The Essentials of Education
GA 308
11 April 1924, Stuttgart
Lecture Five
Living Education
In these five lectures my task has been to describe briefly some guidelines for Waldorf education. Here I have not tried to get into details but describe the spirit of this method as a whole, which should flow from anthroposophy. Perhaps even more than details—though they may be important—contemporary humanity needs a complete renewal and strengthening of all spiritual life. Aside from the spiritual substance that is of course necessary, all spiritual callings require a renewed enthusiasm that springs from knowledge of the world—a worldview that has been taken hold of in spirit. Today it is becoming obvious to a wide range of people that teachers—who must be soul-artists—need such enthusiasm more than anyone else. Perhaps people seek along paths that cannot lead to the goal, because people everywhere continue to fear a thorough investigation of spiritual matters. We base our educational method on the discovery of a teaching method—conditions that will make education viable through reading human nature itself; such reading will gradually reveal the human being so that we can adjust our education to what is revealed to every step of the curriculum and schedule.
Let’s for a moment go into the spirit of how we read the human being. We have seen that children are naturally completely open—in a religious attitude, as it were—to their immediate human surroundings; they are imitative beings, and they elaborate in themselves through will-imbued perception all that they experience unconsciously and subconsciously from their environment. Children’s bodily nature has a religious disposition, from the moment of entering the world until the change of teeth—of course, not in terms of substance, but in its constitution as a whole. The soul is initially spirit, which reveals itself outwardly as a natural creation. Human beings do not enter the world without predispositions—they do not arrive only with the physical forces of heredity from their ancestors but with forces individually brought from a previous earthly life. Consequently, they may at first be equally open to beauty and ugliness, to good and evil, to wisdom and foolishness, to skillfulness and unskillfulness. Our task, therefore, is to work around children—to the degree that we control our very thoughts and feelings—so that children may become beings who imitate goodness, truth, beauty, and wisdom.
When we think in this way, life flows into our interactions with children; education very obviously becomes a part of that life through our interactions with them. Education, therefore, is not something we work at in isolated activities, but something lived. Children develop in the right way in their growth to adulthood only when education is lived with children and not forced on them.
Morality and the Child’s Natural Religious Feeling
What we have educated in children very naturally in a priestly way—what is really a religious devotion—we must now be able to reawaken at a higher soul level during the second stage of life, between the change of teeth and puberty. We do this by transforming pictorially everything we bring them, by transforming education into an artistic activity; nevertheless, it is a truly subjective and objective human activity. We educate children so that, through their relationship to the teacher, they are devoted aesthetically to beauty and internalize the images. Now it becomes essential that, in place of the religious element, a naturally artistic response to the world arises. This naturally artistic human attitude (which must not be confused with the treatment of “art as a luxury,” which is so much a part of our civilization) includes what now would be seen as a moral relationship to the world.
When understood correctly, we realize that we will not get anything from children between the change of teeth and puberty by giving them rules. Prior to the change of teeth, moralizing won’t get us anywhere with children; moralizing is inaccessible to a child’s soul during the first period of life. Only the morality of our actions have access at that age—that is, the moral element children see exprEssentialEd in the actions, gestures, thoughts, and feelings of those around them. Even during the second period of life—between the change of teeth and puberty—moralistic rules will not get us very close to a child. Children have no inner relationship to what is contained in moral commands. To them, they are only empty sounds.
We get close to children during this stage of life only by placing them in the context of natural authority. Children who cannot yet understand abstractly beauty, truth, goodness, and so on may develop this impulse through a sense that the teacher acts as the incarnation of goodness, truth, and beauty. When we understand children correctly, we understand that they have not gained any abstract, intellectual understanding for the revelations of wisdom, beauty, and goodness.
Nevertheless, children see what lives in the teacher’s gestures, and they hear something revealed in how the teacher’s words are spoken. It is the teacher whom the child calls—without saying it—truth, beauty, and goodness as revealed in the heart. And this is the way it must be.
When a teacher corresponds to what the child needs at this age, two things gradually grow in the child. The first is an inner aesthetic sense of pleasure and displeasure in the moral realm. Goodness pleases children when our whole personality exemplifies it. We must plan education so that the natural need to take pleasure in goodness can develop—and, likewise, displeasure in evil. How do children ask questions? Children do not ask intellectually with words, but deep in their hearts. “May I do this?” or, “May I do that?” They will be answered, “Yes, you may,” if the teacher does it. “Should I leave this undone?” “Yes, because my teacher shows that it may be left undone.”
This is how children experience the world through the teacher—the world as goodness or evil, as beauty or ugliness, and as truth or falsehood. This relationship to the teacher—the activity of the hidden forces between the child’s heart and that of the teacher—is the most important aspect of the teaching method; the conditions for life in education are contained in this.
This is how pleasure in morality and displeasure in immorality should develop between the change of teeth and puberty. Then, however, something appears in the background of that growing moral feeling. What first existed naturally during the first period of the child’s life—as a religious surrender to the environment—is resurrected, as it were, in a different form in this moral development; and, if the teacher’s soul forces are equal to it, it is easy to relate what arises as pleasure in good and displeasure in evil to what flows as soul through the manifestations of nature. First a child is surrendered naturally to nature itself; since the moral element in the environment is perceived as a part of nature, a moral gesture is felt, imitated and made part of the child’s being. But as we unfold the child’s sense of pleasure in the good, this religious and natural attitude is transformed into a soul quality.
Now consider what this means. Until the change of teeth, through the magic of completely unconscious processes, we allow the child’s religious attitude to develop naturally, through pure imitation; thus, we ground the religious element while we cannot yet touch the force of the inner, free individuality. We educate through nature and do not interfere with the soul and spirit. And when we approach the soul element between the change of teeth and puberty—since it is then that we must approach it—we do not force a religious feeling but awaken the child, and thus evoke the I in the human being.
In this way, we are already practical philosophers of freedom, since we do not say: You must believe this or that of the spirit; rather, we awaken innate human beliefs. We become awakeners, not stuffers of the souls of children. This constitutes the true reverence we must have for all creatures placed in the world by the Godhead, and we owe this especially to the human being. And thus we see how the I arises in the human being, and how moral pleasure and displeasure assume a religious quality.
Teachers who learn to observe what was initially a purely natural religious aspect as it strives toward transformation in the soul, embody through their words something that becomes a pleasing image of goodness, beauty, and truth. The child hangs on to something in the adult’s words. Teachers and educators are still active in this, but their methods no longer appeal only to imitation but to something that exists behind imitation. It no longer stimulates outer bodily nature but the soul element. A religious atmosphere permeates moral pleasure and displeasure.
The Intellect after Puberty
The intellect becomes active in its own way once children reach puberty. Because of this, I have suggested that it is actually a matter of bringing human beings to the point where they find within themselves what they must understand—draw from their own inner being what was initially given as spontaneous imitation, then as artistic, imaginative activity. Thus, even during the later period, we should not force things on the human being so that there is the least feeling of arbitrary, logical compulsion.
It was certainly a great moment in the development of spiritual life in Germany when—specifically in reference to moral experience—Schiller opposed Kant’s concept of morality. When Kant said, “Duty, you sublime and powerful name—you who bear no enticements but demand stern submission,” Schiller stood against it. He opposed this concept of duty, which does not allow morality to arise from goodwill but only from subjection. Schiller replied to Kant’s idea of duty with the remarkable words containing a true moral motto: “I willingly serve my friend, but unfortunately I serve him from inclination; alas, I therefore lack virtue!”
Indeed, moral life as a whole arises from human nature in purity only when duty becomes a deep human inclination, when it becomes, in the words of Goethe, “Duty—that is, where people love what they tell themselves to do.” It was a great moment when morality was purged of Kant’s influence and made human again through Schiller and Goethe.
What came at that time from German spiritual life nevertheless became immersed in nineteenth-century materialism, as it still is today. Something appeared in civilization because we forgot this powerful action in the moral realm, and our task is now to raise humanity out of it. This rehabilitation of the human being as a fully human and moral being is the special task of those who have to teach and educate. In this consciousness, the impulse of living education will be able to arise. We may say that the sun of German spiritual life shining in Schiller and Goethe in the moral sphere should shine down especially in the actions of those teachers and educators of the present who understand the task of this their own age, and who seek to develop through education a really human relationship of human beings to their own being and to the real needs of the civilization of the age. The task of this educational conference was to speak of the position of education in regard to human individuality and the culture of the age. We shall only accomplish this task if we can think with gratitude of the impulses that flowed into the evolution of Central Europe through great and shining spirits like Goethe and Schiller. When we seek to comprehend our true situation in the world, it is not merely in order to develop a critical sense, but above all things a gratitude for what has already been accomplished by human beings before us.
One could say, of course, that self-education should refer only to the education people give themselves. However, all education is self-education, not just in this subjective sense, but in an objective sense as well—in other words, educating the self of another. To educate (erziehen) means to “draw out,” and it is related to “drawing” (ziehen). The essence of what we invoke is left untouched. We do not smash a stone in order to pull it out of the water. Education does not demand that we in any way injure or overpower those who have entered the world; on the contrary, we must guide them to experience particularly the stage of culture reached by humanity as a whole when it descended from the divine-spiritual worlds into the sensible world. All these ideas, felt and experienced, are a part of the teaching method. The people who least understand the situation of education in our time are those in whom such ideas do not live.
In the moral realm we allow pleasure in the good and displeasure in the evil to grow; we allow the religious element, which was originally natural in the child, to awaken in the soul. In the depths, however, between the change of teeth and puberty there develops the seed and foundation—something already was present—that becomes free understanding after the age of puberty. We prepare a free understanding of the world that includes the religious and moral spheres. It is great when a person can recognize how pleasure and displeasure were experienced as a permeation of the whole life of feeling as the moral qualities of good and evil during the second period of life.
Then the impulse arises: The good that pleased you—this is what you must do! And what displeased you, you must not do. This principle of morality arises from what is already present in the human I, and a religious devotion toward the world arises in the spirit, which had been a thing of nature during the first period, and a thing of the soul during the second. The religious sense—and will applied to the religious impulse—becomes something that allows human beings to act as though God were acting in them. This becomes the expression of the I, not something imposed externally. Following puberty, if the child has developed in accordance with a true understanding of the human being, everything seems to arise as though born from human nature itself.
As I have already suggested, in order that this can happen, we must consider the whole human being during the earthly pilgrimage from birth to death. It’s easy to say that one will begin education by employing the principle of simply observing the child. Today people observe the child externally and experimentally, and from what they perceive in the child they think they can discern the method of teaching. This is impossible, since, as we have seen, a teacher whose uncontrolled choleric temperament leads to angry behavior sows a seed that will remain hidden, and later develop as gout, rheumatism, and disease of the whole organism.
This is what happens in many other relationships; we must keep in mind the earthly life of the whole human being. We must remember this when we are concerned with an event in a particular life period. There are those who limit themselves to a triviality often known as “visual instruction.” They entrench themselves behind the rule—as obvious as it is foolish—that children should be shown only what they can comprehend, and they fall into absurdities that could drive a person crazy. This principle must be replaced by that deeper principle that helps us to understand what it means for the vitality of a person when, at the age of forty, a sudden realization occurs: For the first time I can understand what that respected authority thought and accomplished earlier. I absorbed it because, to me, that individual embodied truth, goodness, and beauty. Now I have the opportunity to draw from the depths what I heard in those days.
When things are reinvigorated in this way, there is an infinitely rejuvenating and vitalizing effect on later life. The human being is deprived of all this at a later age if the teacher fails to insure that there actually is something in the depths that will be understood only later on. The world becomes empty and barren, unless something can arise anew again and again from the essence of human nature—something that permeates outer perception with soul and spirit. Therefore, when we educate this way, we give the human being full freedom and vitality for the rest of life.
Materialism and Spirit in Education
At this point, let me mention something I have often spoken of. A true teacher must always keep in view all of human life. A teacher must, for example, be able to see the wonderful element that is present in many older people, whose very presence brings a kind of blessing without much in the way of words; a kind of blessing is contained in every gesture. This is a characteristic of many people who stand at the threshold of death. From where does this come? Such individuals have this quality because, during childhood, they developed devotion naturally. Such reverence and devotion during childhood later becomes the capacity to bless. We may say that at the end of earthly life, people cannot stretch out their hands in blessing if they have not learned to fold them in prayer during childhood. The capacity for blessing when one grows old and comes near the threshold of death originates with folding one’s hands in prayer with reverent, childhood devotion. Everything visible as a seed in the child will develop into good or evil fruit as the person progresses farther along in earthly life. And this is something else that must be continually within view in order to develop a genuine teaching method based on real life in education.
Thus—at least in rough outline—we have the foundation for an attempt to bring anthroposophy to fruit in education through Waldorf schools. This education conference should illuminate what has been attempted in this way and practiced for some years. It has been illuminated from various perspectives and we have shown what the students themselves have accomplished—though, in relation to this, much has yet to be demonstrated and discussed.
At the beginning of today’s lecture, I was addrEssentialEd with loving words from two sides, for which I am heartily grateful; after all, what could be done with impulses, however beautiful, if there were no one to realize them through devotion and selfsacrifice? Therefore, my gratitude goes to the Waldorf teachers who try to practice what needs to underlie this kind of renewal in education. My gratitude also goes out to today’s youth, young men and women who, through their own educational experiences, understand the true aims of Waldorf education. One would be happy indeed if the cordiality felt by young people for Waldorf education carried their message to our civilization and culture.
I believe I am speaking for the hearts of all of you when I respond with words of gratitude to those who have spoken so lovingly, because, more than anything else, education needs human beings who will accomplish these goals. A painter or sculptor can work in solitude and say that even if people do not see the work, the gods do. When a teacher performs spiritual actions for earthly existence, however, the fulfillment of such activities can be expected only in communion with those who help to realize them in the physical realm of the senses.
As teachers and educators, this impulse must live in our awareness, especially in our time. Therefore, as we conclude these lectures—this lecture must be the last, since I am wanted elsewhere and cannot remain in Stuttgart—allow me to point to something. Based on anthroposophy and not forcing it on people as a worldview—based on anthroposophy because it gives a true knowledge of the human being in body, soul, and spirit—let me conclude by saying that this education serves, in the most practical way possible, the deepest needs and conditions of our modern civilization. The people of Central Europe can hope for a future only if their actions and thoughts arise from such impulses.
What is our most intense suffering? By trying to characterize our education I repeatedly had to point out that we stand with reverent awe before the human I-being placed in the world by divine powers helping to develop that I. The human I is not truly understood unless it is understood in spirit; it is denied when understood only in matter. It is primarily the I that has suffered because of our contemporary materialistic life, because of ignorance, because of the wrong concept of the human I. This is primarily due to the fact that—while we have hammered away at perception of matter and at activity in matter—spirit has been shattered, and with it the I.
If we place limits on knowledge, as is common, saying that we cannot enter the realm of spirit, this implies only that we cannot enter the human realm. To limit knowledge means that we remove the human being from the world as far as knowing is concerned. How can a soul be educated if it has been eliminated by materialistic concepts? Elimination of the soul was characteristic of the kind of materialism we have just passed through, and it still prevails throughout human activity.
What has happened in the materialistic attitude of the more modern time? It is an attitude that, as I have said, was justified from a different perspective because it had to enter human evolution at some point, but now it must pass away. In expressing this attitude, we may say that the human being has surrendered the I to matter—connected it to matter. Consequently, however, the genuine, living method of teaching, the real life of education has been frozen; only external techniques can survive in a civilization bound by matter. But, matter oppresses people. Matter confines each person within the bodily nature, and each individual thus becomes more or less isolated in soul. Unless we find other human beings in spirit, we become isolated souls, since human beings cannot, in fact, be found in the body.
Thus, our civilization’s materialistic view has produced an age when human beings pass each other by, because their perceptions are all connected with bodily nature. People cry out for a social life out of the intellect, and at the same time develop in their feelings an asocial indifference toward one another as well as a lack of mutual understanding. Souls who are isolated in individual bodies pass one another by, whereas souls who awaken the spirit within to find spirit itself also find themselves, as human beings, in communion with other human beings. Real community will blossom from the present chaos only when people find the spirit—when, living together in spirit, they find each other.
The great longing of today’s youth is to discover the human being. The youth movement came from this cry. A few days ago when the young people here came together, it became evident that this cry has been transformed into a cry for spirit, through the realization that the human being can be found only when spirit is found; if spirit is lost, we lose one another.
Last evening, I tried to show how we can find knowledge of the world—how the human being living on earth in body, soul, and spirit can develop out of such knowledge. I tried to show how a worldview can develop into an experience of the cosmos, and the Sun and Moon may be seen in everything that grows and flourishes on Earth. When we educate young people with this kind of background, we will properly develop the experience of immortality, the divine, the eternally religious element in the growing child, and we implant in the child’s being an immortal aspect destined for further progress, which we must carry in spirit through the gate of death.
This particular aspect of education is not what we are discussing here. The relationship between education and the human I, as well as culture, is what we had to look at first. Nevertheless, we may be sure of one thing; if people are educated properly on Earth, the heavenly being will also be educated properly, since the heavenly being lives within the earthly being. When we educate the earthly being correctly, we also promote the true development of the heavenly being through the tiny amount of progress that we make possible between birth and death.
In this way we come to terms with a view that progresses, in the true sense, to a universal knowledge—a knowledge that understands the need for human cooperation in the great spiritual cosmos, which is also revealed in the realm of the senses. True education recognizes that human beings are coworkers in building humankind. This is what I meant yesterday when I described the view of life that I said must form the background of all teaching and education.
From this, it follows that we cannot understand the world as a one-sided subject of the head alone. It is untrue to say that we can understand the world through ideas and concepts. And it is equally false to say that the world can be understood through feeling alone. It has to be understood through ideas and feeling, as well as through the will; human beings will understand the world only when divine spirit descends into will. Humankind will also be understood then—not through one aspect, but through the whole being. We need a worldview not just for the intellect, but for the whole human being—for human thinking, feeling, and willing—a concept of the world that discovers the world in the human body, soul, and spirit.
Only those who rediscover the world in the human being, and who see the world in human beings, can have a true concept of the world; because, just as the visible world is reflected in the eye, the entire human being exists as an eye of spirit, soul, and body, reflecting the whole cosmos. Such a reflection cannot be perceived externally; it must be experienced from within. Then it is not just an appearance, like an ordinary mirrored image; it is an inner reality. Thus, in the process of education, the world becomes human, and the human being discovers the world in the self.
Working this way in education, we feel that the human race would be disrupted if all human experience were tied to matter, because, when they deny their own being, souls do not find one another but lose themselves. When we move to spirit, we find other human beings. Community, in the true sense of the word, must be established through spirit. Human beings must find themselves in spirit; then they can unite with others. If worlds are to be created out of human actions, then the world must be seen in human beings.
In conclusion, allow me to express what was in the back of my mind while I was speaking to you. What I said here was intended as a consideration of education in the personal and cultural life of the present time. Now, in conclusion, let me put this in other words that include all I have wanted to say.
To spend oneself in matter
is to grind down souls.
To find oneself in the spirit
is to unite human beings.
To see oneself in all humanity
is to construct worlds.
Fünfter Vortrag
In diesen fünf Vorträgen mußte ich mir die Aufgabe setzen, die leitenden Gesichtspunkte der Waldorfschul-Pädagogik und -Methodik in einigen Strichen zu charakterisieren. Es kam mir diesmal weniger darauf an, auf Einzelheiten einzugehen, als vielmehr darauf, zu versuchen, den ganzen Geist der Pädagogik, die aus Anthroposophie herausströmen soll, zu kennzeichnen. Denn in der Tat bedürfen die Menschen heute vielleicht noch mehr als der Einzelheiten, deren Notwendigkeit nicht unterschätzt werden soll, einer durchgreifenden Erneuerung, einer durchgreifenden Erkraftung des ganzen geistigen Lebens. Und man kann sagen: In allen geistigen Berufen ist für die nächste Zukunft außer dem geistigen Inhalt, den sie brauchen, vor allen Dingen notwendig eine Erneuerung des Enthusiasmus, der aus einem im Geiste ergriffenen Welterkennen und einer solchen Weltanschauung sich entwickeln kann. Und daß der Bildner, der Seelenkünstler, denn das muß der Pädagoge werden, dieses Enthusiasmus am meisten bedarf, das fängt man heute schon an, in weitesten Kreisen zu empfinden. Man sucht vielleicht nur erst noch auf Wegen, die nicht zum Ziele führen können, weil noch eine allgemeine Mutlosigkeit herrscht gegenüber einem durchgreifenden Suchen gerade auf geistigem Felde. Dasjenige, was unserer Pädagogik zugrunde liegt, ist, eine Methodik des Lehrens zu finden, die Lebensbedingungen der Erziehung durch das Lesen in der Menschennatur zu finden, durch jenes Lesen in der Menschennatur, das die Wesenheit des Menschen allmählich enthüllt, so daß wir dieser Enthüllung folgen können mit dem, was wir vom Lehrplan bis zum Stundenplan in Unterricht und Erziehung hineintragen.
Versetzen wir uns einmal in den Geist eines solchen Lesens im Menschen. Haben wir doch gesehen, wie das Kind in naturhafter Art wie religiös hingegeben ist an seine unmittelbare menschliche Umgebung, wie es ein nachahmendes Wesen ist, wie es in sich wahrnehmend willensgemäß ausbildet, was es unbewußt und unterbewußt aus der Umgebung erlebt. Nicht dem Inhalte nach, denn die Seele ist nach außen naturhaft erst sich offenbarender Geist, wohl aber der ganzen Konfiguration nach liegt religiöser Charakter, ich möchte sagen, in der Körperlichkeit des Kindes von dem Augenblicke an, da es in die Welt eintritt, bis zum Zahnwechsel. Und da der Mensch nicht ohne Vorbedingungen in die Welt hereintritt, da er nicht bloß kommt mit den physischen Vererbungskräften der Abstammungslinie, sondern mit den Kräften, die er sich aus vorigen Erdenleben mitbringt, so kann diese Hingabe zunächst sein an das Schöne und Häßliche, Gute und Böse, Weise und Törichte, Geschickte und Ungeschickte. Da haben wir die Aufgabe, so zu wirken in der Umgebung des Kindes, daß bis in die Gedanken und Empfindungen hinein das Kind ein nachahmendes Wesen des Guten, des Wahren, des Schönen, des Weisen werden möge.
Denkt man so, so kommt Leben in den Verkehr mit dem Kinde, und in dieses Leben in dem Verkehr mit dem Kinde kommt in ganz selbstverständlicher Weise Erziehung hinein. Erziehung wird dann nicht nur angestrebt im einzelnen Tun, sondern Erziehung wird gelebt. Und nur wenn Erziehung gelebt wird um das Kind herum, so daß sie dem Kinde nicht aufgedrängt wird, dann entwickelt sich das Kind in der rechten Art im Leben zum Menschen.
Dasjenige aber, was so in naturhafter Weise als eine religiös zu nennende Hingabe in priesterlichem Erziehen, so wie ich es gemeint habe, heranerzogen wird, das muß man in Erziehen und Unterricht, die verfließen zwischen Zahnwechsel und Geschlechtsreife, wiederzuerwecken verstehen, zu erwecken auf einer seelisch höheren Stufe in der zweiten Lebensepoche des Kindes zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife. Wir erziehen das Kind, indem wir alles, was wir an es heranbringen, bildhaft gestalten, indem wir die Erziehung zu einem künstlerischen und trotzdem echt menschlich subjektiv-objektiven Tun machen. Wir erziehen das Kind so, daß es ästhetisch dem Schönen hingegeben, das Bildhafte in sich aufnehmend, dem Erzieher und Unterrichter gegenübersteht. Da handelt es sich darum, daß an die Stelle des Religiösen das naturhaft künstlerische Empfangen der Welt tritt. Nun ist eingeschlossen in diesem naturhaft Künstlerischen - das nicht verwechselt werden darf mit dem luxuriös Künstlerischen, das in unserer Kultur so vielfach spielt - in diesem rein menschlich Künstlerischen im Kinde ist dasjenige eingeschlossen, was nun auftritt als das moralische Verhalten zur Welt.
Verstehen wir das recht, dann lernen wir wissen, daß wir dem Kinde zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife noch nicht beikommen, wenn wir ihm Gebote geben. Wir kommen moralisch dem Kinde vor dem Zahnwechsel nicht bei, wenn wir irgendwie moralisieren. Das hat im ersten Lebensalter noch keinen Zugang zu der Seele des Kindes. Da hat nur Zugang, was wir an Moral tun, was das Kind schauen kann in dem, was sich als Moral auslebt in den Handlungen, Gebärden, Gedanken, Gefühlen der menschlichen Umgebung. Und in der zweiten Lebensepoche, zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife, kommen wir dem Kinde auch noch nicht bei, wenn wir ihm Moralgebote geben. Es hat noch keine innerliche Beziehung zu dem, was in Moralgeboten liegt. Moralgebote sind für es ein leerer Schall. Beikommen können wir dem Kinde in diesem Lebensalter nur, wenn wir ihm gegenüberstehen als eine selbstverständliche Autorität, wenn das Kind, ohne daß es abstrakt weiß, was Schönheit, Wahrheit, Güte und so weiter ist, in seinem Gefühl entwickeln kann den Impuls: In dem Lehrenden und Erziehenden steht vor mir verkörperte Güte, verkörperte Wahrheit, verkörperte Schönheit. — Versteht man das Kind recht, so weiß man: Ein abstrakt erkennendes, intellektuelles Verständnis gibt es noch nicht beim Kinde für die Offenbarung von Weisheit, Schönheit, Güte, aber die Offenbarung gibt es, die das Kind schaut in dem Blick, der Handbewegung des Lehrers und Erziehers, in der Art und Weise, wie die Worte des Lehrers und Erziehers gesprochen werden. Der Lehrende, der Erziehende selbst ist das, was das Kind, ohne daß es viele Worte ausspricht, Wahrheit, Schönheit, Güte nennt, nennt mit den Offenbarungen des Herzens. Und so muß es sein. Und wenn dann der Lehrer und Erzieher dem entspricht, was das Kind in diesem Lebensalter bedarf, dann erwächst in dem Kinde allmählich zweierlei. Erstens der Sinn, der innere ästhetische Sinn des Wohlgefallens und des Mißfallens auch für das Moralische. Das Gute gefällt dem Kinde, wenn wir es in der richtigen Weise durch unsere ganze Persönlichkeit im Beispiel an das Kind heranbringen. Und wir müssen die Erziehung so einrichten, daß das natürliche Bedürfnis nach dem Gefallen am Guten sich entwickeln kann, ebenso das Mißfallen an dem Bösen. Wie fragt sich das Kind? Nicht in ausgesprochenen intellektuellen Worten, sondern innerlich herzhaft fragt es: Soll ich etwas tun? Ich darf es tun, denn der Lehrer tut es. Soll ich etwas unterlassen? Ich muß es unterlassen, denn der Lehrer bedeutet mir, daß es nicht geschehen darf. — So erlebt das Kind am Erzieher die Welt, die Welt in ihrer Güte, die Welt in ihrem Bösen, die Welt in ihrer Schönheit, die Welt in ihrer Häßlichkeit, in ihrer Wahrheit, in ihrer Lüge. Und dieses Gegenüberstehen dem Lehrer und Erzieher, dieses Arbeiten in den verborgenen Kräften zwischen Kindesherz und Erzieherherz, das ist der wichtigste Teil der Methodik des Lehrens, und darin liegen die Lebensbedingungen des Erziehens.
So ist gerade das Lebensalter zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife dasjenige, in welchem Gefallen und Mißfallen gegenüber dem Moralischen und Unmoralischen heranwachsen. Dann aber zeigt sich in alledem, was da als moralischer Gefühlsinhalt in dem Kinde heranwächst, etwas im Hintergrunde: Dasjenige, was zuerst in naturhafter Art beim Kinde vorhanden war in der ersten Lebensepoche, diese Hingabe, die religiös zu nennen ist, an die Umgebung, die tritt, ich möchte sagen, als etwas Wiedererstehendes in anderer Form in all diesem moralischen Bilden auf. Und wir können leicht, wenn wir dazu die geschickte Seelenkraft als Lehrer und Erzieher haben, dasjenige, was als Gefallen am Guten und Mißfallen am Bösen entsteht, jetzt hinleiten zu demjenigen, was die Naturäußerungen seelisch durchströmt. Erst ist das Kind wie naturhaft an die Natur selbst hingegeben, denn was in der Umgebung als Moralisches auffällt, das wird vom Kind an der Natur geschaut, es wird vom Kind die moralische Handbewegung empfunden, nachgeahmt, sich einverleibt. Aber was da naturhaft ist, dieses Religiöse, es verwandelt sich, metamorphosiert sich, indem wir das Gefallen am Guten entwickeln, ins Seelenhafte hinein.
Und bedenken Sie, was das bedeutet, daß wir im Zauber des voll Unbewußten bis zum Zahnwechsel hin im Kinde das Religiöse auf naturhafte Art, in reiner Nachahmung sich entwickeln lassen. Wir stellen dadurch das Religiöse zunächst in jenes Lebensalter des Menschen hinein, wo wir noch nicht antasten können die Kraft seiner inneren freien Individualität. Wir erziehen an der Natur und tasten das Seelisch-Geistige nicht an. Und wenn wir zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife an das Seelische herandringen, wenn wir uns nähern müssen dem Seelischen, dann pfropfen wir nicht mehr in das Kind hinein das religiöse Fühlen, dann erwecken wir es schon, dann appellieren wir schon an das Selbst im Menschen. Da sind wir als Erzieher und Uhnterrichter schon praktische Freiheitsphilosophen, denn wir sagen nicht: Du mußt an das oder jenes glauben im Geist -, sondern wir erwecken das, was dem Menschen angeboren ist zu glauben. Wir werden immerfort Erwecker der kindlichen Seele, nicht Ausstopfer dieser Seele. Das ist die richtige Ehrfurcht, die wir vor jedem von dem Göttlichen in die Welt hereingesetzten Geschöpf, insbesondere vor dem Menschen, haben müssen. Und so sehen Sie das Selbst im Menschen aufkeimen, sehen, wie sittliches Gefallen und Mißfallen den religiösen Charakter empfängt.
Wenn wir nun beachten lernen, wie das Religiöse, das erst naturhaft war, sich seelisch metamorphosieren will, da legt der Lehrer und Erzieher in das Wort hinein dasjenige, was zum gefallenden Bild des Guten, Schönen, Wahren wird. Dann liegt in seinem Worte das, woran das Kind hängt. Da handelt aber noch der Lehrer und Erzieher. Seine Handlungsweise wird jetzt nicht mehr nachgeahmt, sie weist zu dem, was dahintersteht. Sie regt nicht mehr das äußerlich Körperliche an, sie regt das Seelische an. Eine religiöse Atmosphäre durchzieht das moralische Gefallen und Mißfallen.
Wenn das Kind durch die Geschlechtsreife durchgegangen ist, dann beginnt erst eigentlich das Intellektuelle sich in seiner Art zu regen. Daher habe ich schon aufmerksam gemacht, daß es darauf ankommt, den Menschen wirklich dahin zu bringen, daß er das, was er verstehen soll, dann in sich selber finden kann, daß er heraufholen kann aus seinem Inneren, was ihm gegeben worden ist erst für die naturhafte Nachahmung, dann für die künstlerische Verbildlichung; so daß wir auch für das spätere Lebensalter an den Menschen nicht das heranbringen sollen, wo wir ihn zwingen, daß er in sich, ob er nun will oder nicht, logische Überwältigung empfindet.
Es war schon ein großer Augenblick in der Entwickelung des deutschen Geisteslebens, als gerade mit Bezug auf das moralische Erleben Schiller sich entgegengesetzt hat der Kantischen Moralauffassung. Denn als Kant die Worte ausgesprochen hatte: Pflicht! du erhabener, großer Name, der du nichts Beliebtes, was Einschmeichelung bei sich führt, in dir fassest, sondern Unterwerfung verlangst — da widersetzte sich dem Schiller. Einem solchen Pflichtbegriff widersetzte er sich, der das Moralische nicht aus dem Urquell des guten Willens hervorgehen läßt, sondern aus der Unterwerfung unter das Sittengebot. Schiller setzte ja seine denkwürdigen Worte, die ein wirkliches Moralmotiv enthalten, dem Kantischen Pflichtbegriff gegenüber: «Gerne dien ich den Freunden», so sagt Schiller, «doch tu ich es leider mit Neigung, und so wurmt es mir oft, daß ich nicht tugendhaft bin.» Erst wenn die Pflicht anfängt, innerste menschliche Neigung zu sein, wenn sie das wird, was Goethe mit dem Worte ausgesprochen hat: «Pflicht, wo man liebt, was man sich selbst befiehlt», da wird die ganze Moral zu demjenigen, was aus dem reinen Menschentum hervorquillt. Das war ein großer Augenblick, als dazumal die «Verkantung» des Moralischen wiederum menschlich gerundet wurde durch Schiller und Goethe.
Aber dasjenige, was dazumal gequollen ist aus deutschem Geistesleben, es ist untergetaucht in die materialistische Gesinnung des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Wir finden es noch heute so. Wir müssen den Menschen wiederum herausheben, herausheben aus demjenigen, was in der Zivilisation entstanden ist durch das Vergessen dieser auch auf dem moralischen Gebiete so großen Tat. Zuerst obliegt dieses Wiederherausheben des Menschen, jetzt im Kleid des wahrhaft Menschlichen, auch Moralischen, denjenigen, die zu erziehen, zu unterrichten haben. Und in diesem Bewußtsein wird der Impuls eines lebendigen Erziehens und Unterrichtens entstehen können. Man möchte sagen: Gerade jene Sonne des deutschen Geisteslebens, die da in Schiller und Goethe auch auf moralischem Gebiete leuchtet, die sollte insbesondere herunterscheinen auf all dasjenige, was Tat werden kann durch den Erziehenden und Lehrenden von heute, der die Aufgabe seiner Zeit versteht, der entwickeln will durch das Erziehen und Unterrichten ein menschliches Verhältnis des Menschen zu sich selbst und zu den wahrhaften Bedürfnissen der Zeitkultur. Zu sprechen von der Stellung der Erziehung im Persönlichen des Menschen und in der Zeitkultur war ja die Aufgabe dieser Erziehungstagung. Wir werden an diese Aufgabe nur herankommen, wenn wir auch dasjenige dankbar ins Auge fassen, was durch die großen erleuchteten Geister, wie die genannten, an Impulsen schon hereingekommen ist in die Entwickelung Mitteleuropas. Nicht nur den kritischen Sinn wollen wir entwickeln, wenn wir unsere Stellung in der Welt ergreifen wollen, sondern vor allen Dingen die Dankbarkeit gegenüber dem, was Menschen, die uns vorangegangen sind, schon geleistet haben.
Und so könnte man sagen: Man redet eigentlich nur von Selbsterziehung, wenn man meint die Art, wie der Mensch sich selber erzieht; aber alle Erziehung ist nicht nur in diesem subjektiven Sinne, sondern auch im objektiven Sinne Selbsterziehung, nämlich Erziehung des Selbstes des andern. Und im Deutschen hängt erziehen zusammen mit ziehen. Was man heranzieht, läßt man aber in seiner Wesenheit ungeschoren. Will man einen Stein aus dem Wasser ziehen, so zerschlägt man ihn nicht. Erziehung fordert nicht, daß man das Menschenwesen, das in die Welt hereintritt, in irgendeiner Weise zerschlägt oder vergewaltigt, sondern es heranzieht zu dem Erleben der Kulturstufe, auf der die Menschheit in dem Zeitpunkte steht, in dem dieses Menschenwesen heruntergestiegen ist aus göttlich-geistigen Welten in die sinnliche Welt. Alle diese empfundenen und gefühlten Ideen, sie gehören zur Methodik des Lehrens. Derjenige, der sie nicht drinnen hat in der Methodik, kann am wenigsten die Stellung der Erziehung in der Gegenwart verstehen.
Und während wir moralisch wachsen lassen das Gefallen am Guten, das Mißfallen am Bösen, während wir seelisch erwachen lassen das Religiöse, das erst naturhaft beim Kinde da war, bildet sich wiederum im Untergrunde, im Keimhaften zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife die Anlage aus beim Menschen, der durch die Geschlechtsreife hindurchgegangen ist, für das In-Freiheit-Begreifen desjenigen, was man schon in sich selber hat. Wir bereiten das freie Erfassen der Welt auch für das Religiöse und Sittliche vor. Es ist ein Großes, wenn der Mensch es erleben kann, wie er Gefallen und Mißfallen, Durchdringung seines ganzen Gefühlslebens mit dem moralisch Guten und Bösen durch sein zweites Lebensalter erfahren hat. Dann quillt in ihm der Impuls auf: Das, was dir gefallen hat als gut, das mußt du tun, was dir mißfallen hat, mußt du unterlassen. - Dann quillt das Moralprinzip heraus aus demjenigen, was nun schon im Selbst des Menschen ist; dann ersteht die religiöse Hingabe im Geiste an die Welt, nachdem sie zuerst naturhaft in der ersten Epoche, seelenhaft in der zweiten Epoche da war. Da wird das religiöse Gefühl und auch der religiöse Willensimpuls dasjenige, was den Menschen so handeln läßt, als ob der Gott in ihm handelte. Das wird zum Ausdruck des menschlichen Selbstes, wird nicht etwas äußerlich Aufgepfropftes. Alles erscheint aus der menschlichen Natur erstanden und geboren nach der Geschlechtsreife, wenn man das Kind in entsprechender Weise herangebildet hat, so wie es dem Verständnis des Menschenwesens eben entspricht.
Da aber muß man, wie ich es bereits andeutete, vor sich haben das ganze Menschenwesen, wie es lebt in seinem Erdenwandel von der Geburt bis zum Tode. Wie leicht nimmt man es in der Pädagogik mit dem Ausgehen davon, daß man das Kind beobachten will. Man beobachtet es heute äußerlich experimentell; dann will man aus dem, was man nun am Kinde wahrnimmt, die Methodik des Lehrens schauen. Das kann man nicht. Denn derjenige, der zum Beispiel aus einem cholerischen Temperament, dem er die Zügel schießen läßt, als Lehrer und Erzieher jähzornige Handlungen entwickelt, der bereitet den Keim für Gicht, Rheumatismus, für Ungesundung des ganzen Organismus im höheren Menschenalter. Und in vieler anderer Beziehung ist das so der Fall. Wir haben stets den ganzen Menschen in seiner Erdenzeit vor uns, wenn wir etwas zu tun haben mit einem Geschehen, das in einem einzelnen Lebensalter vor sich geht. Dessen müssen wir eingedenk sein. Wer da hängt an jenen Trivialitäten, die man häufig als Anschauungsunterricht heute hat, wo man sich verschanzt hinter dem auf der einen Seite selbstverständlichen, auf der anderen Seite törichten Wort: An das Kind soll Anschaulichkeit nur herangebracht werden, wofür es eben das Begriffsvermögen hat -, nun, der kommt eben zu all den Trivialitäten, denen gegenüber man die Wand hinaufkriechen möchte. Dem muß entgegengesetzt werden jenes tiefere Menschheitsgesetz, das uns zum Bewußtsein bringt, was es für die Vitalität des Menschen bedeutet, wenn er als Vierzigjähriger plötzlich daraufkommt: Du verstehst jetzt erst das, was dir die verehrte Autorität vorgedacht und vorgelebt hat. Damals nahmst du es auf, weil dir die Autorität die Verkörperung von Wahrheit, Güte, Schönheit war. Jetzt hast du Gelegenheit, das Gehörte ins volle Bewußtsein heraufzuholen.
Solch ein Heraufgeholtes wirkt ungeheuer verjüngend, vitalisierend im späteren Lebensalter. Und all das muß man im späteren Alter entbehren, wenn beim Erziehen und Unterrichten nicht darauf gesehen worden ist, daß nun wirklich in den Untergründen etwas von dem ist, was eben erst später verstanden werden kann. Leer und öde wird die Welt, wenn nicht immer von neuem aus dem Inneren der Menschennatur aufquellen kann, was die äußere Anschauung durchsetzt mit Geist und Seele. So geben wir dem Menschen in voller Freiheit Vitalität für sein ganzes Leben, wenn wir in dieser Weise erziehen. Und ich darf erwähnen, was ich oft gesagt habe: Ein wirklicher Unterrichter und Erzieher muß stets das ganze menschliche Leben vor sich haben, muß zum Beispiel hinschauen auf jene wunderbare Äußerung manches Menschen im Greisenalter: Es braucht einer nur zu kommen und gar nicht viel zu sagen, was er erregt, trägt einen segnenden Stempel. In jeder Handbewegung, die er macht, liegt etwas Segnendes, Das ist manchem an der Schwelle des Todes stehenden Menschen eigen. Woher hat er das? Er hat das, weil er in der Kindheit auf natürliche Art hat aufschauen, hat sich hingeben gelernt. Das verehrende Aufschauen und Hingeben im Kindesalter wird zur Macht des Segnens im späteren Lebensalter. Man darf sagen: Keiner kann am Ende des Erdenlebens die Hand zum Segnen ausbreiten, der sie nicht als Kind auf natürliche Weise hat falten gelernt zum Gebet. Aus der Faltung der Hände zum Gebet, aus jener frommen Hingabe im Kindheitsalter entsteht die Kraft des Begnadens im höchsten Lebensalter an der Schwelle des Todes. Denn alles das, was keimhaft in dem Kinde angedeutet ist, alles das bildet sich aus als gute oder böse Frucht für das eigene Erleben des Menschen im weiteren Erdenleben. Auch das muß man stets vor sich haben, wenn man eine Methodik des Lehrens auf Grund der Lebensbedingungen des Erziehens ausbilden will.
Nun, damit ist wenigstens mit einigen Strichen angedeutet, was zugrunde liegt dem Versuch, Anthroposophie fruchtbar zu machen im Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesen durch die Waldorfschule. Diese Erziehungstagung sollte das, was da versucht worden ist, was nun doch schon seit Jahren in der Praxis wirkt, in einer gewissen Weise beleuchten. Es ist von verschiedenen Seiten beleuchtet worden; es ist auch gezeigt worden, was Leistungen der Schüler sind, und es wird weiter nach dieser Richtung manches zu zeigen und zu besprechen sein.
Es sind nun von zwei Seiten her im Beginne dieser heutigen Stunde liebevolle Worte an mich gerichtet worden. Ich darf sagen: Mit herzlichem Dank empfange ich diese liebevollen Worte, denn was könnte man mit den schönsten Impulsen tun, wenn sich nicht Menschen fänden, die zur Verwirklichung dieser Impulse all ihre Hingabe und Opferwilligkeit aufbringen! — Daher richtet sich meine Dankbarkeit gegen die Waldorflehrer, die versuchen, dasjenige, was zugrunde liegen soll einer Erziehungserneuerung, auszuführen. Es wendet sich mein Dank auch gegen diejenigen, die, ich möchte sagen, als die spätere Jugend, als die jungen Menschen von heute gerade aus ihren Erfahrungen während ihrer Erziehung ein Herzensverständnis entwickeln für das, was mit der Waldorfschulpädagogik eigentlich gemeint ist. Man würde sich glücklich fühlen müssen, wenn in recht großem Umfang das, was hier ausgesprochen worden ist als die herzhafte Empfindung der Jugend gegenüber der Waldorfschulpädagogik, zu dem tragenden Wagen würde, der unsere Waldorfschulpädagogik durch die Zeitenkultur, durch die Zeitenzivilisation dahinfährt. Und ich glaube auch, daß ich aus den Empfindungen Ihrer aller handle, wenn ich allseits denjenigen, die so liebevolle Worte, so schöne Worte gesprochen haben, dankbarlichst diese Worte erwidere; denn mehr noch als irgend etwas anderes braucht Erziehung und Unterricht Menschen, welche die Intentionen verwirklichen. Der Maler, der Bildhauer, er mag sogar in aller Einsamkeit sein Werk hinstellen und sich sagen: Wenn Menschen es nicht schauen, die Götter schauen es ja doch. Der Lehrende, der Erziehende, er leistet dasjenige, was geistige Leistung ist, für das Erdendasein; er kann dasjenige, was sein Geleistetes sein soll, nur im Verein mit denjenigen erleben, die es in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt verwirklichen helfen.
Das brauchen wir als Lehrende und Erziehende wieder als Einschlag in unser Bewußtsein, besonders in dieser unserer Gegenwart. Und darauf lassen Sie mich am Schlusse dieser Vorträge noch hinweisen, denn ich muß meine Vorträge damit abschließen, weil ich, anderwärts in Anspruch genommen, nicht weiter bleiben kann; damit lassen Sie mich abschließen: Eine Erziehung, wie diese auf Anthroposophie begründete — nicht Anthroposophie als Weltanschauung den Menschen aufdrängende, sondern auf Anthroposophie begründete, weil Anthroposophie echte Menschenerkenntnis nach Leib, Seele und Geist liefert —, sie will sich auch wirklich ganz sachgemäß, ganz real hineinstellen in dasjenige, was die tiefsten Notwendigkeiten und Bedingungen unserer gegenwärtigen Zivilisation sind, notwendig deshalb, weil der Menschheit in Mitteleuropa eine Zukunft nur dadurch noch winken kann, daß sie ihr Tun und Denken aus solchen Impulsen herausholt.
Woran kranken wir am allermeisten? Ich habe, indem ich sozusagen ganz zentral unsere Pädagogik und Didaktik charakterisieren wollte, immer wieder darauf hinweisen müssen, wie wir, in scheuer Ehrfurcht vor dem, was die göttlichen Mächte als Selbst des Menschen in die Welt gesetzt haben, diesem Selbst als Erzieher zu seiner Entwickelung verhelfen. Und dieses Selbst, es wird nicht in Wahrheit erfaßt, wenn es nicht im Geist erfaßt wird; es wird in Wahrheit verleugnet, wenn es nur am Stoff erfaßt wird. Vor allen Dingen hat im materialistischen Leben der neueren Zeit das Ich gelitten durch die Mißerkennung, die Mißanschauung des menschlichen Selbstes, denn indem man überall losgegangen ist auf das Anschauen im Stoffe, auf das Handeln im Stoffe, zersplitterte vor dem Menschen der Geist, damit aber sein Selbst. Setzt man mit den naturhaften Methoden der Naturerkenntnis Grenzen, sagt man, man könne nicht in die Welt des Geistigen eindringen, so behauptet man nichts Geringeres als: man kann nicht in die Welt des Menschen eindringen. Der Erkenntnis Grenzen setzen heißt, für das Erkennen in der Welt den Menschen auslöschen. Wie will man eine Seele erziehen, wenn man sie erst durch materialistische Gesinnung auslöscht? Aber dieses Auslöschen ist dasjenige gewesen, was ganz eigen war dem vergangenen, aber heute noch vielfach herrschenden Materialismus in allem menschlichen Tun. Und so kann man schon sagen: Das, was geschehen ist in der neueren Zeit, in der, wie ich gesagt habe, von anderer Seite ja gerechtfertigten materialistischen Gesinnung — gerechtfertigt, weil sie kommen mußte innerhalb der Entwickelung der Menschheit, aber sie muß auch wieder verlassen werden -, man kann es mit den Worten ausdrücken: Die Menschen haben sich ihr Selbst verschrieben an den Stoff. Damit aber ist wirkliche lebendige Methodik des Lehrens, sind die wirklichen Lebensbedingungen der Erziehung mit eingefroren, denn nur äußerlich Technisches kann leben in einer Zivilisation, die sich selbst, die das Selbst dem Stoff verschreibt. Aber der Stoff bedrängt den Menschen. Jeder Mensch wird mehr oder weniger dadurch, daß der Stoff ihn in der Körperlichkeit abschließt, auch eine verschlossene Seele. Man wird eine verschlossene Seele, wenn man den anderen Menschen nicht im Geiste findet, denn im Körper kann man ihn nicht in Wahrheit finden! So hat die materialistische Zivilisationsgesinnung ein Zeitalter heraufgebracht, wo die Menschen aneinander vorbeigehen, weil alle Empfindung an Körperlichkeit verschrieben ist. Sie schreien nach dem sozialen Leben mit dem Verstand, entwickeln aber aus der Empfindung heraus das unsoziale Nebeneinander-Vorbeigehen, das Sich-nichtVerstehen. Die Seelen, die in die einzelnen Körper eingeschlossen werden, sie gehen aneinander vorbei; die Seelen, die den Geist in sich erwecken, die den Geist selber finden, die finden sich als Menschen mit den anderen Menschen zusammen. Ein soziales Leben wird aus dem Chaos nur aufkeimen, wenn die Menschen den Geist finden werden und dadurch, durch den Geist, der eine Mensch den anderen im Nebeneinanderleben findet.
Und das ist auch die große Sehnsucht der Jugend von heute: den Menschen zu finden. Die Jugendbewegung ging aus von dem Schrei nach dem Menschen. Jetzt hat sich — das hat sich vor einigen Tagen gezeigt, als die jungen Menschen, die hier sind, sich vereinigt haben dieses Rufen nach dem Menschen verwandelt in ein Rufen nach dem Geist, weil man ahnt: Der Mensch kann nur gefunden werden im Finden des Geistes. Der andere Mensch muß verloren werden, wenn man den Geist verliert.
Wie man Weltenerkenntnis finden kann und aus der Weltenerkenntnis heraus den wahrhaft lebendigen Menschen auf der Erde nach Leib, Seele und Geist, das versuchte ich gestern abend zu zeigen, wie Weltanschauung hinauswachsen kann in das Erleben des Kosmischen, wie Sonne und Mond gesehen werden können in all dem, was auf der Erde wächst und gedeiht. Erziehen wir mit einem solchen Hintergrund, dann werden wir auch in der richtigen Weise das Erleben des Unsterblichen, des Göttlichen, des Ewig-Religiösen in dem heranwachsenden Kinde entwickeln. Dann werden wir den Menschen während ihrer Kindheit dasjenige einpflanzen, was sie, damit es weiter gedeihen kann, im Geist durch die Pforte des Todes tragen müssen als ihr unsterbliches Teil. Doch diese Seite des Erziehens im besonderen zu besprechen, soll ja hier nicht die Aufgabe sein. Die Beziehung der Erziehung zum menschlichen Selbst und Kulturleben, das ist es, was zunächst gezeigt werden sollte. Aber überzeugt kann man sein: Wenn der Mensch richtig erzogen wird auf der Erde, dann wird auch der Himmelsmensch richtig erzogen, denn im Erdenmenschen lebt der Himmelsmensch. Erziehen wir den irdischen Menschen in der richtigen Weise, so bringen wir durch das Stückchen, das er vorwärtsgebracht werden muß zwischen Geburt und Tod, auch den himmlischen Menschen in der richtigen Weise weiter.
Damit aber ist einer Anschauung Rechnung getragen, welche in der richtigen Weise nach Weltenerkenntnis geht, nach jener Weltenerkenntnis, die da weiß: Der Mensch muß mitbauen an dem großen geistigen Weltenbau, der dann auch im Sinnlichen sich offenbart. Als ein an der Menschheit Mitbauender muß der Mensch erkannt werden in einem richtigen Erziehen. Das habe ich gestern gemeint mit der Charakteristik jener Weltauffassung und Lebensanschauung, von der ich sagte, sie solle im Hintergrunde des Lehrens und Erziehens stehen. Daraus geht aber hervor, daß wir nicht in dem einseitigen Inhalt des Kopfes die Welt erfassen können. Falsch ist es, wenn jemand sagt, die Welt könnte erfaßt werden in Ideen, Begriffen, Vorstellungen. Falsch ist es selbst noch, wenn man sagt, die Welt solle erfaßt werden mit dem Gefühl. Sie soll erfaßt werden mit Ideen und Gefühl, aber auch mit dem Willen! Denn nur, wenn das Göttlich-Geistige in den Willen hinuntergeht, dann ist die Welt vom Menschen erfaßt; dann ist aber auch der Mensch erfaßt, angeschaut nicht von einem Teil des Menschen, sondern vom ganzen Menschen. Wir brauchen Weltanschauung nicht für Verstand und Intellekt allein, wir brauchen Weltanschauung für den ganzen Menschen, für den denkenden, fühlenden und wollenden Menschen, eine Weltanschauung, welche im ganzen Menschen nach Leib, Seele und Geist die Welt im Menschen wiederentdeckt. Nur der, welcher so die Welt im Menschen wiederentdeckt, der im Menschen die Welt schaut, nur der kann eine wirkliche Weltanschauung haben. Denn so wie sich im Auge die sichtbare Welt spiegelt, so ist der ganze Mensch ein geistig-seelisch-leibliches Auge, in dem sich die ganze Welt spiegelt. Dieses Spiegelbild kann man nicht von außen anschauen, das muß man von innen erleben. Dann wird es aber auch nicht Schein bleiben wie ein äußeres Spiegelbild, dann wird es innerliche Realität. Dann wird in der Erziehung die Welt Mensch, und der Mensch entdeckt in sich die Welt. Arbeitet man so erzieherisch, dann empfindet man recht, wie die Menschheit zersplittert wird, wenn alles menschliche Erleben dem Stoffe verschrieben wird, weil die Seelen aneinander sich nicht gewinnen, sondern sich verlieren, wenn sie sich selber verneinen. Geht man über zum Geiste, dann findet man durch dasjenige, was im Geiste gefunden werden kann, den anderen Menschen. Soziales Leben im echten Sinne des Wortes, es muß vom Geiste aus begründet werden. Es muß die menschliche Wesenheit im Geist sich finden, dann wird sich Mensch mit Mensch verbinden können, und es muß die Welt im Menschen geschaut werden, wenn Welten erbaut werden aus Menschentaten. Daher lassen Sie mich aussprechen am Schlusse dieser Betrachtung, was ich eigentlich immer im Hintergrunde hatte, während ich zu Ihnen sprach. Betitelt ist das, was gesprochen werden sollte, als eine Betrachtung der Erziehung im persönlichen Leben und im Kulturleben der Gegenwart. Jetzt am Schluß erlauben Sie mir, daß ich den Titel metamorphosiere, daß ich ihn dahin verwandle, daß er in sich schließt, was ich eigentlich habe aussprechen wollen. So daß zusammenschlagen soll dasjenige, was ich eigentlich gemeint habe, in die Worte:
Dem Stoff sich verschreiben,
Heißt Seelen zerreiben.Im Geiste sich finden,
Heißt Menschen verbinden.Im Menschen sich schauen,
Heißt Welten erbauen.
Fifth Lecture
In these five lectures, I had to set myself the task of characterizing the guiding principles of Waldorf school pedagogy and methodology in a few strokes. This time, I was less concerned with going into detail than with trying to characterize the whole spirit of education that should flow from anthroposophy. For in fact, perhaps even more than the details, whose necessity should not be underestimated, people today need a radical renewal, a radical strengthening of the whole spiritual life. And one can say that in all spiritual professions, in addition to the spiritual content they need, what is necessary above all for the near future is a renewal of enthusiasm that can develop from a spiritual understanding of the world and such a worldview. And that the educator, the artist of the soul, for that is what the teacher must become, needs this enthusiasm most of all, is something that is already beginning to be felt in the widest circles today. Perhaps we are still only looking for ways that cannot lead to the goal, because there is still a general despondency towards a radical search, especially in the spiritual field. What underlies our pedagogy is to find a methodology of teaching, to find the conditions of life for education through reading into human nature, through that reading into human nature which gradually reveals the essence of the human being, so that we can follow this revelation with what we bring into teaching and education, from the curriculum to the timetable.
Let us put ourselves in the spirit of such reading in human nature. We have seen how children are naturally and religiously devoted to their immediate human environment, how they are imitative beings, how they perceive and willingly develop within themselves what they experience unconsciously and subconsciously from their environment. Not in terms of content, for the soul is a spirit that reveals itself outwardly in a natural way, but in terms of its entire configuration, there is a religious character, I would say, in the physicality of the child from the moment it enters the world until it loses its baby teeth. And since human beings do not enter the world without preconditions, since they do not come merely with the physical hereditary forces of their lineage, but with the forces they bring with them from previous earthly lives, this devotion can initially be to the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the wise and the foolish, the skilled and the unskilled. We have the task of working in the child's environment in such a way that the child may become an imitative being of the good, the true, the beautiful, and the wise, right down to their thoughts and feelings.
If we think in this way, life comes into contact with the child, and education enters into this life in contact with the child in a completely natural way. Education is then not only sought in individual actions, but education is lived. And only when education is lived around the child, so that it is not imposed on the child, does the child develop in the right way in life to become a human being.
But what is so naturally called religious devotion in priestly education, as I have meant it, must be reawakened in education and teaching between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, awakened on a higher spiritual level in the second phase of the child's life between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. We educate the child by making everything we bring to it pictorial, by making education an artistic and yet genuinely human, subjective-objective activity. We educate the child in such a way that it faces the educator and teacher with an aesthetic devotion to beauty, absorbing the pictorial. This involves replacing religion with a natural artistic perception of the world. Now, this natural artistic perception – which should not be confused with the luxurious artistic perception that plays such a prominent role in our culture – this purely human artistic perception in the child includes what now emerges as moral behavior towards the world.
If we understand this correctly, we learn that we cannot reach the child between the change of teeth and sexual maturity by giving them commandments. We cannot reach the child morally before the change of teeth if we moralize in any way. This does not yet have access to the child's soul in the first stage of life. The only thing that has access is what we do in terms of morality, what the child can see in the way morality is lived out in the actions, gestures, thoughts, and feelings of the human environment. And in the second phase of life, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, we still cannot reach the child if we give them moral commandments. They still have no inner relationship to what is contained in moral commandments. Moral commandments are empty words to them. We can only reach the child at this age if we face them as a natural authority, if the child, without knowing abstractly what beauty, truth, goodness, and so on are, can develop the impulse in their feelings: in the teacher and educator before me stands embodied goodness, embodied truth, embodied beauty. If one understands the child correctly, one knows that the child does not yet have an abstract, intellectual understanding of the revelation of wisdom, beauty, and goodness, but the revelation is there, and the child sees it in the gaze and hand movements of the teacher and educator, in the way the teacher and educator's words are spoken. The teacher, the educator himself, is what the child, without uttering many words, calls truth, beauty, goodness, calling it with the revelations of the heart. And so it must be. And when the teacher and educator corresponds to what the child needs at this age, then two things gradually develop in the child. First, the sense, the inner aesthetic sense of pleasure and displeasure, also for morality. The child likes what is good when we bring it to the child in the right way through our whole personality in our example. And we must organize education in such a way that the natural need for pleasure in what is good can develop, as well as displeasure in what is evil. How does the child ask itself? Not in explicit intellectual words, but inwardly and heartily it asks: Should I do something? I am allowed to do it because the teacher does it. Should I refrain from doing something? I must refrain from doing it because the teacher tells me that it must not be done. — In this way, the child experiences the world through the educator, the world in its goodness, the world in its evil, the world in its beauty, the world in its ugliness, in its truth, in its lies. And this confrontation with the teacher and educator, this work in the hidden forces between the child's heart and the educator's heart, is the most important part of the methodology of teaching, and therein lie the conditions of life for education.
Thus, it is precisely the age between the change of teeth and sexual maturity that is the age in which liking and disliking of the moral and immoral grow. But then, in all that grows up as moral feeling in the child, something appears in the background: that which was first present in the child in a natural way in the first epoch of life, this devotion, which can be called religious, to the environment, appears, I would say, as something resurrected in another form in all this moral formation. And if we have the skillful soul power of teachers and educators, we can easily guide what arises as a liking for good and a dislike for evil to what flows through the soul in the expressions of nature. At first, the child is naturally devoted to nature itself, for what stands out as moral in the environment is seen by the child in nature; the child senses the moral gesture, imitates it, and incorporates it. But what is natural, this religious element, is transformed, metamorphosed into the soul as we develop a liking for the good.
And consider what it means that, in the magic of the fully unconscious, we allow the religious to develop in the child in a natural way, in pure imitation, until the change of teeth. In this way, we initially place the religious in that age of human life where we cannot yet touch the power of their inner free individuality. We educate through nature and do not touch the soul-spiritual. And when we approach the soul between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, when we must approach the soul, then we no longer graft religious feeling into the child, then we already awaken it, then we already appeal to the self in the human being. As educators and teachers, we are already practical philosophers of freedom, for we do not say: You must believe in this or that in your spirit – but we awaken what is innate in human beings to believe. We constantly become awakening agents of the child's soul, not stuffers of this soul. This is the proper reverence we must have for every creature brought into the world by the divine, especially for human beings. And so you see the self in human beings sprouting, see how moral pleasure and displeasure receive the religious character.
When we learn to observe how the religious, which was initially natural, wants to undergo a spiritual metamorphosis, the teacher and educator puts into words that which becomes the pleasing image of the good, the beautiful, the true. Then his words contain that which the child clings to. But the teacher and educator is still at work. His actions are no longer imitated; they point to what lies behind them. They no longer stimulate the external physical, they stimulate the soul. A religious atmosphere pervades moral approval and disapproval.
Once the child has passed through puberty, the intellectual begins to stir in its own way. That is why I have already pointed out that it is important to really bring people to the point where they can find within themselves what they are supposed to understand, where they can draw from within themselves what has been given to them first for natural imitation and then for artistic representation; so that we should not force people, even in later life, to feel logical subjugation within themselves, whether they want to or not.
It was a great moment in the development of German intellectual life when Schiller opposed Kant's conception of morality, particularly with regard to moral experience. For when Kant uttered the words: Duty! You sublime, great name, which contains nothing pleasant, nothing that leads to flattery, but demands submission — Schiller opposed him. He opposed such a concept of duty, which does not allow morality to arise from the original source of good will, but rather from submission to moral imperatives. Schiller contrasted his memorable words, which contain a real moral motive, with Kant's concept of duty: “I gladly serve my friends,” says Schiller, “but unfortunately I do so with inclination, and so it often bothers me that I am not virtuous.” Only when duty begins to be the innermost human inclination, when it becomes what Goethe expressed in the words: “Duty, where one loves what one commands oneself,” does the whole of morality become that which springs from pure humanity. It was a great moment when, at that time, the “tilting” of morality was once again rounded off humanely by Schiller and Goethe.
But what once flowed from German intellectual life has been submerged in the materialistic attitude of the nineteenth century. We still find it that way today. We must once again lift people up, lift them out of what has arisen in civilization through the forgetting of this deed, which was so great in the moral realm as well. At first, this task of lifting people up again, now in the garb of the truly human, including the moral, falls to those who have to educate and teach. And in this consciousness, the impulse for a living education and teaching will be able to arise. One might say: precisely that sun of German spiritual life, which shines in Schiller and Goethe, also in the moral sphere, should shine down in particular on all that can be achieved by today's educators and teachers who understand the task of their time, who want to develop, through education and teaching, a human relationship between human beings and themselves and the true needs of contemporary culture. The task of this education conference was to discuss the position of education in the personal life of human beings and in contemporary culture. We will only be able to approach this task if we also gratefully consider the impulses that have already been brought into the development of Central Europe by the great enlightened minds such as those mentioned above. If we want to take our place in the world, we must develop not only a critical sense, but above all gratitude for what those who have gone before us have already achieved.
And so one could say: one actually only speaks of self-education when one means the way in which a person educates themselves; but all education is self-education not only in this subjective sense, but also in the objective sense, namely the education of the self of the other. And in German, erziehen (to educate) is related to ziehen (to pull). But what one pulls out is left untouched in its essence. If one wants to pull a stone out of the water, one does not smash it. Education does not require that the human being who enters the world be broken or violated in any way, but rather that he be drawn to experience the cultural level at which humanity stands at the moment when this human being descended from the divine-spiritual worlds into the sensory world. All these perceived and felt ideas belong to the methodology of teaching. Those who do not have them in their methodology are least able to understand the position of education in the present.
And while we allow the moral growth of a liking for good and a dislike for evil, while we allow the religious, which was only natural in the child, to awaken in the soul, the predisposition for the free understanding of what one has already learned is formed in the human being who has gone through puberty, in the germinal stage between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. in the embryonic stage between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the predisposition develops in the human being who has passed through sexual maturity to freely comprehend what one already has within oneself. We also prepare the free comprehension of the world for the religious and moral. It is a great thing when a person can experience how they have experienced pleasure and displeasure, the permeation of their entire emotional life with moral good and evil, through their second age of life. Then the impulse wells up in them: what you have enjoyed as good, you must do; what you have disliked, you must refrain from doing. Then the moral principle springs forth from what is now already within the human being; then religious devotion arises in the spirit toward the world, after it was first present in nature in the first epoch and in the soul in the second epoch. Then religious feeling and also the religious impulse of the will become what causes the human being to act as if the God within him were acting. This becomes an expression of the human self, not something grafted on from outside. Everything appears to arise from human nature and to be born after sexual maturity, if the child has been brought up in the appropriate way, in accordance with the understanding of the human being.
But, as I have already indicated, one must have before one the whole human being as he lives his earthly life from birth to death. How easily one takes it in education for granted that one wants to observe the child. Today, one observes it externally, experimentally; then one wants to see the methodology of teaching from what one now perceives in the child. This is not possible. For example, a teacher or educator who develops irascible behavior due to a choleric temperament that they allow to run wild is sowing the seeds for gout, rheumatism, and the deterioration of the entire organism in old age. And this is the case in many other respects. We always have the whole human being in their earthly life before us when we have something to do with an event that takes place in a single age of life. We must be mindful of this. Those who cling to the trivialities that are often used as illustrative teaching today, where they entrench themselves behind the word that is self-evident on the one hand and foolish on the other: that children should only be presented with things that they have the capacity to understand – well, they end up with all the trivialities that make you want to crawl up the wall. This must be countered by that deeper law of humanity that makes us aware of what it means for human vitality when, at the age of forty, we suddenly realize: Only now do you understand what the revered authority thought and exemplified for you. At that time, you accepted it because authority was the embodiment of truth, goodness, and beauty for you. Now you have the opportunity to bring what you heard into full consciousness.
Such a realization has an enormously rejuvenating and revitalizing effect in later life. And all this must be dispensed with in later life if, during education and teaching, no attention was paid to ensuring that something of what can only be understood later is really present in the foundations. The world becomes empty and desolate if what permeates external perception with spirit and soul cannot continually spring forth from within human nature. In this way, we give people vitality for their entire lives in complete freedom when we educate them in this manner. And I would like to mention what I have often said: A true teacher and educator must always have the whole of human life before them, must look, for example, at the wonderful expression of some people in old age: one need only come and say very little, and what they say has a blessing effect. There is something blessing in every movement of their hand. This is characteristic of many people on the threshold of death. Where does this come from? It comes from having learned to look up and surrender naturally in childhood. The reverent looking up and surrendering in childhood becomes the power to bless in later life. It can be said that no one can extend their hand in blessing at the end of their earthly life who did not learn to fold their hands naturally in prayer as a child. From the folding of the hands in prayer, from that pious devotion in childhood, arises the power of blessing in old age, on the threshold of death. For everything that is germinally indicated in the child develops into good or evil fruit for the person's own experience in later life. This must also always be kept in mind when developing a methodology of teaching based on the conditions of life in education.
Well, this at least outlines in a few strokes what lies at the basis of the attempt to make anthroposophy fruitful in education and teaching through the Waldorf school. This education conference was intended to shed light in a certain way on what has been attempted and what has now been working in practice for years. It has been examined from various angles; the achievements of the students have also been demonstrated, and there will be more to show and discuss in this direction.
At the beginning of today's session, kind words have been addressed to me from two sides. I would like to say that I receive these kind words with heartfelt thanks, for what could one do with the most beautiful impulses if there were no people who would devote all their dedication and willingness to sacrifice to the realization of these impulses! — Therefore, my gratitude goes to the Waldorf teachers who are trying to implement what should be the basis of a renewal of education. My thanks also go to those who, I would say, as the youth of tomorrow, as the young people of today, are developing a heartfelt understanding of what Waldorf education actually means, precisely from their experiences during their education. We should feel happy if, on a large scale, what has been expressed here as the heartfelt feeling of young people towards Waldorf education becomes the vehicle that carries our Waldorf education through the culture of our times, through the civilization of our times. And I also believe that I am acting on behalf of all of you when I respond with gratitude to those who have spoken such loving words, such beautiful words; for more than anything else, education and teaching need people who realize its intentions. The painter, the sculptor, may even stand in solitude and say to himself: If people do not see it, the gods will see it. The teacher, the educator, performs what is intellectual achievement for earthly existence; he can only experience what his achievement is supposed to be in association with those who help to realize it in the physical-sensory world.
As teachers and educators, we need to bring this back into our consciousness, especially in our present time. And let me point this out at the end of these lectures, because I must conclude my lectures now, as I have other commitments and cannot stay any longer. Let me conclude with this: An education based on anthroposophy — not imposing anthroposophy as a worldview on people, but based on anthroposophy because anthroposophy provides genuine knowledge of human beings in body, soul, and spirit — it also wants to place itself in a truly appropriate and realistic way within what are the deepest necessities and conditions of our present civilization, necessary because humanity in Central Europe can only have a future if it draws its actions and thinking from such impulses.
What is our greatest affliction? In attempting to characterize our pedagogy and didactics in a very central way, I have had to point out again and again how, in shy reverence for what the divine powers have placed in the world as the self of the human being, we as educators help this self to develop. And this self is not truly grasped unless it is grasped in the spirit; it is in truth denied if it is only grasped in material terms. Above all, in the materialistic life of modern times, the ego has suffered from the misrecognition, the misperception of the human self, for by setting out everywhere to look at matter, to act in matter, the spirit was fragmented before man, and with it his self. If one sets limits with the natural methods of knowing nature, saying that one cannot penetrate the world of the spiritual, one is asserting nothing less than that one cannot penetrate the world of the human being. To set limits on knowledge means to erase the human being from knowledge in the world. How can one educate a soul if one first erases it through a materialistic attitude? But this erasure has been characteristic of the materialism that was prevalent in the past and still prevails in many areas of human activity today. And so we can already say that what has happened in recent times, in what I have called a materialistic attitude that is justified from another point of view — justified because it had to come about in the course of human development, but it must also be abandoned again — can be expressed in the words: People have devoted themselves to material things. But with this, the real living methodology of teaching, the real living conditions of education, have been frozen, because only external technical things can live in a civilization that devotes itself, that devotes the self to material things. But material things oppress people. Every human being becomes, to a greater or lesser extent, a closed soul because matter confines them in their physicality. One becomes a closed soul when one cannot find other people in spirit, for one cannot truly find them in the body! Thus, the materialistic attitude of civilization has brought about an age in which people pass each other by because all feeling is devoted to physicality. They cry out for social life with their minds, but out of their feelings they develop the antisocial passing by, the not understanding each other. The souls that are enclosed in individual bodies pass each other by; the souls that awaken the spirit within themselves, that find the spirit itself, find themselves together with other people as human beings. A social life will only emerge from chaos when people find the spirit and, through the spirit, one human being finds another in coexistence.
And that is also the great longing of today's youth: to find the human being. The youth movement arose from the cry for the human being. Now — as was evident a few days ago when the young people who are here united — this cry for the human being has been transformed into a cry for the spirit, because one senses that the human being can only be found in finding the spirit. The other human being must be lost if one loses the spirit.
Last night I tried to show how one can find knowledge of the world and, out of this knowledge of the world, find the truly living human being on earth in body, soul, and spirit; how a worldview can grow into the experience of the cosmic, how the sun and moon can be seen in all that grows and flourishes on earth. If we educate with such a background, then we will also develop in the right way the experience of the immortal, the divine, the eternally religious in the growing child. Then we will implant in human beings during their childhood that which they must carry through the gate of death in their spirit as their immortal part, so that it can continue to flourish. But it is not our task here to discuss this aspect of education in particular. The relationship between education and the human self and cultural life is what should be shown first. But we can be convinced that if human beings are properly educated on earth, then the heavenly human being will also be properly educated, for the heavenly human being lives in the earthly human being. If we educate the earthly human being in the right way, then through the little bit that he or she must be brought forward between birth and death, we also bring the heavenly human being forward in the right way.
This, however, takes into account a view that correctly seeks knowledge of the world, that knowledge of the world which knows that human beings must help build the great spiritual world, which then also reveals itself in the sensory world. As a co-builder of humanity, human beings must be recognized in a proper education. This is what I meant yesterday when I described the worldview and outlook on life that I said should form the basis of teaching and education. However, this shows that we cannot comprehend the world through the one-sided content of the head. It is wrong to say that the world can be comprehended through ideas, concepts, and images. It is even more wrong to say that the world should be grasped with feeling. It should be grasped with ideas and feeling, but also with the will! For only when the divine-spiritual descends into the will is the world grasped by human beings; but then human beings are also grasped, viewed not by one part of the human being, but by the whole human being. We do not need a worldview for the mind and intellect alone; we need a worldview for the whole human being, for the thinking, feeling, and willing human being, a worldview that rediscovers the world in the human being in the whole human being, in body, soul, and spirit. Only those who rediscover the world in the human being in this way, who see the world in the human being sees the world in the human being, only they can have a real worldview. For just as the visible world is reflected in the eye, so the whole human being is a spiritual-soul-physical eye in which the whole world is reflected. This reflection cannot be seen from the outside; it must be experienced from within. But then it will not remain an illusion like an external reflection; it will become an inner reality. Then, in education, the world becomes human, and the human being discovers the world within himself. If one works in this way in education, one feels quite rightly how humanity is fragmented when all human experience is devoted to the material, because souls do not gain from each other but lose themselves when they deny themselves. If one turns to the spirit, then one finds other people through what can be found in the spirit. Social life in the true sense of the word must be based on the spirit. The human essence must be found in the spirit, then human beings will be able to connect with one another, and the world must be seen in human beings when worlds are built from human deeds. Therefore, at the end of this reflection, let me express what I actually always had in mind while I was speaking to you. What should be said is entitled A Reflection on Education in Personal Life and in Contemporary Cultural Life. Now, at the end, allow me to metamorphose the title, to transform it so that it encompasses what I actually wanted to say. So that what I actually meant is expressed in the words:
To devote oneself to material things
means to grind down souls.To find oneself in the spirit
means to connect people.To see oneself in people
means to build worlds.