The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A teacher asks if the school should set up a public first-aid station since bandages and so forth would then be cheaper.

Dr. Steiner: I think we will have to buy those things by the case ourselves. Without doubt, it would be desirable if we had a room where we could take the children. On the other hand, it would not be so desirable if people from outside mixed in with that. There is no real value in that. It is good to have Dr. Kolisko here. The faculty should take care of that. Obviously, this can’t happen a couple of times every day, but with three hundred children, minor things will happen where we need a bandaging room we can sterilize and disinfect. Perhaps something will happen once a week, and it will be sufficient if we have a room. I think it is important that we have a doctor on the faculty, but the more we can close ourselves off from the outer world, the better it is. We should try to obtain bandaging material cheaply.

I had thought that there would be a number of questions. As I already said, we have generally made great progress. In the first year it was apparent that you struggled with the subject matter, but you made progress in all areas. What is important though, is what kind of progress you made and that in the coming years we work more with those ideas that are consistent with and related to the Waldorf School. I believe that progress lies in what the students have learned, as well as what the teachers have slowly discovered about how to treat the students. Everything has progressed, even the pranksters. The pranksters have become strong pranksters, but that doesn’t hurt anything. That is simply a side effect. Many have even become better behaved, more cultivated, more intellectual. That is very good and hurts nothing.

In my opinion, we must put more value upon psychology in the future. We must work with psychology. You should not understand that as abstractly or theoretically as it may appear. That might look as though we wanted to analyze the children. When we become accustomed to understanding the children psychologically, we will slowly find a relationship to them that results purely from our activity. That understanding of the children will not remain as a mere recognition, but will become another relationship if you really try to understand them. There is still much we need to catch up on in creating a proper relationship to the children. We need to be clear that when so much depends upon personal activities, as it does here, an intensive analytical understanding of the children is necessary. Then things that have occurred in the past will no longer happen.

It is difficulty to characterize individual cases, but that is not necessary. We should act psychologically. If you think about that, you will discover what I mean. I don’t so much mean that the children must achieve this or that, but that you ask yourselves what the children can achieve in accordance with their psychological makeup. Always work from the standpoint of the children. You can change individual behavior only if you really try to understand children in their different variations. Each child is interesting.

Miss Lang showed me a prankster, B.N. She had cried terribly, but today she skipped school again. That is interesting, and we will have to study it. I cannot promise she will keep her word. It may last for years. I can imagine that she spent some time with tightrope walkers; that is certainly a reason for being interested in her, isn’t it? If you create expectations about what a child is, you can easily define things. However, you can achieve a genuine psychological understanding of a child only through intense study. One of my thoughts is that we should consider learning to understand the children as one of the main things in the first year. We should never assume they must be one way or another.

There is something else that strongly disturbs me in nearly all classes. We should continually strive to integrate anthroposophy organically in the instruction. That truly enlivens the children’s strengths. Just the way that you, Dr. von Heydebrand, have done in anthropology and you, Dr. Stein, have done in history. That is something that is present intuitively with many of you. You cannot do eurythmy without Anthroposophy. You need to try to bring Anthroposophy into your teaching without teaching anything theoretical.

In my opinion, you include a great deal of Anthroposophy when you attempt, and that is the ideal, to bring what we call rhythm into your work. For instance, when you try to connect what the students learn in music, singing, and eurythmy with handwork. That has an extremely positive effect on the children. I would recommend that you read Karl Bücher’s book Work and Rhythm. We should have this book. All work is based upon musical work, threshing, blacksmithing, plastering. Today, you hardly hear that anymore. But if you had gone out into the country at an earlier time and listened to the threshing, you would have heard the flails swinging in rhythm. I think we can bring that into our work. That is what I mean when I talk about bringing the spirit into it. You will find that principle in Work and Rhythm, even though he states it rather pedantically.

Of course, I am also carrying the question about the end of school, about the closing ceremony. I definitely think it should include a certain amount of festivities. Today is the twenty-third, and I will not be able to attend. I simply cannot be there, though I surely would like to be. We need to begin the summer holidays on time. In my opinion, the teachers have done enough, and they will collapse otherwise. I would really like to be at the closing ceremony. Each teacher should give a short speech. Perhaps Mr. Baumann would be kind enough to take care of the musical part. Perhaps you could write something that could be presented through eurythmy, not a normal eurythmy presentation, but something that represents the close of school. It would be really wonderful if we could do that. Begin with a eurythmy presentation accompanied by music. Then go on into a musical presentation alone and close with eurythmy again. I would suggest your composition be connected with the closing of school. Perhaps Miss Röhrle could do something with two or three of the older girls. Then we must have something, and this is very important to me, that is a kind of speech about life, to let the children go and to receive them again. Something that has a connection with the children’s leaving school and their return.

Someone had written on a blackboard, “The sky is blue, the weather is nice, we want to go for a walk, dear teacher.” Dr. Steiner was rather angry about that.

Dr. Steiner: You haven’t seen that? Sometimes when the weather is too hot, you can let the children go. I don’t think it would be right to close earlier, though. I am not in favor of letting the children go as long as we can keep them here. We let them go earlier than we really should. We can, of course, make it easier for the children, but only when it is too warm. It would almost be better if we kept them and took them some place, but stayed with them. Don’t you think it is better when the children go to kindergarten. The longer we have them, the better it is. In that way, we can have the children who do not yet go to school. Right now we can generally take the children only when they begin elementary school. When the age of imitation ends, then we can begin. It would be nice if we could bring something into the child’s education during the first seven years. We will have to have something for the earlier years, later is less important.

Some people want some temporary school buildings, but I think we should discuss that in detail after school has closed. It is settled in general, but, nevertheless, we need to discuss it. There are some things we need to decide that cannot wait until after school has begun. We must expand the singing class, and we need a teacher for it. There are many other things we need to discuss if we have an additional grade. We must also carefully consider who will take over the first grade. We cannot assume that Stockmeyer’s and Stein’s work will cease. These are all things we need to discuss at an early enough time. For those reasons, I will have to be here when school ends unless something significant hinders that. I will probably need to be away only for four to six days. Today is too early.

How should we handle those children who arrive too late? I had to wait today as I came into the school. Three girls were coming in. They simply went in, not the least disturbed that they were late. The person I was walking with said to me, “It seems quite all right with them that they are late.” So, what do we do with the children who come late?

A teacher: Have them come a quarter of an hour earlier.

Dr. Steiner: Then we run the danger that they don’t come at all. We must avoid under all circumstances giving them a punishment we cannot carry out. We may never place ourselves in a situation where we may have to relent in a disciplinary decision. If we say that a child must come earlier, then we must enforce that. We must order the child to come earlier. The girls today were in the seventh or eighth grade. We lose all control the minute we look away. We will find ourselves on a downward path and will continue to slide. With punishment, we cannot relent. It is better to let it go. Under certain circumstances, it can lead to the opposite of what we want, with the children forming a group among themselves and saying, “Today I come late, tomorrow, you.” I don’t think that would work, because it would make us somewhat laughable. Of course, it’s just laziness. Having the children come earlier is not so good; it would be better if they stayed a quarter of an hour longer. That is something the children do not like.

Have you tried that to see if it works? If a child comes ten minutes late, having him or her stand for a half hour. If they have to stand three times as long, they will certainly think about every minute. Let them stand there uncomfortably. Your boy rubs the back of his head on the wall and amuses himself with all kinds of things. I think that in such cases, when there is some punishment connected with the misbehavior, you can be particularly effective if you allow them to stand in some uncomfortable place. The older children will then be careful that they do not come too late. We could also buy a number of little sheds, and then they will not come too late as a group. They may even get some cramps in their legs. We could have the sheds built in the shop class.

A teacher: What should we do if a teacher comes too late?

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have the children put the teacher in the pen. It is important, though, that we differentiate in such things. I would not punish the children as severely in winter as in summer. The moment the children notice there is some reason for the disciplinary action, they will agree to it. In the winter, we could discipline them less intensively and have them stand only twice as long. We need to stir them up. There are some who are inattentive. The industrious children will hardly come too late.

A teacher asks about the windows.

Dr. Steiner: Sometimes, when you go by, you want to climb in yourself. We will need to put some mesh up, so that they can’t climb in.

Concerning F.R. in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: That is a very difficult case. If he leaves school, that will be a real problem, something not particularly desirable. On the other hand, he should not suffer. We should not serve our school on a silver platter to the school he next attends. There will certainly be teachers there who will happily hear that someone comes to them saying he could not stand it here. Tomorrow, I will take a look to see what we can do. This is a very difficult situation.

Here, we have the question of whether to try a parallel class. Right now, there is hardly anything else we can do other than place him in the previous or the following grade. I definitely do not want him in the previous class, so he would then go in your class in the next higher grade. I don’t think there is any other solution, but that will cause considerable upset with the children. We will need to do it in such a way that it appears to be an exception. We will have to think about how we will handle this. It would be a bad story if people knew we did this for personal reasons. Of course, we also run the danger that the children will say, “Well, he got out, we could also try.” What should we do with such a boy though, if we do not want to send him away? Perhaps I will visit the class tomorrow. He is actually not the problem. That is something he inherited, and it has a continuous effect upon him. It is something in the family. It would be best if we could help him past that hurdle. Perhaps he might even become a really good person. He is certainly enthusiastic about eurythmy and singing, he simply does not want the normal class instruction. He finds it horrible. Then there are other things that people take too seriously. He took five marks, but only in fun. You can reach him, he just needs a certain kind of objective treatment because everything at home is so subjective. We have all tried that. His father is a person like the teacher who says when a child is excited, “I will teach you what being relaxed is, I’ll show you what relaxed is.” That is how his father is.

We cannot allow him to remain in the fourth grade. We would run the danger that he would jump overboard, and that would certainly not be pleasant. I still recall a very horrible situation. At that time, I was at an engineering school.7 The janitor’s son was very ambitious. A teacher who was very hot tempered grabbed him by the scruff and walloped him. The boy left the class. He knew from his father where the cyanide was; he took it and poisoned himself. After that, the teacher became red when someone left the class during the period. (Speaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) I only mention all this because he will be coming to you in the fifth grade. He does not belong in the fourth grade. We made an error there.

Act psychologically! We must study the children’s feelings.

A teacher asks about lace making and embroidery.

A teacher: Should we have school on Peter and Paul’s Day?

Dr. Steiner: We can take the day off. “Peter and Paul is always quite lazy.”

The following was also noted.

Bad teeth, the cause lies in the soul/spirit.

Connection between eurythmy and the formation of teeth.

Handwork. Knitting develops good teeth. The children gain dexterity through knitting.

Dr. Steiner: School begins on the thirteenth. Now that we have more teachers, we need to discuss the classes again. Do you have a plan here? We could go according to that.

A final decision is made about who will be the main teacher for each class.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing we need to talk about is the remedial class. We definitely need it, but the question is, who can do it? I would be happy if Dr. Schubert could take over the remedial class. Don’t you think you would just die if you could no longer have your old class?

Dr. Schubert: Did I do poorly?

Dr. Steiner: No, the children are quite lively. I think that Dr. Kolisko should step in for Dr. Schubert in history for the upper three grades.

I would also like to see if Dr. Schwebsch could give a kind of aesthetics class, a class in art for the upper three grades, eighth, ninth, and tenth. Thus, we would add Dr. Schwebsch to the three main lesson teachers for the upper classes, and he would teach aesthetics. We already spoke of that to an extent. That would not continue indefinitely, but would merge into other teaching in a few weeks. The four of you would then rotate.

A teacher: That would mean that one of us would be free for a period of time.

Dr. Steiner: That does not matter since the upper grades need that. We need to speak about the foreign languages.

They discuss how to divide the modern languages.

Dr. Steiner: Dr. Schubert should take over the younger children for Latin and Greek, and I would ask Dr. Röschl to take over the remaining Latin and Greek classes. I will say something more about that later.

A teacher: Isn’t it better to place the students in Latin and Greek by class?

Dr. Steiner: With the confusion we now have, we can do that only slowly. Our goal could be to achieve some balance by the age of sixteen or seventeen. I would like to talk about that tomorrow at 2 o’clock. The teachers who are no longer responsible for Latin could help in the teachers’ library.

Today there was some talk about hiring a librarian, something I consider pure nonsense. If you work at it, you could finish the entire library. I think it would be silly. I could keep the whole thing in order with three hours a week. We need to consider how we can save some time. I think it would be a good idea if the faculty took that up. We can’t create a library and then hire a librarian who will need at least a palace. That talk is pure fantasy. Someone like Dr. R. would cost 30,000 Marks, money we could save if you would spend some of your free time in the library. I think that would be best and most efficient.

The theology course will take place in Dornach from September 26 until October 10. Hahn, Uehli, Ruhtenberg, and Mirbach will attend, and thus the independent religious instruction will not take place. We will have to teach something else in their place. It would be interesting if, for example, Dr. Schwebsch is free during that period, and if he could do something appropriate for the children concerning history or art history. It could also be something else.

I would now like to hear what else has been happening.

A teacher: What should we read in the seventh grade?

Dr. Steiner: We cannot hold the whole class back simply because there are a few new children. Those who are less advanced will not be able to read A Christmas Carol.

A new teacher: I think Dickens is much too difficult for this grade. Could we obtain a textbook for teaching language?

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against using a textbook, but all of them are bad. The class does not have one book that unites them. Look for a textbook, and show it to me when I come back.

With regard to Dickens, I do not agree. The seventh grade can certainly read him. You could also choose some other prose, that was only given as an example. There are a number of good students’ editions. Of course, you’ll have to use something appropriate to the students’ age.

A teacher: In other schools, we began Dickens in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Find some texts you feel you can work with.

A teacher: I would be grateful if you would say something about rhythm and verse.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to hold a course about individual topics in teaching. Why can’t you find anything reasonable?

A teacher: I cannot say precisely.

Dr. Steiner: The children need to learn the poetic meter and rhyme that you know. They should understand the relationship of the individual meters to the pulse and breathing rhythms. That is the goal. I can hardly believe you cannot find anything. We cannot say that all books are bad. You can make them good by using them.

A teacher: I would like to ask a question about algebra. I think it would be good if we gave the children homework. It is certainly clear in this case that the children should do some problems at home.

Dr. Steiner: We need to emphasize what results from a good pedagogy. One basic principle is that we know the children do the homework, and that we never find that they do not do it. You should never give children homework unless you know they will bring the solved problems back, and that they have done them with zeal. A liveliness needs to come into the work, and we need to encourage the children so that their inner attitude is not paralyzed. For example, you should do it so that when you have covered some material, and you want to assign them some work in connection with it, you say, “Tomorrow I will do the following arithmetic operations.” Then wait and see if the children prepare the work at home. Some will be interested enough to do it and then others will become interested. You should bring it about that the children want to do what they need to do in school. What you need to do from day to day should come from what the children want to do.

A teacher: Can we also give homework such as multiplication problems and so forth?

Dr. Steiner: Only in that way. It’s the same story in the other subjects, and together we would then have a great deal of homework.

A teacher: I also wanted to ask what we could do following mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: Afterward, when the children are tired, you could go on to something simpler. You could do something like what you had originally thought of as homework.

A teacher: I have not had the impression that even the most strenuous things in mathematics tire the children.

Dr. Steiner: In spite of that, we should not keep the children under the same stress for two hours.

You could help the children or give them a hint that they should do this or that at home. But do not demand it.

A teacher: Could you give me some help in teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: These are fourteen- to sixteen-year-old children. Through examples, I would try use art itself to give them the concept of beauty. Look at the metamorphosis of beauty through the various style periods: Greek beauty, Renaissance beauty, and so forth. It is particularly important for children at that age that you bring a certain concrete form to what is otherwise abstract. If you study the aesthetics of people like Vischer and Carrière, all that is simply chaff in regard to concepts. On the other hand, you ennoble the children regarding ideals if you can give them an understanding of what is beautiful or what is great. What is comedy and how does music or poetry achieve it? The child’s soul cannot take in generalized concepts in this period. For that reason, at that age you must include such things as what it means to declaim and recite.

At the time when I was lecturing about declamation and recitation, I discovered that most people do not even know there is a difference. If you take the way you should speak Greek verses, then you have the archetype of reciting, because what is important is the meter, how things are extended or contracted. When the important point is the highs and lows, and that is what you need to emphasize, for instance, in The Song of the Niebelungs, then you have declamation. I showed that through an example, that there is a radical difference between the first form of Goethe’s Iphigenia, that he later reworked into a Roman form. The German Iphigenia should be declaimed and the Roman, recited.

A teacher: If we are to integrate our work with that of Dr. Schwebsch, I would like to ask approximately how much time we should allow for teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to allow equal times. In that way, the German class would be less work.

We need to have somewhat different concepts. Think about the Austrian college preparatory schools. They have eight periods of Latin in the fifth grade. That is the result of terribly inefficient teaching. We, of course, must limit that. The Austrian schools have only very few periods of mathematics. Three in the 4th, 5th, and sixth grades and two in the seventh and eighth. If you work in these periods so that you correctly distribute the material you have to cover during the time available, the children will get the most from your instruction. These are children of fifteen or sixteen years of age.

Thus, in geometry, if you can see that the children have the basic concepts, including the law of duality and perspective geometry, so that the children are perplexed and amazed and have some interest in what you say about some of the figures, then you will have achieved everything that you can.

Have you begun with descriptive geometry yet?

A teacher: I have done the constructions with a point and a line, Cavalieri’s perspective and shadow construction, so that the children have an idea of them. Now we are only doing shadow construction. Then, we will do technical drawing. We have done relatively little of that.

Dr. Steiner: Then, you should do mechanical drawing including trajectory, simple machines, and trigonometry. Trajectory is better if you treat it with equations. Do the children understand parabolic equations? If you develop concrete examples, then you do not need to go into detail there. From a pedagogical perspective, the whole treatment of a trajectory is only so that the children learn parabolic equations and understand parabolas. The coinciding of reality with mathematical equations is the goal you need to strive for.

“Philosophy begins with awe,” is partially incorrect. In teaching, awe must come at the end of a block, whereas in philosophy, it is at the beginning. You need to direct the children toward having awe. They need something that will completely occupy them. They need to understand that it is something that, in the presence of its greatness, even Novalis would fall to his knees.

I would particularly like to remind all of you who are involved with drawing to study Baravalle’s dissertation thoroughly. I have attempted to mention it several times. Copies were available at the conference. Baravalle’s dissertation is extremely important for aesthetics. You should all study it. Baravalle’s dissertation could have a very deep effect, particularly in the handwork class. There is certainly a great deal in it that would help in understanding how a collar or a belt should be shaped.

Things like this from Baravalle—now don’t let this go to your head—things like this dissertation have a fundamental importance for Waldorf teachers, since they show how to pictorially present mathematical ideas and thus make them easier. That is something we could extend. What he has done for forms could be done in a similar way for colors or even tone. You could find a number of helpful ideas about Goethe’s thoughts about the world of tone in my last volume of the Kürschner edition. The table contained there is very informative. Certainly the theory of color could be treated in the same way.

A teacher: It may be possible to create a parallel in the moral and perceptible side of tones. Color perception follows the order of the spectrum. Everything in the blue range corresponds to sharps, and the remainder, to flats.

Dr. Steiner: That would be an interesting topic.

A teacher: In looking at both spectra, there is a certain parallel between them.

Dr. Steiner: The thought is nearly correct, but we must avoid simple analogies.

I would like to say something more that will hopefully strike an anthroposophical chord with you. I said that it would be a good idea to study Baravalle’s dissertation. I would like to mention that there is an occult significance in enlivening instruction when a lively interest exists for the work done by members of the faculty.

This is extremely important. The entire faculty is enlivened when you take an interest in some original work by a colleague. That is also a basic thought of many of the various school programs, but it has been corrupted. Each year discussion of the program should be published, but the whole faculty should be concerned with it. The fact is that the spiritual forces within the faculty carry the faculty through a communal inner experience. We should not try to do things individually, the whole should participate. Of course, here, through lively presentation, there is a significant general interest. However, there is an assumption that many others are also hiding their work. I would like to remind you to make that work fruitful for others as well.

A teacher: Sometime ago we spoke about a gymnastics teacher.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Baumann told me we could no longer consider the business regarding a gymnastics teacher because we have no rooms. When we have room, then Englert will be here.

A teacher: He wrote that he could not do that. He is now in Norway.

Dr. Steiner: We haven’t the slightest need in the next half-year. He will need to wait until something else occurs. We will need to make an effort that the boys get better. We cannot say anything about gymnastics since Baumann is not here.

Dr. Steiner: The conference was such a success that it far exceeded our expectations. It was really quite a success. Only the members’ meeting on Sunday, September 4, was poor. It was the worst thing imaginable. The meeting of the local threefold groups was still worse. I had thought that just those people would bring new life into Anthroposophy. We should have been able to see that on Sunday. You can be certain that a great deal was wanted. People were sitting in all the corners having small meetings, but the whole was lost. It would have been better had it all been visible at the surface. Hopefully, further development will be better.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

Speech Exercises:

Children chiding
Chaffinch chirping
Choking chimneys
Cheerfully chattering

Children chiding and fetching
Chaffinch chirping switching
Choking chimneys hitching
Cheerfully chattering twitching

Beach children chiding and fetching
Reach chaffinch chirping switching
Birches choking chimneys hitching
Perches cheerfully chattering twitching

RUDOLF STEINER: The “ch” should be sounded in a thoroughly active way, like a gymnastic exercise.¹

The following is a piece in which you have to pay attention both to the form and the content.

From “Galgenlieder” by Christian Morgenstern:

The Does’ Prayer

The does, as the hour grows late,
Med-it-ate;
Med-it-nine;
Med-i-ten;
Med-eleven;
Med-twelve;
Mednight!
The does, as the hour grows late,
Meditate,
They fold their little toesies,
the doesies.²

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will continue our talk about the plant world.

Various contributions were offered by those present.

RUDOLF STEINER: Later there will be students in the school who will study the plant kingdom on a more scientific basis, in which case they would learn to distinguish mosses, lichens, algae, monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and so on. All children, who in their youth learn to know plants according to scientific principles, should first learn about them as we have described—that is, by comparing them with soul qualities. Later they can study the plant system more scientifically. It makes a difference whether we try first to describe the plants and then later study them scientifically, or vice versa. You can do much harm by teaching scientific botany first, instead of first presenting ideas that relate to the feeling life, as I have tried to show you. In the latter case the children can tackle the study of scientific botanical systems with a truly human understanding.

The plant realm is the soul world of the Earth made visible. The carnation is a flirt. The sunflower an old peasant. The sunflower’s shining face is like a jolly old country rustic. Plants with very big leaves would express, in terms of soul life, lack of success in a job, taking a long time with everything, clumsiness, and especially an inability to finish anything; we think that someone has finished, but the person is still at it. Look for the soul element in the plant forms!

When summer approaches, or even earlier, sleep spreads over the Earth; this sleep becomes heavier and heavier, but it only spreads out spatially, and in autumn passes away again. The plants are no longer there, and sleep no longer spreads over the Earth. The feelings, passions, and emotions of people pass with them into sleep, but once they are there, those feelings have the appearance of plants. What we have invisible within the soul, our hidden qualities—flirtatiousness, for example—become visible in plants. We don’t see this in a person who is awake, but it can be observed clairvoyantly in people who are sleeping. Flirtation, for example, looks like a carnation. A flirt continually produces carnations from the nose! A tedious, boring person produces gigantic leaves from the whole body, if you could see them.

When we express the thought that the Earth sleeps, we must go further: the plant world grows in the summer. Earth sleeps in the summer and is awake during winter. The plant world is the Earth’s soul. Human soul life ceases during sleep, but when the Earth goes to sleep its soul life actually begins. But the human soul does not express itself in a sleeping person. How are we going to get over this difficulty with children?

One of the teachers suggested that plants could be considered the Earth’s dreams.

RUDOLF STEINER: But plants during high summer are not the Earth’s dreams, because the Earth is in a deep sleep in the summer. It is only how the plant world appears during spring and autumn that you can call dreams. Only when the flowers are first beginning to sprout—when the March violet, for example, is still green, before flowers appear, and again when leaves are falling—that the plant world can be compared to dreams. With this in mind, try to make the transition to a real understanding of the plant.

For example, you can begin by saying, “Look at this buttercup,” or any plant we can dig out of the soil, showing the root below, the stalk, leaves, blossoms, and then the stamens and pistil, from which the fruit will develop. Let the child look at a plant like this. Then show a tree and say, “Imagine this tree next to the plant. What can you tell me about the tree? Yes, it also has roots below of course; but instead of a stalk, it has a trunk. Then it spreads its branches, and it’s as if the real plants grew on these branches, because many leaves and flowers can be found there; it’s as if little plants were growing on the branches above. So, we could actually look at a meadow this way: We see yellow buttercups growing all over the meadow; it is covered with individual plants with their roots in the Earth, and they cover the whole meadow. But when we look at the tree, it’s as if someone had taken the meadow, lifted it up, and rounded it into an arch; only then do we find many flowers growing very high all over it. The trunk is a bit of the Earth itself. So we may say that the tree is the same as the meadow where the flowers grow.

“Now we go from the tree to the dandelion or daisy. Here there is a root-like form in the soil, and from it grows something like a stalk and leaves, but at the top there is a little basket of flowers, tiny little blossoms close together. It’s as though the dandelion made a little basket up there with nothing in it but little flowers, perfect flowers that can be found in the dandelion-head. So we have the tree, the little ‘basket-bloomers,’ and the ordinary plant, a plant with a stalk. In the tree it’s as though the plants were only high up on the branches; in the compound flowers the blossom is at the top of the plant, except that these are not petals, but countless fully-developed flowers.

“Now imagine that the plant kept everything down in the Earth; suppose it wanted to develop roots, but that it was unsuccessful—or perhaps leaves, but could not do this either; imagine that the only thing to unfold above ground were what one usually finds in the blossom; you would then have a mushroom. At least, if the roots down below fail and only leaves come up, you would then have ferns. So you find all kinds of different forms, but they are all plants.”

Show the children the buttercup, how it spreads its little roots, how it has its five yellow-fringed petals, then show them the tree, where the “plant” only grows on it, then the composite flowers, the mushroom, and the fern; do not do this in a very scientific way, but so that the children get to know the form in general.

Then you can say, “Why do you think the mushroom remained a mushroom, and why did the tree become a tree? Let’s compare the mushroom with the tree. What is the difference between them? Take the tree. Isn’t it as though the Earth had pushed itself out with all its might—as though the inner being of the tree had forced its way up into the outside world in order to develop its blossoms and fruits away from the Earth? But in the mushroom the Earth has kept within itself what usually grows up out of it, and only the uppermost parts of the plant appear in the form of mushrooms. In the mushroom the ‘tree’ is below the soil and only exists as forces. In the mushroom itself we find something similar to the tree’s outermost part. When lots and lots of mushrooms are spread over the Earth, it is as though you had a tree growing down below them, inside the Earth. And when we look at a tree it is as though the Earth had forced itself up, turning itself inside out, as it were, bringing its inner self into the outer world.”

Now you are coming nearer to the reality: “When you see mushrooms growing you know that the Earth is holding something within itself that, in the case of a growing tree, it pushes up outside itself. So in producing mushrooms the Earth keeps the force of the growing tree within itself. But when the Earth lets the trees grow it turns the growing-force of the tree outward.” Now here you have something not found within the Earth during summer, because it rises out of the Earth then and when winter comes it goes down into the Earth again. “During summer the Earth, through the force of the tree, sends its own force up into the blossoms, causing them to unfold, and in winter it draws this force back again into itself. Now let us think of this force, which during the summer circles up in the trees—a force so small and delicate in the violet but so powerful in the tree. Where can it be found in winter? It is under the surface of the Earth. What happens during the depth of winter to all these plants—the trees, the composite flowers, and all the others? They unfold right under the Earth’s surface; they are there within the Earth and develop the Earth’s soul life. This was known to the people of ancient times, and that was why they placed Christmas—the time when we look for soul life—not in the summer, but during winter.

“Just as a person’s soul life passes out of the body when falling asleep, and again turns inward when a person wakens, so it is also for the Earth. During summer while asleep it sends its sap-bearing force out, and during winter takes it back again when it awakens—that is, it gathers all its various forces into itself. Just think, children, our Earth feels and experiences everything that happens within it; what you see all the summer long in flowers and leaves, the abundance of growth and blossom, in the daisies, the roses, or the carnations—this all dwells under the Earth during winter, and there it has feelings like you have, and can be angry or happy like you.”

In this way you gradually form a view of life lived under the Earth during winter. That is the truth. And it is good to tell the children these things. This is something that even materialists could not argue with or consider an extravagant flight of fancy. But now you can continue from this and consider the whole plant. The children are led away from a subjective attitude toward plants, and they are shown what drives the sap over the Earth during summer heat and draws it back again into itself in winter; they come to see the ebb and flow in plant life. In this way you find the Earth’s real soul life mirrored in plants. Beneath the Earth ferns, mosses, and fungi unfold all that they fail to develop as growing plants, but this all remains etheric substance and does not become physical. When this etheric plant appears above the Earth’s surface, the external forces work on it and transform it into the rudiments of leaves we find in fungi, mosses, and ferns. But under a patch of moss or mushrooms there is something like a gigantic tree, and if the Earth cannot absorb it, cannot keep it within itself, then it pushes up into the outer world.

The tree is a little piece of the Earth itself. But what remains underground in mushrooms and ferns is now raised out of the Earth, so that if the tree were slowly pushed down into the Earth everything would be different, and if it were to be thus submerged then ferns, mosses, and mushrooms would appear; for the tree it would be a kind of winter. But the tree withdraws from this experience of winter. It is the nature of a tree to avoid the experience of winter to some extent, but if I could take hold of a fern or a mushroom by the head and draw it further and further out of the Earth so that the etheric element in it reached the air, then I would draw out a whole tree, and what would otherwise become a mushroom would now turn into a tree. Annual plants are midway between these two. A composite flower is merely another form of what happens in a tree. If I could press a composite flower down into the Earth it would bear only single blossoms. A composite flower could almost be called a tree that has shot up too quickly.

And so we can also find a wish, a desire, living in the Earth. The Earth feels compelled to let this wish sink into sleep. The Earth puts it to sleep in summer, and then the wish rises as a plant. It is not visible above the Earth until it appears as a water-lily. Down below it lives as a wish in the Earth, and then up above it becomes a plant.

The plant world is the Earth’s soul world made visible, and this is why we can compare it with human beings. But you should not merely make comparisons; you must also teach the children about the actual forms of the plants. Starting with a general comparison you can then lead to the single plant species.

Light sleep can be compared with ordinary plants, a kind of waking during sleep with mushrooms (where there are very many mushrooms, the Earth is awake during the summer), and you can compare really sound deep sleep with the trees.

From this you see that the Earth does not sleep as people do, but in one part it is more asleep and in another more awake; here more asleep, there more awake. People, in their eyes and other sense organs, also have sleeping, waking, and, dreaming side by side, all at the same time.

Now here is your task for tomorrow. Please make out a table; on the left place a list of the human soul characteristics, from thoughts down through all the emotions of the soul—feelings of pleasure and displeasure, actively violent emotions, anger, grief, and so on, right down to the will; certain specific plant forms can be compared with the human soul realm. On the right you can then fill in the corresponding plant species, so that in the table you have the thought plants above, the will plants below, and all the others in between.

Rudolf Steiner then gave a graphic explanation of the Pythagorean theorem and referred to an article by Dr. Ernst Müller in Ostwald’s magazine for natural philosophy, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, entitled “Some Observations on a Theory of Knowledge underlying the Pythagorean theorem.”

In the drawing, the red parts of the two smaller squares already lie within the square on the hypotenuse. By moving the blue and the green triangles in the direction of the arrows, the remaining parts of the two smaller squares will cover those parts of the square on the hypotenuse still uncovered.

You should cut out the whole thing in cardboard and then you can see it clearly.³

• 1. The original German exercise (which appears in the appendix) uses the “pf ” sound; the “ch” sound has been substituted in the English version.
• 2. Max Knight, trans., University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964.
• 3. The Pythagorean theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. For another brief discussion of the Pythagorean theorem in teaching see Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995, pp. 85–90.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it, but to talk about what this eurythmy actually wants from certain art sources and how it would like to make use of a certain artistic formal language. What you will see, dear audience, on the stage, is the human being in motion or groups of people in motion, also mutual positions of groups of people in relation to each other, and so on.

At first glance, all of this could be mistaken for pantomime. However, eurythmy is not meant in this sense. Eurythmy is meant as a truly visible language. And it did not come about by arbitrarily adding some gesture that one thought right at the moment to this or that element that now comes to light in poetry and music that go hand in hand. Rather, eurythmy as we understand it here has come about through careful, sensual and supersensory observation, to use this Goethean expression, observation of what actually underlies the conditions of underlying human speech and singing.

What underlies speech and singing is not openly apparent to the ordinary observer. The inner tendencies of movement transform themselves into what can then be heard. But it is entirely possible to study the basis of the audible sound in terms of the movement tendency and in terms of the way in which this movement tendency emerges from the human organism.

If we look at poetry, on the other hand, we will have to say to ourselves: what the poet brings to revelation through tone and phonetic language contains and encompasses human thought. But human thought is an abstract element, especially in more advanced civilizations. And every such abstract element is actually inartistic. So that poetry as an art must constantly struggle to bring thought back from its abstractness to that which can bring it into a living element that is connected to the full human being.

When we study the thought as it is to fertilize poetry, we find that, if we do not grasp it in the abstract but approach it as artists, it has a certain tendency to take shape. We find this particularly in poetry. We find it quite outstanding in dramatic poetry. We can only truly stand before a drama artistically when we are able to transform what is given to us through language into form. Even if we do not see a drama on stage but only read it, we only have it as a dramatic work of art if we are able to transform in our imagination what is presented to us into form.

In epic poetry, in narrative poetry, we see that precisely where it appears in a certain popular form – we take the example of Homer – it also tends to develop into a form of its own, a visualization of what is sought through the literal. In Homeric poetry, we find [as constant designations: Hector, the hero with the billowing crested helmet, or: the swift-footed Achilles]; if we start from these more distinct, immediately illustrative examples, we nevertheless find the transformation of the abstract, literal element into the figurative everywhere.

And even in lyric poetry: if we have to stop at accepting the bare word content, or even thoughts or feelings of a lyric poem, then we do not have it as a complete work of art. We must be able to present to ourselves the figure of the soul from which the song's underlying idea has emerged, even if it is in this case in a spiritualized form. The one who approaches speech so artistically, in that this speech becomes what the poet can use of it, will see how what underlies the literal as thought tends towards form.

Now, if we look first at form, the human form is what appears to us as the most perfect in the realm of the sensual, physical world. And we can say that if we want to gain an insight into the human form, starting from thought, the powerlessness of thought immediately becomes apparent. In thinking, we are not really artistic. But we cannot help but say to ourselves: the capacity for thought is what puts man at the top of the creatures in whose midst he is initially placed.

And what we then encounter in the human form, we cannot grasp with thought. All scientific comprehension of the human form falls short. We must, so to speak, experience how thought becomes powerless, how it is transformed, in order to grasp the human form. But still, the path from thought to the human form is viable. And we will say to ourselves: the one element that confronts us in human language and also in human song, the mental element, is an element that tends towards form, an element that we can only really grasp if we seek to recognize the form but not to penetrate it with thought.

But what confronts us in the human form as the other, is that we actually only grasp this form as the result of movement. Anyone who is able to truly grasp the form of, say, a human hand or an arm will say to themselves: everything that I see in such a form only makes sense if I see in this form the movement that has come to rest. The movement, in turn, that is expressed in the entire human form is the will. The will is something that, by revealing itself in the human being, is directly connected to movement. One does not need to be a Schopenhauerian when it comes to music, and yet one can still say: by moving from the element of thought to the element of will, we begin to understand the musical element in the human being. And musical art is actually that which shows us movement, hidden in the calm of the seemingly lively movement of the sound mass.

In this way, humanly created things appear to us as the right expression of thought. What the human being brings forth in his movement, what is fundamentally one with his will, appears to us, revealing itself in a certain way, in the musical element. The musical element is pictorially formed, but it is that which basically underlies everything that is expressed in the individual organ groups, the larynx and its neighboring organs, in speech and song. If we study, in the sense of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, that which is concentrated in the larynx and its neighboring organs as the entire human organization, we ultimately arrive at the human form. And we arrive at the moving human form.

And if one does not just look with the senses, but with the senses and the supersenses, one finds that what lives in the human form can flow directly into movement, and that which lives in movement and is an expression of human will finds its ultimate result in the form of the human being. Therefore, if you look at this wonderful connection between the human form and its overflow into human movement, and on the other hand, movement and its striving towards the human form, artistically, you can extract what you are meant to see here in eurythmy.

It is not arbitrary. It is what can arise naturally from human movement when one uses not only the speech organ but the whole human being as a means of expression, when one tries to add a visible language to the spoken language, which must first be artistically processed so that what eurythmy is as an art can arise.

This eurythmy is preceded by what eurythmy is as language. Then one must realize that such a human language of form, which has come about out of the moving figure or formative movement, can on the one hand accompany poetry, which is then given in recitation and declamation, and on the other hand the musical. One can sing in a visible language just as one can develop it through sound in tone, in song, and one can express that which really underlies the poetry in this visible language just as it is expressed in the poetry itself. Only then one must not look at the literal content, which is actually the prosaic in the poem, but one must look at the tone, rhythm, form of the meter and so on of the poem, which underlies the poem.

Therefore, recitation and declamation for eurythmy cannot be done in the way that is often popular in our unartistic times, namely, by particularly emphasizing the literal, prosaic aspects and regarding the actual art of declamation and recitation as lying in the emphasis of the literal, prosaic aspects. We must go back to older times, to the Goethean and Schillerian concept of recitation and declamation, to the rhythm, meter and thematic content of poetry, if we want to bring out what is actually artistic in eurythmy, if we want to do justice to the poetry when reciting it. For eurythmy brings out of the poem precisely that which the poet has woven into it out of his own secretive nature. So, in essence, poetry is handed over to the whole human being in eurythmy, in that the poet is aware that he will find understanding of his poetry if the opportunity is created to do so from the whole human being, which he would only have to entrust to a part of the human being, namely the speaking human being.

Eurythmy is a means of expression for precisely those things that cannot come out through speech and mere singing, that cannot be brought out through them. And so we can say: it seems from the outset like an unartistic feeling if one wanted to reject such an extension of our art and artistic endeavors just because one is not accustomed to finding this formal language used so far. Those who really have an artistic sense will have to strive for an extension of our art forms and artistic means.

That, dear attendees, is what eurythmy is about for now. You will see – and especially those of you who have been here as spectators before will notice – that we are always trying to move forward.

For example, today we are trying to reproduce the mood of the poem in introductory forms that are not accompanied by recitation or music, in order to lead into the actual poem. Or we try to hold on to the mood for a while in a closing form, so that in such introductory and closing forms we allow the content of the poem to be revealed only through visible language. And one must feel – not speculate about it, not believe that one could grasp it intellectually, which would be inartistic – one must feel what lies in these forms. – You will see, my dear audience, that one can indeed already find the stylistic form of poetry if one is able to enter into the stylistic form of poetry.

What we do here as eurythmy is really still in the early stages of development. But we are striving onwards. We are trying more and more to eliminate all mere mimicry, to overcome all prosaic content, and to create an art in eurythmy in which everything is truly based on the lawful sequence of movements, just as the lawful sequence of tones in music is based on the lawful sequence of movements, so that nothing is arbitrarily gestural. When creating forms, the keynote, the basic mood, must be taken as the basis, that which is the keynote, the basic mood of a poem.

And you will see how we try to distinguish the serious mood of a poem in eurythmy from the mood of a poem that will confront you, for example, in the eurythmic rendition of Morgenstern's Humoresques, some of which you will see today.

It is not so easy to find the basic tone of these Morgenstern humoresques.

Anyone who finds themselves in today's world with completely unbiased senses will find an enormous amount of philistinism in the world. And the philistine element, which admittedly also has its good sides from time to time, is making itself felt in a harmful way in many ways today. After all, for someone like Christian Morgenstern, it is not only what is commonly called philistine in life that is philistine, but much of what is considered very ingenious today is in fact just genius transformed into philistinism. And such metamorphosed genius, which is actually philistinism, then formed all sorts of skewers in a life like the one Christian Morgenstern led.

From all sides, these philistinisms form skewers. And then you realize that you can't really get close to this stuffiness. But life brings you close again. And that is when these thoughts begin, which you have because you keep bumping into these narrow-minded attitudes, to perform all kinds of dances. These are wonderfully graceful dances, which Morgenstern performs, so that real seriousness can laugh and real seriousness becomes profound and meaningful again in laughter. It is wonderful to see here in Christian Morgenstern how logic cannot be used to deal with the illogical philistinism, but how thoughts must be made to dance so that they enter into a kind of negative logic on the other side, which, however, has something extraordinarily convincing about it.

This dance-like quality of Morgenstern's humorous poems, which depict wonderful irony, which really, I would say, offers something convincing to these moods of the times, must be experienced in their style. And then, once you have grasped them, I believe you can also present these dancing thoughts, which arose from the narrow-mindedness of the philistines, in eurythmy. You can show the difference by following the style forms.

This eurythmy has not only an artistic side but also a pedagogical-didactic one. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is now under my direction, we have included eurythmy as a compulsory subject in the curriculum. And you can see how children from a very young age feel completely at home in these movements in an elementary and natural way and are happy to be able to make these movements, happy not just to need to move according to the physiological peculiarities of external gymnastics, but to bring the whole organism into movements that are inspired and spiritualized. So that this child, in this inspired gymnastics, can feel itself so truly as a human being in full naive unconsciousness.

Then there is a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy, which I only want to point out. The fact that these movements are taken from the healthy form of the human organism means that they can also be used when this organism falls into an unhealthy state, to help it recover.

All in all, I must ask for indulgence today, as I always do before our performances. We are our own harshest critics and know exactly how far we have to go, because we are just beginning with this eurythmy and because what it aims to achieve actually still needs to be perfected. On the other hand, however, one can also point to the almost unlimited possibilities for development: Because the human being, this universe of all the secrets of the world, is used as a tool, not taken as a tool, one can indeed make the confession from inner contemplation that the time will come when eurythmy will be able to stand as a younger sister art beside the older sister arts, which have been fully recognized for some time.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.

1. Part (Goetheanumbau)

“Symbolum“ by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Weltenseelengeister” by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (10) by Rudolf Steiner
“Spring” by Rudolf Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (11) by Rudolf Steiner
“The posy“ by J. W. v. Goethe
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals ‘Highland’ by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (12) by Rudolf Steiner
“World soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

Part two (carpentry)

Music by Leopold van der Pals
“Charon“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Mignon” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Zum neuen Jahr” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Three Gypsies“ by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Jan Stuten
“Anchovy Salad” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Barkers“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Seance” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear attendees, Allow me to say a few words to introduce the performance, as I always do before these eurythmy performances. This is not done in order to somehow explain the artistic performance; that would be inartistic, the artistic must speak for itself. But in this eurythmy we are dealing with a special formal language that is unfamiliar, and with drawing from artistic sources that we have not yet become accustomed to. And I would like to say a few introductory words about these sources and this formal language. What you see on stage is either an individual moving person — moving in their limbs — or moving groups of people. None of the movements presented here are pantomime or facial expressions. If one still sees something of that kind in the performances, it is because eurythmy is still in the early stages of development. And everything dance-like, mime-like and so on must be overcome in this eurythmic art. What underlies it is a real, visible language. Every single expression is not taken from the momentary meaning of this or that word, which eurythmy accompanies, or this or that musical motif; rather, one is dealing with a real language that is drawn from the human organism as elementarily as the sound language, as the phonetic language itself.

It would, of course, be quite impossible to keep asking, 'What does this mean? What does that mean?' about the details of spoken language. This is also not possible with this real, visible language of eurythmy; rather, the forms of eurythmy are based on a real, if I may use Goethe's expression, sensual-supersensory study of spoken language and singing itself.

Our larynx and speech organs as a whole are designed as a part of the human organism in such a way that they want to carry out certain movements. I have to put it this way, because it is first and foremost the predispositions for movement that are involved. These predispositions do not come directly out of the larynx and the other speech organs during ordinary speaking and singing, but are transformed into vibrations of the air, and this is what gives us the sound of speech or singing. But if one really studies what is stored in the larynx and its neighboring organs, as I said, through sensory-supersensory observation, then one can transfer what is stored for a single organ complex to the whole human being, entirely according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphosis teaching, which of course then has to be implemented artistically. In particular, the expressive organs of movement, the arms and hands, can be used to convey the same effect as speech.

And in this way, with regard to human nature, one arrives at something more artistic than even speech or song can be. For in our words, even in poetically and artistically formed language, we have before us a combination of what takes place through the will of man and through the thoughts of man in connection with each other. But all thought, in essence, is inartistic. If our thinking is to be put into action, if one is to look for meaning, expression and so on in the syntactical or other sense, then, to the same extent that one has to do this, what wants to reveal itself becomes inartistic. The poet is always struggling between what is beauty of sound sequence, sound design, rhythm, beat, and what the whole inner movement of the linguistic is, and what is thought. The conceptual is, so to speak, only something that must necessarily be taken along if the sound is to be heard.

But if we go back to the actual element of movement, to the disposition to move in the speech organs, and transfer it to the whole human being, so that the whole human being or groups of people become, as it were, visibly moving larynx and speech organ, then we go back to the element of will. And that emerges from the full human being, the whole human being. It can be seen from this that, firstly, even in a primitive language, a single word is often used for movements that are carried out by the human being and for the sounds that accompany them when they are sung or recited. Primitive man moves when he abandons himself freely to his inner being, in the process of transforming language into art. Hence a word for human artistic movement and for the sung or recited word in primitive language.

On the other hand, we can say that everything that is a mental element in poetry recedes behind the purely formal, that is, the actual artistic element; this comes through as a will element, as a movement element – and movement is always a manifestation of the will – this comes through this eurythmic movement entirely.

Anyone who is able to study the human organism as a whole or in part will say to themselves: the human organism at rest has a certain shape. So now we see the shape, let us say of a hand. We cannot be satisfied with just looking at the hand at rest. Every finger, every surface on the finger, everything about the finger is such that it wants to move out of the shape into movement. If one discovers the laws, as must be the case for eurythmy, where the entire human form wants to pass over, in a very elementary, natural way, into movements that are inherent in it, then one comes to a pure expression of will, to a spiritualized expression of will, and is then able to detach the poetic, the truly poetic, from the literal and to express through the word and through this form of movement more and more that which underlies the actual artistic aspect of poetry in the real poet, in the real artist.

It is therefore important not to believe that one can directly indicate every single gesture in a mimic way in the poem without the accompanying movement. Just as in spoken language itself, the essential, insofar as spoken language is artistically formed, lies in the succession of sounds in the visualization of the sounds, so too here nothing lies in the individual gesture, which is not a gesture at all, but rather, as in music, it lies in the succession of sounds, in the shaping of the sounds - in the movement, the succession of movement, the actual element of the artistic in eurythmy is in the succession of movement. And just as little as one can say in the depths of one's being, when confronted with language, that one wants to bring it to some kind of understanding in the first immediate impression, [but] one simply grasps it in terms of feeling, just as little can one say of eurythmy: this gesture does not fit with this or that that is at its basis. Rather, the aim is to be able to feel the linguistically visible element in eurythmy as such. Eurythmy as such is not yet art. Only then must that which is drawn from the organism in the form of movement be shaped artistically.

Recently, we have endeavored to achieve a great deal in this direction, particularly in the shaping of movement. Those of you who have seen eurythmy before will notice how the forms that are usually more silent, with which we introduce or end a poem, express not only the moving people or groups of people, but also the mood, beat and rhythm of the poem. Thus you will see moving people or groups of people on stage; you will hear what is presented in the movement of eurythmy accompanied by recitation or music. However, it must be noted from the outset that the recitation that has to accompany this eurythmy must now return to the truly artistic element of recitation and declamation.

This artistic element of declamation has, of course, been much maligned in recent times. I use this expression for the reason that those insults that have occurred certainly did not arise out of mere ignorance, but out of ill will, which is connected with all sorts of things, and in particular arose out of an unartistic sensibility that is so widespread in the present day. We appreciate all too little in the present what it means that a true poet like Schiller did not start with the literal meaning of the most important of his poems, but rather started from an indefinite feeling of a melody and only then, I might say, lined up the literal meaning with this musical element. Goethe started more from a figurative-imaginative point of view. But [on this figurative] - which is also expressed in rhythm, beat and so on - and on the musical, the actual artistic of poetry is based, not on the literal content. Just because something is inartistic in our time, one cannot take that into account, because in the emphasis of the pure prose content, in the recitation or in the declamation, something special is being attempted. I would like to say that the inability to feel artistically about recitation today has led to these smear campaigns being unleashed in recent times, especially against recitation to accompany our eurythmy. And it is precisely this form of recitation that will have to prevail because it goes back to what is already eurythmic, namely also musical and imaginative, in language itself.

Just as eurythmy can be accompanied by recitation and declamation, since it is intended to be only a different expression of what is heard, so can eurythmy be accompanied by music. You can sing in these eurythmic movements just as you can reveal yourself through sound. And when music is accompanied by eurythmy, it can be understood as singing in visible motion, and nothing else.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the artistic side of eurythmy. I would just like to mention that eurythmy also contains two other elements. One is a hygienic-therapeutic element, because it can be drawn from the human organism – from that which is already within it, that which occurs in movements. Therefore, these movements can also be transformed into healing movements. A start has already been made on this recently. Now, this side of eurythmy, the hygienic-therapeutic side, will also be further developed.

The third element is the pedagogical-didactic element, which has already proven itself in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, where, in addition to gymnastics, this spiritualization of human movement in eurythmy is introduced to children as soon as they enter elementary school and then continued as a compulsory subject through all school grades throughout.

It may be said that every movement that a child has to perform is not merely carried out from the physical-physiological, but from the whole human being, who is spirit, soul and body. So that the child feels from the outset: it is making movements into which its soul-spiritual flows. The children feel this as something completely natural. And what is more, the fact that children feel so completely in their element is also based on the fact that this eurythmy is particularly suitable not only for developing the physical structure of the limbs and for evoking physical dexterity in movement, but also for evoking the will initiative that our time and probably also the next generation will so urgently need. What eurythmy offers children is education in the will initiative.

I will not go as far as a very famous contemporary physiologist – you would be amazed if I were to mention his name – who, after such introductory words, when he was watching a performance, told me that gymnastics, which are often overestimated today, are not a means of education, but a barbarism. As I said, it was not I who said it, but a famous contemporary physiologist. One could say that this gymnastics, which is based purely on external, physical considerations, this gymnastics that supports the physical, must be complemented by that which is then the spiritualized gymnastics for children, which can be given to the child through eurythmy. The child feels completely at home in its element.

These are the three sides of eurythmy. And here in our performances, it is of course the artistic aspect that comes into its own. And here it may perhaps be said again and again that this eurythmy, if further developed, is truly suited to fulfill that which appeared to Goethe as the highest artistic principle, in that he said: He to whom nature begins to reveal her secret longs for her most worthy interpreter, art - not for the abstract physiology of natural laws , but to the revelation in art.

Man is that which, in essence, he has in his organism as cosmic laws and cosmic secrets. If we set him in motion in such a way that what is grounded in his essence becomes visible in the movement, then we can say: human nature begins to reveal its essence to him who feels a deep longing to bring out this essential humanity in an artistic way from within the human being.

On the other hand, when Goethe says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, takes harmony, order. and meaning together, in order to finally rise to create the work of art - so one may say: an art that does not make use of external instruments, but of the human organism itself as its instrument, as its tool, an art that brings out from this human organism measure, harmony, meaning and so on, such an art has within itself the germs to become more and more perfect.

We are our own harshest critics. I know very well that this eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development. Therefore, I must always apologize to the esteemed audience when such attempts are made. But those who are willing to engage with what is being developed will recognize that if it is properly developed, by us or by others, the eurythmic art will be able to join the other, older, fully-fledged arts.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.

Part I (Goetheanum building)

“Göttermahl“ by C. F. Meyer with music by Leopold van der Pals
“L'Art et le Peuple” by Victor Hugo
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (14) by Rudolf Steiner
“Beherzigung” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Soul Calendar (15) by Rudolf Steiner
“Clouds“ by C. F. Meyer
Saying from the Soul Calendar (16) by Rudolf Steiner
“Buttercup Yellow Meadows” by Christian Morgenstern
Saying from the Soul Calendar (17) by Rudolf Steiner
“Vöglein“ (Little bird) by Friedrich Hebbel
“Waldkonzerte” (Forest concerts) by Christian Morgenstern with music by Max Schuurman

II. Part (Joinery) Music by Leopold van der Pals

“The Fisherman” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Violet“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Papillons” by Jean-Philippe Rameau
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorf
“Valet“ by]. J. W. v. Goethe
“The Reviewer” by J. W. v. Goethe
“To the Originals“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Séance” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear attendees!

Allow me to try to say a few words to introduce this performance, as I usually do before these performances. This is not done for the purpose of explaining the performance itself. Artistic work must speak for itself, through direct observation, and any explanation would, of course, be inartistic. However, since we are dealing here with an artistic activity that draws on artistic sources that are still unfamiliar today and also makes use of an unfamiliar artistic formal language, a few introductory words about these sources and this formal language may be said.

Our eurythmy is not something that could be categorized as pantomime, mime, dance or the like. Rather, it is about bringing something up into a certain artistic sphere that wants to have an effect as a visible language. You see here, esteemed attendees, on the stage the moving human being, namely the human being who is moved in his arms and in his hands, which are the most expressive limbs when you consider the human being as a whole. You will see movements of the human being in space, movements of groups of people.

All this should not be pantomime, not mimicry, nothing that could somehow occur to one as a gesture that is added because one believes that it could have a reference to something that accompanies the presentation in poetry or music, but it is a real, visible language. That which is otherwise revealed in human speech or song through tone or through sound is revealed in eurythmy through the movement of the human being or groups of human beings.

Therefore, what appears as eurythmy cannot be derived from some arbitrary act or from a momentary interpretation of the poetic or the musical. Rather, it is based on a real study of which movement tendencies – I do not say movements, but movement tendencies – the larynx and the other speech organs set when phonetic language or singing

These movement tendencies are, as it were, held back in their formation, in their status nascens, and pass over into those undulations of the air that then convey the tone or the sound. But what is held back in the moment of origin, what thus underlies speech and song out of human nature, can be studied and transferred to the whole human being according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphosis. This Goethean metamorphosis, which Goethe himself only applied to morphology, to the study of living beings, also allows for artistic expression.

In the individual plant leaf, Goethe sees an entire plant, only simpler and more primitive in form. In the whole plant, he sees an individual leaf, a more complicated individual leaf. He then applied the same principle to understanding the forms of other living beings, of man. One day, when certain prejudices of the present so-called scientific method have been overcome, the full scientific fruitfulness of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis will be recognized.

But this theory of metamorphosis, because it leads directly to the visual, allows for artistic expression. And so what can be observed through sensual and supersensual observation of movement tendencies in the human speech and song organs can be applied to the whole human being. And in a sense, you will see in the individual human being, in groups of people here on the stage, moving speech organizations themselves, which visibly, according to exactly the same laws by which metamorphosis gives rise to phonetic language and song, which reveal the human essence according to these laws – and even reveal them in such a way that one is closer to the laws of sound, of tone, insofar as these are lawful, in this visible language than in the case of the spoken word. Not only that the spoken word, especially in the case of the present speaking, leads to the conventional or to that which merely wants to be a communication of the thought - the thought itself can never be artistic, the thought kills the artistic - but language is always formed in a certain way according to logic.

If the poet wants to go back to the artistic, to some extent wants to seek the artistic in the shaping of language, then he must, as far as possible, disregard what makes language logical, what makes it an expression of thought, as much as possible in the already advanced, developed language, and go back to what can be shaped in the tone itself, to the musical in the form of sound. Schiller always had an indefinite melody in mind before he spoke the words of one of his poems, especially the smaller poems that he conceived in his soul. Goethe rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors with a baton because he wanted to go back to the pictorial – Schiller to the musical, Goethe to the plastic-pictorial. The poet must place into the sound-formation that which basically lies behind the language, that which the language more or less conceals, and this must be done in an, I would say, invisible eurythmy.

But it comes to expression in particular when the musical itself is to reveal itself in song. It is just as possible to sing in this visible language of eurythmy as it is to express a poem in this visible language in terms of its actual artistic content. Anyone who really enjoys the artistic process will therefore welcome with joy every expansion of art through a new formal language, through new artistic sources. And something like eurythmy, which seeks to expand the artistic in a particular area, will not meet with any real resistance from him.

But by using the human being himself as a tool in this eurythmy, one also goes back to a more artistic level than one can achieve in spoken language. After all, thought lies in spoken language. But thought is actually always inartistic. The pictorial is more artistic. Such a pictorial quality is in the broadest sense, as it can naturally be, I would say, the audible – and in the musical, that which lies not in the thought but in the human song, in the human tone, that arises from the whole, from the full human being, arises from this will element.

In language, the thought element and the will element always flow together. The thought element almost completely recedes in the visible language of eurythmy; and the will element, that is, what comes forth from the whole, full human being, comes into its own. Therefore, one can feel in the eurythmic presentation of a poem, for example, what lies at the heart of the poetry as the actual artistic element.

This must also be taken into account when, as is the case here, many poems are accompanied in eurythmy not only by music, which also happens, but also by recitation and declamation, which is then only a different expression, a different revelation of what is being declaimed, recited. But we must realize that we must go back from the present declamation and recitation, which belong to an unartistic age, to real artistic recitation and declamation. Here we are not dealing with what is particularly valued today – with the emphasis of the prosaic, the literal – but with the development of the rhythmic, the metrical, and even the melodious, textual, thematic element that underlies it as the truly artistic. In poetry, the literal can never be the essential, but only that which serves as a kind of ladder – the rhythmic, the musical, the metrical, the melodious, the thematic – to be strung together in the words, which are actually used only to form sounds and tones. This formal artistic element must be worked out in the recitation and declamation that accompany the eurythmy. Recently, attempts have been made to develop this recitation and declamation here in a way that recalls more artistic epochs than the present one. But what needs to be trained here today is often not only dismissed, but also insulted. Of course, we cannot be slowed down in the development of what must come again: a truly artistic recitation and declamation.

In declamation and recitation, all that is artistic must arise through formally artistic means, not through the kind of emphasis that people love today and that actually arose only from the inability to find real art in poetry. It is no wonder that a single chapter, I might say, of what must be cultivated here at the Goetheanum and what is cultivated with a purely artistic sense — at least in intention — is distorted and criticized in the world when one sees how otherwise everything that emanates from the Goetheanum in Dornach is worked against with untruth and dishonesty. . Only recently we had an example of this in the form of a report that a so-called sensational brochure about the Goetheanum was being prepared by a quarter from which dozens of lies have been issued in the past. We shall just have to listen expectantly to see whether those people, who have been amply proved that only lies come from that quarter, will now pounce on the new one with wild greed, which of course is also unknown to me. But the side that has only ever lied about the Goetheanum is very well known to me. As I said, when something like this happens on a large scale, it is no wonder that all sorts of things are said out of a lack of understanding or – as has happened recently – out of truly party-political, dishonest opposition to such specific aspects as the search for a real art of declamation and recitation.

That, for the moment, ladies and gentlemen, about the artistic aspect of eurythmy, which, however, has two other sides. I can only mention one of them briefly: that is the therapeutic and hygienic side of eurythmy. The movements that one encounters in eurythmy are drawn from the innermost laws of the human organism, just as language and song come from the laws of the speech organs. And it must be said that anyone who is familiar with the form of the speech organs can see in this form what can be communicated to people through singing and what can be communicated through artistically treated language in poetry. But in the same way, the human organism as a whole contains the potential for certain movements that can be derived from it. If these are faithfully derived from the human organism, they can also be transformed into movements that, because they are derived from human nature, have a therapeutic effect. These are different movements, transformed, metamorphosed movements, which appear on the therapeutic-hygienic side, in contrast to the artistic movements of eurythmy, which can be seen here. But basically they are based on the same source.

The third element in this eurythmy is the pedagogical-didactic element, which we have been applying for two years now at the Freie Waldorfschule founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I run and where eurythmy is taught to the youngest and oldest schoolchildren as a compulsory subject alongside ordinary gymnastics - as a form of gymnastics that is inspired and spiritualized.

I have to keep saying: people will one day think more objectively about gymnastics than they do today; but it is not said by me, but I have to keep saying what one of the most famous physiologists of the present day said to me, who once heard what I said about it and who therefore told me afterwards: ordinary gymnastics should not be seen as something that, from a physiological point of view, point of view, but as a form of torture. Now, as I said, he was one of the most famous physiologists – I don't want to repeat what he said about gymnastics. It is reduced to a basis of what can be researched in a physiological way.

But what is illuminated, inspired and spiritualized in the child through eurythmy is felt by the child. And this is clearly evident in the Waldorf school as something that really comes from the most elementary core of human nature. The child feels truly at home in its element, because it not only experiences physical movement, but because the child's body, soul and spirit are truly emphasized as a unity. And it is no small thing that something is developed in the child that is now missing and will be increasingly missing in every following generation, something that can never be achieved in ordinary gymnastics: soul initiative, initiative of the will. This can only be judged by someone who sees how the child grows in its soul-bodily development from week to week, from month to month, from year to year. It is the case that the child actually develops its will initiative to a particular degree through this eurythmic gymnastics, whereby it is certainly not a one-sided soul or spiritual training that is meant. Rather, precisely because the whole, full human being is appealed to, the human being is furthered in his development through eurythmy as inspired gymnastics in body, soul and spirit.

Here in our presentation, you are now confronted with the artistic. But one may say that when Goethe, with his view of art, took the position: When nature begins to reveal its apparent secrets, as he says, he feels the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. In particular, if one does not use an external instrument, but uses a human being as an instrument – and all the secrets of the world are contained in the human being, the human being is a microcosm, that is not a phrase, it is a fact - and so we can say in response to this saying of Goethe: When man, as a higher nature, begins to reveal his inner secrets of growth and of creation, he feels a deep longing to create that which can arise out of himself!

And when Goethe says elsewhere: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he takes harmony, measure and meaning together, produces a summit within himself and rises to the production of a work of art, then one may also say: When man searches within himself, in his overall organization, for order, harmony, measure and meaning, in order to elevate them to a higher level, then himself, as the most worthy tool, something artistic will certainly arise.

What I always want to say at the end of each introduction to our performances – and so also today, dear audience – remains: We ask the esteemed audience to be lenient because what is already eurythmic art today is just only a beginning. We are our own harshest critics. But we also know that, given time, the germ of an idea will develop into something that can stand on its own as a fully-fledged art alongside its older sister art, eurythmy. It is more likely that others will do this than that we will.

After the studies we have been conducting recently, a basic fact of human life and nature will be able to stand clearly before our soul. It is precisely when we consider a more exact relationship of the human being to his environment that the riddle always arises: how did it come to be that one cannot penetrate into the real nature of the outer world? This outer world lies before us in its phenomena, in its events, and even if we have only a feeble need for knowledge we must presume that behind these phenomena that lie before us as colored, as resounding, as warming world, and so on, the real nature of reality is concealed. There is, as it were, a veil there, and only behind this veil is the nature of reality to be found.

A similar riddle exists in relation to what is within the human being. In the last few days I have suggested that this inner element of the human being reveals the riddles of its organs only if one really arrives at this inner element. The fact is, however, that to begin with in ordinary consciousness one cannot see so deeply down into one's own inner being that one is able really to penetrate the nature of the lungs, liver, and so forth, in the way we described yesterday.

This fact of the existence of two riddles—the riddle regarding the unknowableness of the outer world and the riddle of the unknowableness of the inner world—can be understood out of the knowledge of the whole being of man, if one permits oneself to consider once the whole human nature, which shows only one side between birth and death, having its other side between death and a new birth.

Let us study the human being as he presents himself to us here between birth and death. We need only look at an aspect of the inner soul that is connected with our entire, normal daily life. We need only consider the inner fact of memory. I spoke yesterday of how this memory actually is based upon a reflecting-back on the outsides of the inner organs. We need this memory, however, for our soul life. I have often pointed out facts that show how the disturbance of this memory can undermine the entire normal life between birth and death. I told you of an example showing that the capacity for memory can extinguish itself in the human being. Such cases are well known. You can read in psychological literature of numerous such cases. It is a well-known fact that this can occur, and in a lesser degree this phenomenon is much more frequent than is generally realized. With such human beings, you need only picture that these processes—without the person knowing it in the ordinary sense of the word—are just as they are for you during sleep every night: consciousness is extinguished. Such an abnormal discontinuity of consciousness, however, has an extraordinarily significant influence upon the whole consciousness of the personality. A human being who has undergone such an experience is not quite able to get along with himself; there is something horrifying in his life afterward. From this you can see how important it is for the ordinary life between birth and death—except during the sleeping state—to have continuity of consciousness.

This continuity of consciousness is closely connected with our memory. We need this memory, therefore, in order to maintain our ordinary life normally. When one undergoes an occult development, another fact arises, the fact that it is necessary to develop soul forces that actually, during the moments of spiritual seeing, also extinguish ordinary memory. As long as one maintains this ordinary memory, one is basically unable to see into the spiritual world. Pupils of an occult development usually experience that when they begin to work on their development they have certain visions; then later they begin to complain that they no longer have these visions—the visions stay away. The reason for this is that for such visions—if they are genuine, true visions, and not hallucinations—there is really no memory. It is not possible to recall a vision, for the vision is something real. If you look at a piece of chalk and then look away, you have a memory picture. If, however, you wish to have the chalk before you, the real chalk, then you must return again to the perception; you must have the reality before you again. To experience this reality, memory is of no help at all. If you touch a hot iron, you burn yourself. Regardless of how much heat you retain in your memory, however, you cannot burn yourself. You must return to the real experience, because the vision brings you into connection with something real and not a mere picture. It is a matter, then, of returning to the vision and not merely recalling it, for a real seeing is a real occult experience and cannot become recollection; one can come to it again only in an indirect way. One can say to oneself that before the vision appeared we had gone through this or that in ordinary consciousness. This can be recalled, and one must call this stage back to the point when the vision appeared. One returns to this point. The vision cannot appear directly; rather one must retrace the path, as it were. This is not taken into account by many people, who believe that a vision can be recalled in the ordinary sense.

One must therefore undermine memory in a certain respect in occult development. This is absolutely necessary and cannot be prevented. It therefore must be said that one who strives for such an occult development must above all be certain that in ordinary life he is a reasonable person, that is, that he has no false mystical tendencies but has a healthy intellect and a sound memory. He who in ordinary life already has a tendency to wallow in unclarity and sentimentality is not fit to undergo an occult development. One absolutely must have the ability to recall the events of the day in full clarity before one can risk pressing forward to visions for which there is no such recollection.

The precautions that are recommended for an occult development are actually rooted in the nature of occult development itself. You thus can say that for the ordinary consciousness there is memory, and it is part of normal life between birth and death to have this memory.

Now I can sketch for you how human nature relates to the possession of this memory. Let me sketch it in this way (see drawing, pg. 84). What I am drawing now does not exist in this way but can be perceived in the etheric body. With this line I am indicating schematically that which is really extended over the whole body, and you would have to picture that from the head—and therefore from the sense perceptions, the sense organs—up to this line is what is outside the organs. This line represents the schematic borderline for the organs of the human being: this is the point of reflection, and beyond this line, therefore, lie heart, lungs, liver, and so on. Here (arrows) is where the reflection occurs. This line is symbolic of the human memory. You can actually picture that we have within us a kind of membrane that is really the membrane separating the etheric body from the astral body; in reality, however, it is not spatial—I have merely indicated it schematically. What is perceived is thrown back by the force of the organs that are behind it. It is thereby reflected, but reflected here, and we cannot see through it in ordinary consciousness; we cannot see through this memory membrane into the inner element of the human being; the memory conceals from us the inner element of man. It must conceal man's inner being, for otherwise the human being would not be normal in the ordinary life between birth and death. Memory is what closes off for us our ordinary consciousness from what is within. As soon as this memory is interrupted, as soon as it is torn, as happens through occult development, we see into our organs, as I described it yesterday.

Now, you see, we have the answer to the riddle of the not-being-able-to-look-within. This inner element must be concealed, for otherwise we would not be able to be normal in life between birth and death. We need this memory. The inner element of our self is thus hidden by our memory reflection. This understanding is what is necessary for a solution to this riddle.

From the other side, from the direction of the outer world, we see the veil of the senses spread out, as it were, and we do not see behind it. Let us look at the matter in this way, asking ourselves: how would it be if we were not to perceive the veil of the senses, behind which lies the essence of the world: let us say that the sense veil were perforated everywhere—if one could look through it everywhere, how would it be then? We would always flow with our perception, with our observation, into the objects. We would merge with'the objects. We would not be able to differentiate ourselves from the objects. What would be the result? We would never be able, if we were not able to differentiate ourselves from the objects, to develop feelings of love, for love is based upon the fact that one does not flow over into the other but rather remains an individuality, separated and yet “feeling across” (hinueberfuehlt). We are organized in such a way that we are capable of love between birth and death. In occult development this capacity for love must be replaced by Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition; we must, so to speak, break through the capacity for love. It would ruin our life totally and we would become brutal and cold if in our ordinary life we did not have love. Therefore it is necessary for one who attempts an occult development from this direction to develop above all, to the highest degree, the capacity for love. If he has developed it in such a way that he cannot lose it through occult development, that he maintains it in spite of this occult development, then he can dare to penetrate through the veil of the senses and look into the real objectivity. You thus see the second riddle placed before your soul. The human being must be organized in such a way that he is able to have memory and able to love. Because he must be capable of love, he is unable with his ordinary consciousness to see behind the veil of the senses, and because he must be able to remember, he is unable to look into his own inner being.

This is really the truth of the Kantian philosophy that is so erroneous. Kant wished to investigate human subjectivity, and he concocted a few abstract concepts that actually do not say anything. In reality it is so that we must understand the human being between birth and death as a being capable of both memory and love. In this life the human being learns to know what lives in sensation; he learns to know what lives in love, and this he must carry through the portal of death. We are here on earth, therefore, in order to bring to fruition in ourselves these two faculties.

Now, if the human being, through memory, must hold apart his perceiving and thinking being, which pushes against the veil of the senses here, then he develops, primarily through the head (though the human being is head in total), the life that we designate as the life of consciousness. This life of consciousness goes no further than the thought. The thought becomes memory picture, but we do not penetrate any further than to the memory picture. There the thought is stopped. Only through the fact that it is stopped there can it return again as memory. There the thought is stopped, and our normal life between birth and death actually consists of preventing the thought from descending into the organs. Its forces do descend, as I described yesterday, but the thought as such, as it lives in us as picture, we must not allow to descend into the organs. At the moment when we die, the thought becomes what it should not become in the ordinary consciousness; the thought then becomes Imagination. This Imagination, which in occult development is striven for with all one's effort, occurs when the human being passes through death. All his thoughts become pictures; the human being then lives entirely in pictures. One therefore can understand the dead only if one learns to know this picture-language. Immediately after death the thoughts transform themselves into pictures. The human being lives with these pictures for some time between death and a new birth. Then the pictures gradually become Inspiration. The soul thus in fact grows further. The pictures become Inspiration; then the human being begins to perceive the music of the spheres. The music of the spheres becomes something real for him: he lives in the world of world-tones. Finally he grows together with the objective-spiritual universe: his soul becomes entirely Intuition. He becomes, as it were, one with the universe.

When this Intuition has existed for some time, we are at the same point at which the world Midnight Hour occurs, of which I also spoke yesterday. Now the return path begins, and Intuition is suited to take up something of what the human being has left behind in having lived here on earth. When the human being goes through the portal of death, he lives by virtue of forces other than those that here on earth we call the will. He lives into more cosmic forces. The will becomes absorbed, let me say; the will gradually disappears. When the human being has arrived at the Midnight Hour of the world, however, that is after he has gone through the Imaginative stage, the stage of Inspiration, the Intuitive stage, and arrives, as it were, at the height of life between death and a new birth, then Intuition fills itself again with will. The thought again becomes permeated by will, and this will saturates the soul more and more; the soul wrestles through again to Inspiration and then to Imagination, undergoing Imagination for some time; then it is again ripe to be embodied here. Out of the pictures is formed, in the way I have described, what appears as the transformed metabolic-limb man of the previous incarnation. You see, therefore, that through those stages that are striven for in occult development, the human being ascends to the Midnight Hour of the world and then takes the reverse path down again to Imagination, arriving again at thought formation when he embodies himself (see drawing).

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

During this entire time the human being absorbs the will, and now, coming again into physical existence, we see how what works in out of the cosmos, what he absorbed from the previous incarnation, is as in a picture, and the will is still within this picture. We thus have here will-saturated Imagination.

When the human being therefore arrives at a new physical life, still before his conception, he does indeed have an Imagination, but a will-saturated Imagination. Out of the Imagination, which is essentially what existed already as picture, arises the head and what belongs to it, as well as the will, which takes hold now of the new limbs and the metabolism. This thus distributes itself over the head and the rest of the human being. The head is essentially, let me say, crystallized, frozen thought; what lives in the rest of the human being is organized will. Actually the human being can truly awaken only in the head. After all, you know your thoughts—your mental images in ordinary consciousness—one can say this about all present-day human beings. What happens in the will, as I have often mentioned, is just as unknown to man as what happens in sleep. How does one know, when one lifts an arm in ordinary consciousness, what is taking place? One perceives that an arm is lifted—we have this mental image—but the act of will as such remains in sleep, similar to the period between falling asleep and awakening. One therefore can say that regarding the metabolic-limb system, man also sleeps during the day. He awakens actually only in relation to the head-man. This all works together again.

You see, official science today speaks of a certain logic. It speaks in the logic of the mental image, of making judgments, and of drawing conclusions. Picture such a conclusion. The well-known conclusion, which resides in all logic, is related to the famous logical personality: all human beings are mortal; Caesar is a human being; therefore Caesar is mortal. This is the conclusion, and every part of the conclusion is a judgment: “All human beings are mortal” is a judgment; “Caesar is a human being” is a judgment; “therefore Caesar is mortal” is a judgment. The whole is a conclusion. Man, Caesar, are mental images. If you question a person today who is one of the very clever people—we must always consider the very clever people, for they determine the prevailing tone—he says, “Everything actually takes place in the nervous system; the nervous system is the mediator of the mental image, judgment, conclusion, even of feeling and will.” Already with this kind of forming mental images, making judgments, drawing conclusions, things are not as present official thinking believes them to be. Only forming mental images as such is actually the concern of the head. When you make a judgment, then you must feel, through the mediation of the etheric body, how you stand on your legs. You do not really make judgments with your head at all; you make judgments with your legs, although with the legs of the etheric body. He who makes judgments even when he is lying down stretches his etheric legs. Making judgments is not based on the head; it is based on the legs! Of course nobody believes this today; nonetheless it is true. Drawing conclusions is based on the arms and hands, and generally upon that which lifts man out of what the animal also has. The animal stands on its legs; the animal is itself a judgment, but it does not draw conclusions. The human being draws conclusions; for that purpose his arms have been liberated; that is what his arms are there for, not for walking. The human being has his arms free so that he can be a being that can draw conclusions. What happens when one stretches one's etheric legs or when one moves one's astral arm is a judgment, is a conclusion, which merely reflects itself in the head as mental image and then actually becomes a mental image. One thus needs the entire human being, not merely the nerve-sense human being, in order to arrive at judgments and conclusions.

Now, if you take this into consideration, you will say to yourself: the human being really lifts judgments and conclusions out of his limb system. These are fundamentally already acts of will, and this comes out of a much more indefinite state than forming mental images. We basically experience the same thing when we finish drawing a conclusion as when we wake up in the morning: we have lifted it out of the depths of our being. That which has become old from the previous life to this life, which lives itself out in the head, leads us to be able to have mental images. In the head we are old in relation to the cosmos when we are born. Our will is able to renew itself because in relation to the cosmos we have become young. What we carry with us as our head is always reminiscent of the previous incarnation. It is the old element. The metabolic-limb system, however, has been conquered by the will in entering this incarnation. It is actually mediated by the mother's body. The rest of the body—this can be confirmed by an outer, empirical study of embryology—is actually constructed from out of the cosmos in the mother. The head is simply a copy of the cosmos, brought about by outer forces. Whoever wishes to deny this should also say that it is nonsense that the magnetic field of the earth positions the needle of the magnet. The physicist goes beyond the magnet's needle if he wishes to explain it; the physiologist, the embryologist, the biologist, remains in the mother's body when he wishes to explain the embryo. That is just as nonsensical as if one wished to explain the needle of the magnet only out of itself. One must proceed out to the whole cosmos.

In development we have, to begin with, the head, and the rest of the body is only attached to it; this part the will conquers for itself, having approached Imagination during the passage through life between death and a new birth from the Midnight Hour of Existence onward. Now, when we study this human being (see drawing, page 84) we find that everything pertaining to thinking and perception lies above the membrane of memory, while everything pertaining to willing lies below this membrane. The will works up from below, works up out of the unconscious, and one finds it only in the way that we explained yesterday. There the will works upward. In regard to the will, we are sleeping. We thus actually have the human being as a duality in the life between birth and death. It is true the human being is a monad, but he is this in regard to the whole world, and this monadic quality must be brought about in becoming; he must renew it again and again. In reality, however, the human being between birth and death is dualistic: the thought, to some extent, with the perception on one side, the will with the feeling (Gemüt) on the other side.

The human being is thereby actually the average, I would like to call it, of two worlds. Be honest and ask yourselves, in every moment of your lives what do you have in consciousness? Your memory pictures—what you experienced at age two, three, five, or six—are the content of your consciousness. What comes through from below, welling up out of the will, is love, the capacity for love. The human being is actually nothing other than what in the average of two worlds appears as memory pictures and love. Basically the human being is organized in such a way that above is a world that is cosmic thought, while below is a world that is cosmic will. The human being is continually a point of attack for Lucifer from the side of will and a point of attack for Ahriman from the side of thought (see drawing, page 84). Ahriman continually strives to make the human being all head. Lucifer continually strives to cut the head off so that the human being cannot think at all, so that everything streams out in warmth by way of the heart, overflows with world love, flowing into the world as world love, as an excessively sentimental cosmic being flows out.

In our age, in our highly praised civilization, it is chiefly Ahrimanic influences active in us. These Ahrimanic influences have always been sensed by sensitive human beings. When I was still a very young man, I spoke once with an Austrian poet who was quite well known at that time; he had a fine feeling for what is emerging in our civilization, and he expressed it in a half-pictorial way; this half-pictorial quality was for him, however, a reality. He said to me—and it seems to me as if it were happening today—“Considering how we human beings are today, and especially if things continue along the lines they are going now, humanity will actually be confronted by a terrible fate, for the human being will gradually lose the agility of his limbs; he will no longer be able to walk properly; he will always want to ride a bicycle and to travel mechanically. He will lose the agility of his hands, and everything will become technical. Just as a muscle atrophies if it is not used, so everything in the human body will atrophy and the human being will become merely a head. The head will become bigger and bigger until finally the human being will just roll along, with the rest of his organism totally crippled.”

This picture hovered like a nightmare before this Austrian poet—Hermann Rollett was his name—and he described it very visually, for it weighed upon him terribly, this picture that human beings will become rolling heads due to our civilization. There is something quite true underlying this picture, however. What underlies it is that, in fact, in our time the powers are extraordinarily strong that would like to develop our heads more and more. With the physical head they will not succeed so well, but with the etheric head they will be more successful. It is therefore so, in fact, that in our time the Ahrimanic powers would like to make us thoroughly head-men; they would like to transform us completely into mere thinkers.

For the human being in a healthy development, however, the other pole exists, the will pole, which always counteracts this so that when we die the will has grasped the thought. Thought must not yet be alone. You see, when we are born, we have gathered new will, but the thought separates itself and finds our head; the will takes hold of the rest of the body. While we live on the earth there is within us a continual interaction between will and thought. The will takes hold of the thought, and we must carry this fusing of will and thought through death. Ahriman would like to prevent this. He would like for the will to remain separate, for the thought alone to be particularly cultivated. We would lose our individuality if we were finally to arrive at the point toward which Ahriman strives. We would completely lose our individuality. We would arrive, in the moment of death, at an excessively, intensively cultivated thought. We human beings would be unable to hold this thought, and Ahriman could lay hold of it himself and integrate it into the rest of the world so that this thought would work further in the rest of the world. This is, in fact, the destiny that threatens humanity if we persist in the present-day materialism; then Ahrimanic powers would become so strong that Ahriman could steal thoughts from the human being and incorporate them into the earth in their effectiveness, so that the earth, which actually ought to come to an end, would become consolidated. Ahriman works toward consolidating the earth, toward the earth remaining as earth. Ahriman works against the saying, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” He wishes the words to be cast aside and heaven and earth to remain. This can be accomplished only if the thoughts of human beings are stolen, if human beings are deindividualized.

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If Ahriman could continue to work as he has been able to especially since the year 1845, human brains would become more and more rigid, and human beings would live as though subject to compulsive thoughts, to materialized thoughts, as I explained yesterday. This would show itself particularly in human beings being guided in their education in such a way that they would no longer have mobile thoughts; rather, when they reached a certain age, they would have completely fixed thoughts. Now ask yourselves whether that is not already true to a great extent in our time! Just think how fixed the thoughts of many human beings are today. Is it possible to teach much to human beings today? Their thoughts are so rigid, so solid, that it is almost impossible to teach them very much. This is already being used by Ahriman. Ahriman strives more and more to intensify the process of making thoughts into compulsive thoughts. An active product in the scientific realm of these compulsive thoughts is atomism. In atomism, the spirit behind the veil of the senses is not intimated but only atoms, everywhere vibrating, whirling atoms. Of course you cannot reach behind the veil of the senses in any other way than with thoughts. Ahriman, however, has confused people so much already that they have materialized their thoughts. They no longer believe that they themselves have actually merely constructed a world with thought-atoms; they consider this as reality. They therefore have externalized the thoughts. This is a thoroughly Ahrimanized world. Today we have an Ahrimanized science, Ahrimanized through and through.

That this is actually the case can sometimes be encountered in a frightening way. I received, for example—maybe thirty-five years ago—a manuscript. It was a very scholarly manuscript. It intended to give the human differential—I am telling you a true story! By the human differential was meant the differential that if one integrates it will result in the human being. If one therefore integrates from foot to head, one will get the human being. It was a very scholarly treatise, and the physician who brought it to me said, “You may meet the author personally,” for he was in his clinic. When I became acquainted with the man, he said, “Yes, this is so; I have experienced it myself. I consist altogether of differential atoms. Everywhere there are differentials, and I am only an integral.” He conceived himself as differentiated exclusively into atoms; that was an intellectual-Ahrimanic form of consciousness. In the last analysis, however, it is merely the system of atomism grown rigid. When this manuscript was brought to me, I was led to recall that there is a LaPlacian world formula: according to it, it should be possible, by integration from the processes of atoms, to calculate, by inserting a specific value, when, let us say, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or something similar! Here one does not integrate from foot to head, but rather one merely needs to integrate from the world's beginning to its end. This can be done simply by bringing atoms into the world formula in the appropriate way. This whole way of thinking looks suspiciously similar to the treatise of the man who considered himself an integral locked in between the borders of foot and head. By viewing such matters correctly, one can receive clear insight into the progressively Ahrimanic nature of our culture.

This must, of course, be counteracted, which can happen only if our concepts are again led to have a pictorial quality, so that we do not merely work with abstract concepts but rather bring to our concepts a pictorial quality. Then, when passing through the portal of death, we will already be bringing pictures with us, and we will find the connection to what the world demands. Otherwise humanity approaches the danger of losing itself. What actually ought to be individualized by the flowing of the will into the thoughts will become mineralized, will be made into universal earth. The earth thus would become a world- being, but humanity would in terms of its soul flow into a great cemetery.

Such overviews of civilization must occasionally be made. In our time it is absolutely essential to make such overviews, for whoever is able to oversee more precisely the matters of evolution today knows how rapidly this ossification of our civilization is approaching us. On this occasion I would not like to forget to mention that until the year 869 A.D., until the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, man's members were considered to be body, soul, and spirit. At this Eighth Ecumenical Council, the following formula, to which I have repeatedly drawn attention, was established for the West: it must not be believed that man consists of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul, and the soul has a few spiritual properties. This decision then passed into the world. In the Middle Ages it was heresy to believe that man consisted of body, soul, and spirit. Today philosophy professors discover by means of "unprejudiced science" that man consists only of body and soul. This "unprejudiced science" is nothing but a decision by the Eighth Ecumenical Council. That, however, strives toward something else. One could say that through this Eighth Ecumenical Council humanity has lost the consciousness of the spirit, which must be regained. If we proceed further along the path I have just described to you, however, humanity will also lose consciousness of the soul.

Among the materialists of the nineteenth century, this consciousness of the soul had already disappeared to such an extent that it was said that the brain secretes thoughts just as the liver secretes bile. It seemed, therefore, as if only a consciousness of the bodily processes remained. In fact, already today, without people knowing it, there are all kinds of underground societies that work toward things that lead in a direction similar to the one decided upon in 869 at the Council of Constantinople. They work to explain that man does not consist of both body and soul but rather that man consists only of the body and that the soul is merely something that develops out of the body. It is therefore impossible, if you take this viewpoint, to educate man from the aspect of soul; one must find a substance, a material substance, that can be injected into a human being at a certain age; then he will develop his talents by injection. This tendency definitely exists. It is right in line with the Ahrimanic development: no longer establish schools in order to teach, but inject certain substances instead. This is possible. It is not as if it were not possible. It is indeed possible, but the human being is made thereby into an automaton. One would speed up immensely what would otherwise be achieved by means of developing ready-made thoughts, with an education that overpowers thinking. There are already such substances that can be developed, substances that if injected at seven years of age, for example, could make the public schools altogether expendable; the human being would then become a thought automaton. He would become exceptionally clever but would not have a consciousness of it. This cleverness would just run off like a machine. What do many people today care, however, whether the human being has an inner life or not, as long as outwardly he walks around and does this or that? Such human beings that submit themselves by preference to the Ahrimanic civilization—and they do exist today—strive for such ideals. After all, what could be more tempting than the attitude, such as today is spreading far and wide, which would prefer to find an injectible substance to struggling with the children for years and years? One must present these things as being drastic. If one does not present the situation as being drastic, humanity today would not notice toward what goals it is striving. By such an injectible substance, one would simply achieve a loosening of the etheric body in the physical body. As soon as the etheric body is loosened, the play between the etheric body and the universe would become exceedingly lively, and man would become an automaton. The physical body here on earth must be developed through spiritual will.

Out of the full consciousness that one faces when confronting the automization of the human being, the methods for the Waldorf School, the pedagogical methods for the Waldorf School, were discovered. In this regard they should be motors of civilization that will lead again to a spiritualization, for basically—one can already say this—today above all it is necessary for the spiritual life among human beings to be particularly nurtured. One therefore should look courageously upon all that appears as symptoms of the improvement of individual human beings. I have often mentioned before how humanity strives today to place routine in place of a real practice of life—routine, which is truly the mechanization of life.

I was overjoyed recently when I read that there are still people who, going beyond the ordinary routine of life, have already perceived the practical life as something important. Recently a news item spread through the world, describing how Edison tested the people he wished to prepare for some sort of practical work. It did not interest him at all whether or not a merchant was able to keep books. That, he said, can be learned in three weeks if one is a reasonable, intelligent person. None of these specialties interested him at all; these one can learn. When Edison wished to know whether people would be of any use in practical life, however, he tested them by asking them questions like, "How large is Siberia?" Thus when he wished to discover whether someone was a good bookkeeper, Edison did not ask whether he could conduct an audit properly, but he asked, “How large is Siberia?” or “If a room is five meters long, three meters wide, and four meters high, how many cubic meters of air are contained in this room?” and similar questions. He posed questions like, “What is standing at the place where Caesar crossed the Rubicon?” and so on, just general questions. And according to the extent to which a person could answer such questions, Edison hired him as a bookkeeper, or whatever. He knew that if a person could answer such a general question this was a proof that his schooling had not been in vain, that as a child he had developed mobile thoughts, and this is what Edison demanded.

This is how practical life really should be conducted, whereas in recent times we have steered precisely in the opposite direction, succumbing more and more to specialization, so that finally one could really despair of finding the people needed for practical life. It is impossible to get anyone to do something outside the pigeonhole into which he wants to fit. Already today it must be said that in this way too we must work toward the mobility of thoughts. If there is such a working toward the mobility of thoughts, then these thoughts will not harden, and Ahriman will be in a difficult position. You can see yourselves, if you look at life, how few Edisons there are who have such practical principles. It is necessary to work toward a pictorial quality of concepts; whoever works toward the pictorial quality of concepts will no longer be able to say that he does not understand spiritual science. It is precisely that tug which a person giyes himself in order to receive from abstractions the pictorial quality of concepts that presents on the one hand the possibility of grasping that the earth evolved out of ancient Moon, Sun, Saturn; on the other hand, for the inner life, the life of feeling intermingles with the pictorial conceptions, with the imagination. The fully human being thus will arise.

We had before us yesterday a succession of children to whom we gave our attention. It is in this way for the most part that the study of the treatment of abnormal children has necessarily to be pursued—namely, in relation to particular examples. Abnormality manifests in all possible directions, and each single case is a case by itself. The only way you can begin to learn how to deal with such children is to devote yourself to an individual case, and thereby, as time goes on, gradually acquire the skill that will be needed for dealing with other cases.

You will remember the boy of twelve years old who was brought before us yesterday and whom I had to describe as a kleptomaniac. I explained to you how spiritual vision can discern, in the case of such a kleptomaniac, that on account of hindrances in the astral body, he has no means of access to the capacity for judgement that ordinarily belongs to human beings in the world. In this connection, you must realise that everything which has to do with morality, everything of which it can be said that our conception of it must needs include moral impulses, comes to expression within Earth existence alone. We really could say—it would of course be misunderstood by the superficial thinking of the present day—that where the Earth comes to an end, where one goes out beyond into the super-sensible realm, moral judgements such as we are familiar with on Earth cease to exist; for the reason that out there, in the realm of the super-sensible, morality is, so to say, a complete matter of course. Moral judgements begin only where there is a possibility of choice between good and evil. For the spiritual world, good and evil are simply characteristic qualities. There are good beings and there are bad beings. As little as you can say of a lion that he ought, or ought not, to be lion-like, just so little can you say, when you have come away from the Earth, that good and evil ought or ought not to be as they are. To speak in this way pre-supposes the possibility of choice, of saying Yes or No, a possibility which comes in question solely within the organisation of man and where human beings are living socially together. Now, in the case of an illness such as kleptomania, owing to the hindrances of which we spoke, the person in question has not evolved his astral body far enough to enable him to develop a sensitivity to moral judgements. Consequently, the moment a boy of this kind feels a particular interest in some object, he sees no reason at all why he should not take it. He does not understand that it may “belong” to someone, the idea of “mine and thine” has no meaning for him. His astral body does not get far enough into the physical world for him to be able to appreciate the concept of possession.

We have here exactly the same kind of phenomenon as when someone is colour-blind. It's no use talking about colours to one who is colour-blind; and it would have just as little sense to speak in the higher world about possession and non-possession. The child does not find his way far enough into the physical world for him to be able to attach any meaning at all to what he hears people say about “possessing” things. What is particularly strong in him is the idea of discovery—the idea that he has lighted upon some object or other which astonishes him, which fills him with delight and interest. But there his capacity for forming ideas comes to a full stop. The truth is that up to now his astral body has not penetrated to the region of the will, but has remained more or less in the intellectual sphere. We have evidence of this in the fact that the organs of the will are deformed at the side. Consequently, whatever he finds good intellectually he at once turns into will. Let the same defect show itself in the intellect, and you will find the children are dull and stupid; but when, as here, it shows itself in the will, they are kleptomaniacs.

An abnormality of this kind is very difficult to contend with. For at the age of life when it would be important to make a strong stand against the failing, it generally escapes notice altogether. At this early age, the child is naturally imitative, doing what he sees done around him, and so one may easily fail to discern in his behaviour the tendency to kleptomania. Only after the change of teeth, will the tendency begin to be apparent. When the change of teeth has taken place, the child is however even then not far enough out yet on the physical plane to develop a sense for any moral judgement other than: What I like is good, what I don't like is bad. His judgements, that is to say, are entirely aesthetic. It will therefore be for the teacher to awaken in the child the feeling for the good—the meaning of “good”—by bringing it about that the child looks up to him and takes him for his pattern and example. That is why in our Waldorf School education we take particular care that authority shall make itself felt in this age of life. Quite as a matter of course it should come about that the child regards his teacher with devotion. The teacher will then speak of things that are “good” always in such a manner as to arouse the child's interest and enjoyment, and of things that are “bad” in such a manner as to arouse his antipathy. For this to achieve the desired result, it is of course essential that there be first the natural acceptance of the teacher's authority. If this is necessary in the case of a so-called normal child, it is in the very highest degree necessary in the case of such a child as we are considering. In all education nothing contributes so much to true progress as that the child has trust and confidence in the one who is his teacher; and in dealing with abnormal children it is absolutely essential that this right relationship between child and teacher can be relied on from the outset.

In a course of study such as we are now engaged in, we must not omit to point out how important it is, when dealing with quite little children, to make careful observation of the whole way in which their development takes place. If we notice that a little child grows very happy and animated on account of something he has learned—learned, I mean, before the change of teeth—if we notice, for instance, that a child who is learning to speak takes inordinate pleasure in some new sound he has learned to utter, then we must be prepared for the possibility that things may go wrong with that child! Children who later on become kleptomaniacs, develop this kind of egotism in the tender age of early childhood; they will perhaps click their tongue with satisfaction, when they have acquired a new word. This is rare with very young children, but it certainly can occur.

One has to learn to be able to look ahead and see what may be the outcome of such a trait in future years. Far more important for the doctor as well as for the educator, than the principles upon which he has to work—although a knowledge of these is, of course, to be taken for granted—far more important for him is that he should acquire a sensitive perception for what is going on in the world around him. You must not, you see, be like Wulffen;¹ you must be ready to appreciate what a vast deal depends on the environment of a growing child. Take, for instance, such a case, where a very little child has the habit I spoke of just now: he clicks his tongue with satisfaction over some new thing he has learned. This delight at acquiring something in the intellectual sphere will change, about the time of the second dentition, into a conspicuous vanity; the child will grow vain and conceited in relation to other things as well. It should indeed be a matter for grave concern, for instance, if at about the time of the change of teeth a child develops—as it were, from an inborn tendency—a hankering after fine clothes. Symptoms of this nature should be carefully noted. But let us now consider two kinds of environment into which such a child may grow up.

The child may be born in a region—we will imagine for the purpose some quite small territory—where people are accustomed to live in an easy-going way and let things take their course, and where they look upon the militia as something that is necessary for the defence of their territory, but that arouses in them no enthusiasm or at best an enthusiasm that has to be artificially stimulated. There will then develop in every child as a matter of course, during the period between the seventh and fourteenth years, a feeling for what is expected of him as a member of the community. The boy grows up; and if particular care has not been taken that he is able to look up with love and respect to his teacher (for parents, as you know, do not always concern themselves about such a matter in this period of the child's life), then the tendency which we have seen at work in the intellectual sphere slips down now into the will, and it is quite possible that kleptomania may ensue.

And now let us see, on the other hand, what happens when a child of this kind grows up, not in a country where the militia is regarded as a somewhat troublesome burden, but in a region where the child finds himself surrounded by a kind of Prussianism. (As you will see, I am giving just characteristic features of a particular case.) Militarism is here looked upon by no means merely as a necessity, but as something that gives one tremendous pleasure, something that thrills one with wonder and admiration and to which one is loyal through thick and thin. The child does not remain at home in the family, he is sent to school and then later to the University. And now the trait that was not at all advantageous to the other boy turns out to be of great advantage to him. The disposition of which we have spoken and which was already present in him as a child finds its fulfilment and expression when he becomes a researcher in natural science. He is engaged in preparing microscopic slides; he will look round in all directions for objects to bring under the microscope, and in this regular—and at the same time irregular—way, satisfy his longing to acquire things for himself. The impulse will experience its full satisfaction. For the boy has found his way into a milieu within which the habit of stealing has no place; if things are “taken”, then it is things with which one does not associate the concept of stealing. The kleptomania will in this case go on developing beneath the surface. The boy becomes later a lecturer in physiology, he becomes the most famous physiologist of his time. Something of the kleptomaniac propensity remains with him for life, but it is associated in him with a kind of enthusiasm for war. This enthusiasm now changes however the sphere of its activity, finding its way especially into the imagery he uses in his lecturing; these are all about fighting and going to war. And then, strangely enough, this tendency may in certain circumstances degenerate into a kind of vanity. A feeling may get hold of him that his rhetorical figures are his own possession and that no one else has a right to use them. Suppose some daring and rather mischievous student of his, who is a bit of a genius, ventures in his examination to use the very same figures of speech. That student will certainly be failed. And if he should go so far as to click his tongue at the same time, then things will go very badly with him.

Once we have the insight to see and understand things of this kind when we meet them in life, the insight itself will guide us to the right method of dealing with them. We must resolve to make ourselves acquainted with life in all its manifold shades and varieties. Then we shall be ready to notice quickly when traits begin to show themselves that point in this or that direction.

I have already spoken to you of a good curative measure that can be employed in the psychological sphere. You have to cultivate your power of invention and tell the boy a story, in which this characteristic of his plays a part. You tell him of people who do the same kind of thing, and then you make it clear that all the time they are only digging a pit for themselves into which they afterwards fall. If the dramatic character of the story be developed with real enthusiasm, you can attain your end in this way, provided you sustain the effort without any slackening. In addition, you will at the same time need to treat such a child therapeutically; he must receive injections with hypophysis cerebri and honey, because, as you saw, the temporal lobes are stunted and we must do all we can to encourage forces of growth that shall counteract this deformation.

Very good results can also be obtained from the use of Curative Eurythmy; but it must be carried out with tremendous energy. All the movements that belong to the vowels, the boy must be got to make with his legs. For what we have to do is to expel from the will the intellectual element, and at the same time impel into the will the striving, the taking pains, that lives in the vowel sounds.

Finally, it is most important that by virtue of the authority we have with the child, we should find it possible to speak with him quite plainly and unreservedly on the matter, showing him how objectionable such a habit is. But this must not be done too early. It has to be brought home to the child's intellect, and by attempting it too early we can easily spoil everything. We must go to work with our stories in the first place, and then gradually lead over to this appeal to the intellect.

It is most difficult to point to any success in these measures, for the good results are simply not noticed. The truth is, however, that many a kleptomaniac would never have been one at all, if early on, so soon as symptoms began to show themselves, those in charge of the child had at once begun telling the right kind of stories. Such stories always work; but we must have patience. One can be quite sure that in such a case as this boy, good results can be achieved—although, if the habit is deeply ingrained, perhaps only after a very long time.

And now for the other difficult child of whom I was speaking yesterday, who is not yet quite a year old, the case of hydrocephalus. Treatment has indeed in this instance been very difficult so far. For what do we observe in this child? What strikes us about him? First and foremost, excessive excitability and irritability of the nerves-and-senses system. This it is that has made possible such a prodigious enlargement of the head. Marked irritability of nerves and senses will always be found to express itself in an enlargement of the head. We must however be careful here to look at relative and not absolute measurements. If a person who is predisposed to be small altogether, has a head of the same size as that of a big, tall person, then he has what is for him a large head. This must not be forgotten when we are considering cases that are not abnormal. The child we saw yesterday is abnormal. The inordinate sensitiveness and irritability of the nerves-and-senses system, which are so evident in him, have been induced by the conditions under which he was living in the embryo time; I described these conditions to you yesterday, explaining them as due to the uneven way in which the influences of mother and father co-operated in the embryo.

What must we do in order to bring the child nearer to normality? Everything that could excite or irritate the nerves-and senses system must be shut out for as many hours of the day as possible. Accordingly we have had the child in a dark room, a room that is completely darkened, so that as he lies there, he is all the time in the quiet and the dark, receiving no impressions. As a matter of fact, I overestimated at first the results that could be attained by these means, for the child is actually not yet responsive to light. His sensitivity to light is exceedingly weak; on this account the exclusion of light is of less importance than might have been presumed. Nevertheless, this is the right principle to go on—to let the child live in the quiet and in the dark, having around him as few impressions as ever possible; then the impulse for quick and restless movement—an impulse of the will—will be aroused from within, and will work counter to the nerves-and-senses system. This then will be the first rule we set out to follow. Another thing we must do is to try to influence the nerves-and-senses system through the appropriate agencies. We have been using gneiss as an internal remedy. Quartz itself, used directly, would induce shock, and that we must at all costs avoid; with gneiss, the effects of the influence of quartz are more distributed. In quartz, the forces are strongly “radiant” in their working, sharp and spear-like; whereas when the same forces are distributed as in gneiss, they are mild in their working and spread out in the organism, reaching the periphery with a lighter touch. Gneiss in a high potency can here lead to the desired result. And then we must try to calm down the excited state of the nerves in the region also of the will. For in a very little child the whole human being, you must remember, is nerves-and senses system. This can be achieved by giving poppy baths. Baths are prepared, using the common field poppy.

When you see before you a state of affairs such as shows itself in this child, two things must go hand in hand the whole time—observation of the case, and whatever therapy is possible. You are dealing, you see, with an individual case. You will be in a better position to appreciate the importance of what I am saying if I tell you now what further symptoms have presented themselves to our observation. To begin with, we noticed that during the time of the treatment by injection the temperature dropped. Shortly afterwards the head was found to have increased in size. The child was sleeping by day and crying in the night. That changed when we began to give poppy baths in the evening. The fæces are hard, and a difference can be noticed according as the baths are given in the daytime or at night. The connection of astral with physical body is quite different morning and evening.

What we have to do is to bring order into the processes whereby what comes from the digestive system works into the brain. You will easily realise that mother's milk is not able under all circumstances to benefit a child of this kind in the same way that it does another child. (Normally, you know, mother's milk has an inherent tendency, a natural readiness to transfer itself from the digestive system to the nerves-and senses system.) We therefore discontinued mother's milk at the beginning of March, and the child was from then on nourished by other means. Nectar was given—the content of the nectaries found in the flowers of certain plants. Nectar has the effect of strengthening the ego in the region of the will. By administering a nourishment that develops—with something even of the dynamic of a parasite—in the region of the blossom, we make appeal to the inner individuality of the child, we try to call forth this inner individuality and bring it to activity. We have had some measure of success in this direction. But I must warn you how necessary it is, when one has a plan of this kind on hand, to decide on a suitable time for carrying it out, and then prepare oneself thoroughly for the occasion. Set-backs can always occur, and these are misjudged by anyone who looks at the matter from a layman's point of view. We have it here on record that for some days the child was having nectar and the fæces became softer. Afterwards diarrhoea ensued. The nectar was then discontinued. The diarrhoea stopped, and a condition set in during the night of 11th-12th June, that brought a kind of crisis. The child was crying, and blinking, and passing a great deal of water; the body sank in with every expiration; there were attacks of cramp in the left leg, while the left arm grew tense and rigid; the fontanels were also quite taut, and the reflex actions more pronounced. Hot compresses were applied, and compresses of poppy juice, after which the child fell asleep, and his condition on the following day was good. Appetite and evacuation of the bowels were in order.

You must understand that it is impossible to steer clear of such crises—unless one is prepared to steer clear of all hope of a cure! For the very work we have to set ourselves to do in the organism is bound at some time or other to express itself in such a crisis. When this happens, it is of course necessary immediately to intervene—as Frau Dr. Wegman did. After the application of hot compresses and poppy juice compresses the crisis will subside in a proper way. The only advice that can be given for a crisis of this nature is on no account to allow yourself to be alarmed or thrown off your guard. There are moments in such a case when everything depends on prompt and immediate action.

I would like to tell you of an interesting little experience that I had on this occasion. News reached me from another quarter that the child was in a very bad way. Frau Dr. Wegman herself said nothing about it; I was accordingly reassured, and was confident that the condition was taking its inevitable course. For one must, you know, retain the whole time a mood of readiness for the natural development of the illness; that is essential. And then one can listen quite quietly to someone or other who, without any real understanding of the case, is frightened and disturbed at the turn the illness is taking. In cases like this, where anything may happen, we must first be perfectly clear in ourselves that we are doing what requires to be done; if this is so, then we can also rest assured that everything is as it should be. It is of course most important to be watchful for crises and, when they come, to give them every care and attention; but we must know that they will certainly occur in a case of this kind. Feelings of pity and the like, which tend to make one agitated and upset, cannot help. It is never of the least use to be overcome with a feeling of pity, that way we merely get bewildered and distraught; the one and only thing that can help is to face the situation quite objectively and do what has to be done.

And now let us go a little further into the subject of treatment. As we have seen, it is not possible to do anything much yet in the way of psychological-pedagogical treatment; we have only one possibility in this direction, namely, to help psychologically by giving rest and, as far as possible, darkness. It is important however to find a way of bringing into the organism the principle of disintegration. We must replace the strong tendency that is at work there towards the watery element, towards fluidity by the principle of disintegration. Water does not fall asunder or disintegrate; it flows and spreads. We want to call upon forces that can promote disintegration, that can aid and encourage it. Such are the forces of lead. In lead we have a most effective means of inducing decomposition, disintegration. Whenever you see that upbuilding forces are rampant in the very place where breaking-down forces should be at work—and is not a preponderance of upbuilding over breaking-down forces the fundamental phenomenon to be observed in a giant-embryo such as this little child?—whenever you see this, you may always start on a course of medical treatment with lead. Lead, especially when injected, can have extraordinarily good results.

Let me describe to you how lead takes effect in the organism. Lead has, of course, long been known as a remedy; for thousands of years those who have had any understanding of such things have pointed to the medicinal influence of lead. The knowledge of its beneficial working has however been tending gradually to disappear—although now in our own time it is coming into notice again in a most remarkable way, from quite a new quarter. But now consider for a moment—where, in the whole earth, are the most powerful forces of disintegration to be found? We find them where radium occurs. And from radium we get, along with helium, an intermediary product which, undergoing further transformation, produces lead. Here, then, you have the inner connection. In the great world outside, in the cosmos, the most powerfully working forces of cleavage produce in lead the substance in which these forces of cleavage are ultimately concentrated. If therefore you bring lead into the human body, you are bringing into it cosmic destruction, cosmic disintegration. Think what this means. You introduce the lead, by means of injection, into the blood-circulation. In the circulation of the blood we have an immediate reflection of the structure of the universe. The 25,000 years that the sun takes to go round the universe—these 25,000 years we have in the circulation, in the pulsation of the blood.² And now you bring disintegrating forces straight into the organism. The cosmos, as we know, gives itself time to work; nevertheless, if we have a real insight into the matter, it will be evident to us that the introduction of such a substance as lead can be of real help.

Treatment for this child will therefore be as I have described. We have also used hypophysis, applying it to the legs as an ointment; the formative, shaping forces that are active in the secretion of hypophysis counteract deformation. We shall in this way “form” while we heal. We have of course at the same time to see that the right stimulation is provided in order for the remedies to be able to work.

One can, you know, be very thankful that we have now surmounted a first crisis; one can be glad of the crisis that occurred between the 11th and 12th July, when the child manifested the symptoms we described. He will in all probability have to go through many such crises, and we must be very watchful to see that we cure the child, in the positive sense. For it is, you know, quite possible for a cure to take place in a negative sense. It comes to this—we have to cure, not for death, but for life. It is indeed a most delicate matter ever to deal with an organ therapeutically.

I would like also at this point to draw your attention to the fact that nothing could be achieved by puncturing and letting water flow out; the trouble then only starts again and grows even more serious than before. Obviously, however, so long as we have not yet ourselves attained any success in diminishing the size of the head, it is not for us to begin criticising other methods of treatment.

This is going to be a particularly interesting case, and for me personally it has as a matter of fact quite a special interest. For, whenever I think of this little fellow, whenever I look at him, it is not merely this child that I see before me. Imagine to yourselves this child grown to be thirty years old. He would then be an adult human being. It might well happen. He would be about six times as big as he is now. The head would be perhaps three-and-a-half times its present size, and the rest of the body six times. Imagining this, I see before me a man whom I actually did have before me when I was a boy of six years old. We used to meet constantly, for he was always there at the station when the trains arrived. He was obliged to use crutches, because his body could not carry his head. The whole muscular system that is involved in walking had not developed properly. He had an immense head. The man had in fact remained an embryo, he was a thirty-year-old embryo.

The reason why this man made such a remarkable impression on me as a little boy was that he was unbelievably clever. I did so enjoy talking to him! A deformity is of course a bit of a shock to a boy of seven or eight years old; but then, on the other hand, the man was, as I have said, astonishingly clever. One could learn a great deal from him; and all his judgements were pervaded with a great gentleness. This gentleness and mildness seemed to overflow from him—like his head! When he spoke—his sentences were not unduly drawn out, they took the normal length of time to utter, but as he spoke them, it was almost as though he had some sugary moisture on his lips, as though he were rubbing his lips together and tasting the sweetness all the time. There was indeed something quite original about the man. He was moreover genuinely inventive. Inventions of many kinds were attributed to him—which he was said to have made first on a small scale. Altogether, a most interesting personality. In course of time he had become less sensitive about his abnormality, he had grown accustomed to it. After all, he lived, you see, in a village, where a person of this kind is regarded with a certain measure of understanding. I have in fact never yet come across a village where some afflicted child had not grown up in this manner, becoming the child of the whole village, and receiving constant care and help from those around.

If we should have a child of this kind to look after, who is rather older than the little fellow we are considering, we would have to adopt other measures, such as I described to you in part when I told you how I had to treat the hydrocephalic boy of eleven years old who was given into my care, and who was in time completely healed.

Now let us go on to the next—the little girl who was rather unruly and troublesome. This child weighed 41 lb. at birth, was a nine months child and was breast-fed for seven months. She learned to walk in her first year, and learned also to speak at the proper time. When a year and a half old, she ceased to wet the bed at night, but wet herself by day. At the age of three-and-a-half she had an attack of influenza with headache and high fever, and three weeks later developed measles. The mother had influenza at the same time and was nervous and worried. The child's appetite is bad. She sometimes has disturbing dreams.

We have here a condition that is frequently to be met with among these children; we might even describe the little girl as a “normally” abnormal child. Our chief concern must be to see that the astral body receives the right form and configuration that will enable it to fit itself into the ether and physical bodies in a harmonious manner. To achieve this end, we always give arsenic baths—that is, we use arsenic externally; and occasionally we administer arsenic internally as well. The treatment has the effect of harmonising the relationships of astral body, ether body and physical body. Then, to ensure that the externally administered arsenic shall really strike home, we reinforce it by applying mustard compresses to the feet before and after the bath, using also grated horse-radish for this purpose. I should add that in the latter case, you must make sure that the horse-radish is not grated until immediately before use. It is most important that it should be freshly grated; if allowed to stand for some hours, it loses its efficacy.

Coming to the psychological aspect of the case, we must try to cure the child of the habit of being so excited. For she is still always restless and excited; I don't think the environment here has so far had any marked influence on her. We must break her of this habit. Altogether, the breaking of some habit or trait of character in a child can often lead to most salutary results—a fact that should not be overlooked. In the case we are considering, a great deal can be achieved by bringing the child to be quiet and still at the very moment when something is being told her of a kind that generally makes her excited and restless—even if, in order to keep her still, we have to resort to mechanical means. First of all, therefore, we observe, when we are relating some story, what things in the story particularly excite the child. Then, we compel her to restrain herself and not get excited, to become inwardly a little stiff and hold herself in. If we can bring this about we shall find, as time goes on, that the characteristic trait in the child is somehow being broken down. Instead of evincing excitement, she will begin even to show signs of weariness when the story is told. We let this weariness work—say, for a week or two; and then for a while we simply let the child go her way, treating her as though she were quite normal. After a time there will be some return of the excitability; then we shall have to set to work all over again, and repeat our course of treatment. The pauses are necessary; otherwise, if we go straight on without interruption, a reaction will come. The weariness, the slight signs of depression, will, if we push too far with our treatment, lead on to conditions of bodily depression, and we shall harm the child rather than heal.

We have now come to the point where I can indicate for you the principle that underlies the psychological treatment of all such children. We have to be ready and attentive, watching what is there in the child, realising that the abnormalities of soul are symptoms of what is going on within him, symptoms of the behaviour of ether body, astral body, ego organisation, etc. I say “etc.”; what do I mean? For when we divide the human being into

1. Physical body
2. Ether body
3. Astral body
4. Ego organisation
5. Spirit-Self

we generally go on to say, do we not, that the spirit-self has not yet been evolved by man and does not therefore immediately concern him. We read about it of course in the books, but in the present epoch, man reaches only as far as the ego organisation, and so we have no call to trouble about the spirit-self. But, my dear friends, that is not a true and full picture of the situation. Human beings, we say, reach as yet only as far as the ego organisation; but not all the beings with whom we humans have to do, come only as far as the ego and no further! When we are dealing with growing children, we are necessarily brought into contact with beings who attain to the spirit-self, beings who are further on in evolution than man. If we set out to develop Waldorf School pedagogy and really mean our work to have life, then we must appeal not only to the human beings who are congregated there in our school, but also to spiritual beings who are more highly developed than man, spiritual beings who show quite clearly that they have evolved to the spirit self. In dealing with a growing child, we shall particularly have to do with one specific class of such beings, namely, the beings to whom we give the name of “Genius of Language”. Were it left to the human beings themselves to hand on language to the next generation, man would pine away and perish. Being lives in language, as truly as ever being lives in man himself. Along with speech and language something enters into man, wherein beings live whose whole life bears unmistakably the stamp of the spirit-self, even as man in his life bears the stamp of the ego organisation. These beings inspire us; they live in us through the fact that we speak.

Think how in Eurythmy we have to develop an artistic speaking in order for a visible speech and language to arise. We are really very far from comprehending what speech is in its fullness! A little part of the working of the Genius of Language we elaborate in Eurythmy, so as to enable a visible speech to come to birth. And then again in Curative Eurythmy—think how we appeal there to what these beings can achieve with the spirit-self, in the intuitive stimulation of man's will!

It is really so: the moment we begin to speak of education, we have immediately to make our appeal to spirits who have evolved the spirit-self. And whenever we try to elucidate what lies hidden in speech, we are actually describing the spirit-self. I would therefore recommend anyone who is setting out to educate abnormal children, to meditate upon what he can read in our books, about the spirit-self. He will find this a good material for meditation. It is a prayer to those spiritual beings who are of the same kind as the Genius of Language.

Such spiritual beings are verily present among us. Say, we come into the schoolroom. If our behaviour and gestures as we enter give adequate expression to what we are feeling and experiencing in our soul, then they have an immense influence upon the child. And they are moreover a proof that we are connected with the spiritual beings who bear within them the spirit-self.

There is a habit that is all too common among people today—I am far from suggesting you should start inveighing openly against it; in matters of this kind, one must adopt a completely objective attitude, the same objective attitude as is required in dealing with the crises that occur in the little child. It is nevertheless a fact that when whole communities of people have a habit of keeping their hands in their trouser pockets and so avoiding any use of gesture, it means nothing else than that they want to be God-forsaken, they want to be left alone by the Gods—the Gods who are next above the spirit-man. It means, they would rather not have any knowledge of the beings who have developed the spirit-self—even as man has developed the I organisation. And one of the first things that happens to such persons is that their speech begins to be slovenly. This, is, in fact, the great danger that faces the civilisation of the West—the danger that speech and language, instead of being developed to become what they should become, deteriorate and grow slovenly.

In dealing with the growing child it is of the very first importance to see that he speaks clearly and distinctly, and this is more than ever necessary in the case of the abnormal child. We must on no account overlook the smallest sign of slovenliness of speech. In all your dealings with abnormal children, make it a rule to be watchful of how they speak, mindful always that their speech shall be clear and distinct and well-formed. Your watchfulness will react favourably on the condition of the child.

And then for the very young child who does not yet speak himself, it is good if he hears well-formed speech spoken around him—unless of course special instructions have had to be given that he is to be left still and quiet! And for children between the ages of seven and fourteen whom we have received into our care as abnormal, we need not have the slightest hesitation in bringing to them just as much as ever we can in the way of good speaking and recitation. To listen again and again to good speaking, well-ordered and articulate, is for abnormal children an absolute need, a need that springs from the inherent nature of the abnormality itself.

• 1. See Lecture 2
• 2. The exact number is 25,920.

Translated by Steiner Online Library