The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we consider the human body, we must relate it to the physical sense-world that surrounds it and maintains it, for there is a constant interplay between the physical body and the world, through which it is sustained. When we look out into the physical sense-world around us, we perceive mineral beings, plant beings, animal beings. Our physical body is related to the beings of the minerals, plants and animals. But the peculiar nature of this relationship is not immediately evident to superficial observation; we must penetrate deeply into the character of the kingdoms of nature if we are to understand this relationship.

When we regard the human being as physical body, what we first perceive is his solid bony frame and his muscles. When we penetrate further into him we perceive the circulation of the blood with the organs which belong to it. We perceive the breathing, we perceive the processes of nourishment. We see how, the organs are built up out of the most varied vascular forms—as they are called in natural science. We perceive brain and nerves, the sense organs. We have now to co-ordinate these various organs of the human being and their functions with the external world.

Let us begin with that part of the human being which at first appears to be the most perfect (we have already seen how the matter really stands), let us begin with the brain and nervous system which is closely linked with the sense organs. This part of the human organisation shows the longest earthly evolution behind it, so that it has passed beyond the form which the animal world has developed. Man has passed through the animal world, as it were, in relation to this, his head system, and he has gone beyond the animal system to the real human system—which indeed is most clearly expressed in the formation of the head.

Now we spoke yesterday of how far the formation of the head takes part in individual human evolution, how far the shape, the form of the human body proceeds from the forces which are to be found in the head. And we saw how the work of the head reaches a kind of conclusion with the change of teeth towards the seventh year. We should make clear to ourselves what really happens through the interplay between the human head, the chest organs and the limb organs. We should answer the question: what does the head really do in carrying out its work in connection with the chest-trunk system and the limb-system? It is continually forming, shaping. Our life really consists in this, that in the first seven years an intense forming force streams from the head right down into the physical form; and the head continues its aid by preserving the form, by ensouling it, by spiritualising it.

The head is involved in shaping the human form. But does the head build up our truly human shape? No, indeed it does not. You must learn to accept the view that your head is constantly trying, in secret, to make something different out of you from what you are. There are times when the head would like to shape you so that you would look like a wolf; at other times it would like to shape you so that you would look like a lamb. Then again, so that you would look like a serpent; it would like to make you into a serpent, a dragon.

All the shapes which your head really designs in you, you find spread out in nature, in the different animal forms. If you look at the animal kingdom you can say to yourself: that am I; but when the head produces the wolf form, for instance, my trunk system and my limb system constantly do me the favour of changing this wolf form into the human form. They are perpetually within themselves overcoming the animal element. They so master it as to prevent it attaining complete existence within them, they metamorphose it, they transform it. Thus the human being has a relationship to the animal world around him through the head system. But it is such that he is continually carried beyond the animal world in the creation of his body. What, then, really remains in you? You can look at a human being. Imagine that you have a man before you: you can make this interesting observation. You can say: there is the man. There is his head, and in the head a wolf is actually stirring, but it does not develop into a wolf; it is immediately dissolved by the trunk and the limbs. In the head a lamb is actually stirring; it is dissolved by the trunk and the limbs.

The animal forms are continually moving supersensibly in the human being, and are being dissolved. What would happen if there were a super-sensible photographer who could retain this process, who could preserve this process on a photographic plate, or on a series of photographic plates? What should we see on these plates? We should then see the thoughts of man. These thoughts of the human being are indeed a super-sensible correlate to that which does not come to expression in the sense-world. This continual metamorphosis out of the animal, streaming down from the head, is not expressed in the senses, but it works in man supersensibly as the process of thought. In reality this is present as a super-sensible process. Your head is not merely the lazy-bones on your shoulders, it is that which would really like to maintain you in animality. It gives you the forms of the whole animal kingdom; it would like animal kingdoms continually to arise. But by means of your trunk and your limbs you prevent a whole animal kingdom from arising through you in the course of your life: you transform this animal kingdom into your thoughts. Such is our relationship to the animal kingdom. We allow this animal kingdom to arise supersensibly within us, and then we do not allow it to come to sensible reality, but hold it back in the super-sensible. The trunk and the limbs do not allow these evolving animal forms to enter their sphere. If the head has too strong an inclination to produce something of this animal nature, the remaining organism struggles against accepting it, and then the head has to resort to migraine or to some similar head complaint in order to exterminate it again.

The trunk system is also related to our environment—not in this case, to the animal world but to the whole range of the plant kingdom. There is a mysterious connection between the trunk system of man, the chest system, and the plant world. The most important processes in the circulation of the blood, also in breathing and nourishment, all take place in the chest or trunk system. All these processes are in active interchange with what takes place outside in the physical sense-world of the plants, but in a very special way.

Let us first take the breathing. What does a man do in breathing? You know that he takes in oxygen, and through his life processes he changes oxygen into carbon dioxide by connecting it with carbon. Carbon is in the organism from the transformed foodstuffs. This carbon takes up the oxygen, and carbon dioxide gas arises through the union of the oxygen with the carbon. Now when man has the carbon dioxide within him it would be a splendid opportunity for him not to let it out, but to keep it there. And if he could free the carbon again from the oxygen, what would happen? Let us say that a man breathes in oxygen through his life processes, and allows it to form carbon dioxide by uniting with carbon; if now he were in a position to separate off the oxygen again within, and to work upon the carbon, what would then arise in the man? The plant world. The whole vegetable kingdom would suddenly grow up in man. It really could grow there.

For if you consider a plant, what does it do? Of course it does not breathe in oxygen in the same regular way as man, but it assimilates carbon dioxide. By day the plant is bent on getting carbon dioxide, it gives up oxygen. It would be bad if it did not do this; for then neither we nor the animals would have it. But the plant retains carbon, and out of this it forms starch and sugar and everything else it consists of. From this it builds up its whole organism. The plant world arises by building itself up from carbon which plants in their process of assimilation separate off from the carbon dioxide. When you look at the plant world, it is metamorphosed carbon, which is separated off by the process of assimilation, and this process corresponds to the human process of breathing. The plants also breathe to a certain extent, but it is different from the breathing process in man. The plant does breathe a little, especially in the night, but to say that plants can really breathe shows a superficial observation, and is like saying: “Here is a razor, I will cut meat with it.” The process of breathing in plants is different from the process of breathing in men and in animals, just as the razor is different from the table knife. The human process of breathing corresponds in the plants to the reverse process, that of assimilation.

From this you will understand that if you continued in yourself the process by which carbon dioxide has arisen, that is, if the oxygen could be given up again and the carbon dioxide could be transformed into carbon, as is done by nature in the world around you, then you could let the whole vegetable world grow up in you. You would have the materials for this within yourself and you could bring it about that you would suddenly blossom forth as plant world. You would disappear and the whole plant world would arise. This capacity of producing a plant world is indeed inherent in man, but he does not allow it to come to this point. His chest system has a strong inclination continually to produce the plant world. Head and limbs do not allow this to happen, they defend themselves against it. And so man drives out the carbon dioxide, and does not allow the plant kingdom to arise within himself. He allows the plant kingdom to arise out of the carbon dioxide in the outside world.

This is a remarkable interplay between the trunk-chest system and the sense physical world around us; for outside there is the kingdom of the vegetables, and the human being is continually having to prevent the process of vegetation from arising within him; if it does arise he must immediately send it out again so that he may not become a plant. Thus, in so far as the chest-trunk system is concerned, man is able to create the counter kingdom to the plant world. If you conceive the plant kingdom as positive, then man produces the negative of the plant kingdom. He produces, as it were, reversed plant kingdom.

What happens when the plant kingdom begins to behave badly in him, and head and limbs have not the power to nip it in the bud, to drive it out? Then the man becomes ill. The internal illnesses which come from the trunk system are ultimately due to this, that a man is too weak to check the plant-like growth as soon as it begins to arise within him. The moment there arises in us even a vestige of plant-like nature, the moment we fail to ensure that the plant kingdom which endeavours to grow in us shall be cast out to form its kingdom outside us—in that moment we become ill. And thus the essential nature of disease must be sought in this tendency towards plant growth in man. Naturally it is not true plants that grow, for after all the human interior is not a very pleasant surrounding for a lily. But through a weakening of the other systems of the trunk there can result a tendency towards the growth of the plant kingdom, and then man becomes ill.

Thus if we look at the whole plant world of man's environment we must say to ourselves: in a certain sense the plant kingdom presents pictures of all our illnesses. It is the wonderful secret in man's relationship to surrounding nature that not only (as we have shown on other occasions) do the plants represent pictures of his development up to adolescence, but in the plants around him, especially in so far as these plants are fruit bearing, he can see the pictures of his illnesses. This is a thing we may perhaps not like to hear, because it is natural to love the plant world aesthetically; and, when the plant unfolds in the world outside, this aesthetic attitude is justified. But the moment the plant seeks to unfold within man, the moment vegetation sets up within him, then what works outside in the many-coloured beautiful plant kingdom, works in man as the cause of illness. Medicine will become a science when it is able to show how each individual illness corresponds with some form in the plant world. Actually it is true that when man breathes out carbonic acid gas, he is, for the sake of his own existence, constantly breathing out the whole of the plant world which wants to arise in him. Hence it need not seem strange to you that when the plant begins to extend—beyond its ordinary plant nature, and produces poisons, these poisons are bound up with the processes of man's health and sickness. At the same time all this is bound up with the normal process of nourishment.

Indeed, nourishment, like the process of breathing, takes place in the chest-trunk system, at least in its initial stages, and must be considered in exactly the same way as breathing. In the processes of nourishment man also takes in substances from the world around him, but he does not leave them as they are; he changes them. He changes them with the help of the oxygen which he breathes in. As man transforms the substances taken up in nourishment, they combine with oxygen. This appears as a process of combustion, and it looks as though the human being were constantly burning within. This moreover is what natural science frequently says, that a process of combustion is going on in the human being. But it is not true. What takes place in the human being is no true process of combustion, but is a process of combustion (notice this carefully)—it is a process of combustion which lacks both beginning and end. It is merely the middle stage of the process of combustion; it lacks the beginning and end of it. The beginning and the end of the process of combustion must never take place in the human body, only the intervening part. It is destructive to the human being if the first stages of the process of combustion, such as take place in the forming of fruit, are carried on in the human organism; for instance when a man eats unripe fruit. The human being cannot carry out this initial process similar to combustion. The human being cannot endure this in himself, it makes him ill. And if he can eat a great deal of unripe fruit, like strong country people for instance, then he must be very closely related to the nature around him, for otherwise he would not be able to digest unripe apples and pears as he can the fruit which has been ripened by the sun. Thus it is only the middle process which he can carry out. In the processes of digestion the human being can only take part in the middle stage of all the combustion processes. Again, if the process is carried to its conclusion, to where, in the outer world, the ripe fruit would rot, the human being can have no part in it. Thus he cannot take part in the end stage either. He must excrete the food stuffs before this stage is reached. It is actually the case that the human being does not carry on the processes of nature as they take place around him, but he only goes through the middle part; within himself he cannot fulfil the beginning or the end.

Now we will look at something most remarkable. Consider breathing. It is the opposite to everything which takes place in the plant world around us. It is in a certain way the anti-plant kingdom. The breathing of man is the anti-plant kingdom, and it is inwardly connected with the process of nourishment which is the middle stage of the combustion process of the outer world. You see, there are two processes in our bodily chest-trunk system; this anti-plant process, which takes place through the breathing, is always at work in connection with the central portion of the other external processes. These two are constantly interrelated in their work. Here, you see, body and soul are combined. That which takes place through the breathing unites with the remaining nature processes, which however, as they take place in man, represent only the middle portion of Nature's processes. And this means that the soul life, which is the anti-plant process, unites with the humanised bodily life, namely the middle portion of the processes of Nature. Science may well search for a long time for the mutual relationship between body and soul unless it seeks it in the mysterious connection between the breath, which has become soul, and the middle part of the processes of Nature, which has become body. These processes of Nature neither arise nor decay in man. They take their rise outside him and only after he has excreted them should they decompose. Man unites himself in body with a central part only of the processes of Nature; and in the breathing processes he fills these Nature processes with soul.

Here there arises that delicate inter-weaving of processes to which the medicine and the hygiene of the future will have to devote very special attention. The hygiene of the future will have to ask: how are the different degrees of warmth interrelated in the world outside? How does warmth act when passing from a cooler place to a warmer, and vice versa? There are warmth processes at work in the external world; how does such a warmth process act in the human organism when this organism is placed into it? Man finds an interplay of air and water in the external process of vegetation. He will have to study how that works on the human being when he is placed in it, and so forth.

With regard to things of this kind the medicine of to-day has only made the very smallest beginning, scarcely even a beginning. When there is an illness the medicine of to-day sets the greatest value on finding the bacilli, the kind of bacteria which causes the illness. Then, when it has found that, it is satisfied. But it is much more important to know how it comes about that, at a particular moment of a man's life, he is prone to develop some suggestion of a vegetative process, so that the bacilli scent a comfortable place of sojourn. The important thing is to keep our bodily constitution in such a condition that it is not an agreeable hostelry for all vegetable pests; if we do this, these gentlemen will not be able to bring about too great a devastation in us.

Now there remains the question: in considering the human being physically in his relation to the outer world, what part do the bony skeleton and muscles really play in the human life process as a whole?

We now come to something which, in the science of today, is hardly regarded at all; but it is absolutely essential that you should grasp it if you want to understand the human being. Please notice what happens when you bend your arm. Through the contraction of the muscle which bends your forearm you are bringing into play a machine-like process. Imagine that it simply comes about in the following way. First of all, you have a position where upper and lower arm (or two corresponding laths or poles) lie in one and the same direction (drawing a).

Then this position (drawing b) represents the bent arm.

Suppose now you stretch a band (c) and then begin to roll it up. This lath here would carry out the movement indicated by the arrow in the drawing. It is a thoroughly machine-like movement. You also carry out mechanical movements of this kind when you bend your knee and when you walk. For in walking the whole mechanism of your body is brought into continuous movement, and forces are continuously at work. They are pre-eminently forces of leverage, but forces are actually at work. Imagine to yourselves that by some kind of photographic trick you could arrange that, when a man was walking, all the forces and nothing of the man, should be photographed; I mean the forces which he applies to raise his knee, to put it down again, to bring the other leg in front.

Nothing of the man would be photographed except the forces. If in the photograph you could see these forces developing, it would be a photograph of a shadow, and even in walking itself you would have a whole series of shadows. You make a great mistake if you believe that you live with your ego in your muscles and flesh. Even when you are awake you do not live with your ego in your muscles and flesh, you live with your ego principally in the shadow which you photograph in this way, in the forces used by your body when it moves. Grotesque though it may sound, when you sit down and press your back against the back of the chair, you live with your ego in the force which is developed in this pressure.

When you stand up you live in the force with which your feet press the ground. You live continually in forces. It is not in the least true that we live with our ego in our visible body. We live with our ego in forces. We only carry our visible body about with us; drag it along with us during our physical earth life until death. Even in the waking condition we live only in a force body. And what does this force body really do? It continually sets itself a peculiar task.

It is true, is it not, that when you are eating you take in all kinds of mineral substances? Even if you do not make your soup very salty, the salt is nevertheless in the food, and you are taking in mineral substance. It is necessary that you should take in mineral substance. What do you do with it? Your head cannot do much with it. Neither can your trunk-chest system. But your limb system prevents these mineral substances from taking on their own crystal forms in you. If you did not develop the forces of your limb system, then when you ate salt you would become a salt crystal. Your limb system, your skeleton and your muscular system have a constant tendency to work against the mineral formation of the earth, that is, to dissolve the minerals. The forces which dissolve the minerals in the human being come from the limb system. If a morbid disturbance goes beyond the merely vegetable process, that is, if the body has the tendency not only to allow plant life to appear, but also the process of mineral crystallisation, then a more severe, a more destructive form of illness is set up; for instance, diabetes. Then the body is not able to apply the force of the limbs which it receives from the universe to dissolve the mineral. In reality it should be constantly dissolving the mineral. If to-day men cannot master those forms of illness which arise from unhealthy mineralisation in the human body, it is largely because we cannot adequately apply the antidote which we must find in connection with the sense organs, the brain, the nerve fibres, etc. In order to overcome gout, diabetes and similar illnesses, we ought to be able to use in some form the apparent substances (* German: Scheinstoge)—I call them apparent substances advisedly—we ought to use this decaying matter, which is in the sense organs, in the brain and nerves. What is really healing for humanity in this sphere will only be reached when the relationship between man and nature has been thoroughly investigated from the point of view which I have given you to-day.

The human body is only to be explained when we know the processes that take place in it: when we know that the human being must dissolve within him the mineral, must reverse within him the plant kingdom, must raise above him, that is, must spiritualise, the animal kingdom. And all that a teacher ought to know about the evolution of the body has—as its foundation—what I have placed before you here in these anthropological, anthroposophical considerations.

Your task is to gain an insight into what the human being really is. Up to now in our survey of general pedagogy we have endeavoured to comprehend this nature of man first of all from the point of view of the soul and then from that of the spirit. To-day we will continue from the latter point of view. We shall of course continually have to refer to the conceptions of pedagogy, psychology and the life of the soul, which are current in the world to-day; for in course of time you will have to read and digest the books which are published on pedagogy and psychology, as far as you have time and leisure to do so.

If we consider the human being from the point of view of the soul, we lay chief stress on discovering antipathies and sympathies within the laws which govern the world; but if we consider the human being from the spiritual point of view, we must lay the chief stress on discovering the conditions of consciousness. Now yesterday we concerned ourselves with the three conditions of consciousness which hold sway in the human being: namely, the full waking consciousness, dreaming and sleeping: and we showed how the full waking consciousness is really only present in thinking-cognition; dreaming in feeling; and sleeping in willing.

All comprehension is really a question of relating one thing to another: the only way we can comprehend things in the world is by relating them to each other. I wish to make this statement concerning method at the outset. When we place ourselves into a knowing relationship with the world, we are first of all observing. Either we observe with our senses, as we do in ordinary life, or we develop ourselves somewhat further and observe with soul and spirit, as we can do in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. But spiritual observation too is “observation,” and all observation requires to be completed by our comprehension or conception. But we can only comprehend if we relate one thing to another in the universe and in our environment. You can form good conceptions of body, soul and spirit if you have the whole course of human life clearly before you. Only you must take into account that in this relating of things to each other, as I shall now explain, you have only the rudiments of comprehension. You will need to develop further the conceptions you arrive at in this manner.

For instance if you consider the child as he first comes into the world, if you observe his physical form, his movements, his expressions, his crying, his baby talk and so on—you will get a picture which is chiefly of the human body. But this picture will only be complete if you relate it to the middle age, and old age of the human being. In the middle age the human being is more predominantly soul, and in old age he is most spiritual. This last statement can easily be contended. People will certainly come and say: “But a great many old people become quite feeble-minded.” A favourite objection of materialism to those who speak of the soul and the spirit is that people get feeble-minded in old age, and, with true consistency, the materialists argue that even such a great man as Kant became feeble-minded in his old age. The statement of the materialists and the fact are quite right. Only they do not prove what they set out to prove. For even Kant, when he stood before the gate of death, was wiser than in his childhood; only in childhood his body was capable of receiving all that came out of his wisdom, and thereby it could become conscious in his physical life. But in old age the body became incapable of receiving what the spirit was giving it. The body was no longer a proper instrument for the spirit. Therefore on the physical plane Kant could no longer come to a consciousness of what lived in his spirit. In spite of the apparent force of the above-mentioned argument, then, we must be quite clear that in old age men become wise and spiritual and that they come near to the Spirits. Therefore in the case of people who, right into their old age, can preserve elasticity and life power for their spirit, we must recognise the beginnings of spiritual qualities. For there are such possibilities.

In Berlin there were once two professors. One was Michelet the disciple of Hegel, who was over ninety years old. And as he was considerably gifted he only got as far as being Honorary Professor, but although he was so old he still gave lectures Then there was another called Zeller, the historian of Greek philosophy. Compared with Michelet he was a mere boy, for he was only seventy. But everybody said how he was feeling the burden of age, how he could no longer give lectures, or, in any case, was always wishing to have them reduced. To this Michelet always said: “I can't understand Zeller; I could give lectures all day long, but Zeller, though still in his youth, is always saying that it is getting too much of a strain for him!” So you see one may find isolated examples only of what I have stated about the spirit in old age; yet it really is so.

If, on the other hand, we observe the characteristics of the human being in middle age, we shall get a first basis for our observations of the soul. For this reason, too, a man in middle life is more able, as it were, to belie the soul element. He can appear to be either soulless or very much imbued with soul. For the soul element lies within the freedom of man, even in education. The fact that many people are very soulless in middle life does not prove that middle age is not the age of the soul. If you compare the bodily nature of the child—kicking and sprawling and performing unconscious actions—with the quiet contemplative bodily nature of old age, you have on the one hand a body that shows its bodily side predominantly, in the child, and on the other hand you have a body that as it were withdraws its bodily side in old age, a body that to a certain degree belies its own bodily nature.

Now if we turn our attention more to the soul life we shall say: the human being bears within him thinking-cognition feeling and willing. When we observe a child the impression we get of the child's soul shows a close connection between willing and feeling. We might say that willing and feeling have grown together in the child. When the child kicks and tumbles about he is making movements which precisely correspond to his feelings at the moment; he is not capable of keeping his movements and his feelings separate.

With an old man the opposite is the case: thinking-cognition and feeling have grown together within him, and willing stands apart, independently. Thus human life runs its course in such a way that feeling, which is at first bound up with willing, gradually frees itself from it. And a good deal of education is concerned with this, with this freeing of the feeling from the will. Then the feeling which has been freed from willing unites itself with thinking-cognition. And this is the concern of later life. We can only prepare the child rightly for his later life if we bring about the proper release of feeling from willing; then in a later period of life as a grown man or woman he will be able to unite this released feeling with thinking-cognition, and thus be fitted for his life. Why is it that we listen to an old man, even when he is relating his life history? It is because in the course of his life he has united his personal feeling with his concepts and ideas. He is not telling us theories: he is really telling us about the feelings which he personally has been able to unite with his ideas and concepts. With the old man, who has really united his feelings with thinking-cognition, the concepts and ideas ring true; they are filled with warmth, and permeated with reality; they sound concrete and personal. Whilst with those who have ceased to develop beyond the stage of middle-aged manhood or womanhood the concepts and ideas sound theoretical, abstract, scientific. It is an essential factor of human life that the evolution of soul powers runs a certain course; for the feeling-willing of the child develops into the feeling-thinking of the old man. Human life lies between the two, and we can only give an education befitting this human life when our study of the soul includes this knowledge.

Now we must take notice that something arises straight-away whenever we begin to observe the world—indeed in all psychologies it is described as the first thing that occurs in observation of the external world; and that is sensation. When any one of our senses comes into touch with the environment, it has a sensation. We have sensations of colour, tones, warmth and cold. Thus sensation enters into our contact with our environment.

But you cannot get a true conception of sensation from the way it is described in current books on psychology. When the psychologists speak of sensation they say: in the external world a certain physical process is going on, vibrations in the light ether or waves in the air; this streams on to our sense organ and stimulates it. People speak of stimulus, and they hold to the expression they form, but will not make it comprehensible. For through the sense organ the stimulus releases sensation in our souls, the wholly qualitative sensation which is caused by the physical process (for example by the vibration of air waves in hearing). But how this comes about neither psychology nor present-day science can tell us. This is what we generally find in psychological books.

You will be brought nearer to an understanding of these things than you will by these psychological ideas, if, having insight into the nature of sensations themselves, you can yourself answer the question: to which of the soul forces is sensation really most closely related? Psychologists make light of it; they glibly connect sensation with cognition, without more ado, and say: first we have a sensation, then we perceive, then we make mental pictures, form concepts and so on. This indeed is what the process appears at first to be. But this explanation leaves out of account what the nature of sensation really is.

If we consider it with a sufficient amount of self-observation we shall recognise that sensation is really of a will nature with some element of feeling nature woven into it. It is not really related to thinking-cognition, but rather to feeling-willing or willing-feeling. It is of course impossible to be acquainted with all the countless psychologies there are in the world to-day, and I do not know how many of them have grasped anything of the relationship between sensation and willing-feeling or feeling-willing. It would not be quite exact to say that sensation is related to willing; rather it is related to willing-feeling or feeling-willing. But there is at least one psychologist, Moritz Benedikt of Vienna, who especially distinguished himself by his power of observation, and who recognised in his psychology that sensation is related to feeling.

Other psychologists certainly set very little store by this psychology of Moritz Benedikt, and it is true that there is something rather peculiar about it. Firstly, Moritz Benedikt is by vocation a criminal-anthropologist; and he proceeds to write a book on psychology. Secondly, he is a naturalist—and writes about the importance of poetic works of art in education, in fact he analyses poetic works of art to show how they can be used in education. What a dreadful thing! The man sets up to be a scientist, and actually imagines that psychologists have something to learn from the poets! And thirdly, this man is a Jewish naturalist, a scientific Jew, and he writes a book on Psychology and deliberately dedicates it to Laurenz Mullner, a priest, the Catholic philosopher of the theological faculty in the University of Vienna (for he still held this post at that time). Three frightful things, which make it quite impossible for the professional psychologists to take the man seriously. But if you were to read his books on psychology, you would find so many single apt ideas, that you would get much from them, although you would have to repudiate the structure of his psychology as a whole, his whole materialistic way of thought—for such it is indeed. You would get nothing at all from the book as a whole, but a great deal from single observations within it. Thus you must seek the best in the world wherever it is to be found. If you are a good observer of details, but are put off by the general tendency of Moritz Benedikt's work, you need therefore not necessarily repudiate the wise observations that he makes.

Thus sensation, as it appears within the human being, is willing-feeling or feeling-willing. Therefore we must say that where man's sense sphere spreads itself externally—for we bear our senses on the periphery of our body, if I may express it rather crudely—there some form of feeling-willing and willing-feeling is to be found. If we draw a diagram of the human being (and please note it is only a diagram) we have here on the outer surface, in the sphere of the senses, willing-feeling and feeling-willing. (see drawing further on) What then do we do on this surface when feeling-willing and willing-feeling is present, in so far as this surface of the body is the sphere of the senses? We perform an activity which is half-sleeping, half dreaming; we might even call it a dreaming-sleeping, a sleeping-dreaming. For we do not only sleep in the night, we are continually asleep on the periphery, on the external surface of our body, and the reason why we as human beings do not entirely comprehend our sensations, is because in these regions where the sensations are to be found we are only dreaming in sleep, or sleeping in dreams. The psychologists have no notion that what prevents them from understanding the sensations is the same thing as prevents us from bringing our dreams into clear consciousness when we wake in the morning. You see, the concepts of sleeping and dreaming have a meaning which differs entirely from that we would give them in ordinary life. All we know about sleeping in ordinary life is that when we are in bed at night we go to sleep. We have no idea that this sleeping extends much further, and that we are always sleeping on the surface of the body, although this sleeping is constantly being penetrated by dreams. These “dreams” are the sensations of the senses, before they are taken hold of by the intellect and by thinking-cognition.

You must seek out the sphere of willing and feeling in the child's senses also. This is why we insist so strongly in these lectures that while educating intellect we must also work continually on the will. For in all that the child looks at and perceives we must also cultivate will and feeling; otherwise we shall really be contradicting the child's sensations. It is only when we address an old man, a man in the evening of his life, that we can think of the sensations as having already been transformed. In the case of the old man sensation has already passed over from feeling-willing to feeling-thinking or thinking-feeling. Sensations have been somewhat changed within him. They have more of the nature of thought and have lost the restless nature of will—they have become more calm. Only in old age can we say that sensations approach the realm of concepts and ideas.

Most psychologists do not make this fine distinction in sensations. For them the sensations of old age are the same as those of the child, for sensations for them are simply sensations. That is about as logical as to say: the razor (Rasermesser) is a knife (Messer), so let us cut our meat with it, for a knife is a knife. This is taking the concept from the verbal explanation. This we should never do, but rather take the concept from the facts. We should then discover that sensation has life, that it develops, and in the child it has more of a will nature, in the old man more of an intellectual nature. Of course it is much easier to deduce everything from words; it is for this reason that we have so many people who can make definitions, some of which can have a terrible effect on you.

On one occasion I met a schoolfellow of mine, after we had for some time been separated and had gone our several ways. We had been at the same primary school together; I then went to the Grammar School (Realschule) and he to the Teachers' Training College, and what is more to a Hungarian College—and that meant something in the seventies. After some years we met and had a conversation about light. I had already learnt what could be learnt in ordinary physics, that light has something to do with ether waves, and so on. This could at least be regarded as a cause of light. My former schoolfellow then added: “We have also learnt what light is. Light is the cause of sight!” A hotchpotch of words! It is thus that concepts become mere verbal explanations. And we can imagine what sort of things the pupils were told when we learn that the gentleman in question had later to teach a large number of pupils, until at last he was pensioned off. We must get away from the words and come to the spirit of things. If we want to understand something we must not immediately think of the word each time, but we must seek the real connections. If we look up the derivation of the word Geist (spirit) in Fritz Mauthner's History of Language to discover what its original form was, we shall find it is related to Gischt (“froth” or “effervescence”) and to “gas.” These relationships do exist, but we should not get very far by simply building on them. But unfortunately this method is covertly applied to the Bible and therefore with most people, and especially present-day theologies, the Bible is less understood than any other book.

The essential thing is that we should always proceed according to facts, and not endeavour to get a conception of spirit from the derivation of the word, but by comparing the life in the body of a child with the life in the body of an old person. By means of this connecting of one fact with another we get true conception.

And thus we can only get a true conception of sensation if we know that it is able to arise as willing-feeling or feeling-willing in the bodily periphery of the child, because compared with the more human inward side of the child's being this bodily periphery is asleep and dreaming in its sleep. Thus you are not only fully awake in thinking-cognition, but you are also only awake in the inner sphere of your body. At the periphery or surface of the body you are perpetually asleep. And further: that which takes place in the environment, or rather on the surface of the body, takes place in a similar way in the head, and increases in intensity the further we go into the human being into the blood and muscle elements. Here, too, man is asleep and also dreaming. On the surface man is asleep and dreaming, and again towards the inner part of his body he is asleep and dreaming. Therefore what is more of a soul nature, willing-feeling, feeling-willing, our life of desires and so on, remain in the inner part of our body in a dreaming sleep.

Where then are we fully awake? In the intervening zone, when we are entirely wakeful. Now you see that we are proceeding from a spiritual point of view, by applying the facts of waking and sleeping to man even in a spatial way, and by relating this to his physical form so that we can say: from a spiritual point of view the human being is so constituted that at the surface of the body and in his central organs he is asleep and can only be really awake in the intervening zone, during his life between birth and death. Now what are the organs that are specially developed in this intervening region?

Those organs, especially in the head, that we call nerves, the nerve apparatus. This nerve apparatus sends its shoots into the zone of the outer surface and also into the inner region where they again disperse as they do on the surface: and between the two there are middle zones such as the brain, the spinal cord and the solar plexus. Here we have the opportunity of being really awake. Where the nerves are most developed, there we are most awake. But the nervous system has a peculiar relationship to the spirit. It is a system of organs which through the functions of the body continually has the tendency to decay and finally to become mineral. If in a living human being you could liberate his nerve system from the rest of the gland-muscle-blood nature and bony nature—you could even leave the bony system with the nerves—then this nerve system in the living human being would already be a corpse, perpetually a corpse. In the nerve system the dying element in man is always at work. The nerve system is the only system that has no connection whatever with soul and spirit. Blood, muscles, and so on always have a direct connection with soul and spirit. The nerve system has no direct connection with these: the only way in which it has such a connection at all is by constantly leaving the human organisation, by not being present within it, because it is continually decaying. The other members are alive, and can therefore form direct connections with the soul and spirit; the nerve system is continually dying out, and is continually saying to the human being: “You can evolve because I am setting up no obstacle, because I see to it that I with my life am not there at all.” That is the peculiar thing about it. In psychology and physiology you find the following put forward; the organ that acts as a medium for sensation, thinking and the whole soul and spirit element, is the nerve system. But how does it come to be this medium? Only by continually expelling itself from life, so that it does not offer any obstacles to thinking and sensation, forms no connections with thinking and sensation, and in that place where it is it leaves the human being “empty” in favour of the soul and spirit, Actually there are hollow spaces for the spirit and soul where the nerves are. Therefore spirit and soul can enter in where these hollow spaces are. We must be grateful to the nerve system that it does not trouble about soul and spirit, and does not do all that is ascribed to it by the physiologists and psychologists. For if it did this, if for five minutes only the nerves did what the physiologists and psychologists describe them as doing, then in these five minutes we should know nothing about the world nor about ourselves; in fact we should be asleep. For the nerves would then act like those organs which bring about sleeping, which bring about feeling-willing, willing-feeling.

Indeed it is no easy matter to state the truth about physiology and psychology to-day, for people always say: “You are standing the world on its head.” The truth is that the world is already standing on its head, and we have to set it on its legs again by means of spiritual science. The physiologists say that the organs of thinking are the nerves, and especially the brain. The truth is that the brain and nerve system can only have anything to do with thinking-cognition through the fact that they are constantly shutting themselves off from the human organisation and thereby allowing thinking-cognition to develop.

Now you must attend very carefully to what I am going to say, and please bring all your powers of understanding to bear upon it. In the environment of man, where the sphere of the senses is, there are real processes at work which play their part unceasingly in the life of the world. Let us suppose that light is working upon the human being through the eye. In the eye, that is, in the sphere of the senses, a real process is at work, a physical-chemical process is taking place. This continues into the inner part of the human body, and finally indeed into that inner part where, once again, physical-chemical processes take place (the dark shading in the drawing). Now imagine that you are standing opposite an illumined surface and that rays of light are falling from this surface into your eye. There again physical-chemical processes arise, which are continued into the muscle and blood nature within the human being. In between there remains a vacant zone. In this vacant zone, which has been left empty by the nerve organ, no independent processes are developed such as that in the eye or in the inner nature of the human being; but there enters what is outside: the nature of light, the nature of colour. Thus, at the surface of our bodies where the senses are, we have material processes which are dependent on the eye, the ear, the organs which can receive warmth and so on: similar processes also take place in the inner sphere of the human being. But not in between, where the nerves spread themselves out: they leave the space free, there we can live with what is outside us. Your eye changes the light and colour. But where your nerves are, where as regards life there is only hollow space, there light and colour do not change, and you yourself are experiencing light and colour. It is only with regard to the sphere of the senses that you are separated from the external world: within, as in a shell, you yourself live with the external processes. Here you yourself become light, you become sound, the processes have free play because the nerves form no obstacle as blood and muscle do.

Now we get some feeling of how significant this is: we are awake in a part of our being which in contrast to other living parts may be described as a hollow space, whilst at the external surface and in the inner sphere we are dreaming in sleep, and sleeping in dreams. We are only fully awake in a zone which lies between the outer and inner spheres. This is true in respect to space.

But in considering the human being from a spiritual point of view we must also bring the time element of his life into relationship with waking, sleeping and dreaming. You learn something, you take it in and it passes into your full waking consciousness. Whilst you are occupying yourself with this thing and thinking about it, it is in your full waking consciousness. Then you return to your ordinary life. Other things claim your interest and attention. Now what happens to what you have just learnt, to what was occupying your attention? It begins to fall asleep; and when you remember it again, it awakens again. You will only get the right point of view about all these things when you substitute real conceptions for all the rigmarole's you read in psychology books about remembering and forgetting. What is remembering? It is the awakening of a complex of mental pictures. And what is forgetting? It is the falling asleep of the complex of mental pictures. Here you can compare real things with real experiences, here you have no mere verbal definitions. If you ponder over waking and sleeping, if you look at your own experience or another's on falling asleep, you have a real process before you. You relate forgetting, this inner soul activity, to this real process—not to any word—and you compare the two and say: forgetting is only falling asleep in another sphere, and remembering is only waking up in another sphere.

Only so can you come to a spiritual understanding of the world, by comparing realities with realities. Just as you have to compare childhood with old age to find the real relationship between body and soul, at least the elements of it, so in the same way you can compare remembering and forgetting by relating it to something real, to falling asleep and waking up.

It is this that will be so infinitely necessary to the future of mankind; that men accustom themselves to enter into reality. People think almost exclusively in words today; they do not think in real terms. How could a present-day man get at this conception of awakening which is the reality about memory? In the sphere of mere words he can hear of all kinds of ways of defining memory; but it will not occur to him to find out these things from the reality, from the thing itself.

Therefore you will understand that when people hear of something like the Threefold Organism of the State, which springs entirely out of reality and not out of abstract conceptions, they find it incomprehensible at first because they are quite unaccustomed to produce things out of reality. They do not connect any of their conceptions with getting things out of reality. And the people who do this least are the Socialist leaders in their theories; they represent the last word, the last stage of decadence in the realm of verbal explanations. These are the people who most of all believe that they understand something of reality, but when they begin to talk they make use of the veriest husks of words.

This was only an interpolation with reference to the current trend of our times. But the teacher must understand also the times in which he lives, for he has to understand the children who out of these very times are entrusted to him for their education.

Speech Exercises:

Slinging slanging a swindler
the wounding fooled a victor vexed
The wounding fooled a swindler
slinging slanging vexed

March smarten ten
clap rigging rockets
Crackling plopping lynxes
fling from forward forth

Crackling plopping lynxes
fling from forward forth
March smarten ten
clap rigging rockets

RUDOLF STEINER: With this exercise you should share the recitation, like a relay race, coming in quickly one after the other. One begins, points to another to carry on, and so on.

Someone spoke about the ellipse, the hyperbola, the circle, the lemniscate, and the conception of geometrical loci. At the same time he mentioned how the lemniscate (Cassini curve) can take on the form III, in the diagram, where the one branch of the curve leaves space and enters space again as the other branch.

RUDOLF STEINER: This has an inner organic correlate. The two parts have the same relation to each other as the pineal gland to the heart. The one branch is situated in the head—the pineal gland, the other lies in the breast—the heart. Only the pineal gland is more weakly developed, the heart is stronger.

Someone spoke on a historical theme—the migrations of various peoples.

RUDOLF STEINER: The causes assigned to such migrations very often depend on the explanations of historical facts. As to the actual migrations—for example, the march of the Goths—at the root of the matter, you will find that the Romans had the money and the Germanic peoples had none, and at every frontier there was a tendency among the Germanic peoples to try to acquire Roman money one way or another. Because of this, they became mercenaries and the like. Whole legions of the Germanic peoples entered into Roman hire. The migration of the people was an economic matter. This was the only thing that made the spread of Christianity possible, but the migrations as such began, nevertheless, with the avarice of the Germanic peoples who wanted to acquire Roman money. The Romans of course were also impoverished by this. This was already the case as early as the march of the Cimbri. The Cimbri were told that the Romans had money, whereas they themselves were poor. This had a powerful effect on the Cimbri. “We want gold,” they cried, “Roman gold!”

There are still various race strata—even Celtic traces. Today there are definite echoes of the Celtic language—for example, at the sources of the Danube, Brig and Breg, Brigach, and Brege, and wherever you find the suffix ach in the place names such as Unterach, Dornach, and so on. Ach comes from a word meaning a “small stream” (related to aqua), and points to a Celtic origin. “Ill,” too, and other syllables remind us of the old Celtic language. The Germanic language subsequently overlaid the Celtic.

[Rudolf Steiner referred to the contrast between Arians and Athanasians.¹]

There is something connected with the history of these migrations that is very important to explain to the children—that is, that it was very different for the migrating peoples to come into districts that were already fully developed agriculturally. In the case of the Germanic peoples, such as the Goths in Spain and Italy, they found that all the land was being cultivated already. The Goths and other ethnic groups arrived but soon disappeared. They became absorbed by the other nations who were there before them. The Franks, on the other hand, preferred to go to the West, and arrived in districts not yet fully claimed for agriculture, and they continued to exist as Franks. Nothing remained of the Goths who settled where the land was all already owned. The Franks were able to preserve their nationality because they had migrated into untilled areas. That is a very important historical law. You can refer to this law again later in relation to the configuration of North America. There, it is true that the Red Indians were almost exterminated, but it was also true, nevertheless, that people could migrate into uncultivated districts.

It is also important to explain the difference between such things as, for example, the France of Charles the Great and the state of a later time. If you are unaware of this difference, you cannot cross the Rubicon of the fifteenth century. The empire of Charles the Great was not yet a state. How was it for the Merovingians? Initially they were no more than large-scale landowners. The only thing that mattered to them was civil law. As time passed, this product of the old Germanic conditions of ownership became the Roman idea of “rights,” whereby those who were merely administrators gradually acquired power. And so, by degrees, property went to the administrative authorities, the public officials, and the state arose only when these authorities became the ruling power later. The state, therefore, originated through the claims of the administration. The “count nobility” arose as the antithesis of “prince nobility.” The word Graf (count) has the same origin as “graphologist” or “scribe.” It is derived from graphein, to write. The “count” is the Roman scribe, the administrator, whereas the “prince nobility,” originally the warrior nobility, is still associated with bravery, heroism, and similar qualities. The prince (Fürst) is “first,” the foremost one. And so this transition from Fürst to Graf (prince to count) marked the rise of the concept of “state.” This can of course be made very clear by using examples such as these.

Someone described how he would introduce the spread of Christianity among the Germanic peoples.

RUDOLF STEINER: Arian Christianity, expressed in practical life, is very similar to later Protestantism, except that it was less abstract and more concrete. During the first and second centuries the Mithras cult was very widespread among Roman soldiers on the Rhine and the Danube, especially among the officers. In what is now Alsace and elsewhere, Thor, Wotan, and Saxnot were worshipped as the three principal gods of the ancient Germanic people, and the old Germanic religious rites and ceremonies were used.²

We could describe many scenes that demonstrate how the little churches were built in Alsace and the Black Forest by the Roman clerics. “We want to do this or that for Odin” sang the men. The women sang, “Christ came for those who do nothing by themselves.” This trick was actually used to spread Christianity—that by doing nothing one could achieve salvation.

Eiche (the oak), in the old Germanic cult-language, designates the priest of Donar. During the time of Boniface it was still considered very important that the formulas were still known. Boniface knew how to gain possession of some of these formulas; he knew the magic word, but the priest of Donar no longer knew it. Boniface, through his higher power, felled the priest of Donar—the “Donar-oak”—by means of his “axe,” the magic word. The priest died of grief; he perished through the “fire from Heaven.” These are images of imagination. Several generations later this was all transformed into the well-known picture.

You must learn to “read” pictures of this kind, and thus through learning to teach, and through teaching to learn.

Boniface romanized Germanic Christianity. Charles the Great’s biography was written by Eginhard, and Eginhard is a flatterer.

Music teaching was spoken about.

RUDOLF STEINER: Those who are less advanced in music should at least be present when you teach the more advanced students, even if they do not take part and merely listen. You can always separate them later as a last resort. There will be many other subjects in which the situation will be just as bad, in which it will be impossible for the more advanced students to work with those who are backward. This will not happen as often if we keep trying to find the right methods. But due to a variety of circumstances, such things are not obvious now. When you really teach according to our principles you will discover that the difficulties, usually unnoticed, will appear not only in music lessons, but in other subjects as well—for example, in drawing and painting. You will find it very difficult to help some of the children in artistic work, and also in the plastic arts, in modeling.

Here, too, you should try not to be too quick to separate the children, but try to wait until they can no longer work together.

,em>Someone spoke about teaching poetry in French and English [foreign language] lessons.

RUDOLF STEINER: We must stay strictly with speaking a certain amount of English and French with the children right from the beginning—not according to old-fashioned methods, but so that they learn to appreciate both languages and get a feeling for the right expressions in each.

When a student in the second, third, or fourth grade breaks down over recitation, you must help in a kind and gentle way, so that the child trusts you and doesn’t lose courage. The child’s good will must also be aroused for such tasks.

The lyric-epic element in poetry is suitable for children between twelve and fifteen years of age, for example, ballads or outstanding passages from historical writings, good prose extracts, and selected scenes from plays.

Then in the fourth grade we begin Latin, and in the sixth grade Greek for those who want it, and in this way they can get a three-year course. If we could enlarge the school we would begin Latin and Greek together. We shall have to see how we can manage to relieve children who are learning Latin and Greek of some of their German. This can be done very easily, because much of the grammar can be dealt with in Latin and Greek, which would otherwise come into the German lessons. There can also be various other ways.

C was pronounced “K” in old Latin; and in medieval Latin, which was a spoken language, it was C as in “cease.” The ancient Romans had many dialects in their empire. We can call Cicero “Sisero” because in the Middle Ages it was still pronounced like that. We can’t speak of what is “right” in pronunciation because it is something quite conventional. The method of teaching classical languages can be similarly constructed; here, however, with the exception of what I referred to this morning,³ it is usually possible to use the normal contemporary curricula, because they originated in the best educational periods of the Middle Ages, and they still contain much that has pedagogical value for teaching Latin and Greek. Today’s curricula still copy from the old, which makes good sense.

You should avoid one thing, however: the use of the little doggerel verses composed for memorizing the rules of grammar. To the people of today they seem rather childish, and when they are translated into German they are just too clumsy. You must try to avoid these, but otherwise such methods are not at all bad.

Sculpting should begin before the ninth year. With sculpture too, you should work from the forms—spheres first, then other forms, and so on.

Someone asked whether reports should be provided.

RUDOLF STEINER: As long as children remain in the same school, what is the purpose of writing reports? Provide them when they leave school. Constant reports are not vitally important to education. Remarks about various individual subjects could be given freely and without any specific form.

Necessary communication with the parents is in some cases also a kind of grading, but that cannot be entirely avoided. It may also prove necessary, for example, for a pupil to stay in the same grade and repeat the year’s work (something we should naturally handle somewhat differently than is usual); this may be necessary occasionally, but in our way of teaching it should be avoided whenever possible. Let’s make it our practice to correct our students so that they are really helped by the correction.

In arithmetic, for example, if we do not stress what the child cannot do, but instead work with the student so that in the end the child can do it—following the opposite of the principle used until now—then “being unable” to do something will not play the large role it now does. Thus in our whole teaching, the passion for passing judgment that teachers acquire by marking grades for the children every day in a notebook should be transformed into an effort to help the children over and over, every moment. Do away with all your grades and placements. If there is something that the student cannot do, the teachers should give themselves the bad mark as well as the pupil, because they have not yet succeeded in teaching the student how to do it.

Reports have a place, as I have said, as communication with the parents and to meet the demand of the outside world; in this sense we must follow the usual custom. I don’t need to enlarge on this, but in school we must make it felt that reports are very insignificant to us. We must spread this feeling throughout the school so that it becomes a kind of moral atmosphere.

You now have a picture of the school, because we have been through the whole range of subjects, with one exception; we still have to speak about how to incorporate technical subjects into school. We have not spoken of this yet, merely because there was no one there to do the work. I refer to needlework, which must still be included in some way. This must be considered, but until now there was no one who could do it. Of course it will also be necessary to consider the practical organization of the school; I must speak with you about who should teach the various classes, whether certain lessons should be given in the morning or afternoon, and so on. This must be discussed before we begin teaching. Tomorrow will be the opening festival, and then we will find time, either tomorrow or the day after, to discuss what remains concerning the practical distribution of work. We will have a final conference for this purpose where those most intimately concerned will be present. I shall then also have more to say about the opening ceremony.

• 1. Athanasian refers to the doctrine of Saint Athanasius, or Athanasius the Great (c. 293–373), who was a Greek theologian and prelate in Egypt. Throughout his life he opposed Arianism and became known as the “Father of Orthodoxy.” He was exiled three times by Roman emperors for his stand; he wrote Four Orations against the Arians but not the Athanasian Creed (written after the fifth century), which espouses his teachings on the Trinity. The Arian doctrine, on the other hand, has to do with Arius (c. 250–336), also a Greek ecclesiastic in Alexandria, who taught a Neoplatonic doctrine that God is alone and unknowable, the creator of every being, including the Christ. Emperor Constantine I formed the Council of Nicaea in 325 to declare Arianism a heresy.
• 2. This is a reference to Steiner’s lectures on the history of the Middle Ages, given in the Workers’ College in Berlin between October 18 and December 20, 1904 Geschichte des Mittelalters bis zu den großen Erfindungen und Entdeckungen (GA 51).
• 3. See morning lecture pp. 189–190.