The Spirit of the Waldorf School
GA 297
24 September 1919, Stuttgart
IV. Supersensible Knowledge and Social Pedagogical Life
In these serious times, we can look at what people who have considered the gravity of the situation think is necessary. We can see what new institutions they imagine are needed, what changes in our untenable conditions are necessary. If we do this, we will see people with the goodwill to dedicate themselves to new institutions, to cooperate in changing what seems to need change in one way or another. If we accept the responsibility for our all-too-obvious social circumstances, then we cannot get around the fact that, although there is so much goodwill and there are so many wonderful ideas, they collapse immediately or, in any event, are not carried out to the extent so necessary today.
Spiritual science seeks, through anthroposophical understanding, to open the path to supersensible knowledge for modern humanity. It has tried for decades to address the conspicuous problems of modern civilization, namely the flagging goodwill and the loss of the wonderful ideas that live in this goodwill. The spiritual science I have presented here for years has attempted to point out exactly what is so necessary in the present, and what so many modern people welcome with such great sympathy or reject with such great antipathy. It tries to point out, on the one hand, what has made conventional science so great, and, on the other hand, as we will discuss today, what this science lacks the means to understand, namely, human will and human feeling.
We live in a time when it is no longer possible for people simply to yield to their instinctive will impulses. The necessity to increasingly transform the old instinctive life into a fully conscious life is especially characteristic of our time, yet so many prejudices arise today when it comes to admitting this. That people must increasingly change the old instinctive motives of human nature into conscious motives is a historical fact, the most important historical fact. It is this fact that has led to the present crisis.
To this end, scientific advances over the last three or four centuries have done much for modern civilization. But today, anyone who contemplates the institutions that arise out of the most vital contemporary needs must come to feel the insufficiencies of modern times that come from the modern scientific orientation and way of thinking. Just now in this city a limited attempt is being made to solve a social problem, a social problem that is more important than most people want to believe. Perhaps this evening we can point out the difficulties of solving such a specific problem.
Through the insight into anthroposophical spiritual science that he has often demonstrated throughout the years, our friend Emil Molt has succeeded in founding the Free Waldorf School upon social thinking appropriate to our times. This school is intended for children of the workers at the WaldorfAstoria factory and for a few others who will shortly be included. The imprint of modern society is visible in the manner of the school’s creation and in its connection with an industrial firm. This school must take into account the most practical needs of the people who entrust it with the education of their children. We could say that it is symbolic that this school was created in connection, in direct connection, with the industrialism that gives rise to the most important social questions of our time.
In founding the school, the faculty (for whom I held an introductory seminar lasting several weeks) considered the social pedagogical tasks relevant to modern culture. More than we are aware, our picture of modern civilization (as I already mentioned) results from the way our imagination has developed out of our understanding of physical nature. As I have emphasized for decades, spiritual science fully recognizes the value and meaning of the modern scientific way of thinking; in fact, spiritual science values conventional science more highly than that science values itself. Nevertheless, because conventional science so colors our picture of modern civilization, spiritual science must go beyond it. I have also emphasized that the means used by spiritual science to come to its understanding of the world differ from those of conventional science. I have repeatedly explained how we can really enter into the supersensible world through the path of spiritual science, how, through the development of inner capacities that otherwise only sleep in human nature, the way opens for us to see into the spiritual world in which we live. We can see into the spiritual world just as we can recognize the laws of the physical world through our senses, through reason, through associated events. I have explained how we, by awakening dormant capabilities, can look into the spiritual world that always surrounds us, but is unknown to us because the necessary sense organs remain undeveloped in ordinary life.
Today I want to discuss the capacities that spiritual science uses to see into the supersensible world—healthy, quite normal capacities of human nature. Those who want a deeper insight into how spiritual science works need not concern themselves with the accusations of our critics that it is based upon the use of unwholesome powers. It is quite simple to show the source of Anthroposophy and its path to the supersensible world.
If you look at my book How 7o Know Higher Worlds, you will see that I describe those stages of supersensible knowledge that people can attain through the development of certain capacities sleeping within them: 1) the Imaginative stage of knowledge, 2) the stage of Inspiration and 3) the stage of true Intuition. Now, where does spiritual science find the forces involved in such things as Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition? We can show that certain capacities forming the basis of human nature are at work during childhood. Later in life, when people have reached their normal size, when growth is complete, in a sense these forces lie unused. This spring I discussed the various stages of child development.1Translators’ note: Lectures of 5/11/19, 5/18/19, 6/1/19, contained in A Social Basis for Primary and Secondary Education (GA 192), Waldorf Institute, Adelphi University, New York, 1975. I remarked that during the first period of life, people are primarily imitative beings. They instinctively learn everything that people around them do, and they imitate this in their movements, sounds, speech, even in their thoughts. This imitative behavior continues until approximately the change of teeth, until approximately seven years of age. Then those who can more exactly observe human nature begin to see another activity. They can observe the need in human nature, beginning at six or seven years of age and continuing until sexual maturity, to rely upon people with experience, upon those adults in whom children can devotedly believe. During this period, children need to act under the influence of honored authorities. The self-reliance that is based in people’s confidence in their power of judgment, the self-reliance that enables them to involve themselves in all sorts of things in life, first appears with sexual maturity at the age of fourteen and continues to develop until the age of twenty or twenty-one.
These are three quite distinct periods of human youth. Only people who have lost healthy judgment due to all kinds of prejudices can overlook what develops in the child, what causes physical development until the age of seven when bodily development is relatively complete—the form continues to grow but the general structure is complete. Only such people can overlook how those forces that act formatively until seven years of age subsequently work more inwardly, particularly as inner growth. They act as living forces, making children stronger until fourteen years of age. They work between the ages of fourteen and twenty to strengthen those organs directed toward the environment, those organs that are capable of immersing themselves in their surroundings. In this time those inner spiritual forces act upon the human physical body. Inner spiritual forces act in quite differing ways upon the human body until seven, then fourteen, then twenty-one years of age. Forces that for an unprejudiced observer are quite clearly inner spiritual forces work on human organs to master them and develop them further.
These forces really exist. The forces that in a certain sense cause the crystallization of the second set of teeth out of human nature, a meaningful conclusion to the stage of human development ending at age seven, really exist. The forces that work mysteriously on that part of human beings that is connected with growth and the unfolding of human nature until age fourteen really exist. These forces are real; they are active. But after the completion of physical development (around the age of twenty), where are these inner spiritual forces that have acted upon our physical form? They still exist; they are still there. These inner forces fall asleep, just as the forces we use in our everyday life, our everyday work from waking to sleeping, fall asleep and become dormant while we sleep. The forces of human nature that blazed during childhood and youth, the forces that fired the developmental changes that transform children into adults, and everything connected with these changes, fall asleep around the age of twenty. Those who look at the whole human being know that at the very moment when human beings reach this point, the forces that acted in the child, in the youth, step back into the innermost part of human nature. These forces go to sleep.
We can awaken the forces that have brought forth the processes normally observed between the ages of fourteen and twenty, through which we slowly gain an understanding of our surroundings, through which those organs develop that can form only after puberty. These organs are not one-sidedly oriented toward sexual love, but are formed such that we can deepen our love of all humanity. This loving absorption in all humanity gives us true understanding of the world. The forces we use until the age of twenty-one for growing and forming the inner organs become inflexible, just critical intellect. A certain inner spiritual force stops working formatively. It becomes an imaginary inner force, a power of the soul, no longer so strong as it was earlier when it had to guide human formation. If we can find it sleeping in human nature, this power that once was a formative force but after the age of twenty no longer is, if we develop it so it exists with the same strength as before, then, acting now through love, it becomes Imaginative power. People attain a capacity to see the world not only through abstract concepts, but in pictures that are alive, just as dreams are alive, and that represent reality just as our abstract concepts do. The same force that previously acted upon the healthy developing human to form the capacity to love, can enable us to see such pictures of the world and to reach the first stage of supersensible knowledge. We can awaken this human capacity and plunge it deeper into our surroundings than normal thinking and normal sensing can go.
Then we can go further, since the forces that cause the important formative changes from approximately seven years of age, from the change of teeth, until sexual maturity, are also sleeping in us. These forces sleep deeper under the surface of normal soul life than the forces I just characterized as Imaginative. When we reawaken these idle formative capacities, when we call these spiritual powers out of their sleep, they become the forces of Inspiration. These teach us that Imaginative pictures are filled with spiritual content, that these pictures, which appear to be dreams but really are not, reflect a spiritual reality that exists in our surroundings, outside ourselves.
We can go even deeper, into the strongest forces sleeping in human nature, those that have worked upon human formation from birth until the change of teeth. These formative forces that were active in the first years of life have withdrawn themselves most deeply from external life. If we bring them forth again in later life and imbue them with Imagination and Inspiration, we will then have the Intuitive powers of supersensible knowledge. These are the powers that enable us to delve into the reality of the spiritual world in the same way that we can delve into the physical world through the senses and the will usually associated with the body.
In three stages, through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, we gain access to the supersensible world. These powers do not employ anything abnormal, but actually are the most normal of all things, namely the forces of healthy human development from birth until the early twenties. These forces then lie fallow, but we can bring them forth again. When they are no longer occupied with forming us, we can use them to open up the spiritual world.
I have now given you some idea of the source of those forces that open the way for spiritual science to enter the supersensible world. Those who seriously wish to follow this path will know how to differentiate what it can properly give from what simple conventional science, simple scientific understanding, can offer.
Why do I continually emphasize modern scientific understanding? It would not be so necessary to emphasize this scientific understanding and the attitude that derives from it, if modern popular thinking, including social thinking and social policies, were not so completely patterned after it. To be sure, we have here something that many people seldom consider. However, we must consider it if we wish to find something that will really lead to healing our ailing social conditions. We must be clear that scientific thinking so completely permeates all human thinking that when people begin to consider something else, they automatically revert to the modern scientific attitude and manner of thinking.
What is, in fact, the social political thinking of the second half of the nineteenth century right up to the present? What is it that fundamentally, even now, is presented to us as socialist theory? It is a social thinking patterned after mechanistic scientific thinking. Why does this social thinking appear to be so unfruitful, as I have often described it in these lectures? Because this social thinking, take for example the Marxist English Socialist thinking, is infested through and through with a conventional scientific attitude, an attitude that when used in this area simply cannot accomplish anything.
Now look at the most important characteristic of what I have referred to today as supersensible understanding in the sense of spiritual science. The most important characteristic is that this supersensible understanding uses those forces closely connected with what is human. What forces more closely connected with human nature could we possibly use than those that form human nature itself? How could we possibly use anything more human to achieve an ideal, to achieve anything we want to accomplish? How could we use forces for cognition more human than those that we can bring out of hiding the moment they are no longer needed to form human nature? There is a way of understanding in contrast to the modern scientific attitude and socio-political way of thinking, a life of abstract concepts connected only with the structure and function of the human head. This way of understanding is through those forces that people still retain after their formation is complete at the age of twenty or so. This way of understanding uses forces allowed to sleep, but which are more real because they work on human formation. What we can obtain from scientific concepts and happily use in the social sciences, and wish to use in social pedagogical tasks—these concepts and ideas, in fact, everything that we can obtain in this way for our souls, are only a reflection of reality in comparison to the content of supersensible knowledge. Every concept we can gain when our reason combines sense impressions and observations, everything that we know from our will impulses—all this is actually only a shadow, a reflection, in contrast to what is so tightly enmeshed with human growth and activity and existence as the forces that form us. Thus, the abstract character (the character of being “independent of human nature”) arises out of the scientific way of thinking that does not require people to use their will. We are proud of obtaining such knowledge that we can refer to as scientific and can call “objective.”
Concerning knowledge, spiritual science does not attempt to throw what is human out, but rather to draw it into the world. It attempts to come to its knowledge through just those forces that form people. We can observe that scientific concepts, and socio-political concepts patterned after the same methods, satisfy human intellectual curiosity. They satisfy the intellect, but clearly do not have the power to enliven, to infuse, to ignite human will. Were this scientific viewpoint and its onesidedness to become increasingly stronger and continually more dominant, in the end human willpower would completely atrophy. Nowadays we must motivate human willpower, atrophying under the influence of the scientific mentality, with something that can ignite it. This ability to stimulate willpower arises from people themselves because it can be drawn out of human nature as spiritual scientific knowledge.
This is what spiritual science wants to do, and what spiritual science, as we mean it here, can do. It wants to effect an understanding that is not simply there for the intellect alone, but flows into the feeling and the will.
Today, particularly in education, people repeatedly insist that we should not teach children knowledge simply for the sake of knowledge, that we should also teach them to be capable, to be able to work; we should develop the will. Here we have one of those points where the goodwill of our contemporaries becomes evident. Certainly much goodwill exists when people today say that we should not simply have “knowledge schools,” but schools that develop a capacity to work, schools that develop capabilities. But goodwill alone does not suffice. We need the capacity to illuminate this goodwill, to brighten it with true insight. We do not achieve this insight, however, by simply saying that we should create “schools of capabilities” instead of “schools of knowledge.” The core of this insight is that now we must move more and more from the instinctive to the conscious. It is necessary not only to affect the will instinctively, not only that the teacher instinctively affect the pupil. The important thing is that concepts, ideas and imagination be allowed to flow from the teacher to the child. However, these must be concepts that are not simply concepts in thought, but concepts that can stimulate the will, that can satisfy the whole person. We are not concerned that people often stress that only the will should be developed, or only the feeling. No, what we are concerned with is that we gain the possibility of working to obtain such an insight, such concepts that have the power in themselves to go into the will, to develop the inner fire of the will. This is what we need today to heal the present mentality, to properly use the will in the second social pedagogical area.
The first social pedagogical area is what the recently founded Waldorf School is intended to serve, namely that area encompassing the elementary grades.2Translators’ note: In the Germany of 1919, many children finished formal schooling with the eighth grade and then entered an apprenticeship. Elementary education should prepare people for true social thinking today and in the near future. We shall see how much this is a question of spiritual science, a question of the path into supersensible worlds.
The other aspect of the social pedagogical question is to prepare people to learn from life. We do not fare well in life if we view it as a rigid and foreign object. We can place ourselves correctly in life only when every moment, every day, every week, every year becomes a source of learning for our further development. Regardless of how far we go in our schooling, we will have accomplished the most if, through this schooling, we have learned how to learn from life. If we find the proper way to place ourselves in relationship to everyone we meet, then they will become for us a source of further development through everything they are and through everything they consciously and unconsciously give us. In everything that we do, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, we experience ourselves such that everything we experience in our surroundings becomes a source of continuing further development. Life is a school for every healthy person.
However, neither of these social pedagogical realms, learning in school or learning from life, can meet the needs of society now and in the near future if they are not strengthened by what spiritual science can provide.
Today, people think we should educate children as “individuals.” We also find other fundamental thoughts represented in modern education. With one exception, I do not wish to go into the details of modern pedagogy. However, I do wish to mention that this pedagogy contains certain standards that are made clear to those who teach. The teachers are to educate according to these standards. Much goodwill lives in these standards also. People have done an exceptional amount of well-meant thinking in forming this pedagogy. However, what is necessary now and in the near future is a /iving pedagogy. What we need is a living pedagogy, derived from supersensible human understanding, that replaces an abstract pedagogy that sets up standards for teaching children.
This supersensible perception of human beings does not at all ignore sense-perceptible understanding—it takes it fully into account. The sense-perceptible view of human beings, with all its understanding of anatomy, physiology, and so forth, treats people as an abstraction. Supersensible perception adds the spirit-soul element, while at the same time taking sense-perceptible knowledge fully into account. It observes the whole person, with emphasis upon the development of the whole person. It can, therefore, concentrate upon the developing whole person at the time when the parents entrust him or her to the elementary school at about the age of seven. What developed in the child as a result of imitation requires the support of authority during this life-forming period. Only when we are able to look at people in such a way, can we see what truly lives in them. In that we observe such a change, we can see what is unfolding in people. If you notice in the right way, with sensitivity, what wants to develop in people at six or seven years of age, and if you have not become a teacher, but are a teacher, then an awareness for this most wonderful riddle awakens through the innermost living forces without the necessity of pedagogical standards—the developing person continuously offers him- or herself to your soul’s eye.
Here lies something that a true social pedagogical reformation, which must be the basis of a modern unified elementary school, must really take into account. Here we must say that it is essentially unimportant whether new teachers have really learned what is often taught as pedagogy, as special methods. What is important for future teachers is that, through their training, they have become capable of looking into the developing person. What is important is that they have acquired the skills that they can acquire through a thorough, real understanding of human beings. What is important is that they have become capable in the presence of each child and in each moment to newly form and re-form the educational task.
For the true teacher, pedagogy must be something living, something new at each moment. Everything that teachers carry in their souls as memories robs them of their originality. New insights into the nature of developing humans that allow the pedagogy to change and be alive in those people who teach must replace pedagogical norms. We could even say that the best pedagogy (stated radically) is one that the teacher continually forgets and that is continually reignited each time the teacher is in the presence of the children and sees in them the living powers of developing human nature. When an allencompassing interest in the secrets of the world, in the enigma of the world and in world views accompanies such an attitude, then within the teachers will live what enables them to give that part of themselves that should enter the being of the children.
How can the teacher’s inner nature become so alive in the way I have just described it? Certainly no longer through a way of thinking derived from science, but only when the teacher’s will is ignited through a science drawn from forces connected with human nature. The teachers who have absorbed what spiritual science knows about the supersensible nature of human beings, who have inwardly enlivened this, who in a living fashion carry within themselves a science founded upon those forces through which the child is to be educated—such teachers can make this knowledge into a living inner fire for teaching. The basis of such a pedagogical art is supersensible knowledge, that is, the same forces that from day to day, from week to week, from year to year bring about the growth and development of the child.
Think about it for a moment. Consider how close the sources of pedagogical art are to what grows in the child when supersensible knowledge controls and directs what the teacher brings to the child! We should not search for new abstract ideas nor clever new rules in what we refer to as social pedagogical effectiveness. What we should search for is that the living should replace the dead, the concrete should replace the abstract.
To demand such things today is much more necessary than people often imagine. It is remarkable that people cannot imagine that there is supersensible knowledge that acts upon sensible knowledge, that acts upon life and teaching, upon know-how and capabilities. Already people have begun to misunderstand the core of the Waldorf School, and thus they slander, often unconsciously, what we intend with the Waldorf School. People think the Waldorf School must be some kind of parochial school because those who stand at its cradle begin with spiritual science. They think that it is a school that teaches Anthroposophy to the children. They do not have any idea how deeply stuck they are in old ideas when they assume this, whether it be with a positive or negative attitude. We have absolutely no need to assert Anthroposophy, to assert it as a point of view by developing anthroposophical concepts and seeing to it that children learn these as they previously learned religion. That is not at all our task. We will continue with what we have already stated, namely that the Protestant and Catholic religion teachers shall teach the Protestant and Catholic religions. We will not set any obstacles in the way of the desire to give this religious instruction. We will keep our promises in this regard. We do not seek in any way to bring any new philosophical opinions into the school. We seek something else. Our viewpoint will result from spiritual science because it comes from human nature. We will pay attention to the way it develops human know-how, human capabilities, the way it directly flows into the human will. Our task lies in our pedagogical activities: how we act in a school, how we teach, how we plan the lesson and its goals, which teaching methods to use, how knowledge and philosophy affect the skill and capability of the teacher. These are our tasks.
For this reason, we will have to correct much that (out of goodwill, but without the necessary insight) people consider to be the goals and content of modern educational activity. For instance, people often say that we should emphasize visual aids.3Translators’ note: The reader should be aware that the “visual aids” and “illustrative materials” meant here are to be understood as actual materials in the classroom, as distinct from a verbal or written description of the object of discussion. Prior to this time illustrative material was rarely used in the classroom, and it was a somewhat controversial innovation in 1919. Yes, certainly, within boundaries, it is good to use illustrative material, that is, to teach children about things that we show them directly. But, we must not allow these materials to lead to a slide into the banality and triviality of superficial consideration. People always want to stoop to the level of the child, and then all kinds of trivialities result, like those we find when we read visual aid guides. We concerned ourselves with such things while forming the Waldorf School. There we could see how trivial the so-called visual aids are that are derived completely out of the materialistic attitude of our time. We could see how forced instruction is when the teacher stoops to the child’s level of understanding, when the teacher is not to teach the child anything other than what the child can easily comprehend.
Now, if you only teach children what they can understand, then you neglect what can be the most beautiful thing in human life. If you always want to stoop to the level of what the children can already comprehend, then you do not know what it means later in life, perhaps at the age of thirty or thirty-five, to look back upon what you were taught in school. You do not understand what it means to have been taught something that you did not fully comprehend because you were not yet mature enough. But it comes up again. Now you notice that you are more mature, because you now understand it. Such a re-living of what has been taught forms the real connection between the time in school and the whole rest of life. It is immensely valuable to hear much in school that we cannot fully comprehend until we re-experience it later in life. We rob the children of this possibility when, with banal instruction, we stoop to the level of the child’s understanding.
What then is the task of the teacher who wants to bring the children something they can absorb, but perhaps will understand only after many decades? Teachers must have the necessary inner life forces so that through their personality, through what they put into the teaching, they can give the children something they cannot yet fully understand. A relationship exists between the teacher and the children through which the teacher can bring things to the children. Things can be brought to the children through the way in which they live in the teacher, because the children feel the desire to experience the world that is aglow within the teacher. That is why the children can grasp them. It is tremendously important that the teachers become leaders in this way, that through the fire that lives in them, they become a wellspring for what the children will carry in their own lives. Compare this with how the banal instruction children receive dims with time.
There are many other examples to show that pedagogy must be something living, something stirred up in the teachers out of an understanding of human beings obtained through human capacities. More than anyone else, the teacher needs an understanding of humanity based upon a supersensible view of human beings. If, in teaching, we would use what comes from a supersensible world view and understanding of humanity, we could immediately remove all abstractions so that the teaching would come from the practical.
There are people today who think that they are practical, who think that they stand in practical life, but it is their “practicality,” which is really only routine, that caused the terrible misery and misfortune that resulted in the war, and in which we still find ourselves today. Instead of obtaining an insight into what supersensible knowledge could achieve for education, these people say supersensible knowledge has nothing to do with the true practicalities of life. They have conjured up these miserable times because they have always said this, because, in reproachable carelessness, they have thrown out the true supersensible content of practical life. We have scarcely caught our breath, and now these people want to continue this stupid practice by kicking to death every truly earnest desire for improvement. If those people who absolutely do not want to see what is necessary for our time are again victorious, then in a short time we will again have the same misery that started in 1914. Those people who wish to crush everything supersensible in the activities they so slander, which are in reality so practical, are exactly those people who have led us into this misery. That is what we need to see clearly today.
I would not have spoken these serious words had not the terrible croakings of doom again arisen where we want to create something quite practical, like the Waldorf School. We should have learned something from the terrible events of the last four to five years, and we should progress. We must keep a sharp eye on those who do not want to progress, who want to begin again where they left off in 1914. We need not worry that they will keep a sharp eye on us—that they will do for sure. But, we must also keep a sharp eye on them. All people must unite who have a sense that something must happen today that, on the one hand, really originates out of the true spirit, and, on the other hand, is capable of affecting serious practical life.
For such very practical reasons, what is often an empty slogan, particularly concerning pedagogical questions, must for once be handled with objective seriousness. We must take into account, for instance (we paid particular attention to such things in the seminar for the Waldorf School faculty), that around nine years of age something important ends and something new begins with children. Until the age of nine, children are strongly entwined with their surroundings. The imitative principle is still enmeshed in the authoritative principle. The possibility of developing the feeling of self first begins at the age of nine, so that, for instance, scientific facts, nature studies of the plant and animal world, can be brought to the child. At the same time, the stage between seven and nine years of age is such that we do well not to bring the children anything that is taught out of convention, that is not basic and does not obviously flow out of human nature.
We must gradually lead children into reading and writing. Anyone can see that the letters we have today are something conventional. (With Egyptian hieroglyphics, it was different.) That means we must teach writing starting from drawing. At first we do not pay any attention to the shapes of the letters, but draw forms. We must begin basic drawing and painting, along with music, in the lowest grades. We must derive the whole education from the child’s artistic capabilities. The children’s artistic capabilities touch their entire being. They touch the child’s will and feeling, and then, through will and feeling, the intellect. We then go on. We continue with drawing and painting to motivate the will through artistic instruction. We go on to writing and develop letters out of the drawn forms. Only then comes reading—it is even more intellectual than writing. We develop reading out of writing. I am giving these details so you can see that spiritual science is not off in the clouds but enters into all details of practical instruction. A living understanding of humanity, which must replace an abstract pedagogy, leads into all the details, into the ways in which we teach mathematics, writing, and languages.
So much for the special area of instructional pedagogy.
The social aspect of pedagogy encompasses all of practical living. After we have finished school, we go out into “real life,” but our conventional education creates a gulf between us and life. Thus we see that there is something instinctive in the great questions of humanity. Although these questions address the needs of life, there is no insight for solving them.
I would like to take note of another question that has concerned modern civilization for some time, the so-called feminist question, namely, what forms the gulf between men and women. People are correct in trying to close this gap, but they cannot close it when they do not really understand what is common between men and women. If they only pay attention to what they can learn about human beings in the physical world and from the modern scientific way of thinking, the difference between men and women remains extreme. We will first bridge the abyss between men and women when we bring the differences in perception and ways of working in the world into balance. We will attain this balance through what we can arrive at through the knowledge, will and feeling that exist in the forces that form the basis of human nature. What men do not have, but women do, gives men a certain inclination; and what women do not have, but men do, gives women a certain inclination. During the time when people are physically female, they are spiritually male, and during the time they are physically male, they are spiritually female. If what can come into our society from spiritual science would permeate our culture, then the ground would be prepared for such things as the so-called feminist question. We can apply this to numerous questions, but I only want to remark about one other.
People cry out for organization. It is obvious that they cry out for it since the complicated relationships of modern social life require organization. I have said much in my lectures about the nature of such structure. However, people think that we need only to organize things according to current scientific principles, according to modern socio-political thinking, without spiritual science. Lenin and Trotsky organize, Lunatscharsky organizes according to these principles. They have placed economic life into a mechanistic form, and they want to do the same with spiritual life. Neither the stories of various people who judge out of their impressions, nor what journalists and other people who have recently been in Russia tell, is important. What we can use are Lenin’s writings. They show anyone with insight what to expect: the organizational death of everything that is a true source of humanity, of what lies in the individual human being and in human nature. No greater foe of true human progress exists than what is now happening in the East.
Why is this? Because they absolutely ignore what can come from spiritual development, namely true social pedagogical life forces. We must organize, but we must be conscious that although we want to organize, people must live in this organization. People must live in this organization and have the opportunity to teach what the inner source of human nature is, what is hidden after people have grown, what we can again bring out of the sleeping powers of their human nature. Not everyone needs to be a clairvoyant and experience what can be experienced through the awakened powers of human nature, but everyone can be interested in what humanity can achieve through these living human forces.
When people take interest in such things, then a new capability awakens in them. This is a capability we can best characterize when we bring to mind an area where people already have somewhat weakened sensibilities. This capability can be likened to what a language is to all the people connected by it. To discover the spirit living in the language, those who speak one language must first understand the genius, the wonderful artistic structure of the language, even though they already speak it. They need to understand the spirit emanating from the language that permeates the people and forms the language into a unified whole. In that we learn to speak, we absorb, not consciously, but instinctively and unconsciously, with every word and with every connotation, something that reveals to us the genius of the language in a mysterious way. Social life is something that lives in many instincts. Language has always been one of the most wonderful social instruments. Only, in modern times, as we go from East to West, language has become increasingly abstract. People feel less and less what the sounds of the language say to the heart and to the head, and particularly the connections that the language forms to speak to the heart and to the head. People feel less and less the mysterious way in which the genius of the language makes impressions upon them.
Many other things that touch people as does the genius of language will become effective if a general human development becomes more widespread through the activity of the elementary school—acting not as a parochial school, but through rationally formed instruction. Then when people meet one another, they can unite through speech. Every conversation, every relationship to another person, becomes a source for the further development of our soul. What we do in the world that affects other people becomes a source of our own further development. We can first develop the elements of communication between people if we meet other people with those feelings aroused in us. We can develop this communication if we do not follow abstract modern science, but take up the living fire within us. This living fire can come to us from a science that is connected to what in human nature allows people to grow until twenty years of age, and from then on can lead to a development of supersensible knowledge.
The school of life can follow formal schooling when those forces that make us students of life are ignited. We will meet people in one or another abstract organization, in a political or in an economic organization. We will feel a bond, and see that we are connected with them in a very special way. Alongside those connections formed out of external needs, intimate mysterious connections between one soul and another can form in the future if the results of true spiritual development live in human souls. Human experience will be that you have lived through something with a person in a previous earthly life, and now you meet again. Inner ties lying deep in our souls will form spiritual-soul connections out of external life in the cold, sober organizations that we do not really need.Even though I have described the three forms of the social organism since spring, the spiritual sphere, the rights-political sphere and the economic sphere, I must emphasize that these are three external forms. Inside these three external forms will live the intimate inner connections forged from one human soul to another. People will recognize each other more clearly than they do today. If, in place of antisocial desires, those social motives that are the basis of true social life are present, then the modern scientific way of thinking can at last become fully useful for humanity. Through this scientific way of thinking we will be able to properly master the external lifeless nature that appears as technology and other things. The ethical, moral forces that can be kindled by the spiritual will derived from spiritual science will take care that the results of technology are useful to human beings. An inner structure that carries people and forms human life will come into the external forms of the social organism. Without this inner structure we cannot develop a fruitful external social form.
That is what I wanted to mention to you today, that spiritual science as we think of it here is not in any way abstract, is not something floating in the clouds, is not, as some people claim, metaphysical. It is something that streams directly into human will and makes people more adept and more capable of living. This remains unrecognized by those who refuse to see the present need for our spiritual science. They will also refuse to see that something like the Waldorf School has been formed, not arbitrarily, but out of truly practical life.
Can we expect much from those people setting the tone today? This spring and summer I repeatedly mentioned in my social lectures (I only mention this as characteristic of much of the modern intellectual attitude) that among the issues of the working class is that, in the future, work must not be a commodity. In a neighboring city I spoke about the “commodity character” of work. I think that people need only the tiniest bit of common sense to understand the general intent in the words “commodity character.” This morning I received a newspaper published in that neighboring city. The lead editorial closes with the sentence, “I am confused by the sentence that ‘work must be freed from its true character’”4Translator’s note: Steiner used the German word Warencharakter (commodity character); the editor understood him to say wahren Charakter (true character). Their pronunciation is nearly identical. Yes, that's possible today. Today it is possible for people who are unable to understand something so clearly related to modern culture as “commodity character” to make judgments about such things. Someone like this could not in an entire life have possibly heard of the “commodity character of human work.” How do such people live in the present time? When it is possible to become so out of touch with reality, it is no wonder that we cannot get together in modern social life.
This is not only possible for people such as the writer of this editorial, it is also possible for those people who think they know everything about practical life. It is possible for people who, at every opportunity, look down upon what appears to them to be idealistic. They do not speak about real life any differently than people who see a U-shaped piece of iron and are told it is a magnet. “No,” they answer, “this is used to shoe horses.” These modern people who wish to shut supersensible knowledge out of practical life are like the person who sees a horseshoe-shaped magnet only as a horseshoe. They do not think anything can be true that does not directly meet their limited powers of understanding.
Today there are many more people than we think who hinder social progress. There are many people who do not want to understand that we cannot simply say that the last four or five years have brought something terrible to the people of Europe—something more terrible than ever before existed in historical times. To this we must add that now things must occur out of a depth of thought that people have never before reached in the course of what we call history. We have come to a time in which people think completely abstractly. Most abstract are the political opinions and programs that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century and that grew out of a modern scientific education. People do not want to understand how abstract, how foreign are the means they wish to use to come to grips with life. People think that they are practical. For example, people see today that in world trade money runs through their fingers, that the German mark is worth less day by day. And from day to day we do exactly those things that, of course, cause the value of the mark to fall. “Practical” people have again taken the helm. So long as people do not see that truly practical life does not lie where they, in 1914, looked for it, but in the understanding of the ideals of life, so long will nothing get better. People today are not modest enough to admit that things will get better only if they come to a deepening in their insight. Goodwill will not do it alone, that is the cancer of our times. It will be necessary that people see more and more what the true basis of spiritual cognition is. Spiritual cognition, because it is based upon the development of the same powers that work in the formation of healthy human beings, can place them in social pedagogical life. What we need today is spirituality—not a naive spirituality, not a spirituality lost in the clouds, not a metaphysical spirituality, but true spirituality that affects practical life, true spirituality that can master the problems of life. We also need practical insight into life; we need to be in life, but in such a way that our view of life kindles a desire to bring this spirituality into life.
From a spiritual-scientific point of view, people must understand one thing, otherwise no progress will be possible in our unfortunate times. The axiom must be:
Seek the truly practical material life, but seek it such that it does not numb you to the Spirit working in it.
Seek the Spirit, but seek it not in supersensible lust, out of supersensible egotism; seek it because you want to become selfless in practical life, selfless in the material world.
Turn to the old maxim: Never Spirit without matter, never matter without Spirit!
Do this so that you can say, “We want to perform all material deeds in the light of the Spirit, and we want to seek the light of the Spirit in such a way that it develops warmth within us for our practical deeds.”
Spirit brought by us to matter,
Matter wrought by us to its revelation
Driving the Spirit out;
Matter receiving from us Spirit revealed,
Spirit forged by us back into matter—
These create that Living Being,
Bringing humanity to true progress,
Progress only longed-for
By the best desires in the depths of human souls.
Übersinnliche Erkenntnis Und Sozial-Päadagogische Lebenskraft
Wenn man in der gegenwärtigen ernsten Zeit hinblickt auf das, was die Menschen angesichts des Ernstes dieser Zeit für notwendig halten, was sie sich vorstellen an notwendigen Neueinrichtungen, an notwendigen Umwandlungen der unhaltbaren Verhältnisse, dann bemerkt man, daß ja gewiß in mancher Hinsicht viel guter Wille bei den Menschen vorhanden ist, sich nach der einen oder anderen Richtung hin einer Neueinrichtung zu widmen und mitzuarbeiten an der Umwandlung dessen, was der Umwandlung bedürftig erscheint. Allein, man wird nicht umhin können - gerade wenn man von diesen zunächst so sehr ins Auge fallenden Umständen der gegenwärtigen Zeitkultur sich Rechenschaft gibt , sich zu sagen: So viel guter Wille ist da, und auch in diesem guten Willen waltende, manchmal ganz schöne Gedanken [sind da. Aber] sogleich, nachdem sie entstanden sind, verpuffen sie, kommen jedenfalls nicht zu dem heute so notwendigen intensiven Ausleben.
Geisteswissenschaft, wie sie hier gemeint ist, jene Geisteswissenschaft, welche in anthroposophischer Art sucht, den Weg für die gegenwärtige Menschheit zu übersinnlichen Erkenntnissen zu bahnen, sie möchte seit Jahrzehnten gerade da in die gegenwärtige Kultur eingreifen, wo der Mangel dieser Kultur zu bemerken ist: an dem erlahmenden guten Willen und an den erlahmenden, ganz schönen Gedanken, die in diesem guten Willen leben. Denn die hier von mir seit Jahren vertretene anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft möchte gerade auf das hinweisen, was der Gegenwart so notwendig ist und was zu gleicher Zeit Menschen dieser Gegenwart mit so großer Sympathie erfassen oder aber mit großer Antipathie eben einfach zurückweisen. Sie möchte hinweisen auf das, was auf der einen Seite Rechnung trägt dem, was Naturwissenschaft so groß gemacht hat, und auf der anderen Seite Rechnung trägt dem, wofür Naturwissenschaft, wie wir gerade heute besprechen wollen, kein Mittel hat, also auf das, was menschliche Willenskultur, menschliche Gemütskultur ist.
Wir leben ja in einer Zeit, in welcher sich der Mensch keineswegs mehr in der alten Weise, also instinktiv, den Impulsen seines Willens hingeben kann. Man mag noch so viele Vorurteile ins Feld führen, wenn es sich darum handelt, heute zuzugestehen, daß gerade unsere Zeitkultur dadurch zu charakterisieren ist, daß das alte, instinktive Leben in vollbewußtes Leben immer mehr und mehr sich überführen muß. Es ist dies eine geschichtliche, es ist dies die bedeutendste geschichtliche Tatsache, die in der Gegenwart geradezu zur Krisis geführt hat: daß sich alte instinktive Antriebe in der menschlichen Natur immer mehr und mehr umwandeln müssen in bewußte Antriebe.
Viel ist in dieser Richtung hin in den letzten drei bis vier Jahrhunderten bewirkt worden durch das, was in die allgemeine Zeitkultur und Zeitrichtung fließt aus dem, was Naturwissenschaft groß gemacht hat. Allein, gerade wer heute in die Lage kommt, über Einrichtungen zu sinnen, die herausgewachsen sind aus den wichtigsten Bedürfnissen der Zeit, der muß dazu kommen, das Ungenügende jener Zeitbildung zu empfinden, die nur aus naturwissenschaftlicher Denkrichtung und Denkungsart kommt. Indem versucht wird, gerade in dieser Zeit, in dieser Stadt, in einem gewissen begrenzten Sinn ein soziales Problem zu lösen, ein soziales Problem, das von größerer Wichtigkeit ist, als man vielleicht zunächst glauben möchte, darf einmal am heutigen Abend gerade auf die Schwierigkeiten, die der Lösung eines solchen sozialen Problems entgegenstehen, hingedeutet werden.
Es ist ja gelungen, durch jene wirklich einsichtvolle Art, welcher unser Freund, Herr Molt, durch Jahre hindurch gegenüber der anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft bewiesen hat, nunmehr bis dahin zu kommen, aus dem sozialen Denken für unsere Zeit heraus die sogenannte Waldorfschule zu begründen, jene Schule, welche zunächst für die Kinder der in der Firma Waldorf-Astoria Arbeitenden bestimmt ist und für einige andere Kinder, die sich zunächst angliedern. Diese Schule zeigt ja schon in dem Äußeren ihres Entstehens das ganz moderne Gepräge: Angegliedert an eine industrielle Unternehmung, muß sie in eminentestem Sinne auf die allerpraktischsten Bedürfnisse der Menschen, die ihre Kinder dieser Schule anvertrauen, Rücksicht nehmen. Und man möchte sagen: Es ist symbolisch, daß diese Schule entsteht in Anknüpfung, in lokaler Anknüpfung an den Industrialismus, der gerade die wichtigsten sozialen Probleme in unsere Zeit hineingeworfen hat.
Bei der Begründung dieser Schule kamen für die Lehrerschaft, für die ich den einleitenden seminaristischen Kursus durch Wochen zu leiten hatte, sozial-pädagogische Aufgaben im Sinne der gegenwärtigen Zeitkultur in Betracht. Unsere Zeitbildung fußt ja mehr, als man denkt, ganz und gar auf dem, was sich als Vorstellungsart — ich deutete es schon an - für die Erkenntnis der äußeren Natur ausgelebt hat. Wiederholt habe ich, ich darf schon sagen durch Jahrzehnte hindurch, hier betont, daß der Wert und die Bedeutung naturwissenschaftlicher Denkungsweise jedenfalls von der hier gemeinten Geisteswissenschaft voll gewürdigt werden. Dennoch aber muß immer wieder betont werden: Gerade weil diese anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft mehr als die Naturwissenschaft selbst das würdigt, was in der Naturwissenschaft lebt, deshalb muß diese anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft gerade wegen dieser naturwissenschaftlichen Gesinnung über das Naturwissenschaftliche hinausgehen. Und wiederholt habe ich es ja hier betont, auf welchem anderen Wege die Geisteswissenschaft zu ihren Erkenntnissen kommt als die gegenwärtige Naturwissenschaft. Wiederholt habe ich darauf hingewiesen, wie durch den Weg dieser Geisteswissenschaft wirklich in die übersinnliche Welt hineingegangen werden kann. Ich habe immer wieder angedeutet das soll heute nur mit ein paar Worten berührt werden -, wie durch die Entwicklung innerer menschlicher Kräfte, die sonst in der Menschennatur schlummern, ein Weg gebahnt wird, so daß der Mensch - geradeso, wie er durch seine Sinne die physische Umwelt erkennt, wie er durch seinen Verstand, durch Kombination die Naturgesetze in der physischen Umwelt finden kann - durch andere Kräfte, die entwickelt werden können, hinschauen kann auf die geistige Welt, in der wir leben, die immer um uns ist und die nur deshalb eine unbekannte ist, weil dem Menschen im gewöhnlichen Leben die Empfangsorgane fehlen, die geistigen Sinne nicht aufgeschlossen sind.
Ich möchte nun heute einmal die Frage erörtern: Welche Kräfte gebraucht denn eigentlich diese anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft, um in die übersinnliche Welt hineinzuschauen? O, sie gebraucht sehr gesunde, durchaus normale Kräfte der Menschennatur. Wer tiefere Einblicke wirklich tun will in die Art und Weise, wie diese anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft vorgeht, dem wird es vergehen, davon zu sprechen, daß sie irgendwie auf ungesunde Kräfte baut, wie ihr von verleumderischer Seite immer wiederum vorgeworfen wird. Man kann nämlich in sehr einfacher Art auf die Quellen dieser anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft und ihren Weg in die übersinnliche Welt hinweisen.
Wenn Sie mein Buch «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» in die Hand nehmen, dann werden Sie dort die Stufen der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis beschrieben finden, zu denen sich der Mensch erheben kann durch die Entwicklung gewisser, in ihm schlummernder Kräfte: Erstens die imaginative Erkenntnisstufe, zweitens die Erkenntnisstufe der Inspiration, drittens die Erkenntnisstufe der wahren Intuition. Nun, woher nimmt Geisteswissenschaft die Kräfte, die funktionieren in so etwas wie Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition? — Wir können darauf hinweisen, daß in der kindlichen Entwicklung des Menschen Kräfte walten, welche der menschlichen Organisation zugrunde liegen. Diese Kräfte, sie liegen im späteren Lebensalter, wenn der Mensch eine normale Größe erlangt hat, wenn er sein Wachstum vollendet hat, gewissermaßen brach. Ich habe in diesem Frühling hier schon darauf hingewiesen, welches die Epochen menschlicher Entwicklung sind. Ich habe darauf hingewiesen, wie in einem ersten Zeitraum des Lebens der Mensch vorzugsweise ein nachahmendes Wesen ist, wie er instinktiv hineinwächst in alles, was die Menschen in seiner Umgebung machen, und es in seinen Bewegungen, in seinen Lauten, in seiner Sprache, ja selbst in seinen Gedanken nachmacht. Diese nachahmende Bewegung, die reicht ungefähr bis zum Zahnwechsel, bis zum siebenten Lebensjahr ungefähr. Dann beginnt für den, der die menschliche Natur genauer beobachten kann, etwas ganz anderes tätig zu sein: Das Bedürfnis der menschlichen Natur, vom sechsten, siebenten Lebensjahr bis zur Geschlechtsreife sich anzulehnen an die Menschen, die schon Erfahrung haben, an Erwachsene, die in ihrer Umgebung sind, an die das Kind hingebungsvoll glauben kann; dann beginnt in dem Kinde das Bedürfnis, unter dem Einfluß verehrter Autoritäten zu handeln. Gegenüber dem früheren Nachahmungstrieb tritt jetzt diese Sehnsucht hervor, unter dem Einfluß verehrter Autoritäten zu handeln. — Jene Selbständigkeit dem Leben gegenüber, die auf eigene Urteilskraft aufgebaut ist, jene Selbständigkeit, die darauf beruht, in alle Dinge lebensvoll unterzutauchen, sie entwickelt sich im Grunde genommen erst mit der Geschlechtsreife im vierzehnten Lebensjahr bis zum zwanzigsten, einundzwanzigsten Jahr hin.
Das sind drei deutlich voneinander geschiedene Lebensepochen der menschlichen Jugend. Nur wer sein gesundes Urteil verlegt durch allerlei Vorurteile, kann übersehen, wie jene Kräfte, welche bis zum siebenten Jahr als Formkräfte wirken - denn bis dahin ist die Formung des Leibes ungefähr abgeschlossen, die Formen werden dann noch größer, aber das Plastische ist ausgebildet bis zum siebenten Jahr -, dann mehr innerlich wirken, indem sie als Lebenskräfte wirken, den Menschen erstarken machen, aber insbesondere als innere Wachstumskräfte wirken bis zum vierzehnten Jahre hin. Und sie wirken so, daß sie vom vierzehnten bis zum zwanzigsten Jahr innerlich die Organe kräftigen, welche auf das Verständnis der Umwelt gerichtet sind beim Kinde, also jene Organe, welche fähig sind, sich in die Umwelt zu vertiefen. Es arbeitet das Geistig-Seelische am Physisch-Körperlichen des Menschen in verschiedener Art bis zum siebenten Jahr, bis zum vierzehnten Jahr, bis zum einundzwanzigsten Jahr. Kräfte, die ganz deutlich für den Unbefangenen geistig-seelische Kräfte sind, arbeiten sich heraus, um die Organe des Menschen zu beherrschen und sie in der Entwicklung weiterzubringen.
Diese Kräfte sind also da, diese Kräfte, die gewissermaßen bis zum siebenten Jahr hin jenen bedeutungsvollen Abschluß hervorbringen in der menschlichen Organisation, die herauskristallisieren aus der menschlichen Natur die zweiten Zähne! Und dasjenige Geheimnisvolle in der menschlichen Organisation, was bis zum vierzehnten Jahr hin wirkt und zusammenhängt mit dem Wachstum, der Entfaltung, das ist doch da, das wirkt! Nun fragen wir: Wenn wir in den Zwanzigerjahren die Organisation abgeschlossen haben — wo ist denn das, was bis dahin vom Geistig-Seelischen heraus in unsere physisch-leibliche Organisation hineingewirkt hat? Das ist da, das bleibt auch da! Aber geradeso, wie die Kräfte, die wir vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen zu unserer Tagesarbeit und Tagesbeobachtung verwenden, vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen in uns schlafen und schlummern, so schlummern vom Beginn der Zwanzigerjahre ab in der menschlichen Natur die Kräfte, die in den Kinder- und Jugendjahren die Organisation durchfeuert haben, die Organisation durchglüht haben, so daß aus dem Kinde ein Erwachsener geworden ist, mit alledem, was dazu gehört. Wer den ganzen Menschen ins Auge faßt, der weiß: In dem Augenblick, wo die Organisation diesen Punkt erreicht, da treten gleichsam zurück in das Innere der Menschennatur die Kräfte, die im Kinde, im Jüngling, in der Jungfrau gewirkt haben. Diese Kräfte schlummern dann. Sie können erweckt werden, jene Kräfte, welche vom vierzehnten Jahr bis zum zwanzigsten, einundzwanzigsten Jahr in uns gewöhnlich die beobachteten Vorgänge hervorgebracht haben, durch die wir allmählich Verständnis gewinnen für unsere Umgebung und durch die die Organe in uns ausgebildet werden, die erst nach dem Auftreten der Geschlechtsreife ausgebildet werden können; Organe, die nicht nur einseitig auf die Geschlechtsliebe gehen, sondern darauf, daß wir uns liebevoll in die ganze Menschheit, in die ganze Welt vertiefen können. Dieses liebevolle Vertiefen erst gibt uns das wirkliche Verständnis der Welt. Was wir bis zum einundzwanzigsten Jahr noch zum Wachstum, zum Aufbau von inneren Organen verwenden, das wird, möchte man sagen, nüchtern, wird bloß urteilsmäßig, verstandesmäßig im Beginn der Zwanzigerjahre, Da hört eine gewisse geistig-seelische Kraft auf, zu organisieren. Da wird sie bloß imaginäre, innere Kraft, seelische Kraft. Da ist sie nicht mehr so stark wie früher, als sie eingreifen mußte in die Organisation. Findet man sie, diese in der Menschennatur schlummernde Kraft, die vorher eine bildende Kraft war und es jetzt nach dem zwanzigsten Jahr nicht mehr ist, und bildet man sie aus, so daß sie vorhanden ist nach dem erreichten zwanzigsten Jahr wie früher, da sie am Leibe wirkte, dann wird sie zur imaginativen Kraft. Dann erlangt der Mensch die Fähigkeit, nicht nur in abstrakten Begriffen die Welt zu sehen, sondern in Bildern, die so lebendig sind, wie die Träume sind, und die Wirklichkeit bedeuten wie sonst unsere abstrakten Begriffe. Das, was uns befähigt, die Welt in solchen Bildern zu sehen, das, was uns befähigt, die erste Stufe der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis zu erreichen, das ist dieselbe Kraft, die vorher im gesund sich entwickelnden Menschen für die Liebeskraft wirke, die aus der menschlichen Natur hervorgeholt werden kann und die tiefer hineinführt in die Umgebung des Menschen als der gewöhnliche Verstand und die gewöhnlichen Sinne.
Und dann kann man weitergehen, denn auch diejenigen Kräfte sind schlummernd im späteren Menschen, welche ungefähr vom siebenten Jahr ab, also vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, die wesentlichen Vorgänge im menschlichen Organismus bewirken. Diese Kräfte schlummern tiefer unter der Oberfläche des gewöhnlichen Seelenlebens als jene Kräfte, die ich eben als die imaginativen bezeichnet habe. Wenn diese Kräfte hervorgeholt werden, die gewissermaßen im späteren Menschen unbeschäftigte geworden sind gegenüber der leiblichen Organisation, wenn diese geistig-seelischen Kräfte heraufgeholt werden aus ihrem Schlummer-, ihrem Schlafzustand, dann sind sie die Kräfte der Inspiration. Und dann sind sie diejenigen Kräfte, die uns vermitteln, daß die Bilder, von denen ich gerade sprach bei der imaginativen Erkenntnis, sich mit geistigem Gehalt erfüllen, daß wirklich diese Bilder die auftreten wie Traumbilder, aber nicht Traumbilder sind — eine geistige Wirklichkeit wiedergeben, die außer uns in unserer Umgebung ist.
Und wenn wir gar die noch tiefer in der menschlichen Natur schlummernden Kräfte heraufholen, die Kräfte, die in der ersten Kindheit die organisierenden sind, die von der Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel als die stärksten gegenüber der menschlichen Organisation gewirkt haben, dann aber auch am tiefsten sich zurückgezogen haben vom äußeren leiblich-physischen Leben, wenn wir diese Kräfte für die späteren Lebenszeiten heraufholen und mit ihnen durchsetzen, was Imagination, Inspiration ist, dann bekommen wir die intuitiven Kräfte der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis: Kräfte, durch die der Mensch fähig wird, in die Wirklichkeit der geistigen Welt unterzutauchen, wie er durch die Sinne und den gewöhnlichen, an den Leib gebundenen Willen in die physische Welt untertaucht.
In drei Stufen, durch Imagination, durch Inspiration und durch Intuition gelangt der Mensch in die übersinnliche Welt hinein. Das, was er anwendet als solche Kräfte, sind keine abnormen Kräfte, sondern sind gerade die allernormalsten. Es sind diejenigen Kräfte, durch die der Mensch in gesunder Weise von seiner Geburt bis in die Zwanzigerjahre hinein sich erst entwickelt und die dann brach liegen gelassen werden, die aber hervorgeholt werden können und dann, wenn sie nicht beschäftigt sind, uns zu organisieren, angewendet werden können, um uns die geistige Welt zu offenbaren, zu erschließen.
Damit habe ich Sie auf die Quelle derjenigen Kräfte hingewiesen, welche den Weg in die übersinnliche Welt hinein bahnen wollen. Wer diesen Weg ernst zu nehmen vermag, der wird zu unterscheiden wissen, was dieser richtig geben kann gegenüber dem, was bloße Naturwissenschaft, bloße naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis zu geben vermag.
Und warum betone ich denn eigentlich immerfort diese naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis? Man hätte heute nicht so oft die Notwendigkeit, die naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis und die Gesinnung, die aus ihr fließt, zu betonen, wenn das, was heute namentlich öffentliches Denken ist und was auch eingreift in das Soziale und in die Sozialpolitik, nicht ganz nachgebildet wäre der naturwissenschaftlichen Vorstellungsart. Gewiß, hier liegt etwas vor, worauf sehr viele Menschen noch gar nicht achten, was aber beachtet werden muß, wenn man wirklich etwas zur Gesundung unserer krank gewordenen sozialen Zeitkultur finden will. Man muß sich darüber klar werden: Alles menschliche Denken ist so sehr durchsetzt mit dem, was durch das naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellen heraufgezogen ist, daß, wenn heute der Mensch anfängt, über etwas anderes zu denken, er die naturwissenschaftliche Denkungsweise und Gesinnung hineinträgt.
Was ist denn schließlich das sozial-politische Denken in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und bis ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein, bis heute? Und was ist es im Grunde genommen heute noch, was uns als sozialistische Theorie überall entgegentritt? Es ist ein soziales Denken nach dem Muster des naturwissenschaftlichen Denkens. Warum erscheint uns denn dieses soziale Denken, wie ich es in diesen Vorträgen hier oftmals charakterisieren mußte, so unfruchtbar? Weil dieses soziale Denken — nehmen Sie zum Beispiel das marxistisch-englisch-sozialistische Denken - ganz und gar durchseucht ist von nur naturwissenschaftlicher Gesinnung, und weil die naturwissenschaftliche Gesinnung auf ein Gebiet angewendet wird, wo diese naturwissenschaftliche Gesinnung eben nichts ausrichten kann.
Denn beachten Sie doch einmal, was das wichtigste Kennzeichen dessen ist, was ich Ihnen heute angegeben habe als übersinnliche Erkenntnisse im Sinne der anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft. Da ist das wichtigste Kennzeichen, daß sich diese übersinnliche Erkenntnis solcher Kräfte bedient, die eng zusammenhängen mit dem, was der Mensch ist. Wie könnte man sich denn überhaupt mehr mit der menschlichen Natur zusammenhängender Kräfte bedienen - für irgendein Ideal, für irgend etwas, was zu verwirklichen ist -, als wenn man die Kräfte dazu verwendet, die der menschlichen Organisation selbst zugrunde liegen, dem zugrunde liegen, was wir als Mensch hier sind, und die wir aus ihrem Versteck in dem Moment herausholen, da sie der Mensch zu seiner Organisation nicht mehr braucht, und die wir dann anwenden zur Erkenntnis.
Demgegenüber ist das, was die gewöhnliche naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellungsart und das heutige sozial-politische Denken sind, ein Leben in Begriffen, die abstrakt sind, die nur — so könnte man sagen — mit der Organisation des menschlichen Kopfes erfaßt werden, von den Kräften, die der Mensch noch übrig behält, wenn er in den Zwanzigerjahren seine volle Organisation erreicht hat und die Kräfte schlafen oder schlummern läßt, die viel realer sind, weil sie an seiner Organisation selbst arbeiten.
Das, was wir gewinnen in den Begriffen, von denen uns die Naturwissenschaft erzählt und die wir heute so gerne auch auf die soziale Wissenschaft, ja auch auf das sozial-pädagogische Wirken anwenden möchten, diese Begriffe und Ideen - überhaupt alles das, was wir auf solche Weise für unseren Seeleninhalt gewinnen -, das nimmt sich gegenüber dem, was ich Ihnen heute charakterisiert habe als den Inhalt der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis, nur wie die Spiegelbilder einer Wirklichkeit aus. Und in der Tat: Alles, was wir an Begriffen gewinnen, wenn unser Verstand kombiniert über die Sinnesempfindungen und Sinneswahrnehmungen, und auch alles das, was wir wissen von unseren Willensimpulsen, alles das ist eigentlich nur wie ein Schatten, ein Spiegelbild gegenüber dem, was so eng verwoben ist mit menschlichem Werden und Weben und Wesen wie die uns selbst organisierenden Kräfte. Daher der abstrakte Charakter, der vom Menschen losgelöste Charakter dessen, was durch naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise zustande kommt. Und man ist ja stolz darauf, solche naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen, bei denen der Mensch mit seinem Willen nichts zu tun hat, die, wie man sagt, «ganz objektiv» sind. Geisteswissenschaft strebt danach, nicht den Menschen herauszuwerfen aus der Welt, wenn es sich um Erkenntnisse handelt, sondern ihn gerade hereinzuziehen, indem sie durch diejenigen Kräfte zu ihren Erkenntnissen kommen will, die die Organisationskräfte des Menschen selbst sind. Daher kommt es, daß wir überall wahrnehmen können: Naturwissenschaftliches Vorstellen und auch was nach diesem Muster heute sozial-politisches Vorstellen ist, befriedigt die menschliche Wißbegierde, befriedigt die Anforderungen des Verstandes, aber — das ist deutlich — diese Vorstellungen haben keine Kraft, den Willen des Menschen zu moussieren, zu durchsetzen, zu durchfeuern. Und würde diese naturwissenschaftliche Bildung in ihrer Einseitigkeit immer größer und größer, immer mehr alleinherrschend werden, so würde schließlich die menschliche Willenskraft vollständig erlahmen müssen. In unserer Zeit muß beachtet werden, daß die unter dem Einfluß naturwissenschaftlicher Gesinnung schon erlahmenden Willenskräfte angefeuert werden durch etwas, was in die Willenskräfte hinein befeuernd fließen kann, weil es aus der menschlichen Organisation herausgeholt worden ist als geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnis vom Menschen selbst.
Sehen Sie, das ist dasjenige, was Geisteswissenschaft will und was Geisteswissenschaft, wie sie hier gemeint ist, auch vollbringen kann: eine Erkenntnis bewirken, die nicht bloß für den Verstand da ist, sondern die in Gemüt und Wille übergeht.
Gewiß, man verlangt heute ja immer wieder und wieder, besonders auf pädagogischem Gebiet, es solle nicht bloß erzogen und unterrichtet werden für den Erwerb von Wissen, sondern es solle zum Können, zum Arbeiten erzogen werden, es solle der Wille gebildet werden. Hier haben wir einen der Punkte, wo man sagen kann: Unter unseren Zeitgenossen ist viel guter Wille vorhanden. Gewils, es ist viel guter Wille vorhanden, wenn heute die Menschen sagen, man solle nicht Erkenntnisschulen, sondern Schulen der Arbeitsfähigkeit, Schulen des Könnens begründen. Aber der gute Wille genügt nicht; es muß die Kraft vorhanden sein, diesen guten Willen zu durchhellen, zu durchleuchten mit wirklicher Einsicht. Und diese Einsicht ist an sich nicht damit befriedigt, daß man einfach sagt, man solle Schulen nicht des Kennens, sondern des Könnens errichten, sondern bei dieser Einsicht geht es darum, daß es in unserem Zeitalter, das immer mehr und mehr vom Instinktiven zum Bewußten übergeht, notwendig ist, nicht nur instinktiv auf den Willen zu wirken, vom Lehrer auf den Zögling instinktiv zu wirken, sondern Begriffe, Ideen, Vorstellungen von dem Lehrer auf das Kind übergehen zu lassen; aber solche Vorstellungen, die nicht bloß Vorstellungen sind, die gedacht werden, sondern solche Vorstellungen, die den Willen befeuern, die den ganzen Menschen erfüllen. Nicht darum handelt es sich, daß man einseitig betont, nur der Wille oder nur das Gemüt sollen gebildet werden. Nein, es handelt sich darum, daß wir die Möglichkeit gewinnen, auf eine solche Einsicht, auf solche Vorstellungen, auf solche Begriffe hinzuwirken, die in sich die Kraft haben, in den Willen überzugehen, für den Willen das innere Feuer zu bilden. Dies braucht man heute zum Heile unserer in vieler Beziehung kranken Gegenwart, um es in der richtigen Art anzuwenden auf dem zweiten sozial-pädagogischen Gebiet.
Das erste dieser sozial-pädagogischen Gebiete ist dasjenige, dem unsere eben gegründete Waldorfschule dienen soll: das Gebiet, das den Jugendunterricht umfaßt, jenen Unterricht und jene Erziehung, durch den die Menschen hineingestellt werden sollen in das, was heute und für die nächste Zukunft durch ein wirklich soziales Denken von diesen Menschen gefordert wird. Wir werden sehen, wie sehr dies eine Frage der Geisteswissenschaft ist, wie sehr dies eine Frage des Weges in die übersinnlichen Welten hinein ist.
Das andere Gebiet, das sozial-pädagogisch in Betracht kommt, ist das, von dem ich sagen möchte, es soll vermitteln die «Lehre des Lebens». Wir stehen schlecht im Leben, wenn wir diesem Leben steif und fremd gegenüberstehen. Wir stehen nur dann recht im Leben drinnen, wenn jeder Augenblick, jeder Tag, jede Woche, jedes Jahr für uns eine Quelle ist, für unsere Weiterentwicklung zu lernen. Wir werden unsere Schule - gleichgültig, wie weit wir in ihr gekommen sind - am besten durchgemacht haben, wenn wir durch diese Schule gelernt haben, vom Leben zu lernen. Finden wir die rechte Art, uns jedem Menschen, der uns begegnet, gegenüberzustellen, dann wird er für uns eine Quelle der Weiterentwicklung in allem, was er uns bewußt oder namentlich unbewußt gibt und ist. In allem, was wir tun, Stunde für Stunde, Tag für Tag, Woche für Woche, erleben wir uns selber so, daß wir durch das, was wir mit uns durch die Umwelt erleben, in uns eine Quelle der stetigen Fortentwicklung öffnen. Das Leben ist eine Schule für jeden gesunden Menschen.
Beide aber, das sozial-pädagogische Gebiet des Jugendunterrichts und das sozial-pädagogische Gebiet des Vom-Leben-Lernens, können nicht mehr der Kultur der Gegenwart und der nächsten Zukunft gewachsen sein, wenn sie nicht durchkraftet werden von dem, was von anthroposophisch orientierter Geisteswissenschaft ausgehen kann.
Man hält heute dafür, daß «individuell» erzogen werden muß. Auch andere Grundsätze findet man in der modernen Pädagogik. Ich möchte auf die Einzelheiten der modernen Pädagogik nicht eingehen, nur auf eines möchte ich eingehen, und das ist, daß diese moderne Pädagogik gewisse Normen enthält, die dem, der unterrichten soll, der Lehrer werden soll, beigebracht werden. Nach diesen Normen soll er unterrichten und erziehen. In diesen Normen lebt auch wieder viel guter Wille. Außerordentlich viel gutgemeinte Geisteskraft ist auf diese Pädagogik verwendet worden. Aber was für die Gegenwart und die nächste Zukunft auf diesem Gebiet notwendig ist, das ist, daß an die Stelle einer abstrakten Pädagogik, welche Normen aufstellt, nach denen unterrichtet werden soll, die lebendige Pädagogik trete, welche von übersinnlicher Menschenerkenntnis kommt. Diese übersinnliche Menschenerkenntnis vernachlässigt durchaus nicht, was sinnliche Menschenerkenntnis ist: sie nimmt sie voll auf. Aber während diese sinnliche Menschenerkenntnis mit alledem, was sie als Anatomie und Physiologie enthält, den Menschen als Abstraktum behandelt, nimmt das übersinnliche Erkennen die sinnliche Erkenntnis voll auf, fügt aber dazu das Geistig-Seelische des Menschen. Sie betrachtet den ganzen Menschen, vor allen Dingen den ganzen Menschen in seinem Werden. Sie kann daher den Blick richten auf diesen ganzen werdenden Menschen, wie er von den Eltern gegen das siebente Jahr hin der Volksschule anvertraut wird, in dieser lebenumgestaltenden Epoche, in der aus der Nachahmung heraus das entsteht, was sich auf Autorität stützen will, und manches andere. Und nur dann sieht man, was da eigentlich im Menschen lebt, wenn man auf so etwas, wie ich es jetzt angedeutet habe, den Blick werfen kann, wenn man in der Lage ist, den Menschen so anzusehen, daß einem, indem man auf einen solchen Umschwung sieht, alles das, was im Menschen aufsprießt, vor das geistige Auge tritt. Wenn man in der richtigen Weise dies empfindend wahrnimmt, was da im sechsten, siebenten Jahr aus dem Menschen heraus will, dann erwacht, wenn man nicht Pädagoge geworden ist, sondern wenn man Pädagoge ist, innerlich, durch die innerste Lebenskraft, die Fähigkeit, ohne pädagogische Normen richtend einzugreifen in das, was dieses wunderbarste Weltenrätsel, der werdende Mensch, fortwährend vor unser Seelenauge hinstellt.
Und hier liegt nun etwas [vor], was für eine wirklich sozialpädagogische Neugestaltung, wie sie einer heutigen Einheitsvolksschule zugrunde liegen muß, ins Auge gefaßt werden muß. Hier ist es so, daß man sagen muß: Im Grunde genommen ist es für den werdenden Lehrer gleichgültig, ob man ihm dasjenige beigebracht hat, was heute oftmals als Pädagogik, als spezielle Methodik beigebracht wird. Wichtig ist für den zukünftigen Lehrer, daß er durch seine seminaristische Bildung fähig geworden ist, hineinzuschauen in den werdenden Menschen; daß er sich dasjenige angeeignet hat, was man sich durch eine umfassende, wirkliche Menschenerkenntnis aneignen kann; daß er fähig geworden ist, sich seine Pädagogik jedem Kinde gegenüber und in jedem Augenblicke seiner Erziehungs- und Unterrichtstätigkeit neu zu formen.
Für den wirklichen Lehrer muß heute Pädagogik als etwas Lebendiges in jedem Augenblick neu erstehen. Und alles, was er gedächtnismäßig als Pädagoge in der Seele trägt, das ist etwas, was ihn seiner Ursprünglichkeit beraubt. An die Stelle von pädagogischen Normal-Grundsätzen oder Normgrundsätzen müssen Einsichten in die Natur des werdenden Menschen treten, die eben die Pädagogik fortwährend in dem Menschen, der erziehen und unterrichten soll, neu erstehen und lebendig werden lassen. Man möchte sagen: Die Pädagogik ist die beste - etwas radikal gesprochen -, die vom Lehrer immerzu vergessen wird und immerzu neu angefeuert wird, wenn der Lehrer dem Kinde, dem Zögling gegenübersteht und die in ihm lebenden Kräfte der werdenden Menschennatur vor seine Seele gestellt sieht. Wenn dann zu solcher Gesinnung auch noch ein großes Interesse, ein umfassendes Interesse für die Geheimnisse der Welt, für Weltenrätsel, für Weltanschauungen hinzutritt, so wird dasjenige im Lehrer leben, was ihn wirklich befähigt, von seinem Wesen in das kindliche Wesen übergehen zu lassen, was übergehen soll.
Aber wodurch kann die innere Natur des Lehrers so lebendig werden, wie ich es jetzt charakterisiert habe? Nimmermehr durch Vorstellungen der Art, wie sie von naturwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis genommen sind, sondern allein dadurch, daß der Wille des Lehrers erkennend angefeuert wird durch eine Wissenschaft, die mit Kräften errungen ist, die mit der menschlichen Organisation so zusammenhängen, wie ich es heute charakterisiert habe. Der Lehrer, der in sich das aufgenommen hat, was Geisteswissenschaft auch über die übersinnliche Natur des Menschen kennt, der dies in sich belebt hat, der eine Wissenschaft lebendig in sich trägt, die aufgebaut ist aus den Kräften, nach denen das Kind, das er erzieht und unterrichtet, heranwächst, der wird diese Erkenntnis als lebendiges Feuer im Erziehen und Unterrichten geltend machen können. Denn seine pädagogische Kunst rührt aus übersinnlicher Erkenntnis, das heißt von denselben Kräften her, die von Tag zu Tag, von Woche zu Woche, von Jahr zu Jahr das Heranwachsen und die innere Organisation des Kindes bewirken.
Bedenken Sie einmal, wie nahe die pädagogische Kunst in ihren Quellen dem kommt, was im Kinde aufwächst, wenn übersinnliche Erkenntnisse dasjenige beherrschen, dasjenige orientieren, was als pädagogische Kunst von dem Lehrer an das Kind herangebracht wird! Nicht so sehr neue Abstraktionen, nicht spitzfindige neue pädagogische Grundsätze in dem, was hier sozial-pädagogisches Wirken genannt wird, sollen gesucht werden! Was gesucht werden soll, ist, das Lebendige an die Stelle des Toten, das Konkrete an die Stelle des Abstrakten zu setzen.
Diese Dinge zu fordern, ist heute viel notwendiger, als sich die Welt oftmals noch träumen läßt. Und es ist merkwürdig, wie man sich gar nicht denken kann, daß es ein übersinnliches Wissen gibt, das auf dem Gebiet des sinnlichen Wissens und auch des Lebens, des Unterrichts und der Erziehung, zur Geschicklichkeit, zum Können wird. Schon beginnt man das, was der Nerv der Waldorfschule ist, zu verkennen und deshalb das, was mit der Waldorfschule gewollt wird, zu verleumden, wenn auch unbewußt. Man glaubt, weil diejenigen, die an ihrer Wiege stehen, von der Geisteswissenschaft ausgehen, diese Waldorfschule sei eine «Weltanschauungsschule», eine Schule, in der den Kindern Anthroposophie beigebracht wird. Man ahnt gar nicht, wie sehr man, indem man das voraussetzt — sei es nun anhängerisch oder gegnerisch -, noch in alten Vorstellungen drinnensteht. Wir haben es gar nicht nötig, Anthroposophie dadurch zur Geltung zu bringen, daß wir sie als Weltanschauung zur Geltung bringen, daß wir einzelne anthroposophische Begriffe entfalten und darauf sehen, daß die Kinder diese aufnehmen, wie sie früher religiöse Vorstellungen aufgenommen haben. Nein, das betrachten wir nicht als unsere Aufgabe. Wir werden ehrlich einhalten, was wir veranschlagt haben: daß der protestantische, der evangelische, der katholische Religionslehrer die evangelische, die katholische Religion zu lehren haben, und wir werden dem Willen, diesen Religionsunterricht zu erteilen, keine Hindernisse irgendwie entgegensetzen. Wir werden diejenigen sein, die halten, was wir diesbezüglich versprochen haben. Wir suchen nicht, irgendeine neue Weltanschauung in dieser Form in die Schule hineinzutragen. Wir wollen etwas anderes. Wir sehen darauf hin, wie unsere anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft, weil sie herstammt von menschlichen Organisationskräften, übergeht in menschliche Geschicklichkeit, in menschliches Können, wie sie unmittelbar ausfließt in den menschlichen Willen. Wie wir pädagogisch tätig sind, wie wir in der Schule handeln, wie wir uns den Unterrichtsstoff einteilen, wie wir den Lehrplan, die Lehrziele gestalten, also alles das, was methodische Handhabe des Unterrichts ist, was vom bloßem Wissen, von der bloßen Weltanschauung hinüberfließt in die Geschicklichkeit, in das Können des Erziehers, das ist dasjenige, was wir für unsere Aufgabe halten. Und deshalb wird sich mancherlei korrigieren, was — wiederum aus gutem Willen heraus, aber durchaus nicht aus der nötigen zugrundeliegenden Einsicht - als Ziel und Inhalt gegenwärtigen pädagogischen Wirkens betrachtet wird.
Wie sehr betont man heute zum Beispiel, daß Anschauungsunterricht herrschen soll. Ja gewiß, innerhalb gewisser Grenzen ist es sehr gut, wenn man Anschauungsunterricht pflegt, das heißt, dem Kinde dasjenige beibringt, was man ihm unmittelbar auch vor Augen führen kann. Aber dieser Anschauungsunterricht darf nicht dazu verführen, daß man ins Banale, ins Triviale verfällt, indem man anknüpft an das Allernächststehende. Man will immer nur heruntersteigen zum Anschauungsvermögen des Kindes, und dann kommen alle jene Banalitäten heraus, die man heute findet, wenn man mancherlei Anleitungen zum Anschauungsunterricht liest. Man mußte sich mit diesen Dingen gerade bei der Einrichtung der Waldorfschule beschäftigen. Da konnte man sehen, wie banal, wie trivial der sogenannte Anschauungsunterricht, der ganz und gar herausgewachsen ist aus materialistischer Zeitgesinnung, oftmals getrieben wird und wie es in radikaler Weise getrieben wird, daß man sagt, der Lehrer solle heruntersteigen zur Auffassung des Schülers, er soll nichts beibringen dem Schüler als das, was dieser auch verstehen kann.
Nun, wenn man nur dasjenige an den Schüler heranbringt, was er verstehen kann, dann versündigt man sich gegen etwas, was als Schönstes im menschlichen Leben drinnenstehen kann. Wer nur immer zu dem heruntersteigen will, was der Zögling schon versteht, der weiß nicht, was es heißt, wenn man später in reiferen Jahren, vielleicht erst im dreißigsten, im fünfunddreißigsten Jahr, sich zurückerinnert an etwas, was wieder aufsteigt, was man während seiner Schulzeit durch den Lehrer übermittelt erhalten hat und was man dazumal, weil man noch nicht reif war, nicht zum vollen Verständnis erheben konnte, Jetzt taucht es wieder auf. Jetzt merkt man, daß man reifer geworden ist, indem man es jetzt versteht. Solches Wiedererleben dessen, was man während der Schulzeit aufgenommen hat, das macht den ersprießlichen Zusammenhang zwischen dem ganzen Leben und der Schulzeit eigentlich erst aus. Es ist ungeheuer wertvoll, daß man vieles in der Schule so bekommt, daß man später im Wiedererleben zurückblickt zu dem Bekommenen wie zu etwas, was einem erst Jetzt, nach Jahrzehnten, dem vollen Werte nach aufgegangen ist. Dessen beraubt man den Zögling, wenn man nur zu seinem momentanen Verständnis heruntersteigt in einem banalen Anschauungsunterricht.
Was muß aber der Lehrer für eine Aufgabe erfüllen, der dem Kinde etwas beibringen will, das es in sich aufnimmt, obwohl ihm dessen Verständnis vielleicht erst nach Jahrzehnten aufgeht? Da muß der Lehrer in sich die nötige Lebenskraft haben, damit er einfach durch seine Persönlichkeit auch dasjenige, was er in seinen Unterricht hineinlegt, auf das Kind überträgt, was es noch nicht voll verstehen kann. Es gibt ein Verhältnis zwischen Lehrer und Zögling, durch das auf den Zögling Dinge übergehen, übergehen durch die Art, wie sie im Lehrer leben, weil das Erlebnisfeuer, mit dem er durchglüht ist, was in ihm lebt, von dem Schüler mitempfunden wird. Deshalb nimmt der Schüler es auf. Und es ist etwas ungeheuer Bedeutungsvolles, wenn in dieser Weise der Lehrer zum Führer wird, daß er durch das Feuer, das in ihm lebt, zum Lebensquell wird für das, was der Schüler als sein eigenes Leben weiter pflegt, während das mit der Schulzeit verglimmt, was man durch den gewöhnlichen banalen Anschauungsunterricht dem Schüler beibringt. So könnte vieles zum Beweis dafür angeführt werden, daß, was Pädagogik ist, ein Lebendiges sein muß, das im Lehrer dadurch angefacht werden soll, daß er eine Wissenschaft vom Menschen bekommt, die so gewonnen ist, wie ich es heute charakterisiert habe: durch Kräfte der menschlichen Organisation selbst. Mehr als für irgend jemand anderen ist für den Lehrer und Erzieher eine solche Menschenerkenntnis notwendig, die auf übersinnlicher Anschauung des Menschen gebaut ist. Und unmittelbar könnte man — wenn man nur wollte - sehen, wie in der Unterrichtspraxis alles Abstrakte verschwinden und nur die Handhabung des Notwendigen, des Praktischen selbst hervortreten würde, wenn auf diese Unterrichtspraxis dasjenige angelegt wird, was für sie aus übersinnlicher Weltanschauung und Menschenerkenntnis erfließen kann.
Statt sich aber Einsicht zu verschaffen in das, was für Unterricht und Erziehung durch eine solche Anwendung übersinnlicher Erkenntnisse auf die Sozial-pädagogik geleistet werden könnte, kommen heute die Menschen, die da glauben, im praktischen Leben zu stehen und die durch ihre Praxis, die doch bloß «Routine» ist, jenes furchtbare Elend und Unglück herbeigeführt haben, das sich im Kriege auslebte und in dem wir heute noch drinnen stecken, die[se Menschen] kommen und sagen, Übersinnliches habe nichts zu tun mit der Praxis des Lebens. Weil sie das immer gesagt haben, weil sie in sträflichem Leichtsinn das, was wirklicher übersinnlicher Lebensinhalt ist, aus der Lebenspraxis herausgeworfen haben, deshalb haben sie gerade diese Zeit heraufbeschworen. Und indem sie jetzt diese unsinnige Praxis im Zu-Tode-Treten jeder wirklich ernsten Besserungsbestrebung fortsetzen wollen, setzen sie etwas fort, wovon wir nur eine Weile eine Atempause erleben. Würden aber jene, die nicht sehen wollen, was für die Gegenwart notwendig ist, heute wiederum siegen - in kurzer Zeit hätten wir wieder dasselbe Elend, das 1914 begonnen hat. Denn die Menschen, die heute das von ihnen Verleumdete in allem Übersinnlichen bei einer Unternehmung, die wirklich praktisch ist, tottreten wollen, die sind es auch, die die Menschen ins Unglück hineingeführt haben. Das ist das, was heute klar eingesehen werden muß.
Ich würde diese ernsten Worte hier nicht gesprochen haben, wenn sich nicht diese furchtbaren Unkenrufe schon wieder geltend machen würden da, wo doch etwas ganz modern Praktisches hier geschaffen werden soll wie diese Waldorfschule. Solche Dinge geziemt es sich heute von dem Gesichtspunkte aus anzuschauen, daß die furchtbaren Ereignisse der letzten vier bis fünf Jahre doch etwas gelehrt haben sollten und man weiterkommen muß. Diejenigen, die nicht weitergekommen sein sollen, die heute da wieder anfangen wollen, wo sie 1914 aufgehört haben, die müssen scharf ins Auge gefaßt werden. Daß sie uns scharf ins Auge fassen, dafür brauchen wir nicht zu sorgen, das tun sie von selber. Aber sie müssen scharf ins Auge gefaßt werden. Und all diejenigen müßten sich vereinigen, die einen Sinn dafür haben, daß heute etwas geschehen muß, was auf der einen Seite aus dem wirklichen Geiste stammt und was auf der anderen Seite fähig ist, in die ernste, wirkliche Lebenspraxis hineinzuwirken.
Aus solchen wirklich praktischen Untergründen heraus ist es notwendig, daß das, was oftmals als Phrase gebraucht wird - gerade mit Beziehung auf das Pädagogische -, endlich einmal aus sachlichem Ernste gehandhabt würde. Notwendig haben wir zum Beispiel, zu berücksichtigen - und auf solche Dinge wurde im seminaristischen Kursus für die Waldorfschul-Lehrerschaft besonders gesehen -, daß um das neunte Lebensjahr herum der Mensch wiederum etwas Wichtiges abschließt und etwas Neues beginnt. Bis zum neunten Lebensjahr ist der Mensch noch ganz verwachsen mit seiner Umgebung. Das Prinzip der Nachahmung ragt noch in das Prinzip der Autorität hinein. Erst im neunten Jahr beginnt die Möglichkeit, das Ichgefühl so zu entwickeln, daß zum Beispiel naturgeschichtliche Tatsachen, Naturbeschreibungen der Pflanzen- und Tierwelt an das Kind herantreten können. Aber zu gleicher Zeit ist zwischen dem siebenten und neunten Lebensjahr der Abschnitt so gestaltet, daß wir gut tun, dem Kinde nichts beizubringen, was nicht elementar und selbstverständlich aus der menschlichen Natur herausfließt, sondern nur durch Konvention zustande gekommen ist. -— Wir müssen den Menschen allmählich zum Schreiben und Lesen hinführen. Denn wer sähe nicht, daß die Buchstaben, wie wir sie heute haben, etwas Konventionelles sind? Bei der ägyptischen Bilderschrift war das noch anders. Das bedingt aber, daß wir den Schreibunterricht so erteilen, daß wir ihn vom Zeichenunterricht ausgehen lassen, daß wir zunächst nicht auf Buchstaben Rücksicht nehmen, sondern Formen zeichnen lassen; daß wir überhaupt das elementare Zeichnen und Malen - neben Musik - schon in den untersten Schulstufen beginnen, daß wir den ganzen Unterricht und die Erziehung aus dem Kindlich-Künstlerischen herausarbeiten. Denn das Kindlich-Künstlerische ergreift den ganzen Menschen, Wille und Gemüt, und durch Wille und Gemüt erst den Intellekt. Und dann gehen wir, indem wir Zeichnen und Malen pflegen, indem wir den Willen durch künstlerischen Unterricht angeregt haben, zum Schreiben über, indem wir die Schriftformen sich aus den Zeichenformen heraus entwickeln lassen. Und dann kommt erst das Lesen, das noch intellektualistischer ist als das Schreiben; dann wird das Lesen aus dem Schreiben entwickelt. Ich führe die Einzelheiten an, damit Sie sehen, daß anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft nicht herumredet im Wolkenkuckucksheim, sondern daß sie in die Praxis des Unterrichtens bis in alle Einzelheiten hineinführt. Bis dahin, wie man Mathematik, wie man Schreibunterricht, wie man Sprachenunterricht erteilt, führt jene lebendige Menschenerkenntnis, die anstelle der abstrakten Pädagogik treten muß. Soviel zum speziellen Gebiet der Unterrichts-Pädagogik.
Aber das Sozial-Pädagogische umfaßt auch die ganze «Lebenslehre». Sind wir der Schule entwachsen, dann treten wir ja hinaus ins Leben, und unsere naturwissenschaftliche Bildung richtet eine Kluft auf zwischen uns und dem Leben. Deshalb sehen wir, daß für alle Fragen, welche heute die Menschheit beschäftigen, etwas Instinktives vorwaltet, wodurch diese Fragen zwar Lebensforderungen einschließen, aber keine Einsicht für die Lösung solcher Fragen da ist.
Ich möchte auf eine Frage aufmerksam machen, die seit langer Zeit die moderne zivilisierte Menschheit beschäftigt: die sogenannte Frauenfrage, dasjenige, was die Kluft bildet zwischen Mann und Frau. Mit Recht will man diese Kluft hinwegschaffen, aber man wird sie nicht hinwegschaffen können, wenn man nicht dasjenige wirklich begründet, was gemeinsame Wesenheit in Mann und Frau ist. Sieht man nur auf das, was der Mensch in der physischen Welt und aus der naturwissenschaftlichen Denkweise heraus sich aneignen kann, dann bleibt der Unterschied zwischen Mann und Frau ein radikaler. Der Abgrund zwischen Mann und Frau wird erst überbrückt, wenn die Verschiedenheit, die zwischen ihnen besteht im Aufnehmen der Welt, in dem Wirken in der Welt, ausgeglichen wird durch dasjenige, was den Menschen kommen kann durch jenes Wissen, jene Willens- und Gemütsbildung, die hervorgehen aus den Kräften, die der menschlichen Organisation selbst zugrunde liegen. Denn was im Manne nicht enthalten ist, aber in der Frau, das gibt dem Manne diese Geistesbildung. Und was in der Frau nicht enthalten ist, aber im Manne, das gibt der Frau diese Geistesbildung. Der Frau gibt, während sie körperlich-physisch Frau ist, diese Geistesbildung geistig-seelisch das Männliche, und dem Manne, während er physisch Mann ist, geistig-seelisch das Weibliche. Würde sich ausbreiten über unsere Zeitbildung, was ihr aus anthroposophisch orientierter Geistesbildung heraus erfließen kann, dann würde erst der Boden geschaffen werden für so etwas wie die Frauenfrage.
Und so könnte Unzähliges angeführt werden. Ich will aber nur noch auf eines aufmerksam machen: Die Menschen schreien nach Organisation. Und es ist selbstverständlich, daß sie danach schreien, denn die Kompliziertheit der Verhältnisse im heutigen sozialen Leben, sie bedingt Organisation. Nun, über die Natur solcher Organisation ist hier in den Vorträgen auch schon viel gesprochen worden. Allein man denkt sich, daß nur organisiert werden soll nach den Grundsätzen, die die Menschheit heute hat ohne Geisteswissenschaft, die die Menschheit hat aus bloß naturwissenschaftlicher Bildung, aus heutiger sozial-politischer Bildung heraus. Lenin und Trotzki organisieren, Lunatscharski organisiert nach diesen Grundsätzen. In ein maschinenartiges Getriebe spannen sie das Wirtschaftsleben ein, und sie wollen auch das Geistesleben einspannen. Es geht für mich nicht darum, mich zu stützen auf allerlei Erzählungen von B. und ähnlichen Leuten, die aufgrund eigener Eindrücke urteilen, auch nicht auf das, was Journalisten und andere Leute erzählen, die heute in Rußland gewesen sind. Auf was man sich stützen kann, das sind Lenins Schriften, und die beweisen dem, der Einsicht haben kann, was von dieser Seite gewollt wird, und das ist: Das organisatorische Abtöten all desjenigen, was wahrhaftiger Menschheitsquell ist, desjenigen, was in der individuellen menschlichen Wesenheit und Natur liegt. Es gibt keinen stärkeren Feind des menschlichen Fortschrittes als das, was heute im Osten geschieht. Warum ist das so? Weil ganz und gar nicht das zugrundeliegt, was nur aus der Geistesbildung, der anthroposophisch orientierten Geistesbildung heraus kommen kann, und das ist: wirkliche sozial-pädagogische Lebenskraft. Wir müssen organisieren, aber wir müssen uns bewußt sein: Wenn wir organisieren wollen, so müssen in dieser Organisation Menschen leben, die innerhalb dieser Organisation Gelegenheit haben, dasjenige zu lehren, was innerster Quell der Menschennatur ist, was sich verbirgt, wenn der Mensch erwachsen geworden ist, was aber wieder heraufgeholt werden kann aus den schlummernden Kräften seiner Organisation. Es brauchen nicht alle Menschen Hellseher zu werden und in sich zu erleben, was man durch die aufgeweckten Kräfte der menschlichen Organisation erleben kann, wenn man das zwanzigste Jahr überschritten hat, aber es können alle Menschen sich interessieren für dasjenige, was durch diese lebendige Organisationskraft des Menschen erreicht werden kann.
Wenn die Menschen sich dafür interessieren, dann erwacht in den Menschen eine neue Fähigkeit, eine Fähigkeit, die man heute am besten charakterisieren kann, wenn man an etwas anknüpft, wofür den Menschen auch schon etwas die Empfindung verloren gegangen ist, anknüpft an dasjenige, was einer zusammengehörigen Menschenrasse mit gleicher Sprache diese Sprache ist. Diejenigen, die eine Sprache sprechen, sie müssen - auch wenn sie die Sprache schon sprechen - ja erst die Sprache mit ihrem Genius, mit ihrem wunderbaren künstlerischen Bau kennenlernen, um zu entdecken, welcher Geist in der Sprache lebt, welcher Geist von der Sprache aus die Menschen durchdringt, die diese Sprache zu einem Ganzen vereinigt. Indem wir sprechen lernen, nehmen wir nicht bewußt, sondern instinktiv und unterbewußt, mit jedem Wort, aber namentlich mit jeder Wortwendung etwas auf, was der Genius der Sprache uns lehrend geheimnisvoll offenbart. Soziales Leben ist etwas, was vielfach in Instinkten lebt. Die Sprache ist ein soziales Instrument wunderbarster Art immer gewesen. Nur in der neueren Zeit ist die Sprache, je weiter man von Osten nach Westen geht, um so mehr auch abstrakter geworden. Die Menschen fühlen immer weniger, was in den Lauten der Sprache zum Herzen, zum Kopfe und namentlich in den Zusammenhängen, die die Sprache bildet, zu diesen Herzen, zu diesen Köpfen spricht, wie auf geheimnisvolle Weise in den Menschen hineingeht, was der Genius der Sprache ihm mitzuteilen hat.
Manches andere, was auf eine ähnliche Art auf den Menschen wirken soll wie das, was immerzu durch den Genius der Sprache gewirkt hat, wird wirken, wenn allgemeine Menschheitsbildung schon durch die Tätigkeit der niedersten Schule — die nicht als Weltanschauungsschule, sondern durch rationell betriebenen Unterricht wirken will - verbreitet wird. Dann wird der eine Mensch dem anderen Menschen so gegenüberstehen, daß er wie untertauchen wird in den anderen Menschen, indem der zu ihm spricht. Jedes Gespräch, jedes Verhältnis zu einem anderen Menschen wird eine Quelle für die Weiterentwicklung der eigenen Seele sein. Und was wir in die Welt hineinstellen, wodurch wir auf die anderen Menschen wirken, das wird eine Quelle unserer Fortentwicklung sein. Wir werden erst dann die Imponderabilien, die wirken können von Menschennatur zu Menschennatur, recht entwickeln, wenn wir in die Lage kommen, mit den Empfindungen dem anderen Menschen entgegenzutreten, die in uns angeregt werden, wenn wir nicht abstrakte Naturwissenschaft treiben, sondern jenes lebendige Feuer in uns aufnehmen, das von einer Wissenschaft uns zukommen kann, die mit der menschlichen Natur selber zusammenhängt, das heißt auf die Kräfte, die den Menschen bis zum zwanzigsten Lebensjahr gedeihen machen und von da ab zur Pflege einer übersinnlichen Erkenntnis führen können. Und in sozialpädagogischer Beziehung kann sich anschließen an die Jugendschule die Schule des Lebens, wenn in uns diejenigen Kräfte angeregt sind, die uns zu Lernenden machen in dieser Schule des Lebens. Wir werden dann auch mit Menschen in staatlichen oder wirtschaftlichen Organisationen, also abstrakten Organisationen, zusammenkommen. Wir werden dann einen verwandten Zug in ihnen fühlen und werden uns sagen: Es verbindet uns etwas miteinander, mehr als mit jedem anderen. Und neben den aus äußeren Umständen entstandenen Organisationen werden in der Zukunft intime, geheimnisvolle Organisationen entstehen können, die sich von Seele zu Seele bilden, wenn in den menschlichen Seelen das Erlebnis wahrhaftiger Geisterkenntnis lebt. Dann wird der Mensch die Erfahrung machen: Du hast in früheren Erdenleben mit dem oder dem dieses oder jenes erlebt, und jetzt tritt er dir wieder entgegen. — Durch diese innere Verbindung, die geheimnisvoll in den Tiefen der Seelen ruht, wird etwas Geistig-Seelisches in die sonst kalten, nüchternen Organisationen hineingetragen.
Und wenn ich hier auch seit dem Frühling die drei Organisationen geschildert habe — das geistige Gebiet, das rechtlich-politische Gebiet und das wirtschaftliche Gebiet des sozialen Organismus -, so muß doch betont werden: Das sind drei äußere Organisationen! Innerhalb desjenigen, was diese drei äußeren Organisationen dem Menschen sein werden, werden jene intimen, inneren Organisationen leben, die dadurch von Menschenseele zu Menschenseele geschmiedet werden, daß die Menschen sich genauer erkennen werden, als sie sich heute erkennen. Wenn an die Stelle der antisozialen Triebe jene sozialen Triebe gesetzt werden - wodurch erst das wahre soziale Leben begründet wird -, dann erst wird die naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise für die Menschen voll nützlich werden können. Durch diese naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise werden sie die äußere leblose Natur, die als Technik, als andere Verrichtungen in unser Leben hereintritt, richtig beherrschen können. Dasjenige aber, was für den Menschen als Nutzen, als Effekt aus diesen Einrichtungen technischer oder sonstiger Art kommt, das werden die Kräfte besorgen, die als ethische, sittliche Kräfte angefacht werden durch die geistige Willenskultur und von der Geisteswissenschaft her kommen können. In die äußeren Organisationen wird eine innere Organisation kommen, die die Menschen trägt und das Menschenleben gestaltet. Ohne diese innere Organisation kommen wir auch nicht zu einer fruchtbaren äußeren Organisation.
Das ist dasjenige, was ich heute ein wenig andeuten wollte: daß Geisteswissenschaft, so wie sie hier gedacht ist, nichts irgendwie Abstraktes, nichts im Wolkenkuckucksheim schwebendes Metaphysisches ist - wie man sie verleumden will -, sondern daß sie etwas ist, was unmittelbar in den menschlichen Willen hineinströmt und hineinwirkt und ihn für das Leben geschickt und eigentlich erst lebensfähig macht. Das ist es, was diejenigen verkennen, die heute die Notwendigkeit unserer Geisteswissenschaft nicht einsehen wollen. Sie werden dann auch nicht einsehen, wie nicht aus irgendeiner Willkür, sondern aus wahrer Lebenspraxis heraus - so etwas entsteht wie die Waldorfschule. Aber kann man denn heute gerade von den tonangebenden Leuten viel erwarten? Ich habe im Frühling und im Sommer wiederholt davon gesprochen, das heißt, in meine sozialen Vorträge den Satz einfließen lassen - ich will das nur als für manches in der Geistesverfassung der gegenwärtigen Zeit Charakteristische anführen -, daß die Arbeitskraft in der Zukunft nicht Ware sein darf. Und auch in einer Nachbarstadt dieser Stadt hier sprach ich diesen Satz aus: Daß die menschliche Arbeitskraft befreit werden müsse von dem Warencharakter. - Ich glaube, man braucht heute nur ein kleines bißchen gesunden Menschenverstand zu haben, und man wird das breit gesprochene a in dem Wort «Warencharakter» verstehen. Doch ich bekam heute früh eine Zeitung, die in dieser Nachbarstadt herauskommt; der Leitartikel schließt mit dem Satz: «Ganz ratlos sehe ich mich dem Satz gegenüber, es müsse die Arbeitskraft befreit werden vom wahren Charakter»! Das ist heute möglich. Es ist heute möglich, daß Menschen urteilen über dasjenige, was sich, nicht in vager Weise, sondern aus Erkenntnisuntergründen heraus in die Gegenwartskultur hineinstellen will, und die nicht einmal soweit sind mit ihrer Zeitbildung, daß sie von selber verstehen etwas wie den Warencharakter. Es muß doch ein solcher Mensch in seinem ganzen Leben niemals etwas von dem «Warencharakter der menschlichen Arbeitskraft» gehört haben! Wie leben solche Menschen in der Gegenwart? Ist es da ein Wunder, daß wir nicht zurechtkommen mit dem Kulturleben der Gegenwart, wenn überhaupt solches Aus-der-Zeit-heraus-sich-Versetzen möglich ist? Solches ist aber nicht nur möglich bei Leuten wie dem Schreiber dieses Zeitungsartikels, dieses Leitartikels, sondern es ist auch möglich bei Leuten, die glauben, die Lebenspraxis gepachtet zu haben, die bei jeder Gelegenheit auf dasjenige herabsehen, was ihnen idealistisch erscheint, die nicht anders über das wirkliche Leben reden als derjenige, der ein hufeisenförmiges Eisen sieht und dem jemand sagt, das sei ein Magnet: «Nein», antwortet er, «mit einem Hufeisen beschlägt man doch Pferde.» So kommen einem die Menschen vor, die heute übersinnliche Erkenntnisse von dem praktischen Leben ausschließen wollen: wie der Mann, der mit einem Magneteisen als Hufeisen sein Pferd beschlägt, würden sie das, was ihnen nicht unmittelbar entgegentritt für ihr Auffassungsvermögen, nicht für wirklich halten.
Es sind heute viel mehr Menschen, als man denkt, die den sozialen Fortschritt verhindern; Menschen, die durchaus nicht verstehen wollen, daß an den Satz, daß «die letzten vier bis fünf Jahre der Menschheit Europas etwas Furchtbareres gebracht haben, als jemals da war in dem Zeitraum, den man gewöhnlich als geschichtlichen bezeichnet», nun auch angeschlossen werden muß der Satz: «daß nun auch Dinge geschehen müssen aus Gedankentiefen heraus, zu denen man noch nicht vorgedrungen ist im Verlaufe desjenigen, was man Geschichte nennt». Wir sind in einer Zeitepoche angekommen, in welcher die Menschheit ganz und gar abstrakt denkt; am meisten abstrakt aber sind die Parteimeinungen und Parteiprogramme, die am Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts da waren, herausgewachsen aus dem, was naturwissenschaftliche Erziehung war. Die Leute wollen nicht begreifen, wie abstrakt, wie menschheitsfremd dasjenige ist, womit sie heute das Leben beherrschen wollen. Die Menschen glauben praktisch zu sein. Nur ein Beispiel: Die Leute sehen heute, wie ihnen das deutsche Geld dem Weltverkehr gegenüber unter den Fingern zerrinnt, wie die deutsche Valuta mit jedem Tag mehr und mehr zerrinnt. Und in Deutschland macht man jeden Tag mehr und mehr die Dinge, unter denen die Valuta selbstverständlich fallen muß. Das heißt: die Praktiker sind wieder stark am Ruder. Und solange man nicht einsehen wird, wie wirkliche Lebenspraxis nicht da liegt, wo man sie bis 1914 gesucht hat, sondern in den beherrschenden Ideen des Lebens, solange wird kein Heil werden. Daß die Leute nicht bescheiden genug sind, sich zu gestehen, es müsse eine Vertiefung kommen, die Vertiefung der Einsicht, der gute Wille allein tue es nicht - das ist der Krebsschaden unserer Zeit.
Es wird notwendig sein, daß man immer mehr und mehr einsieht, worauf wirkliche Geisterkenntnis beruht und daß Geisterkenntnis, weil sie auf der Entwicklung derselben Kräfte, die in gesunder Art den Menschen organisieren, beruht, ihn deshalb auch in gesunder Art sozial-pädagogisch in das Leben hineinstellen kann. Das ist das, was wir heute brauchen: Geist - aber Geist nicht weltfremd, nicht im Wolkenkuckucksheim; nicht metaphysischen Geist, sondern wirklichen Geist, der in die Praxis des Lebens eingreift, der die Materie beherrschen kann. Und wir brauchen auch praktische Einsicht in das Leben, Stehen im Leben, aber so, daß wir das Leben selber so anschauen, daß wir den Geist in dieses Leben einführen wollen.
Eine Devise muß aus geisteswissenschaftlicher Gesinnung die Menschen ergreifen, sonst wird kein Fortschritt in unserer heillosen Zeit möglich sein. Und diese Devise muß sein:
Suchet das wirklich praktische materielle Leben,
Aber suchet es so, daß es euch nicht betäubt über den Geist, der in ihm wirksam ist.
Suchet den Geist,
Aber suchet ihn nicht in übersinnlicher Wollust, aus übersinnlichem Egoismus,
Sondern suchet ihn,
Weil ihr ihn selbstlos im praktischen Leben, in der materiellen Welt anwenden wollt.
Wendet an den alten Grundsatz:
«Geist ist niemals ohne Materie, Materie niemals ohne Geist» in der Art, daß ihr sagt:
Wir wollen alles Materielle im Lichte des Geistes tun,
Und wir wollen das Licht des Geistes so suchen,
Daß es uns Wärme entwickele für unser praktisches Tun.Der Geist, der von uns in die Materie geführt wird,
Die Materie, die von uns bearbeitet wird bis zu ihrer Offenbarung,
Durch die sie den Geist aus sich selber heraustreibt;
Die Materie, die von uns den Geist offenbart erhält,
Der Geist, der von uns an die Materie herangetrieben wird,
Die bilden dasjenige lebendige Sein,
Welches die Menschheit zum wirklichen Fortschritt bringen kann,
Zu demjenigen Fortschritt, der von den Besten in den tiefsten Untergründen der Gegenwartsseelen nur ersehnt werden kann.
Supernatural Knowledge and Social-Pedagogical Vitality
When one looks at what people consider necessary in the face of the seriousness of the present time, what they mentally image as necessary new institutions, necessary transformations of untenable conditions, then one notices that, in some respects, there is certainly a great deal of good will among people to devote themselves to new institutions in one direction or another and to cooperate in transforming what appears to be in need of transformation. However, one cannot help but say, especially when one takes stock of these circumstances of contemporary culture that are so striking at first glance: There is so much goodwill, and within this goodwill there are sometimes very beautiful thoughts. But as soon as they arise, they fizzle out and do not come to fruition in the intense way that is so necessary today.
Spiritual science, as it is meant here, that spiritual science which seeks in an anthroposophical way to pave the way for contemporary humanity to supersensible knowledge, has for decades wanted to intervene in contemporary culture precisely where the deficiency of this culture is noticeable: in the flagging good will and in the flagging, quite beautiful thoughts that live in this good will. For the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that I have been advocating here for years seeks to point out precisely what is so necessary for the present and what, at the same time, people of the present embrace with such great sympathy or, conversely, reject with great antipathy. It wants to point to what, on the one hand, takes into account what has made natural science so great and, on the other hand, takes into account what natural science, as we want to discuss today, has no means of achieving, namely what human will culture and human soul culture are.We live in a time in which human beings can no longer indulge the impulses of their will in the old way, that is, instinctively. No matter how many prejudices one may put forward, one must admit today that our contemporary culture is characterized by the fact that the old, instinctive life must increasingly give way to a fully conscious life. This is a historical fact, the most significant historical fact, which has led to a crisis in the present: that old instinctive drives in human nature must increasingly be transformed into conscious drives.
Much has been achieved in this direction over the last three to four centuries through what has flowed into the general culture and direction of our time from what has made natural science great. However, anyone who today finds themselves in a position to reflect on institutions that have grown out of the most important needs of the time must come to feel the inadequacy of that education, which comes only from a scientific way of thinking and a scientific mindset. In attempting to solve a social problem in a certain limited sense, especially at this time, in this city, a social problem that is of greater importance than one might initially believe, we may point out this evening the difficulties that stand in the way of solving such a social problem.Thanks to the truly insightful approach demonstrated over many years by our friend, Mr. Molt, has demonstrated over the years toward anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, we have now succeeded in establishing the so-called Waldorf School out of social thinking for our time, a school that is initially intended for the children of those working at the Waldorf-Astoria company and for a few other children who are initially affiliated with it. This school already shows a very modern character in the way it came into being: affiliated with an industrial enterprise, it must take into account in the most eminent sense the very practical needs of the people who entrust their children to this school. And one might say: it is symbolic that this school is being established in connection, in local connection, with industrialism, which has thrown the most important social problems of our time into sharp relief.
When this school was founded, the teaching staff, for whom I had to lead the introductory seminar course for weeks, considered socio-educational tasks in the spirit of contemporary culture. Our contemporary culture is based more than one might think on what has developed as a way of thinking — as I have already indicated — for understanding the external world of nature. I have repeatedly emphasized here, over decades, I might say, that the value and significance of scientific thinking are fully appreciated by the spiritual science referred to here. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized again and again: precisely because this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science appreciates what lives in natural science more than natural science itself, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must go beyond natural science precisely because of this natural scientific attitude. And I have repeatedly emphasized here how spiritual science arrives at its insights in a different way than contemporary natural science. I have repeatedly pointed out how this spiritual science can truly lead us into the supersensible world. I have repeatedly indicated — and I will only touch on this briefly today — how the development of inner human powers that otherwise lie dormant in human nature can pave the way so that human beings — just as just as he perceives the physical environment through his senses, just as he can discover the laws of nature in the physical environment through his intellect and through combination — through other powers that can be developed, he can look into the spiritual world in which we live, which is always around us and which is unknown only because human beings in ordinary life lack the receptive organs, their spiritual senses are not open.
Today I would like to discuss the question: What powers does this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science actually use to look into the supersensible world? Oh, it uses very healthy, perfectly normal powers of human nature. Anyone who really wants to gain deeper insights into the way this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science proceeds will cease to talk about it building on unhealthy powers, as its detractors repeatedly accuse it of doing. For it is possible to point out in a very simple way the sources of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and its path into the supersensible world.
If you pick up my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” you will find described there the stages of supersensible knowledge to which human beings can rise through the development of certain powers that lie dormant within them: first, the stage of imaginative knowledge; second, the stage of inspirational knowledge; third, the stage of true intuitive knowledge. Now, where does spiritual science get the powers that function in such things as imagination, inspiration, and intuition? We can point out that in the child's development, there are forces at work that underlie the human organism. These forces lie dormant, so to speak, in later life, when the human being has reached normal size and completed his or her growth. I have already pointed out here this spring what the epochs of human development are. I have pointed out how, in the first period of life, the human being is primarily an imitative being, how he instinctively grows into everything that the people around him do and imitates it in his movements, in his sounds, in his language, even in his thoughts. This imitative movement lasts until about the age of seven, when the child's teeth change. Then, for those who can observe human nature more closely, something completely different begins to take effect: the need of human nature, from the age of six or seven until puberty, to lean on people who already have experience, on adults in their environment whom the child can believe in devotedly; then the child begins to feel the need to act under the influence of revered authorities. In contrast to the earlier urge to imitate, there now emerges a longing to act under the influence of revered authorities. That independence in life which is based on one's own power of judgment, that independence which is based on immersing oneself in all things in a lively way, basically only develops with sexual maturity between the ages of fourteen and twenty or twenty-one.
These are three clearly distinct stages in the life of human youth. Only those who cloud their sound judgment with all kinds of prejudices can fail to see how those forces that act as formative forces until the age of seven — for by then the formation of the body is more or less complete, the forms then become even larger, but the plasticity is developed by the age of seven — then they work more inwardly, acting as life forces, strengthening the human being, but acting in particular as inner growth forces until the age of fourteen. And they work in such a way that from the age of fourteen to twenty they strengthen the organs that are directed toward the child's understanding of the environment, that is, those organs that are capable of immersing themselves in the environment. The spiritual-soul works on the physical-bodily aspects of the human being in different ways until the age of seven, until the age of fourteen, and until the age of twenty-one. Forces that are quite clearly spiritual-soul forces to the unbiased observer work their way out to control the human organs and advance their development.
So these forces are there, these forces that, in a sense, bring about that significant conclusion in the human organization up to the age of seven, which crystallize out of human nature the second teeth! And that mysterious thing in the human organization that works until the age of fourteen and is connected with growth and development is there, it is at work! Now we ask: When we have completed our organization in our twenties, where is that which has worked from the spiritual-soul into our physical-bodily organization until then? It is there, it remains there! But just as the forces we use from waking up to falling asleep for our daily work and observations lie dormant and slumber within us from falling asleep to waking up, so, from the beginning of the twenties, the forces that fired and glowed through the organization during childhood and youth, so that the child became an adult with all that this entails, slumber in human nature. Anyone who looks at the whole human being knows that at the moment when the organism reaches this point, the forces that have been at work in the child, the youth, and the young woman retreat, as it were, into the inner life of human nature. These forces then lie dormant. They can be awakened, those forces which, from the age of fourteen to the age of twenty or twenty-one, have usually produced in us the observed processes through which we gradually gain understanding of our surroundings and through which the organs in us are developed which can only be developed after the onset of sexual maturity; organs that are not only directed toward sexual love, but also toward enabling us to immerse ourselves lovingly in all of humanity, in the whole world. It is this loving immersion that gives us a true understanding of the world. What we use up to the age of twenty-one for growth, for building up our inner organs, becomes, one might say, sober, merely judgmental, intellectual at the beginning of our twenties. At that point, a certain spiritual-soul force ceases to organize. It becomes merely an imaginary, inner force, a soul force. It is no longer as strong as it used to be when it had to intervene in the organization. If we find this power slumbering in human nature, which was previously a formative power and is no longer so after the age of twenty, and if we develop it so that it is present after the age of twenty as it was before, when it acted on the body, then it becomes an imaginative power. Then the human being gains the ability to see the world not only in abstract terms, but in images that are as vivid as dreams and that signify reality in the same way as our abstract concepts. That which enables us to see the world in such images, that which enables us to reach the first stage of supersensible knowledge, is the same power that previously worked in the healthily developing human being for the power of love, which can be drawn out of human nature and which leads deeper into the human environment than the ordinary mind and the ordinary senses.
And then one can go further, for those forces are also dormant in later human beings which, from about the age of seven, that is, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, bring about the essential processes in the human organism. These forces lie deeper beneath the surface of ordinary soul life than those forces which I have just described as imaginative. When these forces, which have become, so to speak, unemployed in later human beings in relation to the physical organization, are brought forth, when these spiritual-soul forces are brought up from their slumber, their state of sleep, then they are the forces of inspiration. And then they are the forces that convey to us that the images I just spoke of in imaginative knowledge are filled with spiritual content, that these images, which appear like dream images but are not dream images, truly reflect a spiritual reality that is outside of us in our environment.
And when we bring forth the forces that lie even deeper in human nature, the forces that are the organizing forces in early childhood, which from birth to the change of teeth have had the strongest effect on the human organism, but which have also withdrawn most deeply from external physical life, when we bring these forces to the fore for later stages of life and use them to achieve what imagination and inspiration are, then we obtain the intuitive forces of supersensible knowledge: powers through which human beings become capable of immersing themselves in the reality of the spiritual world, just as they immerse themselves in the physical world through the senses and the ordinary will bound to the body.
In three stages, through imagination, inspiration, and intuition, human beings enter the supersensible world. The powers they use are not abnormal powers, but rather the most normal ones. They are the powers through which human beings develop in a healthy way from birth into their twenties and which are then left unused, but which can be brought out and, when they are not occupied with organizing us, can be used to reveal and open up the spiritual world to us.
I have thus pointed you to the source of those forces that seek to pave the way into the supersensible world. Those who are able to take this path seriously will know how to distinguish what it can rightly offer from what mere science, mere scientific knowledge, can offer.
And why do I keep emphasizing this scientific knowledge? Today, there would not be such a frequent need to emphasize scientific knowledge and the attitude that flows from it if what is now known as public thinking, and which also influences social and social policy, were not entirely modeled on the scientific way of thinking. Certainly, there is something here that very many people do not yet pay attention to, but which must be taken into account if we really want to find something to heal our sick social culture of our time. We must realize that all human thinking is so permeated by what has been brought about by the scientific mental image that when people today begin to think about something else, they bring in the scientific way of thinking and attitude.
What, then, is socio-political thinking in the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th century, up to the present day? And what is it, basically, that we still encounter everywhere today as socialist theory? It is social thinking based on the model of scientific thinking. Why does this social thinking, as I have often had to characterize it in these lectures, seem so fruitless to us? Because this social thinking — take, for example, Marxist-English-socialist thinking — is completely infested with a purely scientific attitude, and because the scientific attitude is applied to a field where this scientific attitude cannot achieve anything.
For consider what is the most important characteristic of what I have presented to you today as supersensible knowledge in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The most important characteristic is that this supersensible knowledge makes use of forces that are closely related to what it means to be human. How could one make more use of forces connected with human nature — for any ideal, for anything that is to be realized — than by using the forces that underlie the human organization itself, that underlie what we are as human beings here, and which we bring out of their hiding place at the moment when the human being no longer needs them for his organization, and which we then apply to knowledge.
In contrast, what the ordinary scientific way of thinking and today's socio-political thinking are is a life in terms that are abstract, that can only — one might say — be grasped by the organization of the human mind, by the powers that man still retains when he has reached his full organization in his twenties and allows the powers that are much more real because they work on his organization itself to sleep or slumber.
What we gain in the concepts that natural science tells us about and that we would so much like to apply today to social science, and even to social-pedagogical work, these concepts and ideas — indeed, everything we gain in this way for the content of our souls — appear, in comparison with what I have characterized for you today as the content of supersensible knowledge, only as mirror images of reality. And indeed, everything we gain in terms of concepts when our intellect combines sensory impressions and perceptions, and also everything we know about our volitional impulses, is actually only like a shadow, a mirror image of what is so closely interwoven with human becoming, weaving, and being, such as the forces that organize ourselves. Hence the abstract character, the character detached from human beings, of what is achieved through scientific thinking. And people are proud to gain such scientific insights, in which human beings and their will have nothing to do, which are, as they say, “completely objective.” The humanities strive not to exclude humans from the world when it comes to knowledge, but rather to draw them in by seeking knowledge through the forces that are the organizing forces of humans themselves. This is why we can see everywhere that scientific mental images, and also what is today's socio-political mental images based on this model, satisfy human curiosity and the demands of the intellect, but — and this is clear — these mental images have no power to spark, enforce, or fuel human will. And if this scientific education were to become ever greater and greater in its one-sidedness, ever more dominant, then human willpower would ultimately have to weaken completely. In our time, it must be noted that the willpower, already weakened under the influence of scientific thinking, is fired up by something that can flow into the willpower as a stimulus because it has been drawn out of the human organism as spiritual scientific knowledge of human beings themselves.
You see, this is what spiritual science wants and what spiritual science, as it is meant here, can also accomplish: to bring about a knowledge that is not only for the intellect, but that also passes into the heart and will.
Certainly, today there are repeated calls, especially in the field of education, that education and teaching should not be aimed solely at the acquisition of knowledge, but should also train people to be capable, to work, and should form the will. Here we have one of the points where we can say that there is a great deal of good will among our contemporaries. Certainly, there is a great deal of good will when people today say that we should not establish schools of knowledge, but schools of workability, schools of skill. But good will is not enough; there must be the power to illuminate this good will, to illuminate it with real insight. And this insight is not satisfied with simply saying that that we should establish schools not of knowledge but of skill. Rather, this insight is about the fact that in our age, which is increasingly moving from the instinctive to the conscious, it is necessary not only to act instinctively on the will, for the teacher to act instinctively on the pupil, but also to transfer concepts, ideas, and mental images from the teacher to the child; but such mental images that are not merely mental images that are thought, but such mental images that fire the will, that fill the whole human being. It is not a question of emphasizing one-sidedly that only the will or only the mind should be educated. No, it is a matter of gaining the ability to work toward such insights, such mental images, such concepts that have the power to pass into the will, to form the inner fire for the will. This is what is needed today for the healing of our present age, which is sick in many respects, in order to apply it in the right way in the second socio-educational field.
The first of these social-educational areas is the one that our newly founded Waldorf school is intended to serve: the area that encompasses youth education, that teaching and upbringing through which people are to be placed in what is required of them today and in the near future through truly social thinking. We will see how much this is a question of spiritual science, how much it is a question of the path into the supersensible worlds.
The other area that is relevant from a social-educational perspective is what I would call the “teaching of life.” We are in a bad position in life if we face this life with rigidity and alienation. We are only truly in life when every moment, every day, every week, every year is a source of learning for our further development. We will have made the most of our schooling—regardless of how far we have progressed in it—if we have learned to learn from life through this schooling. If we find the right way to relate to every person we encounter, then they will become a source of further development for us in everything they consciously or unconsciously give us and are. In everything we do, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, we experience ourselves in such a way that, through what we experience with ourselves through our environment, we open up a source of constant development within ourselves. Life is a school for every healthy person.
However, both the socio-educational field of youth education and the socio-educational field of learning from life can no longer cope with the culture of the present and the near future unless they are permeated by what can emanate from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.
Today, it is believed that education must be “individualized.” Other principles can also be found in modern pedagogy. I do not wish to go into the details of modern pedagogy, but I would like to mention one thing, and that is that this modern pedagogy contains certain norms that are taught to those who are to teach, who are to become teachers. According to these norms, they are to teach and educate. There is also a great deal of good will in these norms. An extraordinary amount of well-intentioned intellectual energy has been devoted to this pedagogy. But what is necessary for the present and the near future in this field is that abstract pedagogy, which establishes standards according to which teaching should be carried out, should be replaced by living pedagogy, which comes from supersensible knowledge of the human being. This supersensible knowledge of the human being does not neglect sensory knowledge of the human being at all: it takes it fully into account. But while this sensory knowledge of the human being, with all that it contains in terms of anatomy and physiology, treats the human being as an abstract entity, supersensible knowledge fully incorporates sensory knowledge, but adds to it the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being. It considers the whole human being, above all the whole human being in their becoming. It can therefore focus on this whole developing human being, as he or she is entrusted by the parents to elementary school around the age of seven, in this life-transforming epoch in which imitation gives rise to what wants to be based on authority, and many other things. And only then can one see what actually lives in the human being, when one can look at something like what I have just indicated, when one is able to look at the human being in such a way that, by seeing such a transformation, everything that sprouts in the human being comes before the spiritual eye. If one perceives this in the right way, what wants to come out of the human being in the sixth, seventh year, then, if you have not become a teacher but are a teacher, the innermost life force awakens within you, the ability to intervene without pedagogical norms in what this most wonderful mystery of the world, the developing human being, continually presents before the eye of our soul.
And here we have something that must be taken into account for a truly socio-educational reorganization, such as must underlie today's unified elementary school. Here, one must say that, basically, it is irrelevant to the teacher-to-be whether he or she has been taught what is often taught today as pedagogy, as special methodology. What is important for the future teacher is that his seminar training has enabled him to look into the developing human being; that he has acquired what can be acquired through a comprehensive, real knowledge of human beings; that he has become capable of reshaping his pedagogy in relation to each child and at every moment of his educational and teaching activity.
For the real teacher today, pedagogy must be something alive that is constantly being recreated. And everything that he carries in his soul as a pedagogue is something that robs him of his originality. In place of standard pedagogical principles or norms, insights into the nature of the developing human being must take their place, insights that continually allow pedagogy to be recreated and brought to life in the person who is to educate and teach. One might say that the best pedagogy – to put it somewhat radically – is that which is constantly forgotten by the teacher and constantly rekindled when the teacher stands before the child, the pupil, and sees before his soul the forces of developing human nature living within him. If, in addition to such an attitude, there is also a great interest, a comprehensive interest in the mysteries of the world, in world enigmas, in worldviews, then that which truly enables the teacher to transfer from his being to the child's being what is to be transferred will live in him.
But how can the inner nature of the teacher become as alive as I have now characterized it? Never through mental images of the kind taken from scientific knowledge, but solely through the teacher's will being cognitively inspired by a science that has been attained through forces connected with the human organization in the way I have characterized today. The teacher who has absorbed what spiritual science knows about the supersensible nature of the human being, who has brought this to life within themselves, who carries within them a living science built up from the forces according to which the child they are educating and teaching grows up, will be able to apply this knowledge as a living fire in their education and teaching. For his pedagogical art stems from supersensible knowledge, that is, from the same forces that bring about the growth and inner organization of the child from day to day, week to week, year to year.
Consider how close the art of education in its sources comes to what grows up in the child when supersensible insights dominate and guide what is brought to the child as the art of education by the teacher! It is not so much new abstractions, not sophistical new pedagogical principles in what is here called social-pedagogical work that should be sought! What should be sought is to replace the dead with the living, the abstract with the concrete.
Demanding these things is much more necessary today than the world often allows itself to dream. And it is strange how one cannot even imagine that there is a supersensible knowledge that becomes skill and ability in the realm of sensory knowledge and also in life, teaching, and education. People are already beginning to misunderstand what is at the heart of Waldorf schools and therefore to slander what Waldorf schools are trying to achieve, even if unconsciously. Because those who stand at its cradle come from spiritual science, people believe that the Waldorf school is a “worldview school,” a school where children are taught anthroposophy. They have no idea how much they are still stuck in old mental images by assuming this, whether they are supporters or opponents. We have no need to promote anthroposophy by promoting it as a worldview, by developing individual anthroposophical concepts and ensuring that children absorb them as they used to absorb religious mental images. No, we do not consider that to be our task. We will honestly adhere to what we have proposed: that Protestant, Evangelical, and Catholic religious education teachers should teach the Evangelical and Catholic religions, and we will not in any way obstruct the will to provide this religious education. We will be the ones who keep our promise in this regard. We are not seeking to introduce any new worldview into schools in this form. We want something else. We are looking at how our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, because it originates from human organizational forces, translates into human skill, into human ability, how it flows directly into the human will. How we work pedagogically, how we act in school, how we organize the teaching material, how we design the curriculum and the teaching goals—in other words, everything that is the methodological handling of teaching, everything that flows from mere knowledge, from mere worldview, into the skill, into the ability of the educator—that is what we consider to be our task. And that is why many things will be corrected which – again out of good will, but by no means out of the necessary underlying insight – are regarded as the goal and content of current educational work.How much emphasis is placed today, for example, on the importance of visual teaching. Yes, certainly, within certain limits, it is very good to cultivate visual teaching, that is, to teach the child what can be shown to them directly. But this visual teaching must not lead to a descent into the banal and the trivial by focusing on the most obvious. One always wants to descend to the child's visual capacity, and then all those banalities come out that one finds today when reading various instructions for visual teaching. One had to deal with these things precisely when setting up the Waldorf school. There we could see how banal, how trivial the so-called visual teaching, which has grown entirely out of the materialistic spirit of the times, is often carried out, and how it is carried out in a radical way, saying that the teacher should descend to the level of the pupil's understanding, that he should teach the pupil nothing more than what the pupil can understand.
Well, if you only teach the student what they can understand, then you are sinning against something that can be the most beautiful thing in human life. Anyone who always wants to descend to what the pupil already understands does not know what it means when, later in more mature years, perhaps only in your thirties or forties, you remember something that comes back to you, something you received from your teacher during your school days and which you were unable to fully understand at the time because you were not yet mature. Now it reappears. Now you realize that you have become more mature, because you understand it now. It is this re-experiencing of what you absorbed during your school days that actually constitutes the fruitful connection between your whole life and your school days. It is immensely valuable that we learn so much at school that we can later look back on what we learned as something whose full value we have only now, decades later, come to appreciate. Pupils are deprived of this if we only descend to their current level of understanding in a banal visual lesson.
But what task must the teacher fulfill who wants to teach the child something that it absorbs, even though it may only understand it decades later? The teacher must have the necessary vitality within himself so that, simply through his personality, he can also convey to the child what he puts into his teaching, even if the child cannot yet fully understand it. There is a relationship between teacher and pupil through which things are transferred to the pupil, transferred through the way they live in the teacher, because the fire of experience with which he is imbued, what lives in him, is felt by the pupil. That is why the pupil absorbs it. And it is something tremendously significant when the teacher becomes a guide in this way, when through the fire that lives within him, he becomes a source of life for what the pupil continues to cultivate as his own life, while what is taught to the pupil through ordinary, banal visual instruction fades away with school days. Much could be cited as evidence that pedagogy must be a living thing, which should be kindled in the teacher by his or her acquisition of a science of human beings, gained in the way I have characterized today: through the forces of the human organism itself. More than for anyone else, teachers and educators need such knowledge of human beings, based on a supersensible view of the human being. And one could immediately see — if one only wanted to — how everything abstract would disappear from teaching practice and only the handling of what is necessary and practical would emerge if this teaching practice were based on what can flow from a supersensible worldview and knowledge of human beings.
But instead of gaining insight into what could be achieved for teaching and education through such an application of supersensible knowledge to social pedagogy, today we have people who believe they are living in practical life and who, through their practice, which is merely “routine,” have brought about the terrible misery and unhappiness that came to a head in the war and in which we are still stuck today, these people come and say that the supersensible has nothing to do with the practice of life. Because they have always said this, because they have thrown what is the real supernatural meaning of life out of practical life with criminal recklessness, they have brought about precisely this time. And by now wanting to continue this senseless practice of trampling to death every truly serious effort at improvement, they are continuing something from which we are only experiencing a brief respite. But if those who do not want to see what is necessary for the present were to prevail again today, we would soon have the same misery that began in 1914. For the people who today want to trample to death everything supernatural in an undertaking that is truly practical are also the ones who have led people into misfortune. That is what must be clearly understood today.
I would not have spoken these serious words here if these terrible prophecies of doom were not already making themselves felt again, even though something very modern and practical is to be created here, such as this Waldorf school. It is appropriate today to view such things from the perspective that the terrible events of the last four to five years should have taught us something and that we must move forward. Those who have not moved forward, who want to start again today where they left off in 1914, must be kept under close watch. We need not worry that they will keep a close watch on us; they do that of their own accord. But they must be kept under close scrutiny. And all those who understand that something must be done today, something that on the one hand comes from the true spirit and on the other hand is capable of having an effect on serious, real life, must unite.
From such truly practical foundations, it is necessary that what is often used as a phrase – especially in relation to education – should finally be handled with objective seriousness. For example, we must take into account – and such things were particularly emphasized in the seminar course for Waldorf school teachers – that around the age of nine, human beings complete something important and begin something new. Until the age of nine, human beings are still completely intertwined with their environment. The principle of imitation still prevails over the principle of authority. It is only in the ninth year that the possibility arises of developing a sense of self in such a way that, for example, facts of natural history and descriptions of the plant and animal world can be presented to the child. But at the same time, between the ages of seven and nine, this phase is such that we would do well not to teach children anything that does not flow naturally and self-evidently from human nature, but has come about only through convention. We must gradually introduce people to writing and reading. For who would not see that the letters we have today are something conventional? With Egyptian pictographic writing, it was different. This requires, however, that we teach writing in such a way that we start with drawing lessons, that we do not take letters into account at first, but let the children draw shapes; that we begin elementary drawing and painting – alongside music – at the lowest school levels, that we develop the entire teaching and education from the child's artistic abilities. For the child's artistic nature takes hold of the whole person, the will and the mind, and through the will and the mind, the intellect. And then, having cultivated drawing and painting, having stimulated the will through artistic instruction, we move on to writing, allowing the forms of writing to develop from the forms of drawing. And only then does reading come, which is even more intellectual than writing; then reading is developed from writing. I am giving you the details so that you can see that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not talk in vague terms, but leads into the practice of teaching in all its details. Until then, how to teach mathematics, how to teach writing, how to teach languages, is guided by that living knowledge of human beings which must take the place of abstract pedagogy. So much for the specific field of teaching pedagogy.
But social pedagogy also encompasses the whole “study of life.” When we outgrow school, we step out into life, and our scientific education creates a gap between us and life. That is why we see that for all the questions that concern humanity today, something instinctive prevails, whereby these questions do indeed involve life's demands, but there is no insight into the solution of such questions.
I would like to draw attention to a question that has preoccupied modern civilized humanity for a long time: the so-called women's question, that which forms the gap between men and women. It is right to want to bridge this gap, but it will not be possible to do so unless we truly establish what is common to both men and women. If we look only at what human beings can acquire in the physical world and from a scientific way of thinking, the difference between men and women remains a radical one. The gulf between man and woman can only be bridged when the difference that exists between them in their perception of the world and their activity in the world is balanced by what can come to human beings through the knowledge, the formation of will and mind that arise from the forces underlying the human organism itself. For what is not contained in man but is contained in woman gives man this spiritual formation. And what is not contained in woman but is contained in man gives woman this spiritual formation. While she is physically a woman, this spiritual formation gives woman the masculine spiritually and soulfully, and while he is physically a man, it gives man the feminine spiritually and soulfully. If what can flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual education were to spread throughout our education system, then the ground would finally be laid for something like the women's issue.
And so countless examples could be cited. But I want to draw attention to just one more thing: People are crying out for organization. And it is only natural that they cry out for it, because the complexity of conditions in today's social life requires organization. Well, much has already been said here in these lectures about the nature of such organization. But one imagines that organization should only be based on the principles that humanity has today without spiritual science, that humanity has from purely scientific education, from today's socio-political education. Lenin and Trotsky organize, Lunacharsky organizes according to these principles. They harness economic life to a machine-like mechanism, and they also want to harness spiritual life. For me, it is not a matter of relying on all kinds of stories from B. and similar people who judge on the basis of their own impressions, nor on what journalists and other people who have been in Russia today tell us. What we can rely on are Lenin's writings, and these prove to anyone who is capable of insight what is wanted on this side, and that is: the organizational destruction of everything that is the true source of humanity, everything that lies in the individual human being and nature. There is no stronger enemy of human progress than what is happening in the East today. Why is that so? Because it is based not at all on what can come only from spiritual education, from anthroposophically oriented spiritual education, and that is: real social-pedagogical vitality. We must organize, but we must be aware that if we want to organize, there must be people living in this organization who have the opportunity within this organization to teach what is the innermost source of human nature, what is hidden when a person has grown up, but what can be brought back up from the dormant powers of their organization. Not all people need to become clairvoyant and experience within themselves what can be experienced through the awakened powers of human organization once they have passed the age of twenty, but all people can take an interest in what can be achieved through this living organizational power of the human being.
When people take an interest in this, a new ability awakens in them, an ability that can best be characterized today by referring to something for which people have already lost some of their sensitivity, referring to that which is the language of a related human race with the same language. Those who speak a language must first get to know the language with its genius, with its wonderful artistic structure, even if they already speak the language, in order to discover the spirit that lives in the language, the spirit that permeates the people who are united by this language. As we learn to speak, we absorb, not consciously but instinctively and subconsciously, with every word, but especially with every turn of phrase, something that the genius of the language mysteriously reveals to us. Social life is something that often lives in instincts. Language has always been a social instrument of the most wonderful kind. Only in recent times has language become more abstract the further one goes from east to west. People feel less and less what the sounds of language say to the heart, to the head, and especially in the contexts that language forms, to these hearts, to these heads, how the genius of language mysteriously enters into people, what it has to communicate to them.
Many other things that are intended to have a similar effect on people as that which has always been exerted by the genius of language will have an effect when general humanistic education is spread through the activities of the lowest schools — which do not seek to influence worldviews, but rather to provide rationally conducted instruction. Then one person will face another in such a way that he will be immersed in the other person as he speaks to him. Every conversation, every relationship with another person will be a source for the further development of one's own soul. And what we put into the world, through which we influence other people, will be a source of our further development. We will only properly develop the imponderables that can influence human nature when we are able to approach other people with the feelings that are stirred within us, when we do not pursue abstract science, but take in that living fire within us that can come to us from a science that is connected with human nature itself, that is, the forces that enable human beings to flourish until the age of twenty and from then on can lead to the cultivation of supersensible knowledge. And in socio-educational terms, the school of life can follow on from the youth school if those forces are stimulated in us that make us learners in this school of life. We will then also come together with people in state or economic organizations, i.e., abstract organizations. We will then feel a kindred spirit in them and say to ourselves: something connects us, more than with anyone else. And alongside the organizations that have arisen from external circumstances, intimate, mysterious organizations may arise in the future, formed from soul to soul, when the experience of true spiritual knowledge lives in human souls. Then people will have the experience: In previous earthly lives, you experienced this or that with this or that person, and now they are coming back to you. Through this inner connection, which rests mysteriously in the depths of the soul, something spiritual and soulful is brought into the otherwise cold, sober organizations.
And although I have described the three organizations here since spring — the spiritual realm, the legal-political realm, and the economic realm of the social organism — it must be emphasized that these are three external organizations! Within what these three external organizations will be for human beings, there will live those intimate, inner organizations that are forged from human soul to human soul as a result of people recognizing each other more accurately than they do today. When the antisocial instincts are replaced by social instincts — thereby establishing true social life — only then will the scientific way of thinking become fully useful to human beings. Through this scientific way of thinking, they will be able to properly master the external, lifeless nature that enters our lives as technology and other activities. But what will come to humans as benefit, as effect, from these technical or other institutions will be provided by the forces that are stirred up as ethical, moral forces through spiritual will culture and can come from spiritual science. An inner organization will come into the outer organizations, which will support people and shape human life. Without this inner organization, we will not achieve a fruitful outer organization.
This is what I wanted to hint at a little today: that spiritual science, as it is conceived here, is not something abstract, not something metaphysical floating in cloud cuckoo land – as some would like to slander it – but that it is something that flows directly into the human will and works within it, making it fit for life and actually viable in the first place. This is what those who today refuse to recognize the necessity of our spiritual science fail to understand. They will also fail to understand how, not out of some arbitrariness, but out of true life experience, something like the Waldorf school comes into being. But can we expect much from the leading figures of today? In the spring and summer, I repeatedly spoke about this, that is, I included the sentence in my social lectures – I only want to cite this as characteristic of some aspects of the current state of mind – that labor must not be a commodity in the future. And I also said this in a neighboring town: that human labor must be freed from its commodity character. I believe that today, one only needs to have a little common sense to understand the widely used “commodity character” in the word “commodity.” But this morning I received a newspaper published in this neighboring town; the editorial concludes with the sentence: “I am completely perplexed by the statement that labor must be freed from its true character!” That is possible today. It is possible today that people judge what wants to enter contemporary culture, not in a vague way, but on the basis of knowledge, and that they are not even so far along in their education that they understand something like the commodity character on their own. Such a person must never have heard anything about the “commodity character of human labor” in their entire life! How do such people live in the present? Is it any wonder that we cannot cope with the cultural life of the present, if such a shift out of time is even possible? But this is not only possible with people like the writer of this newspaper article, this editorial, but it is also possible with people who believe they have a monopoly on practical experience, who look down on anything that seems idealistic to them at every opportunity, who talk about real life in the same way as someone who sees a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron and is told by someone else that it is a magnet: “No,” he replies, “a horseshoe is used to shoe horses.” This is how people who want to exclude supernatural insights from practical life appear today: like the man who shoes his horse with a magnetic iron as a horseshoe, they would not consider what does not immediately meet their understanding to be real.
Today, there are many more people than one might think who are hindering social progress; people who refuse to understand that the statement “the last four to five years have brought something more terrible to the people of Europe than anything that has ever happened in the period commonly referred to as history” must now be followed by the statement: “that things must now happen from depths of thought that have not yet been reached in the course of what is called history.” We have arrived at a time when humanity thinks in entirely abstract terms; but the most abstract of all are the party opinions and party programs that existed at the beginning of the 20th century, which grew out of what was then considered scientific education. People do not want to understand how abstract, how alien to humanity, is that with which they want to control life today. People believe they are being practical. Just one example: today, people see how German money is slipping through their fingers in global trade, how the German currency is slipping away more and more every day. And in Germany, every day more and more things are being done that will naturally cause the currency to fall. This means that the pragmatists are once again firmly at the helm. And as long as people fail to realize that true practical wisdom is not to be found where it was sought until 1914, but in the dominant ideas of life, there will be no salvation. The fact that people are not humble enough to admit that there must be a deepening, a deepening of insight, that good will alone is not enough – that is the cancer of our time.
It will be necessary to understand more and more what real spiritual knowledge is based on and that spiritual knowledge, because it is based on the development of the same forces that organize human beings in a healthy way, can therefore also place them in life in a healthy way in terms of social pedagogy. That is what we need today: spirit — but not an unworldly spirit, not a spirit in cloud cuckoo land; not a metaphysical spirit, but a real spirit that intervenes in the practice of life, that can master matter. And we also need practical insight into life, standing in life, but in such a way that we look at life itself in such a way that we want to introduce the spirit into this life.
A motto must inspire people from a spiritual scientific perspective, otherwise no progress will be possible in our hopeless times. And this motto must be:
Seek the truly practical material life,
But seek it in such a way that it does not numb you to the spirit that is at work in it.
Seek the spirit,
But do not seek it in supersensible voluptuousness, out of supersensible egoism,
But seek it
Because you want to apply it selflessly in practical life, in the material world.
Apply the old principle:
“Spirit is never without matter, matter never without spirit” in such a way that you say:
We want to do everything material in the light of the spirit,
And we want to seek the light of the spirit in such a way
That it may develop warmth for our practical actions."The spirit that is led by us into matter,
The matter that is worked on by us until its revelation,
Through which it drives the spirit out of itself;
The matter that receives the spirit revealed by us,
The spirit that is driven by us toward matter,
These form the living being
That can bring humanity to real progress,
To the progress that can only be longed for by the best in the deepest depths of contemporary souls.