The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We shall try today to understand one of the aspects of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic nature. If we are to acquire some idea of this element which plays a real part in man's existence, we must look back to the Moon-evolution of our Earth and consider this Moon-evolution in connection with Earth-evolution proper.

We know that Earth-evolution proper was the outcome of the Sprits of Form having penetrated into the heritage left by the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. And we know too that these Spirits of Form produced an Earth constituted in such a way that man was able to receive his ego—in other words it became possible for the three principles of man's being which were the heritage of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions to be permeated by the Ego. The Spirits of Form endowed man with his Ego by a direct inpouring of their own being. As we look up to these Spirits of Form, seeing them as the bringers of the Ego we must also be mindful of the Hierarchy ranking immediately above man—which represents as it were, different stages of the organisation of the Spirits of Form. This other Hierarchy consists of the Spirits of Personality, the Archangeloi and the Angeloi.

Leaving aside for the moment the still higher ranks of Beings, we have to regard as the Creators and Regents of Earth-evolution: the Spirits of Form and their Servers—the Spirits of Personality, the Archangeloi and the Angeloi. Thus there was created an Earth-existence which, as its flower or crowning fruit, brought man with his Ego-nature into being.

When we observe earthly existence today we cannot really discern what its character might have been if the Spirits of Form alone, together with their Servers, had created and ruled over it. For the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings penetrate into everything. Thus we have an Earth-existence which, in its onflowing evolution, reveals what can be brought into being and directed by the normally-developed Spirits of Form and their Servers, and in-woven with it everything that proceeds from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences.

If we are clear about this we shall realise that all earthly existence—of man and the other kingdoms alike—would have been different if the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been able to create, to work, and to rule by themselves. What actually lies before us, therefore, is a clouded, falsified picture of Earth-existence, a picture that has been falsified through the working of Lucifer and Ahriman. In connection with many a phenomenon on the Earth we may well ask ourselves: What would this Earth-existence have become if the Luciferic and Ahrimanic falsifications had not taken place—in other words, if only the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been at work?

Among many phenomena that come into consideration, there is, for example, the subject of which I spoke yesterday.¹

I spoke of the evolution of language, which actually takes place more in the subconscious life of man, and I said that there is evidence of a certain law operating. In the development of language within the onflowing stream of Earth existence. I also said that the human-personal element has taken effect in this development and that today man has still not reached the point of perceiving in the sounds of speech, in the sounds of the letters, signs of the development of thoughts. Man has brought the development of thoughts to quite a different stage from that of speech and language.

But just in this connection there is something that can become clear to us when we ask: How would the development of thoughts have proceeded in earthly existence if Luciferic an Ahrimanic influences had not been at work? What would man’s thinking have been, what would his speech have been, if the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been the sole creators and leaders of the Earth?

If no Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence had taken effect in Earth-evolution, speaking and thinking would have been in complete unison. And this unison must be sought for again with a certain objectivity. If speech gradually assumes the character of a sign, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic element will be overcome. But if this Luciferic-Ahrimanic element had not been at work, inner unison, inner harmony between speaking and thinking, would have unfolded in humanity—that is to say, man would have perceived, would have had a living experience of what lies in a sound of speech, in d, t, th, and so on. He has no such experience today. This is evident from the fact that, in essentials at least, when men the whole world over have come to think in a certain way about one thing or another, they do not differ from one another in respect of their concepts, but very much in respect of their words. This one-sided character of thought which does not ever come to expression in speaking, must always be borne in mind for it is something that has already branched away from speech; it would be much more intimately connected with speech if no Luciferic-Ahrimanic influences had invaded Earth-existence. Men would have permeated speech with their feelings; they would have lived in the sound itself but at the same time would have experienced the concept, the idea, within the sound—the concept and the sound would have been experienced as one. That is what the Spirits of Form had originally planned for man. The element of soul which comes into play when, on the one hand, man is given up to his thoughts and ideas, and on the other, when he is given up to speech—this element of soul was not originally intended by the Spirits of Form for man on Earth; what they intended for him had been unison of speaking and thinking—speaking and thinking were to be experienced as one. The breach that exists today between speaking and thinking is to be traced back directly to the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Men have no feeling today for the special quality and character of m, g, and so on; the soul is related with these things in quite a different way from that in which it is related with thinking. The Spirits of Form and the Beings who serve them had intended for man an existence much more strongly based upon Nature-conditions than he was then able to achieve on Earth. The Spirits of Form had intended that man’s speech should be of such a character that it carries thinking itself on its wings, and not a kind of speech from whom the sap of thought has been drained. That is what the Spirits of Form had intended for man. And according to their intentions, differentiation among men was not to be determined by the character of languages on the Earth; differentiation among the nations was intended to be based only upon natural conditions, upon geographical and climatic differences. Man was to have felt himself belonging to a nation through the fact that he felt himself connected with certain powers working in the Nature-foundations underlying his existence.

On the other hand, if the intentions of the Spirits of Form alone had been carried out, it would have been possible when as a member of a nation a man encountered a member of another nation, for him to feel and understand from the very outset what lay within the words. There would still have been different languages. But in respect of the understanding of languages men would not have differed; in experiencing what lay in the single sound, in the single letter, a man would, it is true, have heard the other language, but he would not have heard the word as a mere husk; within the sound, within the word, he would also have heard the thought or the idea; it would have been carried on the wings of the word itself. The reason why a man does not understand a foreign language today is because the ideas do not lie in the words themselves; the words have become divorced from the ideas.

And so a cleft has arisen between speaking and thinking (ideation). The result is that up to now man was unable in Earth-evolution to develop the faculty of meeting other men with a feeling understanding even of an entirely new language. In this connection you must not think of the languages as they are now. The languages themselves would naturally have been quite different; as they have now become, people who live in one language-domain cannot understand those who live in a domain where a different language is spoken. This is because the languages have not developed in the same way that the life of thought has developed. In view of the present development of the languages, therefore, it is impossible to have any such understanding as was originally conceived by the Spirits of Form and which was to have been directed by the Beings who serve them. The Spirits of Form had not, of course, intended that men all over the Earth should be cut to one pattern, as it were by cosmic tailors; the intention was that men should differ among themselves but differ in such a way that they would still have confronted each other with complete understanding over the whole Earth.

Beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi were chosen to direct those groups of men as conceived by the Spirits of Form. The Archangeloi were those Beings who during the Moon-evolution had perfected the development proper to that evolution. And in order that the single individual within such a group of men should also have a guide to act as intermediary between himself as a single personality and the group as a whole—such a guide was to be a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi whose development had proceeded regularly and normally during the Moon-evolution.

It can therefore be said: if things had come about as they were intended by the Spirits of Form, differences among men would have been found all over the Earth, but everywhere they would have been connected as naturally as vegetation, and the plant-world, with the whole earthly environment. Men would have grown together with Nature, but there would not have penetrated into the life of soul the element that separates men according to languages. And there is something else too that would not have come to pass: men would not have attempted to find one science, one form of knowledge, all over the Earth. It is a deep-seated but a purely Luciferic belief today that there can be a uniform science which, comprised in a number of dogmas, must be valid for all mankind on the Earth. This belief has arisen simply because knowledge, conceptual ideation, has separated from speaking and thereby exists on its own.

If the intentions of the Spirits of Form had been ful¬filled, men would have expressed themselves differently about things in the world according to the groups to which they belonged, but in their feeling they would have understood the others, they would have had no dispute with those who expressed themselves differently. Diversity itself would have been the basis of the right form of life on the Earth.

These things were all part of what the Spirits of Form intended, but mankind has no longer the slightest understanding of them. For with surprising forcefulness the belief has taken root that the so-called conceptual life the life of thought, is non-national, in contrast to speaking which must necessarily be national. It was the middle condition that was intended by the Spirits of Form: not separation based upon languages and not union all over the Earth on the basis of some firmly established concept, but diversity of speech together with diversity of ideas. That is what was intended by the Spirits of Form.

In our own domain of spiritual science this must also in a certain respect become an ideal, an actual ideal. But there is a deep-seated unwillingness in man's nature today to recognise this ideal.—I can give you an illustration.

Although it is a long time ago now, you probably know that we were once part of the "Theosophical Society" of which Mrs. Besant was and is to continue to be President. We too—a number of us—were in the habit of attending the Congresses of that Society. Addresses were always given by the different General Secretaries representing the various European Sections. The difference in the languages was brought very clearly into evidence because each of the representatives spoke in his own tongue—with the inevitable consequence that the majority of them were not understood. Nevertheless, with the idea of promoting some measure of mutual understanding, the principle was followed of each representative giving at least a short address in his own language. Perhaps a few who were present on such occasions will remember that for several years I always spoke to the same effect—I do not know whether it was noticed, but year after year I said the same thing—not exactly with the thought, but always with the feeling: Will the real point of it be understood?—What I emphasised was always this: When we come together from the different countries we do not for the purpose of receiving a central Theosophy but in order to lay upon a common altar what it is the task of the various countries to accomplish for Theosophy. I always laid stress upon the individual element which, coming from the different sides, asks only to be laid on a common altar. Year after year I emphasised the same point. The only result was that although what I said was correct, some did not understand and the rest took offence. But it contained an expression of the ideal to which we must aspire: the ideal that cannot be made manifest by attempts to create a uniform system of dogma for the whole world but by working in the direction of enabling the principle of diversity in our Earth-existence to come to expression amid mutual understanding.

The preconceived assumption that there can be only one truth is so deeply rooted in human souls that contradictions are actually suspected when in a lecture-course something is expressed in one way and at another time in a different way. But this is exactly what must be cultivated among us, in order to show that diversity is a sine qua non in any presentation of truth. It is diversity, manifoldness, therefore that must become an ideal—not uniformity.

We have spoken briefly of the normally developed Spirit of Form and the Beings who serve them, and of the character of speaking and thinking which was intended for Earth-evolu¬tion, but we shall understand what lies at the root of these things only when we bear in mind the opposing Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. If we are to understand these, we must turn our minds away from Earth-evolution; for the Luciferic Ahrimanic element became what it is as a result of the Moon-evolution. As we have often heard, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic element remained stationary at the stage of Moon-evolution and carried over into Earth-evolution what stems from the Moon-evolution. So in the case of this Luciferic-Ahrimanic element we must not speak of the Spirits of Form as the Creators; the Spirits of Form are Creators only in the case of beings suitable for the Earth-evolution. In the case of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, it is the Spirits of Movement who must be regarded as the Creators, for they are the Creators and Regents of the Moon-evolution, thus being what the Spirits of Form are for the evolution of man and the Spirits of Movement are for the Moon-evolution and therewith for the Ahrimanic-Luciferic evolution as a whole. These Spirits of Movement were Creators during the Moon-evolution by virtue of what they brought into being in con¬junction with the Spirits who were then their Servers: the Spirits of Form as they then were, the Spirits of Personality and the Spirits belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi.

And what was brought into being were the Angeloi—the Angeloi who developed in the regular and normal way on the Moon. Just as in the course of Earth-evolution man is meant to develop the seven principles or members of his constitution the Angeloi were meant to develop their seven principles during the Moon-evolution.

Those Angeloi who during the Moon-evolution duly developed their seven principles, passed over into Earth-evolution and became the Spirits who were to function as the intermediaries between the individual man and the group of men that is guided and led by a single Archangel—again a Being who developed his seven principles during the Moon-evolution. But among these Beings there were some who had only succeeded in developing six or even five of their principles, who had not developed all their seven principles during the Moon-evolution. Hence they were not capable during Earth-evolution of becoming leaders of individual men as Angeloi, or leaders of groups of men as Archangeloi. These spiritual beings who had developed only six or five of their principles are, so to speak, subordinate Hierarchies; other Hierarchies rank above them. When we speak of Ahriman and Lucifer, they are to be regarded as the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings most closely allied to them—beings, therefore, who could not possibly pass in a regular way into the Earth-evolution because this was under the direction of the Spirits of Form; these beings had not reached the stage where they could become helpers of the Spirits of Form, for they were at the stage of the Angeloi. Neither could they have become men. They therefore stood midway between the normally developed Angeloi and men.

Thus in the Earth-evolution we have Man, (see diagram) and above him the Creators—the Spirits of Form—then the Spirits of Personality, the Spirits from the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, the Spirits from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi. These spiritual Beings had developed their seven or nine principles during the Moon-evolution; hence it is not necessary for them to enter into the kind of earthly embodiment created for man by the Spirits of Form; they – the Angeloi, for example—enter into an etheric body only, because they belong to the Hierarchy immediately above man. And in between are the beings for whom progress in simply not possible in these phases of evolution. Because they have not developed their seven principles, they are beings who can say of themselves: Our Creators are the Spirits of Movement, and we are ruled over by certain Spirits of Form, Archai and Archangeloi. Nevertheless, these beings were there, and were not capable of fulfilling the office that should properly have devolved upon them—which was to share in the rulership of the evolution of humanity and also of the other kingdoms of the Earth. In this they could have no share.

And so there were two classes both of Archangeloi and of Angeloi—not to speak for the moment of the other Beings. These beings who had developed normally now shared in the activity which was meant to have taken the course I have described, for example in connection with speaking and thinking.

If this legacy from the evolution directed by the Spirits of Movement had not existed, speaking and thinking would have developed in harmonious unison—as I described just now. And now something came to pass which seems to have little meaning when it is put into words, but it is, in fact, a tremendously significant, momentous cosmic event. There were now in the Spirit-Land—or, speaking in terms of religion—there were now in Heaven: the normally developed Archangeloi, the normally developed Angeloi, and a brood of incompletely developed Beings. And what happened was that the normally developed Archangeloi and Angeloi cast down upon the Earth those beings who had completed, not their full development, but only that of six or five of their principles—cast them down to the Earth from Heaven because no use could be made of them there.

And so, from the beginning onwards an invisible kingdom was mingled with Earth-evolution, the invisible kingdom of Lucifer and Ahriman, who had been cast out of that realm from which man, animals, plants and minerals were ordained to be created and governed. They had been cast out and were now on the Earth; they could not, of course be perceived with earthly senses, but they were there. The normally developed Archangeloi and Angeloi were in Heaven—to use the Biblical expression; retarded beings were wandering about the Earth. It is to this that the words of the Bible refer: “Neither was their place found any more in heaven.”² They were cast down to the Earth.

And now try to think of the actual situation in order that you may avoid erroneous ideas about certain matters.—Men were living on the Earth in a primitive stage of development, as you will find described in "Occult Science", but immediately below and around them, beings were living—we will speak of the very lowest rank of Luciferic beings—beings who on the Moon were the retarded Angeloi and who, instead of now being in the position of rulers, were, to begin with, idle and inactive. But whereas man was only just about to begin to develop his seven principles, whereas he could only hope to develop his seventh principle at the end of the Earth-evolution, or at a correspondingly nearer time his sixth or fifth principle—in these Luciferic beings the development of the sixth or the fifth principle was already complete; it was only the seventh principle that they had not developed.

The situation at the present time is that we are working at the development of what is called "Intellect”. The principle of man’s nature that is only now—in the Fifth Post Atlantean epoch—coming to expression in him for the first time, was far from being developed in the men of Lemuria. At that time the Angeloi who had been cast down had developed, already in the Moon-period, the principle which man is now for the first time in process of developing—already possessed what man was intended to develop only at a much later period of Earth-evolution. It is indeed a fact that even after the Lemurian epoch, in the Atlantean epoch, an important part was played by invisible beings who at that time had developed to a high degree that of which man in the Atlantean epoch had no trace whatever and which he is only now in process of developing, namely, the element of intellect.

And so highly developed Intelligences, Angeloi beings, hovered hither and thither as retarded Spirits during the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis. These were Spirits at a lofty stage, an exceedingly lofty stage of development. Again, to put it trivially, therefore, we can say: The plan of the Spirits of Form was thwarted. Whereas their intention had been to develop man stage by stage, letting him be guided by Angeloi so that by the time of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch he would be ready to develop intellect which would be in unison with speech and language—this aim was thwarted owing to the fact that invisible Beings lived among men.

We will think, to begin with of the Invisible Luciferic beings, the Luciferic Angeloi. These Luciferic Angeloi-beings penetrated into individual men in an early period of Earth-evolution, took possession of them, as it were. These Angeloi were beings who had been cast down upon the Earth. And so in ancient times there were men who, if they had become what the Spirits of Form had intended, would have been naive, primitive natures—but as things were, Luciferic Angeloi-beings had entered into them, and the result was that they were exceedingly clever, exceedingly astute—to a degree that was not possible in the case of man himself until the fifth or sixth epoch of Earth-evolution. In ancient India there was still some understanding of what the seven Rishis represented; these were men "illuminated by the Luciferic Angeloi-beings. They were men to whom naive and simple people naturally looked up to as standing at very lofty heights. In that time, and during later times too, these Luciferic Angeloi-beings again and again took possession of men, influencing either individuals or groups, they inculcated into humanity the notion of the "internationality" of the world of concepts, of the so-called uniformity of dogma over the whole Earth. Wherever men believe in this uniformity of dogma, wherever they believe that salvation is to be found, not in diversity but in uniformity—there the Luciferic Spirits are at work. They have torn the world of thought and ideation away from the world of speech and languages. Thereby they have evoked the state of things which has made it impossible for the thoughts and ideas to retain their rightful place within the spoken word. And so Luciferic uniformity, Luciferic monism, or the striving for it, came to prevail all over the Earth. Wherever there are fanatics who claim that what they themselves regard as right must forthwith be believed by all men on Earth—these fanatics are possessed by Luciferic Angeloi. What really matters, however is not so much the fact that men are possessed by this false idea of uniformity, but that they shall strive for an understanding of harmonious diversity.

And now the way was smoothed for Spirits other than these Luciferic Angeloi-beings. The Luciferic Angeloi manifested in the form of illumined individuals, especially in ancient India. It was through these chosen men—who, in their states of illumination, gave early expression to a condition not intended for the rest of humanity until a much late time—that the delusion of uniformity of all thinking was spread over the Earth. And thereby the path was smoothed for the other Spirits who belonged to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. But they were Archangeloi who during the Moon evolution had not developed their seventh but only their sixth principle. They too—because they could not be used as teachers and guides of groups of men divided according to geographical and climatic conditions—had been cast down and were now on the Earth among men. These Archangeloi—they were no longer to be found in Heaven but on the Earth—were sent out by the highest among them to the different folk-groups. And these folk-groups dragged speech down a stage lower. Whereas the Luciferic beings had torn thinking away from speaking, these incompletely developed Archangeloi allowed speech and language to sink a stage lower, so that the languages were as different—well, as different as they actually became on the Earth.

These beings who were retarded Archangeloi and carried out the guidance of groups of men on the Earth in such a way that they split humanity asunder, causing men to hate one another, to isolate themselves from one another—these beings have the Ahrimanic nature. They were highly developed beings but they were not the rightful leaders of peoples, for the simple reason that according to the intentions of the Spirits of Form, this leadership was meant to lie with the normal Archangeloi who have developed all their seven principles. It was especially the beings who had developed only six of their principles who now set themselves in opposition to the legitimate leaders of peoples. It is the Ahrimanic beings who have been the cause of languages sinking a stage lower, to a stage where to begin with men simply do not perceive what concepts, what ideas, are contained in the actual words of language. If the Luciferic Angeloi beings alone had come upon the scene the delusion of uniformity would, it is true, have spread over the Earth; but the several languages would have developed in such a way that if, merely in his mind, a man had overcome the delusion of uniformity, he would have been able still to feel what is contained in the different languages. But once the world of thoughts and ideas had been torn away by the Luciferic Angeloi, it was easy for the Ahrimanic Archangeloi to force speech still another stage downwards, with the result that it was then no longer possible for speech to develop in such a way that the thought or idea could be directly experienced within it.

We have here a picture of the interworking of a threefold principle. When our statue³ has been completed and you look at it, you will see that it gives expression to this threefoldness.—There is an onflowing process of evolution, but it has been falsified: falsified above through the delusion of the uniformity of thoughts, and falsified below through the delusion of the false principle of differentiation—which already is no longer a delusion but actual fact—the splitting up of humanity into so-called nations according to languages.

That is what came to pass in the course of Earth-evolution—it is part and parcel of Earth-evolution. And the result was that, as time went on, there developed the belief that is dominated by the delusion of uniformity, and, on the other side, the splitting into nations. That is what developed. This state of things had reached its peak when the Cosmic Being, Christ, came down to the Earth in the way known to you, inculcating into Earth-evolution an Impulse which we now have to carry into the world which represents the normal evolutionary process. But since Earth-evolution has for a time gone astray in two directions, the Christ-Impulse sets itself the task of creating the counter-impulse—that is to say, to impart greater power to the normally developed Angeloi in order that they may oppose the Luciferic Angeloi who uphold the delusion of uniformity. In the place of the monistic, delusive idea of the uniformity of all knowledge, there now came the Impulse that is implicit in Christianity when rightly conceived: understanding but not obtrusion of one’s own belief, the endeavour to find the truth residing in the nature of other men. Inasmuch as this is implicit in Christianity, the Impulse given by Christ enhances the strength of the normally developed Angeloi. So that for men and for every epoch it can again become an ideal to find on the Earth, wheresoever it may be, truth clothed in an individual form—to find what is true, now not merely through the intellect that has already been driven into delusion by Lucifer, but through souls, through hearts, allowing every man to find in his own way what is true.

The saying that truth resides in every human soul is a profoundly Christian principle, as I have said on other occasions. It is the outcome of a strengthening of the Angeloi, enabling them to gain a victory over the Luciferic Angeloi who want to spread over the whole earth the delusion of the uniformity of dogma as a body of intellectualism which does not admit of diversity of manifoldness of understanding. And on the other side, the power of the normally developed Archangeloi was to be fortified in order that they may gradually defeat those spiritual beings who bring about the differentiation of groups of men through the fact that these groups become infatuated with their own language and are led to separate from each other to the point of fanaticism. The strength of the normally developed Angeloi and Archangeloi was to be enhanced through the Christ-Impulse. What was to come to pass through the Christ-Impulse is not something that exists merely in the thoughts, the minds and the feelings of men; what happens in the Earth as the outcome of the Christ-Impulse transcends the visible and passes into the invisible. Christ is there not for men only, but also for the Angeloi and Archangeloi. For Christ is a Cosmic Being Who, through Jesus of Nazareth, entered into the Earth evolution.

In the middle of Earth-evolution, therefore, a strengthening was given everywhere: the Christ-Impulse entered, enhancing the power of the Angeloi and Archangeloi. This Impulse was powerful and mighty; something entered into Earth-evolution that had never previously been seen or known within it. (see diagram) The principle that had formerly prevailed strove to work as a Nature-principle, and desired that the spiritual guidance of the world should be based on the Jahve-principle. According to this principle it would have been natural for man's thinking and speaking to be in unison.—Our thinking has been detached from the Nature-Principle and has become spiritual; our speech has been detached from the Nature-principle and has taken on the qualities of soul.

Speech has been laid hold of by forces of soul, by the element of emotion and passion pertaining to the life of soul; thinking has been laid hold of entirely by the intellectual element which again pertains to the astral. But it was not meant to have been so; thinking was meant to lie a stage lower and to have been far more of a Nature-process; man was meant to speak and to understand the spoken word at a far higher level. After speaking and thinking had been separated for a while (I take speaking and thinking as examples among others that could be quoted), an Impulse much stronger than the Jahve-impulse was necessary. The nature of the Jahve-impulse was such that it did not yet reckon with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses. But these Impulses were at work nevertheless, until the middle of the Greco-Latin epoch—and then came the Christ-Impulse. This Impulse had necessarily to be stronger, more powerful than the Jahve-impulse then in operation. And this mightier Impulse was not only to lead Earth-evolution onwards along the course it would have taken if there had been no invasion by Lucifer and Ahriman, but to bring it back again into its old tracks until the end. Thus the Christ-Impulse took very powerful hold of Earth-evolution. Because men were at first incapable of understanding it, it worked in ways I have indicated—examples that may be thought of are the Emperor Constantine and the Maid of Orleans.—The influence of the Christ-Impulse is of untold significance.

Earth-evolution continued its course, and speaking figuratively, the following may be said. Suppose thick snow is lying on a railway line. A train comes and ploughs through the snow up to a certain point; but at that point the pile of snow is so high that the progress of the train is checked. Something similar happened in the case of the Christ-Impulse. It entered with tremendous power, strove to lay hold of the Earth, but Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces were there and they reared up like the snow in front of the train. For a time they were overcome—and, of course, will be further overcome if a sufficient number of men allow themselves to be moved by the Christ-Impulse—but for all that the snow-pile was there. And the consequence has been that—precisely in the age of intellectualism—the delusion of the uniformity of knowledge has asserted itself with particular strength. There is clear evidence of something which simply was not there in earlier times. Those conversant with the history of spiritual evolution are well aware that from the eighth or ninth century of the Christian era onwards, this delusion that a single form of truth must be made valid all over the Earth came strongly to the fore. The Luciferic Angeloi reared up once again. They were intent upon victory, intent upon misleading men into believing the delusion that one uniform truth should be held to prevail all over the Earth. And again and again there comes over men this terrible delusion of the monistic nature of dogma.

Later on, when the age of intellectualism had already dawned, came the great resistance emanating from the Ahrimanic Archangeloi—those beings who have brought the delusion of nationalism—a delusion that has now become accomplished fact. This Ahrimanic principle took essential effect in the 19th century, just as the Luciferic principle had done in the 8th/9th century. The earthly bearer of this Ahrimanic principle was Napoleon. Napoleon is the one from whom proceeded that corruption of Europe which led to the idea that the principle of nationalism is all-important, that men must be divided into groups on the basis of the nationalistic principle. Napoleon worked in the service of Ahriman, and that was the starting-point of the state of things that has persisted to this day: the grouping of men according to regions of the Earth strictly enclosed within national boundaries.

This delusion—it is now accomplished fact—is everywhere in evidence today. It is Ahriman on his rounds, it is the influence which strives to evoke the seductive cry that men must shut themselves off in accordance with the principle of nationality, while they clothe their delusion in the slogan: "Freedom of the nations—freedom and equality of the nations!"

This is a trend deeply and intimately bound up with cosmic evolution and it is taking effect in a terrible way at the present time. The spiritual beings who set out to bring falsification into Earth-evolution naturally make use of ideas and concepts which seem to men not to be repre-hensible but, on the contrary, particularly noble; Ahrimanic intentions are adorned in the mask of great and powerful ideals, just as the Luciferic spirit has been masked by the delusion of the uniformity of knowledge, expressed in words which everyone understands because they sound so idealistic: "One truth for all men." But with this slogan, Lucifer creeps into the hearts of men; Ahriman creeps in when the cry goes forth: The peoples must shut themselves off as nationalities living in particular regions on the Earth—and only those groups of men who represent nationalities are of any account.

Just as the first is a seductive call of Lucifer which appears in the guise of an ideal, the second is a seductive call of Ahriman which again appears as an ideal—but a terribly perverted ideal. Spiritual science is called upon to see through the seductive falsity of such calls and to work to the end that mankind shall take the rightful path, the path which after it had been laid down less forcefully through the Jahve-impulse, is now the path of the greater Impulse which came into Earth-evolution: the Christ-Impulse which sweeps away all the Luciferic and Ahrimanic delusions that have crept into the souls and hearts of men.

• 1. Das Reich der Sprache—not translated.
• 2. Revelation, XII,8
• 3. The great statue carved in wood which is to be seen in the Goetheanum.

My dear friends,

When people encounter the world conception of Spiritual Science their chief desire is to have an answer to their questions, a solution of their problems. That is quite natural and understandable, one might even say justifiable. But something else must be added if the spiritual scientific-movement is really to become the living thing it must be, in accordance with the general course of evolution of earth and humanity. Above all, a certain feeling must be added, a certain perception that the more one strives to enter the spiritual world, the more the riddles increase. These riddles actually become more numerous for the human soul than they were before, and in a certain respect they become also more sacred. When we come into the spiritual scientific world concept, great life problems, the existence of which we hardly guessed before, first appear as the riddles they are.

Now, one of the greatest riddles connected with the evolution of the earth and mankind is the Christ-riddle, the riddle of Christ-Jesus. And with regard to this, we can only hope to advance slowly towards its actual depth and sanctity. That is to say, we can expect in our future incarnations gradually to have an enhanced feeling in what a lofty sense, in what an extraordinary sense this Christ-riddle is a riddle. We must not expect just that regarding this Christ-riddle much will be solved for us, but also that much of what we have hitherto found full of riddles concerning the entry of the Christ-Being into humanity's evolution, becomes still more difficult. Other things will emerge that bring new riddles into the question of the Mystery of Golgotha, or if one prefers, new aspects of this great riddle.

There is no question here of ever claiming to do more than throw some light from one or other aspect of this great problem. And I beg you to be entirely clear that only single rays of light can ever be thrown from the circuit of human conception upon this greatest riddle of man's earthly existence, nor do these rays attempt to exhaust the problem, but only to illumine it from various aspects. And so something shall here be added to what has already been said that may bring us again some understanding of one aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha.

You remember the pronouncement of the God Jahve, radiating from the far distance, which stands at the beginning of the Bible, after the Fall had come about. The words announced that now men had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they must be banished from their present abode, so that they might not eat also of the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life was to be protected, as it were, from being partaken of by men who had already tasted of the Tree of Knowledge.

Now behind this primordial two-foldness of the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil on the one hand and the eating of the Tree of Life on the other hand, there lies concealed something which cuts deep into life. Today we will turn our attention to one of the many applications to life of this pronouncement: we will bring to mind what we have long known: i.e., that the Mystery of Golgotha, in so far as it was accomplished within the evolution of earthly history, fell in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, in the Graeco-Latin age.

We know indeed that the Mystery of Golgotha lies approximately at the conclusion of the first third of the Graeco-Latin age and that two-thirds of this age follow, having as their task the first incorporation of the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha into human evolution.

Now we must distinguish two things in regard to the Mystery of Golgotha. The first is what took place as purely objective fact: in short, what happened as the entry of the Cosmic Being ‘Christus’ in the sphere of earthly evolution. It would be-hypothetically possible, one might say, it would be conceivable, for the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, the entry of the Impulse of Christ into earthly evolution, to have been enacted without any of the men on earth having understood or perhaps even known what had taken place there. It might quite well have happened that the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place, but had remained unknown to men, that no single person would have been able to think about solving the riddle of what had actually occurred there.

This was not to be. Earthly humanity was gradually to reach an understanding of what had happened through the Mystery of Golgotha. But none the less we must realise that there are two aspects: that which man receives as knowledge, as inner working in his soul, and that which has happened objectively within the human race, and which is independent of this human race—that is to say, of its knowledge. Now, men endeavoured to grasp what had taken place through the Mystery of Golgotha. We are aware that not only did the Evangelists, out of a certain clairvoyance, give those records of the Mystery of Golgotha which we find in the Gospels; an attempt was also made to grasp it by means of the knowledge which men had before the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that since the Mystery of Golgotha not only have its tidings been given out, but there has also arisen a New Testament theology, in its various branches. This New Testament theology, as is only natural, has made use of already existing ideas in asking itself: What has actually come about with the Mystery of Golgotha, what has been accomplished in it?

We have often considered how, in particular, Greek philosophy that which was developed for instance as Greek philosophy in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle—how the ideas of Greek philosophy endeavoured to grasp what had taken place in the Mystery of Golgotha, just as they took pains to understand Nature around them. And so we can say that on the one hand the Mystery of Golgotha entered as objective fact, and on the other hand, confronting it, are the different world-conceptions which had been developed since antiquity, and which reach a certain perfection at the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, and then go on evolving.

Whence were these concepts derived? We know indeed that all these concepts, including those which live in Greek philosophy and which approached the Mystery of Golgotha from the earth, are derived from a primeval knowledge, from a knowledge which could not have been at man's disposal if, let us say, an original revelation had not taken place. For it is not only amaterialistic, but an entirely nonsensical idea that the attenuated philosophy which existed at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha could at its starting point have been formed by human beings themselves. It is primeval revelation, which as we know was founded in an age when men still had the remains of ancient clairvoyance; primeval revelation which in ancient times had been given to man for the most part in imaginative form and which had been attenuated to concepts in the age when the Mystery of Golgotha entered, the Graeco-Latin age. Thus one could see an intensive stream of primeval revelation arise in ancient times, which could be given to men because they still had the final relics of the old clairvoyance that spoke to their understanding and which then gradually dried up and withered into philosophy.

Thus a philosophy, a world-conception existed in many, many shades and nuances, and these sought in their own way to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. If we would find the last stragglers of what was diluted at that time to a world-concept of a more philosophic character; then we come to what lived in the old Roman age.

By this Roman age I mean the time that begins approximately with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the reign of the Emperor Augustus, and flows on through the time of the Roman Empire until the migration of nations that gave such a different countenance to the European world. And what we see flare up in this Roman age like a last great light from the stream flowing from revelation—that is the Latin-Roman poetry, which plays so great a role in the education of youth even up to our own day. It is all that developed as continuation of this Latin-Roman poetry till the decline of ancient Rome. Every possible shade of world-conception had taken refuge in Rome. This Roman element was no unity. It was extended over numberless sects, numberless religious opinions, and could only evolve a certain common ground from the multiplicity by withdrawing, as it were, into external abstractions.

Through this, however, we can recognise how something withered comes to expression in the far-spread Roman element in which Christianity was stirring as a new impulse. We see how Roman thought is at great pains to seize with its ideas what lay behind the Mystery of Golgotha. We see how endeavour was made in every possible way to draw ideas from the whole range of world conception in order to understand what hid behind this Mystery of Golgotha. And one can say, if one observes closely: it was a despairing struggle towards an understanding, a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And this struggle as a matter of fact continued in a certain current throughout the whole of the first millennium.

One should see, for instance, how Augustine first accepts all the elements of the old withered world-conception, and how he tries through all that he so accepts to grasp what was flowing in as living soul-blood, for he now feels Christianity flow like a living impulse into his soul. Augustine is a great and significant personality—but one sees in every page of his writings how he is struggling to bring into his understanding what is flowing to him from the Christ Impulse. And so it goes on, and this is the whole endeavour of Rome: to obtain in the western world of idea, in this world of world-conception, the living substance of what comes to expression in the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is it, then, that makes such efforts, that so struggles, that in the Roman-Latin element overflows the whole civilised world? What is it that struggles despairingly in the Latin impulse, in the concepts pulsating in the Latin language, to include the Mystery of Golgotha? What is that? That is also a part of what men have eaten in Paradise. It is a part of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We can see in the primeval revelations when the old clairvoyant perceptions could still speak to men, how vividly alive concepts were in this ancient time, concepts which were still imaginations, and how they more and more dry up and die and become thin and poor. They are so thin that in the middle of the Middle Ages, when Scholasticism flourished, the greatest efforts of the soul were necessary to sharpen these attenuated concepts sufficiently to grasp in them the living life existing in the Mystery of Golgotha. What remained in these concepts was the most distilled form of the old Roman language with its marvellously structured logic, but with its almost entirely lost life-element. This Latin speech was preserved with its fixed and rigid logic, but with its inner life almost dead, as a realisation of the primeval divine utterance: Men shall not eat of the Tree of Life.

If it had been possible for what had evolved from the old Latin heritage to comprehend in full what had been accomplished in the Mystery of Golgotha, had it been possible for this Latin heritage, simply as if through a thrust, to gain an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, then this would have been an eating of the Tree of Life. But this was forbidden, after the expulsion from Paradise. The knowledge which had entered humanity in the sense of the ancient revelation was not to serve as a means of ever working in a living way. Hence it could only grasp the mystery of Golgotha with dead concepts.

‘Ye shall not eat of the Tree of Life’: this is a saying which also holds good through all aeons of earthly evolution with regard to certain phenomena. And one fulfilment of this saying was likewise the addition: ‘The Tree of Life will also draw near in its other form as the Cross erected on Golgotha—and life will stream out from it. But this older knowledge shall not eat of the Tree of Life.’

And so we see a dying knowledge struggling with life, we see how desperately it strives to incorporate the life of Golgotha in its concepts.¹

Now there is a peculiar fact, a fact which indicates that in Europe, confronting as it were the starting point of the East, a kind of primordial opposition was made. There is something like a sort of archetypal opposition set against the primeval-revelation² decreed to mankind. Here, to be sure, we touch upon the outer rim of a very deep-lying secret, and one can really only speak in pictures of much that is to

There exists in Europe a legend concerning the origin of man which is quite different from the one contained in the Bible. It has gone through later transformations no doubt, but its essentials are still to be recognised. Now the characteristic feature is not that this legend exists, but that it has been preserved longer in Europe than in other parts of the earth. But the important thing is that even while over in the Orient the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, this different legend was still alive in the feelings of the inhabitants of Europe. Here, too, we are led to a tree, or rather to trees, which were found on the shore of the sea by the gods Wotan, Wile and We. And men were formed from two trees, the Ash and the Elm. Thus men were created by the trinity of the gods, (although this was Christianised later, it yet points to the European original revelation) by fashioning the two trees into men: Wotan gives men spirit and life; Wile gives men movement and intelligence, and We gives them the outer figure, speech, the power of sight and of hearing.

The very great difference that exists between this story of creation and that of the Bible is not usually observed—but you need only read the Bible—which is always a useful thing to do—and already in the first chapters you will remark the very great difference that exists between the two Creation legends. I should like but to point to one thing, and that is, according to the saga, a threefold divine nature flowed into man. It must be something of a soul-nature that the Gods have laid within him, which expresses itself in his form and which in fact is derived from the Gods. In Europe, therefore, man was conscious that inasmuch as one moves about on earth, one bears something divine within; in the Orient, on the contrary, one is conscious that one bears something Luciferic within one. Something is bound up with the eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which has even brought men death, something that has turned all men away from the Gods and for which they have earned divine punishment. In Europe man is aware that in the human soul a threefold nature lives, that the Gods have sunk a force into the human soul. That is very significant.

One touches with this, as I have said, the edge of a great secret, a deep mystery. But it will be readily understood: it looks as if in this ancient Europe a number of human beings had been preserved who had not been taken away from sharing in the Tree of Life, in whom there lived on, so to say, the tree or the trees of Life; ash and elm. And with this the following fact stands in intimate harmony. European humanity (and if one goes back to the original European peoples this would be seen with great clarity in all details) actually had nothing of the higher, more far-reaching knowledge that men possessed in the Orient and in the Graeco-Latin world.

One should imagine for once the immense, the incisive contrast between the naive conceptions of European humanity, who still saw everything in pictures, and the highly evolved, refined philosophical ideas of the Graeco-Latin world. In Europe all was ‘Life’; over there all was ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ In Europe something was left over, as it were, like a treasured remnant of the original forces of life; but it could only remain if this humanity were, in a way, protected from understanding anything that was contained in such marvellously finely wrought Latin concepts. To speak of a science of the ancient European population would be nonsense. One can only speak of them as living with all that germinated in their inner soul nature, that filled it through and through with life. What they believed they knew was something that was direct experience. This soul nature was destined to be radically different from the mood that was transmitted in the Latin influence. And it belongs to the great, the wonderful secrets of historical evolution, that the Mystery of Golgotha was to arise out from the perfected culture of wisdom and knowledge, but that the depths of the Mystery of Golgotha should not be grasped through wisdom; they were to be grasped through direct life.

It was therefore like a predetermined karma that—while in Europe up to a definite point life was grasped—the ego-culture appeared purely naively, vitally and full of life where the deepest darkness was; whereas over there where was the profoundest wisdom, the Mystery of Golgotha arose. That is like a predestined harmony. Out of the civilisation based on knowledge which was beginning to dry up and wither ascends this Mystery of Golgotha: but it is to be understood by those who, through their whole nature and being, have not been able to attain to the fine crystallisation of the Latin knowledge. And so we see in the history of human evolution the meeting between a nearly lifeless, more and more dying knowledge, and a life still devoid of knowledge, a life unfilled with knowledge, but one which inwardly feels the continued working of the divinity animating the world.

These two streams had to meet, had to work upon one another in the evolving humanity. What would have happened if only the Latin knowledge had developed further? Well, this Latin knowledge would have been able to pour itself out over the successors of the primitive European population: up to a certain time it has even done so. It is hypothetically conceivable, but it could not really have happened, that the original European population should have experienced the after-working of the dried up, fading knowledge.

For then, what these souls would have received through this knowledge would gradually have led to men's becoming more and more decadent; this drying, parching knowledge would not have been able to unite with the forces which kept mankind living. It would have dried men up. Under the influence of the after effects of Latin culture, European humanity would in a sense have been parched and withered. People would have come to have increasingly refined concepts, to have reasoned more subtly and have given themselves up more and more to thought, but the human heart, the whole human life would have remained cold under these fine spun, refined concepts and ideas.

I say that that would be hypothetically conceivable, but it could not really have taken place. What really happened is something very different. What really happened is that the part of humanity that had life but not knowledge streamed in among those people who were, so to say, threatened with receiving only the remains of the Latin heritage. Let us envisage the question from another side. At a definite period we find distributed over Europe, in the Italian peninsula, in the Spanish peninsula, in the region of present France, in the region of the present British Isles, certain remains of an original European population; in the North the descendants of the old Celtic peoples, in the South the descendants of the Etruscan and ancient Roman peoples. We meet with these there, and in the first place there flows into them what we have now characterised as the Latin stream. Then at a definite time, distributed over various territories of Europe, we meet with the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Lombardi, the Suevi, the Vandals, etc. There is an age when we find the Ostrogoths in the south of present Russia, the Visigoths in eastern Hungary, the Langobardi or Lombard's where today the Elbe has its lower course, the Suevi in the region where today Silesia and Moravia lie, etc. There we meet with various of those tribes of whom one can say: they have ‘life’ but no ’knowledge.’

Now we can put the question: Where have these peoples gone to? We know that for the most part they have disappeared from the actual evolution of European humanity. Where have the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Langobardi, etc. gone? We can ask this. In a certain respect they no longer exist as nations, but what they possessed as life exists, exists somewhat in the following way. My dear friends, let us consider first the Italian peninsula, let us consider it still occupied by the descendants of the old Roman population. Let us further imagine that on this old Italian peninsula there had been spread abroad what I have designated Latin knowledge, Latin culture; then the whole population would have dried up.

If exact research were made, it would be impossible not to admit that only incredible dilettantism could believe that anything still persists today of a blood relationship with the ancient Romans. Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombardi, marched in, and over these there streamed the Latin heritage—though merely mentally as seed of knowledge—it streamed over-the life-without-knowledge, and this gave it substance for continuing. Into the more southern regions there came a more Norman-Germanic element. Thus there streamed into the Italian peninsula from the European centre and the East a life-bearing population. Into Spain there streamed the Visigoths and the Suevi in order later to unite with the purely intellectual element of the Arabs, the Moors. Into the region of France there streamed the Franks and into the region of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxon element.

The following statement expresses the truth. If the southern regions had remained populated by descendants of the old Romans, and the Latin culture had gone on working in them, they would have faced the danger of completely losing the power of developing an ego-consciousness. Hence the descendants of ancient Rome were displaced and there was poured into this region where Latinism was to spread, what came from the element of the Ostrogoths and Lombardi. The blood of Ostrogoths and Lombardi as well as Norman blood absorbed the withering Latin culture. If the population had remained Romans they would have faced the danger of never being able to develop the element of the Consciousness-soul. Thus there went to the south in the Langobardi and the Ostrogoths what we can call the Wotan-Element, Spirit and Life. The Wotan-Element was, so to say, carried in the blood of the Langobardi and Ostrogoths and this made the further evolution and unfoldment of this southern civilisation possible.

With the Franks towards the West went the Wile-element, Intelligence and Movement, which again would have been lost if the descendants of the primitive European population who had settled in these regions had merely developed further under the influence of Rome. Towards the British Isles went We, what one can call: Configuration and Speech, and in particular the faculty to see and to hear. This has later experienced in English empiricism its later development as: Physiognomics, Speech, Sight, Hearing.

So we see that while in the new Italian element we have the expression of the Folk Soul in the Sentient-soul, we could express this differently by saying: The Wotan-element streams into the Italian peninsula. And we can speak of the journeying of the Franks to the West by saying: the Wile-element streams West, towards France. And so in respect of the British Isles we can express it by saying: the We-element streams in there.

In the Italian peninsula, therefore, nothing at all is left of the blood of the original European peoples, it has been entirely replaced. In the West, in the region of modern France, somewhat more of the original population exists, approximately there is a balance between the Frankish element and the original peoples. The greatest part of the original population is still in the British Isles.

But all this that I am now saying is fundamentally only another way of pointing to the understanding of what came out of the South through Europe, pointing to the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha was ensheathed in a dying wisdom and was absorbed through a living element still devoid of wisdom.

One cannot understand Europe if one does not bear this connection in mind; one can, however, understand Europe in all details if one grasps European life as a continuous process. For much of what I have said is still fulfilling itself in our own times. So, for instance, it would be interesting to consider the philosophy of Kant, from these two original polarities of European life, and show how Kant on the one hand desires to dethrone Knowledge, take all power from Knowledge, in order on the other hand to give place to Faith. That is only a continuation of the dim hidden consciousness that one can really do nothing with knowledge that has come up from below—one can only do something with what comes down from above as original life-without-knowledge. The whole contrast in pure and practical reason lies in this: I had to discard knowledge to make way for Faith. Faith, for which protestant theology fights, is a last relic of the life-without-knowledge, for life will have nothing to do with an analysed abstract wisdom.³

But one can also consider older phenomena. One can observe how an endeavour appears among the most important leading personalities to create a harmony, as it were, between the two streams to which we have referred. For the modern physiognomy of Europe shows that up to our own day there is an after-working of the Latin knowledge in the European life, and that one can immediately envisage the map of Europe with the Latin knowledge raying out to south and west, and the Life still preserved in the centre. One can then see, for instance, how pains were taken at one time to overcome this dying knowledge. I should like to give an example. To be sure, this dying knowledge appears in the different spheres of life in different degrees, but already in the 8th-9th Century European evolution had so progressed that those who were the descendants of the European peoples with the Life could get no further with certain designations for cosmic or earthly relations which had been created in old Roman times. So even in the 8th-9th Centuries one could see that it had no special meaning for the original life of the soul when one said: January, February, March, April, May, etc. The Romans could make something of it, but the Northern European peoples could not do much with it; poured itself over these peoples in such a way as not to enter the soul, but rather to flow merely into the language, and it was therefore dying and withering. So an endeavour was made, especially towards Middle and Western Europe (over the whole stretch from the Elbe to the Atlantic Ocean and to the Apennines) to find designations for the months which could enter the feelings of European humanity. Such month-names were to be:

1. Wintarmanoth
2. Hornung
3. Lenzinmanoth
4. Ostarmanoth
5. Winnemanoth (also Nannamanoth)
6. Brachmanoth
7. Henimanoth (using the word Hay)
8. Aranmanoth (Aran = harvest)
9. Widumanoth (Wide = what is left when one has gone over the field)
10. Windumemanoth (vintage)
11. Herbistmanoth
12. Heiligmanoth

He who was at pains to make these names general was Charlemagne.

It shows how significant was the spirit of Charlemagne, for he sought to introduce something which has not up to now found entrance. We still have in the names of the months the last relics of the drying-up Latin cultural knowledge. Charlemagne was altogether a personality who aimed at many things which went beyond the possibility of being realised. Directly after his time, in the 9th Century, the wave of Latinism drew completely over Europe. It would be interesting to consider what Charlemagne desired to do in wishing to bring the radiation of the Wile-element towards the West. For the Latinising only appeared there later on.

Thus we can say that the part of mankind which has been race, which, as race, was the successor of the old Europe,—of the Europe from which the Roman influence proceeded and which itself became the successor of Rome, wholly for the south, largely for the north—has simply died out. Their blood no longer persists. Into the empty space left, there has poured in what came from Central Europe and the European East. One can therefore say: the racial element both of the European South and West is the Germanic element which is present in various shadings in the British Isles, in France, in Spain and in the Italian peninsula, though in this last completely inundated by the Latin influence.

The racial element therefore moves from East to the West and South, whereas the knowledge-element moves from South to North. It is the race-element which moves from the East to the West and South and along the West of Europe to the North, and gradually flows away towards the North. If one would speak correctly, one can talk of a Germanic race-element,-but not a Latin race. To speak of a Latin race is just as sensible as to speak of wooden iron; because Latinism is nothing that belongs to race, but something that has poured itself as bloodless knowledge over a part of the original European people. Only materialism can speak of a Latin race, for Latinism has nothing to do with race.

So we see how, as it were, the Bible saying works on in this part of European history, how the destiny of Latinism is the fulfilment of the words: ‘Ye shall not eat of the Tree of Life.’ We see how the Life given to the earth with the Mystery of Golgotha cannot come to full harmony with the old knowledge; but rather how into what remained of the ebbing original wisdom, new life had to enter. If we are to give a concrete answer to the question: Where does that remain, which from such new life has not been preserved in its own special character, but has disappeared in history, the element of the Visigoths, the Suevi, the Langobardi, the Ostrogoths, etc.? we must give as answer: It lives on as life within the Latin culture. That is the true state of affairs. That is what must be known regarding the primeval Bible two-fold utterance and its working in early times in the development of Europe, if we are to understand this European evolution.

I had to give you this historical analysis today because I shall have things to say which assume that one does not hold the false ideas of modern materialism and formalism with regard to historical evolution.

• 1. See ‘The Christmas Thought and the Mystery of the Ego. The Tree of the Cross and the Golden Legend’—Rudolf Steiner.
• 2. See Genesis 3:3—The creation of man
• 3. Gap left between these sentences

My dear friends,

My dear friends, it is really difficult in our time to meet with full understanding when one speaks out of the sources of what we call Spiritual Science.

I have not in mind so much the difficulty of being understood among the individuals whom we encounter in life, but much more of being comprehensible to the cultural streams, the various world-conceptions and feelings which confront us at the present time.

When we consider European life we find in the first place a great difficulty which has sprung from the following cause. European life at the moment of passing over from mere sense perceptions to thinking about percepts—and this is effected by every individual in every moment of his waking life—does not feel how intimately connected is the thought-content with what we are as human beings.

People think thoughts, they form concepts, and they have the consciousness that through these thoughts and concepts they are, as it were, learning something of the world, that the images in fact reproduce something of the world. This is the consciousness people have. Each one who walks along the street has the feeling that because he sees the trees etc. concepts come to life, and that the concepts are inner presentations of what he perceives, and that he thus in some way takes the world of external percepts into himself and then lives them over again.

In the rarest cases, one can say practically never, is it brought to consciousness in the European world-conception that the thought, the act of thinking, is an actuality in our inner self as man, that we do something by thinking, that thinking is an inner activity, an inner work.

I called your attention here once to the fact that every thought is essentially different from what people usually believe it to be. People take it to be a reproduction of something perceptible. But it is not recognised as a form-builder, a moulder. Every thought that arises in us seizes, as it were, upon our inner life and shares (above all so long as we are growing) in our whole human construction. It already takes part in our structure before we are born and belongs to the forming forces of our nature. It goes on working continually and again and again replaces what dies away in us. So it is not only the case that we perceive our concepts externally, but we are always working upon our being through our thoughts, we work the whole time anew upon our forming and fashioning through what we conceive in ideas.

Seen with the eyes of spiritual science every thought appears like a head with a sort of continuation downwards, so that with every thought we actually insert in us something like a shadowy outline, a phantom, of ourselves; not exactly like us, but as similar as a shadow-picture. This phantom of ourselves must be inserted, for we are continuously losing something, something is being destroyed, is actually crumbling away. And what the thought inserts into our human form, preserves us, generally speaking, until our death. Thought is thus at the same time a definite inner activity, a working on our own construction.

The western world-concept has practically no knowledge of this at all. People do not notice, they have no inner feeling of how the thought grips them, how it really spreads itself out in them. Now and again a man will feel in breathing—though for the most part it is no longer noticed—that the breath spreads out in him, and that breathing has something to do with his re-building and regeneration. This applies also to thoughts, but the European scarcely feels any longer that the thought is actually striving all the time to become man, or, better said, to form the human shape.

But unless we come to a feeling of such forces within us we can hardly reach a right understanding, based on inner feeling and life, of what spiritual science really desires. For spiritual science is actually not active at all in what thought yields us inasmuch as it reproduces something external; it works in the life element of thought, in this continuous shaping process of the thought.

Therefore it has been very difficult for many centuries to speak of spiritual science or to be understood when it was spoken of, because this last characterised consciousness became increasingly lost to European humanity. In the Oriental world-conception this feeling about thought which I have just expressed exists in a high degree. At least the consciousness exists in a high degree that one must seek for this feeling of an inner experience of thought. Hence comes the inclination of the Oriental for meditation; for meditation should be a familiarising oneself with the shaping forces of thought, a becoming aware of the living feeling of the thought. That the thought accomplishes something in us should become known to us during meditating. Therefore we find in the Orient such expressions as: A becoming one, in meditation, with Brahma, with the fashioning process of the world. What is sought in the Oriental world-conception is the consciousness that when one rightly lives into the thought, one not only has something in oneself, not only thinks, but one becomes at home in the fashioning forces of the world. But it is rigidified, because the Oriental world-conception has neglected to acquire an understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha. To be sure, the Oriental world-conception of which we have yet to speak—is eminently fitted to become at home in the forming forces of thought life, but nevertheless in so doing, it comes into a dying element, into a network of abstract, unliving conceptions. So that one could say: whereas the right way is to experience the life of the thought-world, the Oriental world-conception becomes at home in a reflection of the life of thought. One should become at home in the thought-world as if one were transposing oneself into a living being; but there is a difference between a living being and a reproduction of a living being, let us say a paper mache copy. The oriental world-conception, whether Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Chinese and Japanese religions, does not become at home in the living being, but in something which may be described as a copy of the thought-world, which is related to the living thought-world, as the papier-mache organism is related to the living organism.

This then is the difficulty, as well in the West as in the East. One is less understood in the West, since in general not much consciousness exists there of these living, forming forces of thought; in the East one is not understood aright, since there people have not a genuine consciousness of the living nature of thought, but only of the dead reproduction, of the stiff, abstract weaving of thoughts.

Now you must be clear whence all that I have just analysed actually comes. You will all remember the account of the Moon evolution given in my book Occult Science. Man in his own evolution has taken his proper share in all that has taken place as Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and he then further shares in what comes about as Earth evolution. When you call to mind the Moon evolution as described in my Occult Science you find that during that time the separation of the moon planet from the sun took place; that it proceeded for the first time in a distinct, definite way. Thus such a separation actually took place. We can say that whereas before there had been a kind of interconnected condition of the planetary world, at the separation of the moon from the sun there now took their course side by side the Moon evolution and the Sun evolution. This separate state was of great significance, as you can gather from Occult Science. Man as he now is could not have arisen if this separation had not taken place. But on the other hand, with every such event is intimately connected the emergence of a certain one-sidedness. It came about that certain beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, who were at the human stage during the Moon evolution, at that time rebelled against, showed themselves in antipathy to, uniting again with the Sun. Thus the Moon broke away, and at the later reunion with the Sun they refused to take this step, and be reunited with the Sun.

All Luciferic staying behind rests upon an unwillingness to take part in later phases of evolution. And hence, on the one hand, the Luciferic element originated in the fact that certain beings from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, who were human at that time, were not willing to reunite with the Sun in the last part of the Old Moon time. To be sure, they were obliged to descend again, but in their feeling, in their inner nature, they preserved a longing for the Moon existence. They were out of place, they were not at home in the existing evolution; they felt themselves to be actually Moon-beings. Their remaining behind consisted in this. The host of Luciferic beings who then in their further development descended upon our Earth naturally contained in their ranks this kind of being. They also live in us in the manner I have indicated in one of the last lectures. And it is they who will not let the consciousness arise, in our Western thinking, that thinking is inwardly alive. They want to keep it of a Moon-nature, cut off from the inner life element that is connected with the Sun, they want to keep it in the condition of separation. And their activity produces the result that man does not get a conscious feeling: thinking is connected with inner fashioning, but feels instead that thinking is only connected with the external, precisely with that which is separated. Thus in respect of thinking they evoke a feeling that it can only reproduce the external; that one cannot grasp the inner formative living element with it, but can only grasp the external. Thus they falsify our thinking.

It was in fact the karma of Western humanity to make acquaintance with these spirits, who falsify thinking in this manner, alter it, externalise it, who endeavour to give it the stamp of only being of service in reproducing outer things and not grasping the inner living element. It was apportioned to the karma of the Oriental peoples to be preserved from this kind of Luciferic element. Hence they retained more the consciousness that in thinking one must seek for the inwardly forming, shaping of the human being, for what unites him inwardly with the living thought-world of the universe. It was allotted to the Greeks to form the transition between the one and the other.

Since the Orientals have made little acquaintance with that Luciferic element I have just characterised, they have no real idea that one can also come into connection with the living element of thinking about the external. What they get hold of in this connection always seems made of paper mache they have little understanding of applying thinking to outer things. Lucifer must of course cooperate in the activity which I have just described, by which man feels the inclination to meditate on the outer world. But then it is like the swing of the pendulum to one side, man goes too far in this activity—towards the external. That is the common peculiarity of all life; it swings out sometimes to the one side, sometimes to the other. There must be the swinging out, but one must find the way back from the one to the other, from the Oriental to the Occidental. The Greeks were to find the transition from Oriental to Occidental. The Oriental would have fallen completely into rigid abstractions—has, indeed, partly done so, abstractions which are pleasing to many people—if Greece had not influenced the world. If we base our judgment simply on what we have now considered, we shall find in Greece the tendency to make thoughts inwardly formative and alive.

Now if you examine both Greek literature and Grecian art you will everywhere find how the Greek strove to produce the human form from his own inner experiencing; this is so in sculpture as well as in poetry, in fact in philosophy too. If you acquaint yourself with the manner in which Plato still sought, not to found an abstract philosophy, but to collect a group of men who talk with one another and exchange their views, so that in Plato we find no world-concept (we have only discussions) but men who converse, in whom thought works humanly, thoughts externalise, you will find this corroborated. Thus even in philosophy we do not have the thought expressing itself so abstractly, but it clothes itself as it were in the human being representing it.

When in this way one sees Socrates converse, one cannot speak of Socrates on the one hand and of a Socratic world-conception on the other. It is a unity, one complete whole. One could not imagine in ancient Greece that someone—let us say, like a modern philosopher—came forward who had founded an abstract philosophy, and who placed himself before people and said: this is not the correct philosophy. That would have been impossible—it would only be possible in the case of a modern philosopher, (for this rests secretly in the mind of them each). The Greek Plato, however, depicts Socrates as the embodied world-conception, and one must imagine that the thoughts have no desire to be expressed by Socrates merely to impart knowledge of the world, but that they go about in the figure of Socrates and are related to people in the same way as he is. And to pour, as it were, this element of making thought human into the external form and figure, constitutes the greatness in the works of Homer and Sophocles, and in all the figures of sculpture and poetry which Greece has created. The reason why the sculptured gods of Grecian statuary are so human is that what I have just expressed was poured into them. This is at the same time a proof of how humanity's evolution in a spiritual respect strove as it were to grasp the living element of man from the thought-element of the cosmos and then to give it form. Hence the Grecian works of art appear to us (to Goethe they appeared so in the most eminent sense) as something which of its kind is hardly to be enhanced, to be brought to greater perfection, because all that was left of the ancient revelation of actively working and weaving thoughts had been gathered up and poured into the form. It was like a striving to draw together into the human form all that could be found as thoughts passing from within outwards, and this became in Greece philosophy, art, sculpture. (See Diagram (a) p.8a)

A more modern age has another mission, the present time has an entirely different task. We now have the task of giving back to the universe that which there is in man. (Diagram (b)). The whole pre-Grecian evolution led to man's taking from the universe all that he could discover of the living element of the human form in order to epitomise it. That is the unending greatness of Greek art—that the whole preceding world is actually epitomised and given form in it. Now we have the task reversed—the human being, who has been immeasurably deepened through the Mystery of Golgotha, who has been inwardly seized in his cosmic significance, is now to be given back again to the universe.

You must, however, inscribe in your souls that the Greeks had not, of course, the Christian view of the Mystery of Golgotha; for them everything flowed together out of the cosmic wisdom:

And now picture the immense, the immeasurable advance in the evolution of humanity when the Being who had formerly worked from the cosmos and who could only be known from the cosmos, and whom man could express in the earthly stage in the element of Form:—when this Being passed out of the cosmos into the earth, became man, and lives on in human evolution.

That which was sought out in the cosmos in pre-Grecian times now came into the earth, and that which had been poured out into form, was now itself in human evolution. (c) Naturally (I have therefore indicated it with dots) it is not yet rightly known—it is not yet rightly experienced, but it lives in man, and men have the task of giving it back gradually to the cosmos. We can picture this quite concretely, this giving back to the cosmos of what we have received through Christ. We must only not struggle against this giving back. One can really cling closely to the wonderful words: ‘I am with you all the days until the end of the Earth period.’

This means: what Christ has to reveal to us is not exhausted with what stands in the Gospel. He is not among us as one who is dead, who once upon a time permitted to be poured into the Gospels what he wished to bring upon earth, but he is in earthly evolution as a living Being. We can work through to him with our souls, and he then reveals himself to us as he revealed himself to the Evangelists. The gospel is therefore not something that was once there and then came to an end, the gospel is a continuous revelation. One stands as it were ever confronting the Christ, and looking up to Him, one waits again for revelation.

Assuredly he—whoever he may have been—who said: ‘I should still have much to write but all the books in the world could not contain it’—assuredly he, John, was entirely right. For if he had written all that he could write, he would have had to write all that would gradually in the course of human evolution result from the Christ event. He wished to indicate: Wait! Only wait! What all the books in the world could not contain will come to pass. We have heard the Christ, but our descendants will also hear Him, and so we continuously, perpetually, receive the Christ revelation. To receive the Christ revelation means: to acquire light upon the world from Him. And we must give back the truths to the cosmos from the centre of our heart and soul.

Hence we may understand as living Christ-revelation what we have received as Spiritual Science. He it is who tells us how the earth has originated, the nature of the human being, what conditions the earth passed through before it became earth. All that we have as cosmology, and give back to the universe, all this is revealed to us by Him. It is the continuous revelation of Christ to feel such a mood as this: that one receives the cosmos from the Christ in an inward spiritual way, drawn together as it were, and as one has received it to relate it to the world with understanding, so that one no longer looks up to the moon and stares at it as a great skittles-ball with which mechanical forces have moved skittles in the cosmos and which from these irregularities has acquired wrinkles, and so on—but recognises what the moon indicates, how it is connected with the Christ-nature and the Jahve-nature. It is a continuous revelation of the Christ to allot again to the outer world what we have received from Him. It is at first a process of knowledge. It begins with an intellectual process, later it will be other processes. Processes of inner feeling will result which arise from ourselves and pour themselves into the cosmos, such processes as these will arise.

But you gather something else from what I have just explained. When you observe this motion- (Diagram (a) p.10a) where one has gathered up out of the cosmos, as it were, the component parts of the human being, which have in the Greek world-concepts, in Greek art, then flowed together to the whole human being, then you will understand: In Greece the evolution of humanity strove towards the plastic form, sculptured-form, and what they have reached in such form, we cannot as a matter of fact succeed in copying. If we imitate it nothing true or genuine results. That is therefore a certain apex in human evolution. One can in fact say this stream of humanity strives in Greece in sculpture towards a concentration of the entire human evolution preceding Greece.

When, on the contrary, one takes what has to happen here (b) it is what could be called a distribution of the component parts of man into the cosmos. You can follow this in its details. We assign our physical body to Saturn, the etheric body to the Sun, the astral body to the Moon, our Ego-organisation to the Earth. We really distribute man into the universe, and it can be said that the whole construction of Spiritual Science is based upon a distribution, a bringing again into movement, of what is concentrated in the human being. The fundamental key of this new world-conception (diagram (b)) is a musical one; of the old world (a) is a plastic one. The fundamental key of the new age is truly musical, the world will become more and more musical. And to know how man is rightly placed in the direction towards which human evolution is striving, means to know that we must strive towards a musical element, that we dare not recapitulate the old plastic element, but must strive towards a musical one.

I have frequently mentioned that on an important site in our Building there will be set up the figure of archetypal man, which one can also speak of as the Christ, and which will have Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. What is concentrated in the Christ we take out and distribute again in Lucifer and Ahriman, in so far as it is to be distributed. What was welded together plastically in the one figure we make musical, inasmuch as we make it a kind of melody: Christus-Lucifer-Ahriman.

Our Building is really formed on this principle. Our whole Building bears the special imprint in it: to bring plastic forms into musical movement. That is its fundamental character. If you do not forget that, in mentioning something like this, one is never to be arrogant, but to remain properly humble, and if you remember that in all that concerns our work on this Building only the first most imperfect steps have been taken, you will not misunderstand what is meant when I speak about it. It is of course not meant that anything at all of what floats before us as distant ideal is also only attained in the farthest future; but a beginning can be sought in that direction,—this one can say. More shall not be said than, that a beginning is desired.

But when you compare this beginning with that which has undergone a certain completion in Greece, with the infinite perfection of the plastic principle in, for instance, the Greek you find polaric difference. In Greece everything strives for form. An Acropolis figure of Athena, or in the architecture of the Acropolis, or a Greek Temple, they stand there in order to remain eternally rigid in this form, in order to preserve for man a picture of what beauty in form can be.

Such a work as our Building, even when one day it becomes more perfect, will always stand there in such a way that one must actually say: this Building always stimulates one to overcome it as such, in order to come out through its form into the infinite. These columns and in particular the forms connected with the columns, and even what is painted and moulded, is all there in order, so to say, to break through the walls, in order to protest against the walls standing there and in order to dissolve the forms, dissolve them into a sort of etheric eye, so that they may lead one out into the far spaces of the Cosmic thought-world.

One will experience this building in the right way if one has the feeling in observing it that it dissolves, it overcomes its own boundaries; all that forms walls really wants to escape into cosmic distances. Then one has the right feeling. With a Greek temple one feels as if, one would like best to be united for ever with what is firmly enclosed by the walls and with what can only come in through the walls. Here, with our Building, one will particularly feel: If only these walls were not so tiresomely there—for wherever they stand they really want to be broken through, and lead out further into world of the cosmos. This is indeed how this Building should be formed, according to the tasks of our age, really out of the tasks of our age.

Since we have not only spoken for years, my dear friends, on the subjects of Spiritual Science, but have discussed with one another the right attitude of mind towards what is brought to expression through Spiritual Science, it can also be understood that when something in the world is criticised, one does not mean it at all as absolute depreciation, absolute blame, but that one uses phrases of apparent condemnation in order to characterise facts in the right connection.

When, therefore, one reproaches a world-historical personality, this does not imply that one would like to declare at the same time one's desire—at least in the criticism of this person—to be an executioner who cuts off his head—figuratively spoken—by expressing a judgment. This is the case with modern critics, but not with someone imbued with the attitude of mind of Spiritual Science. Please also take what I have now to say in the sense indicated through these words.

An incision had at some time to be made in mankind's evolution; it had at some time to be said: This is now the end of all that has been handed down from old times to the present: something new must being (diagram Page 109 (a)). This incision was not made all at once, it was in fact made in various stages, but it meets us in history quite clearly. Take, for instance, such an historical personality as the Roman Emperor Augustus, whose rule in Rome coincided with the birth of the current which we trace from the Mystery of Golgotha. It is very difficult today to make people fully clear wherein lay the quite essentially new element which entered Western evolution through the Emperor Augustus, as compared with what had already existed in Western civilisation till then, under the influence of the Roman Republic. One must in fact make use of concepts to which people are little accustomed today, if one wishes to analyse something of this sort. When one reads history books presenting the time of the Roman Republic as far as the Empire, one has the feeling that the historians wrote as if they imagined that the Roman Consuls and Roman Tribunes acted more or less in the manner of a President of a modern republic. Not much difference prevails whether Niebuhr or Mommsen speaks of the Roman Republic or of a modern republic, because nowadays people see everything through the spectacles of what they see directly in their own environment. People cannot imagine that what a man in earlier times felt and thought, felt too as regards public life, was something essentially different from what the present-day man feels. It was however radically different, and one does not really understand the age of the Roman Republic if one does not furnish oneself with a certain idea which was active in the conception of the old republican Roman, and which he took over into the age which is called the Roman Empire.

The ancient kings, from Romulus to Tarquinius Superbus, were to the ancient Romans actual beings, who were intimately connected with the divine, with the divinely spiritual world rulership. And the ancient Roman of the time of the kings could not grasp the significance of his kings otherwise than by thinking: In all that takes place there is something of the nature of what happened in the time of Numa Pompilius, who visited the nymph Egeria in order to know how he should act. From the gods, or from spirit-land one received the inspirations for what had to be done upon earth. That was a living consciousness. The kings were the bridges between what happened on earth and what the gods out of the spiritual world wished to come about.

Thus a feeling extended over public life which was derived from the old world conception—namely, that what a man does in the world is connected with what forms him from the cosmos, so that currents continually stream in from the cosmos. Nor was this idea confined to the government of mankind. Think of Plato: he did not chisel things out in his soul as ideas, but received them as outflow of the divine being. So too in ancient Rome they did not say to themselves: One man rules other men, but they said: The gods rule men, and he who in human form is governing, is only the vessel into which the impulses of the gods flow. This feeling lasted into the time of the Roman Republic when it was related to the Consular office. The Consular dignity in ancient times was not that genuine so-called bourgeois-element, as it were, which a state- government increasingly feels itself to be today, but the Romans really had the thought, the feeling, the living experience: Only he can be Consul whose senses are still open to receive what the gods wish to let flow into human evolution.

As the Republic went on and great discrepancies and quarrels arose, it was less and less possible to hold such sentiments, and this finally led to the end of the Roman Republic. The matter stood somewhat thus: People thought to themselves: if the Republic is said to have a significance in the world, the Consuls must be divinely inspired men, they must bring down what comes from the gods. But if one looks at the later Consuls of the Republic one can say to oneself: The gentlemen are no longer the proper instruments for the gods. And with this is linked the fact that it was no longer possible to have such a vital feeling for the significance of the Republic. The development of such a feeling lay of course behind men's ordinary consciousness. It lay very deep in the subconscious, and was only present in the consciousness of the so-called initiates. The initiates were fully cognisant of these things. Whoever therefore in the later Roman Republic was no ordinary materialistically thinking average citizen said to himself: 'Oh, this Consul, he doesn't please me—he's certainly not a divine instrument!' The initiate would never have admitted that, he would have said: He is, nevertheless, a divine instrument—Only ... with advancing evolution this divine inspiration could enter mankind less and less. Human evolution took on such a form that the divine could enter less and less, and so it came about that when an initiate, a real initiate appeared who saw through all this, he would have to say to himself: We cannot go on any further like this! We must now call upon another divine element which is more withdrawn from man. Men had developed outwardly, morally, etc., in such a way that one could no longer have confidence in those who were Consuls. One could not be sure that where the man's own development was in opposition to the divine, that the divine still entered. Hence the decision was reached to draw down, as it were, the instreaming of the divine into a sphere which was more withdrawn from men. Augustus, who was an initiate to a certain degree in these mysteries, was well aware of this. Therefore it was his endeavour to withdraw the divine world rulership from what men had hitherto, and to work in the direction of introducing the principle of heredity in the appointment to the office of Consul. He was anxious that the Consuls should no longer be chosen as they had been up to then, but that the office should be transmitted through the blood, so that what the Gods willed might be transmitted in this way. The continuance of the divine element in man was pressed down to a stage lying beneath the threshold of consciousness because men had reached a stage where they were no longer willing to accept the divine. You only arrive at a real understanding of this extraordinarily remarkable figure of Augustus, if you assume that he was fully conscious of these things, and that out of full consciousness, under the influence of the Athenian initiates in particular who came to him, he did all the things that are recorded of him. His limitation only lay in the fact that he could reach no understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, that he only saw how human beings come down into matter, but could not conceive how the divine element should take anchor in the material of the blood. He had no understanding of the fact that something entirely new had now arisen in the Mystery of Golgotha. He was in a high sense an initiate of the old Mysteries, but he had no understanding for what was then emerging in the human race as a new element.

The point is, however, that what Augustus had accomplished was an impossibility. The divine cannot anchor in the pure material of the blood in earthly evolution, unless this earthly evolution is to fall into the Luciferic. Men would never be able to evolve if they could only do so as the blood willed, that is, developing from generation to generation what was already there before. However, something infinitely significant is connected with the accomplishment of this fact. You must remember that in early times when the ancient Mysteries were in force people possessed in the Mysteries a constant and powerfully active spiritual element, although that cannot be significant to us in the same way today. They knew, nevertheless, of the spiritual worlds; they came quite substantially into the human mind. And on the other hand people ceased in the time of Augustus to know anything of the spiritual element of the world; they no longer knew of it in consequence of man's necessary evolution. The Augustus-initiation actually consisted in his knowledge that men would become less and less fitted to take in the Spiritual element in the old way. There is an immense tragedy in what was taking place round the figure of Augustus. The ancient Mysteries were still in existence at that time, but the feeling continually arose: Something is not right in these ancient Mysteries. What was received from them was of immeasurable significance, a sublime spiritual knowledge. But it was also felt that something of immeasurable significance was approaching; the Mystery of Golgotha, which cannot be grasped with the old Mystery knowledge, with which the old Mystery knowledge was not in keeping. What could, however, be known to men through the Mystery of Golgotha itself was still very little. As a matter of fact even with our spiritual science we are today only at the beginning of understanding what has flowed into humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus there was something like a breaking away from the old elements, and we can understand that more and more there were men who said: We can do nothing with what comes to us from the Mystery of Golgotha. These were men who stood at a certain spiritual eminence in the old sense, the sense of the pre-Christian, the pre-Golgotha time.

Such men said to themselves: Yes, we have been told of one, Christus, who has spread certain teachings. They did not yet feel the deeper nature of these teachings, but what they heard of them seemed to be like warmed-up ancient wisdom. It was told them that some person had been condemned, had died on the cross, had taught this and that. This generally seemed to them false and deceptive, whereas the ancient wisdom which was handed down to them seemed enormously grand and splendid. Out of this atmosphere we can understand Julian the Apostate, whose entire mood can be understood in this way. More and more, individuals came forward who said: That which is given by the old wisdom, the way it explains the cosmos, cannot be united with that which blossoms, as if from a new centre, through the Mystery of Golgotha.—One of the individuals who felt this way was the sixth century Byzantine emperor Justinian (who lived from 527–565,¹ whose actions are to be understood from exactly this viewpoint. One must understand that he felt, through the whole manner in which he grew into his time, that something new was in the world ... at the same time there came into this new world that which was handed down from the old time. We will consider just three of these things which were thus handed down.

For a long time (five or six centuries) Rome had been ruled by emperors: The rank of consul, however, had existed for only a short time, and, like a shadow of the old times, these consuls were elected. If one looked at this election of consuls with the eyes of Justinian, one saw something which no longer made any sense, which had true meaning in the time of the Roman Republic, but was now without meaning: therefore he abolished the rank of consul. That was the first thing.

The second was that the Athenian-Greek schools were still in existence; in these was taught the old mystery-wisdom, which contained a much greater store of wisdom than that which was then being received under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha. But this old mystery-wisdom contained nothing about the Mystery of Golgotha. For that reason Justinian closed the old Greek Philosophers' Schools.

Origenes, the Church Teacher, was well versed in what was connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, even though he still stood in the old wisdom, although not as strict initiate, yet as one having knowledge to a high degree. In his world-concept he had amalgamated the Christ-Event with the World-conception of the ancient, wisdom, he sought through this. to understand the Christ Event. That is just the interesting thing in the world concept of Origenes, that he was one of those who especially sought to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in the sense of the old mystery wisdom. And the tragedy is that Origenes was condemned by the Catholic Church.

Augustus was the first stage. (see the lined diagram p.10a) Justinian in this sense was the second stage. Thus the earlier age is divided from the newer age, which- as regards the West—had no longer understanding for the Mystery wisdom. This wisdom had still lived on in the Grecian schools of philosophy, and had gradually to work towards the growth and prosperity of that current in mankind which proceeded from the Mystery of Golgotha. So it came about that the newer humanity, with the condemning of Origenes, with the closing of the Greek schools of philosophy, lost an infinite amount of the old spiritual treasure of wisdom. The later centuries of the Middle Ages worked for the most part with Aristotle, who sought to encompass the ancient wisdom through human intellect. Plato still received it from the ancient mysteries, Aristotle—he is, to be sure, infinitely deeper than modern philosophers—did not regard wisdom as a treasure of the Mysteries; he wished to grasp it with the human understanding. Thus what prevailed at that time in a noted degree was a thrusting back of the old Mystery Wisdom.

All this is connected with the perfecting in the new age of the condition which I described at the beginning of today's lecture. Had not the Grecian schools of philosophy been closed we should have possessed the living Plato, not that dead Plato whom the Renaissance produced, not the Platonism of modern times, which is a ghastly misconception of ^{1missing text}

• 1. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Justinian lived from 482–565, and ruled from 527–565.

My dear friends:

After almost two years of Waldorf education, and in view of the opening of yet another important class in September, we shall again consider a number of curriculum issues. I shall, however, leave this till tomorrow. Today I shall take a look at the results of our work so far. New ideas may arise from this review that could further improve our teaching.

In order to prevent a possible misunderstanding of what I am going to say today, I can assure you that I have noticed and appreciated the progress made during these two years. The way you are teaching—the presentation of subjects—is already such that it can be said: You have progressively come to grips with your tasks. You have, in an extraordinarily healthy way, fused with the goals of these tasks.

But it behooves us to consider such details as can provide the basis for a positive development of our work. I believe that in reviewing your work, all of you will have this initial feeling that our work with the children has kept helping us to improve our methods. There is, however, something we might have missed—perhaps with a degree of pain. It is relatively easy to mediate the subject matter to the children, to give them a momentary understanding for what we teach them. But we have not yet succeeded in making the subject matter last for them, in making it a part of their whole being, so that it can stay with them throughout their lives, so that we may achieve the same results with our teaching as with our talks at special festive occasions.

Our teaching must live. It must reach beyond the ideas, images, feelings, and skills the children have acquired. We must give them something that can—depending on their dispositions and possibilities—continue into their adult lives.

Just as the limbs of any living creature are developing during the growing stages, are becoming bigger and more complicated, so also should the ideas, feelings, and skills we give our children be not fully formed but rather capable of growth and development. We must see to it that our teaching does not remain rigid, static, but that it can grow with them, change as they change during the course of development, so that at the age of thirty or forty they will still have the benefit of what they learned at seven or eight, because the learning has grown and developed as their complicated limbs have developed, because it has slowed down at the appropriate time, and so forth. Our teaching must enter the children’s being deeply, so that it can continue to develop with them, can live or fade away. This means that the children will have to absorb whatever we present to them and make it their own. The question arising from this realization is: How can we achieve this? The answer will come from assumptions quite different from those we generally make.

My dear friends, what we need to do is to make every effort at understanding the human being in his or her totality—in our case, this is the child—as a being consisting of body, soul, and spirit. Such understanding will allow us to comprehend the inner processes in the children when we teach them various subjects, and, as a result, we shall learn to adjust our work to these processes. Today, therefore, we shall concentrate on gaining a complete picture of how we ought to teach and educate.

To begin, let me draw your attention to the many erroneous ideas that are current regarding the human being. Teachers, especially, are convinced that what and how we teach—be it through visual perception or stories or activities—will increase children’s skills, ideas, and concepts, will strengthen their feeling, and that the increase and strengthening will last throughout the children’s lives. But this is not so. Let us proceed by example. We give the children certain ideas and mental images—in a history lesson, in the history of literature, in mathematics, or in geography—assuming that they will retain them as lasting possessions. It is generally assumed that such concepts descend somewhere into the lower regions of the soul, into the sub- or unconscious spheres, and that there they remain in one way or another, to be called upon whenever a situation arises. This is the function of memory, so they say.

But this assumption is not true. The ideas, the mental images, which we produce in the children and which, with us, they elaborate and develop, immediately change when the children occupy themselves with other things after the lesson. In no way does a concept swim about in the unconscious in its original form, to be called up at random. This is certainly not the case. The ideas and concepts we produce in the children are, when the children are no longer thinking about them, no longer present anywhere. They are not swimming about; they are no longer there. The process by which children later recollect is quite different from what is generally assumed—namely, that the ideas and concepts are called forth from the unconscious.

Not only may the processes taking place in recollecting and perceiving be compared; in a certain respect, they may be considered as one and the same. When we perceive something, when in the case of children we direct their soul activity to some outer object and develop with them an idea or concept, the activity will certainly be the children’s very own; they are preoccupied, are working with the idea or concept. We call this process perception.

When the children remember something, the same process is involved, but now it is directed inward. Something is happening within the children. The children are working with, developing, something in the same way as in the perception of an outer object. These inner processes that continue when the original mental images of perception are no longer directly present are extremely complicated. It is very difficult to describe in any specific instance how a mental image prepares to reconnect with the human being in order to emerge as memory—so that the image may again be perceived, this time as an inner event. But when we remember, we really perceive inner events in the same way we perceive outer objects.

It is really not all that important to have an exact knowledge of these processes. We need to be aware of something else. We need to know that the continuing effects of mental images and ideas that, later, emerge in memory actually take place in the sphere of our feelings. It is our life of feelings—with its joys, pains, pleasures, displeasures, tensions, and relaxations—that is the actual vehicle for the enduring qualities of the ideas and mental images that we can recall at a later stage. Our mental images change into stirrings of feeling, and it is these stirrings of feeling that we later perceive and that enable us then to remember.

It is important for us to understand this process because we must pay special attention to it in education. If in line with the convictions of most teachers today, we merely present to the children things to be looked at, to be accurately perceived by the senses, we are not giving them anything that will help them to remember later in life. Their memory will be greatly enhanced, however, if we put feeling into our words, if we teach with warmth, if we spice our lessons with the possibility of allowing the children to experience corresponding emotions, if we make them smile or feel sad, if we endeavour to go beyond the merely intellectual aspects to the life of feeling. I cannot overemphasize the importance of such an approach. It is, of course, more difficult. It demands great presence of mind. Mere intellectual instruction is easier than a teaching that wishes to stimulate the children’s feeling, that makes for an inner connection with a subject. We need not be pedantic in this teaching, need not necessarily always connect feeling directly to the subject taught. We may refer to something else in order to stimulate feelings. The important thing is that the children’s feelings are engendered during a lesson. Such stirrings of feeling aid memory. And this fact we must not lose sight of. Even in the driest of subjects, such as physics or geometry, we should try to appeal to the children’s feelings. If, for example, we interrupt a thought process and ask a child, “If you were to do this and something unexpectedly were to happen …?”—we add feeling to the lesson. We add tension, expectation, and relaxation that will permeate and benefit the thought process.

Never underestimate the effect of the unknown or half known. The effect of such on feeling is extremely important. If toward the end of a lesson we say, “and tomorrow we shall do this…”—the children need not know anything about “this”; their expectation and curiosity will still be aroused. If, for example, I have taught the properties of the square before those of the triangle and I conclude the lesson by saying, “Tomorrow we shall learn about the triangle”—the children do not yet know anything about the triangle, but it is exactly this fact that causes a certain tension, an expectation of what is to come, a looking forward to the next day’s lesson. The effect will carry the day. We ought to make use of the unknown or half known in order to facilitate the children’s effort at fitting the details into a totality. We really must not ignore such matters.

As we get used to working in this way we shall, on the one hand, in a quite elementary way, connect teaching with education and, on the other hand, feel the need to make ourselves ever more familiar with the nature of the human being, the child. And then, as out of our anthroposophical knowledge we ponder this nature, this wisdom of the human being, much will become clear to us and lead to increased teaching skills.

Developing such wisdom and teaching skills will ever more be of the gravest importance. It will allow the subject matter to fuse with the children, to become their very own possession. We have not yet achieved enough here.

Essentially our lessons consist of two interacting parts. We instruct, we exhort the children to participate, to use their skills, to be physically active. Be it in eurythmy, music, physical education, even writing or the mechanical processes in arithmetic—we try to engender activity. The other part of our lessons is concerned with contemplation. Here we ask the children to think about, to consider the things we tell them.

Although these two aspects always interact, they are fundamentally different. It is not generally appreciated how much the teacher of a contemplative subject, such as history, owes to a colleague who is more concerned with skills and aptitudes. Concentrating merely on contemplation leads the children to a stunted, prosaic adult life, with a tendency to boredom. They will have a superficial view of life, will not feel inclined to observe accurately, will not pay attention to events around them. Children who are trained predominantly in contemplation become benumbed, confused adults. We really owe a great deal, as teachers of contemplative subjects, to the teachers of handwork, music, and eurythmy. We can go so far as to say that the history teacher actually lives off the music or singing teacher and that, vice versa, the singing and music teachers live off the contemplative elements in history, and so forth.

In a situation that calls for directing the children’s attention to something of a contemplative nature, when they are sitting on their chairs listening to and concentrating on a story or on something that demands their judgment—however great our efforts may be to get them to think for themselves, if they merely sit and listen, this is no more than, if I may use the paradox, a “waking sleeping activity.” The children are, in a certain sense, outside the body with the soul and spirit, and it is only because the separation is not as complete as in sleep that the body’s participation continues. Indeed, especially during a contemplative lesson, we can observe the same phenomenon that is present in sleep—namely, an ascending organic activity. In children who are merely listening to stories, organic processes are called forth that are identical to those occurring during sleep, when the metabolic processes ascend to the brain. Making the children sit and listen, we engender in them, in the organism, a delicate sleep-like activity.

It is generally assumed that sleep strengthens and replenishes the organism. Waking up with a headache could correct this view. We must be clear about the fact that the unhealthy parts of our organism are kept back by the awake activity of the upper organs, so that they cannot ascend. But during sleep they rise, ascend. And this rising upward of what is amiss in the organism is continuously engendered by our insistence on making the children listen, think, and contemplate. When, on the other hand, we teach them eurythmy, when we make them sing, or play instruments, when we employ them in physical activities, as in handwork and gymnastics, even when we make them write something—when they are in fact doing things, the organic processes thus stimulated are an intensification of waking activity.

Even if the effect is not noticed, singing and eurythmy are hygienic, even therapeutic activities. This cannot be denied. This hygienic, therapeutic activity will perhaps be the healthier the less we approach it in an amateurish medical way, the more we simply do it out of our healthy imaginative conception of life.

Still, it is good for the teachers to know that they cooperate as partners, that the children owe the healthy ascent of their body fluids—essential during a contemplative lesson such as history—to the singing or eurythmy lesson of the previous day. We can only benefit from such a comprehensive overview of education, which will encourage us, should a problem arise, to cooperate with our colleagues. We shall discover that we can advise each other if, for example, as a teacher of history I can discuss a child with the music teacher.

Little, if anything, will happen if this consultation takes place in a didactic, routine way. Positive results will be achieved only when—from the comprehensive overview—we feel the urge to discuss a problem with a colleague. Then we may be convinced that when the physics teacher notices a problem and talks it over with the singing teacher, the problem will be lessened or solved when the appropriate steps are taken in singing. The singing teacher will know better what to do than the physics teacher and will be grateful to that teacher for having drawn attention to the problem. Only in this way will we establish a fruitful cooperation as teachers. Only in this way will we be enabled to consider the totality of the human being. The rest will follow, one thing developing from another.

This greater mobility in education will result also in something we cannot do without—humor. We need humor not only for thinking, at the right moment, of the unknown or half known, through which we evoke tensions and relaxations as memory aids, but for something else as well. As we make our teaching ever more mobile, as we get used to considering the whole human being instead of merely the subject matter, we shall in time learn to enlarge certain aspects of our lessons. This widening of subject in all directions is again of enormous importance, especially when it occurs in the direction I shall shortly speak about.

Consider a physics lesson. We are certainly not in favor of having apparati in our classrooms or of methodically developing experiments. Such methods can be employed, can even be very intelligent. It could be asserted that such an approach has proved itself and that a great deal is achieved by it. But the effect is short-term, and we cannot be concerned merely with short-term effects. What we intend to do is to provide the children with something that will benefit them throughout life. To succeed in this intent, we have continuously to enlarge concepts. We must, of course, teach the phenomena in optics and hydraulics. But we must also learn to be ready, at appropriate moments, to relate certain aspects of lessons to other things in life.

Let me give you an example. We could, at a given opportunity, spontaneously refer to the weather, to climatic conditions, to phenomena occurring across the globe in a distant country, so that the students realize that there are connections everywhere in the world. They will then experience the feelings that arise when we are led from one phenomenon to another; the tensions and relaxations that result will allow them to identify with the subject, grow together with it, make it their very own possession.

The most important connection we can establish is the one with the human being. We should never miss an opportunity for making this connection. Every situation—be it during a discussion of an animal, of a plant, or of the phenomenon of warmth—every situation presents an opportunity, without losing sight of the subject, without diverting the students from it, to connect with the human being. What, indeed, is there to prevent us, when talking about the phenomenon of warmth, from mentioning fever? What is to prevent us, when talking about elastic balls in physics, from mentioning the phenomenon of vomiting, a process similar to the repulsion in elastic balls? Vice versa, what is there to prevent us, during a lesson on reflexes in the human organism, from mentioning the simple phenomenon of repulsion in elastic balls, and so forth?

Such connections to life in general can be established already in the lower grades, can gradually get the children used to seeing the human being as the confluence of all world phenomena. When we teach the things that lie outside the human being as natural phenomena, they will always tend to be forgotten. When, on the other hand, we relate them to the human being, when we consider the corresponding phenomena in the human being, we shall notice another tendency: that it is really impossible to regard something that is connected with the human being without feelings. We cannot describe the functions of the ear or of the heart without evoking feelings in the children. By relating the outer world to the human being we always stimulate their feelings—and this is so very important.

Making this connection is, therefore, so very important in subjects treating the objective world, subjects that are usually taught “objectively,” as unconnected with the human being. We should always try to find such connections, and in fact, the most objective subjects are the ones that lend themselves most easily to our doing so, because all the world can be found within the human being.

Again, we have the means of aiding the children’s memory. We can be quite sure that the children will soon forget facts learned by rote in physics. They will not identify with them; the facts will not become inner possessions. But as soon as we relate such facts to the human being, demonstrate what is happening for the human being, the facts will remain, will become an intrinsic part of the children’s experience. What is explained to the human being about the human being becomes the human being’s very own possession. It is necessary for us to avoid abstractions, on the one hand, and on the other hand, what Schlegel referred to as the “crude-material-concrete.” Both should be avoided, especially in our lessons and education.

Let me give you another example. Recently I observed a lesson on comedy and tragedy in class eight. It is relatively easy to think of quite persuasive definitions of the comical, the humorous, the tragic, the beautiful, and so on. They can be found in current literature. But most, if not all, of them are abstractions and will not allow living mental images to arise. What actually happens is that our experience of a tragic, a sad event affects our metabolic processes, slows them down. Our experience of tragedy is, indeed, connected with our physical processes, as though something in our stomach cannot be digested, cannot pass into the intestine.

A deeply sad experience has the effect of literally hardening our metabolism, even though these processes are delicate. Indeed, if you happen to be unhappy, sad, or depressed, you are working against your digestion. The experience is identical to the feeling one has when food lies like a lump in the stomach, a crudely material but qualitatively comparable phenomenon. In a healthy digestion, the food passes naturally from the stomach to the intestine, is absorbed by the villi, passes into the blood, then penetrates the diaphragm, so that it can be distributed in the upper organism. This physical process is, qualitatively understood, identical to the effect of laughing, when we artificially induce the vibrations of the diaphragm. Laughing is a process that makes us organically healthy; its effect is similar to that of a healthy undisturbed digestion.

Such knowledge will allow us to relate the humorous to the digestive processes. We are learning to think in the way the ancient Greeks did, are beginning to understand the Greeks’ concept of hypochondria, of abdominal ossification. An objective observation will confirm this connection. Living toward the upper organism, getting the diaphragm into movement, stimulated by a healthy digestion and passing to the world outside—this physical process does, indeed, provide the connection of a humorous, happy mood to the physical body. By avoiding such abstract explanations as “humor allows us to rise above a situation,” we shall succeed in establishing the confluence of the abstract with the concrete. We establish a totality. We show the children how to combine, in their minds, spirit and soul with the physical, corporeal. We repress the absolutely harmful modern ideas of continuously teaching the human cultural aspects—soul and spirit—without relating them to the physical and, vice versa, at the other pole of the pendulum, of speaking about the physical in crudely materialistic ways. Taken separately, neither approach is truthful; for the ideas interact, flow into each other.

It behooves us to evoke total, comprehensive ideas and images, by binding humor and tragedy not to abstract concepts but to the diaphragm. A possible objection is that doing so might encourage a materialistic view of the world. This is certainly not so. It is exactly by showing how spirit and soul are living in the physical that we bring people to the point of seeing that the whole of the material world owes its existence to soul and spirit. As soon as we can imagine—when somebody is laughing, when somebody experiences laughter in the soul and spirit—that the event is connected with the diaphragm, we shall also gradually arrive at the idea of the effects of spirit and soul in rain, thunder, and lightning. We are led to these realizations by relating everything to the human being.

In relating everything to the human being it is important not to dwell too much on the egocentric—because much or exclusive self-interest, egocentricity, would result in contemplative egotism. If, on the other hand, in our contemplative lessons, we connect everything to the human being, we produce in the human being—simply by making one see oneself as consisting of body, soul, and spirit—a disposition that provides the best basis for one’s working from the depths of one’s being during physical activities. If our lessons allow the contemplative thinking elements to connect with the human being, we shall educate our students through history, geography, physics to become singers, to become truly musical people. Affecting our students in such a way that we let them think what they themselves physically want, we produce something in them which we really ought continuously to be creating.

In order to achieve this creation, we must acquire certain concepts. As you well know, it is not possible to remain well fed without the need of eating again. We cannot feed a person and say: “This is it, you need no longer be hungry!” Living processes proceed in rhythms. This truth applies to music, to everything in life. A human being must live in rhythmic alternations, so that one’s “being led back to oneself” is subjected to the highest tension and, in turn, to relaxation. The concepts we teach our students about stomach, lungs, and liver will produce in them a disposition that will again be offset in singing, in the way hunger alternates with eating—a rhythmic process. Only rhythm maintains life. The correct handling of the contemplative subjects will produce faculties that will correspondingly manifest in the other subjects.

If instead of merely enumerating Julius Caesar’s actions, successes, and failures, we would at the same time give the children imaginative pictures of the man, paint as it were a historical situation, so that the children feel impelled to have in their imagination a kind of shadowy picture of him, see him walk, follow his walk in their minds—if they were to imagine Julius Caesar in such a way that they did not merely copy the image in a painting but actually modeled it in their minds, and if they then proceeded to a handwork lesson, you may be absolutely sure that they would knit better than they would have without Caesar.

Such connections are as mysterious as those between hunger and satiation. Ignoring the connections produces different results. For example, if we teach for an hour without stimulating the imagination of the children, their stomachs will be filled with acid, will have excessive pepsin. This cannot be avoided in a contemplative lesson. It is, however, not only a matter of acidifying the food in the stomach; there is also a spiritual dimension. All matter is at the same time spirit. When the children are singing, the pepsin’s role is to produce in them the inner prickling they should feel during singing. This prickling cannot occur if the pepsin remains stuck in the folds of the stomach. And it does remain there if one only talks, without stimulating the imagination. When the imagination is stirred, the pepsin is distributed throughout the body, with the result that the singing teacher will be confronted by children whose organs are permeated by this prickling, this effervescent sensation. Without such experience—especially in the speech organs—the children will be lethargic and lazy, and they will sing without enthusiasm.

I tell you these things so that you can appreciate the importance of considering the totality of the school organism, of seeing it as a unit. Interfering in things that do not concern one does not help. Of course, each teacher must feel free to do what he or she thinks best. But one will gradually acquire the necessary skills by studying the nature of children and by appealing to their imagination. The children long for this attention, need it. And the teacher will greatly benefit from a preoccupation with this aspect of education.

A lively interest in human nature is, of course, the condition for succeeding in this endeavor. Such interest can be developed, and anthroposophy will provide you with all the hints you need. What I especially recommend to you—from a direct pedagogical/didactic point of view—is that you avoid getting stuck in abstractions when you develop your own concepts. You should instead endeavor to understand the human being in regard to organization.

You must actually become pioneers in a certain sphere, must tell yourselves: “We have today, on the one hand, the abstract sciences—history, geography, even physics, and so on. They are practiced in the most abstract ways. People acquire concepts. On the other hand, we have the sciences of the human being—anatomy, physiology—by means of which we learn about the human being, as though the organs were cut out of leather and reassembled.” Truly, as cut from leather—because there is really no difference between the descriptions of living organs presented by our anatomists and cut-out leather pieces. The human being is not described as a totality. The spirit is ignored.

You can, however, be pioneers. You can contribute positively to education by making use of both the abstractions, the lifeless concepts propagated today, and the crudely materialistic approach. You may teach both, but only in order to combine them in a living way, by interweaving them. You could teach history in such a way that it enlivens anatomy, and anatomy in order to bring life to history. The function of the liver could, for example, give you an idea for treating the history of the later Egyptian culture, because the nuance, this special nuance in the presentation, the (let me say) aroma one has to spread across the later stages of Egyptian history, one acquires during the contemplation on the function of the liver in the organism. The effect is the same.

By interweaving subjects in this way you will not only give humanity something that is culturally interesting; you will also meet an educational need by bringing together the so-called physical, which does not as such exist, and the abstract spiritual, which again has no meaning as such. Thus you may enter the classroom in such a way that your words carry weight and, at the same time, acquire wings. You will not torture the children with words that merely fly away, nor will you teach them skills and aptitudes that weigh them down.

During our reflections on education, we have had to emphasize that our work as teachers depends on the manner in which we ourselves develop and find our way to the world. And we have had to single out the frequently characterized age of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years—for which our own correct preparation for our lessons is especially important.

But we also have to organize all our educational activities in such a way that we prepare the children for this age. Everything depends on their developing a definite relation to the world. This relation to the world announces itself especially at the age we are now discussing, when both girls and boys begin to incline toward ideals, toward something in life that is to be added to the physical, sense-perceptible world. Even in their obnoxious teenage behavior we can see this inclination toward a supersensible, ideal life—toward, as it were, a higher idea of purpose: Life must have a meaning! This is a deeply seated conviction for the human being. And we have to reckon with this “Life must have a meaning, a purpose!”

It is especially important at this age that we do not channel this basic inner maxim—life must have a purpose—into the wrong direction. Boys at this age are often seen as being filled with all sorts of ideas and hope for life, so that they easily get the notion that this or that has to be so or so. Girls get into the habit of making certain judgments about life. They are, especially at this age, sharply critical of life, convinced that they know what is right and wrong, fair and unfair. They make definite judgments and are convinced that life has to offer something that, coming from ideas deep down in human nature, must then be realized in the world. This inclination toward ideals and ideas is indeed strongly present at this age.

It is up to us whether, during the whole of the elementary school years beginning in first grade, we manage to allow the children to grow into this life of ideals, this imaginative life. A necessary condition is that we ourselves be able to permeate our whole being with such principles that allow us a correct understanding of the way children develop. Through anthroposophy we get a theoretical knowledge of the three most important aspects. Up to the seventh year, when the change of teeth occurs, children are essentially imitators. They develop, we may say, by doing what they see done in their environment. All their activities are basically imitations. Then during the time of the change of teeth, children begin to feel the need for an authority, the need to be told what to do. Thus, while before the change of teeth children accept the things that are done in the environment as a matter of course, copying the good and the bad, the true and the false, now they no longer feel the need to imitate but know that they can carry out what they are told to do and not to do. Then again, at puberty the children begin to feel that they can now make judgments themselves, but they still want to be supported by authorities of their own choosing: “This person may be listened to; I can accept his or her opinions and judgments.”

It is important that we allow the children to grow into this natural relation to authority in the right way. To do this we must understand the meaning and significance of the imitative instinct. What does it actually tell us? The imitative instinct cannot be understood if we do not see children as coming from the spiritual world. An age that limits itself to seeing children as the result of hereditary traits cannot really understand the nature of imitation. It cannot arrive at the simplest living concepts, concepts capable of life.

The science of this age sees the chemical, the physical world, how the elements, enumerated in chemistry, analyze and synthesize; it discovers, in progressing to the sphere of life—but working with it in a synthetic and analytic way—processes that correspond identically with those in the human corpse. Such a science, applying the same process that can be observed during the natural decomposing of the corpse, finds the same elements in the living organism: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and the rest. And it discovers these elements living in the form we know as albumen. The scientists now try to discover how the carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen in the albumen can be synthesized in a living way. And they hope to discover one day how these elements—\(C\), \(N\), \(H\), and \(O\)—develop a definite structure by virtue of being together in albumen.

But this procedure will never lead to an understanding of albumen as the basis of life. In characterizing albumen in the cell in this way we follow a wrong direction. The reality is quite different. The natural, instinctive forces that hold the substances together, that bring about specific forms in, for example, a mountain crystal, a cube of pyrite, or other minerals, change to a chaotic condition during the creation of albumen. We should, in our study of albumen, instead of paying attention to more complicated laws, observe how these forces in their reciprocal relation paralyze themselves, cease to be active in the albumen, are no longer in it. Instead of structure, we should look for chaos, dissolution. We should tell ourselves: The substances in their reciprocal activities change to a chaotic condition when they pass to the stage in which they appear as albumen; then they enter an undefined, vague stage, cease to influence one another, enter a stage in which they become open to another influence.

In the general life processes, this chaotic condition is still kept somewhat in check through the mineral processes in the organism. The cells in our brain, lungs, and liver, as far as they are albumen, are still affected by the forces we receive from our food. There the chaotic condition is not present. But in the cells that later become our reproductive cells, the cell substance is protected from the influence of food, protected from the forces we receive from food. In our reproductive cells there is almost complete chaos; all mineral substances are completely destroyed, ruined. Reproductive cells are produced in human beings, in animals, and in plants by virtue of the fact that the terrestrial effects, the mineral activities, are through a laborious process destroyed, ruined. This process allows the organism to become receptive to the work of the cosmos. Cosmic forces can now work into the organism from every direction. These cosmic forces are initially influenced by the reproductive cells of the other sex, adding the astral to the etheric. We may say that as the mineral elements demineralize themselves, the possibility arises for the cosmic laws to enter on this detour through the chaotic condition of the albumen, whereas ordinarily in the mineral world we find the terrestrial influencing the terrestrial.

Natural science will never comprehend the nature of albumen as long as it endeavors to find in the organic molecule a structure that is simply more complicated than that which occurs in the inorganic molecule. Today’s chemistry and physiology are mainly concerned with discovering the structure of atoms in different bodies, atoms which assume ever more complex forms, culminating in that of the albumen. The molecule of albumen does not tend toward greater complexity, however, but toward the dissolution of mineral structure, so that extraterrestrial—and not terrestrial—forces can influence it.

Our thinking is here confused by modern science. We are led to a thinking that is—in its most important aspects—in no way connected to reality. Our modern knowledge of the properties of albumen prevents us from raising our thoughts to the reality that something enters the human being that does not come from heredity but via the detour from the cosmos. Today’s idea of albumen leaves no room for the concept of the pre-existence of the human being.

We have to understand the tremendous importance of learning, as teachers, to distance ourselves from the basic tenets of modern science. With the basic tenets of modern science one can bamboozle people, but one cannot teach with them. Our universities do not teach at all. What do they do? There is a faculty that enforces its position through the power of unions or associations. The students have to congregate there, in order to prepare themselves for life. Nobody would do this. Neither the old nor the young would do this, if it were left to them to develop their innate forces and potential. In order to make them study, compulsion is necessary. They are forced into this situation, incarcerated for a while, if they wish to prepare themselves for a profession. And because of this, these institutions do not think of relaxing their power. It is a childish notion to believe such institutions, the last outposts at which compulsory membership clings—the compulsory membership of all the other unions no longer existing—it is hard to believe such institutions are in the forefront of progress. They are the last place of recourse for finding answers. Everywhere else the enforced measures and rules of the Middle Ages have been done away with. In the way today’s universities are conducted, they are in no way different from the guilds of the Middle Ages. Our universities are the last remnants of the guilds. And since those concerned with these things have no longer any knowledge, any feeling about this development, they enlist the help of show business, especially during such highlights as graduation ceremonies—caps, gowns, and so forth. It is important to see behind these things.

One who today wishes to educate and teach must find other ways in which to become a true human being; one must acquire new ideas of the basic principles. Then one will arrive at the correct understanding of the nature of imitation during early childhood.

During the time in the spiritual world, before conception, the child’s soul accepts everything from its spiritual surroundings as a matter of course. After birth the child continues this activity that the soul became used to in the spiritual world. In the child’s imitating we can see that this habit from before birth has not been lost; it has only taken a different turn. Before conception the child was concerned with development from within; now the world outside is confronted. We may use the following picture to help us understand this difference. Before conception the child was as though within a ball; now the child looks at this ball from outside. The world one sees with one’s physical eyes is the outside of what one saw previously from within. Imitation is an instinctive urge for the child in all activities, a continuation of the child’s experience in the spiritual world; it is through imitation that the child develops an initial relation to the spiritual world in the physical world.

Just think what this means! Keep in mind that the very young child wants to face the outer world according to the principles that are valid in the spiritual world. During these early years, the child develops a sense for the true and, connecting to the world in this way, arrives at the conviction: “Everything around me is as true as the things I so clearly perceived in the spiritual world.” The child develops the sense for the true before beginning school. We still observe the last phases of this conviction when the child enters school, and we must receive the child’s sense for the true in the right way. Otherwise we blunt it instead of developing it further.

Consider now the situation of children entering first grade and forced to adapt to the conventional way people read and write today—an activity that is external to human nature. Our modern way of reading and writing is abstract, external to human nature. Not so long ago, the forms of the letters were quite different. They were pictures—that is, they did not remind one of the reality, but they depicted the reality. But by teaching the Roman alphabet, we take the children into a quite foreign element, which they can no longer imitate.

If we show the children pictures, teach them how to draw artistic, picture-like forms, encourage them to make themselves into pictures of the world through a musical element that is adapted to child nature, we then continue what they had been doing by themselves before starting school. If, on the other hand, we teach by instructing them to copy an abstract “I” or “O,” the children will have no cause to be interested, no cause for inwardly connecting with our teaching. The children must in a certain way be connected with what they are doing. And the sense of imitation must now be replaced by the sense of beauty. We must begin to work from all directions toward the healthy separation from imitation, to allow the children’s imitation to give way to a correct, more outer relation to the world. The children must grow into beings who copy the outer world beautifully. And we must now begin to consider two as yet rather undifferentiated aspects—namely, the teaching of physical skills and the teaching of such things that are more concerned with knowledge, with the development of concepts.

What are children actually doing when they sing or make eurythmic movements? They disengage themselves from imitating, yet the imitating activity continues in a certain way. The children move. Singing and listening to music are essentially inner movements—the same process as in imitation. And when we let children do eurythmy, what are we actually doing then? Instead of giving them sticks of crayon with which to write an “A” or an “E”—an activity with which they have a purely cognitive connection—we let the children write into the world, through their own human form, what constitutes the content of language. The human being is not directed to abstract symbols but allowed to write into the world what can be inscribed through his or her organism. We thus allow the human being to continue the activity of prenatal life. And if we then do not take recourse to abstract symbols when we teach reading and writing, but do this through pictures, we do not distance ourselves from the real being when we must activate it, we do not let the human being get fully away from it. Through effort and practice we employ the whole of the human being.

I want you to be aware of what we are doing with the children in regard to their activities. On the one hand, we have the purely physiological physical education lessons. There the children are trained and tamed—we merely use different methods—as animals are. But spirit and soul are excluded from our considerations. On the other hand, we have lessons that are unconnected with the human body. We have progressed to the point at which, in writing and reading, the more delicate movements of the fingers, arms, and eyes are made so active that the rest of the organism is not participating in them. We literally cut the human being in half.

But when we teach eurythmy, when the movements contain the things the children are to learn in writing, we bring these two parts—body and soul/spirit—closer together. And in the children’s artistic activities, when the letters emerge from pictures, we have one and the same activity—now, however, tinged by soul and spirit—as in eurythmic movements or in listening to singing, a process in which the children’s own consciousness is employed. We join body, soul, and spirit, allowing the child to be a totality.

By proceeding in this way, we shall, of course, find ourselves reproached by parents in parent/teacher meetings. We only have to learn to deal with them appropriately when they ask us, for example, to transfer their sons to a class with a male teacher. They would, so they say, have a greater respect for a male teacher. “My son is already eight years old and cannot spell correctly.” They blame the female teacher for that, believing that a male teacher would be more likely to drill the child in this subject.

Such erroneous opinions, which keep being voiced in our school community, must be checked; we have to correct them and enlighten the parents. But we must not shock them. We cannot speak to them in the way we speak among ourselves. We cannot say to them: “You ought to be grateful for the fact that your son cannot read and write fluently at the age of nine. He will as a result read and write far better later on. If he could read and write to perfection already at age nine, he would later turn into an automaton, because he would have been inoculated with a foreign element. He would turn into an automaton, a robot.”

Children whose writing and reading activities are balanced by something else will grow into full human beings. We have to be gentle with today’s grown-ups, who have been influenced by modern culture. We must not shock them; that would not help our cause at all. But we must, tactfully and gently, find a way to convince them that if their child cannot yet read and write fluently at the age of nine, this does not constitute a sin against the child’s holy spirit.

If in this way, we guide the child correctly into life—if we don’t “cut the child in half” but leave the child’s whole being intact, we shall observe an extraordinarily important point in the child’s life at the age of nine. The child will relate quite differently to the world outside. It is as though the child were waking up, were beginning to have a new connection to the ego. We should pay attention to this change, at the very beginning. In our time, it is possible for this change to happen earlier. We should observe the new relation to the environment—the child showing surprise, astonishment. Normally this change occurs between the ninth and the tenth years.

If, thoughtfully and inwardly, we ask ourselves what it is that has led to this condition, we shall receive an answer that cannot be accurately expressed in words but can be conveyed by the following analogy. Previously, had we given the child a mirror and had the child seen his or her reflection in it, the child would not have seen it very differently from any other object, would not have been especially affected by it. Imagine a monkey to whom you give a mirror. Have you observed this? The monkey takes hold of the mirror and runs to a place where it can look at it undisturbed, quite calmly. The monkey becomes fascinated by its reflection. Should you try to take the mirror away, that would not be to your advantage. The monkey is absolutely bent on coming to grips with what it sees in the mirror. But you will not notice the slightest change in the monkey afterward. It will not have become vain as a result; the experience does not influence the monkey in this way. The immediate sense impression of the reflected picture fascinates the monkey, but the experience does not metamorphose into anything. As soon as the mirror is taken away, the monkey forgets the whole thing; the experience certainly does not produce vanity.

But a child at the characterized age looking at his or her reflection would be tempted to transform his or her previous way of feeling, to become vain and coquettish. This is the difference between the monkey, satisfied with just seeing itself in the mirror, and the child. Regarding the monkey, the experience does not permanently affect its feeling and will. But for the nine-and-one-half-year-old child, the experience of seeing himself or herself in the mirror produces lasting impressions, influences his or her character in a certain way.

An actual experiment would confirm this result. And a time that wishes to make education into an experimental science—because it cannot think of any other way of dealing with it, because it has lost all inner connection to it—could well feel inclined to make experiments in order to discover the nature of the transition from the ninth to the tenth year. Children would be given mirrors, their reactions would be recorded, learned books would be written, and so forth. But such a procedure is no different for the soul and spirit than the assumption that our ordinary methods cannot solve the mystery of the human being. In order to get answers, we must decide on killing somebody every year, in order to discover the secrets of life at the moment of death. Such scientific experiments are not yet permitted in the physical, sense-perceptible world. But in the realm of soul and spirit, we have progressed to the point that experiments are allowed which paralyze the unhappy victims, paralyze them for life—experiments that ought to be avoided.

Take any of the available books on education and you will find thoughts the very opposite of ours. You will, for example, read things about memory and the nature of sensation, the application of which you ought to avoid in your lessons. Experimental pedagogy occupies itself precisely with such experiments that should be abolished. Everything that should be avoided is experimented with. This is the destructive practice of our current civilization—the wish to discover the processes in the corpse rather than those in life. It is the death processes that experimental pedagogy wishes to study, instead of making the effort to observe life: the way children, in a delicate, subtle way arrive at being astonished at what they see around them, because they are beginning to see themselves placed into the world. It is only at this stage that one arrives at self consciousness, the awareness of one’s ego. When one sees it reflected, rayed back from everywhere in the environment, from plants and animals, when one begins to experience them in one’s feeling, one relates consciously to them, develops a knowledge through one’s own efforts.

This awareness begins to awaken in children at the age of nine and ten. It does not awaken if we avoid the formative activities, if we avoid the meaningful movements in, for example, eurythmy. This is not done today. Children are not educated to do meaningful, sensible things. Like little lambs in a pasture, they are taken to the gymnasium, ordered to move their arms in a certain way, told how to use the various apparati. There is nothing of a spiritual element in such activities—or have you noticed any? Certainly, many beautiful things are said about such activities, but they are not permeated by spirit.

What is the result? At an age that affords the best opportunities for infusing the sense of beauty in children, they do not receive it. The children wish so very much to stand in awe, to be astonished, but the forces for this response are squashed. Take a book on current curricula and their tendencies. The six- and seven-year-old children, on entering school, are treated in a way that makes them impervious to the experiences they ought to have in their tenth year. They don’t experience anything. Consequently, the experiences they ought to have pass into the body, instead of into the consciousness. They rumble deep down in the unconscious regions and transform into feelings and instincts of which individuals have no knowledge. People move about in life without being able to connect with it, without discovering anything in it. This is the characteristic of our time. People do not observe anything meaningful in life, because they did not learn as children to see the beautiful in it. All they are to discover are things that in the driest possible sense somehow increase their knowledge. But they cannot find the hidden, mysterious beauty that is present everywhere, and the real connection to life dies away.

This is the course culture is taking. The connection of human beings to nature dies away. If one is permeated by this, if one observes this, then one knows how everything depends on finding the right words, words that will allow children at the age of nine to be astonished. The children expect this from us. If we do not deliver, we really destroy a great deal.

We must learn to observe children, must grow into them with our feelings, be inside them and not rest content with outer experimentation. The situation is really such that we have to say that the development of the human being includes a definite course of life that begins at the moment when in a lower region, as it were, from language, there emerge the words: “I am an ‘I.’” One learns to say “I” to oneself at a relatively early age in childhood, but the experience is dreamlike and continues in this dreamy way. The child then enters school. And it is now our task to change this experience. The child wishes, after all, to take a different direction. We must direct the child to artistic activities. When we have done this for a while, the child retraces his or her life and arrives again at the moment of learning to say “I” to himself or herself. The child then continues the process and later, through the event of puberty, again passes through this moment.

We prepare the children for this process by getting them at the age of nine and ten to the point that they can look at the world in wonder, astonishment, and admiration. If we make their sense of beauty more conscious, we prepare the children for the time at and after puberty in such a way that they learn to love correctly, that they develop love in the right way. Love is not limited to sex; sex is merely a special aspect of love. Love is something that extends to everything, is the innermost impetus for action. We ought to do what we love to do. Duty is to merge with love; we should like what we are duty-bound to do. And this love develops in the right way only if we go along with the child’s inner development. We must, therefore, pay attention to the correct cultivation of the sense of beauty throughout the elementary school years. The sense of truth the children have brought with them; the sense of beauty we have to develop in the way I have described.

That the children have brought the sense of truth with them can be seen in the fact that they have learned to speak before entering school. Language, as it were, incorporates truth and knowledge. We need language if we wish to learn about the world. This fact has led people like Mauthner to assume that everything is already contained in language. People like Mauthner—who wrote the book Critique of Language—actually believe that we harm human beings by taking them beyond the point at which they learn to speak. Mauthner wrote his Critique of Language because he did not believe in the world, because of his conviction that human beings should be left at a childlike stage, at the time when they learn to speak. Were this idea to become generally accepted, we would be left with a spiritual life that corresponds to that of children at the time when they have learned to speak. This manner of thinking tends toward producing such human beings who remain at the stage of children who have just learned to speak. Everything else is nowadays rejected as ignorance.

What now matters is that we can enter the concept of imitation with our feeling and then to understand the concept of authority as the basis, between us and the children, for the development of the sense for the beautiful. If we manage to do this up to the time of puberty, then as the children are growing into their inclinations toward ideals, the sense for the good is correctly developed. Before puberty it is through us that the children are motivated to do the good; through the reciprocal relationship we must affect the children in this way. It is necessary for the eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old girls and boys to have the teacher’s authority behind them, to feel their teacher’s pleasure and satisfaction when they are doing something that is good. And they should avoid bad actions because they feel their teacher would be disappointed. They should be aware of the teacher’s presence and in this way unite with him or her. Only at puberty should they emancipate themselves from the teacher.

If we consider the children to be already mature in first grade, if we encourage them to voice their opinions and judgments as soon as they have learned to speak—that is, if we base everything on direct perception [Anschauung]—we leave them at the stage of development at which they have just learned to speak, and we deny them any further development. If, in other words, we do not address ourselves to the very real changes at puberty—that the children then leave behind what they were used to doing through our authority—they will not be able later in life to do without it. Children must first experience authority. Then at puberty they must be able to grow beyond it and begin to make and depend on their own judgments.

At this time we really must establish such a connection to the students that each one of them may choose a “hero whose path to Mt. Olympus can be emulated.” This change is, of course, connected with some unhappiness and even pain. It is no longer up to the teacher to represent the ideal for the children. The teacher must recognize the change and act accordingly. Before puberty the teacher was able to tell the children what to do. Now the students become rather sensitive to their teachers in their judgments, perceive their weaknesses and shortcomings. We must consciously expose ourselves to this change, must be aware of the students’ criticism of their teachers’ unwarranted behavior. They become especially sensitive at this age to their teachers’ attitudes. If, however, our interest in the students is honest and not egotistical, we shall educate and teach with exactly these possibilities of their feelings in mind. And this will result in a free relationship between us and them.

The effect will be the students’ healthy growth into the true that was given to them by the spiritual world as a kind of inheritance, so that they can merge with, grow together with, the beautiful in the right way, so that they can learn the good in the world of the senses, the good they are to develop and bring to expression during their lives. It is really a sin to talk about the true, the beautiful, and the good in abstractions, without showing concretely their relation to the various ages.

Such a short reflection, my dear friends, can of course give us no more than a small segment of what the future holds for us. We can only gradually grow into the tasks we are given. But it really is true that we shall in a certain way grow into them as a matter of course, provided we let ourselves be guided in our work by the forces we can acquire if we see the physical, sense-perceptible world from the standpoint of soul and spirit and if, in observing the world, we do not forget the human being. These things we must do, especially as teachers to whom the young are entrusted.

We really must feel ourselves as a part of the whole universe, wherein the evolution of humankind is playing a major role. For this reason, I would always—at the beginning of the school year—like to see our feelings permeated, as it were, with a healthy sensing of our great task, so that we may in all humility feel ourselves as missionaries in human evolution. In this sense, I always wish such talks to contain also something of a prayer-like element by which we may raise ourselves to the spirit, so that we evoke it not merely intellectually but as a living reality. May we be conscious of the spirit spreading among us like a living cloud that is permeated by soul and spirit; may we feel that the living spirits themselves are called upon through the words we speak among ourselves at the beginning of a new school year, that these living spirits themselves are called forth when we beseech them: “Help us. Bring living spirituality among us. Insert it into our souls, our hearts, so that we may work in the right way.”

If you have the sensitivity to appreciate that our words at the beginning of the school year should also be a feeling experience, you will be open to the intention that is connected with our talks. So let me add for you this short meditative formula, to be spoken as follows:

We resolve to do our work by letting flow into it what from the spiritual world wishes to become human being in us, by way of the soul and spirit as well as of the corporealphysical organization.

[Wir wollen arbeiten, indem wir einfliessen lassen in unsere Arbeit dasjenige, was aus der geistigen Welt heraus auf seelisch-geistige Weise und auch auf leiblich-physische Weise in uns Mensch werden will.]

If today we think of the education of the young, we must bear in mind that we are concerned with feelings, the ideas, the will impulses of the next generation; we must be clear that our present work is to prepare this next generation for definite tasks which will be accomplished, at some time in the future of mankind. When a thing of this kind is said, the question at once arises; Why is it then that humanity has reached the widespread misery in which it is today? Humanity has entered into this misery because it has really in essential things made itself dependent, through and through dependent, on the kind of thinking and feeling peculiar to the western man. It is true to say that when today someone in Central Europe speaks about, e.g., Fichte, Herder or even Goethe, if he belongs to external public life, either as a journalist, book-wright or the like, he is much further from the true spiritual impulse living in Fichte, Herder or Goethe when he is thinking and active in Berlin or Vienna, than he is from what is felt and thought today in London, Paris, New York or Chicago. Things have worked out gradually In such a way that speaking generally our whole civilization has been flooded by the impulses proceeding from the philosophy of the western nations and our whole public life is lived in the impulses proceeding from the philosophy of these nations.

It must also be admitted that this is particularly true where the art of education is concerned. For from the last third of the 19th century European nations, speaking generally, have learned from the western nations in all such educational matters, and today it is taken for granted by those men who discuss or dispute among other things about questions of education, that they should make use of the habits of thought which come from the west. If you trace back all the educational ideas which are considered reasonable in Central Europe today, you will find their source in the views of Herbert Spencer or similar men. People do not trace out the numerous paths by which the views of Spencer and others like him have entered the heads of those who have to decide about spiritual questions in Central Europe, but these paths exist—they are to be found. And if you (I will not lay special stress on the details) take the spirit of the educational line such as is to be found, e.g., in Fichte, it is now not only absolutely different from that which is generally looked upon today as sensible pedagogy, but the fact is that modern men are hardly in a position to think and feel along the lines which would enable then to understand what was meant by Fichte and Herder that they could find a way of continuing it. Thus, our experience today in the realm of pedagogy, especially in the art of pedagogy, is that the principles that have arisen are exactly the opposite of what they ought to be. Here I would like to point out to you something which Spencer has written.

Spencer was of the opinion that the way of giving object lessons should be such that they would lead over into the experience of the naturalist, into the research work of the men of science. What then would have to be done in the school? According to that, we should have to teach the children in school in such a way that when they are grown up and have the opportunity, they can continue what they have learned in the school about plants, minerals, animals, etc., so that they can become regular scientists or natural philosophers. It is true that this kind of idea is frequently attacked, but at the same time people really put this principle into practice. And for this reason; Our textbooks are composed with this in view, and no one thinks of altering or doing away with our textbooks. Today the fact is that, e.g., the textbooks on botany are composed for future botanists rather than for human beings in general. In the same way textbooks on zoology are written for future zoologists, not for human beings in general.

Now the remarkable thing is that we ought to strive for the exact opposite of that which Spencer has laid down as a true educational principle. When we are teaching the children about plants and animals in our Volkschule lessons, we could hardly imagine a greater mistake in our method of education than to treat the subject as an introduction to the studies which would be required to enable the child later to become a botanist or zoologist. If, on the contrary, you could have arranged your lessons so that your way of teaching about plants and animals would hinder the child in question from becoming a botanist or zoologist, then you would have acted more wisely than by following Spencer's principle, for no one should become a botanist or zoologist through what he learns in the Volkschule; that he can only become through his special gifts which are revealed by his choice of vocation and which would be sure to appear during his life if there is a true art of education. Through his gifts! That is, if he has the gifts necessary for a botanist, he can become a botanist; and if he has the gifts necessary for a zoologist, he can become a zoologist. That can only be the result of the gifts of the child in question, i.e., of his predetermined Karma. This must come about through the fact that we recognise this child has the makings of a botanist, that child has the makings of a zoologist. It must never be the result of making our Volkschule lessons in any way a preparation for special scientific activity. Just think what has happened of late. It has come about that unfortunately our “scientists” have been our educationalists; people who have definitely trained themselves to think scientifically have been engaged in pedagogy, have taken a most important part in deciding educational questions. That is to say, it has been thought that the teacher as such has something to do with the scientist; a scientific training has actually been taken as a teacher's training, whereas the two should be completely and absolutely different. If the teacher is a scientist, if he makes it his business to think scientifically in a narrow sense (that he can do as a private man, but not as a teacher), then there comes about something which does often happen. The teacher cuts rather a comical figure in his class and among his pupils or among his colleagues; jokes are made at his expense. Goethe's “Baccalaureus” in the upper classes is not such a rarity as is usually supposed.

And as a matter of fact, if you are asked today whether you would be more on the side of the teacher when his pupils make jokes about him or on the side of the scholars, you would under present educational conditions be more on the side of the scholars. For it is in our universities that you can best see whence this has arisen. What are our universities, properly speaking? Are they institutions for teaching young men and women or are they institutions for research? They would like to be both and that is why they have become the caricatures which they are today. It is usually even held up as a special feature of our universities that they are at the same time institutions for teaching and for research. But it is in this way that the bad methods, which come into our education when it is carried out by scientists, work their way first of all into our highest educational centres. Later these bad methods find their way down into the Mittelschule, and then finally also into the Volkschule. And it is this which cannot sufficiently be borne in mind, that the art of education must proceed from life and that it cannot proceed from abstract scientific thought.

Now the remarkable thing is that there is now arising, chiefly out of the western culture, just what can be called a pedagogy with a scientific, even a natural scientific, bent and that when we remember what was to be found in Herder, in Fichte, what was to be found in Jean Paul, in Schiller and similar minds, we know that here is really a pedagogy, which has been forgotten, taken from life, a pedagogy drawn directly from life. And now there lies before us the calling of the Central European nations, that calling which has its place in the history of the world, to cherish and develop this pedagogy, to make it their esoteric task to develop this pedagogy. For many things can be common to humanity and many things must be common to humanity if an improvement in social affairs is to come in the future; but the western nations will not be able to understand what will arise out of the whole concrete Central European spiritual culture with regard to the art of education; on the contrary, it will annoy them, and it really ought not to be told them in its original form. It could only have an undesirable effect upon them. It will only be possible to speak of it to them when they have made up their minds to take their stand on the esoteric foundation of Spiritual Science. With regard to all those things which have been looked upon in Germany during the last forty years with such pride, with regard to all those things which have been considered such a great advance, Germany has lost. All this will pass over to the dominion of the western nations. In this respect there is nothing to be done, and we can only hope to awaken so much understanding for the threefold social organism that the western nations will take part in it. But with regard to what has to be given for the art of education, we have something to give the world from Central Europe which no one else can give, not an oriental and not a western man. But we must know how to keep this among those who are able to understand it; we must understand how to guard it with a certain sense of trust, and we must know that it is this guardianship which will make our work effectual. You must know exactly about what things you have to be silent before certain people if you want to obtain a result. Then we must above all things be clear that there is nothing to hope from anything that might come to us from the kind of thought which, proceeding from the west, is indispensable in many branches of modern civilization; we must know that there is absolutely nothing to be expected from this direction for the educational art we have to develop.

There is a publication about education by Herbert Spencer which is extraordinarily Interesting. He gives there a whole number of maxims, of “Principles,” as he calls them, about the intellectual education of the child. Among these principles there is one which he especially emphasizes. In teaching you should never proceed from the abstract, but always from the concrete; you should always work your subject out from an individual case. Now in his book about education, before anything concrete is approached, there is the worst possible abstract litter, really abstract chaff, and he does not notice that he is himself carrying out the opposite of those principles which he sets forth as indispensable. Thus, we have an illustration of how an eminent, leading philosopher of the present day absolutely contradicts what he himself advocates.

Now you saw last year that our pedagogy has not to be built up on abstract principles of education, for it was said that we should not bring things to the child from the outside, but rather develop the individuality of the child. You know that our educational art should be built upon a real sympathy with the child's being, that it should be built up, in the widest sense, on a knowledge of the growing child, and in our first course of lectures and then later in our conferences we have collected sufficient facts about the being of the growing child. If as teachers we can enter into the child's being, then, out of our knowledge of the child, there will spring up a perception of the way in which we should act. In this respect we must as teachers become artists. Just as it is impossible for an artist to take a book on aesthetics in his hand in order to paint or model according to the principles laid down by the writer, so it should be quite impossible for a teacher to use an “educational guide” in order to teach, but what he needs is a real insight into what the child really is, what he will become as he works his way through childhood. It is above all necessary that we should be clear about the following: we teach, let us say, to begin with in the first class, the 6-7 year old children; now our teaching will always be bad, will have failed to fulfil its purpose if after we have worked with this first class for a year we do not say to ourselves; Who then has really learned the most? It is I, the teacher! If we say to ourselves, “At the beginning of the school year I had excellent educational principles, I have followed the best educational authorities, have done everything to carry out these principles;”—If you really had done this, you really would have taught badly. You would however certainly have taught best if each morning you had gone into your class in fear and trembling without over much confidence in yourself and then had said at the end of the year, you yourself have really learned the most during this time! For whether you can say: you, yourself have learned the most depends on how you have acted; it depends upon what you have really done, depends upon your constantly having had the feeling: you are growing while you are helping the children to grow, you are experimenting in the highest sense of the word, you are not really able to do so very much, but by working with the children there grows in you a certain power. Sometimes you will have the feeling: there is not much to be done with this kind of child, but you will have taken trouble with them. From other children, owing to their special gifts, you will have had certain experiences. In short, you have become quite a different person from what you were before you began, and you have taught what you would not have been able to teach a year earlier. At the end of the school year you say: yes, now for the first time you can do what you ought to have been doing. This is quite a religious feeling! And here there lies hidden a certain secret. If at the beginning of the school year you had really been able to do all you can do at the end, you would have taught badly. You have given good lessons because you had to work them out as you went along! I must put the following paradox before you. You taught well when you did not know at the beginning what you had learned by the end of the year, and it would have been harmful if you had already known at the beginning of the year what you had learned by the end. A remarkable paradox!

It is important for many people that they should know this, but it is most important of all that teachers should know it. For this is a special case of universal comprehensive understanding; a knowledge, no matter what the subject is, which can be comprehended in abstract principles, which can be represented by ideas in the mind, can be of no practical value; it is only what leads to this knowledge, only what is found on the way to this knowledge that is of any practical value. For this knowledge which is ours after we have taught for a year, receives its first value after our death. It is not until after the death of a man that this knowledge becomes such a reality that it can further his development, that it can further the development of the real individual man. In life it is not the ready knowledge that is of value, but the work which leads to the knowledge and particularly in the art of education this work has its own particular value. It is the same in education as in the arts, I do not think that an artist has the right attitude of mind if, when he has finished a work, he does not say to himself; it is only now that you could really do it. I do not think that an artist has the right attitude of mind If he is satisfied with any work he has done. He may have a certain natural egoistic feeling for what he has done, but he cannot really be satisfied with it. A work of art when it is finished really loses for the artist a large part of its interest, and this loss of interest is owing to the peculiar nature of the knowledge which is acquired while the work is being done. And on the other hand, the living element in a work of art, the life that springs from it, owes its being to the fact that it has not yet been transmuted into knowledge.

The same thing is indeed true with regard to the whole human organism. Our head is as “finished” as anything can be finished, for it is formed out of the forces of our last incarnation; it is over mature. Human heads are all over mature, even the immature ones. But the rest of the organism is only at the stage of furnishing the seed for the head in our next incarnation; it is full of life and energy, but it is incomplete. It will not be until our death that the rest of our organization will really show its true form, namely the form of the forces which are at work in it. The constitution of the rest of our organism shows that there is flowing life in it; ossification is reduced to the minimum in this part of our organism while in our head it reaches the maximum.

This peculiar kind of real heartfelt modesty, this feeling that we ourselves are still only becoming, is something which will give the teachers strength, for more arises out of this feeling than out of any abstract principles. If when we are in our class we are conscious that we are doing everything imperfectly, then we shall teach well. If on the other hand we are constantly smacking our lips with satisfaction over the perfection of our teaching, then it is quite certain that we shall teach badly.

But now imagine the following: to begin with you have charge of the teaching of the first class and so on, so that you have gone through everything that has to be gone through, of excitements, disappointments, successes too, if you will. Imagine that you have gone through all the classes of the Volkschule; at the end of each year you have spoken to yourself somewhat after the fashion that I have just described, and now you go down again from the eighth to the first class. Yes, now it might be supposed that you must say to yourself; now I am beginning with what I have learned, now I shall be able to do it well, I shall be an excellent teacher! But it will not be like that. The course of your new class will bring something quite different before your mind. At the end of the second third of each school year, you will say just the same out of a really right feeling. I have now learned what it was possible to learn about seven, eight and nine-year old children by working with them; at the end of each school year I know what I ought to have done. But when you have reached the fourth or fifth, school year, you will again not know how you really ought to have taught. For now, you will correct what you thought to be right after you have taught for a year. And so, after you have finished the eighth school year and have corrected everything, if you really have the good fortune to begin again at the first school year, you will be in the same position, only you will teach in a different spirit. But if you go through your teaching with true, noble, not with mock scepticism, you will find that your diffidence has brought you an imponderable power which will make you peculiarly fitted to accomplish more with the children that are entrusted to you. That is doubtless true. The effect however in life will really then only be a different one, not one that is so much better, but a different effect. I might say that the quality which you bring about in the children will not be much better than the first time; the effect will only be a different one. You will attain something different in quality but not much more in quantity. You will attain something that is different in quality and that is sufficient, for everything which we acquire in the way described with the necessary, noble diffidence and heartfelt humility has the effect that we are able to make individualities out of the children; on the whole they become individualities. We cannot have the same class twice over and send out into the world the same copies of a cut and dried educational pattern.

We can however give the world figures which are individually different. We bring about many-sidedness in life. This does not depend on the working out of abstract principles, but rather this many-sidedness in life depends on a deeper understanding of life such as has been put before you.

Thus, you can see that what matters more than anything else in a teacher is the way in which he regards his holy calling. That is not without significance, for the most Important things In teaching and in education are those which are imponderable. A teacher who enters his classroom with this feeling in his heart achieves something different from another. Just as, even in everyday life, it is not always the largest thing physically that determines our standard but something quite small, so also it is not always what we do with the largest number of words which carries most weight, but sometimes it is that perception, that feeling which we have built up in our hearts before we enter the classroom. There is one thing especially which is of great importance. That is that we must quickly strip off our narrower, personal self like a snake skin when we go into the class. A teacher may in certain circumstances, because he, as is sometimes said with such self-satisfaction, is also only human, go through all sorts of experiences between the end of a class one day and beginning again on the next. It may be that he has been warned by his creditors, or he may have had a quarrel with his wife, as does happen in life.

These are things which bring disharmonies. Disharmonies of this kind give a man's frame of mind a certain tendency; so also do happy joyous feelings. The father of one of your pupils, if he particularly likes you, may have sent you a hare after he has been out hunting, or a bunch of flowers perhaps, if you are a lady teacher. What I mean is that it is quite a natural thing in life to have moods of this kind. As teachers we must train ourselves to lay aside these moods and to give ourselves up entirely to the content of the subject we are going to teach, so that we are really able in presenting one subject to speak tragically, taking our mood from our subject and then to pass over into a humorous mood as we proceed with our lesson, in this way entering completely into our subject. The important thing however is that we should now be able to perceive the whole reaction of the class to tragedy or sentimentality or humour. Then, when we are in a position to do this, we shall be aware that tragedy, sentimentality and humour are of extraordinary significance for the souls of children. And if we allow our lessons to be carried along by an alternation between humour, sentimentality and tragedy, if we pass from the one mood into the other and back again, if we are really able, after presenting something for which we needed a certain heaviness, to pass over into a certain lightness, not a forced lightness, but one that arises because we are living in our lesson, then we are bringing about in the soul something akin to the in and outbreathing in the bodily organism. In teaching, our object is not to teach merely intellectually or intellectualistically, but to be able to really take these various moods into consideration. For what is tragedy, what is sentimentality, what is a “melancholic” mood? It is just the same as an inbreathing in the organism, the same as filling the organism with air. Tragedy signifies that we are trying harder and harder to draw our physical body together so that in our drawing together of the physical body we are aware how the astral body comes ever more and more out of the physical body owing to the drawing together of the physical body. A humorous mood signifies that we paralyze the physical body, but with the astral body we do just the opposite of what we did before; we stretch it out as far as possible, stretch it out over its surroundings so that we are aware, if we, e.g., do not merely see redness but grow into it, how we stretch out our astral body beyond this redness, pass over into it. Laughing simply means that we drive the astral body out of our face; laughing is simply nothing else but an outbreathing. Only, if we want to apply all this, we must have a certain feeling for the force there is in these things. It is not always advisable to go straight over into something humorous when we have just had something serious or melancholy, but if we can always have in our lessons the means of preventing the childish soul from being imprisoned by the serious, the tragic, and of freeing it so that it can really experience this breathing in and out between the two frames of mind.

I have now told you something of the variety of moods which should be taken into consideration by the teacher, for this is just as necessary as any other part of special pedagogy.

It is impossible to educate or teach without a spiritual grasp of the whole human being, for this whole human being comes into consideration even far more prominently during the time of a child's development than later on. As we know, this whole human being comprises within itself the ego, the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. These four members of the nature of man are by no means going through a symmetrical development, but rather they develop in very different ways; and we must distinguish accurately between the development of the physical and of the etheric body, and that of the astral body and of the ego. The outer manifestations of this differentiated development express themselves—as you know from the various elucidations—in the change of teeth and in that change which in the male appears as the change of voice at puberty, but which also proclaims itself clearly in the female, though in a different way. The essence of the phenomenon is the same as with the male in the change of his voice, only in the female organism it appears in a more diffused form, so that it is not merely observable in one organ as in the case of the male organism, but it extends more over the entire organism.

You know that between the change of teeth and the change of voice, or puberty, lies that period of teaching with which we have principally to do in the grade-schools; but the careful educator, in teaching and educating, must pay close attention as well to the years following the change of voice, or its analogy in the female organism.

Let us call to mind what the change of teeth signifies. Before the change of teeth—that is, between birth and the change of teeth—the physical body and the etheric body in the child's organism are strongly influenced by the nervous-sensory system, that is, from above downward. Up to about the seventh year the physical body and the etheric body are most active from the head. In the head are concentrated, as it were, the forces that are particularly active in these years—that is, in the years when imitation plays so important a role. And what takes place in the formative process in the remaining organism of trunk and limbs is achieved through the emanation of rays from the head to this remaining organism, to the trunk and the limb organism, from the physical body and the etheric body. That which here radiates from the head into the physical and etheric bodies of the whole child, right into the tips of his fingers and toes—this that radiates from the head into the whole child is soul-activity, even though it has its inception in the physical body: the same soul-activity that is later active in the soul as mind and memory. Later on this soul-activity appears in such a form that after the change of teeth the child begins to think, and that his memories become more conscious. The whole change that takes place in the soul-life of the child shows that certain psychic powers previously active in the organism become active as soul-forces after the seventh year. The whole period up to the change of teeth, while the child is growing, is a result of the same forces which after the seventh year appear as mental forces, intellectual forces.

There you have a case of actual co-operation between soul and body, when you realize how the soul emancipates itself in the seventh year and begins to function—no longer in the body but independently. Now those forces which in the body itself come newly into being as soul-forces begin to be active with the seventh year; and from then on, they operate through into the next incarnation. Now that which is radiated forth from the body is repulsed, whereas the forces that shoot downward from the head are checked. Thus, at this time of the change of teeth the hardest battle is fought between the forces tending downward from above and those shooting upward from below. The physical change of teeth is the physical expression of this conflict between those two kinds of forces: the forces that later appear in the child as the reasoning and intellectual powers, and those that must be employed particularly in drawing, painting, and writing. All these forces that shoot up, arising out of the conflict, we employ when we develop writing out of drawing; for these forces really tend to pass over into plastic creation, drawing, and so forth. Those are the forces that come to an end with the change of teeth, that previously had modelled the body of the child: the sculpture-forces. We work with them later, when the change of teeth is completed, to lead the child to drawing, to painting, and so on. These are in the main the forces in which the child's soul lived in the spiritual world before conception; at first their activity lies in forming the body, and then from the seventh year on they function as soul- forces. Thus, in the educational period following the seventh year, during which we must work with the forces of authority, we simply see that manifesting itself in the child which formerly he practiced unconsciously as imitation, when these forces still influenced the body unconsciously. If later the child becomes a sculptor, a draftsman, or an architect—but a real architect who works out of the forms—this is because such a person has the capacity for retaining in his organism, in his head, a little more of those forces that radiate downward into the organism, so that later on as well these forces of childhood can radiate downward. But if they are entirely used up, if with the change of teeth everything passes over into the psychic, children result who have no talent for architecture, who could never become sculptors.

These forces are related to the experiences between death and a new birth; and the reverence that is needed in educational activity, and that takes on a religious character, arises if one is conscious that when, around the seventh year, one calls forth from the child's soul these forces that are applied in learning to draw and to write, it is actually the spiritual world that sends down these forces. And the child is the mediator, and you are in reality working with forces sent down from the spiritual world. When this reverence permeates the instruction it truly works miracles. And if you have this reverence, if you have the feeling that by means of this telephone which transcends time you are in contact with the forces developed in the spiritual world during the time before birth—if you have this feeling that engenders a deep reverence, then you will see that through the reality of such a feeling you can accomplish more than through any amount of intellectual theorizing about what should be done. The teacher's feelings are the most important means of education there is, for this reverence can have an immeasurable formative influence upon the child.

Thus, we find in the change of teeth, when the child is entrusted to us, a process that directly represents a transfer through the child of spiritual forces out of the spiritual world into the physical world.

Another process takes place in the years of puberty, but it is prepared gradually through the whole cycle from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year. During this period something comes to light in those regions of the soul-life not yet illuminated by consciousness—for consciousness is still being formed, and something of the outer world which remains unconscious is constantly radiating into those regions not yet illuminated by consciousness—that only gradually becomes conscious, but that from birth has permeated the child from the outer world, that has co-operated in building the child's body, and that has entered into the plastic forces.

Those, again, are different forces. While the plastic forces enter the head from within, these forces now come from without. They are dammed up by the plastic forces and then descend into the organism. They co-operate in what takes place, beginning with the seventh year, in connection with the building of the child's body. I can characterize these forces in no other way than as those active in speech and in music. These forces are derived from the world.

The musical forces derive more from the outer world, the extra-human world, from the observation of processes in nature, particularly their regularities and irregularities. For all that takes place in nature is permeated by a mysterious music: I In- earthly projection of the “music of the spheres.” In every plant, in every animal, there is really incorporated a tone of the music of the spheres. That is also the case with reference to the human body, but it no longer lives in what is human speech—that is, in expressions of the soul—but it does live in the body, in its forms and so forth. All this the child absorbs unconsciously, and that is why children are musical to such a high degree. They take all that into their organism. While that which the child experiences as forms of movement, lines and plastic elements in his surroundings is absorbed by him and then acts from within, from the head, all that is absorbed by the child as tone-texture, as speech-content, comes from without. And this again, that which comes from without, is opposed by the gradually developing spiritual element of music and speech—only somewhat later: around the fourteenth year. This also is dammed up again now, in the woman in the whole organism, in the man more in the region of the larynx, where it causes the change of voice. The whole process, then, is brought about by the fact that here an element of the nature of will expresses itself from within in conflict with a similar element coming from without; and in this conflict is manifested that which at puberty appears as the change of voice. That is a conflict between inner music-speech forces and outer music-speech forces. Up to the seventh year, man is essentially permeated more by plastic and less by musical forces—that is, less by the music and speech forces that glow through the organism. But beginning with the seventh year what proceeds from music-speech becomes particularly active in the etheric body. Then this condition is opposed by the ego and the astral body: an element of the nature of will struggles from with-out against the similar one from within, and this appears at puberty. It is manifest even externally by the pitch of the voice that a difference exists between the male and the female. Only partially do the pitches of the voices of men and of women over lap: the woman's voice reaches higher, the man's goes lower—down to the bass. That corresponds with absolute accuracy to the structure of the remaining organism that forms itself out of the conflict of these forces.

These things show that in our soul-life we are concerned with something which at certain definite times co-operates also in the up-building of the organism. All the abstract discussions you find in modern scientific books on psychology, all the talk about psycho-physical parallelism, are merely testimony to the inability to grasp the connection between the psychic and the physical. For the psychic is not connected with the physical in the manner set forth in the senseless theories thought out by the psycho-physical parallelists; but rather we have to do with the recognition of this wholly concrete action of the psychic in the body, and then in turn with the reaction. Up to the seventh year what is plastic-architectonic works together with what is active in music-speech; only this changes in the seventh year, so that from then on the relation between music-speech on the one hand and the plastic-architectonic on the other is merely a different one. But through the whole period up to puberty this co-operation takes place between the plastic-architectonic, which emanates from the head and has its seat there, and speech-music, which comes from without, uses the head as a passage, and spreads itself into the organism.

From this we see that human language as well, but particularly music, co-operates in the formation of man. First it forms him, then it is dammed up as it halts at the larynx; now it does not enter the gate as it did before. For before, you see, it is speech that changes our organs, even down into the bony system; and anyone who observes a human skeleton from a psycho-physical thoughts of our present-day philosophers--and considers the differentiation between the male and the female skeleton sees in the skeleton an embodied musical achievement performed in the reciprocal action between the human organism and the outer world. Were we to take a sonata, and could we preserve its structure through some spiritual process of crystallization, we would have, as it were, the principal forms, the scheme of arrangement, of the human skeleton. And that will incidentally attest the difference between man and the animals. Whatever the animal absorbs of the music-speech element—very little of the speech, but very much of the musical—passes through the animal, because in a sense the animal lacks man's isolation that later leads to mutation. In the shape of an animal skeleton we find a musical image too, but only in the sense that a composite picture of the different animal skeletons, such as one can gain, for instance, in a museum, is needed to yield a musical coherence. An animal invariably manifests a one-sidedness in its structure.

Such things we should consider carefully in forming our picture of man: they will show us what feelings we should develop. As our reverence grows through feeling our connection, through fostering our feeling of contact, with pre-natal conditions, we acquire greater enthusiasm for teaching, by occupying ourselves intensely with the other forces of man. A Dionysian element, as it were, irradiates the music-speech instruction, while we have more of an Apollonian element in teaching the plastic arts, painting and drawing. The instruction that has to do with music and speech we impart with enthusiasm, the other with reverence.

The plastic forces offer the stronger opposition, hence they are held up as early as the seventh year; the others act less vigorously, so they are held up only in the fourteenth year. You must not interpret that to mean physical strength and weakness: it refers rather to the counter-pressure that is exerted. Since the plastic forces, being stronger, would overrun the human organism, the counter-pressure is stronger. Therefore, they must be held up earlier, whereas the music-forces are permitted by cosmic guidance to remain longer in the organism. The human being is permeated longer by the music forces than by the plastic ones.

If you let this thought ripen within you and bring the requisite enthusiasm to bear, conscious that by developing an appreciation for speech and music precisely during the grade-school period, when that battle is still raging and when you are still influencing the corporeality—not just the soul—then you are preparing that which man carries with him even beyond death. To this we contribute essentially with everything we teach the child of music and speech during the grade-school period. And that gives us a certain enthusiasm, because we know that thereby we are working for the future. On the other hand, by working with the plastic forces we make contact with what lived in man before birth or conception, and that gives us reverence. In that which reaches into the future we infuse our own forces, and we know that we are fructifying the germ of music-speech with something that will operate into the future after the physical has been stripped off. Music itself is a reflection of what is spheric in the air—only thus does it become physical. The air is in a sense the medium that renders tones physical, just as it is the air in the larynx that renders speech physical. That which has its being as non-physical in the speech-air, and as non-physical in the music-air unfolds its true activity only after death. That gives us the right enthusiasm for our teaching, because we know that when working with music and speech we are working for the future. And I believe that in the pedagogy of the future, teachers will no longer be addressed as they usually are today, but rather in ideas and concepts that can transform themselves into feelings, into the future. For nothing is more important than that we be able, as teachers, to develop the necessary reverence, the necessary enthusiasm. Reverence and enthusiasm—those are two fundamental forces by which the teacher-soul must be permeated.

To make you understand the matter still better I should like to mention that music has its being principally in the human astral body. After death man still carries his astral body fur a time; and as long as he does so, until he lays it aside completely—you are familiar with this from my book Theosophy — there still exists in man after death a sort of memory—it is only a sort of memory—of earthly music. Thus, it comes about that whatever in life we receive of music continues to act like a memory of music after death—until about the time the astral body is laid aside. Then the earthly music is transformed in the life after death into the “music of the spheres,” and it remains as such until some time previous to the new birth. The matter will be more comprehensible for you if you know that what man here on earth receives in the way of music plays a very important role in the shaping of his soul-organism after death. That organism is molded there during this period. This is, of course, the kamaloka time; and that is also the comforting feature of the kamaloka time: we can render easier this existence, which the Roman Catholics call purgatory, for human beings if we know that. Not, to be sure, by relieving them of their perception: that they must have; for they would remain imperfect if they could not observe the imperfect things they have done. But we furnish the possibility that the human being will be better formed in his next life if during that time after death, when he still has his astral body, he can have many memories of things musical. This can be studied on a comparatively low plane of spiritual knowledge. You need only, after having heard a concert, wake up in the night, and you will become aware that you have experienced the whole concert again before waking. You even experience it much better by thus awaking in the night after a concert. You experience it very accurately. The point is that music imprints itself upon the astral body, it remains there, it still vibrates; it remains for about thirty years after death. What comes from music continues to vibrate much longer than what comes from speech: we lose the latter as such comparatively quickly after death, and there remains only its spiritual extract. What is musical is as long as the astral body. What comes from speech can be a great boon to us after death, especially if we have often absorbed it in the form which I now frequently describe as the art of recitation. When I describe the latter in this way I naturally have every reason to point out that these things cannot be rightly interpreted without keeping in view the peculiar course the astral body takes after death: then the matters must be described somewhat as I have described them in my lectures on eurythmy. Here, you see, we must talk to people in the most primitive language, so to speak; and it is really true that, seen from the point of view beyond the Threshold, people are actually all primitive: only beyond the Threshold are they real human beings. And we can only work ourselves out of this primitive-man state by working ourselves into spiritual reality. This is also the reason for the constantly increasing fury against the endeavors of Anthroposophy to show the path to a spiritual reality.

Now I would call your attention to something that is very much in the foreground in the art of pedagogy and that can be pedagogically employed—namely, that in the first conflict which I described in connection with the adolescent child, the outer expression of which is the change of teeth, and in that later struggle whose equivalent is the change of voice, there is to be considered something peculiar that gives to each its special character: everything that up to the seventh year descends from the head appears as an attack in relation to that which meets it from within and which builds up. And everything is a warding off that acts from within toward the head, that rises upward and opposes the current emanating from the head and descending.

In the case of music in turn the conditions are similar; but here that which comes from within appears as an attack, and that which descends from above through the head-organism appears as the warding off. If we had not music, frightful forces really would rise up in man. I am completely convinced that up to the sixteenth or seventeenth century traditions deriving from the old Mysteries were active, and that even then people still wrote and spoke under the influence of this after-effect of the Mysteries. They no longer knew, to be sure, the whole meaning of this effect, but in much that still appears in comparatively recent times we simply have reminiscences of the old Mystery-wisdom. Hence, I have always been deeply impressed by the passage in Shakespeare :*

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Is fit for treason, murder and deceit!
Let no such man be trusted.”

Merchant of Venice, V, 1.

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.”

Translator's Note: The third line of the German translation of this passage reads: “Is fit for treason, murder and deceit”, and thus it is quoted by Dr. Steiner. Thus, must be kept in mind to understand what follows.

In the old Mystery-schools the pupils were told: that which acts in man as an attack from within and which must be continually warded off, which is dammed back for the nature of man, is “treason, murder and deceit,” and the music that is active in man is that which opposes the former. Music is the means of defense against the Luciferic forces rising up out of the inner man: treason, murder and deceit. We all have treason, murder and deceit within us, and it is not for nothing that the world contains what comes to us from music-speech quite aside from the pleasure it affords. Its purpose is to make people into human beings. One must, of course, keep in mind that the old Mystery- teachers expressed themselves somewhat differently: they expressed things more concretely. They would not have said “treason, murder and deceit” (it is already toned down in Shakespeare) but would have said something like “serpent, wolf and fox.” The serpent, the wolf and the fox are warded off from the inner nature of the human being through music. The old Mystery-teachers would always have used animal forms to depict that which rises out of the human being, but which must then be transformed into what is human. Thus, we can achieve the right enthusiasm when we see the treacherous serpent rising out of the child and combat it with music-speech instruction, and in like manner contend with the murderous wolf and the tricky fox or the cat. That is what can then permeate us with the intelligent, the true sort of enthusiasm—not the burning, Luciferic sort that alone is acknowledged today. We must recognize, then: attack and warding off.

Man has within him two levels where the warding off occurs. First, within himself, where the warding off appears in the change of teeth in the seventh year; and then again, in what he has received from music and speech, through which is warded off that which tends to rise up within him. But both battlefields are within man himself, what comes from music-speech more toward the periphery, toward the outer world, the architectonic- plastic more toward the inner world. But there is still a third battlefield, and that lies at the border between the etheric body and the outer world. The etheric body is always larger than the physical body; it extends beyond it in all directions; and here also there is such a battlefield. Here the battle is fought more under the influence of consciousness, whereas the other two proceed more in the subconscious. And the third conflict manifests itself when everything has worked itself to the surface that is a transformation of what takes place on the one hand between the human being and what is plastic-architectonic, and on the other between him and what is music-speech, when this amalgamates with the etheric body, thereby taking hold of the astral body, and is thus moved more toward the periphery, toward the outer border.

Through this originates everything that shoots through the fingers in drawing, painting, and so on. This makes of painting an art functioning more in the environs of man. The draftsman, the sculptor, must work more out of his inner faculties, the musician more out of his devotion to the world. That which lias ils being in painting and drawing, to which we lead the child when we have it make forms and lines, that is a battle that lakes place wholly on the surface, a battle that is fought principally between two forces, one of which acts inward from without, the other on I ward from within. The force that acts outward from within really tends constantly to disperse the human being, tends to continue the forming of man—not violently but in a delicate way. This force—it is not so powerful as that, but I must express il more radically so that you will see what I mean—this force, acting outward from within, tends to make our eyes swell up, to raise a goiter for us, to make the nose grow big and to make the ears bigger: everything tends to swell outward. Another force is the one we absorb from the outer world, through which this swelling up is warded off. And even if we only make a stroke—draw something—this is an effort to divert, through the force acting from the outer world inward, that inner force which tends to deform us. It is a complicated reflex action, then, that we as men execute in painting, in drawing, in graphic activity. In drawing or in having the canvas before us, the feeling actually glimmers in our consciousness that we are excluding something that is out there, that in the forms and strokes we are setting up thick walls, barbed wire. In drawing we really have such barbed wire by means of which we quickly catch something that tends to destroy us from within and prevent its action from becoming too strong. Therefore, instruction in drawing works best if we begin its study from the human being. If you study what motions the hand tends to make—if, say, in eurythmy instruction you have the child hold these motions, these forms that he wants to execute—then you have arrested the motion, the line, that tends to destroy, and then it does not act destructively. So when you begin to have the eurythmic forms drawn, and then see that drawing and also writing are formed out of the will that lives there, you have something which the nature of man really wants, something linked with the development and essence of human nature.

And in connection with eurythmy we should know this, that in our etheric body we constantly have the tendency to practice eurythmy: that is something the etheric body simply does of its own accord; for eurythmy is nothing but motions gleaned from what the etheric body tends to do of itself. It is really the etheric body that makes these motions, and it is only prevented from doing so when we cause the physical body to execute them. When we cause them to be executed by the physical body these movements are held back in the etheric body, react upon us, and have a health-giving effect on man.

That is what affects the human being in a certain hygienic- therapeutic as well as didactic-pedagogic way, and which outwardly gives the impression of beauty. Such things will be understood only when we know that something which is trying to manifest itself in the etheric organization of man must be stopped at the periphery by the movements of the physical body. In one case, that of eurythmy, an element more connected with the will is stopped; in the other, in drawing and painting, an element more closely allied with the intellect. But fundamentally both processes are but the two poles of one and the same thing.

If we now follow this process too with our feeling and incorporate it in our sensitive teaching ability, we have the third feeling that we need. That is the feeling which should really always penetrate us especially in grade-school instruction: that, when a human being is placed in the world, he is really exposed to things from which we must protect him through our teaching. Otherwise he would become one with the world too much. Man really always has the tendency to become psychically rickety, to make his limbs rickety, to become a gnome. And in teaching and educating him we work at forming him. We best obtain a feeling for this forming if we observe the child making a drawing, then smooth this out a bit so that the result is not what the child wants, but not what we want either, but a result of both. If I succeed, while smoothing out what the child wants to scribble, in merging my feelings with those of the child, the best results obtain. And if I transform all that into feeling and let it permeate me, the feeling arises that I must protect the child from an over-strong coalescence with the outer world. We must see that the child grows slowly into the outer world and not let him do so too rapidly. That is the third feeling that we as educators must cherish within us: we constantly hold a protecting hand over the child.

Reverence, enthusiasm, and the feeling of protection, these three are actually the panacea, as it were, the magic formula in the soul of the educator and teacher. And if one wished to represent, externally, artistically, something like an embodiment of art and pedagogy in a group, one would have to represent this:

Reverence for what precedes the child's existence (before birth);

Enthusiastic looking forward to what follows it (after death);

Protecting gesture for what the child experiences (during life).

Rudolf Steiner accompanied each of these three sentences with a gesture.

This work of art would also best represent the external manifestation of the teacher-character.

When one says something thus derived out of the intimacies of the world-mysteries one always feels it as unsatisfactory when uttered in conventional speech. But if one must say such things by means of external speech one always has the feeling that a supplement is necessary. What is spoken rather abstractly always feels the urge to pass over into the artistic. That is why I wanted to give you that hint in closing.

The fact is, we must learn to bear something of mankind's future frame of mind within us, consisting of the knowledge that the possession of mere science makes the human being into something which will cause him to regard himself as a psycho-spiritual monster. He who is a scientist pure and simple will not have the impulse—not even in the forming of his thoughts—to transform the scientific into the artistic. But only through the artistic can one comprehend the world. Goethe's saying always remains true:

“He to whom Nature begins to reveal her manifest secret feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy exponent — Art.”

As educators we should have the feeling: as far as you are a scientist only, you are in soul and spirit a monster. Not until you have transformed your psycho-spiritual-physical organism, when your knowledge takes on artistic form, will you become a human being. Future development will in the main lead from science to artistic grasp, from the monster to the complete human being. And in this it is the pedagogue's duty to co-operate.

As described in the previous lecture, cognition through imagination can be attained by lifting into consciousness what is active subconsciously and involuntarily in dreaming. To be more precise, it is the activity behind our dreaming and not the dreaming itself with its content that is lifted into consciousness, since if this were to happen, we should remain in the realm of unreality. (For the moment I will leave this activity behind our dreaming undefined.) It is this activity—lifted into consciousness by controlled will power—that becomes the basis for cognition through imagination, and this conscious activity is very different from that of dreaming. In dream activity, because we are not active participants, we have the feeling that our experiences are real. But when we lift the activity that produces dreams into consciousness, we realize very well that we are seeing images we ourselves made. It is this awareness that saves us from falling into hallucinations instead of doing research through spiritual science.

This first meditative activity of creating images must now be superseded by a second step that involves obliterating those images, thus leading to empty consciousness. If you have been able, in full consciousness and under full control, to enhance your soul powers in this way, you will have in fact entered the spiritual world. You will then be able to engage in an activity that, being solely soul and spirit, is independent of the physical body; you no longer perceive with your physical organs. While thinking becomes freed from the body, your conscious experience becomes purely spiritual.

Yesterday I showed that, for spiritual scientific investigators, dreamlike experience is not to be seen as a model for spiritual perception. Only fully controlled experiences, similar to those of our sensory perceptions, are valid. Obviously there is no possibility of sensory perception in suprasensory cognition. Nevertheless, we can see definite capacities in our ability to move freely when surrounded by sensory perceptions and in our independence from our personal makeup while perceiving. An example will clarify my meaning.

Let us look at one of our most characteristic and representative sensory organs, the human eye. We recognize the relative independence of this organ by the way it rests in its cavity, attached to the remaining organism by insubstantial links. Forgetting for the moment what happens in the act of seeing, we find another, more external process. Near the eye are the lachrymal glands, which, while we are awake, continually secrete a liquid composed mainly of salt water. This liquid flushes the whole eyeball, especially the part exposed to the outer air when the eye is open. Through this glandular activity, the eye is constantly bathed so that dust entering the eye from the outside is washed away through tear ducts entering the nose. This process, which forms part of the normal function of our organ of sight, is hidden from ordinary consciousness.

Now this wisely ordained (though completely unconscious) activity of the lachrymal glands can be accelerated by the various stimuli of pressure or cold, for example, or through exhaustion, either in the eye or in the organism in general. The lachrymal glands thus become more active, and the cause of secretion and the secretion of tears itself begins to enter our consciousness. However, a further increase of this activity may occur in a very different way; when sadness makes us weep, tears flow as a result of a purely emotional stress or because our feelings have been deeply moved. Here we see how, under normal circumstances, the lachrymal liquid is constantly secreted in complete unconsciousness, and how outer irritants will lead to an increase in our consciousness of this activity. But when a person cries because of soul distress, this lachrymal activity is lifted into the sphere of consciousness only through soul or moral issues, not through physical causes.

This simple fact can help to illustrate what happens when, through meditation, we are able to lift ourselves into a bodyfree state of consciousness, in which we can live entirely in soul and spiritual experiences. If you shed tears because you receive a letter that makes you unhappy, you must admit that the cause of your tears has nothing to do with your physical eyes. Nevertheless, it affects your physical eyes. The fact that tears are not connected with the physical act of reading the letter is easily proved if someone else reads the letter to you and you experience the same tearful consequences. Something non-physical has set an organic process in motion.

Now imagine you have gained such mastery over yourself that you can suffer great sorrow without shedding any tears. Of course, this does not imply that your anguish would be any less intense than when you weep. In this situation, soul experiences do not directly affect the bodily functions. This example may illustrate how, through self-development, we can achieve a state of soul and spirit, emancipated from the physical organism. It may help you to form some idea of how imagination, inspiration, and intuition as methods of spiritual science can open the gates into the suprasensory world. If you take the proper steps, you will be able to describe experiences from beyond the tapestry of the senses, experiences that may be seen as an enhanced continuation of what a person experiences in normal life. This, however, is possible only through the practice of specific soul and spiritual exercises.

If now, through continued spiritual training, you have reached the stage where you can suppress previous imaginations of your own creation, and if in the ensuing stage of emptied consciousness you are able to experience real soul and spiritual content, the first thing that comes to meet you is a tableau sort of image of your earthly life, approximately from birth until the present. You will be unable to see your physical body in that picture, because it vanishes when you reach bodyfree perception. And there before you, ready to meet your soul, is everything you have experienced, everything that belongs to your stream of memory, which normally remains unconscious, with only individual images occasionally arising. It confronts you as an entity, as a kind of time organism full of its own inner movement.

If you look at the physical body as it appears spatially, you find that its members are interdependent, all together making up the whole. What happens in the head has a certain relationship with the stomach and vice versa. All the processes in an organism are interrelated. The same is true of an organism existing in time; later events depend on earlier ones, and the past lives in the present. At such a moment, you are all at once confronted by a tableau of your whole life.

Now, if you are able to consciously suppress the tableau of these memory pictures—not just the body but the entire life tableau—you reach the stage where you are able to perceive experiences prior to birth, or rather, prior to conception. The realm of soul and spirit that you inhabited before entering this earthly existence remains part of your inner being, even during life on earth. It works and lives in us in a way similar to the way hydrogen lives with oxygen after they form water. One cannot examine hydrogen separately from the oxygen while they form water; similarly, one cannot examine the human soul and spirit separately while we live on earth. Just as the oxygen must first be isolated from water before we can examine the remaining hydrogen, the soul and spiritual parts of the human being must first be isolated. When this happens, we are led not into the present time but into our pre-earthly existence. Thus, you really can perceive what has descended from the spirit world to assume earthly form. The realm where we lived before entering earthly life is revealed to us.

It is understandable if some are unprepared to go to such lengths to investigate the eternal human being. Certainly, everyone is free not to follow these paths. But to think it is possible to examine the human soul and spirit using ordinary methods of cognition is like believing naively that we could examine hydrogen while it forms a part of water, without first isolating it. One must recognize that ordinary consciousness is unable to enter the realm of soul and spirit. If you are unprepared to accept the results of spiritual investigation, you will have to remain silent about suprasensory realities. And in this case, you will have to be content with involvement only within material existence. The truth may be irksome to some, but there are certain facts in life that one must simply accept.

Continuing along this path of spiritual training, we gradually reach knowledge through inspiration. We become inspired by something that does not normally enter consciousness but permeates our being as does the oxygen we breathe in from the outer air. In full consciousness, we are filled with inspirational cognition and the experience of our pre-earthly life, just as in respiration we are filled with physical oxygen. We breathe with our soul and spiritual being, rising to the stage of inspiration. This word was not chosen arbitrarily, but with the nature of this type of cognition in mind.

Inspirational cognition has yet another characteristic. You will find more about it in How to Know Higher Worlds. In order to develop this higher cognition, another faculty is necessary: presence of mind. It is this faculty that enables us to act spontaneously during any given life situation. In order not to miss the right moment, we may have to act without waiting until we have time to assess an issue properly. We should really use these moments in life to practice swift and decisive action, learning to quickly grasp the moment, because whatever comes through inspiration passes in a flash. As soon as it appears, it has already vanished. One must be able to catch such fleeting moments with the utmost attentiveness.

The ordinary world of the senses appears to us be spread out in space. But when we are confronted by our life tableau, we see it existing in time. However, during inspirational cognition, we are outside the realm of time. We depend on being able to perceive in the flash of a moment; time loses its meaning as soon as we experience inspiration.

If we penetrate this life tableau, we find something far more real than the ordinary memory pictures can give us. The images of memory are neutral and lack inner strength; they are there, and we are free to take them up, but in themselves they have no strength. When viewing our life tableau, on the other hand, we see that it is full of its own life and strength and contains the very forces that form the human being. These are the suprasensory, formative forces that are active, for example, in forming the brain of a young child before the final structure has been finished. It is these formative forces that we begin to recognize, for they are contained within this life tableau. We do not apprehend something abstract, but a full reality, encompassing the course of time and full of power. It is the refined nonmaterial body of forces that we also call the ether body, or body of formative forces. This body presents only momentarily a well-defined appearance in space, for it is in constant motion. If we were to try to paint a picture of it, we would paint something unreal, because the ether body is in a constant flow. Its subsequent stage would be very different again, just as a former stage was different. This ether body is a time organism through and through, and is the basis for the growing processes and the forces active in the human metabolism.

Once we have advanced far enough in imaginative cognition, consciously living in the realm of soul and spirit beyond the physical, and once we have progressed far enough to see our life tableau—or ether body—at will, then we have truly experienced a complete transformation of our cognition. We find that experiences in the etheric world are similar to, and yet very different from, what happens in the world of artistic activity. To experience this, one has to develop a more creative way of thinking, one very different from abstract naturalistic thinking. Although in certain respects this kind of thinking resembles that of a creative artist, in other ways it is quite different. An artist’s creations have to reach a certain finality within the realm of fantasy. The artist’s creativity remains bound to the physical; it is not freed from corporeality. But the activity practiced in imaginative cognition is freed entirely from the physical and, therefore, is capable of grasping spiritual reality. For example, when we look at the Venus de Milo, we hardly have the feeling that this statue will move and walk toward us; an artistic creation does not embody outer realities. If you saw the devil painted on canvas, you would not be afraid that he was coming after you. The important thing is the way an artist, bound to physical reality, deals with material reality. But artists do not plunge into the reality of soul and spirit. What has been achieved in imaginative cognition, on the other hand, is immersed in ultimate reality, the reality of spiritual processes.

Now someone might argue that pure cognition should be kept separate from artistic activities. It is easy to prove by logic that cognizing means moving from one concept to the next in logical sequence and that, if we enter the sphere of art, we are in fact transgressing the realm of cognition. One can argue for a long time about the laws of cognition. But if nature herself is an artistic creator, she will never reveal herself to mere logical thinking. Logic alone will never reach her true being. Therefore, however much logic might prove that cognizing should not be confused with artistic activities, we cannot enter the reality of the etheric world without an artistic mode of cognition. What matters is the way things are and not what the laws of cognition should be. Even when certain suppositions are logically tenable, they may only prevent us from reaching our goal. Therefore it is proper to maintain that an artistic element must become part of our efforts if we wish to raise our ordinary cognition to the level of imagination.

When we reach the stage of inspiration, we may again compare our experiences with something they resemble, yet differ from greatly: moral experiences and the comprehension of moral ideas. Viewed qualitatively, inspirations are like moral ideas. Yet they are totally different, since any moral ideal we may have does not, in itself, have the power to realize itself on its own; in themselves, moral ideals are powerless. We must make them effective through our own physical personality, placing them in the world by means of our physical existence. Otherwise, they remain only thoughts. But this cannot be said of an inspiration. Though qualitatively similar to moral ideas, or moral impulses, inspiration manifests as a reality, existing in its own right. It is a powerful force that works like the elemental forces in nature. Thus we enter a world that, whereas we have to imagine it as similar to the world of moral ideas, has reality because of its primal power.

If one can take a stand in the world of soul and spirit, having advanced far enough in the state of inspiration, then something else is still needed to experience its content. We have to carry something into this realm that does not exist at all in our abstract world of thoughts: complete devotion to our chosen objective. It is impossible to come to know a being or power in the spiritual world unless we surrender lovingly and completely to what we encounter during the state of inspiration. At first, inspiration remains only a manifestation of the spiritual world. Its full inner nature reveals itself only when, with loving devotion, we pour ourselves out into its substance. And only after experiencing the reality of soul and spirit in this way—full of life and with heightened consciousness—do we enter the realm of inspiration.

And this is intuitive cognition. Shadow forms of intuition can be found in ordinary life, where they exist in religious feelings and moods. However, a religious feeling remains a purely inner experience that does not lift us into outer spirituality. Intuition, on the other hand, is an experience of objective spiritual reality. In this way, intuition is similar and yet again very different from a purely religious experience.

If you want to arrange these levels of higher knowledge in a more or less systematic order, we can say, first of all, that in ordinary life we have knowledge of the material world, which we could call naturalistic knowledge. Then we come to knowledge gained through imagination, which has a kind of artistic nature. The next step is knowledge attained through inspiration, which is, in essence, a moral one. Finally we reach knowledge through intuition, which is like religious experiences, but only in the sense just described.

These suprasensory experiences of an artistic, moral, and religious sort work on and transform the whole human being. Although ordinary consciousness knows nothing of them, they nevertheless form part of the human being. Therefore suprasensory knowledge gained through imagination, inspiration, and intuition enables us to know the whole human being. And because these powers streaming from the spiritual world into earthly existence work in an especially strong way in children, higher cognition, in particular, allows us to understand the nature of a child. It is important, however, to recognize how suprasensory forces are related to physical forces.

This can be illustrated particularly well if we take memory as an example, because active memory definitely depends on the functioning of physical organs. Even commonplace experiences can demonstrate how our body must play its part when we use our powers of memory. For instance, we may wish to memorize part of a play or a poem, only to find that the lines simply refuse to become imprinted on the mind. Yet, after sleeping on them overnight, we may suddenly remember them without difficulty. This happens because, during the sleep, our body has regenerated so that we are able to use its renewed vitality the following morning for the task of remembering the lines.

One can also prove anatomically and physiologically that, through paralysis or the separation of certain areas within the nervous system, specific areas of memory may be wiped out. In other words, we can see that memory depends on the functioning of the physical organization and that physical organs are active during the process of remembering. However, this kind of memory activity is completely different from what we experience in heightened consciousness through imagination, inspiration, and intuition. For these suprasensory experiences simply must not be involved in any way in the functions of physical organs. This tells us why such experiences cannot be remembered in the ordinary way; they do not impress themselves into ordinary memory.

Anyone engaged in spiritual scientific research must allow ordinary memory to run its course alongside what one experiences in the suprasensory realm. Ordinary memory must remain intact. In a way, a student of anthroposophy has to maintain a second personality that represents ordinary life and is always present. But the researcher knows full well that there is this other, first personality engaged in suprasensory knowledge that will not allow itself to become imprinted on the memory. In ordinary life we can retain only a memory image of a fish we have seen, not the fish itself. In suprasensory cognition, we have direct perceptions—not mental images—and thus we cannot carry them in our memory. Consequently one has to return to them again and again. However, it is possible to remember the process we used to gain suprasensory cognition, and if we repeat those efforts, suprasensory sight will reemerge, albeit only passively, since it cannot live in the memory. It can be attained only through renewed inner activity. The fact that these higher faculties are beyond the reach of memory is a characteristic of suprasensory cognition. One can regain it, but only by following a route similar to the one traveled earlier. One can remember the path taken previously, but not the suprasensory experience itself.

It is this fact that distinguishes suprasensory experiences from those of ordinary life. It must be emphasized again and again, however, that a healthy memory goes hand in hand with true suprasensory experiences. If you lose the stream of common memory while engaged in suprasensory experiences, you will pour your subjective personality into them. Then you would not be a student of spiritual scientific research but live in hallucinations and personal visions. It is important to understand that all forms of hallucinations should be strictly excluded from suprasensory cognition and that such cognition must be developed along with a normal, healthy soul life. Anyone who argues that imagination and inspiration attained through anthroposophy might simply be hallucinations does not understand the nature of the spiritual scientific path and talks only out of ignorance.

It is essential to recognize this difference between suprasensory cognition and memory, since both are real in life. Suprasensory substance gained through imagination and inspiration has its own separate existence, and we can become aware of it through our own effort. Memory, on the other hand, is not just the result of our own effort, because the subconscious also plays a role. What we experience through imagination remains in the spirit world, as though it comes to unite with us. But memory flows right through us, entering the physical body and causing it to participate; it penetrates the physical human being. Comparing memory with imagination helps us appreciate the difference between everything related to the physical body and the suprasensory forces that live in us eternally, even between birth and death. But, because this eludes ordinary consciousness, it must be shown through spiritual scientific investigation.

We come to know the whole human being only by immersing ourselves in this relationship between the suprasensory aspect of the human being and physical existence. If we penetrate the knowledge gained through suprasensory cognition, we come to know the child and the growing human being in such a way that we can develop a true art of education. This example of the relationship between the suprasensory human being and the activity of memory helps shed light on this problem.

Let us imagine that a teacher is introducing a subject to a class. First he approaches it in a somewhat general way and may have the impression that all was going well. But after a time, he notices that a child in the class is becoming pale. Pallor is not always obvious and might easily go unnoticed by those not trained in exact observation. Ideally, however, teachers should remain fully aware of each student’s condition. The symptoms I will describe could have many causes. But when teachers deepen their knowledge of the human being through anthroposophic training, they awaken and enhance their ordinary pedagogical instincts so they are able to diagnose and address other causes as well. If a science of education establishes fixed and abstract rules, it affects teachers as though they were constantly stepping on their own feet while trying to walk; it robs them of all creative spontaneity. When teachers always have to wonder how to apply the rules prescribed by educational science, they lose all ingenuity and their proper pedagogical instincts. On the other hand, the educational principles based on spiritual science have the opposite effect. They do not allow inborn pedagogical sense to wither away but enliven and strengthen the teacher’s whole personality. At least, this is the intention of the practical educational principles that spring from anthroposophy.

However varied external symptoms may be (life, after all, is full of surprises), our imaginary teacher, whose pedagogical sense has been stimulated and sharpened by anthroposophy, might suddenly realize that this child is growing pale because he was overfed with memory content. Of course, there might be many other reasons for such a symptom, which a gifted teacher would also be able to discover. I am giving you this example, however, to illustrate one of the fundamental tasks of spiritual science: to make people aware of how the human soul and spirit interacts with the physical, material nature of the human being. Anthroposophy does not want to simply reveal spiritual knowledge; most of all, it endeavors to open people’s eyes to the way living spirit works and reveals itself in matter. Such knowledge enables us to deal correctly with the practical problems of life, and it places us firmly in the world where we have to fulfill our tasks.

If this pallor, caused by the overburdening of the student’s memory, is not recognized in time, a perceptive teacher will notice a further change in the child—this time psychological—as an anxiety complex develops. Again, this symptom may not be conspicuous and might be detected only by teachers for whom intense observation has become second nature. And, finally, overtaxing a student’s memory can eventually have the effect of retarding the child’s growth forces; even physical growth can be affected.

Here you have an example of how soul and spirit interact with what is physical. It shows us how important it is for teachers to know how to deal with children’s tendencies toward health and sickness. Of course, illnesses have to be treated by medical doctors, but educators are always confronted by inherent trends toward health or sickness in children, and they should learn to recognize these tendencies. They should also be aware of how illnesses can come out later in life and how, often, they can be traced back to what happened in school. Such knowledge makes teachers far more circumspect in choosing their teaching methods. In the example given, the teacher would certainly avoid placing too much stress on the student’s memory, and he might see a healthier complexion return to the child’s face. He could bring about such a change by showing his student something beautiful that would give pleasure. The next day he might again show the child something beautiful or a variation of the previous object, thus bypassing mere memory.

A teacher may also discover the opposite symptoms in a child. For example, a teacher notices a girl whose face appears permanently flushed, even if only slightly. She may discover that this change is not at all the result of embarrassment, but represents a shift in the girl’s health. Again, this symptom may be so slight that it would go unnoticed by a less perceptive teacher. And this condition could have many other causes, and these would not escape our teacher’s notice either. It could be that this student has a tendency to blush because the teacher did not appeal sufficiently to the child’s memory. Realizing this, she would try to rectify this condition by giving the student more memorizing to do. If not addressed, this irregularity could intensify and spread to the girl’s psyche, where it would manifest in mild but significant outbursts of temper.

This connection between slackness in memorizing and slight but unhealthy fits of temper is certainly a possibility. The general repercussions of such a condition would be injurious to a student’s health. In such cases, the mutual effects between soul and spirit on the one hand, and the body on the other, could lead to breathing and circulatory problems. Thus, teachers who are unaware of such links may unwittingly plant illnesses in their students, and these can remain dormant for many years and then, triggered by other causes, lead to serious illnesses. For this reason, any teacher worthy of the title should be aware of these connections and characteristics in human nature.

As mentioned previously, acute illnesses must be dealt with by medical doctors, but during their developmental stages, children are always moving either toward health or illness. The art of education demands that teachers be conversant with these indications and have the ability to perceive them, even in their more subtle manifestations.

To illustrate this point even more drastically, I will give you one more example that, I realize, may be open to argument, but life presents us with a great number of situations. Consequently, the case I will describe may also be the result of completely different causes. If you live with what anthroposophy offers to teaching, you become used to looking around for the most varied causes when confronted with a particular problem. But the following connections between symptom and cause are certainly possible.

Let us imagine that a boy in a class has followed the lessons attentively and to the satisfaction of the teacher. However, one day he suddenly appears somewhat blasé; he is no longer inclined to pay attention, and much of the subject matter seems to pass unnoticed. Depending on the experience and outlook of the boy’s teacher, he might even resort to corporal punishment or some other form of correction to bring about greater participation. However, if this teacher is aware of the interplay between spirit and matter that manifests in health and illness, he would approach this in a very different way. He might say to the boy, “You shouldn’t allow your finger- and toenails grow too long. You ought to cut them more often.” Outer signs of growth, such as fingernails and toenails, are also permeated by soul and spirit. And if fingernails and toenails grow too long, these growth forces become blocked. Being held back in this way, those forces are no longer able to flow into the nails. This obstruction to the flow of growth forces, which is removed when the nails are cut, similarly affects the soul and spiritual counterpart and manifests as difficulties in concentration. The ability to pay attention can be developed only with a free and unlimited flow of the life forces that permeate the whole organism. In most cases, this kind of change in powers of concentration may pass unnoticed. I give this example to show that anthroposophic principles and methods of education in no way neglect the physical aspects of life. Nor do they lead to a vague kind of spirituality; spirit is taken fully into account, so that life can be understood and treated appropriately.

Educators who gradually learn to understand human nature can learn how to deal correctly with matters related to their students’ health and illness.

Anyone called on to look after a very young child—either as a parent or in any other capacity of child care—will experience the great responsibility this task involves. Such people feel morally obligated to lay the best foundations for the child’s future development. Therefore it grieves me deeply that our Waldorf school in Stuttgart can accept only children who have reached the official school age, and it would give me the greatest satisfaction if we could take in the younger children as well. In addition to other difficulties, our goal of opening a nursery has been thwarted by a lack of funds, as happened with so many other anthroposophic activities. This continual shortage of money leaves us with at least the hope that, if we can win support from the general public, we will eventually be able to build a nursery class as an integral part of our Waldorf school.

Very young children are the least accessible to us. The gates to the soul life are absolutely closed to the outer world, and outer influences cannot touch it. Those who take care of infants of this age are powerless when they struggle and cry; these children do what they want. Thus, observant adults must accept the fact that the will of children is beyond their control—even during later stages and occasionally the latest stages of life.

You may know that early in 1894, well before publishing other anthroposophic works, I published Die Philosophie der Freiheit [Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path]. This book was intended to give the world a true assessment of the human quality that develops, within the social context, the impulse toward individual freedom. If you accept its message—the matter of freedom, on the one hand, and destiny, on the other—you can see that it is relevant even to a baby.

If you listen to what lives in the human heart, you find that real human happiness on earth depends on the awareness of human freedom, an appreciation of human values, and a feeling for human dignity. Anthroposophy shows us that—apart from what a person may have developed even before birth or conception while still in the spiritual world and apart from what one will meet again after death—the very purpose of earthly incarnation involves enlivening the impulse toward freedom. This impulse depends completely on plunging into an earthly body. This freedom can be realized only during physical incarnation; we can attain freedom only while living on earth, and when we enter other worlds, we can take with us only the degree of freedom we have attained here on earth.

If you approach young children with such feelings (and feelings are the most potent source for those engaged in the art of education), this question will always be present in your mind as you take charge of an infant: What must I do to enable this child to develop the fullest consciousness of human freedom at maturity? And with this question, a new truth begins to dawn. The outer conditions of life are already clearly pointing at it, and, through anthroposophic insight, it can be understood with inner certainty. It is the fact that, despite one’s freedom, each person has a destiny, or to use the Eastern term, karma.

Let us imagine that, later in life, a man meets a person he has known before, and that this person has a profound influence on the life of this man. Perhaps such people might even begin a partnership for life. At first it may seem to them as if their meeting were simply chance. But when they look back over the years of their lives—even with no knowledge of spiritual science—this man may well discover the strange fact that, during the years before this meeting, he had unconsciously taken numerous steps that eventually led to this other person. Though at first it appeared to be mere chance, hindsight revealed an inherent pattern and underlying plan. Looking back over his life, Goethe’s old friend Nobel spoke these meaningful words from the depths of his soul: “If, in later years, we survey our early life, everything seems to fall into a definite pattern; everything fits together.” Since our will is woven into all our actions, we can see everywhere how destiny confronts us in the events of life. One could quote many others who, through observing ordinary life, reached the same conclusion. When we look at life’s external events, we find confirmation of the hidden truths of karma.

Anyone in charge of young children—especially those who work in children’s homes—who is aware of the activity of destiny, must ask, Have I been specifically chosen for the important task of guiding and educating these children? And other questions follow: What must I do to eliminate as far as possible my personal self, so I can leave those in my care unburdened by my subjective nature? How do I act so I do not interfere with a child’s destiny? And, above all, How can I best educate a child toward human freedom? If you come to understand what happens in a child between birth and the change of teeth—during the first seven years—you will realize how vulnerable young children are and how deeply we can affect their being (I will speak later about the period of embryonic development). The change of teeth represents a decisive turning point in the life of children. Close observation reveals that, after the seventh year, an entirely new interrelationship emerges between the child’s thinking, feeling, and willing.

We have become accustomed to applying certain concepts gained from observing physical processes to the life of the human being. For instance, in natural processes, when we notice the sudden emergence of heat that was imperceptible in a previous state and had not been introduced externally, we say that latent heat is being released. Just as latent heat can be set free by material processes, similarly, soul and spirit forces are set free after the change of teeth, forces that have thus far been bound up with the organism and instrumental for its growth. Freed from processes of growth and nourishment, however, these forces go to work in the child’s soul; they are transformed into soul forces.

Natural science today forms abstract concepts about the relationship between body and soul; theories are invented to explain the effects of one on the other. One speaks of a psychophysical parallelism and so on. Instead of making exact observations, one philosophizes. But all this leads nowhere. If you want to fathom the secrets of human nature, you have to observe it with the same precision used to observe the phenomena of outer nature. Then you will discover that, after approximately the seventh year, forces that were engaged in building the physical organism of the child are now transformed into soul forces that will determine a child’s relationship to the outer world.

If we wish to find out what the soul of a child is like between birth and the seventh year, we must observe the child’s development from the seventh year on. Then, in the child’s soul, we can see the very same forces that were active in the physical organization. And we will find that the hidden, organic activity that molds and shapes the child’s brain and the rest of the organism has a very special significance. Through birth, or conception, children carry into their physical organization what they brought from the worlds of soul and spirit. When children are fully engaged in building up the physical organs in this way, they must be left free to do so, and consequently the doors leading to the outer world remain closed. It is essential that we refrain from interfering in our clumsy ways with these inner activities in children, because they are doing what they have to do and are thus inaccessible to outer will forces.

We must also realize, however, that despite the preoccupation of children with their processes of growth, everything we do around them nevertheless makes deep and distinct impressions on them. I will go into further detail later, but we must not forget that everything at work within the child’s soul after the seventh year was directly involved in the process of building organs up to that age. This means that until the seventh year, the impressions coming from the outer world directly affect their physical constitution—the lungs, stomach, liver, and other organs. In children at this age, the soul has not yet become free of the physical organization, where it is still actively engaged. Because of this, all of the impressions they receive from us through our general conduct have a decisive effect on their future constitution of health or illness.

You came expecting to learn something about our educational principles, but it is the practical application of these principles that is most important. What really matters in education are the mood and soul attitude that teachers carry in their hearts toward the human being. We cannot truly serve the art of education unless we approach the growing human being with real insight. One could even say that teachers are free to approach subjects in their own individual ways, since, in any event, they must prepare their subject material according to what they have learned from life. The important thing is that teachers each carry within themselves a true picture of the human being; if this picture is present to their inner eyes, they will do the right thing, although outwardly each teacher may act in very different ways.

I visited parallel classes as the spiritual guide of the Waldorf school (the large numbers already require parallel classes), and when I saw how the teachers each treat the same subject in very individual ways, I never object or insist that they all follow the same set courses. Even when two versions of the same subject appear contradictory externally, each may nevertheless be correct in its own way. In fact, if one teacher were to copy another, the results could be entirely wrong. There is a good reason that our school is called the “Free Waldorf School.” This is not just because of our independence from the state system, but the name very much reflects the atmosphere of freedom that pervades its entire makeup.

During the previous lecture I pointed out that a suprasensory contemplation of the human being will reveal to us—apart from the physical body—another, finer body that we call the ether body, or body of formative forces. This ether body provides not just the forces that sustain nourishment and growth; it is also the source of memory faculties and the ability to create mental images and ideas. It does not become an independent entity until the change of teeth, and its birth is similar to the way the physical body is born from one’s mother. This means that, until the change of teeth, the forces of the ether body work entirely in the processes of a child’s organic growth, whereas after that time—while still remaining active in this realm to a great extent—those forces partially withdraw from those activities. The released forces of the ether body then begin to work in the soul realm of mental images and memory, as well as in many other nuances of a child’s soul life.

The change of teeth is a unique event. The forces needed to push out the second teeth existed prior to this event, but now they are no longer needed. Once the second teeth have appeared, this particular activity of the ether body becomes redundant. The final activity of pushing out the second teeth is an external manifestation of the sort of activity that is happening within a child’s organism. At the end of the first seven-year period, most of these ether forces are released to flow into a child’s soul and spiritual nature.

One can recognize these seven-year periods throughout the entire human life, and each again can be seen in three clearly differentiated shorter periods. If we observe the gradual withdrawal of some of these ether forces until approximately the seventh year, we see how during the first two and a half years after physical birth the ether body frees itself from the head region; in the next two and a half years, it frees itself from the chest region; and finally, until the change of teeth, it frees itself from the child’s metabolic-limb system. Thus we see three phases in the gradual withdrawal of ether forces. And we clearly recognize how, while the ether body is still connected with the head region, a child rejects any intentional influence coming from outside.

What children learn during this first two-and-a-half-year period is extremely important for their whole life. They do so through an incoming activity and from what they have brought with them from prenatal existence. Just consider how children learn to speak and walk during this first short period. These are two human faculties that are closely connected with maintaining self-confidence, both from a personal and a social point of view. These two important faculties are developed while the ether body is still engaged in shaping the brain and radiating into the rest of the organism. If these ether forces radiate too strongly into the organism and disturb the infant’s delicate processes of metabolism, breathing, and blood circulation—if they become too powerful within a baby’s organism—scarlet fever and similar childhood illnesses may occur even at this young age. Basically, because of all this activity within children at this stage, they remain inaccessible to conscious approaches directed by the will and demands from the outside. They want to be left to work on their own organism.

Being inaccessible to the outer world during the first two and a half years is one significant factor. Another is the fact that children have a fine, instinctive perception for everything going on around them, especially what is happening in people with whom they have established a certain rapport. Anyone caring for such a child naturally belongs to this category. I am not speaking of a child’s ability to use the senses as an older person does. It is not a matter of what children see with their eyes, but a general perception of the most intimate kind that takes in what is happening in their surroundings. This perception, however, excludes anything that seeks to impose itself from outside, against which children will defend themselves instinctively during those first two and a half years.

To get a better understanding of children’s susceptibility to the outer world when their sensory perceptions are still deeply immersed in feeling, it may help to look at animals, the creatures immediately below the human being, because they show a similar, acute sensitivity toward the outer world. I am not contradicting what I said about senility in a previous lecture; one must simply observe accurately. Animals are especially sensitive to their surroundings. I do not know whether those who have come from England or other European countries have ever heard of the horses that, a few years before the war, created a sensation by appearing to do simple mathematical calculations. In Berlin, there was the famous horse of Mr. von Osten, and in Elberfeld there were several horses that could do numeric calculations. Well, I cannot say anything about the Elberfeld horses, but I did make the acquaintance of von Osten’s horse in Berlin, and I was able to observe the close relationship between this horse and its master. It is true that the horse stamped its legs—three times three is nine—which, for a horse, is a very respectable achievement.

All kinds of theories were advanced to explain the horse’s reactions to questions from von Osten. There was one university lecturer—a most erudite man—who even wrote a whole book on this horse. He wrote, “Of course the horse cannot calculate, but whenever Mister von Osten says, ‘Three times three,’ he accompanies his words by barely noticeable facial expressions. He sort of mimes, and when he pronounces the word nine, the horse is capable of observing these facial expressions and stamps accordingly.” His was certainly a learned treatise. He continued, “I myself was unable to detect the miming on von Osten’s face and therefore I cannot guarantee that my theory is correct. But it must have been there and the horse was able to observe it.” It seems to me that the author merely states that he, a university lecturer, considered the horse more capable of observation than he was himself. In my opinion, the crucial point was von Osten’s procedure, for he had large pockets filled with sweets that he shoved into the horse’s mouth, thus maintaining an uninterrupted flow of sensation and gratification. The result was an intimate relationship between master and horse. Everything was immersed in a feeling of sympathy, which made the horse extremely receptive, in keeping with its animal nature, to all that came from its master, even his thoughts and shades of feeling, but hardly the play of mysterious expressions on his face. The processes of calculation going on in von Osten’s mind were transferred to the horse via the taste of sweetness. This phenomenon does not become any less interesting when interpreted this way, but it can teach us a great deal about the relationship of living beings. It cannot be explained hypothetically by observing the facial expressions a horse can detect, though not a university lecturer.

During the first two and a half years, children have a similar rapport with the mother or with others they are closely connected with as long as their attitude and conduct make this possible. Then children become perfect mimics and imitators. This imposes a moral duty on adults to be worthy of such imitation, which is far less comfortable then exerting one’s will on children. Children take in all that we do, such as the ways we act and move. They are equally susceptible to our feelings and thoughts. They imitate us, and even if this is not outwardly noticeable, they nevertheless do this by developing tendencies for imitation that, through their organic soul forces, they press down into the physical organism. Therefore, education during these first two and a half years should be confined to the self-education of the adults in charge, who should think, feel, and act in a way that, when perceived by children, will cause them no harm. Fundamentally, the stage of imitation continues until the change of teeth, and thus children will be strongly influenced by their environment later on as well.

The following example may demonstrate this. Two disconsolate parents once came to me, saying, “Our child has always been good, but now she has stolen money.” Was this really true? At a superficial glance, yes, for she had taken money out of the cupboard where it was always kept by her mother. The child then bought sweets with the money and even gave some to other children. I reassured the parents that their child had not stolen at all, but that she had merely imitated her mother, who regularly took money from the cupboard to buy things. There was never any intention of stealing; this concept did not yet exist in the child’s mind. But children are imitators and will do what mother does. If we wish to avoid confusion, it is up to adults to realize this and act differently in front of the children.

Neither will children learn to walk through our efforts to make them stand and do all sorts of movements. Such instruction belongs in gym much later on. If we intervene by making children stand and walk prematurely, we may do irreparable damage to the nerve processes, which may persist for their whole life. If children see adults in an upright position, as imitator they try to raise themselves to the same position when the time comes. We must always see the human being during the initial stages as an imitator and arrange our child rearing accordingly.

This can certainly be very trying at times, and we all know that there are babies who seem to be yelling all day and, apart from the ear-splitting noise, inflict all kinds of other provocations on the adult. True, there are situations that have to be dealt with, even drastically, to avoid serious damage by a child. But such measures do not really belong to the field of education. Admittedly, it is hard to put up with a screaming child, but when we behave as described, our conduct gradually sinks into the deeper layers of a child’s soul and spiritual forces (which are still closely connected to organic processes) and eventually brings about more positive results.

If we observe small children without preconceived ideas, we find that their screaming and other unpleasant features come from their physical organization. Although the inherent forces in the behavior of intense crying remain with the child, the habit of crying will gradually pass. Such forces are very intense. If we influence the child correctly by setting the proper example and acting morally, the forces behind a baby’s crying will reveal themselves as intensely moral forces in later life. A strong morality later in adult life is an expression of those same forces that lived in the intense crying of a young child. On the other hand, if those close to a child have an immoral attitude—even if only in thoughts—these forces will reappear later as intensely immoral forces. And we must be careful not to harm the development of children while they are learning to speak. This easily happens when we make them say words we choose; this, too, is an imposition of our will on the child. It is best to speak naturally in front of children (as long as we speak in a moral way) so that they have opportunities to hear us. In this way, children find their own way into language.

Now you can appreciate the real point of what has been said so far—that we must not be tempted by a false kind of instinct to make baby talk for the child’s benefit. This is not an instinct but something we may have acquired through misguided customs. Nurses or others dealing with young children should never speak to them in an artificial or childish way. We really do a great wrong when we change our normal way of speaking to “suit” a child, for children always want to imitate us as we really are, not as we pretend to be. They reject anything that approaches them as an expression of another person’s will, such as childish and naive baby talk. Children have to put up with it, but they have a deep inner resentment toward such an approach. The effects of such well-intended folly is so farreaching that it may come to light in later years as a weakened digestion. When an older person is diagnosed as having a weak digestion, it might be nothing but the result of the wrong approach by an over-zealous but misguided nurse during that person’s early childhood.

These are the main points regarding the first third of the first seven-year period, and they need to be kept in mind.

At the age of two and a half, the head organization in children is developed far enough so that the forces of the ether body that have been working on it may be released. This gradual withdrawal continues into the area of the chest until about the fifth year, when breathing and blood circulation have also reached a certain stage of completion. Thus, by the time children learn to speak and walk, the formative forces released from the head (now acting now as soul and spiritual forces) join those being released in the chest region. This change can be recognized externally by the emergence of an exceptionally vivid memory and wonderful imagination, which children develop between two and a half and five. However, you must take great care when children develop these two faculties, since they are instrumental in building the soul. Children continue to live by imitation, and therefore we should not attempt to make them remember things we choose. At this stage it is best to leave the evolving forces of memory alone, allowing children to remember whatever they please. We should never give them memory exercises of any kind, otherwise, through ignorance, we might be responsible for consequences we can see only when viewing the entire course of human life.

Sometimes we meet people who, around the age of forty or later, complain of shooting pains or rheumatism. This may certainly have various causes, but if we carry our research far enough, we may find that the rheumatism was caused by a premature overloading of the memory during early childhood. The pattern of life is indeed very complex, and only by trying to recognize its many hidden links can we engender the love that is the true basis of growing human beings.

Whatever one’s attitude may be, as educators we must respond to the imagination and fantasy of children, which tries to express itself outwardly when they play with toys or join in games with other children. The urge to play between the ages of two and a half and five is really just the externalized activity of a child’s power of fantasy. And if we have the necessary ability of observation for such matters, we can foretell a great deal about the future soul life of children merely by watching them play. The way young children play provides a clear indication of their potential gifts and faculties in later life. The most important thing now is to meet their inborn urge to play with the right toys. People in the past responded to this need according to their own particular understanding.

Perhaps this also happened in the West, but at one time a regular epidemic spread throughout Central Europe of giving children boxes of building bricks, especially at Christmas. From separate cubic and quadrilateral stones, children were expected to build miniature architectural monstrosities. This sort of thing has a far-reaching effect on the development of imagination in children, since it leads to an atomistic, materialistic attitude—a mentality that always wants to put bits and pieces together to form a whole. In dealing with practical life, it is far better to give full freedom to children’s flexible and living powers of imagination than to nurture intellectual capacities that, in turn, encourage the atomistic nature of modern thinking. Imagination in children represents the very forces that have just liberated themselves from performing similar creative work within the physical formation of the brain. This is why we must avoid, as much as possible, forcing these powers of imagination into rigid, finished forms.

Imagine two nurses who are looking after a child between two and a half and five years of age. One of them—she may be very fond of the little girl in her charge—gives her a “beautiful” doll, one that has not only painted cheeks and real hair but eyes that close and a moveable head. I believe there are dolls that can even speak. Well, she gives this doll to the little girl, but since it is finished in every detail, there is nothing left for the child’s imagination to create, and her yearning for creative flexibility remains unsatisfied. It is as if its forces of imagination were put into a straitjacket. The other nurse, who has a little more understanding for the inner needs of the child, takes an old piece of cloth that is of no use for anything else. She winds a thread around its upper end until something resembling a head appears. She may even ask the little girl to paint two black dots on the face or perhaps more, for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Now, because the child’s imagination is stimulated, because she can create instead of having to put up with fixed and finished forms, the child experiences a far more lively and intimate response than she does toward the so-called beautiful doll. Toys, as much as possible, should leave the power of fantasy free in children. And since intellect is not the same as fantasy or imagination, the activity of assembling many parts is really not in harmony with the type of fantasy that is characteristic of children at this age.

Anything that evokes an inner feeling of liveliness and flexibility is always suitable for young children. For example, there are children’s books with cut-outs and nicely colored figures that can be moved by pulling strings attached below, so they will do all kinds of things, such as embracing or thrashing each other. These always stimulate children to invent whole stories, and thus they are very wholesome objects of play. Similarly, games with other children should not be too formal but should leave plenty of scope for children’s imagination.

All these suggestions spring from a knowledge of the human being, based on reality and allowing educators to acquire the necessary understanding, especially in terms of the practical side of life.

When children approach the fifth year, the ether forces of the body—which have thus far been building the breathing and the blood circulation—now become available for other activities. Likewise, up to the change of teeth, ether forces will struggle free and, after completing their task within the metabolic-limb system, become redundant. At that time, new spiritual soul forces gradually awaken and emerge fully after the seventh year (we will study this in more detail later). However, these forces already shine with a dawning light in this third and final period, which concludes the first seven-year period of human life.

When ether forces from the chest area reappear as soul and spiritual forces, children are becoming amenable to exhortations and to a sense of authority. Previously, unable to understand what they should or should not do, they could only imitate, but now, little by little, they begin to listen to and believe what adults say. Only toward the fifth year is it possible to awaken a sense of right and wrong in children. We can educate children correctly only by realizing that, during this first seven-year period until the change of teeth, children live by imitation, and only gradually do they develop imagination and memory and a first belief in what adults say.

Faith in the adult induces a feeling of authority, especially for teachers with whom children have a very close relationship. However, at this stage, children are too young for any formal education. It pains me to know that the sixth year has been fixed as the official school age. Children should not enter elementary school before their seventh year. I was always glad to hear, therefore (and I don’t mind if you consider this uncivilized), that the children of some anthroposophists had no knowledge of writing and reading, even at the age of eight. Accomplishments that come with forces that are available later on should never be forced into an earlier stage, unless we are prepared to ruin the physical organism.

In the next few days I will show you how we try to treat our children without inflicting harm on them when they enter the Waldorf school. Tomorrow I will begin by introducing you to the Waldorf school, though only by speaking of it.

First Question:

It is certainly possible to believe that spreading a main lesson subject over a longer period of time could have drawbacks. Neither can one deny that it is difficult to engage the attention of children on the same subject for a longer time. Other opinions, representing official contemporary educational theory, also seem to speak against such an extension of a subject into block periods. Nevertheless, it was decided to introduce this method in the Waldorf school. The point is that the results of recent psychological experiments (the main reason for disapproval of our methods) do not represent the true nature of the human being. These methods do not penetrate the deeper layers of the human being.

Why are psychological experiments done at all? I do not object to them, inasmuch as they are justified within the proper sphere. Within certain limits, I am quite willing to recognize their justification. Nevertheless the question remains: Why perform experiments on the human psyche today?

We experiment with the human soul because, during the course of human evolution, we have reached a point where we are no longer able to build a bridge, spontaneously and naturally, from one soul to another. We no longer have a natural feeling for the various needs of children, of how or when they feel fatigued and so on. This is why we try to acquire externally the kind of knowledge that human beings once possessed in full presence of mind, one soul linked to the other. We ask, How do children feel fatigued after being occupied with one or another subject for a certain length of time? We compile statistics and so on. As I said, in a way we have invented these procedures just to discover in a roundabout way what we can no longer recognize directly in a human being.

But for those who wish to establish a close rapport between the soul of a teacher and that of a child, there is something far more important than asking whether we claim too much of our students’ powers of concentration by teaching the same subject for a longer period of time. If I understand the question correctly, it implies that, if we were to introduce more variety into the lesson by changing the subject more frequently, we would gain something of value. Well, something would be gained, all right; one cannot deny that. But these things affect students’ whole lives, and they should not be calculated mathematically. One ought to be able to decide intuitively. Do we gain something valuable when seen against the whole life development of an individual? Or is something lost in the long run?

It is an entirely different matter whether we teach the same subject for two hours (as in a main lesson) or teach one subject for an hour and then another for the second hour—or even change subjects after shorter periods of time. Although students will tire to a certain extent (for which teachers must make allowances), it is better for their overall development to proceed in this concentrated way than to artificially limit the lesson time just to fill the students’ souls with new and different material in another lesson.

What we consider most important in the Waldorf school is that teachers use their available lesson time in the most economical way—that they apply soul economy in relation to their students’ potential. If we build lessons along major lines of content that students can follow without becoming tired, or at least without feeling overcome by tiredness, and if we can work against any oncoming tiredness by introducing variations of the main theme, we can accomplish more than if we followed other methods for the sake of advantages they may bring.

In theory it is always possible to argue for or against such things, but it is not a question of preference. The only thing that matters is finding what is best for the overall development of children, as seen from a long-term viewpoint.

There is one further point to be considered. It is quite correct to say that children will tire if made to listen to the same subject too long. But nowadays there is so little insight into what is healthy or unhealthy for children that people see fatigue as negative and something to be corrected. In itself, becoming tired is just as healthy as feeling refreshed. Life has its rhythms. It is not a question of holding the students’ attention for half an hour and then giving them a five-minute break to recover from the strain (which would not balance their fatigue in any case) before cramming something else into their heads. It is an illusion to think that this would solve the problem. In fact, one has not tackled it at all, but simply poured something different into their souls instead of allowing the consequences of the organic causes of fatigue to fade. In other words, we have to probe into the deeper layers of the human soul to realize that it has great value for the overall development of children when they concentrate for a longer period on the same subject.

As I said, one can easily reach the opinion that more frequent changes of subjects offer an advantage, but one must also realize that a perfect solution will never be found in life as it is. The real issue is, relatively speaking, finding the best solution to a problem. Then one finds that short lessons of different subjects do not offer the possibility of giving children content which will unite deeply enough with their spiritual, soul, and physical organizations.

Perhaps I should add this; if a school, based on the principles I have been describing, were ever condemned to put up with boring teachers, we would be forced to cut the length of the lesson time. I have to admit that, if teachers were to give boring and monotonous lessons, it would be better to reduce the length of each lesson. But if teachers are able to stimulate their students’ interest, a longer main lesson is definitely better. For me, it is essential not to become fixed or fanatical in any way but always consider the circumstances. Certainly, if we expect interesting lessons at school, we must not engage boring teachers on the staff.

Second Question:

There may be good reasons for seeing eurythmy as a derivation of another art form rather than as a new form of art. But whenever one deals with an artistic medium or with the artistic side of life, it is not the what that matters, but the how. To me, there is no real meaning in the statement that sculpture, music, speech, rhythm, and so on are merely a means of expression, whereas the underlying ideas are the real substance. There seems to be little point in making such abstract distinctions in life. Naturally, if one is interested in finding unifying ideas in the abstract, one can also find different media through which they are expressed. But in real life, these media do represent something new and different. For example, according to Goethe’s theory of plant metamorphosis, a colored flower petal is, in the abstract, essentially the same as a green plant leaf. Goethe sees a metamorphosed green leaf in a flower petal. And yet, from a practical point of view, a petal is altogether different from a leaf.

Whether eurythmy is a new form of expression or a new version of another art form is not the point at all. What matters is that, during the course of human evolution, speech and singing (though singing is less noticeable) have increasingly become a means of expressing what comes through the human head. Again, this is putting it rather radically, but from a certain point of view it represents the facts. Today, human language and speech no longer express the whole human being. Speech has become thought directed. In modern cultures, it has become closely connected with thinking, and through this development, speech reveals what springs from egoism.

Eurythmy, however, goes back again to human will, so it engages the whole human being. Through eurythmy, human beings are shown within the entire macrocosm. For example, during certain primeval times, gesture and mime always accompanied speech, especially during artistic activities, so that word and gesture formed a single expression and became inseparable. But today, word and gesture have drifted far apart. So one senses the need to engage the whole human being again by including more of the volition and, thus, reconnecting humankind to the macrocosm.

There seems to be way too much theorizing these days, whereas it is so important to consider the practical aspects of life—especially now. Those who observe life from this point of view, without preconceived ideas, know that for every “yes” there is a “no” and that anything can be proved both right and wrong. Yet the real value does not lie in proving something right or wrong or in finding definitions and making distinctions; it is a matter of discovering ways to new impulses and new life in the world. You may have your own thoughts about all this, but spiritual scientific insight reveals the development of humankind, and today it is leaning toward overcoming the intellectuality of mere definitions, being drawn instead toward the human soul realm and creative activity.

And so, it does not really matter whether we see eurythmy as a version of another art form or as a new art. A little anecdote may illustrate this. When I studied at Vienna University, some of the professors there had been given a much coveted title of distinction; they were called “Privy Councillors” (Hofrat). In Germany I found that such professors received the title of “Confidential Councillors” (Geheimrat). In certain quarters, the distinction between these two titles seemed important. But to me, it was the person behind the title that mattered, not the title itself. This seems similar to the situation in which people engage in philosophical arguments (forgive me, for I really don’t wish to offend anyone) to determine the difference between an art form that has been transferred to a different medium or, for want of a better word, one referred to as a new dimension in the world of art.

Third Question:

I am not quite clear what this question means, but it seems to express a somewhat evangelical attitude. At best, discipline, as I have already said, can become a natural byproduct of ordinary classroom life. I have also told you how, during the last two years of the Waldorf school, discipline has improved remarkably, and I have given examples to substantiate this. With regard to this “sense of sin,” it seems that one’s moral attitude led to a belief in awakening this feeling in children for their own benefit. But let’s please look at this point without any religious bias. An awakening of an awareness of sin would pour something into the soul of children that would remain there in the form of a kind of insecurity throughout life. Putting this in psychoanalytical terminology, one could say that such a method could create a kind of vacuum, an inner emptiness, within the souls of children, which, in later life, could degenerate into a weakness rather than a more active and energetic response to life in general. If I have understood the question rightly, this is all I can say in answer to it.

Fourth Question:

In my opinion this question has already been answered by what I said during the first part of my lecture this morning. In general, we cannot say that at this particular age boys have to go through yet another crisis, apart from the one described this morning. There would be too many different grades of development if we were to speak of an emerging turbulence that affects all boys at this age. Perhaps some people are under delusions about this. If the inner change I spoke of this morning is not guided correctly by the teachers and educators, children (and not just boys) can become very turbulent. They become restless and inwardly uncooperative, so that it becomes very difficult to cope with them.

Events at this age can vary a great deal according to the temperament of the adolescent, a factor that needs to be taken into account. If this were done, one would not make generalizations of the sort that appears here in the first sentence. It would be more accurate to say that, unless children are guided in their development—unless teachers know how to handle this noticeable change around the ninth and tenth years—they become uncooperative, unstable, and so on. Only then does the situation arise that was mentioned in the question. It is essential for teachers and educators to fully consider this turning point in the children’s development.

Fifth Question:

What has been written here is perfectly correct and I believe that one needs to simply say “yes.” Of course, we need a certain amount of tact when talking about the human being with students between ten and twelve. If teachers are aware of how much they can tell students about the nature of the human being, then I certainly agree that we have to enter the individual life of the person concerned.

Sixth Question:

With regard to this question I would like to say that we must count on the possibility of a continually increasing interest in new methods for understanding the secrets of human nature, because spiritual research into the human being is more penetrating than the efforts of natural science. Of course, the possibilities of this study will not be available in every field, but where they do exist, they should be used. It is beneficial not only for teachers and educators, but also for, say, doctors, to learn to observe the human being beyond what outer appearances tell us. I think that, without causing any misunderstandings, we can safely say that only prejudice stands in the way of such methods, and that their development is to be desired. It really is true that much more could be achieved in this way if old, intellectual preconceptions did not bar the way to higher knowledge. My book How to Know Higher Worlds describes just the initial stages of such paths.

Seventh Question:

In the Waldorf school, mathematics definitely belongs to the main lesson subjects, and as such it plays its role according to the students’ various ages and stages. In no way is this subject relegated to classes outside the main lesson. This question is based on a misunderstanding.

Rudolf Steiner:

Because of the impending departure of various conference members, there is a wish that the practical application of Waldorf principles be discussed first. Thus, it is surely appropriate for me to speak of the Waldorf school. Nevertheless, I want to broaden this subject, because I believe we need a great deal of strength and genuine enthusiasm in the face of present world conditions before our educational goals can be put into practice. It seems to me that, until we recognize the need to move toward the educational impulses described here, it will be impossible to achieve any sort of breakthrough in education. I am convinced that if you are willing to observe the recent development of humankind with an open mind, you must realize that we are living in the middle of a cultural decline and that any objection to such an assessment is based on illusions. Of course it’s very unpleasant and seems pessimistic, though in fact it is meant to be optimistic to speak as I do now. But there are many indications of a declining culture in evidence today, and the situation is really very clear. And the whole question of education arises properly in hearts and souls only when this is fully recognized. In view of this, I see the establishment of the Waldorf school as only the first example of a practical application of the education we have been talking about.

How did the Waldorf school come about? It owes its existence—this much can surely be said—to the realization of educational principles based on true knowledge of the human being. But what made it happen? The Waldorf school is an indirect result of the total collapse of society all over Central Europe in 1919. This general collapse embraced every area of society—the economic, sociopolitical, and spiritual life of all people. Perhaps we could also call it a collapse of economic and political life and a complete bankruptcy of spiritual life. In 1919 the stark realities of the situation made the entire public very much aware of this. Roughly halfway through 1919, there was a general and complete awareness of it.

Today there is much talk, even in Central Europe, about how humankind will recover, how it will eventually pull itself out of the trough again, and so on. But such talk is a figment of an all too comfortable way of thinking, and in reality such thoughts are only empty phrases. The fact is that this decline will certainly accelerate. Today, the situation in Central Europe is not unlike those who have known better days, when they bought plenty of good clothes. They still have those clothes and wear them down to their last threads. The fact that they cannot buy new clothes is certainly clear. And, although they realize they cannot replenish their stock, they nevertheless live under the illusion that all is well and that they will be adequately provided for. Similarly, the world at large fails to realize that it is no longer possible to obtain “new clothes” from its cultural past.

During the first half of 1919, the people of Germany were ready for a serious reassessment of the general situation. At that time, however, a Waldorf school had not yet begun, but it was the time when I gave lectures on social and educational issues, which addressed what I have been describing during this conference (though only in rough outline). Some people saw sense in what was said, and this led to founding the Waldorf school.

I emphasize this point, because the prerequisite for a renewal of education is an inner readiness and openness to assess the real situation, which will itself clearly indicate what needs to be done. At the founding of the Waldorf school, I remarked how good it is that this school will serve as a model, but this in itself it is not enough. As the only school of its kind, it cannot solve today’s educational problems. At least a dozen Waldorf schools must be started during the next three months if we are to take the first steps toward a solution in education. However, since this has not happened, we can hardly see our achievement in Stuttgart as success. We have only a model, and even this does not yet represent what we wish to see. For example, apart from our eurythmy room, which we finally managed to obtain, we badly need a gymnasium. We still do not have one, and thus anyone who visits the Waldorf school must not see its current state as the realization of our goals. Beyond all the other problems, the school has always been short of money. Financially it stands on extremely weak and shaky legs.

You see, hiding one’s head in the sand goes nowhere in such serious matters. Therefore, I must ask you to permit me to speak freely and frankly. Often, when I speak of these things, as well as my views on money, I am told, “In England we would have to go about this in a very different way; otherwise, we would merely put people off.” Now, in my opinion, two things must be done. First, the principles of this education—based as they are on a true picture of the human being—should be made widely known, and the underlying ideas need to be thoroughly taken in and understood. Everything possible should be done in this direction.

If we were to leave it at that, however, there would be little progress. Unless we make up our minds to overcome certain objections, we will never move forward at all. For instance, people say, “In England, people must see practical results.” This is precisely what the civilized world has been saying for the past five or six hundred years. Only what people see with their own eyes has been considered truly valuable, and this drags us down. And if we insist on this stance, we will never pull ourselves out of this chaos.

We are not talking about small, insignificant matters. It is absolutely necessary that we grasp our courage and give a new impulse. Well-meaning people often think that I cannot appreciate what they are saying when they state, “In England, we would have to do things very differently.” I understand this only too well, but this does not get to the root of the issue at all. If the catastrophic conditions of 1919 had not hit the people of Central Europe so hard—though this ill fortune was really a stroke of good luck in terms of beginning the Waldorf school—if that terrible situation had not opened people’s eyes, there would be no Waldorf school in Central Europe, even today. In Central Europe, and especially in Germany, there is every need for a new impulse, because there is an innate lack of any ability to organize and so little sense of structured social organization. When people outside Central Europe speak so highly of German organization, it does not reflect the facts. There is no assertive talent for organization in Germany. Above all, there is no articulated social organization; rather, real culture is carried by individuals, not by the general public. Look, for example, at German universities. They do not represent the real character of the German people at all. They are very abstract structures, and do not at all express what is truly German. The real German spirit lives only in individuals. Of course, this is only a hint, but it shows what would probably happen if we appealed to the national mood in Germany; one meets a void and a lack of understanding for what we have been speaking of here. In other words, the Waldorf school owes its existence to an “unlucky stroke of luck.”

Now, with regard to the second point, the most important thing, besides the need to build further on what was spoken of here, is that something like a Waldorf school should be established also in countries where the populations have not been jolted into action by abysmal, cataclysmic conditions, such as Germany experienced in 1919. If, for instance, some sort of Waldorf school could be opened in England, this would mark a significant step forward. Naturally, such a school would have to be adapted to the conditions and culture of that country.

I realized that the Waldorf educational movement was not going to spread its wings, because the original Waldorf school was, in fact, still the only one. So I tried to initiate a worldwide Waldorf school movement. I did this because, during the preceding years, there had been a tremendous expansion of the anthroposophic movement, at least in Central Europe. Today this movement is a fact to be reckoned with in Central Europe. As a spiritual movement, it has made its mark. But there is no organization to direct and guide this movement. It needs to said, and generally understood, that the Anthroposophical Society is not in a position to carry the anthroposophic movement. The Anthroposophical Society is riddled with a tendency toward sectarianism, and consequently it is not capable of carrying the anthroposophic movement as it has developed and exists today.

All the same, I had wanted to make a final appeal to the stronger elements within the Anthroposophical Society, because I was hoping that some individuals might respond by making a final effort to bring about a Waldorf movement. Well, this did not happen. The world school movement is dead and buried, because it is not enough simply to talk about such things; it must be accomplished in a down-to-earth and practical way. To implement such a plan, a larger body of people is needed.

The Waldorf school in Stuttgart is one of the results of the German revolution. It is not itself a revolutionary school, but the revolution was its matrix, so to speak. It would mean a big step forward if something like a Waldorf school were started in another country also (say, in England) because the general world situation was clearly recognized. Perhaps later, when time has been given to the discussion, a little more could be said about this.

Millicent MacKenzie (Professor at University College, Cardiff: At this point, I would like to add that, among the members of this conference, there are several people from England who recognize the needs of humankind and would be in a position to work in this direction. They are in a position to exert considerable influence in an effort to realize this educational impulse. As a first step, they would like to invite Dr. Steiner to come to England some time later this year, and they are eager to create the right attitude and context for such a visit, during which they hope a number of prominent individuals and educators would also be present to welcome Dr. Steiner.

Rudolf Steiner: I wish to add that such a step must be taken only in a practical sense, and that it would be harmful if we talk too much about it. Those of you who are in a position to take a step forward in this direction would have to prepare the ground, so that when the right time has come, the appropriate action may be taken.

I am sure that Mrs. MacKenzie and her friends will agree if there are conference members from other countries who might have ideas on this subject and wish to come forward to add their suggestions.

Mrs. K. Haag: Today we have heard a great deal about England. We are pleased about this and have found it useful. But there are various other matters that we, who come from our little Holland, have on our heart. In fact, we have come with a very guilty conscience because the idea of a World school movement was just discussed for the first time in Holland. Somehow we did not do what we might have done about it, partly because of misunderstandings and partly because of a lack of strength. But we have not been quite as inactive as people might think, and I can assure you that we are more than ready to make good on our failure, as far as possible. Despite our shortcoming, I would like to ask Dr. Steiner whether the plan he outlined for England could also be implemented in Holland. And since Dr. Steiner has promised to visit us in April, I would like to ask him if he might be willing to discuss this with a larger group of people who have a particular interest in education.

Rudolf Steiner: There is already a plan for Holland, which, as far as I know, is being worked out. From the fifth to the twelfth of April this year, an academic course will be held there that are similar to courses given elsewhere. It has the task, first and foremost, of introducing anthroposophy in depth.

After the need to work for anthroposophy in Holland was repeatedly pointed out, and after the lectures and performances there during February and the beginning of March last year, it has been somewhat discouraging to see a notable decline, not in an understanding of spiritual science, but certainly in terms of the inner life of the Anthroposophical Society in Holland. Therefore it seems to me very necessary, especially in Holland, that the anthroposophic movement make a new and vigorous beginning. From which angle this should be approached will depend on the prevailing conditions, but an educational movement could certainly be the prime mover.

Another question has been handed to me, which has a direct bearing on this point.

Question: According to Dutch law, it is possible to set up a free school if the government is satisfied that the intentions behind it are serious and genuine. If we in Holland were unable to raise enough money to begin a Waldorf school, would it be right for us to accept state subsidies, as long as we were allowed to arrange our curriculum and our lessons according to Waldorf principles?

Rudolf Steiner: There is one part of the question I do not understand, and another fills me with doubts. What I cannot understand is that it should be that difficult to collect enough money for a free school in Holland. Forgive me if I am naive, but I do not understand this. I believe that, if the enthusiasm is there, it should at least be possible to begin. After all, it doesn’t take so much money to start a school.

The other point, which seems dubious to me, is that it would be possible to run a school with the aid of state subsidies. For I seriously doubt that the government, if it pays out money for a school, would forego the right to inspect it. Therefore I cannot believe that a free school could be established with state subsidies, which imply supervision by inspectors of the educational authorities. It was yet another stroke of good luck for the Waldorf school in Stuttgart that it was begun just before the new Republican National Assembly passed a law forbidding the opening of independent schools. Isn’t it true to say that, as liberalization increases, we increasingly lose our freedom? Consequently, in Germany we are living in a time of progress, whereas it is quite unlikely that we could begin a Waldorf school in Stuttgart today. It was established just in time.

Now the eyes of the world are on the Waldorf school. It will be allowed to exist until the groups that were instrumental in instituting the so-called elementary schools have become so powerful that, out of mistaken fanaticism, they will do away with the first four classes of the Waldorf school. I hope this can be prevented, but in any case we are facing menacing times. This is why I continue to emphasize the importance of putting into action, as quickly as possible, all that needs to be done. A wave is spreading all over the world, and it is moving quickly toward state dictatorship. It is a fact that Western civilization is exposing itself to the danger of one day being inundated by an Asiatic sort of culture, one that will have a spirituality all its own. People are closing their eyes to this, but it will happen nevertheless.

To return to our point: I think it only delays the issue to think it is necessary to claim state help before starting a school. Somehow this does not look promising to me at all. But perhaps others have different views on this subject. I ask everyone present to voice an opinion freely.

Question: He states that, at the present time, it is impossible to establish a school in Holland without interference by the state, which would demand, for instance, that a certain set curriculum be formulated and so on.

Rudolf Steiner: If things had been any different, I would not have decided at the time to form a world school movement, because, as an idea, it borders on the theoretical. But because the situation stands as you have described it, I thought that such a movement would have practical uses. The matter is like this: Take the example of the little school we used to have here in Dornach. For the reason already mentioned several times, we managed to have only a very small school because of our continual “overabundant lack of funds.” Children around the age of ten came together in this school. Now, in the local canton of Solothurn, there is a strict law in education that is really not much different from similar laws all over Switzerland. This law is so fixed that, when the local education authorities found out that we were teaching children under the age of fourteen, they declared it completely unacceptable; it was simply unheard of. Whatever we might have done to arrive at some agreement, we would never have received permission to apply Waldorf methods in teaching children under fourteen.

Hindrances of this kind will, of course, be placed in our way all over the continent. I dare not say how this would work in England at the moment. But if turns out to be possible to begin a totally free school there, it would really mean a marvelous step forward. But because we meet resistance almost everywhere when we try to put Waldorf education into practice, I thought that a worldwide movement for the renewal of education might have some practical value. I had hoped that it might make an impression on people interested in education, thus creating possibilities for establishing new Waldorf schools. I consider it extremely important to bring about a movement counter to modern currents, which culminated in Russian Bolshevism. These currents find their fulfillment in absolute state dictatorship in education. We see it looming everywhere, but people won’t realize that Lunatscharski is merely the final result of what lies dormant all over Europe. As long as it does not interfere with people’s private lives, the existence of such thinking is conveniently ignored. Well, in my opinion, we should react by generating a movement against Lunatscharski’s principle that the state should become a giant machine, and that each citizen should be a cog in the machine. The goal of this countermovement should be to educate each person. It is this that is needed. In this sense, one can make most painful experiences even in the anthroposophic movement.

Today it would also be possible to give birth to a real medical movement on the basis of the anthroposophic movement. All the antecedents are there. But it would require a movement capable of placing this impulse before the eyes of the world. Yet everywhere we find a tendency to call those who are able to represent a truly human medicine “quacks,” thus putting them outside the law. As an example, and entirely unconnected with the anthroposophic medical movement, I would like to tell you what happened in the case of a minister in the German government who rigorously upheld a strict law against the freedom of the healing profession, a law that still operates today. However, when members of his own family fell ill, he surreptitiously called for the help of unqualified healers, showing that, for his own family, he did not believe in official medical science, but only in what the law condemned as “quackery.”

This is symptomatic of the root causes of sectarianism. A movement can free itself of such causes when it stands up to the world, while remaining fully within the laws of the land, so that there can be no confusion in terms of the legal aspects. And this is what I had in mind with regard to a world school movement. I wanted to create the right setting for introducing laws that allow schools based entirely on the need for educational renewal. Schools will never be established correctly by majority decisions, which is also why such schools cannot be run by the state.

That’s all I have to say about the planned world school movement, an idea that, in itself, does not appeal to me at all. I do not sympathize with it, because it would have led to an international association, a “world club,” and to the creation of a platform for the purpose of making propaganda. My way is to work directly where the needs of the times present themselves. All propaganda and agitation is alien to me. I abhor these things. But if our hands are tied and if there is no possibility to establish free schools, we must first create the right climate for ideas that might eventually lead to free education. Compromises may well be justified in various instances, but we live in a time when each compromise is likely to pull us still further into difficulties.

Question: How can we best work in the realm of politics?

Rudolf Steiner: I think that we should digress too much from our main theme if we were to look at these deep and significant questions from a political perspective. Unless today’s politics experience a regeneration—at least in those countries known to me on the physical plane—they hold little promise. It is my opinion that it is exactly in this area that such definite symptoms of decadence are most obvious, and one would expect society to recognize the need for renewal—the threefold social order. Such a movement would then run parallel to the anthroposophic movement.

Where has the old social order placed us? I will indicate this only very briefly and, thus, possibly cause misunderstandings. Where did the old social order, which did not recognize its own threefold nature, land us? It has led to a situation in which the destinies of whole populations are determined by political parties whose ideological backgrounds consist of nothing but phrases. No one today can maintain that the phrases used by the various political parties contain anything of real substance.

A few days ago I spoke of Bismarck, who in later life became a rigid monarchist, although in his younger years he had been something of a bashful, closet republican. This is how he described himself. This same Bismarck expressed opinions similar to those expressed by Robespierre. People can make all sorts of statements. What matters in the end is what comes to light when the real ideology of a party is revealed.

For some years, I taught at the Berlin Center for the Education of the Working Classes, a purely social-democratic institution. I took every opportunity to spread the truth wherever people were willing to listen, no matter what the political persuasion or program of the organizers of those institutions. And so, among people who were, politically, rigid Marxists, I taught a purely anthroposophic approach to life, both in courses on natural science and on history. Even when giving speech exercises to the workers, I was able to express my deepest inner convictions. The number of students grew larger and larger, and soon the social-democratic party leaders began to take notice. It led to a decisive meeting, attended not only by party leaders but also by all my adult students, who were unanimous in their wish to continue their courses. But three to four party leaders stolidly declared that this kind of teaching had no place in their establishment, because it was undermining the character of the social-democratic party. I replied that surely the party wanted to build for a future and that, since humankind was moving inevitably toward greater freedom, any future school or educational institution would have to respect human freedom. Then a typical party member rose and said, “We don’t know anything about freedom in education, but we do know a reasonable form of compulsion.” This was the decisive turning point that finally led to closing my courses.

It may seem rather silly and egotistic to say this, but I am convinced that, had this quickly growing movement among my students at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century been allowed to live and expand unhindered, conditions in Central Europe would have been different during the 1920s.

So you can see that I do not have much trust in working with political parties. And you will have the least success in bringing freedom into education when dealing with socialist parties. They, above all, will strive in most incredible ways for the abolition of freedom in education. As for the Christian parties, they are bound to clamor for independent schools, simply because of the constitution of the present German government. But if they were placed at the helm, they would immediately claim this freedom in education only to suit themselves. It is a simple fact that we will be unable to make progress in public life unless we first create the necessary foundations for a threefold social order, in which the democratic element prevails exclusively in the middle sphere of rights. This in itself would guarantee the possibility of freedom in education. We will never achieve it through electioneering.

Question: If children of the present generation were educated according to the principles of anthroposophic knowledge, would this in itself be enough to stem the tide of decadence and decay, or would it be necessary to send them out into the world with the stated intent of changing society to bring about a new social organism?

Rudolf Steiner: The ideas I tried to express in Towards Social Renewal are not fully understood. The reasons for writing this book are decades old. Humanity has reached a stage when, although someone might show up with the most promising ideas for improving society and people’s social attitudes, one could not implement them simply because there is a lack of practical possibilities for such purposes. The first step would be to create the right conditions for the possibility of implementing such ideas and insights into social life.

Consequently, I do not believe it is helpful to ask, If a generation were educated in the way we have described, would the desired social conditions automatically follow? Or, Would a change of the social order one way or another still be necessary? I would say, we must understand that the best we can do in practical life is to help as many people as possible of one generation to make progress through education based on knowledge of the human being. This in itself would obviate the second question, because the thoughts and ideas needed to change society would be exactly those developed by that generation. Since their human conditions would be different from those of the general public today, they would have very different possibilities for implementing their aims.

The point is, if we want to be practical, we have to think in practical terms rather than theories. To think practically means to do what is possible, not attempt to realize an ideal. Our most promising aim would be to educate as many as possible of one generation, working from knowledge of the human being, and then trust that, in their adult lives, they would be able to bring about a desirable society. The second question can be answered only through the actions of those who, through their education, have been prepared for the task you outlined. It cannot be answered theoretically.

Question: How can one make use of what we have heard in this course of lectures to educate profoundly mentally retarded children?

Rudolf Steiner: In answer to this question I should like to give you a real and practical example. When I was twenty-three or twenty-four, I was called to work as a tutor in a family of four boys. Three of the boys presented no educational difficulties, but one, who was eleven at that time, had a particular history. At the age of seven, a private tutor had tried in vain to teach him according to the accepted methods of an elementary school. Bear in mind that this happened in Austria, where anyone was free to teach children, because the only thing that mattered was that they could pass an examination at the end of each year, and students were allowed to take these exams at any state school. No one cared whether they had been taught by angels or by devils, as long as they passed their exam, which was seen as proof of a good education.

Among those four boys, one had four to nearly five years of private tutoring behind him. He was around eleven years old when his latest drawing book was presented to me, which he had brought home from his most recent annual exam. In all other subjects he had remained either completely silent or had talked complete nonsense, but he had not put anything down on paper. His drawing book was the only document he had handed in during his exam, and all it contained was a big hole in the first page. All he had done was scribble something and then immediately erase it, until only a big hole was left as evidence of his efforts and the only tangible result of his exam. In other respects, it proved impossible—sometimes for several weeks—to get him to say even a single word to anyone. For awhile, he also refused to eat at table. Instead, he went into the kitchen, where he ate from the garbage can. He would rather eat garbage than proper food.

I am describing these symptoms in detail so you can see that we are dealing with a child who certainly belonged to the category of “seriously developmentally disabled.” I was told that not much could be done, since everything has been tried already. Even the family doctor (who incidentally was a leading medical practitioner in Vienna and a greatly respected authority) had given up on the boy, and the whole family was very discouraged. One simply did not know how to approach that boy.

I asked that this child’s education, as well as that of his three brothers, be left entirely in my hands, and that I be given complete freedom in dealing with the boy. The whole family refused to grant me such freedom, except for the boy’s mother. From their unconscious depths, mothers sometimes have the right feeling for these things, and the boy was given into my care. Above all else, when preparing my lessons I followed the principle of approaching such a child—generally called “feebleminded”—entirely in terms of physical development. This means that I had to base everything on the same principles I have elaborated to you for healthy children. What matters in such a case is that one gains the possibility of looking into the inner being of such a child. He was noticeably hydrocephalic, so it was very difficult to treat this boy. And so my first principle was that education means healing and must be accomplished on a medical basis.

After two and a half years, the boy had progressed enough to work at the curriculum of a grammar school, for I had succeeded in teaching him with the strictest economy. Sometimes I limited his academic work to only a quarter or, at most, a half hour each day. In order to concentrate the right material into such a short time, I sometimes needed as much as four hours of preparation for a lesson of half an hour. To me, it was most important not to place him under any strain whatsoever. I did exactly as I thought right, since I had reserved the right to do so. We spent much time on music lessons, which seemed to help the boy. From week to week, the musical activity was increased, and I could observe his physical condition gradually changing. Admittedly, I forbid any interference from anyone. The rest of the family, with the exception of the boy’s mother, registered objections when, time and again, they noticed that the boy looked pale. I insisted on my rights and told them that it was now up to me whether I made him look pale, and even more pale. I told them that he would look ruddy again when the time came.

My guiding line was to base the entire education of this child on insight into his physical condition and to arrange all soul and spiritual measures accordingly. I believe that the details will always vary in each case. One has to know the human being thoroughly and intimately, and therefore I must repeatedly point out that everything depends on a real knowledge of the human being. When I asked myself, What is the boy’s real age and how do I have to treat him? I realized that he had remained a young child of two years and three months, and that I would have to treat him as such, despite the fact that he had completed his eleventh year, according to his birth certificate. I had to teach him according to his mental age. Always keeping an eye on the boy’s health and applying strictest soul economy, I initially based my teaching entirely on the principle of imitation, which meant that everything had to be systematically built on his forces of imitation. I then went on to what, today, I called “further structuring” of lessons. Within two and a half years, the boy had progressed enough that he was able to study grammar school curriculum. I continued to help when he was a student in grammar school. Eventually, he was weaned of any extra help. In fact, he was able to go through the last two classes of his school entirely on his own. Afterward, he became a medical doctor with a practice for many years. He died around the age of forty from an infection he had contracted in Poland during the World War.

This is just one example, and I could cite many others. It shows that, especially in the case of developmentally disabled children, we need to apply the same principles I elaborated here for healthy children. In the Waldorf school there are quite a number of slightly and profoundly “mentally-retarded children” (to use the phrase of the question). Naturally, more serious cases would disturb their classmates, so we have opened a special remedial class for such children of various ages, whose members are drawn from all our classes. This group is under the guidance of Dr. Schubert.

Whenever we have to decide whether to send a child into this remedial class, I have the joy (if I may say it this way) of having to fight with the child’s class teacher. Our class teachers never want to let a class member go. All of them fight to keep such children, doing their best to support them within the class, and often successfully. Although our classes are certainly not small, by giving individual attention, it is possible to keep such children in the class. The more serious cases, however, must be placed in our remedial group, where it is absolutely essential to give them individual treatment. Dr. Schubert, who is freed from having to follow any set curriculum, allows himself be guided entirely by the individual needs of each child. Consequently, he may be doing things with his children that are completely different from what is usually done in a classroom. The main thing is to find specific treatments that will benefit each child.

For instance, there may be some very dull-witted children in such a group, and once we develop the necessary sense for these things, we realize that their faculty of making mental pictures is so slow that they lose the images while making them. They lose mental images because they never fully make them. This is only one type of mental handicap. We can help these children by calling out unexpected commands, if they are capable of grasping their meaning. We have also children who are unable to follow such instructions, so one has to think of something else. For instance, one may suddenly call out, “Quickly hold your left earlobe between your right thumb and second finger. Quickly grip your right arm with your left hand!” In this way, if we let them orient themselves first through their own body geography and then through objects of the world outside, we may be able to make real progress with them. Another method might get them to quickly recognize what one has drawn on the blackboard (Steiner drew an ear on the board). It is not easy at all to get such a child to respond by saying “ear.” But what matters is this flash of recognition. One has to invent the most varied things to wake up such children. It is this awakening and becoming active that can lead to progress, though, of course, not in the case of those who display uncontrollable tempers. They have to be dealt with differently. But these examples may at least indicate the direction in which one has to move. What matters is the individual treatment, and this must spring from a real knowledge of the human being.