The Essentials of Education
GA 308
10 April 1924 a.m., Stuttgart
Lecture Three
Before education can be helpful, teachers and educators must gain the right perspective, one that allows them to fully understand the source and the formation of a child’s organism. For the sake of clarity in this area I would like to begin with a comparison.
Let’s take reading—the ordinary reading of adults. If we wanted to describe what we gain from our usual reading of a book, we would not say, “the letter B is shaped like this, the letter C like that” and so on. If I read Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, it wouldn’t occur to me to describe the individual letters as a result of my reading, since the real substance assimilated is not on the paper at all, it’s not even contained within the covers of the book. Nevertheless, if I want to comprehend in any way the content of Wilhelm Meister, I would have had to have learned how to read the letters and their relationships—I must be able to recognize the forms of the letters.
The Ability to Read the Human Being
A teacher’s relationship with children is similar; it must constitute a reading of the human being. What a teacher gets from a strictly physical understanding of the physiology and anatomy of the organs and their functions amounts to no more than learning the letters. As teachers and educators, it is not enough to understand that the lungs or heart have this or that appearance and function in the physical realm; that kind of an understanding of the human being is similar an to illiterate person who can only describe the forms of letters but not the book’s meaning.
Now in the course of modern civilization, humankind has gradually lost the habit of reading nature and, most of all, human nature. Our natural science is not reading but mere spelling. As long as we fail to recognize this specifically, we can never develop a true art of education that arises from real knowledge of the human being. This requires knowledge that truly reads, not one that only spells. People are obviously unhappy at first when they hear such a statement, and it is left at that. They argue: Isn’t the human race supposed to be making continual progress? How can it be, then, that during our time of momentous progress in the natural sciences (which philosophical anthroposophists are the first to acknowledge) we are moving backward in terms of penetrating the world more deeply?
We must answer: Until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, human beings were unable to “spell out” nature. They saw natural phenomena and received instinctive, intuitive impressions, primarily from other human beings. They did not get as far as describing separate organs, but their culture was spiritual and sensible, and they had an instinctive impression of the human being as a totality. This kind of impression only arises when one is not completely free in one’s inner being, since it is an involuntary impression and not subject to inner control.
Thus, beginning with the fourteenth or fifteenth century, a time had to come in the historical evolution of humanity—an epoch of world history that is about to end—when human beings would forgot their earlier, instinctive knowledge, and become more concerned with learning the “alphabet” of human nature. Consequently, in the last third of the nineteenth century and, in effect, until the present period of the twentieth century, as human beings we were faced with a larger culture whose worldview is void of spirit. This is similar to the way we would face a spiritual void if we could not read, but only perceived the forms of the letters. In this age, human nature in general has been strengthened, just because the involuntary life and being of the spirit within it were absent, especially among the educated.
We must have the capacity to observe world history in depth, since otherwise we would be incapable of forming a correct assessment of our position as human beings in the sequence of eras. In many ways, modern people will be averse to this, because we are endowed, as I have already indicated, with a certain cultural pride, especially when we think we have learned something. We place an intrinsically higher value on a “letter” reading of nature than we do on what existed in earlier periods of earthly evolution. Of course, anatomists today think they know more about the heart and liver than those of earlier times. Nevertheless, people then had a picture of the heart and liver, and their perception included a spiritual element.
We must be able to empathize with the way the modern anatomist views the heart, for example. It is seen as something like a first-rate machine—a more highly developed pump that drives the blood through the body. If we say that an anatomist is looking at a corpse, the response would be denial, which from that viewpoint is appropriate, since an anatomist wouldn’t see the point of such a distinction. Ancient anatomists, however, saw a kind of spiritual entity in the heart, working in a spiritual and psychic sense. The sensory content of perception was permeated and simultaneous with a spiritual aspect. Such perception of the spiritual could not be fully clear and conscious, but was involuntary. If humankind had been forced to continue to experience a simultaneous revelation of spirit in sense perception, complete moral freedom could not have been attained. Nevertheless, at some point it had to enter historical evolution.
When we go back over the whole course of history since the fourteenth century, we find a universal struggle toward freedom, which was ultimately exprEssentialEd in the revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century (particularly in the widespread fermentation in the more developed regions, beginning with the Bohemian-Magyar brotherhoods in Central Europe, where a definite pedagogic impulse was trying to make itself felt) and onward to Wycliffe, Huss, and the so-called Reformation. This struggle of humanity for the inner experience of freedom still continues.
None of this could have happened while the old perceptual mode persisted. Human beings had to be liberated for a while from the spirit working involuntarily within them so that they could freely assume that spirit itself. An unbiased observation of the activity of spiritual culture leads one to say: It is of primary importance that educators develop full awareness of the process of human evolution on Earth. Whereas there used to be an unconscious bond between teacher and student—which was true of ancient times—they must now develop a conscious bond. This is not possible if culture arises from mere spelling, which is the way of all science and human cognition today. Such a conscious relationship can arise only if we learn to progress consciously from spelling to reading. In other words, in the same way we grasp the letters in a book but get something very different from what the letters say (indeed, the letters themselves are innocent in terms of the meaning of Wilhelm Meister), so we must also get from human nature something that modern natural science cannot express by itself; it is acquired only when we understand the statements of natural science as though they were letters of an alphabet, and thus we learn to read the human being.
This explains why it is not correct to say that anthroposophic knowledge disregards natural science. This is not true. Anthroposophic knowledge gives a great deal of credit to natural science, but like someone who respects a book through the desire to read it, rather than one who merely wants to photograph the forms of the letters. When we try to truly describe the culture of our time, many interesting things can be said of it. If I give someone a copy of Wilhelm Meister, there is a difference between someone wanting to quickly get a camera to photograph every page, not bothering at all about the content of the book, and someone else who longs to know what the book is about. If I can be content with only natural science to help me understand the human being, I am like the first person—all I really want is photographs of the external forms, since the available concepts allow no more than a mere photograph of the forms.
We are forced to use radical expressions to describe the relationship that people today have with one another and with the world. This relationship is completely misunderstood. The belief is that human beings really have something higher today than was available before the fourteenth century; but this is not true. We must develop to the degree that we learn to manipulate consciously, freely, and deliberately what we have, just as in earlier times we gained our concepts of human nature through instinctive intuition. This development in modern culture should pass through teacher training education like a magic breath and become a habit of the soul in the teachers, since only it can place the teachers at the center of that horizon of worldview, which they should perceive and survey.
Thus, today it is not as necessary that people take up a scientific study of memory, will, and intelligence. It is more important that pedagogical and didactic training be directed toward evoking the attitude I described within the teachers’ souls. The primary focus of a teacher’s training should be the very heart of human nature itself. When this is the situation, every experience of a teacher’s development will be more than lifeless pedagogical rules; they will not need to ponder the application of one rule or another to a child standing in front of them, which would be fundamentally wrong.
An intense impression of the child as a whole being must arise within the whole human nature of the teacher, and what is perceived in the child must awaken joy and vitality. This same joyful and enlivening spirit in the teacher must be able to grow and develop until it becomes direct inspiration in answer to the question: What must I do with this child? We must progress from reading human nature in general to reading an individual human being. Everywhere education must learn to manipulate (pardon this rather materialistic expression) what is needed by the human being. When we read, what we have learned about the relationships between the letters is applied. A similar relationship must exist between teacher and pupils. Teachers will not place too much nor too little value on the material development of the bodily nature; they will adopt the appropriate attitude toward bodily nature and then learn to apply what physiology and experimental psychology have to say about children. Most of all, they will be able to rise from a perception of details to a complete understanding of the growing human being.
The Implications of the Change of Teeth
A deeper perception reveals that, at the elementary school age, children are fundamentally different after their change of teeth. Let’s look into the nature of the human being before the change of teeth. The teeth are the outer expression of something developing within the human organism as a whole (as I described yesterday). There is a “shooting up” into form—the human soul is working on the second bodily nature, like a sculptor working at shaping the material. An inner, unconscious shaping process is in fact happening. The only way this can be influenced externally is to allow children to imitate what we do. Anything I do—any movement I make with my own hand—passes into the children’s soul building processes when they perceive it, and my hand movement causes an unconscious shaping activity that “shoots up” into the form.
This process depends completely on the element of movement in the child. Children make movements, their will impulses change from chaotic irregularity into inner order, and they work on themselves sculpturally from without. This plastic activity largely moves toward the inner being. When we meet children at the elementary age, we should realize that in the development of their spirit, soul, and body, the process that initially lived only in the movements passes into a very different region. Until the change of teeth, blood formation in the child depends on the system in the head. Think of a human being during the embryonic period, how the head formation dominates, while the rest of the organic structuring depends on external processes; regardless of what takes place in the mother’s body, everything that proceeds from the baby itself begins with the formation of the head. This is still true, though less so, during the first period of life until the change of teeth. The head formation plays an essential role in all that happens within the human organism. The forces coming from the head, nerves, and sensory system all work into the motor system and the shaping activity. After the child passes through the change of teeth, the activities of the head move to the background. What works in the limbs now depends less on the head and more on the substances and forces passing into the human organism through nourishment from outside.
I would like you to consider this carefully. Suppose that, before the change of teeth, we eat some cabbage, for example. The cabbage contains certain forces intrinsic to cabbages, which play an important part in the way it grows in the field. Now, in the child those forces are driven out of the cabbage as quickly as possible by the process of digestion being carried on by forces that flow down from the child’s head. Those forces flow from the head of the child and immediately plunge into the forces contained in the vegetable. After the change of teeth, the vegetable retains its own forces for a much longer time on its way through the human organism; the first transformation does not occur in the digestive system at all, but only where the digestive system enters the circulatory system. The transformation takes place later, and consequently, a completely different inner life is evoked within the organism. During the first years before the change of teeth, everything really depends on the head formation and its forces; the important thing for the second life stage from the change of teeth until puberty is the breathing process and meeting between its rhythm and the blood circulation. The transformation of these forces at the boundary between the breathing process and the circulatory system is particularly important. The essential thing, therefore, during the elementary school age, is that there should always be a certain harmony—a harmony that must be furthered by the education—between the rhythm developed in the breathing system and the rhythm it encounters in the interior of the organism. This rhythm within the circulatory system springs from the nourishment taken in. This balance—the harmonization of the blood system and the breathing system—is brought about in the stage between the change of teeth and puberty.
In an adult, the pulse averages four times as many beats as breaths per minute. This normal relationship in the human organism between the breathing and the blood rhythms is established during the time between the change of teeth and puberty. All education at that time must be arranged so that the relationship between the breathing and blood rhythms may be established in a way appropriate to the majesty and development of the human organism.
This relationship between pulse and breath always differs somewhat among people. It depends in each individual on the person’s size, or whether one is thin or fat; it is influenced by the inner growth forces and by the shaping forces that still emanate from hereditary conditions during the early years of childhood. Everything depends on each human being having a relationship between the breathing and the blood rhythms suited to one’s size and proportions. When I see a child who is inclined to grow up thin, I recognize the presence of a breathing system that, in a certain sense, affects the blood system more feebly than in some fat little child before me. In the thin child, I must strengthen and quicken the imprint of the breathing rhythm to establish the proper relationship. All these things, however, must work naturally and unconsciously in the teacher, just as perception of individual letters is unconscious once we know how to read. We must acquire a feeling of what should be done with a fat child or with a thin child, and so on. It is, for example, extremely important to know whether a child’s head is large or small in proportion to the rest of the body. All this follows naturally, however, when we stand in the class with an inner joy toward education as a true educational individual, and when we can read the individual children committed to our care.
It is essential, therefore, that we take hold, as it were, of the continual shaping process—a kind of further development of what takes place until the change of teeth—and meet it with something that proceeds from the breathing rhythm. This can be done with various music and speech activities. The way we teach the child to speak and the way we introduce a child to the music—whether listening, singing, or playing music—all serve, in terms of teaching, to form the breathing rhythm. Thus, when it meets the rhythm of the pulse, it can increasingly harmonize with it.
It is wonderful when the teacher can observe the changing facial expressions of a child while learning to speak and sing—regardless of the delicacy and subtlety of those changes, which may not be so obvious. We should learn to observe, in children between the change of teeth and puberty, their efforts at learning to speak and sing, their gaze, physiognomy, finger movements, stance and gait; with reverence, we should observe, growing from the very center of very small children, unformed facial features that assume a beautiful form; we should observe how our actions around small children are translated into their developing expressions and body gestures. When we can see all this with inner reverence, as teachers we attain something that continually springs from uncharted depths, an answer in feeling to a feeling question.
The question that arises—which need not come into the conscious intellect—is this: What happens to all that I do while teaching a child to speak or sing? The child’s answer is: “I receive it,” or, “I reject it.” In body gestures, physiognomy, and facial expressions we see whether what we do enters and affects the child, or if it disappears into thin air, passing through the child as though nothing were assimilated. Much more important than knowing all the rules of teaching—that this or that must be done in a certain way—is acquiring this sensitivity toward the child’s reflexes, and an ability to observe the child’s reactions to what we do. It is, therefore, an essential intuitive quality that must develop in the teacher’s relationship with the children. Teachers must also learn to read the effects of their own activity. Once this is fully appreciated, people will recognize the tremendous importance of introducing music in the right way into education during the elementary years and truly understand what music is for the human being.
Understanding the Fourfold Human Being
Anthroposophy describes the human physical body, a coarse, material principle, and the more delicate body, which is still material but without gravity—in fact, its tendency is to fly against gravity into cosmic space. The human being has a heavy physical body, which can fall to the ground when not held upright. We also have a finer etheric body, which tends to escape gravity into cosmic space. Just as the physical body falls if it is unsupported, so the etheric body must be controlled by inner forces of the human organism to prevent it from flying away. Therefore, we speak of the physical body, the etheric body, and then the astral body, which is no longer material but spiritual; and we speak of the I-being, which alone is completely spirit. If we want to gain a real knowledge of these four members of the human being—a true understanding of the human being—we might say: The methods of modern anatomy and physiology allow for an understanding of the physical organism, but not the etheric human being and certainly not the astral human being.
How can we understand the etheric body? This requires a much better preparation than is usual for understanding the human being today. We understand the etheric body when we enter the shaping process, when we know how a curve or angle grows from inner forces. We cannot understand the etheric body in terms of ordinary natural laws, but through our experience of the hand—the spirit permeated hand. Thus, there should be no teacher training without activities in the areas of modeling or sculpture, an activity that arises from the inner human being. When this element is absent, it is much more harmful to education than not knowing the capital city of Romania or Turkey, or the name of some mountain; those things can always be researched in a dictionary. It is not at all necessary to know the masses of matter required for exams; what is the harm in referring to a dictionary? However, no dictionary can give us the flexibility, the capable knowledge, and knowing capacity necessary to understand the etheric body, because the etheric body does not arise according to natural laws; it permeates the human being in the activity of shaping.
And we shall never understand the astral body simply by knowing Gay-Lussac’s law or the laws of acoustics and optics. The astral body is not accessible to such abstract, empirical laws; what lives and weaves within it cannot be perceived by such methods. If we have an inner understanding, however, of the intervals of the third or the fifth, for example—an inner musical experience of the scale that depends on inner musical perception and not on acoustics—then we experience what lives in the astral human being.
The astral body is not natural history, natural science, or physics; it is music. This is true to the extent that, in the forming activity within the human organism, it is possible to trace how the astral body has a musical formative effect in the human being. This formative activity flows from the center between the shoulder blades, first into the tonic of the scale; as it flows on into the second, it builds the upper arm, and into the third, the lower arm. When we come to the third we arrive at the difference between major and minor; we find two bones in the lower arm—not just one—the radius and ulna, which represent minor and major. One who studies the outer human organization, insofar as it depends on the astral body, must approach physiology not as a physicist, but as a musician. We must recognize the inner, formative music within the human organism.
No matter how you trace the course of the nerves in the human organism, you will never understand what it means. But when you follow the course of the nerves musically—understanding the musical relationships (everything is audible here, though not physically)—and when you perceive with spiritual musical perception how these nerves run from the limbs toward the spine and then turn upward and continue toward the brain, you experience the most wonderful musical instrument, which is the human being, built by the astral body and played by the I-being.
As we ascend from there, we learn how the human being forms speech through understanding the inner configuration of speech—something that is no longer learned in our advanced civilization; it has discarded everything intuitive. Through the structure of speech, we recognize the I-being itself if we understand what happens when a person speaks the sound “ah” or “ee”—how in “ah” there is wonder, in “ee” there is a consolidation of the inner being; and if we learn how the speech element shoots, as it were, into the inner structure; and if we learn to perceive a word inwardly, not just saying, for example, that a rolling ball is “rolling,” but understand what moves inwardly like a rolling ball when one says “r o l l i n g.” We learn through inner perception—a perception really informed by the spirit of speech—to recognize what is active in speech.
These days, information about the human organism must come from physiologists and anatomists, and information about what lives in language comes from philologists. There is no relationship, however, between what they can say to each other. It is necessary to look for an inner spiritual connection; we must recognize that a genius of speech lives and works in language, a genius of speech that can be investigated. When we study the genius of speech, we recognize the human I-being.
We have now made eurythmy part of our Waldorf education. What are we doing with eurythmy? We divide it into tone eurythmy and speech eurythmy. In tone eurythmy, we evoke in the child movements that correspond to the form of the astral body; in speech eurythmy we evoke movements that correspond to the child’s I-being. We thus work consciously to develop the soul by bringing physical elements into play in tone eurythmy; and we work consciously to develop the spirit aspect by activating the corresponding physical elements in speech eurythmy.
Such activity, however, only arises from a complete understanding of the human organization. Those who think they can get close to the human being through external physiology and experimental psychology (which is really only another kind of physiology) would not recognize the difference between beating on a wooden tray and making music in trying to evoke a certain mood in someone. Similarly, knowledge must not remain stuck in abstract, logical rules, but rise to view human life as more than grasping lifeless nature—the living that has died—or thinking of the living in a lifeless way. When we rise from abstract principles to formative qualities and understand how every natural law molds itself sculpturally, we come to understand the human etheric body. When we begin to “hear” (in an inner, spiritual sense) the cosmic rhythm expressing itself in that most wonderful musical instrument that the astral body makes of the human being, we come to understand the astral nature of the human being.
What we must become aware of may be exprEssentialEd this way: First, we come to know the physical body in an abstract, logical sense. Then we turn to the sculptural formative activity with intuitive cognition and begin to understand the etheric body. Third, as a physiologist, one becomes a musician and views the human being the way one would look at a musical instrument—an organ or violin—where one sees music realized. Thus, we understand the astral human being. And when we come to know the genius of speech as it works creatively in words—not merely connecting it with words through the external memory—we gain knowledge of the human I-being.
These days, we would become a laughing stock if in the name of university reform—medical studies, for example—we said that such knowledge must arise from the study of sculpture, music, and speech. People would say: Sure, but how long would such training take? It certainly lasts long enough without these things. Nevertheless, the training would in fact be shorter, since its length today is due primarily to the fact that people don’t move beyond abstract, logical, empirical sense perception. It’s true that they begin by studying the physical body, but this cannot be understood by those methods. There is no end to it. One can study all kinds of things throughout life—there’s no end to it—whereas study has its own inner limits when it is organically built up as a study of the organism in body, soul and spirit.
The point is not to map out a new chapter with the help of anthroposophy, adding to what we already have. Indeed, we can be satisfied with what ordinary science offers; we are not opposed to that. We are grateful to science in the sense that we are grateful to the violin maker for providing a violin. What we need in our culture is to get hold of all of this modern culture and permeate it with soul and permeate it with spirit, just as human beings themselves are permeated with soul and spirit. The artistic must not be allowed to exist in civilization as a pleasant luxury next to serious life, a luxury we consider an indulgence, even though we may have a spiritual approach to life in other ways. The artistic element must be made to permeate the world and the human being as a divine spiritual harmony of law.
We must understand how, in facing the world, we first approach it with logical concepts and ideas. The being of the universe, however, gives human nature something that emanates from the cosmic formative activity working down from the spheres, just as earthly gravity works up from the central point of the Earth. And cosmic music, working from the periphery, is also a part of this. Just as the shaping activity works from above, and physical activity works from below through gravity, so cosmic music works in the movements of the starry constellations at the periphery.
The principle that really gives humanity to the human being was divined in ancient times when words were spoken—words such as “In the primal beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word.” That Cosmic Word, Cosmic Speech, is the principle that also permeates the human being, and that being becomes the I-being. In order to educate, we must acquire knowledge of the human being from knowledge of the cosmos, and learn to shape it artistically.
Dritter Vortrag
Es ist für ein gedeihliches Erziehen und Unterrichten notwendig, daß man sich als der Erziehende und Unterrichtende den richtigen Blick angewöhnt, der dazu führt, die Regungen, die werdende Gestaltung des kindlichen Organismus wirklich zu durchschauen. Ich möchte, um klarzumachen, was da eigentlich vorliegt, ausgehen von einem Vergleich.
Nehmen Sie das Lesen, so wie wir es üben als Erwachsene, das gewöhnliche Lesen. Dasjenige, was uns durch das Lesen vermittelt wird, wenn wir in ganz gewöhnlichem Sinne ein Buch lesen, ist doch sicher nicht dasjenige, was wir etwa aussprechen würden damit, daß wir sagen würden: Ein B hat diese Form, ein C hat diese Form. Denn schließlich, wenn jemand den Goetheschen «Wilhelm Meister» liest, wird er nicht als Resultat seines Lesens die Buchstaben beschreiben; sondern das, was er aufnimmt, ist ja ganz und gar nicht auf dem Papier, ist ja gar nicht in diesem Einband enthalten. Dennoch muß jemand, der den «Wilhelm Meister» seinem Inhalte nach aufnehmen will, gelernt haben, die Buchstaben und ihren Zusammenhang zu lesen. Er muß also die Formen der Buchstaben kennen. Ähnlich muß das Verhältnis des Lehrenden, des Erziehenden zum Kinde ein Lesen in der menschlichen Wesenheit werden. Daher wird für den Lehrenden und Erziehenden durch die Kenntnis desjenigen, was ihm die auf das Materielle sowohl der Organe wie der Funktionen bezügliche Physiologie und so weiter sagen kann, nicht mehr herauskommen als beim Lernen der Buchstaben selber herauskommt. Man muß als Lehrender und Erziehender nicht nur lernen, die Lunge sieht so aus, hat diese und jene Funktion in der physischen Welt, das Herz. und so weiter sieht so und so aus; da würde man erst so viel von der Menschenwesenheit verstehen können, als einer versteht von dem Sinn eines Buches, wenn er nichts kann als die Buchstaben beschreiben, wenn er nicht lesen kann.
Nun ist in der neueren Kulturentwickelung die Sache so gegangen, daß in der Tat die Menschen allmählich abgekommen sind davon, in der Natur und namentlich in der menschlichen Natur zu lesen. Unsere Naturwissenschaft ist kein Lesen, unsere Naturwissenschaft ist ein Buchstabieren. Und solange man das nicht mit aller Schärfe in sich aufgenommen hat, wird man nicht eine wirkliche pädagogische Kunst, eine wirkliche Didaktik aus wahrer Menschenerkenntnis heraus entwickeln können. Es muß eine lesende, nicht eine buchstabierende Menschenerkenntnis sein. Man bleibt natürlich unbefriedigt, wenn man zunächst nur dieses hört, weil man den Einwand machen muß: Ja, wie ist es denn gekommen, da ja doch das Menschengeschlecht in einem fortwährenden Fortschritt sein soll, daß in bezug auf das Durchschauen der Welt gerade in der Epoche des größten Aufschwunges der Naturwissenschaften, den man als philosophischer Anthroposoph voll anerkennt, eigentlich ein Rückschritt stattgefunden hat?
Da muß folgendes gesagt werden. Bis zum vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Jahrhundert herein haben die Menschen in der Natur überhaupt nicht «buchstabieren» können. Sie haben die Naturerscheinungen angeschaut und einen instinktiv-intuitiven Eindruck, namentlich vom Menschen, gehabt. Sie sind nicht heruntergegangen bis zu der Beschreibung der einzelnen Organe, sondern sie hatten eine Art von geistig-sinnlicher Bildung, instinktiv einen Eindruck von dem Gesamtmenschlichen. Solch einen Eindruck kann man nur haben, wenn man in seinem Inneren nicht ganz frei wird. Denn es ist ein unwillkürlicher Eindruck, es ist kein Eindruck, den man innerlich beherrscht. Daher mußte eine Epoche in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit kommen, die im vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Jahrhundert begonnen hat, die jetzt zu Ende gehen muß, in der man eigentlich weltgeschichtlich alles vergessen hat, was in der früheren Zeit an instinktiver Menschenerkenntnis da war, in der man sich befaßt hat mit dem Buchstabieren in der Menschennatur, so daß man eigentlich im letzten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und als Nachwirkung in dem bisherigen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert in der allgemeinen Kulturbildung vor sich hatte eine geistesleere Weltanschauung, so wie man eine Geistesleere vor sich hätte, wenn man nicht lesen könnte, sondern bloß die Formen der Buchstaben anschaute. In dieser Zeit erstarkte gerade im allgemeinen die Menschennatur, weil das unwillkürliche Leben und Wesen des Geistes in der Menschennatur gerade in den Gebildeten nicht vorhanden war.
So muß man in die Weltgeschichte hineinschauen können, sonst wird man seine Stellung als Mensch in der Zeitentwickelung nicht richtig beurteilen können. Das, was damit gesagt wird, ist ja allerdings in vieler Beziehung bedrückend gerade für den modernen Menschen. Denn er ist ja, wie ich schon angedeutet habe, mit einem gewissen Bildungshochmut, namentlich wenn er etwas gelernt zu haben glaubt, behaftet, und er schätzt sein Buchstabieren in der Natur wesentlich höher als dasjenige, was in früheren Epochen der Erdenmenschheitsentwickelung da war. Der heutige Anatom glaubt ganz gewiß mehr über Herz und Leber zu wissen, als die vorangehenden Anatomen gewußt haben. Die vorangehenden Anatomen hatten ein Bild von Herz und Leber, das in sich ein Geistiges trug in der Anschauung. Man muß sich hineinversetzen können in die Art und Weise, wie der heutige Anatom das Herz anschaut: es ist für ihn so etwas wie eine bessere Maschine, eine bessere Pumpe, die das Blut durch den Körper treibt. Wenn man sagt, er sehe ein Totes, wird er es ableugnen. Er leugnet es von seinem Standpunkt mit Recht ab, selbstverständlich, denn er kann das gar nicht einsehen, worum es sich handelt, während der ältere Anatom im Herzen etwas wie ein geistiges Wesen gesehen hat, das sich geistig-seelisch betätigt. Der Inhalt der sinnlichen Anschauung war durchsetzt von etwas Geistigem, auf das er zugleich schaute. Dieses Schauen des Geistigen konnte nicht mit klarer, voller Besonnenheit vor sich gehen, sondern es war etwas, was unwillkürlich kam. Hätte die Menschheit fortfahren müssen, in diesem sinnlichen Anschauen zugleich ein Geistiges zu haben, dann wäre es unmöglich gewesen, daß die Menschheit in ihrer Entwickelung die volle moralische Freiheit ergriffen hätte, die auch einmal kommen mußte in dieser geschichtlichen Entwickelung.
Wenn Sie den ganzen Werdegang der Geschichte seit dem vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Jahrhundert verfolgen, gerade in den zivilisierten Gegenden verfolgen, was in der nachfolgenden Entwickelung im weitesten Umkreise gegoren hat von den böhmisch-mährischen Brüdern in Mitteleuropa, deren Streben einen entschieden pädagogischen Einschlag hatte, bis zu Wiclif, Hus, bis herauf zu dem, was man gewöhnlich die Reformation nennt, so werden Sie überall finden das Streben nach Freiheit, das dann seinen Ausdruck findet in den Revolutionsbewegungen des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Und noch immer ist es ein Ringen der Menschheit, die Freiheit innerlich zu erleben. Das hätte nicht kommen können, wenn die alte Art der Anschauung geblieben wäre. Man mußte sozusagen eine Zeitlang von dem im Menschen unwillkürlich wirkenden Geiste frei werden, damit der Mensch frei das geistige Wirken in sich aufnehmen könne. Und wer so sich unbefangen das Wirken der geistigen Kultur anschaut, der wird sich schon sagen müssen: Eigentlich muß der Pädagoge zuerst ein volles Bewußtsein entwickeln von dem, was da im Menschenwerden der Erde vor sich geht. Er muß zuerst aus jenem instinktiven Zusammensein des Lehrenden und des zu Erziehenden, wie es in alten Zeiten der Fall war, ein bewußtes Zusarnmensein entwickeln. Das läßt sich nicht entwickeln, wenn man seine Bildung herausnimmt aus einem bloßen Buchstabieren, das auch eingezogen ist in die ganze Wissenschaft, das in das gesamte menschliche Erkennen eingezogen ist. Das läßt sich nur gewinnen, wenn man nun wiederum bewußt aufsteigen lernt von dem Buchstabieren zum Lesen. Das heißt: Wie man in dem Verhältnis, das man zu einem Buche hat, ganz darinnensteckt in dem, was die Buchstaben sagen, aber etwas ganz anderes herausnimmt, als die Buchstaben sagen — die Buchstaben sind sehr unschuldig an dem Inhalt des «Wilhelm Meister» in gewisser Beziehung -, so muß man aus der menschlichen Natur herausnehmen können dasjenige, was nun nicht die heutige Naturwissenschaft an sich sagen kann, sondern was entsteht, wenn man die Angaben der heutigen Naturwissenschaft als Buchstaben betrachtet und dann lesen lernt in der menschlichen Wesenheit.
Deshalb ist es auch so unberechtigt zu sagen, anthroposophische Erkenntnis mißachte die Naturwissenschaft. Das ist gar nicht der Fall; sie achtet sie ganz stark, aber wie derjenige das Buch achtet, der es lesen will, nicht wie der das Buch achtet, der bloß die Buchstabenformen photographieren will.Man muß in dieser Beziehung merkwürdige Dinge sagen, wenn man die Zeitkultur richtig charakterisieren will. Ich gebe irgend jemandem einen Band «Wilhelm Meister» in die Hand. Es ist doch ein Unterschied zwischen dem, der mir sagt: Ich werde gleich meinen Abknipsapparat nehmen, um diesen Band «Wilhelm Meister» auf jeder Seite zu photographieren — und sich gar nicht kümmert um dasjenige, was als Inhalt in dem Buch enthalten ist, und zwischen einem, der gleich schnappt, weil er neugierig ist, was darinnen steht. In der Lage des ersteren ist derjenige, der stehenbleiben will bei der bloßen Naturwissenschaft von heute in der Menschenerkenntnis. Er will eigentlich nichts als die äußeren Formen photographieren, denn er hat auch in seinen Begriffen von den äußeren Formen nur dieses Photographieren. Es ist heute schon so, daß man zu radikalen Aussprüchen kommen muß, wenn man jenes Verhältnis des Menschen zum Menschen und zur Welt charakterisieren will, das heute vorhanden ist, denn man mißversteht ja ganz dieses Verhältnis. Man denkt, man habe heute schon etwas Höheres, als man es gehabt hat vor dem vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Jahrhundert. Man hat es nicht. Aber man muß wieder dazu kommen, dasjenige was man hat, in derselben Weise bewußt, willkürlich, besonnen handhaben zu lernen, wie man früher unbewußt in instinktiven Intuitionen zu Anschauungen von der Menschennatur gekommen ist. Diese Bildung innerhalb der Zeitkultur, das ist dasjenige, was sozusagen wie ein Zauberhauch durch alle Lehrerseminarbildung hindurchgehen müßte, was Gesinnungsbildung für die Lehrerschaft werden müßte, was eigentlich erst den Lehrer bringen würde in den Mittelpunkt desjenigen Horizontes der Weltanschauung, den er übersehen, überblicken müßte. Daher ist es heute nicht so notwendig, daß man sich hinsetzt und experimentelle Gedächtnis- und Willensuntersuchungen, Verstandesuntersuchungen macht, sondern wichtig ist, daß die didaktische, die methodische, die pädagogische Bildung in Seminaren dahin orientiert wird, daß eine Gesinnung Platz greift in den Lehrerseelen, die in der Richtung geht, wie ich sie eben charakterisiert habe. Auf das Zentrale des Menschenwesens müßte eigentlich gerade in der Lehrerbildung losgegangen werden.
Und wenn das der Fall ist, dann wird dasjenige, was der Lehrer erfahren kann, erleben kann durch seine eigene Bildung, in ihm nicht ein totes Anwenden von Erziehungsregeln sein, nicht ein Nachdenken darüber, wenn irgendein Kind da ist: Wie wendet man diese oder jene Regel an? — Das ist etwas, was im Grunde genommen gar nicht sein darf, sondern es muß im ganzen Menschenwesen des Lehrers ein intensiver Eindruck entstehen von dem Kinde wiederum als Ganzes, und dasjenige, was da erblickt wird in dem Kinde, muß Freude und Leben erweckend sein. Und jenes Wesen, das als Freude und Leben erweckend im Lehrer wirkt, das muß wachsen können und unmittelbar eingeben dasjenige, was in der Frage liegt: Was machst du mit dem Kinde?
Man muß vom Lesen im Allgemeinen der Menschennatur übergehen zum Lesen in der einzelnen Menschenwesenheit. Überall muß Pädagogik übergeführt werden können, lassen Sie mich diesen materiell gefärbten Ausdruck gebrauchen, in die Handhabung desjenigen, was man braucht. Beim Lesen geht auch dasjenige, was man gelernt hat über den Zusammenhang der Buchstaben, über in Handhabung. Es muß wirklich ein dem Lesen ähnliches Verhältnis werden, in das der Lehrer eingehen kann zu dem Schüler. Dann wird er die materielle Entwickelung des Körperlichen nicht unterschätzen und nicht überschätzen, sondern sich zu ihr in eine richtige Beziehung setzen. Dann wird er erst anwenden lernen, was ihm Physiologie und experimentelle Psychologie über das Kind geben können. Dann wird er vor allen Dingen aufsteigen können von der Einsicht in Einzelheiten zu der Gesamterfassung der werdenden Menschenwesenheit.
Wenn wir das Kind in dem volksschulpflichtigen Alter hereinbekommen in die Schule, dann ist es für eine innere Schau im Grunde genommen eine andere Wesenheit, als es vorher bis zum Zahnwechselalter war. Schauen wir innerlich auf die Menschennatur hin, wie sie vor dem Zahnwechsel war. In den Zähnen kommt etas heraus, was sich bildet im ganzen menschlichen Organismus auf die Art, wie ich es gestern beschrieben habe. Es ist ein Schießen in die Form, die menschliche Seelenwesenheit arbeitet an dem zweiten Körperlichen des Menschen, wie der Bildhauer arbeitet an der Gestaltung des Stoffes. Es ist in der Tat ein innerlich unbewußtes plastisches Gestalten. Das kann man nicht auf eine andere Weise von außen beeinflussen als dadurch, daß man das Kind nachahmen läßt, was man selber tut. Was ich vormache, was als eine Bewegung mit meiner eigenen Hand da wirkt und von dem Kinde angeschaut wird, das geht über in sein seelenbildendes Element, und meine Handbewegung wird der Anlaß zur unbewußten plastischen Tätigkeit, die in die Form schießt. Dieses Indie-Form-Schießen ist ganz und gar abhängig von dem Bewegungselemente im Kinde. Was das Kind vollbringt an Bewegungen, wie bei ihm diese Willensregungen übergehen aus dem Chaotischen, Unorientierten in innerlich geordnete, wie das Kind da nach außen plastizierend an sich arbeitet, so geht dieses Plastizieren in einem hohen Grade nach dem Innern vor sich. Wenn wir das Kind in die Volksschule hereinbekommen, so müssen wir uns darüber klar sein, daß mit seinem Fortschreiten in der physisch-seelisch-geistigen Entwickelung der Vorgang, der zuerst nur in den Bewegungen lebte, in eine ganz andere Region herübergeht. Das Kind ist bis zum Zahnwechsel in seiner Blutbildung abhängig von seiner Kopforganisation. Sehen Sie sich einen Menschen an während seiner Embryonalzeit, wie da die Kopfbildung überwiegt, wie sogar die andere organische Bildung von außen, von dem, was im mütterlichen Leibe vor sich geht, abhängig ist, wie alles dasjenige, was vom Kinde selbst ausgeht, von der kindlichen Kopfbildung ausgeht. Das bleibt, wenn auch abgeschwächt, noch vorhanden in der ersten Lebensepoche des Menschen bis zum Zahnwechsel hin. Da ist in alledem, was im menschlichen Organismus vorgeht, im wesentlichen die Kopfbildung beteiligt. Da wirken Kräfte, die von der Kopfbildung, vom Nerven-Sinnes-System ausgehen, hinein in das motorische System, in das plastische Gestalten. Wenn das Kind den Zahnwechsel durchgemacht hat, dann zieht sich die Kopfbildung zurück. Dasjenige, was in den Gliedmaßen wirkt, das ist nun weniger von der Kopfbildung abhängig; das ist mehr abhängig von dem, was durch die äußerlich aufgenommenen Nahrungsmittel namentlich an Stoffen und Kräften in den menschlichen Organismus übergeht.
Beachten Sie das nur ganz genau! Nehmen wir an, wir essen als Kind in dem Lebensalter vor dem Zahnwechsel irgend etwas, wir essen Kohl zum Beispiel. Essen kann man ihn ja, wenn man ihn nur nicht redet. Der Kohl hat in sich dadurch, daß er Kohl ist, gewisse Kräfte. Diese Kräfte, die der Kohl in sich hat, die eine große Rolle spielen in der Artund Weise, wie der Kohl da auf den Feldern als Pflanze wächst, werden bei dem Kinde möglichst bald aus dem Kohl herausgetrieben, und die Verarbeitung des Kohls wird unternommen von denjenigen Kräften, die von dem Kopfe des Kindes ausstrahlen. Gleich versenkt sich in die Kohlkräfte dasjenige hinein, was von der Kopfbildung des Kindes selber ausstrahlt. Geht das Kind durch den Zahnwechsel durch, dann behält, weil die menschliche Natur sich mehr verinnerlicht, der Kohl viel länger bei seinem Wege durch den menschlichen Organismus seine eigenen Kräfte, und er wird nicht etwa schon im Verdauungssystem umgewandelt, sondern erst beim Übergang von dem Verdauungssystem in das Blutzirkulationssystem. Er wird später umgewandelt. Dadurch wird ein ganz anderes inneres Leben im Organismus hervorgerufen. Während in den ersten Jahren bis zum Zahnwechsel alles eigentlich abhängt von der Kopfbildung und ihren Kräften, wird für das zweite Lebensalter, für das Lebensalter vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, besonders wichtig, wie der Atmungsprozeß mit seinem Rhythmus entgegenkommt der Blutzirkulation, und besonders wichtig wird diese Umwandlung der Kräfte, die da stattfindet an der Grenze zwischen dem Atmungsprozeß und dem Blutzirkulationssystem. So daß für das volksschulpflichtige Alter des Kindes das Wesentliche darin liegt, daß immer eine gewisse Harmonie da sein und durch die Erziehung gefördert werden muß, eine Harmonie zwischen dem Rhythmus, der sich im Atmungssystem herausbildet, und dem Rhythmus, mit dem er sich im Inneren des Organismus berührt, dem Rhythmus, der im Blutzirkulationssystem liegt und der aufschießt aus den äußerlich aufgenommenen Nahrungsmitteln. Der Ausgleich, die Harmonisierung zwischen Blutzirkulationssystem und Atmungssystem, das ist dasjenige, was sich vollzieht zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife.
Wir wissen ja, wenn wir einem Menschen den Puls fühlen, spüren wir viermal so viel Schläge durchschnittlich im erwachsenen Alter, als wir Atemzüge empfinden. Aber dieses, was da eintritt als das dem menschlichen Organismus normale Verhältnis zwischen dem Atmungsrhythmus und Blutrhythmus, das muß erst erobert werden in demjenigen Alter, das zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife verfließt. Und die Erziehung muß so eingerichtet sein in all ihrem Verhalten, daß ein der Größe, der Bildung des menschlichen Organismus angemessenes Verhältnis zwischen Atmungsrhythmus und Blutrhythmus eintreten kann. Ein klein wenig verschieden ist dieses Verhältnis zwischen Pulsschlag und Atemzahl immer bei den Menschen. Es hängt dieses Verhältnis bei dem einzelnen Menschen davon ab, wie groß er ist, ob er schlank oder dick ist, es wird beeinflußt durch seine ganzen inneren Wachstumskräfte, durch die plastischen Kräfte, die in den ersten Kinderjahren noch von den Vererbungsverhältnissen herrühren. Es hängt alles davon ab, daß der Mensch seiner Größe, seiner Dickheit oder Schlankheit angemessen das Verhältnis hat zwischen Atmungsrhythmus und Blutrhythmus. Sehe ich ein aufschießendes, zur Schlankheit hintendierendes Kind an, so weiß ich: Da muß ein Atmungsrhythmus sein, der in einer gewissen Beziehung schwächer wirkt auf die Blutzirkulation, als wenn ich einen kleinen Dickling vor mir habe. Bei dem Dickling muß ich den Atmungsrhythmus durch die ganze Erziehung, durch alles das, was ich geistig-seelisch in ihm hervorbringe, zu stärkerem Druck bringen, zu größerer Schnelligkeit bringen, damit für den Dickling das rechte Verhältnis da ist. Das alles muß aber so selbstverständlich und wiederum unbewußt in dem Lehrer wirken wie das Anschauen der Buchstabenformen bei dem Lesen. Man muß ein Gefühl dafür kriegen können, was man bei dem Dickling tun muß, und was man bei dem Dünnling tun muß und bei allem ähnlichen. Ob ein Kind einen großen Kopf hat im Verhältnis zum übrigen Körper, ob ein Kind einen kleinen Kopf hat, darauf kommt unendlich viel an. Aber das alles ergibt sich, wenn man mit innerer Erziehungsfreude und richtiger Erzieherindividualität in der Klasse darinnensteht und in den Individualitäten der zur Pflege übergebenen Kinder lesen kann.
Da kommt es dann darauf an, daß man nun, man möchte sagen, den fortlaufenden plastischen Prozeß, der wie ein Fortrollen desjenigen ist, was bis zum Zahnwechsel hin geschieht, gewissermaßen auffaßt, ergreift und ihm entgegenkommt, ihm etwas entgegenstellt, was vom Atmungsrhythmus ausgeht. Das ist aber alles dasjenige, was von musikalischer, von rezitatorischer Kunst im Erziehen ausgehen kann. Die Art und Weise, wie wir das Kind sprechen lehren, wie wir das Kind an das Musikalische heranbringen, sowohl an das Hören des Musikalischen wie an das Gesangliche, wie an die Betätigung im Musikalischen, das alles wird für die Erziehung ein Gestalten des Atmungsrhythmus, so daß der sich immer mehr und mehr an den ihm entgegenkommenden pulsierenden Rhythmus von unten herauf anpassen kann. Und es ist schon ein sehr Schönes, wenn der Unterrichtende, der Erziehende dahin kommt, bei alledem, was sich im Sprechenlernen, im Singenlernen für das Kind so herausstellt, daß nun durch das Sprechenlernen, durch das Singenlernen die Gesichtszüge, wenn auch intim, fein, wenn auch nicht für eine grobe Beobachtung, sich da ändern. Wenn wir als Lehrender, als Erziehender für das Lebensalter zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife hinschauen lernen auf das, was im Blick, in der Physiognomie, in der Bewegung der Finger, in dem Aufstellen der Beine auf den Boden sich herausentwickelt aus dem Sprechenlernen und aus dem Singenlernen, wenn wir das ebenso mit innerer Ehrfurcht beobachten können, wie wir am ganz kleinen Kind beobachten, wie aus dem Zentrum des Menschen heraus die verwaschenen Gesichtszüge übergehen in die schön geformten und so weiter, wenn wir gewissermaßen den Übergang beobachten desjenigen, was wir um das Kind herum tun, in die körperliche Physiognomierung und Gestikulierung des menschlichen Organismus, dann gelangen wir als Lehrende, als Erziehende zu der fortwährend wie aus dem Unbestimmten herauskommenden Empfindungsantwort auf eine Empfindungsfrage. Diese Empfindungsfrage, die man sich gar nicht zum verstandesmäßigen Bewußtsein zu bringen nötig hat, ist diese: Was geschieht mit dem, was ich an dem Kinde im Sprechenlehren, im Singenlehren tue? — Dann antwortet das Kind: Ich nehme auf, oder ich lehne ab! — und man sieht es an der Geste des Körpers, an der Physiognomie, an dem Mienenspiel des Gesichtes: Geht das, was du tust, in das Kind hinein, arbeitet es darinnen, oder verfliegt das, was du tust, in leere Luft, geht einfach durch das Kind durch, und ist es, als ob das Kind gar nichts davon aufnähme? — Viel wichtiger als das Wesen aller Erziehungsregeln: «Das muß man so und das so machen!» ist es, diese Empfindung sich anzueignen, den Reflex des Kindes empfinden, beobachten zu können, wenn man die eigene Tätigkeit entwickelt, wie sie einem entgegenkommt am Reflex. Es ist also im wesentlichen ein intuitives Element, das im Verhältnis des Lehrenden und Erziehenden zu dem Kinde sich entwickeln muß. Man muß sozusagen auch lesen lernen das Ergebnis seines eigenen pädagogischen Tuns. Dann, wenn man das ganz ermißt, wird man sehen, welche ungeheure Bedeutung es hat, in der richtigen Weise gerade mit dem musikalischen Elemente einzugreifen in Erziehung und Unterricht in der Volksschule und ein Verständnis zu haben für dasjenige, was eigentlich das Musikalische am Menschen ist.
Sehen Sie, wir beschreiben in der Anthroposophie den Menschen nach seinem physischen Leib, der das Grobstoffliche an ihm ist, nach seinem feineren Leib, dem Ätherleib, der noch ein Stoffliches ist, aber ein Stoffliches, das nicht Schwere in sich hat, das eigentlich eher eine Tendenz hat, der Schwere entgegen sich in den Weltenraum zu verflüchtigen. Der Mensch hat seinen schweren physischen Körper, der zur Erde fallen kann, wenn er ihn nicht aufrecht hält; er hat aber auch einen feineren Ätherkörper, der ebenso immer in die Weiten der Welt, der Schwere entgegen, sich verflüchtigen will. Und ebenso wie der physische Körper, wenn er nicht unterstützt wird, hinabfällt, ebenso wie der physische Körper unterstützt werden muß durch die Unterlage, ebenso muß der Ätherleib gehalten werden durch die inneren Kräfte der menschlichen Organisation, damit er sich nicht verflüchtigt. Wir reden also von dem physischen Leib, von dem ätherischen Leib, wir reden dann von dem astralischen Leib, der nun nicht mehr substantiell ist, der nun schon geistig ist, und wir reden von der IchOrganisation, die erst recht geistig ist. Wir reden von diesen vier Gliedern der menschlichen Wesenheit. Verfolgt man in dieser Weise den Menschen und will man sich Erkenntnis, Menschenerkenntnis über ihn erwerben, dann sagt man sich folgendes: Den physischen Organismus, ihn kann man begreifen, über ihn kann man Einsichten bekommen, wenn man so vorgeht, wie die heutige Anatomie und Physiologie vorgehen; den ätherischen Menschen kann man so schon nicht mehr begreifen, und ganz und gar nicht den astralischen Menschen.
Wie soll man den ätherischen Menschen begreifen? Nun, den ätherischen Menschen zu begreifen, dazu ist eine viel bessere Vorbereitung notwendig als die, die heute gesucht wird, um den Menschen zu begreifen. Den begreift man, wenn man sich hineinlebt in das plastische Gestalten, wenn man weiß, eine Rundung wird so, eine Ecke wird so, aus den inneren Kräften heraus wird das so. Mit dem, was man als die allgemeinen Naturgesetze begreift, kann man den Ätherleib nicht begreifen. Mit dem, was man in die Hand, in die durchgeistigte Hand hineinbekommt, mit dem begreift man den Ätherleib. Daher sollte eigentlich keine Seminarbildung sein ohne eine aus dem Inneren des Menschen hervorgehende künstlerische Betätigung in Plastik, in Bildhauerei. Wenn das fehlt, ist es für das Erziehen viel ungünstiger, als wenn einem fehlt, die Hauptstadt von Rumänien oder der Türkei oder diesen oder jenen Berg zu wissen, denn das kann man im Lexikon nachschlagen. Es ist gar nicht nötig, daß man manches weiß, wovon man heute im Examen Gebrauch macht; das schadet auch nichts, wenn man im Lexikon nachschaut. Aber es gibt noch kein Lexikon, wodurch man jene Beweglichkeit kennenlernt, jenes könnende Wissen und wissende Können, das man in sich haben muß, um den Ätherleib zu begreifen, der nicht nach Naturgesetzen vorgeht, sondern der den Menschen in plastischer Tätigkeit durchzieht.
Und dem astralischen Leib, dem kommt man schon ganz und gar nicht bei, wenn man weiß, das Gay-Lussacsche Gesetz lautet so und so, wenn man alle Gesetze kennt, die man in der Akustik lernt, in der Optik lernt. Dem astralischen Leibe kommt man nicht bei mit diesen abstrakten empirischen Gesetzen. Was im astralischen Leibe webt und west, das läßt sich nicht so anschauen. Hat man aber innerlich begriffen, was eine Terz ist, was eine Quinte ist, kann man innerlich erleben dieses Verhältnis — aber innerlich musikalisch anschauend, nicht wie es die Akustik macht -, kann man innerlich musikalisch die Skala erleben, dann erlebt man das, was in dem astralischen Menschen ist. Denn der astralische Leib des Menschen ist Musik, nicht Naturgeschichte, nicht Naturwissenschaft, nicht Physik. Das geht so weit, daß man auch in der formenden Tätigkeit verfolgen kann im menschlichen Organismus, wie die Musik des astralischen Leibes in dem Menschen gestaltet. Sie setzt hier ein in der Mitte der Schulterblätter, strahlt aus zunächst in die Prim der Skala. Indem sie zur Sekunde vorschreitet, bildet sie den Oberarm, indem sie zur Terz fortschreitet, den Unterarm. Indem wir zur Terz kommen, haben wir den Unterschied zwischen Moll und Dur, und wir haben am Unterarm zwei Knochen, nicht einen. Der eine Knochen, die Speiche, stellt das eine, die Elle stellt das andere, Moll und Dur, dar. Wer die äußere menschliche Organisation betrachtet, inwieweit sie vom astralischen Leib abhängig ist, der muß Physiologie treiben nicht als Physiker, sondern als Musiker. Und er muß die innerlich gestaltende Musik im menschlichen Organismus kennen.
Verfolgt, wie ihr wollt, anatomisch den Gang der Nerven im menschlichen Organismus, ihr werdet nie auf den Sinn dieses Ganges der Nerven kommen. Verfolgt ihr aber diesen Gang musikalisch, mit Verständnis der Musikverhältnisse, aber alles tief innerlich hörbar, nicht mit physikalischer Akustik, verfolgt ihr so das Nervensystem, schaut ihr mit musikalischer Anschauung, mit geistig-musikalischer Anschauung, wie diese Nerven von den Gliedmaßen hin verlaufen nach dem Rückenmark, da angespannt werden und von da aus nach dem Gehirn sich fortpflanzen, seht ihr das geistig-musikalisch an, dann bekommt ihr durch das musikalische Anschauen das allerwunderbarste Musikinstrument des Menschen, das aus dem astralischen Leib gebildet ist, und auf dem die Ich-Organisation spielt.
Und lernt man, von da aufsteigend, wie die Sprache sich gestaltet im Menschen, lernt man das innere Gefüge der Sprache, das man ja gar nicht mehr kennenlernt in unserem Zeitalter der fortgeschrittenen Zivilisation, die alles Anschauliche abgestreift hat, lernt man erkennen, was im Menschen dann vorgeht, wenn er ein A, ein I ausspricht, wie im A die Verwunderung gegenüber etwas liegt, im I die In-sichErfestigung der inneren menschlichen Wesenheit, lernt man so erkennen, wie sozusagen das Sprachliche in die Organisation des Menschen hineinschießt, lernt man nicht bloß abstrakt sagen, wenn eine Kugel hinrollt: sie rollt -, sondern lernt man im Aussprechen das Rollen, was so innerlich verfließt wie das Rollen der Kugel äußerlich - rollen -, lernt man so innerlich anschauend, aber sprachgeistig anschauend kennen dasjenige, was eigentlich in der Sprache wirkt, dann lernt man durch die Struktur des Sprachlichen die Ich-Organisation kennen.
Heute gehen wir, wenn wir die Organisation des Menschen kennenlernen wollen, zum Physiologen, zum Anatomen, wenn wir kennenlernen wollen, was in der Sprache lebt, gehen wir zum Philologen. Aber was von dem einen und dem anderen gesagt wird, hat keine Verbindung. Darum handelt es sich aber, daß eine innerliche geistige Beziehung entsteht, daß man weiß, in dem Sprechen wirkt und lebt ein lebendiger Sprachgenius, und dieser Sprachgenius, der kann studiert werden, und studiert man ihn, dann lernt man die Ich-Organisation des Menschen kennen.
Wir gliedern in unsere Waldorfschulerziehung die Eurythmie dem Unterrichte ein. Was tun wir damit? Die Eurythmie zerfällt bei uns in eine Toneurythmie und in eine Spracheurythmie. Wir rufen in der Toneurythmie in dem Kinde diejenigen Bewegungen hervor, die entsprechen der Gestaltung des astralischen Leibes; wir rufen in der Spracheurythmie diejenigen Gestaltungen hervor, die entsprechen der Ich-Organisation. Wir arbeiten damit bewußt an der Ausgestaltung des seelischen Menschen, indem wir das Physische tun und Toneurythmie treiben; wir arbeiten bewußt an der Ausgestaltung des geistigen Menschen, indem wir das Physische dafür tun in der Spracheurythmie. Solch ein Arbeiten kann aber nur hervorgehen aus einer wirklich totalen Auffassung der menschlichen Organisation. Wer da glaubt, mit äußerer Physiologie oder mit experimenteller Psychologie, die ja auch nur äußere Physiologie ist, an den Menschen heranzukommen, der sieht eben nicht, daß man ja auch nicht, wenn man jemanden im Leben in irgendeine Stimmung versetzen will, vor ihm auf irgendeine Holzplatte klopfen muß, sondern Musik entwickeln muß. So muß auch das Erkennen nicht stehenbleiben bei den abstrakten logischen Regeln, sondern es muß das Erkennen so zum Erfassen des Menschenlebens aufsteigen, daß es nicht nur die tote Natur begreift oder das Lebendige, wenn es tot geworden ist oder man es tot vorstellt. Wenn man von diesen abstrakten Regeln aufsteigt zu dem, was sich plastisch gestaltet, wie sich jedes Naturgesetz bildhauerisch gestaltet, dann lernt man den Menschen nach seinem Ätherleib kennen. Wenn man aber anfängt, innerlich geistig zu hören, wie sich der Weltenrhythmus ausspricht aus dem wunderbarsten Musikinstrument, das aus dem Menschen gemacht wird durch den astralischen Leib, dann lernt man die astralische Natur des Menschen kennen. Und es müßte ein Bewußtsein davon vorhanden sein: Erste Periode des Lernens: Man lernt abstrakt logisch den physischen Leib des Menschen kennen. Man wendet dann das plastische Gestalten an im intuitiven Erkennen: Man lernt den Ätherleib kennen. Und die dritte Periode: Man wird als Physiologe zum Musiker und schaut den Menschen an, wie man ein Musikinstrument anschaut, wie eine Orgel oder eine Geige, indem man in ihr darinnen die verwirklichte Musik schaut; so lernt man den astralischen Menschen kennen. Und lernt man nicht nur äußerlich gedächtnismäßig mit den Worten verbunden leben, sondern lernt man den Genius in den Worten wirksam kennen, so lernt man die Ich-Organisation des Menschen kennen.
Nun, heute würde man einem schön heimleuchten, wenn man bei einer Universitätsreform etwa des medizinischen Studiums sagen würde: Die Erkenntnis muß aufsteigen vom Lernen zum Plastizieren, zum Musikalischen, zum Sprachlichen. Die Menschen würden sagen: Ja, wie lange würde dann eine Ausbildung sein? Sie dauert ohnedies schon lange genug! Dann soll man noch zum Plastizieren, dann zum Musikalischen und dann noch zum Sprachlichen aufsteigen! — Sie würde aber kürzer sein in Wirklichkeit. Denn die heutige Länge rührt von etwas ganz Besonderem her. Die rührt nämlich davon her, daß man ganz stehenbleibt beim Abstrakt-Logischen und beim empirisch-sinnlichen Anschauen. Da fängt man zwar an beim physischen Leib, aber der ist nicht erklärlich dadurch - und jetzt kommt man an kein Ende. Man kann da alles Mögliche studieren und kann das bis an sein Erdenende fortsetzen: es braucht gar kein Ende zu haben, während es innerlich geschlossen wird, wenn es selber organisch aufgebaut wird für den leiblich-seelisch-geistigen Organismus. Es handelt sich also nicht darum, daß wir etwa durch Anthroposophie noch neue Kapitel aufnehmen in das, was wir schon haben. Oh, wir können schon zufrieden sein mit demjenigen, was die äußere Wissenschaft gibt. Wir bekämpfen sie nicht, wir sind ihr nur dankbar, aber so, wie wir dem Geigenmacher dankbar sind, daß er uns die Geige liefert. Aber was notwendig ist aus unserer Zeitbildung und Zeitkultur heraus, das ist, diese ganze heutige Bildung in die Hand zu nehmen und sie zu durchseelen, zu durchgeistigen, wie der Mensch selber durchseelt und durchgeistigt ist. Es ist notwendig, das künstlerische Element in der Kultur überhaupt nicht so bestehen zu lassen, daß es wie eine Luxusunterhaltung neben dem ernsten Leben einhergeht, wie eine Luxusunterhaltung, der wir uns zuwenden, auch wenn wir sonst das Leben geistig zu nehmen wissen, sondern es so zu nehmen, daß es überall als eine göttlich-geistige Gesetzmäßigkeit Welt und Mensch durchdringt.
Wir müssen verstehen lernen zu sagen: Du stehst der Welt gegenüber. Erst kommst du ihr bei mit logischen Begriffen und Ideen. Das Wesenhafte der Welt gibt aber weiter der menschlichen Natur etwas, was herrührt von der Weltenplastik, die da ebenso aus den Sphären hereinarbeitet wie die Erdenschwere von unten herauf, von dem Erdmittelpunkte heraus, arbeitet. Und in all das gliedert sich hinein Weltenmusik, die da wirkt im Umkreis. Wie die Plastik von oben, die Physik von unten durch die Schwere wirkt, so wirkt in der Bewegung der Gestirne im Umkreis die Weltenmusik. Und das, was den Menschen eigentlich zum Menschen macht, das, was man geahnt hat in alten Zeiten, als man solche Sätze geprägt hat wie diesen: «Im Urbeginne war das Wort, und das Wort war bei Gott, und ein Gott war das Wort», das Weltenwort, die Weltensprache, sie ist das, was auch die menschliche Wesenheit durchdringt und in der menschlichen Wesenheit zur Ich-Organisation wird. Will man erziehen, muß man aus Weltenerkenntnis heraus Menschenerkenntnis gewinnen und auf diese Art künstlerisch gestalten lernen, was man an Menschenerkenntnis aus der Weltenerkenntnis gewonnen hat.
Davon dann heute abend weiter.
Third Lecture
For education and teaching to be successful, it is necessary for educators and teachers to develop the right perspective, which enables them to truly understand the impulses and developing nature of the child's organism. To clarify what this actually means, I would like to start with a comparison.
Take reading, as we practice it as adults, ordinary reading. What is conveyed to us through reading, when we read a book in the ordinary sense, is certainly not what we would express by saying, for example, that a B has this shape and a C has that shape. After all, when someone reads Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister,” they do not describe the letters as a result of their reading; rather, what they absorb is not at all on the paper, is not contained in this cover. Nevertheless, someone who wants to absorb the content of “Wilhelm Meister” must have learned to read the letters and their context. So they must know the shapes of the letters. Similarly, the relationship between the teacher, the educator, and the child must become a reading of the human being. Therefore, for the teacher and educator, knowledge of what physiology and so on can tell them about the material aspects of both the organs and their functions will not yield any more than learning the letters themselves. As a teacher and educator, one must not only learn that the lungs look like this, have this and that function in the physical world, that the heart looks like this and so on; for then one would understand as much about human nature as one understands the meaning of a book if one can do nothing but describe the letters, if one cannot read.
Now, in recent cultural development, things have gone so far that people have gradually strayed from reading nature, and especially human nature. Our natural science is not reading, our natural science is spelling. And as long as one has not taken this in with all sharpness, one will not be able to develop a real pedagogical art, a real didactics out of true knowledge of human beings. It must be a reading, not a spelling, knowledge of human beings. Of course, one remains unsatisfied when one first hears only this, because one must raise the objection: Yes, how did it come about, since the human race is supposed to be in constant progress, that in terms of understanding the world, precisely in the era of the greatest upswing in the natural sciences, which one fully recognizes as a philosophical anthroposophist, a regression actually took place?
The following must be said. Until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, people were completely unable to “spell out” nature. They looked at natural phenomena and had an instinctive, intuitive impression, especially of human beings. They did not go down to the description of individual organs, but had a kind of spiritual-sensory education, an instinctive impression of the whole human being. One can only have such an impression if one does not become completely free within oneself. For it is an involuntary impression, not one that one controls internally. Therefore, an epoch had to come in the historical development of humanity, which began in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and must now come to an end, in which everything that had been instinctive knowledge of humanity in earlier times was actually forgotten in world history, in which people concerned themselves with spelling out human nature, so that in the last third of the nineteenth century and as an aftereffect in the twentieth century so far, general cultural education was faced with a worldview devoid of spirit, just as one would be faced with a void of spirit if one could not read but only looked at the forms of letters. During this period, human nature grew stronger in general, precisely because the involuntary life and essence of the spirit in human nature was not present, especially in the educated.
One must therefore be able to look into world history, otherwise one will not be able to correctly assess one's position as a human being in the development of time. What this implies is, of course, depressing in many respects, especially for modern man. For, as I have already indicated, they are afflicted with a certain educational arrogance, especially when they believe they have learned something, and they value their spelling in nature much more highly than what existed in earlier epochs of human development on earth. Today's anatomists certainly believe they know more about the heart and liver than previous anatomists did. The anatomists of the past had a picture of the heart and liver that carried a spiritual element in their view. One must be able to put oneself in the shoes of today's anatomist and see the heart in the same way he does: for him, it is something like a better machine, a better pump that drives blood through the body. If one says that he sees a dead person, he will deny it. From his point of view, he rightly denies it, of course, because he cannot understand what it is all about, whereas the older anatomist saw something like a spiritual being in the heart, something that was spiritually and soulfully active. The content of sensory perception was permeated by something spiritual, which he also saw. This seeing of the spiritual could not take place with clear, full deliberation, but was something that came involuntarily. If humanity had had to continue to have something spiritual in this sensory perception, it would have been impossible for humanity to attain full moral freedom in its development, which was bound to come at some point in this historical development.
If you follow the entire course of history since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially in civilized areas, you will see what has fermented in the widest circles in subsequent development, from the Bohemian-Moravian Brethren in Central Europe, whose aspirations had a decidedly pedagogical impact, to Wiclif, Hus, up to what is commonly called the Reformation, you will find everywhere the striving for freedom, which then found its expression in the revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century. And it is still a struggle for humanity to experience freedom inwardly. This could not have come about if the old way of thinking had remained. It was necessary, so to speak, to free oneself for a time from the spirit that acts involuntarily in human beings, so that human beings could freely absorb the spiritual activity within themselves. And anyone who looks at the workings of spiritual culture with an open mind will have to admit that educators must first develop a full awareness of what is happening in the human development of the earth. They must first develop a conscious togetherness out of the instinctive togetherness of the teacher and the student, as was the case in ancient times. This cannot be developed if one takes one's education out of mere spelling, which has also been incorporated into the whole of science, which has been incorporated into the whole of human knowledge. This can only be achieved if one learns to consciously ascend from spelling to reading. This means that, just as one is completely immersed in what the letters say in one's relationship to a book, but you take out something completely different from what the letters say — the letters are very innocent of the content of “Wilhelm Meister” in a certain respect — then you must be able to take out of human nature that which today's natural science cannot say in itself, but which arises when you regard the data of today's natural science as letters and then learn to read them in human nature.
That is why it is so unjustified to say that anthroposophical knowledge disregards natural science. That is not the case at all; it respects it very much, but in the same way that someone who wants to read a book respects it, not in the same way that someone who merely wants to photograph the letter forms respects it. In this regard, one has to say strange things if one wants to characterize the culture of the times correctly. I give someone a copy of Wilhelm Meister. There is a difference between someone who says to me, “I'm going to take my camera and photograph every page of this copy of Wilhelm Meister” — and who is not at all interested in the content of the book — and someone who immediately snatches it up because they are curious about what is inside. The former is the position of someone who wants to remain with the mere natural science of today in the knowledge of man. He actually wants to photograph nothing but the outer forms, because he has only this photographing in his concepts of the outer forms. Today, one must already resort to radical statements if one wants to characterize the relationship of human beings to each other and to the world that exists today, because this relationship is completely misunderstood. People think that today they have something higher than they had before the fourteenth or fifteenth century. They do not. But they must learn again to handle what they have in the same conscious, deliberate, and thoughtful way as they used to unconsciously arrive at views of human nature through instinctive intuitions. This education within the culture of the times is what should, so to speak, pass like a magic breath through all teacher training, what should become the formation of attitudes for the teaching profession, what would actually bring the teacher to the center of that horizon of worldview that he should overlook and survey. Therefore, it is not so necessary today to sit down and conduct experimental studies of memory, will, and intellect, but rather it is important that didactic, methodological, and pedagogical training in seminars be oriented toward a mindset taking hold in the souls of teachers that goes in the direction I have just characterized. The central aspect of human nature should actually be addressed in teacher training.
And if that is the case, then what the teacher can experience through his own education will not be a dead application of educational rules, not a reflection on how to apply this or that rule when a child is present. — That is something that should not happen at all, but rather an intense impression of the child as a whole must arise in the teacher's entire being, and what is seen in the child must be joyful and life-giving. And that being, which works as joy and life-giving in the teacher, must be able to grow and immediately inspire that which lies in the question: What do you do with the child?
One must move from reading human nature in general to reading the individual human being. Everywhere, pedagogy must be able to be transferred, let me use this materially colored expression, into the handling of what is needed. In reading, what one has learned about the connection between letters is also transferred into handling. It must really become a relationship similar to reading, into which the teacher can enter with the student. Then he will neither underestimate nor overestimate the material development of the physical, but will relate to it in the right way. Then he will learn to apply what physiology and experimental psychology can give him about the child. Then, above all, he will be able to rise from insight into details to a comprehensive understanding of the developing human being.
When we bring children of compulsory school age into school, they are, in essence, a different being than they were before they reached the age of tooth replacement. Let us look inwardly at human nature as it was before tooth replacement. Something emerges in the teeth that is formed in the whole human organism in the way I described yesterday. It is a shooting into form; the human soul works on the second physical body of the human being, just as the sculptor works on the shaping of the material. It is in fact an inner, unconscious plastic shaping. This cannot be influenced from outside in any other way than by letting the child imitate what one does oneself. What I demonstrate, what appears as a movement with my own hand and is observed by the child, passes into its soul-forming element, and my hand movement becomes the occasion for unconscious plastic activity that shoots into form. This inner formation is entirely dependent on the movement elements in the child. What the child accomplishes in terms of movements, how these impulses of will are transformed from chaotic and disoriented to internally ordered, how the child works on itself externally in a plastic way, this plasticity takes place to a high degree internally. When we bring the child into elementary school, we must be clear that as it progresses in its physical, soul, and spiritual development, the process that initially lived only in its movements moves into a completely different region. Until its teeth change, the child is dependent on its head organization for its blood formation. Look at a human being during its embryonic stage, how the formation of the head predominates, how even the other organic formation is dependent on what is happening outside, in the mother's body, how everything that emanates from the child itself emanates from the child's head formation. This remains, albeit in a weakened form, during the first stage of human life until the change of teeth. In everything that goes on in the human organism, the formation of the head is essentially involved. Forces emanating from the formation of the head, from the nerve-sense system, act into the motor system, into plastic formation. Once the child has gone through the change of teeth, the head formation recedes. What is at work in the limbs is now less dependent on the head formation; it is more dependent on what is transferred to the human organism through the food taken in from outside, namely substances and forces.
Please note this very carefully! Let us assume that as a child, before the change of teeth, we eat something, for example cabbage. We can eat it, as long as we do not talk about it. Cabbage has certain forces within it because it is cabbage. These forces, which cabbage possesses and which play a major role in the way cabbage grows as a plant in the fields, are driven out of the cabbage as soon as possible in children, and the processing of the cabbage is undertaken by the forces that radiate from the child's head. What radiates from the child's own head formation immediately sinks into the forces of the cabbage. When the child goes through the process of changing teeth, because human nature becomes more internalized, the cabbage retains its own forces much longer on its way through the human organism, and it is not transformed in the digestive system, but only when it passes from the digestive system into the blood circulation system. It is transformed later. This brings about a completely different inner life in the organism. While in the first years up to the change of teeth everything actually depends on the formation of the head and its powers, for the second stage of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, it becomes particularly important how the respiratory process with its rhythm corresponds to the blood circulation, and this transformation of the powers that takes place at the boundary between the respiratory process and the blood circulation system becomes particularly important. So that for the child's compulsory school age, the essential thing is that there must always be a certain harmony, which must be promoted through education, a harmony between the rhythm that develops in the respiratory system and the rhythm with which it comes into contact within the organism, the rhythm that lies in the blood circulation system and which springs from the food taken in from outside. The balance, the harmonization between the blood circulation system and the respiratory system, is what takes place between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.
We know that when we feel a person's pulse, we feel four times as many beats on average in adulthood as we feel breaths. But this normal relationship between the respiratory rhythm and the blood rhythm in the human organism must first be achieved between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. And education must be structured in such a way that a relationship between the respiratory rhythm and the blood rhythm can be achieved that is appropriate to the size and development of the human organism. This relationship between pulse rate and respiratory rate always varies slightly from person to person. In each individual, this relationship depends on how tall they are, whether they are slim or overweight, and is influenced by all their internal growth forces, by the plastic forces that in the early years of childhood still originate from hereditary factors. It all depends on the individual having a ratio between breathing rhythm and blood rhythm that is appropriate to their size, thickness, or slimness. When I look at a tall, slender child, I know that there must be a breathing rhythm that has a weaker effect on blood circulation than if I had a small, chubby child in front of me. With the chubby child, I must bring the breathing rhythm to a stronger pressure, to greater speed, through the whole education, through everything that I bring forth in him spiritually and emotionally, so that the right relationship is there for the chubby child. But all this must work as naturally and unconsciously in the teacher as looking at the shapes of letters when reading. One must be able to develop a feeling for what to do with the chubby child, what to do with the thin child, and so on. Whether a child has a large head in relation to the rest of its body, or whether a child has a small head, is infinitely important. But all this comes about when one stands in the classroom with an inner joy of teaching and the right educational individuality and is able to read the individualities of the children entrusted to one's care.
It is then important to understand, grasp, and respond to the ongoing plastic process, which is like a continuation of what happens until the teeth change, and to counteract it with something that comes from the rhythm of breathing. But all this is what can emanate from musical and recitative art in education. The way in which we teach the child to speak, how we introduce the child to music, both to listening to music and to singing, as well as to musical activity, all of this becomes a shaping of the breathing rhythm for education, so that it can increasingly adapt to the pulsating rhythm that comes up from below. And it is very beautiful when the teacher, the educator, comes to realize that in all that emerges for the child in learning to speak and sing, the facial features change, albeit subtly, finely, not noticeable to the casual observer. If, as teachers and educators, we learn to look at what develops in the gaze, in the physiognomy, in the movement of the fingers, in the positioning of the legs on the floor as a result of learning to speak and singing, if we can observe this with inner reverence, as we observe in very young children, how the blurred facial features transition from the center of the human being into beautifully formed ones, and so on, if we observe, as it were, the transition of what we do around the child into the physical physiognomy and gesticulation of the human organism, then we, as teachers and educators, arrive at the feeling response to a feeling question that continually emerges from the indefinite. This feeling question, which does not need to be brought to intellectual consciousness, is this: What happens to what I do with the child in teaching speech and singing? — Then the child answers: I accept it, or I reject it! — and you can see it in the gestures of the body, in the physiognomy, in the facial expressions: Does what you do enter into the child, does it work within, or does what you do vanish into thin air, simply pass through the child, and is it as if the child takes nothing of it in? — Much more important than the essence of all educational rules: “You must do this and that!” is to acquire this feeling, to be able to sense the child's reflexes, to observe them as you develop your own activity, how they respond to your reflexes. It is therefore essentially an intuitive element that must develop in the relationship between the teacher and educator and the child. One must also learn to read, so to speak, the results of one's own pedagogical actions. Then, when one has fully grasped this, one will see what tremendous significance it has to intervene in the right way with the musical element in education and teaching in elementary school and to have an understanding of what is actually musical in human beings.
You see, in anthroposophy we describe the human being according to his physical body, which is the gross material part of him, according to his finer body, the etheric body, which is still material, but a material that has no heaviness in it, that actually has a tendency to evaporate into space, counteracting heaviness. Human beings have their heavy physical bodies, which can fall to the ground if they do not hold them upright; but they also have a finer etheric body, which likewise always wants to evaporate into the vastness of the world, away from heaviness. And just as the physical body falls down if it is not supported, just as the physical body must be supported by the ground, so too must the etheric body be held by the inner forces of the human organization so that it does not evaporate. So we speak of the physical body, of the etheric body, we then speak of the astral body, which is no longer substantial, which is already spiritual, and we speak of the I-organization, which is even more spiritual. We speak of these four members of the human being. If one pursues the human being in this way and wants to acquire knowledge, knowledge of the human being, then one says the following: The physical organism can be understood, insights can be gained about it if one proceeds as modern anatomy and physiology do; the etheric human being can no longer be understood in this way, and the astral human being cannot be understood at all.
How can we understand the etheric human being? Well, to understand the etheric human being, we need much better preparation than is sought today in order to understand the human being. We can understand it if we immerse ourselves in plastic modeling, if we know that a curve becomes this way, a corner becomes that way, out of inner forces. One cannot understand the etheric body with what one understands as the general laws of nature. One understands the etheric body with what one gets into the hand, into the spiritualized hand. Therefore, no seminar education should be without artistic activity in plastic arts, in sculpture, arising from within the human being. If this is missing, it is much more unfavorable for education than if one does not know the capital of Romania or Turkey or this or that mountain, because one can look that up in the encyclopedia. It is not at all necessary to know some of the things that are used in exams today; it does no harm to look them up in the encyclopedia. But there is no encyclopedia yet that teaches you that agility, that capable knowledge and knowing ability that you must have within yourself in order to understand the etheric body, which does not follow the laws of nature, but permeates the human being in plastic activity.
And the astral body cannot be approached at all if one knows that Gay-Lussac's law is such and such, if one knows all the laws that are learned in acoustics and optics. The astral body cannot be approached with these abstract empirical laws. What weaves and flows in the astral body cannot be seen in this way. But if one has understood inwardly what a third is, what a fifth is, one can experience this relationship inwardly — but inwardly, musically, not as acoustics does it — one can experience the scale inwardly, musically, and then one experiences what is in the astral human being. For the astral body of the human being is music, not natural history, not natural science, not physics. This goes so far that one can also follow in the formative activity in the human organism how the music of the astral body shapes the human being. It begins here in the middle of the shoulder blades, radiating out first into the prime of the scale. As it progresses to the second, it forms the upper arm, and as it progresses to the third, it forms the lower arm. When we come to the third, we have the difference between minor and major, and we have two bones in the lower arm, not one. One bone, the radius, represents one, and the ulna represents the other, minor and major. Anyone who considers the external human organization and the extent to which it depends on the astral body must study physiology not as a physicist but as a musician. And they must know the inner formative music in the human organism.
However you follow the course of the nerves in the human organism anatomically, you will never understand the meaning of this course of the nerves. But if you follow this course musically, with an understanding of musical relationships, but with everything audible deep within, not with physical acoustics, if you follow the nervous system in this way, if you look with musical insight, with spiritual-musical insight, at how these nerves run from the limbs to the spinal cord, where they are stretched and from there propagate to the brain, if you look at this spiritually and musically, then through musical observation you will discover the most wonderful musical instrument of the human being, which is formed from the astral body and on which the ego organization plays.
And if you learn, ascending from there, how language is formed in the human being, you learn the inner structure of language, which you no longer get to know in our age of advanced civilization, which has stripped away everything that is vivid, you learn to recognize what goes on in the human being when he pronounces an A, an I, how in the A there is wonder at something, and in the I, the inner strengthening of the inner human being. You learn to recognize how language, so to speak, shoots into the organization of the human being. You learn not just to say abstractly, when a ball rolls: it rolls — but you learn to pronounce the rolling, which flows inwardly like the rolling of the ball outwardly — rolling — you learn to perceive inwardly, but with the spirit of language, what actually works in language, then you learn to know the organization of the I through the structure of language.
Today, if we want to learn about the organization of the human being, we go to the physiologist, to the anatomist; if we want to learn about what lives in language, we go to the philologist. But what is said by one and the other has no connection. The point is that an inner spiritual relationship arises, that one knows that a living language genius works and lives in speech, and this language genius can be studied, and if one studies it, one learns about the ego organization of the human being.
We incorporate eurythmy into our Waldorf school education. What do we do with it? We divide eurythmy into tone eurythmy and speech eurythmy. In tone eurythmy, we evoke in the child those movements that correspond to the formation of the astral body; in speech eurythmy we evoke those formations that correspond to the organization of the ego. We consciously work on the development of the soul by doing the physical and practicing tone eurythmy; we consciously work on the development of the spirit by doing the physical in speech eurythmy. Such work can only arise from a truly comprehensive understanding of the human organization. Anyone who believes that they can approach the human being through external physiology or experimental psychology, which is also only external physiology, fails to see that if you want to put someone in a certain mood in life, you don't have to knock on a wooden board in front of them, but rather develop music. In the same way, knowledge must not remain at the level of abstract logical rules, but must rise to the level of understanding human life in such a way that it does not only comprehend dead nature or living nature when it has become dead or is imagined to be dead. When one rises from these abstract rules to what is sculpturally formed, as every law of nature is sculpturally formed, then one gets to know the human being according to his etheric body. But when one begins to hear inwardly, spiritually, how the rhythm of the world expresses itself from the most wonderful musical instrument that is made of the human being through the astral body, then one learns to know the astral nature of the human being. And there should be an awareness of this: First period of learning: One learns to know the physical body of the human being in an abstract, logical way. Then one applies plastic modeling in intuitive recognition: one learns about the etheric body. And the third period: as a physiologist, one becomes a musician and looks at the human being as one looks at a musical instrument, such as an organ or a violin, by seeing the music realized within it; in this way one learns about the astral human being. And if one learns not only to live externally in memory, connected with words, but also to know the genius effective in words, then one learns to know the ego organization of the human being.
Now, today, one would be beautifully enlightened if, in a university reform of medical studies, for example, one were to say: Knowledge must rise from learning to sculpting, to music, to language. People would say: Yes, but how long would an education take then? It already takes long enough as it is! Then one should rise to sculpting, then to music, and then to language! — But in reality it would be shorter. For the current length stems from something very special. It stems from the fact that one remains completely stuck in abstract logic and empirical-sensory observation. One begins with the physical body, but that cannot be explained by it — and now there is no end in sight. One can study all kinds of things and continue doing so until the end of one's days: it does not need to have an end, while it is internally closed when it is itself organically constructed for the physical-soul-spiritual organism. So it is not a question of adding new chapters to what we already have through anthroposophy. Oh, we can already be satisfied with what external science provides. We do not fight it, we are only grateful to it, but in the same way that we are grateful to the violin maker for supplying us with the violin. But what is necessary from our contemporary education and culture is to take this whole of today's education in hand and to imbue it with soul and spirit, just as the human being himself is imbued with soul and spirit. It is necessary not to allow the artistic element in culture to exist as a kind of luxury entertainment alongside serious life, like a luxury entertainment that we turn to even though we otherwise know how to take life seriously, but to take it in such a way that it permeates the world and human beings everywhere as a divine-spiritual law.
We must learn to say: You stand before the world. First you approach it with logical concepts and ideas. But the essence of the world gives something to human nature that comes from the plasticity of the world, which works in from the spheres just as the earth's gravity works up from below, from the center of the earth. And woven into all this is the music of the worlds, which works in the surrounding area. Just as the plastic arts work from above and physics works from below through gravity, so the music of the worlds works in the movement of the stars in the surrounding area. And that which actually makes human beings human, that which was sensed in ancient times when phrases such as this were coined: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word,” the world word, the world language, is that which also permeates the human being and becomes the organization of the self in the human being. If one wants to educate, one must gain knowledge of human beings from knowledge of the world and in this way learn to artistically shape what one has gained in knowledge of human beings from knowledge of the world.
More on this tonight.