürlich ganz gut den Gesetzen der Akustik nachgehen und können sagen: Wenn ich einen Schall errege, so hat die Verbreitung des Schalles eine gewisse Geschwindigkeit. Wenn ich den Schall irgendwo an einer bestimmten Stelle höre, so kann ich berechnen, wie er sich in einer bestimmten Zeit fortpflanzt. Bewege ich mich nun in irgendeiner Geschwindigkeit in der Fortpflanzungsrichtung des Schalles, so höre ich ihn später; wird meine Geschwindigkeit größer als die des Schalles, so höre ich ihn überhaupt nicht; gehe ich aber dem Schalle entgegen, so höre ich ihn früher. Die Relativitätstheorie hat ihre bestimmte Berechtigung. Aber danach kann auch folgendes sein: bewege ich mich nun so, daß ich, dem Schalle entgegen, schneller gehe, als der Schall läuft, dann komme ich schließlich auch darauf hinaus, daß ich den Schall eher höre, ehe es geknallt hat! So etwas spürt der, der eine wirklich realistische Denkweise hat. Ein solcher weiß auch, daß es ganz richtig, wunderbar logisch gedacht ist, daß eine Uhr mit Lichtgeschwindigkeit in den Weltenraum hinausgeworfen wird und von dort wieder zurückkommt, nach dem berühmten Vergleich, der von Einstein gegeben worden ist. Man kann so wunderbar ausdenken, wie da an der Uhr sich nichts verändert habe. Aber für einen realistischen Denker stellt sich die Frage ein: Wie dann die Uhr ausschaut, wenn sie zurück-kommt? — denn er trennt nicht sein Denken von der Wirklichkeit, er steht immer in der Wirklichkeit drinnen.

Das ist das Eigentümliche der Geisteswissenschaft, daß sie niemals die Forderung aufstellt, bloß logisch zu sein, sondern wirklichkeitsgemäß zu sein. Daher werden heute die, welche die Abstraktionen bis in die Puppen treiben, uns Anthroposophen vorwerfen, daß wir abstrakt sind, weil gerade unsere Denkweise die absolute Realität überall sucht, nie heraus will aus dem Zusammenhange mit der Wirklichkeit, wobei man allerdings die geistige Realität mit erfaßt. Dadurch kann man so scharf hinsehen auf das Unnatürliche der an die Botanisiertrommel angeschlossenen Pflanzenkunde.

Es handelt sich also darum, daß man dem Kinde Pflanzenlehre so beibringt, daß man das Antlitz der Erde als solches berücksichtigt, Boden und Pflanzenwachstum als eines behandelt, so daß das Kind nie die Vorstellung von der abgesonderten Pflanze hat. Für den Lehrer kann das unangenehm sein. Denn er kann sich jetzt nicht die gewöhnlichen Botaniken in die Klasse mitnehmen, sie während des Unterrichtes rasch aufschlagen und so tun, als ob er alles ganz genau wüßte. Ich sagte schon, es gibt heute für den Botanikunterricht noch keine richtigen Handbücher. Aber diese Art des Unterrichtens bekommt noch ein anderes Gesicht, wenn man weiß, wie Imponderabilien wirken, und wenn man berücksichtigt, daß das Unterbewußte im Kinde noch stärker wirkt als beim späteren Menschen. Dieses Unterbewußstsein ist furchtbar gescheit und wer ins geistige Leben des Kindes hineinschauen kann, der weiß, wenn da eine Klasse sitzt, und der Lehrer mit seinen Notizen herumgeht und den Kindern beibringen will, was die Notizen enthalten, daß da die Kinder immer urteilen: Ja, warum soll ich das wissen? Der weiß es doch selber nicht! — Das stört ungeheuer den Unterricht, denn es webt aus dem Unterbewußtsein herauf. Und es wird nichts aus einer solchen Klasse, die man mit Notizen in der Hand unterrichtet.

Man muß überall ins Geistige hineinsehen. Das ist insbesondere zur Entwickelung der pädagogischen Kunst notwendig. Dadurch aber schafft man ein festes Drinnenstehen des Kindes in der Welt. Denn jetzt bekommt das Kind nach und nach die Vorstellung, die Erde ist ein Organismus. Das ist sie nämlich auch. Und wenn sie anfängt unlebendig zu werden, dann müssen wir bei unseren Agrikulturpflanzen anfangen nachzuhelfen durch richtiges Düngen. — Es ist zum Beispiel nicht wahr, daß das Wasser, das in der Luft enthalten ist, dasselbe ist wie unten in der Erde. Das Wasser unten hat eine Spur von Vitalität; das Wasser oben büßt das ein, und es belebt sich erst wieder im Hinuntergehen. Das sind alles Dinge, die da sind, die real sind. Wer diese Dinge nicht aufnimmt, der verbindet sich nicht real mit der Welt. Dies für die Pflanzenwelt im Unterricht.

Nun kommt die Tierwelt. Wir können sie nicht so betrachten, daß sie zur Erde gehört. Das zeigt sich schon daran, daß die Tiere herumlaufen können; sie sind schon für sich selbständig. Aber wenn wir wieder die Tiere mit dem Menschen vergleichen, so finden wir etwas sehr Eigentümliches in der Gestaltung der Tiere. Darauf ist in der älteren instinktiven Wissenschaft immer hingewiesen worden, wovon noch Nachklänge im ersten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts vorhanden waren. Nur kommt es den heutigen Menschen ganz närrisch vor, wenn sie mit ihren Anschauungen heute Aussprüche von solchen Naturphilosophen lesen, die noch nach alten Traditionen die Tierwelt in ihrem Verhältnis zur Menschenwelt betrachtet haben. Ich weiß, wie sich die Leute vor Lachen kaum gehalten haben in einem Kreise, wo aus einer Vorlesung des Naturphilosophen Oken der Satz herauskam: «..... die menschliche Zunge ist ein Tintenfisch». Was sollte damit gesagt werden? Natürlich ist die Einzelheit bei Oken nicht mehr richtig gewesen, aber es lag das Prinzip zugrunde, das man dabei haben muß: Wenn man die einzelnen Tierformen ansieht von den kleinsten Protisten bis zu den vollkommenen Affentieren, so stellt jede Tierform irgendein Stück des Menschen, ein menschliches Organ oder ein Organsystem, einseitig ausgebildet, dar. Sie brauchen ja nur die Sache grob zu betrachten. Stellen Sie sich einmal vor, bei einem Menschen würde die Stirn sehr zurücktreten, die Kiefer würden sehr hervorstehend werden, die Augen, statt nach vorn, hinaufsehen; es würde also das Gebiß mit dem, was daranstößt, einseitig ausgebildet werden. Sie können sich auf diese Weise, vereinseitigt ausgebildet, die verschiedensten Säugetierformen vorstellen; Sie können sich, indem Sie von der menschlichen Gestalt dies oder jenes weglassen, die menschliche Gestalt in eine Ochsenform, in eine Schafform und so weiter verwandeln. Und wenn Sie innere Organe nehmen, zum Beispiel die,welche mit dem Fortpflanzungstrakt zusammenhängen, so kommen Sie hinunter ins Reich der niederen Tiere. —- Dieser Mensch ist die synthetische Zusammenfügung der einzelnen Tierformen, die sich mildern, wenn sie in die Einheit zusammengefaßt werden. Der Mensch ist die ganzen Tierformen zusammen, aber harmonisch gegliedert. Wenn ich das, was in den Menschen aufgelöst ist, wieder zurückverfolge bis zu seinen Urformen, so bekomme ich also die ganze Tierwelt. Es ist der Mensch die zusammengezogene Tierwelt.

Diese Betrachtungsweise, die uns mit unserem ganzen Seelenleben wieder richtig hineinstellt in die Tierwelt, ist ganz vergessen worden. Da sie aber wahr ist und tatsächlich den Entwickelungsprinzipien zugrunde liegt, so muß sie wieder belebt werden. Und wir müssen, soweit es heute möglich ist, tatsächlich an das Kind, so gegen das 11. Jahr, nachdem wir die Pflanzenwelt betrachtet haben als zur Erde gehörig, die Tierwelt in der Weise heranbringen, daß wir sie ihren Formen nach als zum Menschen im engeren Sinne gehörig erkennen. Denken Sie, wie der junge Mensch dann zu Tier und Pflanze steht: die Pflanzen gehen zur Erde, werden mit der Erde eins; die Tiere werden mit ihm eins! Das ist wirklich das Begründen eines Verhältnisses zur Welt; das stellt den Menschen in eine Realität zur Welt. - Das kann immer mit dem Unterrichtsstoff an das Kind herangebracht werden. Und geht alles im künstlerischen Sinne einher, geht es einher mit dem, was den Menschen seiner inneren Wesenheit nach erfaßt im lebendigen Erziehen und Unterrichten, dann belebt man das Kind für das Leben; sonst aber ertötet man leicht den Zusammenhang zum Leben. Aber man muß eben hineinschauen in die ganze menschliche Wesenheit.

Was ist denn eigentlich dieser Ätherleib? Ja,wenn jemand den Ätherleib aus dem physischen Leib des Menschen herausnehmen könnte und ihn imprägnieren könnte, so daß er sichtbarlich eine Form zeigte - es gäbe kein größeres Kunstwerk als dieses! Denn der menschliche Ätherleib ist durch seine eigene Wesenheit, durch das, was der Mensch in ihm gestaltet, Kunstwerk und Künstler zugleich. Und indem wir das Bildende in dem Künstlerischen an das Kind heranbringen, bringen wir das Tiefverwandte zum Ätherleib an es heran, indem wir in freier Weise, wie ich es gestern angedeutet habe, modellierend mit dem Kinde uns beschäftigen. Das macht das Kind fähig, indem es innerlich seine eigene Wesenheit ergreift, sich als Mensch richtig in die Welt hineinzustellen.

Und indem wir das Musikalische an das Kind heranbringen, bildet es den astralischen Leib aus. Fügt man beides zusammen, macht man das Plastische so, daß es in Bewegung übergeht, und macht man die Bewegung plastisch, dann hat man die Eurythmie, die ganz aus der Beziehung desÄtherleibes zum astralischen Leibe beim Kinde folgt. Daher lernt jetzt das Kind Eurythmisieren, diese in artikulierten Gebärden sich offenbarende Sprache, wie es in früheren Jahren das Sprechen von selbst gelernt hat. Man wird beim Eurythmielernen nie Hemmnisse finden, wenn das Kind gesund ist; denn es setzt in der Eurythmie einfach seine eigene Wesenheit heraus, es will seine eigene Wesenheit verwirklichen. Daher haben wir in der Waldorfschule die Eurythmie vom 1.Volksschuljahre an bis zu den Oberklassen als einen obligatorischen Unterrichtsgegenstand eingeführt neben dem Turnen.

So sehen Sie, die Eurythmie ist aus dem ganzen Menschen, aus physischem Leib, Ätherleib und Astralleib heraus entstanden; sie kann man nur mit anthroposophischer Menschenerkenntnis studieren. Das heutige Turnen richtet sich einseitig physiologisch auf den physischen Leib; und weil die Physiologie nicht anders kann, werden einzelne Vitalitätsgesetze hineingebracht. Aber man erzieht durch das Turnen nicht Totalmenschen, nur Partialmenschen. Es soll damit nichts gegen das Turnen gesagt werden, aber heute überschätzt man es. Deshalb muß heute für die Erziehung die Eurythmie an die Seite des Turnens treten. — Ich möchte nicht zu weit gehen, wie es einmal, nicht von mir, sondern von einem sehr berühmten Physiologen der Gegenwart geschah, der einmal, als ich über Eurythmie sprach, im Auditorium war. Ich sprach es da aus, daß das Turnen heute überschätzt werde, namentlich als Erziehungsmittel, und daß das geistig-seelische Turnen, das in der Eurythmie gepflegt wird neben dem Künstlerischen der Eurythmie, an die Seite des physiologischen Turnens treten müsse. Nachdem ich zu Ende gesprochen hatte, kam der berühmte Physiologe zu mir und sagte: Sie sagen, das Turnen hätte eine Berechtigung als Erziehungsmittel, weil die Physiologen das sagen? Ich, als Physiologe, muß sagen, das Turnen ist überhaupt als Erziehungsmittel eine Barbarei! — Nun, Sie würden sehr erstaunt sein, wenn ich Ihnen den Namen dieses Physiologen nennen würde. Solche Dinge sind auch schon anschaulich in der Gegenwart für Leute, die etwas mitzureden haben, und man muß daher vorsichtig sein, wenn man, ohne die Zusammenhänge zu durchschauen, gewisse Dinge fanatisch vertritt. Am wenigsten kann man in bezug auf die pädagogische Kunst Dinge fanatisch vertreten, weil man es da mit dem vielgestaltigen Leben des Menschen zu tun hat.

Wenn Sie das, was zu den übrigen Kenntnissen gehört, die an das Kind herangebracht werden müssen, unter die Gesichtspunkte rücken werden, die sich durch das Auseinandergesetzte ergeben, dann kommen Sie dazu, nun in dem Lebensalter, wo das Kind nur durch das Fühlen das Bildhafte aufnehmen kann, auch zum Beispiel Geschichte und Geographie bildhaft zu treiben; so daß Sie also Bilder hinstellen müssen, wenn Sie Geschichtsunterricht treiben, plastische Bilder, malerische Bilder! Daran entwickelt sich der Sinn des Kindes. Denn was in den ersten zwei Epochen des zweiten größeren Lebensabschnittes, vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, vor allen Dingen noch nicht in dem Kinde lebt, das ist das, was man den Ursachenbegriff nennt. Vor dem 7.Jahre sollte das Kind überhaupt nicht zur Schule kommen. Wenn Sie die Zeit vom 7. bis zum 9. und 1/3 Jahr nehmen, so haben Sie dann wiederum die erste Unterabteilung des zweiten großen Lebensabschnittes; von 9 1/3 bis zu 11 2/3 Jahren haben Sie die zweite Epoche; und von 11 2/3 bis zum 14. Jahre, approximativ, die dritte Epoche. In der ersten Epoche der zweiten Überepoche ist das Kind ganz auf Bildhaftigkeit veranlagt. Da muß man märchenhaft sprechen, da muß alles in der Außenwelt noch ungeschieden sein von der kindlichen Natur. Da muß die eine Pflanze mit der andern sprechen, ein Mineral mit dem andern sprechen; da müssen Pflanzen sich küssen, da müssen Pflanzen Vater und Mutter haben und so weiter. Wenn jener Zeitpunkt herangekommen ist, den ich eben charakterisiert habe, von 9 1/3 Jahren an, dann wird das Ich anfangen sich zu unterscheiden von der Außenwelt. Da kann man dann auch mit einer Art Realerkenntnis an die Pflanzen und Tiere herankommen. Aber immer wird man das Geschichtliche in den ersten Lebensjahren überhaupt noch märchenhaft, mythenhaft behandeln; in der zweiten Lebensepoche dieses größeren Abschnittes, von 9 1/3 bis 11 2/3 Jahren, wird man bildhaft sprechen. Und erst wenn das Kind nahezu das 12. Lebensjahr erreicht, kann man mit dem kommen, was man unter der Gewalt des Ursachenbegriffes betrachtet, was etwas nach abstrakten Begriffen hinübergeht, wobei Ursache und Wirkung auftreten kann. Vorher ist das Kind für Ursache und Wirkung so unzugänglich wie der Farbenblinde für die Farben, und man ahnt als Erzieher manchmal gar nicht, wie unnötig man dem Kinde von Ursache und Wirkung redet. Woran wir heute so gewöhnt sind in dem wissenschaftlichen Betrachten, davon kann man dem Kinde erst nach dem 12. Jahre sprechen.

Das aber erfordert auch, daß man mit allem Unterricht über das Leblose, wo eben der Ursachenbegriff in Betracht kommt, wartet bis gegen das 12. Jahr, und daß man mit dem geschichtlichen Betrachten über Ursache und Wirkung in der Geschichte, wo es über das Bildhafte hinausgeht und die Ursachen gesucht werden, auch wartet bis gegen das 12. Jahr. Vorher sollte man es nur mit dem zu tun haben, was man an das Kind heranbringt an Seelischem, an Lebendigem. — Die Menschen sind sehr merkwürdig. Da gibt es zum Beispiel eine kulturhistorische Anschauung, die sich Animismus nennt. Die sagt: Wenn das Kind sich an einem Tische stößt, so beseelt es den Tisch, es prügelt ihn; es träumt eine Seele in den Tisch hinein; so hätten es auch die Naturvölker gemacht. — Man stellt sich vor, daß da etwas Komplizierteres in der Seele des Kindes vor sich geht: das Kind soll den Tisch belebt, beseelt denken, und deshalb ihn prügeln, wenn es sich stößt. Es ist das eine phantastische Vorstellung. Wer aber etwas beseelt, das ist eben derjenige, der Kulturgeschichte treibt; der beseelt das Vorstellungsvermögen des Kindes. Aber das Seelische des Kindes ist in einem viel größeren Maßstabe im Körperlichen drinnen als später, wo es sich emanzipiert und als Seelisches frei wirkt. Wenn das Kind sich am Tische stößt, so beginnt eine Reflexbewegung, ohne daß das Kind den Tisch beseelt; es ist reine Willensbewegung, es unterscheidet sich noch nicht von der Außenwelt. Diese Unterscheidung tritt erst ein, wenn gegen das 12. Jahr beim gesunden Kinde der Ursachenbegriff eintritt. Und wenn man mit dem Ursachenbegriff, überhaupt mit so brutalen äußeren Anschaulichkeiten beim Kind zu früh arbeitet, dann ruft man eigentlich fürchterliche Zustände in der Entwickelung des Kindes hervor. Es ist ja sehr schön, wenn man sagt, man soll sich bemühen, dem Kinde alles anschaulich zu machen. Wieviel Nettes ist nach einer gewissen Richtung geschehen unter dem Bestreben, alles anschaulich zu machen. Rechenmaschinen sind aufgetreten, wo Kugeln hin- und hergeschoben werden, um die Rechnungsoperationen anschaulich zu machen. Nun wartet man nur, daß dieselbe Gesinnung die moralischen Begriffe anschaulich macht durch irgendeine Maschine, wo man dann auch irgend etwas verschiebt, wo man das Gute und das Böse so sieht wie man bei der Rechenmaschine sieht, daß 5 + 7 = 12 sind. Aber es gibt eben durchaus Gebiete des Lebens, die unanschaulich sind und die von dem Kinde ganz unanschaulich aufgenommen werden; und wenn man sie anschaulich macht, so täuscht man. Daher ist es falsch, wenn man etwas, was nicht auf Anschaulichkeit gestellt ist, in den pädagogischen Büchern angeraten sieht, in die Anschaulichkeit zu bringen. Es sind manchmal furchtbare Trivialitäten, welche da den Menschen angeraten werden.

Aber es handelt sich in dem Lebensalter zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife nicht nur um Anschaulichkeit, sondern darum, daß, wenn man auf das ganze Menschenleben blickt, folgendes beginnt. Ich nehme im 8. Jahre einen Begriff auf; ich durchschaue ihn noch nicht, ich durchschaue überhaupt die Sache nach abstrakten Zusammenhängen gar nicht, bin ja auch dazu noch nicht veranlagt. Warum nehme ich denn den Begriff auf? Weil das durch die Sprache, durch die selbstverständliche Autorität des Lehrers auf mich wirkt. Aber das soll man ja heute alles nicht machen dürfen; es soll das Kind alles anschaulich bekommen. Aber nehmen wir ein Kind, das alles anschaulich bekommt, da wachsen aber die Erlebnisse nicht mit dem Kinde weiter, dann rechnet man damit, daß man es mit einem Wesen zu tun hat, das nicht wächst. Wir sollen aber in dem Kinde nicht Vorstellungen erwecken, die nicht mit ihm wachsen; denn dann würden wir dasselbe tun, wie wenn wir einem dreijährigen Kinde Schuhe machen lassen, die es später mit 12 Jahren noch tragen soll. Aber alles wächst am Menschen, auch das, was wir einmal begreifen; daher müssen die Begriffe mit uns weiter wachsen. Wir müssen also durchaus sehen, daß wir lebendige Begriffe in das Kind hineinbringen. Die bringen wir ihm aber nur bei, wenn der lebendige Bezug zur Autorität des Erziehers vorhanden ist; die bringen wir ihm nicht bei, wenn der Lehrer als Abstraktling vor dem Kinde dasteht und Begriffe vorbringt, für die das Kind noch gar keine Empfänglichkeit hat.

Stellen Sie sich zwei Kinder vor. Das eine wird so unterrichtet, daß es seine Begriffe aufnimmt, und daß es schließlich mit 45 Jahren für ein Ding noch dieselbe Erklärung gibt, die es einmal mit 8 Jahren gelernt hat. Der Begriff ist nicht herangewachsen mit dem Kinde; es hat sich alles gut gemerkt und kann mit 45 Jahren noch immer dieselbe Erklärung geben. Nehmen wir nun ein zweites Kind, das in lebendiger Weise erzogen ist. Da werden wir finden, geradeso wie es nicht mehr die Größe der Schuhe trägt, die es mit 8 Jahren gehabt hat, so trägt es auch im späteren Alter nicht mehr dieselben Begriffe mit sich herum, die es mit 8 Jahren gelernt hat; sondern diese Begriffe sind ausgeweitet, sie sind zu etwas ganz anderem geworden. Das alles aber wirkt wieder zurück auf die Körperlichkeit. Und schauen wir uns jetzt diese zwei Menschen in bezug auf ihre körperliche Verfassung an, so hat der erste mit 45 Jahren die Sklerose, der zweite ist beweglich geblieben, hat nicht Sklerose. - Was denken Sie, was da für Unterschiede in den Menschen zutage treten? Da gab es einmal an einem Orte Europas zwei Philosophielehrer. Der eine war berühmt in der griechischen Philosophie; der andere war ein alter Hegelianer, aus der Schule Hegels, wo der Mensch gewöhnt worden war, nach seinem 20. Jahre noch lebendige Begriffe in sich aufzunehmen. Beide waren an einer Universität. Da wurde der eine 70 Jahre alt und nahm das Recht für sich in Anspruch, sich pensionieren zu lassen; er konnte nicht mehr weiter. Der andere, aus dem Hegelianismus, war 91 Jahre und sagte: Ich kann nicht begreifen, warum der Jüngling sich schon zur Ruhe setzt. — Aber dieser zweite hatte auch bewegliche Begriffe. Dafür aber schimpften die Leute, er wäre nicht konsequent. Der andere war konsequent, aber er hatte die Sklerose!

So ist eine vollständige Einheit des Geistigen und desLeiblichen vorhanden, und man kann auch das Kind nur richtig behandeln, wenn man auf diese Einheit Rücksicht nimmt. Vom Materialismus sagt man heute unter denen, die ihn nicht teilen, er ist etwas Schlimmes. Warum? Da werden manche sagen, er ist es deshalb, weil er nichts versteht vom Geistigen. Aber das ist nicht das Schlimmste, denn diesen Mangel werden die Menschen nach und nach merken und aus dem Drang, über diesen Mangel hinauszukommen, werden die Menschen zum Geiste kommen, sondern das Schlimmste am Materialismus ist, daß er nichts von der Materie versteht! Sehen Sie nach, was aus der Erkenntnis der lebendigen Kräfte des Menschen in Lunge, Leber und so weiter geworden ist unter dem Einfluß des Materialismus. Man weiß nichts darüber, wie die Dinge da wirken. Man präpariert aus der Lunge, der Leber und so weiter ein Stück heraus, aber man lernt durch den heutigen Wissenschaftsbetrieb nicht den wirkenden Geist in den menschlichen Organen kennen. Den lernt man erst durch die Geisteswissenschaft kennen. Das Materielle erschließt sich erst der geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtung. Daher krankt also der Materialismus am meisten daran, daß er nichts von der Materie versteht; er möchte sich auf die Materie beschränken, aber er kann nicht zur Erkenntnis des Materiellen kommen - aber des wirklichen Materiellen, nicht des ausgedachten Materiellen, wo man so und so viele Atome um einen zentralen Kern herumtanzen läßt; denn solche Dinge kann man leicht konstruieren. In dieser Beziehung hat es auch früher Theosophen gegeben, die ein ganzes System von Atomen und Molekülen konstruiert haben; aber das alles war ja ausgedacht. Es handelt sich wieder darum, daß man an die Wirklichkeit herankommt. Und kommt man selber an die Wirklichkeit heran, so empfindet man es als unbehaglich, daß man einen Begriff fassen soll, der niemals an der Wirklichkeit gefühlt ist. Man empfindet es als Schmerz, wenn einem jemand zum Beispiel eine solche Theorie vorsagt: es sei im Grunde genommen einerlei, ob ich mit einem Auto nach einer Stadt fahre,oder ob das Auto stille steht und die Stadt zu mir kommt. Gewiß, die Dinge sind für eine gewisse Betrachtungsweise berechtigt. Aber so ausgedehnt, wie das heute unter der Gesinnung für Abstraktheiten geschieht, veröden sie das ganze menschliche Seelenleben. Und wer einen Sinn dafür hat, dem ergibt sich ein furchtbar schmerzliches Empfinden gegenüber manchem, was man heute denkt und was gerade für den Unterricht so außerordentlich zerstörend wirkt. Wenn ich so sehe, wie gewisse Methoden schon bei kleinen Kindern in den Kindergärten darauf hingehen, daß sie die gewöhnlichen Buchstaben eingeschnitten haben und dann lernen, in Eingrabungen die Buchstaben zu Worten zusammenzustellen, so wird damit schon früh an das Kind etwas herangebracht, wozu es in diesem Alter noch gar keinen Bezug hat. Da ergeht es ihm so, wie wenn man beim realen Denken sagen würde: Ich war doch eben noch ein Mensch mit Muskeln und Haut und so weiter, jetzt bin ich nur noch ein Skelett. — So ist es heute unter dem Einfluß der Gesinnung für Abstraktheiten im Geistesleben der Menschheit: man erblickt sich plötzlich als Skelett. Aber mit solchen Anschauungen, die eigentlich skelettierte Wirklichkeit sind, kann man in der Pädagogik nicht an das Kind herankommen.

Darum wollte ich heute zeigen, wie es darauf ankommt, daß der Lehrer in richtiger Weise lebendig an das Leben herangehen kann.

Fourth lecture

Following yesterday's lecture, another question was asked, which I would like to address here in context. The question is: "With regard to the law of imitation in the movements of the child, I would appreciate an explanation of the following situation. My grandfather died when my father was between 1½ and 2 years old. At around the age of forty-five, my father visited an acquaintance of my grandfather's, who was surprised by the similarity of all my father's movements and gestures. What was at work here, since there could be no question of imitation in view of the early death of the grandfather?"

So a man died when his son was 1½ to 2 years old, and later, from an acquaintance who was well informed about the matter, it was learned that this son still imitated his grandfather's gestures at the age of 45, i.e., he had the same gestures as his father.

Now, the point is that in discussions such as those currently taking place here, one can only ever give guidelines and therefore hardly take detailed discussions into account. Unfortunately, our courses are short, and the topic that should actually be discussed here could fill plenty of lectures for half a year or even a whole year. This naturally raises many questions in the wake of the discussions, which, if asked, could be answered; but I would like to point out that, of course, ambiguities could sometimes arise due to the brevity of the discussion, which can only be clarified if one can go into the details. With regard to the question asked, I would now like to make the following comment.

If we take the first phase of a child's life, that is, the period from birth to the change of teeth, then the child's organism, developing during this time, works in such a way that the first predispositions of what I discussed yesterday as what can be summarized as walking, but which is actually the overall orientation of the human being, are integrated into the organism, then into speaking, and thirdly into thinking. Now, the situation is as follows. Essentially, the child organizes itself between the ages of 1 and 7 in terms of gestures; between the ages of 7 and 14, approximately, in terms of language, as I explained yesterday; and in terms of thinking, it organizes itself between the ages of 14 and 21, again approximately speaking. But what emerges over a period of 21 years is already formed in the first phase of life, between birth and the change of teeth. So, as far as the actual acquisition of gestures is concerned, which is expressed in orientation, in walking, but also in free orientation without support, as expressed in the movement of the arms and also the facial muscles, that is, an overall orientation, a settling into gestures and movements, this develops mainly in the first third of these seven years, that is, in the first two and a third years. During this period, the child's main development lies in the formation of gestures. The development of gestures then continues, but it is accompanied by the development of the predisposition to internalize language in a more intimate way. Even if the child produces sounds earlier, the familiarization with language then takes place, after 2Y3 years, in the predisposition. The feeling for language develops between the ages of 7 and 14, but we have it in the predisposition between 2½ and 4½ years. All this is, of course, on average. And after that, the child develops the ability to experience thoughts internally in the first predisposition. What emerges and blossoms later, between the ages of 14 and 21, develops in the germ between the ages of 42/3 and 7. — The formation of gestures continues, of course, but the other pushes its way in, so that we have to shift the time that is mainly devoted to the formation of gestures to the first 2!/s years. What is acquired during this time is naturally most deeply ingrained, for we need only imagine how thoroughly the principle of imitation works in the very earliest years of life.

If you keep this in mind, you will find nothing surprising in what is asked here. The grandfather died when the father was 1½ to 2 years old. But that is precisely the time when gestures are most deeply ingrained. If the grandfather dies now, what is imitated from him will be most deeply engraved. This will no longer be changed by what is later imitated from others in terms of gestures. Therefore, when viewed in detail, this case is extremely significant. That is all there is to say about it in brief.

Yesterday, we tried to examine how children in the second stage of life, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, experience everything that is incorporated into their development through language, in which the natural authority of the educator, the teacher, must be effective. Whatever can be effective between the educator and the child must be effective in a pictorial way. And I explained how, at this age, one cannot approach the child with moral imperatives, but can only influence its morality by awakening in it feelings such as those awakened by images; so that the child receives images presented to it by its role model, the educator, the teacher, which have the effect of making it like what is good and dislike what is evil. So, in relation to morality, education at this compulsory school age must also be carried out in a pictorial and emotional way.

Then I explained how writing must be introduced to the child in a pictorial way, how the shapes of letters must be extracted from drawing and painting. This painting-drawing and drawing-painting must be cultivated first and foremost among all the arts that introduce the child to civilization. Anything that refers from the outset to letter forms, which are completely foreign to the child, is actually pedagogically nonsense; for the finished letter forms of today's civilization have the effect of little demons on the child.

Now, in the spirit of an education based on human knowledge, learning to write must precede learning to read. Why? Well, learning to write engages a good part of the whole person, not just the head, as is the case with learning to read. If you really want to reach the child, you must approach the whole child at this age, immediately after the change of teeth. A child who engages in writing in such a way that at least the entire upper body is involved is in a completely different state of inner activity than when one begins with the observation of forms that only occupy the head. The emancipated, independent application of mental abilities is only possible at a later age. Therefore, the only transition that can be made is for the child to memorize what they have written by reading it.

By cultivating this way of teaching in Waldorf schools, it has become apparent that our children learn to read a little later than usual, and even start writing letters a little later than children in other schools. However, one must really look into human nature again in order to judge this. With today's lack of insight into human nature, people do not realize how detrimental it is to the overall development of the human being when they learn such remote activities as reading and writing too early. And no one who learns to read and write a little later than usual will have a deficiency in their reading and writing skills later in life; on the contrary, everyone who learns to read and write too early will have a great deficiency in this respect. A pedagogy based on knowledge of human nature must proceed from the premise of reading the development and living conditions of human nature and, in accordance with this reading of living conditions, helping the child in such a way that the child's own nature emerges. Only then is the art of education truly healthy.

In order to understand everything else, it is necessary for us to delve a little into the essence of the human being. In the human being, we first have the physical body, which is primarily active in development during the first stage of life. In the second stage of life, the higher, more refined body of the human being, namely the etheric body, comes into development. Here it is really a matter of being able to proceed in a genuinely scientific manner when observing human beings and of having the same courage that is otherwise required in science today. If one has a substance that exhibits a certain degree of heat, it may be possible to bring the substance into conditions whereby heat — which is said to be bound to the substance — is released. It comes out and becomes free heat. For substances in the mineral world, we have the courage to speak scientifically about bound heat and free heat. We must acquire this courage for our overall view of the world. Once we have it, the following becomes apparent to us about human beings.

We may ask: Where are the forces of the human etheric body in the first epoch of life? — During this time, they are bound to the physical body, engaged in its nourishment and growth. The child is different in this first epoch than later on. All the forces of the etheric body are bound to the physical body; they become partially free at the end of the first epoch, just as the heat in substances that was previously bound becomes free. But what happens then? Only part of the etheric body continues to influence growth and nutrition after the change of teeth; the other part becomes free and now becomes the bearer of the developing, more intense memory, the soul. We must learn to speak of the bound soul for the first seven years of life, and of the liberated soul for the time after the age of seven. For that is how it is. What we apply as soul forces in the second seven years of life is bound to the physical body in the first seven years, imperceptible; therefore, it does not emerge psychically. How the soul works in the first seven years of life must be observed in the body. And only from the change of teeth onwards can one enter into the soul.

This is a way of looking at things that leads directly from physics into psychology. Consider what we have today as teachings about the soul; we have teachings about the soul that are based purely on speculation. We think about it and conclude that the soul is there and the body is there. Now we ask: Does the body cause the soul, or does the soul cause the body? If one cannot come to terms with both, one invents something as extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical parallelism, where one imagines that the two expressions, the physical and the spiritual, run parallel, side by side. However, this does not explain the interaction between the two, but only speaks of a parallelism. It is only a sign that one knows nothing about these things from experience. If one had experience, one would say: In the first seven years of a child's life, one can see the soul working in the physical body. How it works there must be learned through observation, not through philosophical speculation or the like. Anthroposophy as a method of knowledge rejects all speculation and relies everywhere on experience, but physical and spiritual experience.

Thus, for the second phase of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the etheric body of the human being will be the primary focus of education. In this body, the forces that are primarily effective for the teacher and the child are those that trigger feelings in the child, not yet judgments and thoughts. For deep within the child's nature, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, lies the third member of the human being, the astral body, which is the bearer of the entire life of feeling and sensation. Even during this second phase of life, it is still deeply embedded in the etheric body. Therefore, we have the task of developing the etheric body – because it becomes somewhat free – in such a way that it can follow its own inclinations in education. When can it do this? It can do this when we teach and educate the child in its entirety through imagery, when we present everything to the child in a pictorial way. For the etheric body is the body of formative forces; it forms the wonderful shapes of the organs, heart, lungs, liver, and so on. The physical body that we inherit is only like a model; it is discarded in the first seven years of life. After the change of teeth, the second physical body is then formed from this etheric body. In education, we must now respond to this plastic, pictorial nature of the etheric body.

Just as we introduce images to the child when learning to write, through drawing and painting, and so on — but we cannot introduce the artistic to the child soon enough, for all teaching must be imbued with artistry — we must bear in mind that just as the etheric body is geared toward pictoriality, so the astral body, which underlies the life of feeling and sensation, is organized toward the musical nature of the human being. So what must we look for when we observe the child? A mentally healthy child is deeply musical inside, because between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the astral body is still embedded in the physical and etheric bodies. Every healthy child is deeply musical inside. We only need to bring out the musicality from the child's movement and liveliness. That is why artistic education, both in the visual arts and in the musical arts, should be cultivated in school from the very beginning. It is not the abstract that should prevail, but the artistic, and it is through the artistic that the child must be led into understanding the world.

But we really have to proceed in such a way that the child gradually learns to place itself in the world. I have already said that I always find it repugnant to see today's science-oriented textbooks being brought into schools and used to structure lessons. For in our scientific endeavors today, which I fully acknowledge, we have in many ways strayed from a natural view of the world. We will now ask ourselves, as we will catch up on other things in the course of the discussion: When can we approximately begin to teach children, for example, about plants?

It must be introduced neither too late nor too early. It must be clear that between the ages of 9 and 10 is a very important stage of development for the child. Anyone with an educational eye can observe this in every child. There comes a time when the child usually shows, not by speaking, but in its whole behavior, that it has a question or a series of questions that reveal an inner crisis in its life. It is an extremely delicate experience for the child, and one must be extremely delicate if one wants to notice it. But it is there and must be observed. At this age, the child learns quite instinctively to distinguish itself from the outside world. Before that, the self and the outside world flow into one another. Before this age, you can tell the child about animals, plants, and stones as if they behaved like humans; and you will get along best if you appeal to the child's visual perception and talk about the whole of nature in this way. But between the ages of 9 and 10, the child learns to say “I” with full consciousness. They learn this earlier, but now with full awareness. During these years, when the child no longer merges with the outside world in their consciousness but learns to distinguish themselves from it, is the time when we can also begin to teach the child an understanding of the plant world — but an emotional understanding of the plant world — without immediately denying its pictorial nature.

Today, we are used to looking at one plant next to another, because we know what they are called and so on, and we act as if each plant were on its own. But if you look at a plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pull out a hair and, forgetting that it was on your head, look at it on its own and believe that you could know something about its living conditions and its nature if you did not regard it as an outgrowth of your head. Hair only has meaning when it grows on the head; you cannot consider it on its own. The same is true of plants. You cannot pull them out of consideration, but must consider the whole earth as an organism to which plants belong. And that is what it is. Plants belong to the overall growth of the earth, just as hair belongs to our head. You can never consider plants in isolation, but only in connection with the whole nature of the earth. The earth and the plant world belong together.

Suppose you have a herbaceous, annual plant that grows from the root, sprouts stems, leaves, and flowers, develops fruit, and is sown again the following year. Then you have soil below in which the plant grows. But now suppose you have a tree. It lasts, it is not annual. It develops mineralizing bark around itself, which is why it also barks. What is that actually in reality? What is happening there is this: if you were to push the soil surrounding a plant up onto the plant with your strength, covering it with soil, you would achieve this externally and mechanically through human activity. But nature does the same thing by enveloping the tree in bark; only it is not entirely soil. In a sense, there is a mound of soil in the bark; the soil piles up. We can see the soil growing and flourishing as we watch the tree grow. Therefore, what is in the vicinity of the root is definitely part of what belongs to the plant. We must regard the soil as belonging to the plant.

Anyone who has acquired an eye for this and drives through an area where they see plants with yellow flowers at the top will immediately look to see what kind of soil is there: if you find certain flowers, you will find red soil at the bottom, for example. You will never be able to imagine the plant without the soil. The two belong together. And you should get used to this as early as possible, otherwise you will kill your sense of reality.

How deeply this touched my heart when, at the request of farmers, I recently had to give an agricultural course, where immediately afterwards a farmer said: Today everyone knows that our vegetables are dying, falling into decline, and at a frightening rate. Why is that? Because people no longer understand, as people originally did, as farmers understood, how to view the soil in connection with plants. But if you want to promote the flourishing of vegetables again, you must also know how to treat them in the right way, that is, you must be able to fertilize them properly. We must give the soil the opportunity to truly thrive in the vicinity of the plant roots. Today, after the degeneration that agriculture has experienced, we need a spiritually inspired form of agriculture that allows us to use fertilizers in such a way that plant growth does not decline. Anyone who has grown as old as I have can say: I know what potatoes looked like in Europe 50 years ago — and what they look like now! Today, we are witnessing not only the decline of the West in terms of the cultivation of the soul, but also a profound decline in other realms of nature, for example in agriculture.

So it is important not to kill the sense of the unity between plants and their environment, not to pull up plants on school trips and the like, put them in a botanical drum, then bring them to class and believe that something has been achieved. For the uprooted plant cannot exist on its own. People today indulge in completely unrealistic observations. For example, they regard a piece of chalk and a flower as real in the same sense. Philosophers today regard both things in the same sense as something that exists. But what nonsense! The mineral can exist on its own, and it actually can. The plant is supposed to be something complete, but it cannot be; it ceases to exist when it is torn out of the ground. It only has an earthly existence by being connected to something else, and that something else only has an existence by being connected to the whole earth. One must view things as they are in their totality and not tear them out of that totality.

Almost our entire view of knowledge today is teeming with such unrealistic views. This has led us to observations of nature that are completely abstract, which are partly justified in their abstractness, such as the theory of relativity. But those who can think realistically cannot simply let concepts run their course in abstraction; they notice when concepts begin to no longer refer to reality. This then causes them pain. Of course, you can easily follow the laws of acoustics and say: when I generate a sound, the propagation of the sound has a certain speed. If I hear the sound somewhere at a certain point, I can calculate how it propagates in a certain time. If I now move at any speed in the direction of propagation of the sound, I hear it later; if my speed exceeds that of the sound, I do not hear it at all; but if I move toward the sound, I hear it earlier. The theory of relativity has its specific justification. But according to it, the following can also be true: if I move in such a way that I walk faster than the sound travels, then I will ultimately hear the sound before it has even occurred! Someone with a truly realistic way of thinking will sense this. Such a person also knows that it is quite correct and wonderfully logical to think that a clock is thrown out into space at the speed of light and comes back again, according to the famous comparison given by Einstein. One can imagine so wonderfully how nothing has changed on the clock. But for a realistic thinker, the question arises: What will the clock look like when it comes back? — because they do not separate their thinking from reality; they always remain within reality.

This is the peculiarity of spiritual science: it never demands to be merely logical, but to be realistic. That is why those who take abstractions to extremes accuse us anthroposophists of being abstract, because our way of thinking seeks absolute reality everywhere, never wanting to depart from the context of reality, whereby spiritual reality is also grasped. This enables us to see so clearly the unnaturalness of botany as it is taught in schools.

The point is to teach children botany in such a way that the face of the earth as such is taken into account, treating soil and plant growth as one, so that the child never has the idea of the plant as something separate. This can be unpleasant for the teacher. For now they cannot take the usual botany books into the classroom, quickly open them during the lesson, and pretend that they know everything exactly. I have already said that there are still no proper textbooks for teaching botany today. But this type of teaching takes on a different aspect when one knows how imponderables work and when one takes into account that the subconscious has an even stronger effect on children than on adults. This subconscious is terribly clever, and anyone who can look into the spiritual life of a child knows that when a class is sitting there and the teacher is walking around with his notes and trying to teach the children what the notes contain, the children are always thinking: Yes, why should I know that? He doesn't know it himself! — This greatly disrupts the lesson, because it weaves its way up from the subconscious. And nothing will come of such a class that is taught with notes in hand.

One must look into the spiritual everywhere. This is particularly necessary for the development of the art of education. In this way, however, one creates a firm inner standing for the child in the world. For now the child gradually gets the idea that the earth is an organism. And that is what it is. And when it begins to become lifeless, then we must start to help our agricultural plants by fertilizing them properly. — For example, it is not true that the water contained in the air is the same as the water below in the earth. The water below has a trace of vitality; the water above loses this, and it only comes back to life when it descends. These are all things that exist, that are real. Those who do not take these things in do not connect with the world in a real way. This applies to the plant world in teaching. We cannot regard it as belonging to the earth. This is already evident from the fact that animals can run around; they are already independent in themselves. But when we compare animals with humans again, we find something very peculiar in the design of animals. This has always been pointed out in older instinctive science, echoes of which were still present in the first third of the 19th century. However, it seems quite absurd to people today when they read the statements of natural philosophers who, following old traditions, viewed the animal world in relation to the human world. I know how people could hardly contain their laughter in a circle where the following sentence came out of a lecture by the natural philosopher Oken: " the human tongue is an octopus." What was meant by this? Of course, the detail was no longer correct in Oken's case, but the principle that one must have in mind was there: if one looks at the individual animal forms, from the smallest protists to the perfect apes, each animal form represents some part of the human being, a human organ or organ system, developed on one side. You only need to look at the matter in broad terms. Imagine if a human being had a very receding forehead, very protruding jaws, and eyes that looked up instead of forward; the teeth would then be developed on one side with whatever they come into contact with. In this way, you can imagine the most diverse forms of mammals, developed on one side; by omitting this or that from the human form, you can transform the human form into an ox form, a sheep form, and so on. And if you take internal organs, for example those related to the reproductive tract, you descend into the realm of lower animals. This human being is the synthetic combination of the individual animal forms, which become milder when they are combined into a unity. The human being is all animal forms together, but harmoniously structured. When I trace back what is dissolved in the human being to its original forms, I get the whole animal world. The human being is the condensed animal world.

This way of looking at things, which puts us back into the animal world with our whole soul life, has been completely forgotten. But since it is true and actually underlies the principles of development, it must be revived. And we must, as far as is possible today, actually introduce the child, around the age of 11, after we have considered the plant world as belonging to the earth, to the animal world in such a way that we recognize it in its forms as belonging to the human being in the narrower sense. Think how the young person then relates to animals and plants: plants go to the earth, become one with the earth; animals become one with him! This is truly the foundation of a relationship with the world; it places the human being in a reality with the world. This can always be brought to the child through the teaching material. And if everything goes hand in hand in an artistic sense, if it goes hand in hand with what grasps the human being in his inner essence in living education and teaching, then one enlivens the child for life; otherwise, however, one easily kills the connection to life. But one must look into the whole human essence.

What exactly is this etheric body? If someone could remove the etheric body from the physical body of a human being and impregnate it so that it took on a visible form, there would be no greater work of art than this! For the human etheric body is, through its own essence, through what the human being forms in it, both a work of art and an artist. And by introducing the child to the creative aspect of art, we bring it into contact with what is deeply related to the etheric body, by engaging with the child in a free manner, as I indicated yesterday, through modeling. This enables the child, by grasping its own inner being, to position itself correctly in the world as a human being.

And by introducing the child to music, it develops its astral body. If you combine the two, you make the plastic arts so that they transition into movement, and if you make the movement plastic, then you have eurythmy, which follows entirely from the relationship between the etheric body and the astral body in the child. Therefore, the child now learns eurythmy, this language revealed in articulated gestures, just as it learned to speak by itself in earlier years. One will never encounter obstacles in learning eurythmy if the child is healthy, for in eurythmy the child simply expresses its own being; it wants to realize its own being. That is why we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject in Waldorf schools from the first year of elementary school up to the upper grades, alongside physical education.

So you see, eurythmy has emerged from the whole human being, from the physical body, etheric body, and astral body; it can only be studied with anthroposophical knowledge of the human being. Today's gymnastics focuses one-sidedly on the physical body from a physiological point of view; and because physiology cannot do otherwise, individual laws of vitality are introduced. But gymnastics does not educate whole human beings, only partial human beings. This is not to say anything against gymnastics, but today it is overestimated. That is why eurythmy must now take its place alongside gymnastics in education. — I do not want to go too far, as once happened, not to me, but to a very famous contemporary physiologist who was in the auditorium when I was speaking about eurythmy. I said that gymnastics is overrated today, especially as an educational tool, and that spiritual and mental gymnastics, which is cultivated in eurythmy alongside the artistic aspects of eurythmy, must take its place alongside physiological gymnastics. After I had finished speaking, the famous physiologist came up to me and said: You say that gymnastics is justified as an educational tool because physiologists say so? As a physiologist myself, I must say that gymnastics as an educational tool is barbaric! — Well, you would be very surprised if I told you the name of this physiologist. Such things are already evident in the present day for people who have a say in matters, and one must therefore be careful when fanatically advocating certain things without understanding the context. One can least of all fanatically advocate things in relation to the art of education, because one is dealing with the multifaceted life of human beings.

If you consider what other knowledge needs to be imparted to the child from the perspective of what has been discussed, you will come to the conclusion that at this age, when the child can only absorb images through feeling, you should also teach history and geography in a pictorial way, for example; so that when you teach history, you must present images, vivid images, picturesque images! This is how the child's sense develops. For what does not yet live in the child during the first two epochs of the second major phase of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, is what is called the concept of cause. Before the age of 7, the child should not go to school at all. If you take the period from 7 to 9 and 1/3 years, you then have the first subdivision of the second major phase of life; from 9 1/3 to 11 2/3 years you have the second epoch; and from 11 2/3 to 14 years, approximately, the third epoch. In the first epoch of the second super-epoch, the child is completely predisposed to imagery. One must speak in a fairy-tale manner, for everything in the outside world must still be undifferentiated from the child's nature. One plant must speak to another, one mineral must speak to another; plants must kiss each other, plants must have a father and mother, and so on. When the time I have just described arrives, from the age of 9 1/3 years onwards, the ego will begin to distinguish itself from the outside world. Then it will be possible to approach plants and animals with a kind of real knowledge. But in the first years of life, history will always be treated in a fairy-tale-like, mythical way; in the second phase of this larger period, from 9 1/3 to 11 2/3 years, one will speak figuratively. And only when the child is almost 12 years old can one introduce what is considered to be the power of the concept of cause, which goes over into abstract concepts, whereby cause and effect can occur. Before that, the child is as inaccessible to cause and effect as the color-blind are to colors, and as an educator, one sometimes has no idea how unnecessary it is to talk to the child about cause and effect. What we are so accustomed to today in scientific observation can only be discussed with the child after the age of 12.

But this also requires that all teaching about inanimate objects, where the concept of cause comes into play, be postponed until around the age of 12, and that historical consideration of cause and effect in history, where it goes beyond the pictorial and causes are sought, also be postponed until around the age of 12. Before that, one should only deal with what can be brought to the child in terms of the soul and the living. — Human beings are very strange. For example, there is a cultural-historical view called animism. It says: when a child bumps into a table, it animates the table, it beats it; it dreams a soul into the table; this is what primitive peoples would have done. — One imagines that something more complicated is going on in the child's soul: the child is supposed to think of the table as animated, animated, and therefore beat it when it bumps into it. It is a fantastic idea. But the one who animates something is the one who drives cultural history; he animates the child's imagination. But the child's soul is present in the physical body on a much larger scale than later, when it emancipates itself and acts freely as a soul. When the child bumps into the table, a reflex movement begins without the child animating the table; it is a pure movement of will, not yet distinguished from the outside world. This distinction only occurs when the concept of cause enters the healthy child's mind around the age of 12. And if one works with the concept of cause, or indeed with such brutal external illustrations, too early with the child, then one actually causes terrible conditions in the child's development. It is all very well to say that we should strive to make everything clear to the child. How many nice things have been done in a certain direction in an effort to make everything clear. Calculating machines have appeared where balls are moved back and forth to make arithmetic operations clear. Now we are just waiting for the same attitude to make moral concepts clear through some kind of machine, where you also move something around, where you see good and evil in the same way as you see 5 + 7 = 12 on the calculating machine. But there are certainly areas of life that are not clear and that are not understood by children; and if you make them clear, you are deceiving them. Therefore, it is wrong to advise in educational books that something that is not clear should be made clear. Sometimes it is terrible trivialities that are recommended to people.

But at the age between tooth replacement and sexual maturity, it is not only a question of vividness, but also of the fact that, when you look at human life as a whole, the following begins. At the age of 8, I take up a concept; I do not yet understand it, I do not understand the matter at all in terms of abstract connections, as I am not yet predisposed to do so. So why do I take in the concept? Because it affects me through language, through the natural authority of the teacher. But today, we are not supposed to do any of that; the child is supposed to get everything in a concrete way. But let's take a child who gets everything in a concrete way, but whose experiences do not grow with the child, then we can expect that we are dealing with a being that does not grow. However, we should not awaken ideas in the child that do not grow with it, because then we would be doing the same thing as if we were to have a three-year-old child make shoes that it would still have to wear at the age of 12. But everything grows in human beings, even what we once understood; therefore, concepts must continue to grow with us. We must therefore ensure that we instill living concepts in the child. However, we can only teach them if there is a living connection to the authority of the educator; we cannot teach them if the teacher stands before the child as an abstract figure and presents concepts for which the child is not yet receptive.

Imagine two children. One is taught in such a way that it absorbs its concepts and, at the age of 45, still has the same explanation for a thing that it learned at the age of 8. The concept has not grown with the child; it has remembered everything well and can still give the same explanation at the age of 45. Now let us take a second child who has been educated in a lively manner. We will find that just as it no longer wears the same size shoes it wore at the age of 8, it no longer carries around the same concepts it learned at the age of 8; instead, these concepts have expanded and become something completely different. But all of this has an effect on physicality. And if we now look at these two people in terms of their physical condition, the first has sclerosis at the age of 45, while the second has remained agile and does not have sclerosis. What do you think are the differences that become apparent in these people? There were once two philosophy teachers in a place in Europe. One was famous for his knowledge of Greek philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, from the school of Hegel, where people were accustomed to absorbing living concepts even after the age of 20. Both were at a university. One of them turned 70 and claimed his right to retire; he could no longer continue. The other, from Hegelianism, was 91 years old and said: I cannot understand why the young man is already retiring. — But this second one also had flexible concepts. For this, however, people scolded him for not being consistent. The other was consistent, but he had sclerosis!

Thus, there is a complete unity of the spiritual and the physical, and one can only treat the child properly if one takes this unity into account. Today, those who do not share materialism say that it is something bad. Why? Some will say that it is because it understands nothing of the spiritual. But that is not the worst thing, because people will gradually become aware of this deficiency and, driven by the urge to overcome it, they will come to the spirit. The worst thing about materialism is that it understands nothing about matter! Look at what has become of the knowledge of the living forces of the human being in the lungs, liver, and so on under the influence of materialism. We know nothing about how things work there. We prepare a piece from the lungs, the liver, and so on, but today's scientific practice does not teach us about the active spirit in human organs. We only learn about this through spiritual science. The material only reveals itself to spiritual scientific observation. Therefore, materialism suffers most from the fact that it understands nothing about matter; it would like to limit itself to matter, but it cannot come to a knowledge of the material – but of the real material, not the imagined material, where one has so many atoms dancing around a central nucleus; for such things can easily be constructed. In this regard, there have also been theosophists in the past who have constructed an entire system of atoms and molecules; but all of that was imagined. Once again, it is a matter of approaching reality. And when one approaches reality oneself, one finds it uncomfortable to have to grasp a concept that is never felt in reality. It is painful when someone suggests, for example, that it is basically all the same whether I drive to a city in a car or whether the car stands still and the city comes to me. Certainly, things are justified from a certain point of view. But when extended as far as they are today under the influence of abstract thinking, they devastate the entire human soul. And anyone who has a sense of this will feel a terrible pain when confronted with some of the ideas that are prevalent today and which have such an extraordinarily destructive effect on education. When I see how certain methods in kindergartens already encourage small children to carve out ordinary letters and then learn to put the letters together into words, something is being introduced to the child at an early age that it has no connection to at this age. It is like saying in real thinking: I was just a human being with muscles and skin and so on, now I am just a skeleton. — That is how it is today under the influence of the attitude toward abstractions in the spiritual life of humanity: one suddenly sees oneself as a skeleton. But with such views, which are actually skeletonized reality, one cannot approach the child in education.

That is why I wanted to show today how important it is for the teacher to be able to approach life in the right way, with vitality.