The Child's Changing Consciousness and Waldorf Education
GA 306
16 April 1923, Dornach
Lecture II
To begin with we will try to understand more fully the nature of the growing human being, bearing in mind the later stages in life, in order to draw conclusions about education from our findings.
Knowledge of the human being made possible through anthroposophical research—as outlined briefly yesterday—fundamentally differs from the findings of modern science and other research. The knowledge of the human being produced by our contemporary civilization is based mainly on what remains when the human spirit and part of the human soul are ignored. Such knowledge rests on what can be found, both anatomically and physiologically, when one looks at a corpse. Furthermore, it is supported by investigations into pathological changes, due to illness or other causes, from which conclusions are drawn with regard to the healthy human being. What is gained through this approach then forms the background for the attitude from which judgments are made regarding the living, healthy human being.
The anthroposophical approach begins by looking at the human being as an entity, an organization of body, soul, and spirit. It attempts to comprehend the human being not in an abstract and dead way, but through a living mode of observation that can recognize and comprehend with living concepts the human totality of spirit, soul, and body. This approach enables us to perceive accurately the various metamorphoses that take place during a lifetime. Children are different beings depending on whether they are going through the development between birth and change of teeth, or between the second dentition and puberty—the latter period being the time when they are in the care of the class teacher—or during the stage following puberty. Human beings are completely different creatures depending on which of these three stages they are going through. But the differences are so deeply hidden that they escape a more external form of observation. This external method of observation does not lead to a clear perception and judgment of how body, soul, and spirit are permeated by spirit in entirely different ways during each of the first three periods of life.
It would surely not be proper for teachers to first acquire theoretical knowledge and then to think: What I have learned in theory I will now apply in my teaching in one way or another. With this attitude they would only distance themselves from the child's true being. Teachers need to transform their knowledge of the human being into a kind of higher instinct whereby they can respond properly to whatever comes from each individual child. This is another way that anthroposophical knowledge of the human being differs from the usual kind, and can lead to a routine approach to education at best, but not to a firmly founded pedagogical sense and teaching practice. To achieve this, one's knowledge of human nature must be capable of becoming pedagogical instinct the moment one has to deal with a child, so that in response to all that comes from the child one knows instantly and exactly what must be done in every single case. If I may use a comparison, there are all kinds of theories about what we should eat or drink, but in ordinary life we do not usually follow such theoretical directions. We drink when thirsty and eat when hungry, according to the constitution of the human organism. Eating and drinking follow a certain rhythmical pattern for good reasons, but usually one eats and drinks when hungry or thirsty; life itself sees to that.
Now, knowledge of the human being, which forms the basis of a sound and practical way of teaching, must create in the teachers, every time they face a child, something like the relationship between hunger and eating. The teachers' response to a given pedagogical situation has to become as natural as satisfying a sensation of hunger by eating. This is only possible if knowledge of the human being has permeated flesh and blood as well as soul and spirit, so that you intuitively know what needs to be done every time you face a child. Only if your knowledge of human beings has such inner fullness that it can become instinctive can it lead to the proper kind of practical teaching. It will not happen on the basis of psychological experiments leading to theories about pupils' powers of memory, concentration, and so on. In that case, intellectual ideas are inserted between theory and practice. This presents an unreal situation that externalizes all educational methods and practice. The first thing to be aimed for is a living comprehension of the child in all its pulsing life.
Let's look now at young children as they grow into earthly life. Let our observations be straightforward and simple, and we shall find that there are three things with which they have to come to terms, three activities that become a decisive factor for the entire life to come. These are what are simply called walking, speaking, and thinking.
The German poet Jean Paul—this is the name he gave himself—once said: “The human being learns more for the whole of life during the first three years than he does during his three years at university.”1Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter) (1763–1825) German poet. This is entirely true; it is a fact. For even if academic studies nowadays extend over longer periods of time, their gain for life amounts to less than what is acquired for the whole of life during the time when children are learning how to walk, speak, and think.
What does it actually mean when we say the child is learning to walk, speak, and think? The capacity to walk comprises far more than is generally realized. It is by no means simply a case of the young child—after the stage of crawling—managing to stand up and take the first steps in order to develop what will eventually become an individual and characteristic way of walking. An inner adjustment underlies learning to walk; there is an inner orientation of the young child. The equilibrium of the organism, with all its possibilities for movement, becomes related to the equilibrium and all the possibilities for movement of the whole universe, because the child stands within it. While learning to walk, children are seeking to relate their own equilibrium to that of the entire cosmos.
They are also seeking the specifically human relationship between the activities of arms and hands and those of the lower limbs. The movements of arms and hands have a special affinity to the life of the soul, while those of the legs lag behind, serving more the physical body. This is of immense importance for the whole of later life. The differentiation between the activities of legs and feet and those of arms and hands represents the human quest for balance of soul that is lifelong.
When raising themselves up, young children are first of all seeking physical balance. But when freely moving arms and hands, they are also seeking balance of soul. There is infinitely more than meets the eye hidden behind what is commonly called “learning to walk,” as everyone can find out. The expression “learning to walk” signifies only the most obvious and outwardly important aspect perceptible to our senses. A deeper look at this phenomenon would make one wish to characterize it in the following way. To learn to walk is to learn to experience the principles of statics and dynamics2The terms statics and dynamics, the principles of rest or equilibrium and of movement, are used by Steiner in various ways in this and the following lectures. These polar forces, active in the young child, work in full coordination in walking, while the body's weight is being transferred from one leg to the other. The way that a child gradually learns to control these forces is not only highly individual, but is significant for the child's entire life.—Translator. in one's own inner being and to relate these to the entire universe. Better still, to learn to walk is to meet the forces of statics and dynamics both in body and soul and to relate these experiences to the whole cosmos. This is what learning to walk is all about. But through the fact that the movements of arms and hands have become emancipated from those of the legs and feet, something else has happened. A basis has been created for attaining a purely human development. Thus, the child who is learning to walk adapts itself outwardly to the external, visible world with its own rhythms and beat, as well as inwardly with its entire inner being.
So you see that something very noteworthy is woven into the development of the human being. The activities of the legs, in a certain way, have the effect of producing in the physical and soul life a stronger connection with what is of the nature of beat, of what cuts into life. In the characteristic attunement of the movements of right and left leg, we learn to relate ourselves to what lies below our feet. And then, through the emancipation of the movements of our arms from those of our legs, a new musical and melodious element is introduced into the beat and rhythm provided by the activities of our legs. The content of our lives—or one might say, the themes of our lives—comes to the fore in the movements of our arms. Their activity, in turn, forms the basis for what is being developed when the child is learning to speak. Outwardly, this is already shown through the fact that with most people, the stronger activity of the right arm corresponds to the formation of the left speech organ. From the relationship between the activities of legs and arms, as you can observe them in a freely moving human being, yet another relationship comes into being. It is the relationship that the child gains to the surrounding world through learning to speak.
When you look at how all this is interconnected and belongs together, when you see how in the process of sentence formation the legs are working upwards into speech, and how the content, the meaning of words, enters into the process of sound production—that is, into the inner experience of the structure of the sentences—you have an impression of how the beat-like, rhythmical element of the moving legs works upon the more musical-thematic and inward element of the moving arms and hands. Consequently, if a child walks with firm and even steps, if its walk does not tend to be slovenly, you have the physical basis—which, naturally, is a manifestation of the spirit, as we shall see later—for a good feeling for the structure of both spoken and written sentences. Through the movement of the legs, the child learns to form correct sentences. You will also find that if a child has a slouching gait, it will have difficulties finding the right intervals3The German word Intervall refers to differences in pitch only, and not to a break in the flow of time.—Translator. between sentences, and that the contours of its sentences become blurred. Likewise, if a child does not learn to move its arms harmoniously, its speech will become rasping and unmelodious. In addition, if you cannot help a child to become sensitive in its fingertips, it will not develop the right sense for modulation in speech.
All this refers to the time when the child learns to walk and talk. But something else can also be detected. You may have noticed that in life the proper timing of certain processes is sometimes disturbed, that certain phases of development make their appearance later than one would expect according to the natural course of development. But in this context you can also see that the proper sequence of events can be safeguarded if children are encouraged to learn to walk first, that is, if one can possibly avoid having children learn to speak before they can walk. Speech has to be developed on the basis of the right kind of walking and of the free movement of the arms. Otherwise, children's speech will not be anchored in their whole being. Instead, they will only babble indistinctly. You may have come across some people whose speech sounded not unlike bleating. In such a case, not enough attention was paid to what I have just tried to characterize.
The third faculty the child must learn on the basis of walking and speaking is thinking, which should gradually become more and more conscious. But this faculty ought to be developed last, for it lies in the child's nature to learn to think only through speaking. In its early stages, speaking is an imitation of the sounds that the child hears. As the sounds are perceived by the child in whom the characteristic relationship between the movements of the legs and arms is deeply rooted, it learns intuitively to make sense of the sounds that it imitates, though without linking any thought to what it has heard. At first, the child only links feelings to the sounds coming toward it. Thinking, which arises later, can develop only out of speech. Therefore, the correct sequence we need to encourage in the growing child is learning to walk, learning to speak, and finally, learning to think.
We must now enter a bit more deeply into these three important processes of development. Thinking, which is—or ought to be—the last faculty developed, always has the quality of mirroring, or reflecting, outer nature and its processes. Moral impulses do not originate in the sphere of thinking, as we all know. They arise in that part of the human being we call the conscience, about which we shall have more to say later on. In any case, human conscience arises in the depths of the soul before penetrating the sphere of thinking. The faculty of thinking, on the other hand, that we acquire in childhood, is attuned only to perceiving the essence of outer nature and its processes. Thus all of the child's first thinking is aimed at creating images of outer nature and its processes.
However, when we turn to learning to speak, we come across quite a different situation. With regard to the development of this faculty, present-day science has been able to make only tentative observations. Orthodox science has achieved quite wonderful results, for instance in its investigations into the animal world. And when it compares its findings with what happens in a human being, it has made many discoveries that deserve our full recognition. But with regard to the comprehension of the processes taking place when a child is learning to speak, contemporary science has remained rather in the dark.
The same applies to animal communication through sound. And here a key question needs to be answered first. In order to speak, the human being uses the larynx and other speech organs. The higher animals also possess these organs, even if in a more primitive form. If we disregard certain animals capable of producing sounds that in some species have developed into a kind of singing, but think instead of animals that emit only very primitive sounds, an obvious question comes to mind (and I raise this question not only from a causal, but also from quite a utilitarian point of view). Why should such animals have a larynx with its neighboring organs, since these are used for speech only by the human being? Though the animal is not capable of using them for speaking, they are there nevertheless, and this even very markedly. Comparative anatomy shows that even in relatively dumb animals—dumb in comparison with the human being—organs of this kind exist.
It is a fact that these organs, at least to a certain extent, have possibilities destined to be realized only by the human being. Though incapable of making use of these organs for speech, the animal nevertheless possesses them. What is the meaning of this? A more advanced physiology will come to discover that the animal forms of the various species depend, in each case, upon the animal's larynx and its neighboring organs. If, for instance, a certain animal grows into a lion, the underlying causes have to be looked for in its upper chest organs. From there, forces are radiating out that create the form of a lion. If an animal grows into a cow, the cause of this particular form is to be found in what becomes the speech organ in the human being. From these organs, the forces creating the animal forms radiate. One day this will have to be studied in detail in order to learn how to approach morphology more realistically. Then one will find out how to correctly study animal forms, how to grasp the nature of the upper chest organs and the way these pass over into the organs of the mouth. For it is from this region that forces radiate creating the entire animal form.
Human beings form these organs into speech organs on the basis of their upright walk and freely moving arms. They take in what works through sound and speech from their surroundings—if we are dealing with present times. And what is it they absorb in this way? Think of how the potential to give form to the entire human organism lies in these organs. This means that if, for instance, a child hears an angry or passionate voice, if it is surrounded by loud and ill-tempered shouting, it will absorb something the animal keeps out. The animal lets itself be shaped only by the larynx and its neighboring organs, but members of the human species allow vehement or passionate voices to enter their inner being. These sounds flow into the human form, right into the structure of the most delicate tissues. If children hear only gentle speech in their surroundings, this too flows right into the structure of their finest tissues. It flows into their very formation, and especially so into the more refined parts of their organization. The coarser parts are able to withstand these influences, as in the case of the animal. But whatever is taken in through speech flows into the finer parts of the child's organization. This is how the differing organizations of the various nations come about. They all flow out of the language spoken. The human being is an imprint of language. You will therefore be able to appreciate what it means that in the course of human evolution so many people have learned to speak several languages. It has had the effect of making such people more universal. These things are of immense importance for the development of humankind.
<And so we see how during the early period of childhood the human being is inwardly predisposed, right down to the blood circulation, by what comes from the environment. These influences become instrumental for the orientation of a person's thought life. What happens in a human being through learning to speak is something I ask you to consider most seriously.
This human faculty might best be understood in its essence by comparing it with animal development. If an animal could express what lives in its forming and shaping, emanating from its upper chest organs, it would have to say, My form conforms with what streams from my upper chest and mouth organs, and I do not allow anything to enter my being that would modify this form. So would the animal speak if it were able to express this relationship. The human being, on the other hand, would say, I adapt the upper organs of my chest and mouth to the world processes that work through language, and I adjust the structure of my innermost organization accordingly.
The human being adapts the most inward physical organization to what comes from the surroundings through language, but not the outer organization, which develops in a way similar to that of animals. This is of immense importance for an understanding of the entire human being. For out of language, the general orientation of thought is developed, and because of this the human being during the first three years of life is given over entirely to what comes from the outer world, whereas the animal is rigidly enclosed within itself.
For this reason, the way that we find our relationship during these three years to statics and dynamics, then to speech, and finally to thinking, is of such profound importance. It is essential that this process develops in the right way. No doubt you are all aware that this can happen in the most varied ways in each individual human being.
On what does it depend that these processes take their prper course? It depends on many things. But the most fundamental factor during the first stage of childhood is the right relationship between the child's times of sleeping and waking. This means that we have to acquire an instinctive knowledge of how much sleep a child needs and how long it should be awake. For example, suppose that a child sleeps too much, relatively speaking. In this case it will develop a tendency to hold back in the activity of its legs. If a child gets too much sleep, inwardly it will lose the will to walk. It will become lethargic in its walking, and, because of this, it will also become lazy in its speech. Such a child will not develop a proper flow in its speech and it will speak more slowly than it should according to its natural disposition. When we meet such a person in later life—unless this imbalance has been put right during the subsequent school years—we sometimes despair because he or she gives us the opportunity, one might say, to go for a little walk between every two words spoken. There are such people who have difficulties in finding their way from one word to the next. And if we come across them and look at their childhood, we will find that when they were learning to walk, they were allowed to sleep too much.
Now let us take the case of a child whose parents or those in charge did not ensure that it had the relatively long hours of sleep appropriate to its age. The inner being of such a child is incapable of gaining the necessary control over its leg movements. Instead of walking normally, the child will have a floppy gait. In its speech, instead of controlling the sequential flow of words with the forces of the soul, it will let the words fall out of its mouth. The words of the sentences will not cohere.
This is quite different from the case of a child who has difficulties in finding the right words. Here an overabundance of speech energy prevents it from getting from one word on to the next. Thus, in the instance mentioned previously, I was referring to the opposite, namely to a lack of the necessary energy. The words, as they follow each other, are not carried along by the flow of the soul; instead, the child waits for the right moment to “click in” the next word. If this reaches extreme proportions, the result is stammering. If one finds a tendency toward stammering in people, especially in their twenties and thirties, one can be sure that as young children they were not given enough sleep.
From this you can see how knowledge of the human being can give us the fundamentals of what needs to be done.
Now let us consider the entire human organism and see how during the first three years it adapts itself to earthly conditions of life, how it allows the principles of statics and dynamics, underlying the faculty of autonomous movement, to flow into what is produced through shaping the air in speech. In this process there is much more involved that is of consequence for the development of thinking. Compare this situation with that of an adult, and you will see that in the child there is a much stronger working together of these inner dynamics—of walking, fidgeting, movements of arms, and creating mental images. In the child all this flows together into a unity far more than in the adult. The child remains a far more homogeneous being than a grown-up in other respects as well.
If, for instance, we as adults suck a sweet (which we really shouldn't do), this merely amounts to a titillation of the tongue, for the sweet taste does not go much further than that. But the child is in a different position. There the taste continues to spread. Children don't tell us this and we don't notice it; nevertheless, the taste continues to have an effect upon the child. Many among you will surely have observed how, according to their individual makeup, certain children are strongly permeated by soul and spiritual forces and how this quality comes to outer expression in them. It is far more interesting to watch the arms and legs of such a lively child than its mouth, when it is standing some distance away from a table where there is a bowl full of sugar. What the mouth says is more or less obvious, but the way such a child develops desire right down to its toes, or in the arms, as it steers toward the sugar bowl: you can clearly see it is not just a matter of the tongue anticipating sweetness, but changes are taking place throughout the entire being of the child. Here, tasting flows throughout the whole human being. If you enter into these things without preconceptions, you will come to realize that the young child, in a certain sense, is really just one great sense organ. Mainly this is so during the very first years (and more generally so between birth and the change of teeth) and is, naturally, less so in later years. What has become localized in the sense organs on the periphery of the human body in the adult, permeates the child's entire organism. Of course, you must understand these things with a certain discernment, but fundamentally they are real. Their existence is so real that orthodox physiology will one day be able to prove them with regard to the most conspicuous of all our sense organs, namely the human eye.
People come to me quite frequently and ask, Considering the present state of science, what would you recommend as a suitable theme for a thesis? (Theses, too, belong to the chapter on “school misery.”) If such a question is asked by students of physiology, I refer them to a topical problem. I tell them to observe the developmental phases of the human eye as seen in the embryo, and then to compare these with the corresponding phases of the entire embryo from its germinal stage onward. This will lead them to a kind of inverted parallel between the eye and the whole embryo as its development progresses. They will discover that, in a certain way, the eye begins its development later, it omits the first stages. In contrast, the embryo as an entity never reaches its final stage—as the eye does—but stops short beforehand. This points to something of great significance for embryology. If one looks at the whole development of the embryo, one will come to recognize that in these beginning stages we may observe ideal stages that exist only as an indication. The eye continues to develop into a perfected sense organ, whereas the embryo remains behind in its development only to continue its further growth later on.
But the situation in the young child is still one where, in its entire soul and spiritual development, the child's senses are poured out, as it were, over all of its corporeality. In a certain way the child is entirely a sense organ and it confronts the world as such. This has to be borne in mind, not only with regard to educational matters, but concerning everything that is happening in the child's environment before the change of teeth. We shall go into questions relating to more practical methods of teaching at a later stage. But it is only if one can see the fundamentals in the right light that one will be able to find the correct answers to particular human questions. One of these has been handed to me, which is of extraordinary importance for anyone who does not merely look at human evolution from external and well-known aspects of history.
As you know, in the past, as you know, there was far more discussion of sin and original sin than is customary today. Now I do not wish to go into this question in detail, I only want to outline what this expression implied to those who studied such questions as we study general scientific subjects today (not in its present popular sense where such matters have undergone a certain coarsening). To those inquiring minds, original sin stood for all inherited characteristics.4The German word for “original sin” is Erbsunde, which means literally “inherited sin.”—Translator. This means that what a person had inherited from his or her forebears was considered to represent original sin. Such was the actual concept of this expression; only later on was it changed to what we associate it with today. In earlier times, it was definitely felt that physical features inherited from one's ancestors gave rise to sinfulness.
And what do we say today? We not only believe in studying inherited characteristics most carefully, but we even encourage their cultivation! If an earlier form of science had been asked to judge the modern attitude, it would have responded, With all your progress you have managed to come up with a most extraordinary principle—you have actually taught society to cultivate what is of sinful origin in the human being! Because we know of historical events only from what is rather superficially recorded in history books, we do not notice such subtle changes of interpretation.
However, if you look into what I have told you today—namely how the child, through its relationship to dynamics and statics, through learning to speak and to think, adapts itself to the environment—then you will be able to distinguish between the part played by purely physical heredity and that of the environmental influences, which are far stronger than is generally realized. Often we hear it said that someone has inherited a particular trait from either the father or the mother, whereas in reality it is simply the result of imitating a certain way of walking, or a characteristic gesture of hands, or a specific manner of speaking, from those close to the person in his or her early childhood. The child's total surrender to the influences of the environment is what is of preeminent importance during the first years and not heredity as such. In their proper place, theories of heredity have their justification, but these also need to be seen within the context of what I said yesterday, when speaking about soft ground into which footmarks were imprinted.
If now some hypothetical Martian were to appear on the Earth, a being unacquainted with the human race, it might explain the origin of these footprints in the following way: Certain forces have pushed up the Earth, more in some places and less in others, which has caused the configuration of these footmarks. This is how some people would explain the nature of the human soul on the basis of heredity and as a result of the working of the brain. Just as the footprints have been pressed into the Earth from outside, so have environmental influences, experienced during the childhood stage of imitation, through learning to walk, speak, and think, been imprinted in the body, and particularly so in the brain and the nervous system.
What orthodox physical psychology maintains is perfectly correct. The brain is a clear imprint of what the human individual is as a being of soul. One only has to know that the brain is not the cause, the creator of the soul element, but the ground on which the soul develops. Just as I cannot walk without the ground under my feet, neither can I, as a physical being, think without a brain. This is obvious. But the brain is no more than the ground into which the activities of thinking and speaking imprint what is received from the surrounding world. It is not a matter of heredity.
Perhaps now you can see that people tend to have only unclear notions about what is happening in the child during these first three “nonacademic” years. During that time, to a large extent, the foundations are being laid for a person's whole inner life and configuration. I have already spoken of how thinking, which develops later, turns toward the outer world. It forms images of the natural world and its processes. But the faculty of speaking, which is developed earlier, absorbs—at least in nuances and in modified form—what lives spiritually in language. And language, coming from the child's environment, works upon the child's soul. Through language we take in from our surroundings what we make our own in the realm of the soul. The entire soul atmosphere of our surroundings permeates us through the medium of language. And we know that the child is one great sense organ; we know that inner processes are inaugurated through these soul impressions.
So that, for example, if a child, is frequently exposed to the outbursts of an over-choleric father who utters his words as if in constant anger, it will inwardly experience its father's entire soul background through the way he forms his words. And this has an effect not only on the child's soul, but, through the atmosphere of anger surrounding it, causes the activity of fine glandular secretions to increase as well. Eventually, the glands of such a child become accustomed to an enhanced activity of secretion, and this can affect the whole life of such a child. Unless these harmful influences are balanced through the right kind of education later on, a tendency will develop toward nervous anxieties in any angry atmosphere. Here you have an example of how a certain soul condition directly enters and affects the physical organization. The attempt is often made to comprehend the relationship between the human soul and body, but a fact such as this, where during the first period of life a physical condition directly manifests itself as a symptom in the realm of the soul, simply goes unnoticed.
And now, while the child enters into the realm of statics and dynamics working through its surroundings, it does something unconsciously that is of great importance. Think for a moment of how much trouble it means for many an older pupil to learn the laws of statics and dynamics and to apply them, even if only in the field of mechanics. The young child does this unconsciously. It incorporates statics and dynamics into its entire being. Anthroposophical research shows us that what most accomplished experts in the field of statics and dynamics manage to think out for the external world is child's play compared with the way the child incorporates these complicated forces while learning to walk. It does so through imitation. Here is an opportunity to observe the strange outer effects of imitation in just this situation. You can find many examples in life. I will give you one.
There once were two girls of roughly the same age, who could be seen walking side by side. This case happened many years ago, in a town in central Germany. When they walked next to each other, they both limped with one leg. While both were performing the same limb movements, they displayed a marked difference between the movements of their more mobile right arms and right fingers and a somewhat paralyzed way they carried their left arms and left fingers. Both children were exact copies of each other. The slightly younger one was a true copy of the older one. And yet, only the older sister had a damaged left leg. Both legs of the younger one were perfectly normal. It was only by sheer imitation that she copied the movements of her handicapped sister. You can find similar cases everywhere, though many of them, being less conspicuous, may easily escape your notice.
When a child learns to walk, when it makes the principles of statics and dynamics its own, it takes in the spirit in its environment. One could formulate it in this way: In learning to walk, we take hold of the soul element of our milieu. And in what the child ought to learn first after entering earthly life, it takes hold of the spirit in its surroundings.
Spirit, soul, and body—spirit, soul, and nature—this is the right order in which the surrounding world approaches the human being. But as we take hold of the soul element in our surroundings, we also lay the foundations for our future sympathies and antipathies in life. These flow into us quite unnoticed. The way we learn to speak is, at the same time, also the way we acquire certain fundamental sympathies and antipathies. And the most curious aspect of it all is that whoever is able to develop an eye for such matters (an eye of the soul, of course) will find in the way a child walks—whether it does so more with the heel or with the toes, whether it has a firm footstep or whether it creeps along—a preparation for the moral character the child will develop in later life. Thus, we may say that together with the spiritual element the child absorbs while learning to walk, there also flows into it a moral element emanating from the environment. And it is a good thing if one can learn to perceive how the characteristic way a child moves its legs portends its moral character, whether it will develop into a morally good or bad person. For the most naturalistic quality belongs to what we take in through our thinking during childhood. What we absorb through language is already permeated by an element of soul. What we make our own through statics and dynamics is pervaded by moral and spiritual powers. But here statics and dynamics are not of the kind we learn about in school; here they are born directly out of the spirit.
It is most important to look at these matters in the right way, so that one does not arrive at the kind of psychology that is based primarily on physical aspects. In this kind of psychology one reads in fair detail what the author has managed to establish in the first thirty pages of print, only to find that relevant aspects of the soul are stuck on artificially. One must no longer speak today of the human spirit, since an Ecumenical Council abolished it, declaring that the human being does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but only of body and soul, the latter having certain spiritual properties.5The Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in A.D. 869.
The trichotomy of the human being was dogmatically forbidden during the Middle Ages, and today, our contemporary “unbiased” science begins its psychology with the declaration that the human being consists of body and soul only. Blissfully unaware of how little “unbiased” its findings are, it is still adhering to medieval dogmatism. The most erudite university professors follow this ancient dogma without having the slightest notion of it. In order to arrive at an accurate picture of the human being, it is essential to recognize all three constituent parts: body, soul, and spirit.
Materialistic minds can grasp only human thinking—and this is their tragedy. Materialism has the least understanding of matter because it cannot see the spirit working through matter. It can only dogmatize—there is only matter and its effects. But it does not know that everywhere matter is permeated with spirit. If one wants to describe materialism, one has to resort to a paradoxical definition. Materialism is the one view of the world that has no understanding of what matter is.
What is important is to know exactly where the borderlines are between the phenomena of body, soul, and spirit, and how one leads over into the other. This is of special importance with regard to the child's development during the first period of life.
Zweiter Vortrag
Wir wollen zunächst versuchen, einzudringen in das Wesen des heranwachsenden Menschen mit Rücksicht auf die späteren Lebensalter, um dann daraus die pädagogisch-didaktischen Konsequenzen zu ziehen.
Jene Menschenerkenntnis, auf die ich gestern hingedeutet habe und die durch anthroposophische Forschung möglich ist, sie unterscheidet sich doch ganz wesentlich von dem, was man aus heutigen wissenschaftlichen und sonstigen Bildungsvoraussetzungen über den Menschen wissen kann. Man möchte sagen: Diese Menschenerkenntnis, die aus dem heutigen Zivilisationsleben hervorgeht, stützt sich ja zumeist auf dasjenige, was am Menschen ist, wenn man von dem geistigen und von einem Teil des Seelischen absieht. Sie stützt sich auf das Anatomische und auf das Physiologische, das gewonnen werden kann über den Menschen, wenn man ihn als Leiche hat. Sie stützt sich ferner auf das, was man über den Menschen wissen kann, wenn man zu Rate zieht die pathologischen Veränderungen, die am Menschen durch Krankheit oder sonst vorgehen können, und was man daraus erschließen kann für das Wesen des gesunden Menschen. Man hat dann in seiner ganzen Seelenverfassung drinnen dasjenige, was man auf diese Weise gewinnen kann, und zieht dann seine Schlüsse auch für den im vollen Leben, in voller Lebensbewegung begriffenen Menschen.
Anthroposophische Forschung geht von vorneherein darauf aus, den Menschen in seiner Ganzheit zu erfassen, nach seinem leiblichen, seelischen und geistigen Wesen. Sie geht darauf aus, den Menschen sozusagen nicht durch eine innerlich abstrakte und tote Betrachtungsweise zu erfassen, sondern durch eine lebendige Betrachtungsweise, die dem Menschen auch folgen kann, die durch lebendige Begriffe den Menschen in seiner von Geist und Seele und Leib gebildeten Wesenheit auch in voller Lebendigkeit erfassen kann. Und dadurch kommt man in die Lage, auch jene Metamorphosen des Menschlichen wirklich richtig anzusehen, die im Laufe des Lebens auftreten. Der Mensch ist ja sozusagen ein ganz anderer, je nachdem er die kindliche Entwickelung von der Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel durchmacht oder die Entwickelung von dem Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife das ist diejenige, vor der wir gerade stehen, wenn wir das Kind in der Volksschule haben - und dann diejenige Entwickelung, welche auf die Geschlechtsreife folgt. Der Mensch ist in diesen drei Entwickelungen eigentlich ein ganz anderes Wesen. Aber die Unterschiede liegen so tief, daß man durch eine äußerliche Betrachtungsweise auf diese Unterschiede eben nicht kommt. Und vor allen Dingen kommt man nicht darauf, jene innige Durchdringung von Leib, Seele und Geist, wie sie in den drei genannten Lebensaltern ganz verschieden ist, wirklich richtig zu beurteilen.
Der Lehrende, der Erziehende darf ja nicht zuerst etwas theoretisch lernen und sich dann sagen: Was ich theoretisch gelernt habe, das wende ich jetzt auf das Kind in dieser oder jener Weise an. - Dadurch entfernt er sich von dem Kinde, er nähert sich nicht dem Kinde. Der Lehrer muß das, was er über den Menschen weiß, in eine Art höheren Instinkt hineinbekommen, so daß er in einer gewissen Weise instinktiv jeder Regung des einzelnen individuellen Kindeslebens gegenübersteht. Dadurch unterscheidet sich eben anthroposophische Menschenerkenntnis von jener, die heute üblich ist. Diejenige Menschenerkenntnis, die heute üblich ist, führt höchstens zur Erziehungsroutine, nicht aber zur wirklichen Erziehergesinnung und zur wirklichen Erzieherpraxis. Denn einer wirklichen Erzieherpraxis muß eine solche Menschenerkenntnis zugrunde liegen, die dem Kinde gegenüber in jedem Augenblick instinktiv wird, so daß man aus der ganzen Fülle dessen, was einem am Kinde entgegentritt, dem einzelnen Falle gegenüber weiß, was man zu tun hat. Wenn ich einen Vergleich gebrauchen darf, möchte ich so sagen: Nicht wahr, wir haben allerlei Theorien über das Essen und Trinken, aber wir richten uns im Leben im allgemeinen nicht nach dem, was theoretisch ersonnen werden kann darüber, wann man essen soll, wann man trinken soll. Man trinkt, wenn man durstig ist - das ergibt sich aus der ganzen Konstitution des Organismus heraus -, man ißt, wenn man hungrig ist. Daß das in einen gewissen Lebensrhythmus eingeschaltet ist, hat natürlich seine guten Gründe, aber der Mensch ißt und trinkt, wenn er hungrig und durstig ist; das ergibt das Leben selber. Nun muß eine Menschenerkenntnis, welche einer wirklichen Erziehungspraxis zugrunde liegt, im Menschen, wenn er einem Kinde gegenübersteht, so etwas erzeugen, wie etwa erzeugt wird das Verhältnis vom Hunger zum Essen. Es muß so natürlich sein, wie daß ich durch den Hunger ein gewisses Verhältnis zu den Speisen bekomme. So muß es ganz natürlich werden durch eine wirkliche, nicht nur in Fleisch und Blut, sondern auch in Seele und Geist eindringende Menschenerkenntnis, daß ich, wenn das Kind auftritt vor mir, etwas bekomme wie Hunger: Das hast du jetzt zu tun, jenes hast du jetzt zu tun! Nur wenn in dieser Weise Menschenerkenntnis eine solche innere Fülle hat, daß sie instinktiv werden kann, dann kann sie zur Erzieherpraxis führen; nicht wenn man nach Versuchen eine Theorie darüber ausbildet, wie sich etwa die Leistungen in Gedächtnis, Aufmerksamkeit und so weiter verhalten. Dadurch wird erst gedanklich intellektualistisch vermittelt zwischen den Theorien und der Praxis. Das kann aber durchaus nicht stattfinden; dadurch veräußerlicht man alle Methodik, alle Erziehungspraxis. Dasjenige also, was wir zunächst als Menschenerkenntnis gewinnen wollen, das soll sein ein Erfassen des Kindes in seiner lebendigen Lebensregung.
Sehen wir da zunächst auf das in die Welt hineinwachsende Kind. Beobachten wir es zunächst ganz primitiv. Wir finden, daß das Kind dreierlei bald nach seinem Lebenseintritt sich aneignen muß, was für das ganze spätere Leben entscheidend ist. Das sind die Betätigungen, die das Kind sich aneignet für dasjenige, was wir so populär nennen: Gehen, Sprechen, Denken.
Sehen Sie, der deutsche Dichter Jean Paul - so nannte er sich selber - sagte einmal: Der Mensch lernt in seinen drei ersten Lebensjahren mehr für das Leben als in seinen drei akademischen Jahren. Das gilt durchaus. Das ist so. Denn selbst wenn die akademische Lehrzeit noch so verlängert wird, so ist das Fazit für das Leben von dem, was man während der drei akademischen Jahre lernt, ein geringeres als dasjenige, was für das Leben erworben wird, während das Kind in der Betätigung ist, in der lernenden Betätigung für Gehen, Sprechen und Denken. Denn was heißt denn das nur: das Kind lernt Gehen, Sprechen und Denken? Sehen Sie, Gehen ist zunächst etwas, was wir im Leben so populär zusammenfassen. Es liegt aber darin unendlich viel mehr, als daß das Kind bloß vom Fortkriechen sich aufrichtet zu derjenigen Art von Gehen, die es sich später aneignet für das ganze Leben. In diesem Gehenlernen liegt das Einstellen des Menschen, das ÖOrientieren des Menschen in der Weise, daß sich das ganze Gleichgewicht des eigenen Organismus und aller seiner Bewegungsmöglichkeiten einordnet in das Gleichgewicht und in die Bewegungsmöglichkeiten des Weltenalls, soweit wir drinnenstehen. Wir suchen, während wir gehen lernen, die dem Menschen entsprechende Gleichgewichtslage zum Weltenall. Wir suchen, während wir gehen lernen, jene eigentümlichen, nur beim Menschen auftretenden Verhältnisse zwischen der Betätigung der Arme und Hände und der Betätigung der anderen Gliedmaßen. Jenes Zugeteiltwerden der Arme und Hände zu dem seelischen Leben, während die Beine zurückbleiben und dem körperlichen Bewegen weiter dienen, das ist etwas ungeheuer Bedeutungsvolles für das ganze spätere Leben. Denn die Differenzierung in die Tätigkeiten der Beine und Füße und in die Tätigkeiten der Arme und Hände ist das Aufsuchen des seelischen Gleichgewichts für das Leben. - Zunächst suchen wir das physische Gleichgewicht im Aufrichten - aber im Freiwerden der Betätigung der Arme und Hände suchen wir das seelische Gleichgewicht. Und noch unendlich viel mehr - was Sie ja nun selber sich ausführen können - liegt in diesem Gehenlernen, wobei wir, wenn wir diesen Namen Gehenlernen gebrauchen, nur auf das Allerwichtigste sehen, und nicht einmal darauf im Grunde, sondern auf das, was für die Sinne äußerlich am Kinde hervortritt. Nun betrachten Sie dieses, was ich nun auch populär zusammenfasse in dem Namen Gehenlernen, man müßte eigentlich sagen: Die Statik und Dynamik des inneren Menschen in bezug auf das Weltenall lernen: das ist Gehenlernen. Und sogar: Die physische und die seelische Statik und Dynamik des Menschen in bezug auf das Weltenall lernen, das ist Gehenlernen. - Aber sehen Sie, indem sich auf diese Weise die Arme und Hände für das Menschliche von den Beinen und Füßen emanzipieren, tritt etwas anderes auf: damit ist eine Grundlage geschaffen für die ganze menschliche Entwickelung. Diese Grundlage tritt äußerlich dadurch hervor, daß mit dem Gehenlernen der Mensch mit seinem inneren Rhythmus und Takt und auch mit dem ganzen Innern seines Wesens sich einfügt in die äußerlich sichtbare Welt.
Und so gliedert sich ein in die Entwickelung der menschlichen Wesenheit ein sehr Merkwürdiges. Dasjenige, was mit den Beinen ausgeführt wird, das wirkt in einer gewissen Weise so, daß es in das ganze physisch-seelische Leben des Menschen den stärkeren Zusammenhang mit dem Taktmäßigen, mit den Einschnitten des Lebens hervorbringt. Wir lernen in dem eigentümlichen Zusammenstimmen zwischen der Bewegung des rechten und linken Beines uns ins Verhältnis setzen, möchte man sagen, mit dem, was unter uns ist. Dann lösen wir dasjenige, was in den Armen sich emanzipiert, eben von der Bewegungsbetätigung durch die Beine los: damit kommt in das Taktmäßige und Rhythmische des Lebens ein musikalisch-melodiöses Element hinein. Die Themen des Lebens, möchte man sagen, der Inhalt des Lebens, er tritt auf in der Armbewegung. Und das wiederum bildet die Grundlage für dasjenige, was sich ausbildet im Sprechenlernen; was äußerlich schon dadurch charakterisiert ist, daß der bei den meisten Menschen stärkeren Betätigung des rechten Armes die Ausbildung des linken Sprachorgans eben entspricht. Aus demjenigen, was Sie da sehen können beim lebendig bewegten Menschen an Verhältnissen eintreten zwischen der Beinbetätigung und der Armbetätigung, aus dem bildet sich heraus das Verhältnis, das der Mensch zur Außenwelt gewinnt dadurch, daß er das Sprechen lernt.
Wenn Sie hineinsehen in diesen ganzen Zusammenhang, wenn Sie hineinsehen, wie in dem Satzbildungsprozeß von unten herauf die Beine in das Sprechen wirken, wie in den Lautbildungsprozeß, also in das innere Erfühlen der Satzstruktur die Wortinhalte hineinsteigen, so haben Sie darin einen Abdruck dessen, wie das Taktmäßig-Rhythmische der Beinbewegungen wirkt auf das mehr Thematisch-Innerliche der Arm- und Handbewegungen. Wenn daher ein Kind vorzugsweise stramm ist im regelmäßigen Gehen, wenn es nicht schlampig wird im regelmäßigen Gehen, sondern stramm sich hineinzulegen vermag ins regelmäßige Gehen, so haben Sie darin eine körperliche Unterlage, die ja natürlich, wie wir später sehen werden, schon aus dem Geiste herauskommt, aber als körperliche Unterlage in Erscheinung tritt: die Unterlage für ein richtiges Abteilen auch im Sprechen. So daf3 das Kind mit der Bewegung der Beine lernt, richtige Sätze zu bilden. Sie werden sehen: wenn ein Kind schlampig geht, so führt es auch nicht richtige Intervalle zwischen Satz und Satz herbei, sondern alles verschwimmt in den Sätzen. Und wenn ein Kind nicht ordentlich lernt harmonische Bewegungen mit den Armen zu machen, dann ist seine Sprache krächzend und nicht wohllautend. Ebenso wenn Sie ein Kind gar nicht dazu bringen, das Leben zu fühlen in seinen Fingern, dann wird es keinen Sinn bekommen für die Modulation in der Sprache.
Das alles bezieht sich auf die Zeit, während das Kind gehen und sprechen lernt. Aber Sie sehen noch etwas ganz anderes daraus. Sie sehen, wie sich im Leben manches durcheinandermischt, wie manches später auftritt, als es eigentlich dem inneren Zusammenhang nach auftreten sollte. Sie sehen aber aus diesem inneren Zusammenhang, daß das richtige Verhältnis beim Menschen dadurch herauskommt, daß man zuerst auf das Gehenlernen sieht und daß man womöglich versucht zu vermeiden, daß das Kind das Sprechen vor dem Gehen lernt. Es muß sich auf der Basis des Gehenlernens, des Armbewegenlernens in einer geordneten Weise das Sprechenlernen entwickeln, sonst wird die Sprache des Kindes nicht eine im ganzen Menschen fundierte Betätigung, sondern eine Betätigung, die bloß eben herauslallt. Bei denjenigen Menschen, die zum Beispiel, statt zu sprechen, meckern, was ja sehr häufig vorkommt, ist eben nicht acht gegeben worden auf solche Verhältnisse, wie ich sie eben jetzt charakterisiert habe.
Das dritte nun, was das Kind dann auf Grundlage von Gehen und Sprechen zu lernen hat, das ist das immer mehr und mehr bewußte Denken. Das muß aber eigentlich zuletzt kommen. Das Kind kann nämlich nicht seiner Wesenheit nach das Denken an etwas anderem lernen als an dem Sprechen. Das Sprechen ist zunächst ein Nachahmen des gehörten Lautes. Indem der gehörte Laut von dem Kinde aufgenommen wird und das Kind zugrunde liegend hat jenes eigentümliche Verhältnis zwischen den Bewegungen der Arme und den Bewegungen der Beine, findet es Verständnis für diese Laute und ahmt sie nach, ohne zunächst mit den Lauten noch Gedanken zu verbinden. Zunächst verbindet das Kind mit den Lauten nur Gefühle; das Denken, das dann auftritt, muß sich erst aus der Sprache heraus entwickeln. Die richtige Folge, auf die wir also sehen müssen bei dem heranwachsenden Kinde, ist: Gehenlernen, Sprechenlernen, Denkenlernen.
Nun muß man aber weiter eindringen in diese drei wichtigen Entwickelungsvorgänge beim Kinde. Das Denken, das am spätesten gelernt wird oder wenigstens werden soll, das Denken wirkt sich beim Menschen so aus, daß er eigentlich im Denken immer nur etwas hat wie Spiegelbilder der äußeren Naturwesen und äußeren Naturvorgänge. Sie wissen ja schon, daß dasjenige, was der Mensch dann in seinem Leben zum Beispiel als moralische Impulse aufnimmt, nicht aus dem Denken kommt; das kommt aus jenem Kräftesystem, sagen wir des inneren Menschen, das wir als Gewissen bezeichnen. Wir werden später vom Gewissen noch zu sprechen haben. Es kommt jedenfalls aus seelischen Tiefen herauf und erfüllt erst das Denken aus seelischen Tiefen heraus; während das Denken, das wir uns als Kind aneignen, ganz deutlich zeigt, wie es eigentlich nur abgestimmt ist auf das Erfassen der äußeren Naturwesen und äußeren Naturvorgänge, wie es bloß Bilder liefern will von Naturwesen und Naturvorgängen.
Dagegen in dasjenige, was mit dem Sprechenlernen auftritt, fließt noch etwas ganz anderes hinein. Mit dem Sprechenlernen ist im Grunde genommen die heutige Wissenschaft ja noch auf einem recht gespannten Fuße. Die heutige Wissenschaft hat ganz Großartiges zum Beispiel in bezug auf die Tierentwickelung gelernt, und dann vergleicht sie die Tierentwickelung mit dem Menschen und bekommt allerlei heraus, das sehr anerkennenswert ist; aber mit Bezug auf das, was im Menschen als Sprechenlernen auftritt, weiß die heutige Wissenschaft auch mit Bezug auf die Tiere noch nicht richtig Bescheid. Denn es muß ja dabei eine bestimmte Frage vor allen Dingen beantwortet werden. Der Mensch benutzt seinen Kehlkopf und die anderen Sprachorgane zum Sprechen. Die höheren Tiere haben auch diese Organe, wenn auch in einer primitiveren Weise. Wenn wir absehen von denjenigen Tieren, die nun zu gewissen Lauten kommen, die aber sehr primitiv sind, die sich nur bei einigen Tieren zu einer Art von Gesang dann entwickeln, wenn wir davon absehen, so kommen wir ja doch zu der Frage: Wozu sind eigentlich - ich frage nicht in einer schlecht teleologischen Weise, sondern in kausaler Weise -, wozu sind eigentlich der Kehlkopf und seine Nachbarorgane bei den Tieren ausgebildet, da dieser ja deutlich zeigt, daß erst der Mensch diese Organe zum Sprechen verwendet? Beim Tiere sind sie ja noch nicht zum Sprechen verwendet, sie sind aber da - und sie sind sogar sehr deutlich da. Wenn man vergleichende Anatomie treibt, so sieht man, wie auch schon in dem verhältnismäßig - in bezug auf den Menschen verhältnismäßig - stummen Tiere Organe nach dieser Richtung hin sich finden. Das ist durchaus schon so, daß es in einer gewissen Weise vorbestimmt das Menschliche enthält, und doch kommt das Tier nicht zum Sprechen. Was bedeuten also beim Tier der Kehlkopf und seine Nachbarorgane? Da wird eben eine ausgebildetere Physiologie einmal darauf kommen, daß die ganze tierische Form abhängt von der Bildung des Kehlkopfes und seiner Nachbarorgane. Wenn also ein Tier ein Löwe wird, so ist die Ursache davon in seinen oberen Brustorganen zu suchen; von da strahlen die Kräfte aus, die es zur Löwenform machen. Wenn ein Tier eine Kuh wird, so ist die Ursache zu dieser Kuhform gerade in dem enthalten, was beim Menschen Sprachorgan wird. Von diesen Organen strahlt die tierische Form aus. Es muß einmal studiert werden, damit man verstehen wird, wie die Morphologie eigentlich in Wirklichkeit zu gestalten ist, wie man die tierische Gestalt erfassen muß, wie gerade diese oberen Brustorgane, auch indem sie in die Organe des Mundes übergehen, gestaltet sind. Denn von da aus strahlt die ganze Form des Tieres.
Der Mensch gestaltet diese Organe auf der Grundlage seines aufrecht gehenden und mit den Armen agierenden Wesens zu Sprachorganen aus. Er nimmt, wenn wir bei der Gegenwart bleiben, dasjenige auf, was an Laut und Sprache aus seiner Umgebung wirkt. Was nimmt der Mensch damit auf? Denken Sie, daß in diesen Organen die Tendenz liegt, den ganzen Organismus der Form nach zu bilden. Indem der Mensch also eine Sprache hört, die zum Beispiel leidenschaftlich und zornig, jähzornig dahinpoltert, so nimmt er etwas auf, was das Tier nicht einläßt. Das Tier läßt sich nur formen vom Kehlkopf und seinen Nachbarorganen; der Mensch aber nimmt das Zornige, Leidenschaftliche seiner Umgebung in sich hinein, es fließt ein in die Formen, bis in die äußersten Gewebestrukturen hinein. Wenn der Mensch nur Sanftes hört in seiner Umgebung, so fließt es bis in die Struktur seiner feinsten Gewebe, es fließt in seine Formen hinein. Gerade in die feinere Organisation fließt es hinein. Die gröbere macht der Mensch auch so ab wie das Tier, aber in die feinere fließt alles ein, was der Mensch mit der Sprache aufnimmt. Dadurch sind ja auch die feineren Organisationen der Völker gegeben: sie fließen aus der Sprache heraus. Der Mensch ist ein Abdruck der Sprache. Sie werden daher begreifen, was es bedeutet, daß in der Entwickelung die Menschen allmählich dazu gekommen sind, verschiedene Sprachen zu lernen: dadurch wird der Mensch universeller. Diese Dinge haben ja eine ungeheure Bedeutung für die Entwickelung des Menschen. Nun, so sehen wir, wie während seiner ersten Kindheitszeit der Mensch ganz und gar innerlich bis in seine Blutzirkulation hinein gerichtet, orientiert wird nach demjenigen, was in seiner Umgebung vorgeht - und daraus fließt dann das, was er als die Gedankenrichtungen aufnimmt. Sehen Sie, was da beim Menschen geschieht durch das Sprechenlernen, möchte ich Ihnen ganz besonders ans Herz legen zu beachten. Ich möchte es Ihnen daher in zwei Sätze prägen, die gewissermaßen diesen Unterschied von Mensch und Tier angeben. Wenn das Tier zum Ausdruck bringen könnte das, was sein Formen betrifft, sein Gestalten betrifft mit Bezug auf die oberen Brustorgane, dann müßte es sagen: Ich bilde mich in Gemäßsheit der oberen Brust- und Mundorgane zu meiner Gestalt und lasse in mein Wesen nichts ein, was die Gestalt modifiziert. - So müßte das Tier sagen, wenn es ausdrücken wollte, wie dieses Verhältnis ist. Der Mensch da Titel ? gegen würde sagen: Ich passe meine oberen Brust- und Mundorgane den Weltvorgängen an, welche in der Sprache ablaufen, und richte darnach die Struktur meiner innersten Organisation. - Also nicht der äußeren Organisation, die entwickelt sich tierähnlich; aber der Mensch paßt gerade die innerste physische Organisation an dasjenige an, was in seiner Umgebung in der Sprache verläuft. Das ist von ungeheurer Bedeutung für das ganze Verständnis des Menschenwesens. Denn aus der Sprache heraus entwickelt sich wieder die Denkrichtung, und der Mensch wird dadurch eben ein Wesen, das in diesen ersten Jahren des kindlichen Lebens hingegeben ist an die Außenwelt, während das Tier in sich krampfhaft abgeschlossen ist.
Nun sehen Sie, dadurch wird ja für den Menschen ungeheuer wichtig die Art und Weise, wie er zuerst Statik und Dynamik, dann die Sprache, dann das Denken während der ersten Kindesjahre findet. Es wird ja ungeheuer wichtig. Das muß sich in der richtigen Weise ausbilden. Sie wissen ja alle, daß das in verschiedenster Weise sich bei den Menschen ausbildet. Und wir müssen fragen: Wovon hängt denn das ab, daß diese Dinge in der richtigen Weise sich ausbilden? Ja, es hängt von mancherlei ab. Aber für dieses erste kindliche Alter ist das allerwichtigste, von dem es abhängt, daß das richtige Verhältnis besteht zwischen Schlafens- und Wachenszeit; daß wir also allmählich eine instinktive Erkenntnis gewinnen darüber, wie lange ein Kind schlafen und wie lange es wachen muß. Denn nehmen wir an: ein Kind schläft für seine Verhältnisse zuviel. Wenn ein Kind für seine Verhältnisse zuviel schläft, dann entwickelt sich - ich will Beispiele anführen -, es entwickelt sich in seiner Betätigung der Beine eine Art inneres Ansichhalten. Das Kind wird innerlich unwillig zu gehen, wenn es zuviel schläft. Es wird gewissermaßen träge in bezug auf das Gehen, und es wird dadurch auch träge in bezug auf das Sprechen. Das Kind entwickelt nicht die ordentliche Aufeinanderfolge, der Zeit nach, im Sprechen. Es spricht langsamer, als es nach seiner Organisation eigentlich sprechen sollte. Wenn wir dann im späteren Leben einem Menschen begegnen, bei dem das durch die Schule nicht ausgeglichen worden ist, so werden wir manchmal verzweifeln, weil er uns immer zwischen zwei Worten die Gelegenheit gibt - nun, einen kleinen Spaziergang zu machen. Solche Menschen gibt es ja, die von einem Wort zum andern nur sehr schwer hinüberfinden. Wenn wir einen solchen treffen, dann können wir zurückschauen in seine Kindheit, und wir werden finden: den haben seine Erzieher oder seine EItern zuviel schlafen lassen in der Zeit, in der sich gerade das Gehen ausgebildet hat. - Aber nehmen wir an, das Kind schläft zuwenig; es wird also nicht in der richtigen Weise dafür gesorgt, daß das Kind seinen, für das Kind notwendigen, verhältnismäßig langen Schlaf hat. Dann bildet sich das im Innern so eigentümlich aus, daß das Kind seine Beine nicht ganz in seiner Gewalt hat. Statt zu gehen, schlenkert es. Statt die Worte wirklich mit der Seele in ihrer Aufeinanderfolge zu beherrschen, entfallen sie ihm; die Sätze werden so, daß die Worte auseinanderfallen. Es ist das etwas anderes wie das Nichtfinden des Wortes; da hat man zuviel Kraft, man kann nicht an das nächste Wort heran. Bei dem, was ich jetzt meine, hat man zuwenig Kraft; das nächste Wort wird gewissermaßen nicht mit dem fortlaufenden Strom der Seele erfaßt, sondern man wartet und will in das nächste Wort einschnappen. Und wenn das zum besonderen Extrem führt, dann drückt sich das in einer stotternden Sprache aus. Wenn man bei Menschen Anlagen zum Stottern findet, namentlich so in den Zwanziger-, Dreißigerjahren, dann kann man sicher sein: diese Kinder sind, während sie sprechen gelernt haben, nicht in der richtigen Weise angehalten worden, genügend zu schlafen.
Daraus sehen Sie, wie durch Menschenerkenntnis die Grundlagen gegeben werden für das, was man zu tun hat.
Nun sehen Sie hinein in diesen ganzen Menschenorganismus, wie er sich in den drei ersten Jahren der Welt anpaßt, wie er gewissermaßen einfließen läßt die Statik und Dynamik seiner eigenen Bewegungsfähigkeit in dasjenige, was er durch die Gestaltung der Luft hervorbringt im Sprechen - und damit hängt noch vieles andere zusammen, was dann sich als eine Folge davon ergibt für das Denken. Sehen Sie sich das alles an und betrachten Sie nun in bezug auf das alles das Kind im Verhältnis zum erwachsenen Menschen, dann sehen Sie, daß in dem Kinde ein viel stärkeres Zusammenwirken stattfindet zwischen dieser inneren Dynamik, zwischen Gehen, Zappeln, Armebewegen, Vorstellungenbilden. Das alles fließt beim Kinde viel mehr in eins zusammen als beim erwachsenen Menschen. Das Kind ist in dieser Beziehung noch im wesentlichen eine Einheit. Und das Kind ist auch in anderer Beziehung im wesentlichen mehr eine Einheit als der spätere erwachsene Mensch. Wenn wir zum Beispiel als erwachsener Mensch Zuckerl lutschen, was wir ja eigentlich nicht sollten, dann bedeutet das eigentlich nur eine Annehmlichkeit für die Zunge, für den Gaumen; weiter nach dem Körper hinein hört es auf. Das Kind ist in einer anderen Lage; da setzt sich der Geschmack viel weiter fort. Die Kinder sagen uns das nur nicht, und wir geben nicht acht darauf, aber da wirkt der Geschmack weiter fort. Viele von Ihnen werden gewiß schon einmal Kinder beobachtet haben, die besonders ihrem ganzen Organismus nach durchseelt, durchgeistigt sind - wie bei ihnen dieses Durchseeltsein und Durchgeistigtsein zum Ausdruck kommt. Es ist viel interessanter, bei einem lebhaften Kind, wenn es ein bißchen weiter weg ist von einem Tisch, auf dem etwas Süßes steht, die Arme und Beine anzusehen als etwa den Mund. Was der Mund sagt, ist ja schon mehr oder weniger selbstverständlich, aber wie das Kind die Begierde zum Beispiel in den Zehen entwickelt, in den Armen, wenn es so hinrudert zum Zucker, da können Sie deutlich sehen: da geht nicht nur eine Veränderung auf der Zunge vor sich, sondern im ganzen Menschen. Da fließt das Schmecken in den ganzen Menschen hinein. Gehen Sie in alle diese Dinge wirklich unbefangen hinein, dann kommen Sie dazu, zu erkennen, daß das Kind - allerdings in den vorgerückten Jahren immer weniger, im ersten Erdenleben am meisten, aber im wesentlichen von der Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel - in einem gewissen Sinne ganz Sinnesorgan ist, Sinnesorganisation ist. Was sich später in unsere Sinne geflüchtet hat an unserer Körperoberfläche, das lebt im Kinde im ganzen Organismus. Natürlich müssen Sie diese Dinge nicht grob nehmen, aber im wesentlichen sind sie schon vorhanden. Und sie sind so vorhanden, daß sie auch die äußere Physiologie einmal bei dem zunächst anschaulichsten Sinnesorgan, bei dem Auge, wird nachweisen können.
Sehen Sie, es kommen zu mir öfters Leute, die fragen: Was kann man aus der jetzigen Wissenschaft heraus, sagen wir zu einer Dissertation - Dissertationen gehören ja auch zum Schulelend -, was kann man zu diesem Zweck besonders verarbeiten? Und denjenigen, die etwa Physiologen sind, rate ich heute etwas, was sozusagen in der Physiologie geradezu in der Luft liegt: sie sollen einmal beobachten die Entwickelung des menschlichen Auges, wie es am Embryo auftritt und weitergeht, und dann sollen sie beobachten in dem entsprechenden Stadium den ganzen Embryo, wie er sich aus dem Keim heraus entwickelt. Sie werden einen merkwürdigen Parallelismus gerade zwischen dem Auge und dem ganzen menschlichen Keim, wie er embryonal vorschreitet, finden. Nur wird man herausbekommen: das Auge setzt gewissermaßen später ein, überspringt die ersten Stadien, und der ganze Embryo kommt nicht bis zu dem Ende, zu welchem das Auge hinkommt, sondern hört früher auf. So daß sich da für die Embryonalphysiologie etwas ungeheuer Bedeutungsvolles ergeben wird. Man wird dazu kommen, wenn man die embryonale Entwickelung, so wie sie dann weiter vor sich geht, verfolgt, dieses Anfängliche als ideale Stadien zu betrachten, die ganz nur im Ansatz vorhanden sind im Keim und im Auge beim Embryo. Das Auge geht nur weiter, wird zum vollkommenen Sinn; der Embryo bleibt zurück und geht später zur Körperbildung über.
Aber beim Kinde liegt das noch vor, daß es in seiner ganzen seelisch-geistigen Entwickelung dieses Ausgegossensein des Sinnenhaften über den ganzen Körper hat. Das Kind ist in einem gewissen Sinne ganz Sinnesorgan, steht als solches der Welt gegenüber. Auf das muß fortwährend Rücksicht genommen werden bei der Erziehung und bei demjenigen, was überhaupt in der Umgebung des Kindes gemacht wird vor dem Zahnwechsel. Das mehr pädagogisch-didaktische Element werden wir ja noch zu besprechen haben. Erst wenn man da in der richtigen Weise hineinschaut, wird man sich gewisse Fragen, die sich an das Menschenwesen anknüpfen, recht beantworten können. Denn sehen Sie, es liegt eine Frage vor, die für den, der nun nicht nur äußerlich nach der bekannten Geschichte die Entwickelung der Menschheit betrachtet, außerordentlich bedeutungsvoll ist. Sie wissen ja, in früheren historischen Epochen der Menschheitsentwickelung hat man viel mehr von Sünde und von Erbsünde geredet, als man das heute tut. Nun möchte ich Ihnen jetzt keine historische Abhandlung geben, aber ich möchte auf das hinweisen, was - nun nicht im populären Bewußtsein, da haben sich ja die Dinge manchmal etwas vergröbert -, aber was bei denjenigen, die diese Dinge so gelernt haben wie wir heute, wenn wir eben irgend etwas mehr wissenschaftlich anschauen lernen, uns das für unsere heutigen Verhältnisse aneignen. Für diese war Erbsünde im Menschen alles das, was aus den vererbten Eigenschaften kam. Was der Mensch also von seinen Vorfahren hatte, das war die Erbsünde. Das ist der wirkliche Begriff der Erbsünde. Man hat diesen Begriff später sehr verändert nach den Vorstellungen, die man später gewonnen hat. Aber das direkt physisch Vererbte gibt in dem Menschen Anlagen, die zugrunde liegen dem, daß er sündhaft ist - so sagte man früher. Was sagt man heute? Heute sagt man: Man muß die vererbten Anlagen am meisten beobachten, und man muß den Menschen so entwickeln, daß diese Anlagen vorzugsweise in Betracht kommen. Ja, wenn eine ältere Wissenschaft dafür ein Urteil abgeben sollte, so würde sie sagen: Na, ihr habt was Schönes gelernt durch den Menschheitsfortschritt; ihr habt gelernt, den Grundsatz zu verfolgen, gerade das Sündhafte im Menschen heranzubilden. - So müßten wir eigentlich im Sinne einer älteren Wissenschaft sagen. Wir beobachten nur die historischen Vorgänge nach dem, was eben nun leider recht oberflächlich in den Geschichtsbüchern verzeichnet ist; daher kommen wir nicht auf solche Sachen.
Derjenige, der nun hineinsieht in das, was ich heute geschildert habe: wie der Mensch sich in der Dynamik und Statik seines Wesens, im Sprechen, im Denken der Umgebung anpaßt, der wird auch eine richtige Einsicht bekommen, wieviel rein physisch vererbt ist und wieviel von demjenigen abhängt, was in der menschlichen Umgebung sich abspielt, was viel mehr einfließt in den Menschen, als man gewöhnlich glaubt. Von manchem sagt man heute, der Mensch habe es von seinem Vater oder seiner Mutter geerbt, während er es in Wirklichkeit dadurch sich angeeignet hat, daß er die besondere Gehweise seiner Umgebung oder die Bewegung der Hände oder das Sprechen eben in der ersten Lebensperiode nachahmte. Die Hingabe an die Umgebung ist es, die vorzugsweise in Betracht kommt in der ersten Lebensperiode, nicht die Vererbung. Die Vererbungstheorien haben ja auf ihrem Gebiet ganz recht, aber das muß eben auch so angesehen werden wie dasjenige, was ich gestern gesagt habe. Ich sagte: Wir gehen hinaus auf den Weg, er ist jetzt weich; wir drücken unsere Fußspuren ein. Jetzt kommt einer, der irdische Menschen nicht kennt, vom Mars herunter, und der erklärt jetzt: Nun ja, diese Fußspuren sind dadurch bewirkt, daß da unten in der Erde Kräfte sind; die drücken an einer Stelle den Boden etwas stärker, an einer anderen Stelle etwas weniger, dann konfigurieren sich die Spuren, so daß genau so etwas entsteht wie ein Fußabdruck. - So etwa erklären aus vererbten Anlagen heraus und aus dem Gehirn heraus die Menschen das Seelenwesen. Gerade so wie die Fußspuren von außen eingedrückt sind, so sind in den Körper, besonders in das Gehirn und in die Nervenorganisation eingedrückt diejenigen Dinge, die aus der Umgebung herein im nachahmenden Leben erlebt werden im Gehenlernen, Sprechenlernen, Denkenlernen. Es ist ja alles richtig, was die äußere, physische Psychologie sagt: Das Gehirn ist ein deutlicher Abdruck dessen, was der Mensch seelisch ist; aber man muß eben wissen, daß es nicht der Erzeuger des Seelischen ist, sondern der Boden, auf dem sich das Seelische entwickelt. Gerade so wenig wie ich gehen kann ohne Boden unter den Füßen, ebensowenig kann ich als irdischer Mensch ohne Gehirn denken, selbstverständlich. Aber das Gehirn ist nichts anderes als der Boden, in den das Denken und Sprechen hineinkonfiguriert dasjenige, was Sie gerade aus der Welt heraus, aus der Welt Ihrer Umgebung bekommen, nicht aus den vererbten Anlagen heraus.
Nun sehen Sie aber daraus, daß vor dem heutigen Menschen es in einer sehr starken Undeutlichkeit liegt, was da eigentlich vorgeht während dieser drei ersten nicht «akademischen» Lebensjahre. Da wird ja in einem höheren Maße der ganze Mensch konfiguriert und verinnerlicht. Nun sagte ich schon: das Denken, das dann später auftritt, es wendet sich gegen die Außenwelt, es bildet Abbilder der Natur, der Naturdinge und Naturvorgänge. Aber dasjenige, was sich früher bildet, das Sprechen, das nimmt schon temperiert, nuanciert alles dasjenige auf, was geistig in der Sprache liegt, die auf den Menschen wirkt, was seelisch auf den Menschen aus der Umgebung wirkt. Mit der Sprache nehmen wir auf, was wir uns seelisch aneignen aus der Umgebung. Die Seele des ganzen Milieus dringt in uns ein auf dem Umwege durch die Sprache. Und wir wissen, daß das Kind ganz Sinnesorgan ist, daß wirklich sich innere Vorgänge abspielen, indem diese Dinge als seelische Eindrücke da sind. So daß zum Beispiel, sagen wir, wenn das Kind in der Umgebung eines jähzornigen Vaters ist, der seine Worte immer ausstößt wie ein Jähzorniger, dann erlebt das Kind im Innern diese ganze seelische Eigentümlichkeit, die in der Formung der Worte durch den Jähzorn liegen; und das prägt sich in dem Kinde jetzt nicht nur dadurch aus, daß es auch seelisch wird, sondern das Kind sondert dadurch, daß es jähzornige Ereignisse in der Umgebung hat, aus feinen Drüsen mehr Stoff ab, als es in einer nicht jähzornigen Umgebung absondern würde. Und seine Drüsen gewöhnen sich an eine starke Stoffabsonderung. Das wirkt dann im ganzen Leben weiter, ob die Drüsen gewohnt worden sind, mehr oder weniger Stoff abzusondern. Dadurch kann der Mensch, wenn das die Schule später nicht zurechtrichtet, dazu veranlagt werden, gerade, wie man heute sagt, nervös zu werden für alles dasjenige, was in der Umgebung jähzorniger Äußerungen liegt. Sie sehen, da dringt in das Physische Seelisches unmittelbar ein. Sonst suchen wir überall in der Welt das Verhältnis des Seelischen und Physischen zu begreifen; aber auf die Tatsache, wo das Physische in der ersten Periode des Lebens unmittelbar in seelischen Tatsachen sich äußert, darauf schauen wir gar nicht hin.
Indem nun das Kind in die Statik und Dynamik seiner Umgebung hineinkommt, tut es unbewußt etwas außerordentlich Bedeutsames. Denken Sie nur einmal, wieviel Mühe es manche Menschen kostet, später in der Schule Statik und Dynamik zu lernen und sie anzuwenden, nur soweit man sie anwendet auf das Maschinelle! Das Kind tut das unbewußt. Es gliedert wirklich Statik und Dynamik in sein ganzes Menschenwesen ein. Und gerade aus anthroposophischer Forschung kann man ersehen, daß selbst das, was die gelehrtesten Statiker und Dynamiker ausdenken für die äußere Welt, ein Kinderspiel ist gegen dasjenige einer so komplizierten Statik und Dynamik, wie sie das Kind sich im Gehenlernen eingliedert. Das tut es durch Nachahmung. Daher werden Sie sehen, wie merkwürdig gerade auf diese Verhältnisse die Nachahmung wirkt. Dergleichen Beispiele können Sie viele im Leben sehen; ein Beispiel möchte ich Ihnen anführen. Da waren zwei Mädchen, sehr wenig im Alter unterschieden, die gingen nebeneinander. Der Fall trug sich in einer mitteldeutschen Stadt zu vor vielen Jahren. Wenn man sie nebeneinander gehen sah, dann traten sie beide so auf, daß das eine Bein hinkte und unregelmäßig ging. Bei ganz gleichen Bewegungen hatten sie einen eigentümlich konfigurierten Unterschied zwischen einer lebendigeren Art des rechten Armes und der rechten Finger und einem etwas abgelähmten Tragen des linken Armes und der linken Finger. Beide Kinder waren genaue Kopien voneinander; das jüngere Kind war richtig eine Kopie vom älteren Kinde. Aber nur das ältere Kind hatte nämlich einen Beinschaden an der linken Seite; das jüngere war ein ganz gesundes Kind, das sich das alles nur angeeignet hatte, indem es nachahmend die falsche Dynamik des Schwesterchens aufnahm. - Solche Fälle können Sie überall im Leben finden, nur treten sie einem nicht in solchen extremen und groben Dingen entgegen, so daß man sie gleich sieht. In feineren Gestaltungen ist es überall im Leben vorhanden. Da wo Gehen gelernt, wo Dynamik und Statik angeeignet wird, da nimmt der Mensch aus seiner Umgebung den Geist auf. So daß man sagen kann: Im Denkenlernen eignen wir uns Dinge der äußeren Natur an. Im Sprechenlernen eignen wir uns das Seelische des Milieus an. Und indem, was eigentlich zuerst der Mensch machen soll, indem er ins Erdenleben eintritt, eignet man sich aus der Umgebung den Geist an.
Geist, Seele, Leib - Geist, Seele, Natur, das ist die Reihenfolge, wie die Welt des umliegenden Erdenlebens an den Menschen herantritt. Aber wenn wir aufnehmen das Seelische, so eignen wir uns mit diesem Seelischen zu gleicher Zeit im wesentlichen an unsere Sympathien und Antipathien im Leben. Sie fließen ganz unvermerkt ein. Die Art und Weise, wie wir sprechen lernen, ist zu gleicher Zeit die Art und Weise des Aneignens bestimmter Sympathien und Antipathien. Und das Kuriose ist: derjenige, der sich dafür ein richtiges Auge anschafft, ein Seelenauge natürlich, der findet in der Art und Weise, wie das Kind auftritt, ob es mehr mit den Hacken oder mehr mit den Fußspitzen auftritt, ob es stramm auftritt oder schleicht, er findet in diesem Äußerlich-Physischen den ganzen moralischen Charakter des Menschen für das spätere Leben vorbereitet. So daß wir sagen können: Mit jenem Geistigen, das wir aufnehmen, indem wir gehen lernen, fließt auch aus der Umgebung das Moralische ein. Und es ist gut, wenn man sich ein Auge dafür aneignet, wie ein Kind die Beine bewegt, das dann ein gutes Kind wird, und wie ein Kind die Beine bewegt, das dann ein böses wird. Denn am meisten naturalistisch ist dasjenige, was wir durch das Denken in der Kindheit aufnehmen. Schon seelisch durchsetzt ist, was wir durch die Sprache aufnehmen. Und moralisch-geistig durchsetzt ist dasjenige, was wir durch die Statik und Dynamik aufnehmen. Das ist eben keine bloße Statik und Dynamik, wie wir sie in der Schule lernen, das ist eine aus dem Geiste heraus geborene Statik und Dynamik.
Es ist so ungeheuer wichtig, richtig auf diese Dinge hinzuschauen, um bei diesen Dingen nun nicht jene Psychologien zu bekommen, die zuerst auf das Körperliche begründet sind - wo man auf den ersten 30 Seiten das wieder abdruckt, was der Physiologe in ausführlichen Physiologien hat und dann die seelischen Erscheinungen daran anleimt, also das Seelische bezieht auf das Körperliche. Vom Geiste darf man ja nicht mehr sprechen, seitdem ein Konzil den Geist abgeschafft hat, seitdem gesagt worden ist: Der Mensch besteht nicht aus Leib, Seele und Geist, sondern nur aus Leib und Seele, die Seele hat nur geistige Eigenschaften. Die Trichotomie wurde ja dogmatisch im Mittelalter verboten, aber die heutige «voraussetzungslose» Wissenschaft treibt Psychologie, indem sie gleich damit beginnt: Der Mensch besteht aus Leib und Seele. Sie weiß nicht, wie wenig voraussetzungslos sie ist, indem sie nur folgt der mittelalterlichen Dogmatik! Die erleuchtetsten Universitätsprofessoren folgen derselben, ohne eine Ahnung davon zu haben. Man muß, um richtig in den Menschen hineinzusehen, den Menschen betrachten können nach Leib, Seele und Geist. Der Materialist begreift nur das Denken - das ist nämlich seine Tragik. Der Materialismus begreift am wenigsten die Materie, weil er am wenigsten den Geist darin sieht. Er dogmatisiert bloß: es gibt nur Materie und ihre Wirkungen; aber er versteht nichts davon, daß überall der Geist darinnen ist. Es ist das Eigentümliche, man muß, wenn man den Materialismus schildern will, die Definition aufstellen: Der Materialismus ist diejenige Weltanschauung, die nichts von der Materie versteht.
Nun handelt es sich darum, daß man eben genau die Grenzen kennen muß, wo die körperlichen Erscheinungen sind, wo die seelischen Erscheinungen sind, wo die geistigen Erscheinungen sind und wie eins in das andere überleitet. Und das ist ganz besonders notwendig gegenüber der kindlichen Entwickelung in der ersten Lebensperiode.
Second Lecture
We will first attempt to penetrate the essence of the adolescent human being with regard to later stages of life, in order to then draw pedagogical and didactic conclusions from this.
The knowledge of human beings that I referred to yesterday, which is made possible by anthroposophical research, differs significantly from what can be learned about human beings from today's scientific and other educational sources. One might say that this knowledge of human beings, which emerges from today's civilized life, is based mostly on what is human, if one disregards the spiritual and part of the soul. It is based on the anatomical and physiological knowledge that can be gained about human beings when they are dead. It is also based on what can be learned about human beings by consulting the pathological changes that can occur in them as a result of illness or other causes, and what conclusions can be drawn from this about the nature of healthy human beings. One then has within one's entire soul constitution that which can be gained in this way, and then draws conclusions for the human being in full life, in full life movement.
Anthroposophical research sets out from the outset to grasp the human being in its entirety, according to its physical, soul, and spiritual nature. It aims to understand the human being, so to speak, not through an inwardly abstract and dead approach, but through a living approach that can also follow the human being, that can grasp the human being in his or her full liveliness through living concepts, in his or her essence formed by spirit, soul, and body. This enables us to truly see the metamorphoses of the human being that occur in the course of life. Human beings are, so to speak, completely different depending on whether they are going through childhood development from birth to the change of teeth, or the development from the change of teeth to sexual maturity – which is what we are currently facing when we have children in elementary school – and then the development that follows sexual maturity. In these three stages of development, human beings are actually completely different beings. But the differences are so profound that they cannot be discerned by an external observation. Above all, it is impossible to truly assess the intimate interpenetration of body, soul, and spirit, which is very different in the three stages of life mentioned above.
The teacher, the educator, must not first learn something theoretically and then say to himself: What I have learned theoretically, I will now apply to the child in this or that way. In doing so, he distances himself from the child; he does not approach the child. The teacher must incorporate what he knows about human beings into a kind of higher instinct, so that he instinctively responds to every impulse of the individual child's life in a certain way. This is precisely what distinguishes anthroposophical knowledge of human nature from that which is common today. The knowledge of human nature that is common today leads at most to educational routine, but not to a true educational attitude and true educational practice. For real educational practice must be based on an understanding of human nature that becomes instinctive toward the child at every moment, so that from the whole wealth of what one encounters in the child, one knows what to do in each individual case. If I may use a comparison, I would like to say this: It is true that we have all kinds of theories about eating and drinking, but in general we do not base our lives on what can be theoretically devised about when to eat and when to drink. We drink when we are thirsty—this is a result of the whole constitution of the organism—and we eat when we are hungry. There are, of course, good reasons why this is integrated into a certain rhythm of life, but people eat and drink when they are hungry and thirsty; that is a result of life itself. Now, an understanding of human nature that forms the basis of real educational practice must create in people, when they are faced with a child, something similar to the relationship between hunger and eating. It must be as natural as the relationship I have with food because of hunger. It must become completely natural through a real understanding of human nature that penetrates not only the flesh and blood, but also the soul and spirit, so that when the child appears before me, I feel something like hunger: You have to do this now, you have to do that now! Only when knowledge of human nature has such inner richness that it can become instinctive can it lead to educational practice; not when, after experiments, a theory is developed about how, for example, memory, attention, and so on behave. This only leads to an intellectualistic mediation between theory and practice. But that cannot happen at all; it alienates all methodology, all educational practice. So what we want to gain first as knowledge of human nature should be an understanding of the child in its lively vitality.
Let us first look at the child growing up in the world. Let us observe it in a very primitive way. We find that the child must acquire three things soon after its entry into life, which are decisive for its entire later life. These are the activities that the child acquires for what we popularly call: walking, speaking, thinking.
You see, the German poet Jean Paul – as he called himself – once said: People learn more for life in their first three years than in their three academic years. That is absolutely true. It is so. For even if the academic apprenticeship is extended, the conclusion for life from what is learned during the three academic years is less than what is acquired for life while the child is engaged in activity, in the learning activity of walking, speaking, and thinking. For what does it mean when we say that a child learns to walk, speak, and think? You see, walking is something we summarize in such a popular way in life. But there is infinitely more to it than the child simply rising from crawling to the kind of walking that it later acquires for its whole life. In learning to walk lies the adjustment of the human being, the orientation of the human being in such a way that the entire balance of its own organism and all its possibilities of movement are integrated into the balance and possibilities of movement of the universe, as far as we are concerned. While we are learning to walk, we seek the balance between the human being and the universe that is appropriate to the human being. While we are learning to walk, we seek that peculiar relationship between the activity of the arms and hands and the activity of the other limbs that occurs only in human beings. That allocation of the arms and hands to the soul life, while the legs remain behind and continue to serve physical movement, is something tremendously significant for the whole of later life. For the differentiation between the activities of the legs and feet and the activities of the arms and hands is the search for spiritual balance in life. First, we seek physical balance in standing upright, but in freeing up the activity of the arms and hands, we seek spiritual balance. And there is infinitely more – which you can now work out for yourselves – in this learning to walk, whereby, when we use the term learning to walk, we are only looking at the most important thing, and not even that, but what is outwardly apparent to the senses in the child. Now consider what I am summarizing in the popular term learning to walk. One should actually say: learning the statics and dynamics of the inner human being in relation to the universe: that is learning to walk. And even: learning the physical and spiritual statics and dynamics of the human being in relation to the universe, that is learning to walk. But you see, as the arms and hands emancipate themselves from the legs and feet in this way, something else emerges: a foundation is laid for the whole of human development. This foundation manifests itself externally in that, as the child learns to walk, it integrates itself into the externally visible world with its inner rhythm and beat and also with the whole of its inner being.
And so something very remarkable becomes part of the development of the human being. What is done with the legs has a certain effect in that it brings about a stronger connection with rhythm, with the turning points of life, in the whole physical and soul life of the human being. In the peculiar harmony between the movement of the right and left legs, we learn to relate, one might say, to what is beneath us. Then we detach what is emancipated in the arms from the movement of the legs, thus introducing a musical, melodious element into the rhythm and cadence of life. The themes of life, one might say, the content of life, appear in the movement of the arms. And this in turn forms the basis for what develops in learning to speak, which is already characterized externally by the fact that the stronger activity of the right arm in most people corresponds to the development of the left speech organ. From what you can see in living, moving human beings in the relationship between the use of the legs and the use of the arms, the relationship that human beings gain to the outside world through learning to speak is formed.
If you look into this whole context, if you look into how the legs influence speech from the bottom up in the sentence formation process, how the contents of words enter into the inner feeling of the sentence structure in the sound formation process, you have an impression of how the rhythmic nature of the leg movements affects the more thematic, inner nature of the arm and hand movements. Therefore, if a child prefers to walk briskly and regularly, if it does not become sloppy in its regular walking but is able to put its whole heart into walking regularly, then you have a physical foundation which, as we will see later, naturally comes from the spirit but manifests itself as a physical foundation: the foundation for proper division in speech as well. In this way, the child learns to form correct sentences with the movement of its legs. You will see that if a child walks sloppily, it does not produce correct intervals between sentences, but everything becomes blurred in the sentences. And if a child does not learn to make harmonious movements with its arms, its speech will be croaky and not melodious. Similarly, if you do not teach a child to feel life in its fingers, it will not develop a sense of modulation in speech.
All this refers to the time when the child is learning to walk and talk. But you see something else entirely from this. You see how some things get mixed up in life, how some things occur later than they should according to their inner connection. But you see from this inner connection that the right relationship in humans comes about when you first look at learning to walk and try as far as possible to avoid the child learning to speak before walking. Learning to speak must develop in an orderly manner on the basis of learning to walk and learning to move the arms, otherwise the child's speech will not be an activity rooted in the whole person, but an activity that merely babbles. In the case of those people who, for example, bleat instead of speaking, which happens very often, no attention has been paid to the conditions I have just described.
The third thing that the child has to learn on the basis of walking and speaking is increasingly conscious thinking. But this must actually come last. The child cannot, by its very nature, learn to think about anything other than speaking. Speaking is initially an imitation of the sounds heard. As the child absorbs the sounds it hears and has that peculiar relationship between the movements of its arms and legs, it gains an understanding of these sounds and imitates them without initially associating thoughts with the sounds. At first, the child associates only feelings with the sounds; the thinking that then occurs must first develop out of language. The correct sequence that we must therefore observe in the growing child is: learning to walk, learning to speak, learning to think.
Now, however, we must delve deeper into these three important developmental processes in children. Thinking, which is learned last, or at least should be learned last, affects humans in such a way that they actually only ever have something like mirror images of external natural beings and external natural processes in their thinking. You already know that what human beings then take in during their lives, for example as moral impulses, does not come from thinking; it comes from that system of forces, let us say of the inner human being, which we call conscience. We will talk about conscience later. In any case, it comes up from the depths of the soul and first fills thinking from the depths of the soul; whereas the thinking we acquire as children clearly shows how it is actually only attuned to grasping external natural beings and external natural processes, how it merely wants to provide images of natural beings and natural processes.
In contrast, something quite different flows into what occurs with learning to speak. With learning to speak, today's science is still on rather tense footing. Modern science has learned some remarkable things, for example, about animal development, and then it compares animal development with that of humans and discovers all kinds of things that are very noteworthy; but when it comes to what happens in humans as they learn to speak, modern science does not yet really know what is going on, even in relation to animals. For there is one particular question that must be answered above all others. Humans use their larynx and other speech organs to speak. Higher animals also have these organs, albeit in a more primitive form. If we disregard those animals that produce certain sounds, which are very primitive and only develop into a kind of song in some animals, if we disregard that, we still come to the question: What is the actual purpose—I am not asking in a teleological sense, but in a causal sense—of the larynx and its neighboring organs in animals, since it is clear that only humans use these organs for speech? In animals, they are not yet used for speech, but they are there – and they are very clearly there. If one studies comparative anatomy, one sees how even in animals that are relatively mute – relative to humans – organs are found that point in this direction. It is certainly true that, in a certain sense, it contains what is predetermined to be human, and yet the animal does not speak. So what is the significance of the larynx and its neighboring organs in animals? A more developed physiology will one day discover that the entire animal form depends on the formation of the larynx and its neighboring organs. So when an animal becomes a lion, the cause of this is to be found in its upper chest organs; from there radiate the forces that make it a lion. When an animal becomes a cow, the cause of this cow form is contained precisely in what becomes the speech organ in humans. The animal form radiates from these organs. It must be studied in order to understand how morphology should actually be shaped, how the animal form must be grasped, how precisely these upper chest organs are shaped, even as they merge into the organs of the mouth. For it is from there that the entire form of the animal radiates.
Humans develop these organs into speech organs on the basis of their upright walking and arm-wielding nature. In the present day, they absorb the sounds and speech that come from their environment. What do humans absorb with this? Consider that these organs have a tendency to shape the entire organism. So when humans hear a language that is, for example, passionate and angry, booming with rage, they absorb something that animals do not allow in. Animals allow themselves to be shaped only by the larynx and its neighboring organs; humans, however, take in the anger and passion of their environment, and it flows into their forms, right down to the outermost tissue structures. If humans hear only gentleness in their environment, it flows into the structure of their finest tissues, it flows into their forms. It flows into the finer organization in particular. Humans also deal with the coarser organization in the same way as animals, but everything that humans absorb through language flows into the finer organization. This is also how the finer organizations of peoples come about: they flow out of language. Human beings are an imprint of language. You will therefore understand what it means that, in the course of their development, human beings have gradually come to learn different languages: this makes them more universal. These things are of enormous significance for human development. Now, we see how, during their early childhood, human beings are completely inwardly oriented, down to their blood circulation, toward what is going on in their environment — and from this flows what they take in as their lines of thought. I would urge you to pay particular attention to what happens to human beings when they learn to speak. I would therefore like to summarize it for you in two sentences that, in a sense, indicate this difference between humans and animals. If the animal could express what concerns its form, its shape in relation to the upper chest organs, it would have to say: I form myself in accordance with the upper chest and mouth organs to my shape and do not allow anything into my being that modifies my shape. This is what the animal would have to say if it wanted to express this relationship. The human being, on the other hand, would say: I adapt my upper chest and mouth organs to the world processes that take place in language, and I organize the structure of my innermost being accordingly. So it is not the outer organization that develops in an animal-like way; but humans adapt their innermost physical organization to what takes place in their environment in language. This is of enormous importance for the whole understanding of the human being. For it is from language that the way of thinking develops, and this is what makes humans beings who, in these first years of childhood, are devoted to the outside world, while animals are desperately closed in on themselves.
Now you see, this makes the way in which humans first encounter statics and dynamics, then language, then thinking during their early childhood years, tremendously important. It becomes tremendously important. It must develop in the right way. You all know that this develops in different ways in different people. And we must ask: What determines whether these things develop in the right way? Yes, it depends on many things. But for this early childhood age, the most important thing on which it depends is that there is the right balance between sleeping and waking hours; that we gradually gain an instinctive understanding of how long a child needs to sleep and how long it needs to be awake. For let us suppose that a child sleeps too much for its circumstances. If a child sleeps too much for its needs, then – and I will give some examples – a kind of inner restraint develops in the movement of its legs. The child becomes inwardly unwilling to walk if it sleeps too much. It becomes sluggish in relation to walking, and this also makes it sluggish in relation to speaking. The child does not develop the proper sequence of speech in terms of time. It speaks more slowly than it should according to its constitution. When we later encounter a person in whom this has not been corrected by school, we sometimes despair because between every two words they give us the opportunity to take a little walk. There are people like that, who find it very difficult to move from one word to another. When we meet someone like that, we can look back at their childhood and we will find that their teachers or parents let them sleep too much during the period when walking was being developed. But let's assume that the child doesn't sleep enough; in other words, the necessary care is not taken to ensure that the child gets the relatively long sleep it needs. This then develops into such a peculiar condition that the child does not have complete control over its legs. Instead of walking, it waddles. Instead of truly mastering the words in their sequence with its soul, they escape it; the sentences become such that the words fall apart. This is different from not being able to find the right word; in that case, one has too much energy and cannot access the next word. In what I mean now, one has too little strength; the next word is not, so to speak, grasped with the continuous flow of the soul, but one waits and wants to snap into the next word. And when this leads to a particular extreme, it expresses itself in stuttering speech. When you find people with a tendency to stutter, especially in their twenties and thirties, you can be sure that these children were not encouraged to get enough sleep while they were learning to speak.
From this you can see how knowledge of human nature provides the basis for what needs to be done.
Now look at the whole human organism, how it adapts to the world in the first three years, how it allows the statics and dynamics of its own motor skills to flow into what it produces through the shaping of air in speech – and much else is connected with this, which then has consequences for thinking. Look at all this and then consider the child in relation to the adult human being, and you will see that in the child there is a much stronger interaction between this inner dynamics, between walking, fidgeting, moving the arms, and forming ideas. All this flows together much more in the child than in the adult human being. In this respect, the child is still essentially a unity. And in other respects, too, the child is essentially more of a unity than the later adult human being. For example, when we as adults suck on candy, which we really shouldn't do, it actually only means a pleasure for the tongue, for the palate; further into the body, it stops. Children are in a different situation; the taste continues much further. Children just don't tell us this, and we don't pay attention to it, but the taste continues to have an effect. Many of you will certainly have observed children who are particularly animated and inspired throughout their entire organism – how this animation and inspiration is expressed in them. It is much more interesting to look at the arms and legs of a lively child who is a little further away from a table on which there is something sweet than at their mouth. What the mouth says is more or less self-evident, but how the child develops a desire, for example, in its toes, in its arms, as it rows toward the sugar, you can clearly see: it is not only the tongue that is changing, but the whole person. The taste flows into the whole person. If you approach all these things with a truly open mind, you will come to realize that the child – less and less in later years, most in its first life on earth, but essentially from birth until the change of teeth – is in a certain sense entirely a sensory organ, a sensory organization. What later has fled to our senses on the surface of our bodies lives in the child in its entire organism. Of course, you must not take these things too literally, but essentially they are already present. And they are present in such a way that they can also be demonstrated in the external physiology, starting with the most obvious sensory organ, the eye.
You see, people often come to me and ask: What can be done with current science, say for a dissertation — dissertations are also part of the misery of school — what can be done specifically for this purpose? And to those who are physiologists, for example, I would advise something that is, so to speak, in the air in physiology: they should observe the development of the human eye as it occurs in the embryo and continues, and then they should observe the entire embryo at the corresponding stage as it develops from the germ. You will find a remarkable parallelism between the eye and the entire human germ as it progresses embryonically. However, you will discover that the eye develops later, so to speak, skipping the first stages, and that the entire embryo does not reach the end that the eye reaches, but stops earlier. This will yield something tremendously significant for embryonic physiology. If one follows the embryonic development as it progresses, one will come to regard these initial stages as ideal stages that are only present in the germ and in the eye of the embryo. The eye continues to develop, becoming a perfect sense organ; the embryo remains behind and later transitions to physical formation.
But in children, there is still the fact that in their entire mental and spiritual development, they have this outpouring of the sensory over the entire body. In a certain sense, children are entirely sensory organs, facing the world as such. This must be constantly taken into account in education and in everything that is done in the child's environment before the change of teeth. We will have to discuss the more pedagogical-didactic element later. Only when one looks at it in the right way will one be able to answer certain questions relating to the human being correctly. For you see, there is a question that is extremely significant for those who do not merely observe the development of humanity from the outside, according to the familiar story. As you know, in earlier historical epochs of human development, there was much more talk of sin and original sin than there is today. Now, I do not want to give you a historical treatise, but I would like to point out what — not in popular consciousness, where things have sometimes become somewhat crude — but what those who have learned these things as we do today, when we learn to look at things more scientifically, apply to our present circumstances. For them, original sin in humans was everything that came from inherited characteristics. What humans had from their ancestors was original sin. That is the real concept of original sin. This concept was later changed considerably according to ideas that were developed later. But what is directly inherited physically gives humans predispositions that are the basis of their sinfulness – or so it was said in the past. What do we say today? Today we say: We must observe the inherited predispositions most closely, and we must develop human beings in such a way that these predispositions are given priority. Yes, if an older science were to pass judgment on this, it would say: Well, you have learned something wonderful through human progress; you have learned to pursue the principle of cultivating precisely what is sinful in human beings. That is what we would actually have to say in the spirit of older science. We only observe historical events according to what is unfortunately recorded in a rather superficial way in history books; that is why we do not come up with such things.
Anyone who now looks into what I have described today: how human beings adapt to their environment in the dynamics and statics of their being, in their speech and in their thinking, will also gain a true insight into how much is purely physically inherited and how much depends on what is happening in the human environment, which influences human beings much more than is commonly believed. Today, people say of many things that a person has inherited them from his father or mother, when in reality he has acquired them by imitating the particular way of walking, the movement of the hands, or the speech of his environment during the first period of life. It is devotion to the environment that is primarily taken into account in the first period of life, not heredity. Theories of heredity are quite correct in their field, but this must also be viewed in the same way as what I said yesterday. I said: We go out onto the path, it is soft now; we leave our footprints. Now someone comes along who does not know earthly human beings, coming down from Mars, and he explains: Well, these footprints are caused by forces down there in the earth; they press the ground a little harder in one place, a little less in another, and then the traces configure themselves so that something exactly like a footprint is created. This is how people explain the soul being, based on inherited predispositions and the brain. Just as the footprints are imprinted from the outside, so too are those things that are experienced from the environment in imitative life imprinted in the body, especially in the brain and the nervous system, in learning to walk, learning to speak, learning to think. Everything that external, physical psychology says is correct: the brain is a clear imprint of what a person is spiritually; but one must know that it is not the creator of the spiritual, but the ground on which the spiritual develops. Just as I cannot walk without ground under my feet, so I cannot think as an earthly human being without a brain, of course. But the brain is nothing more than the ground into which thinking and speaking configure what you receive from the world, from the world around you, not from your inherited predispositions.
Now you can see from this that it is very unclear to people today what actually happens during these first three non-academic years of life. It is during this time that the whole person is configured and internalized to a greater extent. Now, as I have already said, the thinking that emerges later turns toward the outside world, forming images of nature, natural things, and natural processes. But what is formed earlier, speech, already takes in in a tempered, nuanced way everything that lies spiritually in language, which has an effect on the human being, everything that has a psychological effect on the human being from the environment. Through language, we absorb what we acquire spiritually from our surroundings. The soul of the entire milieu penetrates us indirectly through language. And we know that the child is entirely a sensory organ, that inner processes really take place when these things are present as spiritual impressions. So, for example, let's say that if the child is in the environment of a quick-tempered father who always utters his words like a hothead, then the child experiences internally this whole soul peculiarity that lies in the formation of words through quick temper; and this is now imprinted on the child not only in that it also becomes psychological, but also in that the child, because it has quick-tempered events in its environment, secretes more substance from its fine glands than it would in a non-quick-tempered environment. And its glands become accustomed to a strong secretion of substance. This then continues to have an effect throughout life, whether the glands have become accustomed to secreting more or less substance. As a result, if the school does not correct this later on, the person may be predisposed to become, as we say today, nervous about everything that is associated with angry expressions in their environment. You see, the soul penetrates directly into the physical. Otherwise, we seek to understand the relationship between the soul and the physical everywhere in the world; but we do not look at the fact that in the first period of life, the physical expresses itself directly in soul realities.
As the child enters into the statics and dynamics of its environment, it unconsciously does something extremely significant. Just think how much effort it takes some people later on in school to learn statics and dynamics and apply them, even if only to machines! The child does this unconsciously. It truly integrates statics and dynamics into its entire human being. And it is precisely from anthroposophical research that we can see that even what the most learned staticians and dynamists devise for the external world is child's play compared to the complex statics and dynamics that the child integrates into itself when learning to walk. It does this through imitation. Therefore, you will see how strangely imitation affects these circumstances. You can see many such examples in life; I would like to give you one example. There were two girls, very close in age, who were walking side by side. This happened in a city in central Germany many years ago. When you saw them walking side by side, they both appeared to have a limp and walked irregularly. With completely identical movements, they had a peculiar difference between a more lively use of the right arm and right fingers and a somewhat sluggish use of the left arm and left fingers. Both children were exact copies of each other; the younger child was really a copy of the older child. But only the older child had a leg injury on the left side; the younger child was a completely healthy child who had only acquired all this by imitating her little sister's false dynamics. You can find such cases everywhere in life, but they do not occur in such extreme and gross forms that you can see them immediately. In more subtle forms, it is present everywhere in life. Where walking is learned, where dynamics and statics are acquired, the human being absorbs the spirit from his environment. So that one can say: in learning to think, we acquire things from the external nature. In learning to speak, we acquire the soul of the milieu. And by doing what human beings should actually do first, when they enter earthly life, they acquire the spirit from their surroundings.
Spirit, soul, body – spirit, soul, nature: this is the order in which the world of earthly life approaches human beings. But when we absorb the soul, we simultaneously acquire our sympathies and antipathies in life. They flow in quite unnoticed. The way we learn to speak is at the same time the way we acquire certain sympathies and antipathies. And the curious thing is: those who acquire a keen eye for this, a soul's eye of course, can tell from the way a child walks, whether they walk more on their heels or more on their toes, whether they walk briskly or sneak around, they can see in these external physical characteristics the whole moral character of the person prepared for later life. So we can say that with the spiritual that we absorb as we learn to walk, the moral also flows in from the environment. And it is good to acquire an eye for how a child moves its legs that will become a good child, and how a child moves its legs that will become a bad child. For what we absorb through thinking in childhood is most naturalistic. What we absorb through language is already imbued with soul. And what we absorb through statics and dynamics is imbued with morality and spirit. This is not mere statics and dynamics as we learn them in school; it is statics and dynamics born of the spirit.
It is so incredibly important to look at these things correctly, so as not to end up with psychologies that are based primarily on the physical – where the first 30 pages reproduce what the physiologist has in detailed physiologies and then attach the psychological phenomena to it, i.e., relating the psychological to the physical. One is no longer allowed to speak of the spirit since a council abolished the spirit, since it was said: Man does not consist of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul; the soul has only spiritual qualities. Trichotomy was dogmatically forbidden in the Middle Ages, but today's “unconditional” science pursues psychology by starting with the premise that man consists of body and soul. It does not know how unconditional it is, as it merely follows medieval dogma! The most enlightened university professors follow it without having any idea about it. In order to truly understand human beings, one must be able to observe them in terms of body, soul, and spirit. The materialist only understands thinking—that is his tragedy. Materialism understands matter the least because it sees the least of the spirit in it. It merely dogmatizes: there is only matter and its effects; but it understands nothing of the fact that the spirit is everywhere within it. It is peculiar that, if one wants to describe materialism, one must establish the definition: Materialism is the worldview that understands nothing of matter.
Now it is a matter of knowing exactly where the boundaries lie between physical phenomena, mental phenomena, and spiritual phenomena, and how one transitions into the other. And this is particularly necessary in relation to the development of children in the first period of life.