| 170. The Riddle of Humanity: Lecture IX
15 Aug 1916, Dornach Tr. John F. Logan Rudolf Steiner |
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| When you use the processes of sensory perception to see a green parrot, your eyes see the green colour. But when you enjoy a painting, other subtle, imaginative processes also participate in the act of seeing. |
| 170. The Riddle of Humanity: Lecture IX
15 Aug 1916, Dornach Tr. John F. Logan Rudolf Steiner |
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We have been busy getting acquainted with the way man's life processes and the sense-zones locate him in the cosmos, and we have tried to look at some of the consequences that follow from the facts on which this knowledge is based. Above all, we have to some extent cured ourselves of the trivial notion, held by many who want to befriend the spirit, that everything that can be referred to as ‘material’ or ‘perceptible to the senses’ is to be despised. For we have seen that here in the physical world it is precisely the lower organs and functions that reflect higher activities and relationships in the human being. In their present state, we can only view the senses of touch and life as being very dependent on the physical world—equally so the ego sense, the sense of thought and the sense of speech. But we must accustom ourselves to seeing those senses that in the Earth sphere only serve the inner being of the organism as the shadowy reflections of something that is immense and significant for the spiritual world once we have passed through death: the sense of movement, the sense of balance, the sense of smell, the sense of taste and, to a certain degree, the sense of sight. We have emphasised the fact that in the spiritual world the sense of movement enables us to move among the beings of the various hierarchies in accordance with the way they attract or repel us. After death we experience our connection with the hierarchies as spiritual sympathy or antipathy. Physical balance, as we know it here in our physical bodies, is not the only thing the sense of balance provides for us; it also holds us in balance between the beings and influences of the spiritual world. It is similar with the other senses: taste, smell, sight. And, in so far as a hidden spirituality plays into the physical world, it is of no use to turn to the higher senses for clarification. Rather we must enter the realms of the so-called lower senses. Mind you, these days it is not possible to speak about many of the highly significant things that lie in this direction. For today there are such strong prejudices that all one has to do to be misunderstood and accused of all kinds of things is to speak out about precisely those things that are interesting and significant in a higher spiritual sense. So, for the time being, I must forgo speaking about some of the interesting things that go on in the realm of the senses. In this respect, the situation was much more favourable in earlier times. In those times, however, there were not the same possibilities of disseminating information, either. Aristotle could discuss certain truths much more unguardedly than they can be discussed today, when such things are immediately taken personally and awaken personal sympathies and antipathies. In Aristotle's works, for example, you can find profound truths about the human being which one simply could not explain to a large audience of today. I was referring to some of these in the last lecture when I said that the Greeks did not fall prey to materialism even though they knew more than we do of how our soul-spiritual nature is related to our physical, bodily nature. In Aristotle's writings, for example, you can find wonderful descriptions of the external appearance of a brave person, or a coward, or an indignant person, or of someone who is addicted to sleep. There, in a manner that from a certain point of view is correct, you find described what kind of hair and complexion and wrinkles cowardly people have, what sort of bodies drowsy people have, and so on. To say even this much would create problems these days; other things would be even more problematic. People of today take these things much more personally. In many respects they positively want to use the personal to keep themselves in the fog about the truth. That is why some circumstances today compel one to speak in more general terms if one wants to speak truthfully. Specific insights about every kind of human being and every human activity await those who, in the right spirit, turn to our preceding considerations with the necessary questions. We have said, for example, that the human senses are presently located in more or less separate, static regions. They are just like the constellations, each of which remains motionless in its own region of the cosmos—in contrast to the planets, which appear, circling, wandering, changing their location in a relatively short time. Moreover, the boundaries of each sense region are fixed, whereas the life processes pulse through the whole organism and circulate through the individual sense-zones, permeating them with their influence. Now we also have said that our sense organs were more like vital organs during Old Moon. There they functioned more as vital organs, whereas the organs that are now vital organs were essentially more related to the soul. Consider, then, something that has been emphasised more than once: that sometimes people will regress to, or return to, an atavistic state that was a natural and usual state in an earlier time—in this case, during the Old Moon period. We have noted that there is a form of regression that revives the dreamlike imaginative vision of Old Moon. Today, such an atavistic regression into the visionary state of Old Moon is a form of illness. Now I ask you please not to lose sight of something: namely, that the visions themselves are not pathological. If that were so, we would have to say that everything mankind experienced on Old Moon was the product of illness, for there one lived entirely in such visions. And we would have to say that Old Moon was an illness that humanity had to go through—an illness of soul, at that—so that the humanity of Old Moon was necessarily insane. Naturally, one cannot say this; it is utter nonsense. The pathological aspect does not lie in the visions themselves, but rather in the fact that they cannot be sustained by the human organisation in its present, earthly form. The earthly, human organisation adapts to such visions in a way that is not appropriate to them. Just consider: when someone has the kind of vision one had on Old Moon, this vision is only adapted for engendering the kind of feelings, activities and acts that were appropriate to Old Moon. The illness consists in someone having such a vision here on Earth and responding to it in ways that only an earthly organisation can respond. This only happens because the earthly organisation cannot tolerate this vision with which it is more or less impregnated. Take the most obvious, concrete kind of case: circumstances arise in which someone has a vision. Then, instead of remaining in quiet contemplation of the vision and relating it to the spiritual world, which is the only world to which it can rightly be related, the person applies it to the physical world and behaves accordingly. In other words, he starts to go berserk because the vision is doing what it should not do—permeating his body and bringing it into action. This is the most obvious kind of case. Today, when an atavistic vision arises that the body cannot tolerate, it does not remain in the domain which has brought it to life, which is where it should remain. A person becomes powerless if, his physical body is too weak to stand up against the vision. If the physical body is strong enough to stand up against it, the vision is weakened. Then the objects and events in it cease to appear—falsely—as if they really belonged to the world of the senses, for that is how they seem to someone who is made ill by them. Thus, if the physical body is strong enough to counter the falsifying tendencies of an atavistic vision, the following occurs: in such cases, a person relates to the world in a fashion that is similar to that of Old Moon, and yet he is strong enough to reconcile this Moon mode of experience with the earthly organism in its present state. What does this imply? It implies that this person has somewhat altered his inner zodiac with its twelve sense-zones. It is changed in such a way that what happens in this zodiac of the twelve senses is more like a life process than a sense process. Or, better expressed, one could say that events in the regions of the senses, events which actually do impinge on the sense processes, are transformed into life processes—so that the sense processes are lifted out of their present, dead state and transformed into something living: you still see, but something lives in that seeing; you hear, but simultaneously there is something living in that hearing. Something lives in the eyes or in the ears which otherwise only lives in your stomach or on your tongue. The sense processes are truly brought into movement. And it is quite in order for that to happen. For then our modern sense organs acquire qualities that could otherwise only be possessed in the same degree by our vital organs. The forces of sympathy and antipathy flow strongly through our vital organs. Now just consider how much of our whole life depends on sympathy and antipathy—on which things we accept and take up and which we reject! And now those very powers of sympathy and antipathy, powers that are otherwise developed in the life organs, once more begin to pour into the sense organs. The eye not only sees red, it experiences sympathy or antipathy along with the colour. The sense organs regain the capacity to receive and be permeated by the life forces. So we can say: in this way the sense organs are brought once more into the sphere of life. For this to happen, there must be changes in the life processes. Through these changes, the life processes become more ensouled than they otherwise would be in earthly life. The ensouling takes place in such a way that the three life processes—breathing, warming and nourishing—are more or less united. Then they begin to manifest themselves more in the sphere of the soul. With normal breathing, one breathes the prosaic, earthly air; the normal process of warming involves earthly warmth; and so on. But when they are ensouled, the life processes are united by a kind of symbiosis. They cease to be separated in the way they are usually separated in the present-day human organism; they establish connections with each other. Breathing, warming and nourishing unite to form an inner association with one another. And this is not nourishing in the coarse, material sense, but is rather the process of nourishing. The process occurs without it being necessary for anything to be eaten, and it does not occur on its own, as when we eat, but in conjunction with the other processes. The four remaining life processes are united in a similar fashion. Secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction are united to form a single, more ensouled process, a life process that has more to do with the soul. And then these two parts can unite yet again-not just gathering all the life processes together so that they function as one, but by combining three of the processes in one group and the other four processes in another so that these two groups, in turn, can function in concert.  In this way three new soul faculties arise. In character they resemble—but are not identical with—the earthly faculties of thinking, feeling and willing: here is another triad of soul faculties. The new faculties differ from thinking, feeling and willing as they normally present themselves on Earth. They are more like life processes, but not so differentiated as the life processes otherwise are on Earth. When someone is able to sustain this sinking-back into Moon without lapsing into visions, a very intimate, subtle process takes place. The sense-zones are transformed into regions of life, the life processes are ensouled, and there arises a kind of understanding that is faintly suggestive of the Old Moon visions. Nor can a person remain constantly in this state, for then one would cease to be fit for life on Earth. To be fit for Earth one needs the kind of senses and vital organs we have described previously. But in special circumstances a person can enter into this other state. Then, if the state tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creation; if the state tends more towards perception, it leads to aesthetic enjoyment. Truly aesthetic human behaviour consists in the enlivening of the sense organs and the ensouling of the life processes. This is an extremely important truth about humanity; it explains much. This enlivening of the sense organs and this new life in the regions of the senses is to be found in the arts and the enjoyment of art. Something similar occurs with the vital processes, which are more ensouled in the enjoyment of art than they are in normal life. These days, it is impossible to understand the full significance of the changes a person undergoes when he enters the artistic sphere, because a materialistic approach is incapable of grasping the facts in their full reality. Today a human being is seen as concrete and fixed. But, within certain limits, people actually are variable. This is demonstrated by the sort of variability we have just been observing. Elucidations such as those that have just been presented contain far, far-reaching truths. To mention only one such truth: there is the fact that precisely those senses that are most adapted to the physical plane of existence are the senses that must undergo the most radical changes when they are led halfway back into a quasi-Moon existence. In order to serve someone who follows this road halfway back into the time of Old Moon, the sense of the I, the sense of thought and the sense of physical touch must be wholly transformed, for these senses are robustly adapted to Earth existence. It is of no use to art, for example, to confront the I or the world of thoughts the way we normally do. At the very most, you might find the usual relationship to the I and to thought in some minor arts. No art describes or portrays a person's I directly, in the way the person actually lives, standing within the real world. The artist must go through a process whereby the I is lifted out of the specialisation it has acquired on earth; it must give him a generalised sense of meaning, a sense for the typical. An artist does this as a matter of course. Similarly, an artist cannot directly express the world of thoughts in the way in which it is usually expressed here on earth. Otherwise he would not be able to produce any poetry or works of art at all, but at the very most only didactic things, things that contain some lesson and are not artistic in the true sense of the word. The changes that the artist makes in the world that confronts him enliven the senses by leading them back to a previous condition in the way I have been explaining. But, regarding this change in the senses, there is something else that must still be considered. I said that the life processes intermingle. Just as the planets come into conjunction, and just as their mutual relations are significant—in contrast to the immobile stars—the sense-zones can also come into motion; once they have been transposed to the planetary dimension of human life, they can come to life and attain to relationships with one another. This is the reason why artistic perception is never as restricted to specific sense-zones in the way in which our usual perception is. The particular senses also develop certain relationships with one another. Let us consider an example—say, painting. A consideration that is based on true spiritual science would discover the following things. Sight, the sense of warmth, the sense of taste, the sense of smell—these have their discrete zones as far as normal sense observation goes. Their respective areas are separate. In painting, however, these sense regions merge in a remarkable fashion, not only in the concrete organs, but also in their spheres of influence as I have described them in preceding lectures. A painter, or someone who is enjoying a painting, does not merely see the content as colours: the red or the blue or the violet. Instead, he actually tastes the colours, although of course not with the actual organ, or else he would have to lick the painting with his tongue, which he does not do. But a subtle process that is similar to the process of tasting nevertheless takes place in all those areas allied to the sphere of the tongue. When you use the processes of sensory perception to see a green parrot, your eyes see the green colour. But when you enjoy a painting, other subtle, imaginative processes also participate in the act of seeing. These processes are associated with your tongue and belong to your tongue's sense of taste. They are similar to the subtle processes that occur when you taste something, when you eat your food. Now, the act of seeing simultaneously involves other processes—not the processes that actually happen on the tongue, but rather fine, physiological processes associated with these—so that in the deeper sense of the word the painter really does taste the colours. And he smells the nuances of the colours—not with his nose but rather with the more soul-allied things that accompany the act of smelling from deeper in the organism. Therefore, the individual sense-zones begin to merge as they become areas more given over to the life process. When we read a description intended for instructing us as to how something looks or how something happened, we employ the sense of speech, or the sense of word. Through it, we obtain information about one thing and another. But if we listen to a poem in the same way as we listen to straightforward information, we will not be able to understand it. The poem does manifest itself to the sense of speech, of course, but it cannot be understood solely through the sense of speech. In addition to the sense of speech, the ensouled senses of balance and movement must also be focused on the poem—not just the usual senses of balance and movement, but the ensouled senses. So we again see that the senses merge. The regions of the senses have become life regions and the sense organs function in combination. Furthermore, this whole process must be accompanied by life processes that relate to the soul instead of functioning like the usual life processes in the physical world. Someone who engages the fourth life process so intensely that he sweats when he listens to a piece of music has gone too far; that is no longer appropriate to the aesthetic realm, for secretion has been taken as far as physical secretion. The first point is that the process should remain on the soul level and not lead to physical secretion, even though physical secretion is based on exactly the same process. The second point to note is that secretion should not emerge as a discrete process, but rather in an association of four processes—all of them on a soul level: secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction. On the one hand, spiritual science has the task of linking the development of Earth to the spiritual worlds. From many points of view we have seen that mankind is headed for disaster unless this link is established. On the other hand, however, spiritual science must also revive the capacity for grasping and understanding the physical world in terms of the spiritual. Not only has materialism led to an inability to rise to the spirit, it also has led to an inability to understand the physical. The spirit is alive in everything physical. If it is lost sight of, it becomes impossible to understand the physical. Just ask yourselves, what could someone who knows nothing of spiritual realities know about the way an entire sense-zone can become a life-zone, and about the way vital processes can manifest as soul processes? What do contemporary physiologists know about these subtle processes that occur in us? Materialism has gradually brought us to such a pass that we have lost all contact with concrete reality. We live only in abstractions, and now we are abandoning the abstractions, too. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people still spoke of vital energy, or of life energy. Naturally, one cannot do anything with such an abstraction, for matters can only be grasped when one enters into the concrete. Once you have a full grasp of the seven life processes you are involved with the realities, and what matters is to re-establish a connection with reality. People try to put new life into all sorts of greyish abstractions, abstractions like elan vital. Even though they may intend exactly the opposite, they are only leading mankind deeper into the crudest materialism, materialism that stoops to mysticism. These abstractions say nothing; they simply testify to an inability to understand. The development of humanity in the immediate future depends on a knowledge of things that can only be discovered in the spiritual worlds. We must make real progress in our spiritual understanding of the world. In this regard, we ought to go back to the good Aristotle, who was closer to the ancient vision than people are today. I only want to remind you of one characteristic thing about old Aristotle. A whole library has been written about the notion of catharsis, by which he attempted to show what is at the root of tragedy. He said: Tragedy is a unified presentation of events from human life, events which arouse fear and pity as they unfold; furthermore, the soul is purified because of the way this fear and pity unfold, and so the effects of the fear and pity are also purified. The age of materialism has written so much about this passage because it does not possess the organ for apprehending Aristotle. The only ones on the right track were those who saw that Aristotle's expression ‘catharsis’ is medical, or quasi-medical, and not so in the sense of today's materialistic medicine. The aesthetic experience of tragedy really does engender processes that reach right into the physical body and are the organic events that normally accompany fear and pity. It does this because vital processes are changed to processes of soul. A tragedy purifies these vital effects because they are simultaneously elevated to processes of soul. And if you read further in Aristotle's Poetics you will find a hint of this deep understanding of the aesthetic man—not understanding in the modern style, but out of the ancient traditions of the Mysteries. You will find yourself much more in the grips of immediate life reading Aristotle's Poetics than you ever will by reading the tract of some modern aesthetician who can only sniff around and dialecticize, but is unable to get hold of realities. Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man marks another high point in the understanding of aesthetic man. He lived in a more abstract time, however. Today we need to add the spiritual—the spiritually concrete—to the idealism of that time. But when we look at the more materialistic time of Goethe and Schiller, we see that the abstractions of Schiller's letters on aesthetics nevertheless contain something of what we have been talking about. It is only that the process has descended nearer to the physical plane—but only so that the material may be all the more thoroughly penetrated by an intensively grasped spirituality. What does Schiller say? He says: Humanity, as it lives on earth has two basic drives: it has rational impulses and natural impulses. The logic of the impulse to reason functions as a natural necessity. One is forced to think in a certain way; thinking is not at all free. What avails it to speak of freedom as regards this sphere of natural necessity where one is forced to think that three times three is nine, and not ten? Logic implies a strict rational necessity. For this reason, Schiller says that the person who conforms to the necessities of pure reason is subject to spiritual compulsion. Schiller contrasts the necessity of reason with the necessities of the world of the senses—of everything that lives in the drives and emotions. There, also, a person must follow a natural necessity rather than his own free impulses. Then Schiller looks for a middle condition between the necessities of reason and the necessities of nature. He finds it in what occurs when a person forms something aesthetically—when rational necessity inclines towards what the person loves or does not love, and when his thinking follows or avoids inner impulses and pictures instead of being bound by rigid, logical necessity. But this state also suspends natural necessity. For one ceases to follow, as through compulsion, the necessities of the natural senses. These necessities are ensouled and spiritualised. A person ceases simply to want what the body wants; instead, sensual pleasures are spiritualised. In this way, the necessity of reason and the necessity of nature approach one another. Naturally, you must read Schiller's letters on aesthetics for yourselves; they are among the most significant philosophical productions of world history. There, living in Schiller's analyses, you will discover the very things you have just been hearing, only there they are described in metaphysical abstractions. The way vital forces are returned to the sense-zones is contained in what Schiller calls the freeing of natural necessity from rigidity. And what Schiller calls the spiritualisation of natural necessity—he might more aptly have called it ‘ensouling’—contains what we referred to as the functioning of the life processes as soul processes. The life processes become more ensouled, the sense processes come more to life—that is the true process that you will find described in Schiller's letters on aesthetics. There it is put more in abstract, rather ghostly concepts, because that was how it had to be in that era. At that time thinking was not yet spiritually strong enough, not strong enough to descend with the spirit into the regions sought by the seer. In those regions there is no opposition between matter and spirit; rather there is an experience of how the spirit everywhere saturates matter so that there is no possibility of ever bumping into spiritless matter. Contemplation that is merely mental is merely mental only because the person is not able to make his thoughts as strong and as spiritual—as concretely spiritual—that the thoughts can cope with matter. In other words, he is not able to penetrate to what is truly material. Schiller is not yet able to see that the vital processes can function as soul processes. He is not yet able to go as far as to be able to see how the processes that work physically as nourishing, warming and breathing can be formed into something that ceases to be material and instead lives and bubbles in the soul. When this happens, the material particles are scattered by the force of the concepts with which one grasps the physical process. And Schiller is equally unable to look up to the realm of the logical in such a way that he ceases to experience it as merely conceptual. He is not able to come to that stage of development, which can be reached through initiation, whereby the spiritual processes are experienced in their own right and whereby a living spirituality enters into what would otherwise be mere knowing. Thus the attitude that lives in Schiller's aesthetic letters is that ‘I do not quite trust myself to directly approach concrete experience.’ Nevertheless, that which one grasps more exactly when one tries to approach the realm of life through the spirit, and the realm of material through the living, is already stirring in these letters. Thus we can see all areas of life struggling to move towards the goals of spiritual science. At the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century there arose a philosophy which expressed a longing for greater concreteness. This philosophy had a more or less conceptual form, however, and the longing could not be satisfied. And, because its initial vitality ebbed, this longing for greater concreteness gradually degenerated into the coarse materialism that has lasted from the second half of the nineteenth century into our own time. But something else must also be understood: For spiritualism to establish links only with the spirit is not enough; the material world must be conquered—we must learn to recognise the spirit in matter. That happens through such knowledge as we have been discussing. It leads one to discover new connections, such as the unique place of aesthetic man in Earth evolution. To a certain extent, aesthetic man lifts himself above the stream of development and enters a different world. And that is important. The aesthetically inclined person and the person who works in an aesthetic field do not act in a way that is entirely appropriate to someone on earth, but rather their sphere of activity is in a certain way lifted out of the Earth sphere. With this discovery, aesthetics leads us to some profound secrets of human existence. On the one hand, anyone who expresses such things as these is touching on the highest truths; on the other hand, what he says can sound virtually nonsensical—mad and distorted. But we will never understand life as long as we timidly hold ourselves back from the real truths. Take any work of art that you wish—the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo: if it really is a work of art, it is not entirely of this earth. It has been lifted out of the stream of earthly events. That is self-evident. And what lives in a Sistine Madonna or a Venus of Milo? That which lives in them also lives in the human being. It is a power that is not entirely adapted to Earth. If everything in humanity were adapted to the earth, mankind would not be able to live on any other level. But not everything in the human being is adapted to the earth and, for occult vision, not everything in humanity is attuned to being earthly man. There are mysterious forces that some day will provide mankind with the impetus to lift itself out of the sphere of earth existence. Nor will we ever understand art as such until we see that its task is to point beyond the merely earthly and beyond what is solely adapted to the earth—to point to the sphere where that which lives in the Venus de Milo truly does exist. The more you cast your gaze towards the humanity of the future and towards the spiritual challenges of the future, the more you must take certain facts into account, certain facts that are necessary to any truthful picture of the world. Today we still are living with many versions of the assumption that anyone who states something logical and who logically substantiates what he says is necessarily saying something significant about life. But being logical—logicism—is not enough on its own. And because people are always so satisfied when they can produce something logical, they maintain the truth of all imaginable kinds of world view and philosophical system. And of course, all of these can be supported logically: no one who is acquainted with logic would question that they are supportable by logic. But mere logical demonstration does nothing for life. What is thought, what is held in the light of consciousness, needs to be more than just logical, it needs to measure up to reality. What is merely logical is not necessarily valid; only what measures up to reality is valid. I will use just one example to show you what I mean. Suppose you are describing a tree trunk that is lying here before you. You can describe it quite systematically and demonstrate to someone that something really is there because you are describing it just as it is. All the same, your description is a lie. For what you describe does not exist in its own right and cannot possible be a tree trunk in the state in which it is now lying there, cut off from it roots and branches and twigs. It is only a part of existence when seen along with its branches, blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of the trunk as existing in its own right. It is not a reality when it is only seen as it is, lying there. It must be seen with all its shoots and with everything in it that enables it to come into being. One must become convinced that the trunk lying before one is a lie because the truth is before one only when the whole tree is there. Logic does not require us to see a tree trunk as a lie, but it accords with reality that we see it so and that we only accept the whole tree as the reality. A crystal is a truth. In a certain respect it exists in its own right, although only in a certain respect, mind you, for all is relative here, too. A crystal is a reality, but a rosebud is a lie if it is seen only as a rosebud. So you see how all manner of things occur today because the concept of being in accordance with reality is lacking. Crystallography and, at a pinch, mineralogy are still sciences that accord with reality. But when you get to geology, it no longer accords with reality, for it is an abstraction in the way the tree trunk is an abstraction. It is an abstraction, not a reality, even though it is lying there before you. Things contained in the earth's crust came into being along with what grows out of the earth's crust and thus cannot be conceived without it. We need philosophers who are not satisfied to limit themselves to their powers of abstraction, thinking up new abstractions. More, and increasingly more, there must arise a thinking that accords with reality and is not merely logical. Thinking alters the whole course of world evolution. For what is a Venus de Milo or a Sistine Madonna from the standpoint of thinking that accords with reality? If you take them just as they are before you, you are not in contact with reality. You must be enraptured. To see a work of art truly, you must be lifted out of the earth's sphere and removed from it. To really encounter the Venus de Milo, your soul must be different from the soul that responds to earthly things; precisely the things that do not exist on this earthly plane are what transport the soul to the plane where they really do exist—to the realm of the elemental world, which is where what is in the Venus de Milo really exists. One is able to stand before the Venus de Milo in a way that accords with reality precisely because she possesses the power to tear us away from mere sense-bound vision. I have not the slightest desire to promote teleology in the negative sense of the word. Nor shall I say anything about the uses of art, for that would be adding pedantry and philistinism to teleology. I shall say nothing about the uses of art. But we can well speak of the sources of art and how art comes to be a part of our lives. We do not have time to cover the whole subject today, so I will just make a start with a few preparatory words. A counter-question leads us to part of the answer: What would happen if there were no art in the world? If that were so, all the forces that are now devoted to art and the enjoyment of art would be used to produce a life that runs counter to reality. If you were to remove art from the development of humanity, then human development would contain just as many lies as it now contains works of art! Here art displays that unique and dangerous relationship that arises when one nears the threshold of the spiritual world. Just listen yonder, where things always have two sides! If a person has a sense for being in accord with reality, then an aesthetic attitude gives him access to higher realities. An aesthetic attitude leads someone who lacks the sense for being in accord with reality directly into a world of lies. There is always a dividing of the ways and it is very important to be aware of this fork in the road. This does not just apply to occultism; it already applies when you come to the realm of art. To bring about a way of seeing the world that accords with its reality is an aim of spiritual science. Materialism has given us a way of seeing things that goes directly against reality. As contradictory as this all seems, it is only contradictory for those who judge the world according to their preconceptions, rather than in accordance with what is really there. We really do live in a phase of development in which the direct influence of materialism is putting more and more distance between us and the ability to comprehend what even a normal object of the senses is—an ordinary thing of the physical world. There have been some very interesting experiments that shed light on this problem.13 They conform exactly to a materialistic way of thinking but, like so many things produced by materialistic thought, they support the development of precisely those abilities that mankind needs for developing a spiritual world-view. The following experiment has been carried out—I am taking just one example from among the many such experiments. A whole event was planned ahead of time: A person is to give a lecture in the course of which he says something injurious and upsetting about someone present in the audience. All of it is planned. The lecture is given word for word as planned beforehand. The person against whom the insult is directed is supposed to jump up and a real scuffle is to develop—this is how events are supposed to develop. During the course of the argument, the man who has jumped up is to reach into his pocket and draw out a revolver. Other details of the incident are planned out exactly. In other words, you must imagine the unfolding of a fully programmed, detailed scene. Thirty people were in the invited audience—not just any people, but advanced students of law, and lawyers who had already completed their studies. After the scuffle is over, each of the thirty was asked to describe what happened. Others who were privy to what was going on were there to ensure that protocol was followed and that the whole event went exactly according to plan. So each of the thirty is questioned. Each has seen the event. None of them is thick-headed. They are all educated people, the very ones who later will go out into life and investigate what really has occurred in the case of such a fracas or of other incidents. Yet of these thirty, twenty-six falsely described what they saw and only four could produce an acceptably accurate account—only four tolerably accurate accounts! Such experiments have been going on for years in order to demonstrate how the truthfulness of witnesses should be weighed in a court of law. Every one of the twenty-six sat there and could say, ‘I saw it with my own two eyes.’—One forgets to consider what is required in order to be able to correctly describe something that has occurred before one's very eyes! We need to consider the art of maintaining a true perspective on what happens before our very eyes. Someone who is not conscientious towards events in the world of the senses will never be able to develop the feeling of responsibility and the conscientiousness necessary for viewing spiritual facts. Just look at this world of ours that is presently so under the influence of materialism and ask yourselves how many are aware that it is possible for twenty-six people out of the thirty who have witnessed an event to be unable to describe it without committing falsehoods, with only four who are able to give even tolerably accurate accounts. In view of something like this, you can begin to feel what immeasurable significance the results of a spiritual world-view have for ordinary life. Now you might ask yourself whether things were different in earlier times. Our current mode of thought has not always been current. The Greeks did not yet possess the abstract manner of thinking that we have, and need to have, in order to get about the world in a way appropriate for today. But the manner of thinking is not the important thing; the truth is what matters. In his own way, Aristotle tried to use more concrete concepts to describe the inner aesthetic mood and the aesthetic attitude. But the aesthetic constitution was understood in an even more concrete, imaginatively clairvoyant fashion by the early Greeks, who were still connected with the Mysteries and who experienced pictures instead of concepts. In those times, one looked back to the age of Uranus, who embodied everything that we can take in through our heads and through the powers that now are manifest in the outer world through the sense-zones. Uranus—the twelve senses—is wounded. Drops of his blood fall, foaming, into the ocean called Maya. Here you see the senses beginning to come to life and sending something down into the ocean of the life processes, and there below you see how the blood of the senses pulses through the life processes which begin to foam up and become processes of soul. And the ancient Greeks' understanding of this led them to see how Aphrodite14—Aphrogenea, the goddess of beauty—is created out of the foam that arises when the blood of the wounded Uranus drips into the ocean of Maya. This, the more ancient of the myths about the creation of Aphrodite, expresses the condition of the aesthetic man and is one of the most significant imaginations and one of the most significant thoughts in the whole of mankind's spiritual evolution. But still another thought needs to be placed beside the thought of this ancient myth which shows Aphrodite being born from the drops of blood of the wounded Uranus that fall into the sea—rather than as the child of Zeus and Dione. We need a further imagination—one that penetrates even more deeply into reality and goes beyond the realities of the elemental world into the physical realities. We need an imagination from a later age—one that approaches the physical-sensory world. Alongside the myth that shows how Aphrodite, beauty, was born into the world of mankind, we need to place the great truth about how original goodness entered into humanity. We need to show how the spirit descended into Maya-Maria, just as the drops of Uranus' blood trickled into the ocean whose name also was Maya—and how, out of the beautiful foam that arises [*The German for foam—Schaum—has many suggestive echoes. For example, there is the word schauen, ‘show’ or ‘spectacle’, and also ‘Schema’, which means ‘perceptible manifestation, semblance, or appearance’, and which refers to a concept that is central to Schiller's account of aesthetic man. (Tr. note.)], the herald who announces the approaching dawn of a new age is born. The sunrise that announces the eternal regency of the Good ... of understanding of the Good, The True-and-the-Good, the spirit. This is the truth Schiller intended when he wrote the words: Only through beauty's dawn-lit gate The knowledge he refers to is primarily moral knowledge. You can see how the tasks of spiritual science are growing—not mere theoretical ones, but real life tasks. In our day it is no wonder that the misunderstandings about spiritual science multiply among those who are not devoted to the truth. We have to accept that as an inevitable side-effect. Many people have been caught in the grip of a most peculiar attitude towards the truth, especially in our materialistic age. And if I had to tell you about the letters I receive, then today I would have to make yet another addition to that part of our collection where the enemies of the truth are exhibited. I do not even like to mention the latest incredible nonsense, which came in a letter I received yesterday. Yes, my dear friends, this is something we must feel; just reflecting a little on it is not enough. For although our time demands it, bringing spiritual science to mankind in a form that is appropriate to our time is not such a simple task. One must speak out in spite of thereby being exposed to the dangers involved in telling numbers of people—and it truly is more than a few—about truths that not only touch upon what is highest and most holy, but that also go most deeply, affecting heart and soul. Think of the times when there were not a few sitting in the auditorium who later became thorough-going enemies and falsified what was being said! Those who, at any rate, still take the Society seriously, must go through this experience of speaking to many people who, like yourselves, are supposedly friends, while knowing that in the past there have been some who turned out to be enemies—people who later falsified the truths they heard and used what they received here to attack the truth. One must always reckon—sometimes while watching it happen—on the possibility that the person who is listening to what is being said may turn against us in the way others have turned in the past. Today this must colour our work in the realm of spiritual science: knowledge of the human soul takes on special significance. Such things are not to be taken too lightly. Let us try to refresh our memory for a moment, our memory of truth's path as it has appeared in cosmic development, in the evolution of humanity, and remind ourselves of how much was involved in the progress of truth! I will not say any more about it today. But we have touched on an area that is closely related to the direct connections between this life and the spiritual world. Only by understanding it can we shed lights on such things. One must take such opportunities as this to touch on what today's representatives of the truth must undergo. And I hope that there are at least a few of you who know why every now and then I have something bitter to say about the way people relate to the truth, and that there are some who know that it is not quite truthful to say that I am the guilty one. Perhaps I might characterise our contemporaries' much-loved illogicality with an anecdote that would seem silly in other circumstances. But this false logic is used, not in the service of the truth, but in the service of lies. Once there was a man who took another man's estate away from him. After he had taken it, the former owner did not possess it as before, but instead had to begin all over again to work for what he already had earned once. A trial was conducted. The former possessor of the estate was there and also the man who had taken it away. Each had his own advocate. Now, advocates are not always there to present the unconditional, absolute truth, but rather to say what is useful to the person they represent. In this case, the advocate who was lodging the complaint was the first to speak, the one representing the man from whom something had been taken. And, indeed, to begin with he seemed on the way to convincing the court. But then the advocate of the man who had taken the estate away took the floor and said to the judge, ‘Your Honour, you have heard that my client confesses to having done everything that he has done. You have asked my client, “Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?” To that my client answered, “I took all those things, but I do not feel that I am guilty.” And my client is entirely correct in saying this. He will concede that he took all those things; but he need not feel guilty about it. Nor can Your Honour find him guilty, for in order to establish the guilt one must go back to the original cause of the matter. Just consider, Your Honour, this man has become a thief. But he never would have become a thief if the other man had not possessed these things he took away from him! The original owner is the one who has trespassed! If he had never had the possessions, my client could never have become a thief! So he is truly the guilty one! It was only when my client saw that this man had these possessions that he was tempted to become a thief.’ And this advocate spoke so eloquently that the court finally declared, ‘Yes, until today we have always believed that the thief is the guilty one. But all those who have believed that the person who takes something is guilty have been mistaken, for when one examines the real, original cause, one sees that the person from whom the things were taken, the original possessor, is the guilty one.’ Everyone will see that what I am telling you is utter nonsense. But this is exactly the sort of logic that is used today against spiritual science. Spiritual science makes its way into the world and accomplishes certain things. Then these things are distorted by people who say they only do so because they see the truth in spiritual science. They are using the same logic as someone who says that the person from whom something is taken is the guilty one because he has tempted the other to take it from him. Such is the logic abroad today and, if you will only take care to observe the life around you, you will see instances of this kind of logic. Yesterday I was blamed—among other things—for everything that happens in the world when someone or other lies about spiritual science and commits certain acts. This is the same logic as that followed by one who says: ‘The real guilt does not lie with the person who takes, but with the person from whom something is taken, for he is the one who created the original cause of the theft.’
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| 310. Human Values in Education: Stages of Childhood
19 Jul 1924, Arnheim Tr. Vera Compton-Burnett Rudolf Steiner |
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| The fully grown, fully developed plant usually has root, stalk, with it cotyledon leaves, followed by the later green leaves. These are then concentrated in the calyx, the petals, the stamen, the pistil and so on. There are however plants which do not develop as far as the blossom, but remain behind at the stage of herbs and other plants where the green leaves remain stationary, and the fruit is merely rudimentary. |
| 310. Human Values in Education: Stages of Childhood
19 Jul 1924, Arnheim Tr. Vera Compton-Burnett Rudolf Steiner |
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You will have gathered from the remarks I have made during the last two days that there is a fundamental change in the inner constitution of the human being at every single stage of his life. Today, certainly, modern psychologists and physiologists also take this into account. They too reckon with these changes which take place in the course of life, firstly up to the change of teeth, then up to puberty, and again from puberty into the twenties. But these differences are more profound than can be discovered by means of the methods of observation customary today, which do not reach far enough, however excellent they may be. We must take a further step and examine these differences from aspects demanded by spiritual science. You will hear many things that are already familiar to you, but you must now enter more deeply into them. Even when the child enters this world from the embryo condition, that is, to take an external characteristic, when he adapts himself to the outer process of breathing, even then, physiologically speaking, he is not yet received directly by the outer world, for he takes the natural nourishment of the mother's milk. He is not nourished as yet by what comes from the outer world, but by what comes from the same source as the child himself. Now today people study the substances they meet with in the world more or less according to their external, chemical, physical properties only and do not consider the finer attributes which they possess through their spiritual content. Nowadays everything is considered in this way. Such methods are not to be condemned; on the contrary they should be recognised as justified. Nevertheless because the time came when man was concerned only with the outer aspects of things, aspects which could not be so regarded in earlier civilisations, he has now reached a point of extreme externalisation. If I may make a comparison, things are observed today in some such way as this. We say: I look upon death, upon dying; plants die, animals die, human beings die. But surely the question arises as to whether dying, the passing away of the various forms of life with which we come in contact, is in all three kinds of living beings the same process, or whether this only appears outwardly to be so. We can make use of the following comparisons: If I have a knife there is a real difference whether I cut my food with it, or whether I use it for shaving. In each case it is a knife, but the properties of “knife” must be further differentiated. Such differentiation is in many cases not made today. No differentiation is made between the dying of a plant, an animal or a man. We meet the same thing in other domains too. There are people who in a certain way want to be philosophers of nature, and because they aim at being idealistic, even spiritual, they assert that plants may well have a soul; and they try to discover in an external way those characteristics of plants which seem to indicate that they have certain soul qualities. They make a study of those plants which, when they are approached by insects, tend to open their petals. The insect is caught, for it is attracted by the scent of what is in the plant. Such a plant is the Venus Flytrap. It closes its petals with a snap and the insect is trapped. This is considered to be a sort of soul quality in the plant. Well, but I know something else which works in the same way. It is to be found in all sorts of places. The mouse, when it comes near, feels attracted by the smell of a dainty morsel; it begins to nibble, and—hey presto! snap goes the mousetrap. If one were to make use of the same thought process as in the case of a plant, one might say: the mousetrap has a soul. This kind of thinking, however, although quite legitimate under certain conditions never leads to conclusions of any depth, but remains more or less on the surface. If we wish to gain a true knowledge of man we must penetrate into the very depths of human nature. It must be possible for us to look in a completely unprejudiced way at things which appear paradoxical vis-à-vis external methods of observation. Moreover it is very necessary to take into consideration everything which, taken together, makes up the entire human organisation. In man we have, to begin with, the actual physical organism which he has in common with all earthly beings and particularly with the mineral kingdom. In man, however, we have clearly to distinguish between his physical organism and his etheric organism. The latter he has in common only with the plant world, not with the minerals. But a being endowed only with an etheric organism could never experience feeling, never attain to an inner consciousness. For this again man has his astral organism, which he has in common with the animal world. It might appear that this is an external organisation, but in the course of these lectures we shall see how inward it can be. In addition to this man still has his ego-organisation, which is not to be found in the animal world and which he alone possesses among earthly beings. What we are here considering is in no sense merely an external, intellectual pattern; moreover, in speaking, for instance, of an etheric or life-body, this has no connection whatever with what an outmoded natural science once called “life-force,” “vital-force” and so on. On the contrary, it is the result of observation. If, for instance, we study the child up to the age of the change of teeth, we see that his development is primarily dependent on his physical organism. The physical organism must gradually adapt itself to the outer world, but this cannot take place all at once, not even if considered in the crudest physical sense. This physical body, just because it contains what the human being has brought with him out of the spiritual world in which he lived in pre-earthly existence, cannot forthwith assimilate the substances of the outer world, but must receive them specially prepared in the mother's milk. The child must, so to say, remain closely connected with what is of like nature with himself. He must only gradually grow into the outer world. And the conclusion of this process of the physical organism growing into the outer world is indicated by the appearance of the second teeth at about the seventh year. At approximately this age the child's physical organism completes the process of growing into the world. During this time, however, in which the organisation is chiefly concerned with the shaping and fashioning of the bony system, the child is only interested in certain things in the outer world, not in everything. He is only interested in what we might call gesture, everything that is related to movement. Now you must take into account that at first the child's consciousness is dream-like, shadowy; to begin with his perceptions are quite undefined, and only gradually do they light up and gain clarity. But fundamentally speaking the fact remains that during the time between birth and the change of teeth the child's perception adheres to everything in the nature of gesture and movement and does so to such an extent, that in the very moment when he perceives a movement he feels an inner urge to imitate it. There exists a quite definite law of development in the nature of the human being which I should like to characterise in the following way. While the human being is growing into the physical, earthly world, his inner nature is developing in such a way that this development proceeds in the first place out of gesture, out of differentiation of movement. In the inner nature of the organism speech develops out of movement in all its aspects, and thought develops out of speech. This deeply significant law underlies all human development. Everything which makes its appearance in sound, in speech, is the result of gesture, mediated through the inner nature of the human organism. If you turn your attention to the way in which a child not only learns to speak, but also learns to walk, to place one foot after the other, you can observe how one child treads more strongly on the back part of the foot, on the heel, and another walks more on the toes. You can observe children who in learning to walk tend to bring their legs well forward; with others you will see that they are more inclined to hold back, as it were, between two steps. It is extraordinarily interesting to watch a child learning to walk. You must learn to observe this. But it is more interesting still, although much less attention is paid to it, to see how a child learns to grasp something, how he learns to move his hands. There are children who, when they want something, move their hands in such a way that even the fingers are brought into movement. Others keep their fingers still, and stretch out their hands to take hold without moving the fingers. There are children who stretch out their hand and arm, while keeping the upper part of the body motionless; there are others who immediately let the upper part of the body follow the movement of arm and hand. I once knew a child who, when he was very small and his high-chair was placed at a little distance from the table on which stood some dish he wished to get at, proceeded to “row” himself towards it; his whole body was then in movement. He could make no movements at all without moving his whole body. This is the first thing to look out for in a child; for how a child moves reveals the most inward urge of life, the primal life impulse. At the same time there appears in the child's movement the tendency to adapt himself to others, to carry out some movement in the same way as his father, mother or other member of the family. The principle of imitation comes to light in gesture, in movement. For gesture is what appears first of all in human evolution, and in the special constitution of the physical, soul and spiritual organism of man gesture is inwardly transformed; it is transformed into speech. Those who are able to observe this know without any doubt that a child who speaks as though the sentences were hacked out of him is one who sets his heels down first; while a child who speaks in such a way that the sentences run one into the other tends to trip on his toes. A child who takes hold of things more lightly with his fingers has the tendency to emphasise the vowel element, while a child who is inclined to stress the consonants will bring his whole arm to his aid when grasping something. We receive a very definite impression of a child's potentialities from his manner of speaking. And to understand the world, to understand the world through the medium of the senses, through the medium of thought, this too is developed out of speech. Thought does not produce speech, but speech thought. So it is in the cultural development of humanity as a whole; human beings have first spoken, then thought. So it is also with the child; first out of movement he learns to speak, to articulate only then does thinking come forth from speech. We must therefore look upon this sequence as being something of importance: gesture, speech, thought, or the process of thinking. All this is especially characteristic in the first epoch of the child's life, up to the change of teeth. When little by little the child grows into the world during the first, second, third and fourth years of life, he does so through gesture; everything is dependent on gesture. Indeed, I would say that speaking and thinking take place for the most part unconsciously; both develop naturally out of gesture, even the first gesture. Therefore speaking approximately we can say: From the first to the seventh year gesture predominates in the life of the child, but gesture in the widest sense of the word, gesture which in the child lives in imitation. As educators we must keep this firmly in mind for actually up to the change of teeth the child only takes in what comes to him as gesture, he shuts himself off from everything else. If we say to the child: Do it like this, do it like that, he really does not hear, he does not take any notice. It is only when we stand in front of him and show him how to do it that he is able to copy us. For the child works according to the way I myself am moving my fingers, or he looks at something just as I am looking at it, not according to what I tell him. He imitates everything. This is the secret of the development of the child up to the change of teeth. He lives entirely in imitation, entirely in the imitation of what in the widest possible sense comes to meet him from outside as gesture. This accounts for the surprises we get when faced with the education of very young children. A father came to me once and said, “What shall I do? Something really dreadful has happened. My boy has been stealing.” I said, “Let us first find out whether he really steals. What has he done?” The father told me that the boy had taken money out of the cupboard, had bought sweets with it and shared them with the other boys. I said “Presumably that is the cupboard out of which the boy has often seen his mother taking money, before going shopping; he is quite naturally imitating her.” And this proved to be the case. So I said further, “But that is not stealing; that lies as a natural principle of development in the boy up to the change of teeth. He imitates what he sees; he must do so.” In the presence of a child therefore we should avoid doing anything which he should not imitate. This is how we educate him. If we say: You should not do this or that, it does not influence the child in the slightest degree up to the change of teeth. It could at most have some effect if one were to clothe the words in a gesture, by saying: Now look, you have just done something that I would never do!—for this is in a way a disguised gesture. It comes to this: with our whole manhood we should fully understand how up to the change of teeth the child is an imitating being. During this time there is actually an inner connection between the child and his environment, between all that is going on around him. Later on this is lost. For however strange and paradoxical it may sound to people today, who are quite unable to think correctly about the spirit, but think always in abstractions, it is nevertheless true that the whole relationship of the child to gesture and movement in his surroundings has an innate religious character. Through his physical body the child is given over to everything in the nature of gesture; he cannot do otherwise than yield himself up to it. What we do later with our soul, and still later with our spirit, in that we yield ourselves up to the divine, even to the external world, as again spiritualised, this the child does with his physical body when he brings it into movement. He is completely immersed in religion, both with his good and his bad qualities. What remains with us as soul and spirit in later life, this the child has also in his physical organism. If therefore the child lives in close proximity with a surly, “bearish” father, liable to fall into rages, someone who is often irritable and angry, expressing uncontrolled emotions in the presence of the child, while the inner causes of such emotions are not as yet understood by the child, nevertheless what he sees, he experiences as something not moral. The child perceives simultaneously, albeit unconsciously, the moral aspects of these outbreaks, so that he has not only the outer picture of the gesture, but also absorbs its moral significance. If I make an angry gesture, this passes over into the blood organisation of the child, and if these gestures recur frequently they find expression in his blood circulation. The child's physical body is organised according to the way in which I behave in his presence, according to the kind of gestures I make. Moreover if I fail in loving understanding when the child is present, if, without considering him I do something which is only suitable at a later age, and am not constantly on the watch when he is near me, then it can happen that the child enters lovingly into something which is unfitted for his tender years, but belongs to another age, and his physical body will in that case be organised accordingly. Whoever studies the whole course of a man's life from birth to death, bearing in mind the requirements of which I have spoken, will see that a child who has been exposed to things suitable only to grown-up people and who imitates these things will in his later years, from the age of about 50, suffer from sclerosis. One must be able to examine such phenomena in all their ramifications. Illnesses that appear in later life are often only the result of educational errors made in the very earliest years of childhood. This is why an education which is really based on a knowledge of man must study the human being as a whole from birth until death. To be able to look at man as a whole is the very essence of anthroposophical knowledge. Then too one discovers how very strong the connection is between the child and his environment. I would go as far as to say that the soul of the child goes right out into his surroundings, experiences these surroundings intimately, and indeed has a much stronger relationship to them than at a later period of life. In this respect the child is still very close to the animal, only he experiences things in a more spiritual way, in a way more permeated with soul. The animal's experiences are coarser and cruder, but the animal too is related to its environment. The reason why many phenomena of recent times remain unexplained is because people are not able to enter into all the details involved. There is, for instance, the case of the “calculating horses” which has made such a stir recently, where horses have carried out simple arithmetical operations through stamping with their hooves. I have not seen the famous Elberfelder horses, but I have seen the horse belonging to Herr von Osten. This horse did quite nice little sums. For instance Herr von Osten asked: How much is 5 + 7? And he began to count, beginning with 1, and when he got to 12 the horse stamped with its foot. It could add up, subtract and so on. Now there was a young professor who studied this problem and wrote a book about it which is extremely interesting. In this book he expounds the view that the horse sees certain little gestures made by Herr von Osten, who always stands close to the horse. His opinion is that when Herr von Osten counts 7 + 5 up to 12 and the horse stamps when the number 12 is reached, this is because Herr von Osten makes a very slight gesture when he comes to 12 and the horse, noticing this, duly stamps his foot. He believes that it can all be traced back to something visible. But now he puts a question to himself: “Why,” he says, “can you not see this gesture which Herr von Osten makes so skilfully that the horse sees it and stamps at the number 12?” The young professor goes on to say that these gestures are so slight that he as a human being cannot see them. From this the conclusion might be drawn that a horse sees more than a professor! But this did not convince me at all, for I saw this wonder of an intelligent horse, the clever Hans, standing by Herr von Osten in his long coat. And I saw too that in his right-hand pocket he had lumps of sugar, and while he was carrying out his experiments with the horse he always handed it one lump after another, so that feeling was aroused in the horse associating sweet things with Herr von Osten. In this way a sort of love was established between Herr von Osten and the horse. And only when this is present, only when the inner being of the horse is, as it were, merged into the inner being of Herr von Osten through the stream of sweetness that flows between them, only then can the horse “calculate,” for it really receives something—not through gesture, but through what Herr von Osten is thinking. He thinks: 5 + 7 = 12, and by means of suggestion the horse takes up this thought and even has a distinct impression of it. One can actually see this. The horse and his master are in a certain way merged in feeling one into the other: they impart something to one another reciprocally when they are united through the medium of sweetness. So the animal still has this finer relationship to its environment, and this can be stimulated from outside, as, in this case, by means of sugar. In a delicate way a similar relationship to the outer world is still present in children also. It lives in the child and should be reckoned with. Education in the kindergarten should therefore never depend on anything other than the principle of imitation. The teacher must sit down with the children and just do what she wishes them to do, so that the child has only to copy. All education and instruction before the change of teeth must be based on this principle. After the change of teeth all this becomes quite different. The soul life of the child is now completely changed. No longer does he perceive merely the single gestures, but now he sees the way in which these gestures accord with one another. For instance, whereas previously he only had a feeling for a definite line, now he has a feeling for co-ordination, for symmetry. The feeling is awakened for what is co-ordinated or uncoordinated, and in his soul the child acquires the possibility of perceiving what is formative. As soon as this perception is awakened there appears simultaneously an interest in speech. During the first seven years of life there is an interest in gesture, in everything connected with movement; in the years between seven and fourteen there is an interest in everything connected with the pictorial form, and speech is pre-eminently pictorial and formative. After the change of teeth the child's interest passes over from gesture to speech, and in the lower school years from seven to fourteen we can work most advantageously through everything that lies in speech, above all through the moral element underlying speech. For just as the child before this age has a religious attitude towards the gesture which meets him in the surrounding world, so now he relates himself in a moral sense—his religious feeling being gradually refined into a soul experience—to everything which approaches him through speech. So now, in this period of his life, one must work upon the child through speech. But whatever is to work upon him in this way must do so by means of an unquestioned authority. When I want to convey to the child some picture expressed through speech, I must do so with the assurance of authority. I must be the unquestioned authority for the child when through speech I want to conjure up before him some picture. Just as we must actually show the little child what we want him to do, so we must be the human pattern for the child between the change of teeth and puberty. In other words, there is no point whatever in giving reasons to a child of this age, in trying to make him see why we should do something or not do it, just because there are well-founded reasons for or against it. This passes over the child's head. It is important to understand this. In exactly the same way as in the earliest years of life the child only observes the gesture, so between the change of teeth and puberty he only observes what I, as a human being, am in relation to himself. At this age the child must, for instance, learn about what is moral in such a way that he regards as good what the naturally accepted authority of the teacher, by means of speech, designates as good; he must regard as bad what this authority designates as bad. The child must learn: What my teacher, as my authority, does is good, what he does not do is bad. Relatively speaking then, the child feels: When my teacher says something is good, then it is good; and if he says something is bad, then it is bad. You will not attribute to me, seeing that 30 years ago I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom a point of view which upholds the principle of authority as the one and only means of salvation. But through the very fact of knowing the true nature of freedom one also knows that between the change of teeth and puberty the child needs to be faced with an unquestioned authority. This lies in the nature of man. Everything is doomed to failure in education which disregards this relationship of the child to the unquestioned authority of the personality of the teacher and educator. The child must be guided in everything which he should do or not do, think or not think, feel or not feel, by what flows to him, by way of speech, from his teacher and educator. At this age therefore there is no sense in wanting to approach him through the intellect. During this time everything must be directed towards the life of feeling, for feeling is receptive to anything in the nature of pictures and the child of this age is so constituted that he lives in the world of pictures, of images, and has the feeling of welding separate details into a harmonious whole. This is why, for instance, what is moral cannot be brought to the child by way of precept, by saying: You should do this, you should not do that. It simply doesn't work. What does work is when the child, through the way in which one speaks to him, can feel inwardly in his soul a liking for what is good, a dislike of what is bad. Between the change of teeth and puberty the child is an aesthete and we must therefore take care that he experiences pleasure in the good and displeasure in what is bad. This is the best way for him to develop a sense of morality. We must also be sincere, inwardly sincere in the imagery we use in our work with the child. This entails being permeated to the depths of our being by everything we do. This is not the case if, when standing before the child we immediately experience a slight sense of superiority: I am so clever—the child is so stupid. Such an attitude ruins all education; it also destroys in the child the feeling for authority. Well then, how shall I transform into a pictorial image something that I want to impart to the child? In order to make this clear I have chosen the following example as an illustration. We cannot speak to the child about the immortality of the soul in the same way as to a grown-up person; but we must nevertheless convey to him some understanding of it. We must however do so in a pictorial way. We must build up the following picture and to do this may well take the whole lesson. We can explain to the child what a butterfly's chrysalis is, and then speak in some such words as these: “Well, later on the finished butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. It was inside all the time only it was not yet visible, it was not yet ready to fly away, but it was already there inside.” Now we can go further and tell him that in a similar way the human body contains the soul, only it is not visible. At death the soul flies out of the body; the only difference between man and butterfly is that the butterfly is visible and the human soul is invisible. In this way we can speak to the child about the immortality of the soul so that he receives a true picture of immortality and one suited to his age. But in the presence of the child we must on no account have the feeling: I am clever, I am a philosopher and by no means of thought can I convince myself of the truth of immortality; the child is naive, is stupid, and so for him I will build up the picture of the butterfly creeping out of the chrysalis. If one thinks in this way one establishes no contact with the child, and then he gets nothing whatever from what he is told. There is only one possibility. We must ourselves believe in the picture, we must not want to be cleverer than the child; we must stand in the presence of the child as full of belief as he is. How can this be done? An anthroposophist, a student of spiritual science knows that the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis is actually a picture of the immortality of the human soul placed into the world by the gods. He can never think otherwise than that the gods inscribed into the world this picture of the emerging butterfly as an image of the immortality of the human soul. In all the lower stages of the process he sees the higher processes which have become abstract. If I do not get the idea that the child is stupid and I am clever, but if I stand before the child conscious that this actually is so in the world and that I am leading him to believe in something which I too believe with all my heart, then there arises an imponderable relationship between us, and the child makes real progress in his education. Then moral imponderabilia continually enters into our educational relationship. And this is the crux of the matter. When we are quite clear about this we shall, out of the whole nexus of our studies, come to see how we can find the right approach to an instruction which is truly educational, an education which really instructs. Let us take an example. How must the child learn to read and write? There is actually a great deal more misery connected with this than one usually imagines, though human intellectualism is far too crude to perceive it. One recognises that learning to read and write is a necessity, so it follows that the child must at all costs be drilled into learning reading and writing. But just consider what this means for a child! When they are grown-up, people have no inclination to put themselves in the child's place, to imagine what he undergoes when he learns to read and write. In our civilisation today we have letters, a, b, c and so on; they are there before us in certain definite forms. Now the child has the sound a (ah, as in father). When does he use it? This sound is for him the expression of an inner soul experience. He uses this sound when he is faced with something which calls up in him a feeling of wonder, of astonishment. This sound he understands. It is bound up with human nature. Or he has the sound e (eh, as in they). When does he use this? He uses it when he wants to show he has the feeling: “Something has come up against me; I have experienced something which encroaches on my own nature.” If somebody gives me a blow, I say e (eh).1 It is the same with the consonants. Every sound corresponds to some expression of life; the consonants imitate an outer, external world, the vowels express what is experienced inwardly in the soul. The study of language, philology, is today only approaching the first elements of such things. Learned scholars, who devote themselves to research into language, have given much thought to what, in the course of human evolution, may have been the origin of speech. There are two theories. The one represents the view that speech may have arisen out of soul experiences in much the same way as this takes place in the animal, albeit in its most primitive form—“moo-moo” being the expression of what the cow feels inwardly, and “bow-wow” what is experienced by the dog. And so, in a more complicated way, what in man becomes articulated speech arises out of this urge to give expression to inner feelings and experiences. In somewhat humorous vein this is called the “bow-wow theory.” The other point of view proceeds from the supposition that in the sounds of speech man imitates what takes place in the outer world. It is possible to imitate the sound of a bell, what is taking place inside the bell: “ding-dong—ding-dong.” Here there is the attempt to imitate what takes place in the outer world. This is the basis for the theory that in speech everything may be traced back to external sounds, external event. It is the “ding-dong theory.” So we have these two theories in opposition to one another. It is not in any way my intention to make fun of this, for as a matter of fact, both are correct: the “bow-wow” theory is right for the vowel element in speech, the “ding-dong” theory for the consonantal element. In transposing gestures into sounds we learn by means of the consonants to imitate inwardly outer processes; and in the vowels we give form to inner experiences of the soul. In speech the inner and the outer unite. Human nature, itself homogeneous, understands how to bring this about. We receive the child into the primary school. Through his inner organisation he has become a being able to speak. Now, suddenly he is expected to experience—I say experience deliberately weighing my words, not recognise, experience—a connection between astonishment, wonder, (ah) and the demonic sign a. This is something completely foreign to him. He is supposed to learn something which he feels to be utterly remote, and to relate this to the sound “ah.” This is something outside the sphere of a young child's comprehension. He feels it as a veritable torture if at the very outset we confront him with the forms of the letters in use today. We can, however, remember something else. The letters which we have today were not always there. Let us look back to those ancient peoples who had a picture writing. They used pictures to give tangible form to what was uttered, and these pictures certainly had something to do with what they were intended to express. They did not have letters such as we use, but pictures which were related to their meaning. Up to a certain point the same could be said of cuneiform writing. These were times when people still had a human relationship to things, even when these were fixed into a definite form. Today we no longer have this, but with the child we must go back to it again. We must of course not do so in such a way that we study the cultural history of ancient peoples and fall back on the forms which were once used in picture writing; but we must bring all our educational fantasy into play as teachers in order to create the kind of pictures we need. Fantasy, imagination [The German phantasie is often more equivalent to the English imagination than to fantasy. In this lecture the latter is probably more appropriate.] we must certainly have, for without it we cannot be teachers or educators. And so it is always necessary to refer to the importance of enthusiasm, of inspiration, when dealing with some characteristic feature of anthroposophy. It never gives me any pleasure, for instance, when I go into a class in our Waldorf School and notice that a teacher is tired and is teaching out of a certain mood of weariness. That is something one must never do. One simply cannot be tired, one can only be filled with enthusiasm. When teaching, one must be absolutely on the spot with one's whole being. It is quite wrong to be tired when teaching; tiredness must be kept for some other occasion. The essential thing for a teacher is that he learns to give full play to his fantasy. What does this mean? To begin with I call up in the child's mind something that he has seen at the market, or some other place, a fish for example. I next get him to draw a fish, and for this I even allow him to use colours, so that he paints as he draws and draws as he paints. This being achieved I then let him say the word “Fish,” not speaking the word quickly, but separating the sounds, “f-i-ssh.” Then I lead him on so that he says only the beginning of the word fish (f...) and gradually I transfer the shape of the fish into a sign that is somewhat fish like, while at the same time getting the child to say f ... And there we have it, the letter “f!”  Or I let the child say Wave (W-a-v-e) showing him at the same time what a wave is (see sketch). Once again I let him paint this and get him to say the beginning of the word—w—and then I change the picture of a wave into the letter w.   Continuing to work in the same way I allow the written characters gradually to emerge from the painting-drawing and drawing-painting, as indeed they actually arose in the first place. I do not bring the child into a stage of civilisation with which as yet he has nothing in common, but I guide him in such a way that he is never torn away from his relationship to the outer world. In order to do this there is no necessity to study the history of culture—albeit the writing in use today has arisen out of picture-writing—one must only give free play to one's fantasy, for then one brings the child to the point at which he is able to form writing out of this drawing and painting. Now we must not think of this only as an ingenious and clever new method. We must value the fact that the child unites himself inwardly with something that is new to him when his soul activity is constantly stimulated. He does not “grow into it” when he is pushed, so that he is always coming into an unfamiliar relationship with his environment. The whole point is that we are working on the inner being of the child. What is usually done today? It is perhaps already somewhat out-of-date, but not so long ago people gave little girls “beautiful” dolls, with real hair, dolls that could shut their eyes when one laid them down, dolls with pretty faces and so on. Civilisation calls them beautiful, but they are nevertheless hideous, because they are inartistic. What sort of dolls are these? They are the sort which cannot activate the child's fantasy. Now let us do something different. Tie a handkerchief so that you have a figure with arms and legs; then make eyes with blobs of ink and perhaps a mouth with red ink as well; now the child must develop his fantasy if he is to imagine this as having the human shape. Such a thing works with tremendous living force on the child, because it offers him the possibility of using his fantasy. Naturally one must do this first oneself. But the possibility must be provided for the child, and this must be done at the age when everything is play. It is for this reason that all those things which do not stimulate fantasy in the child are so damaging when given as toys. As I said, today these beautiful dolls are somewhat out-dated, for now we give children monkeys or bears. To be sure, neither do these toys give any opportunity for the unfolding of a fantasy having any relationship to the human being. Let us suppose that a child runs up to us and we give him a bear to cuddle. Things like this show clearly how far our civilisation is from being able to penetrate into the depths of human nature. But it is quite remarkable how children in a perfectly natural, artistic way are able to form imaginatively a picture of this inner side of human nature. In the Waldorf School we have made a transition from the ordinary methods of teaching to what may be termed a teaching through art, and this quite apart from the fact that in no circumstances do we begin by teaching the children to write, but we let them paint as they draw, and draw as they paint. Perhaps we might even say that we let them splash about, which involves the possibly tiresome job of cleaning up the classroom afterwards. I shall also speak tomorrow about how to lead over from writing to reading, but, quite apart from this painting and drawing, we guide the child as far as possible into the realm of the artistic by letting him practise modelling in his own little way, but without suggesting that he should make anything beyond what he himself wants to fashion out of his own inner being. The results are quite remarkable. I will mention one example which shows how something very wonderful takes place in the case of rather older children. At a comparatively early age, that is to say, for children between ten and eleven years old, we take as a subject in our curriculum the “Study of Man.” At this age the children learn to know how the bones are formed and built up, how they support each other, and so on. They learn this in an artistic way, not intellectually. After a few such lessons the child has acquired some perception of the structure of the human bones, the dynamic of the bones and their interdependence. Then we go over to the craft-room, where the children model plastic forms and we observe what they are making. We see that they have learned something from these lessons about the bones. Not that the child imitates the forms of the bones, but from the way in which he now models his forms we perceive the outer expression of an inner mobility of soul. Before this he has already got so far as to be able to make little receptacles of various kinds; children discover how to make bowls and similar things quite by themselves, but what they make out of the spontaneity of childhood before they have received such lessons is quite different from what they model afterwards, provided they have really experienced what was intended. In order to achieve this result, however, these lessons on the “Knowledge of Man” must be given in such a way that their content enters right into the whole human being. Today this is difficult. Anyone who has paid as many visits to studios as I have and seen how people paint and model and carve, knows very well that today hardly any sculptor works without a model; he must have a human form in front of him if he wishes to model it. This would have had no sense for a Greek artist. He had of course learned to know the human form in the public games, but he really experienced it inwardly. He knew out of his own inner feeling—and this feeling he embodied without the aid of a model—he knew the difference between an arm when it is stretched out or when, in addition, the forefinger is also extended, and this feeling he embodied in his sculpture. Today, however, when physiology is taught in the usual way, models or drawings of the bones are placed side by side, the muscles are described one after another and no impression is given of their reciprocal relationship. With us, when the children see a vertebra belonging to the spinal column, they know how similar it is to the skull-bone, and they get a feeling for the metamorphosis of the bones. In this way they enter livingly right into the different human forms and so feel the urge to express it artistically. Such an experience enters right into life; it does not remain external. My earnest wish, and also my duty as leader of the Waldorf School, is to make sure that wherever possible everything of a fixed nature in the way of science, everything set down in books in a rigid scientific form should be excluded from class teaching. Not that I do not value science; no one could value science more highly. Such studies can be indulged in outside the school, if so desired; but I should be really furious if I were to see a teacher standing in front of a class with a book in his or her hand. In teaching everything must come from within. This must be self-understood. How is botany taught today for instance? We have botany books; these are based on a scientific outlook, but they do not belong to the classroom where there are children between the change of teeth and puberty. The perception of what a teacher needs in the way of literature must be allowed to grow gradually out of the living educational principles I shall be speaking about here. So we are really concerned with the teacher's attitude of mind, whether in soul, spirit and body he is able to relate himself to the world. If he has this living relationship he can do much with the children between the change of teeth and puberty, for he is then their natural and accepted authority. The main thing is that one should enter into and experience things in a living way and carry over into life all that one has thus experienced. This is the great and fundamental principle which must form the basis of education today. Then the connection with the class will be there of itself, together with the imponderable mood and feeling that must necessarily go with it. Answers to a QuestionQuestion: There are grown-up people who seem to have remained at the imitative stage of childhood. Why is this? Dr. Steiner: It is possible at every stage of human development for someone to remain in a stationary condition. If we describe the different stages of development, adding to today's survey the embryonic stage, and continuing to the change of teeth, and on to puberty, we cover those epochs in which a fully developed human life can be formed. Now quite a short time ago the general trend of anthroposophical development brought it about that lectures could be held on curative education, with special reference to definite cases of children who had either remained backward or whose development was in some respect abnormal. We then took the further step of allowing certain cases to be seen which were being treated at Dr. Wegmann's Clinical-Therapeutic Institute. Among these cases there was one of a child of nearly a year old, about the normal size for a child of this age, but who in the formation of his physical body had remained approximately at the stage of seven or eight months embryo. If you were to draw the child in outline with only an indication of the limbs, which are somewhat more developed, but showing exactly the form of the head, as it actually is in the case of this little boy, then, looking cursorily at the drawing, you would not have the faintest idea that it is a boy of nearly a year old. You would think it an embryo, because this boy has in many respects kept after his birth the embryonic structure. Every stage of life, including the embryonic, can be carried over into a later stage; for the different phases of development as they follow one after the other, are such that each new phase is a metamorphosis of the old, with something new added. If you will only take quite exactly what I have already said in regard to the natural religious devotion of the child to his surroundings up to the change of teeth, you will see that this changes later into the life of soul, and you have, as a second attribute the aesthetic, artistic stage. Now it happens with very many children that the first stage is carried into the second, and the latter then remains poorly developed. But this can go still further: the first stage of physical embodiment can be carried over into each of the others, so that what was present as the original stage appears in all the later stages. And, for a superficial observation of life, it need not be so very obvious that an earlier stage has remained on into a later one, unless such a condition shows itself particularly late in life. Certain it is however that earlier stages are carried over into later ones. Let us take the same thing in a lower kingdom of nature. The fully grown, fully developed plant usually has root, stalk, with it cotyledon leaves, followed by the later green leaves. These are then concentrated in the calyx, the petals, the stamen, the pistil and so on. There are however plants which do not develop as far as the blossom, but remain behind at the stage of herbs and other plants where the green leaves remain stationary, and the fruit is merely rudimentary. How far, for instance, the fern has remained behind the buttercup! With the plant this does not lead to abnormality. Man however is a species for himself. He is a complete natural order. And it can happen that someone remains his whole life long an imitative being, or one who stands in need of authority. For in life we have not only to do with people who remain at the imitative stage, but also with those who in regard to their essential characteristics remain at the stage that is fully developed between the change of teeth and puberty. As a matter of fact there are very many such people, and with them this stage continues into later life. They cannot progress much farther, and what should be developed in later years can only do so to a limited extent. They remain always at the stage where they look for the support of authority. If there were no such people, neither would there be the tendency, so rife today, to form sects and such things, for sectarian associations are based on the fact that their adherents are not required to think; they leave the thinking to others and follow their leaders. In certain spheres of life, however, most people remain at the stage of authority. For instance, when it is a question of forming a judgment about something of a scientific nature people do not take the trouble to look into it themselves, but they ask: Where is the expert who must know about this, the specialist who is a lecturer at one of the universities? There you have the principle of authority. Again in the case of people who are ill the principle of authority is carried to extremes, even though here it may be justifiable. And in legal matters, for instance, nobody today will think of forming an independent judgment, but will seek the advice of a solicitor because he has the requisite knowledge. Here the standpoint is that of an eight or nine year old child. And it may well be that this solicitor himself is not much older. When a question is put to him he takes down a lawbook or portfolio and there again you have an authority. So it is actually the case that each stage of life can enter into a later one. The Anthroposophical Society should really only consist of people who are outgrowing authority, who do not recognise any such principle but only true insight. This is so little understood by people outside the Society that they are continually saying: “Anthroposophy is based on authority.” In reality the precise opposite is the case; the principle of authority must be outgrown through the kind of understanding and discernment which is fostered in anthroposophy. The important thing is that one should grasp every scrap of insight one can lay hold of in order to pass through the different stages of life.
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