The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: We need to discuss the ending of school. You have a number of questions.

The following are discussed: A question about how to handle promoting the students this year. General questions about the tenth and following grades. A request for a course about educating children over fourteen years of age and also the instruction of religion. Questions about “bourgeois methods” in the school and how to eliminate them. A question about teaching instrumental music. A question of whether third graders should write foreign language or only speak it. A question about social studies and social understanding. A question about a special course for eurythmy. Questions about a teachers’ meeting, pedagogical conferences, and a newsletter.

Dr. Steiner: I think we could handle the individual questions more easily if the teachers first discuss promoting the children and the end of the school year. We can then more easily discuss the question of promoting the children. I think we should begin with the ninth grade. I would ask the teachers to present the experiences they had at the end of the school year.

Each class is discussed, beginning with the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was present during the Jean Paul discussion. Were you satisfied with the way the children participated?

What is there to say about eurythmy? That lethargic child, U.A., is not really lethargic. He only makes a lethargic impression.

In the event we create a tenth grade, all the children would have to move on to it.

Now we come to the eighth grade. Are there any students so weak we should hold them back?

A teacher: We should consider H.K. and whether it would be better to keep him in a lower grade so that he will progress better.

Dr. Steiner: My impression is that he does not need to be held back. Is he one of those who is more behind in particular subjects?

A teacher: He literally falls asleep.

Dr. Steiner: He is physically weak. He took part in the Quaker meals.

A teacher: The situation at home is very bad.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you think he will be a disturbance next year in the ninth grade, or whether you will be able to carry him along. With such situations, a shock like that is not exactly desirable.

A teacher: I do not think he will be a disturbance.

Dr. Steiner: Can you achieve something with him in eurythmy? A eurythmy teacher: He is trying. P.R. is deformed. Should we have a look at him specifically?

Dr. Steiner: Do we have a number of such children in the different classes? You need to do the best you can to come to grips with the children in the same groups. We can’t put P.R. aside. Is there anything to say regarding languages?

We should think about H.K. I think there is some doubt we can take him into the ninth grade. Perhaps I will come by the class tomorrow morning or the morning after. We need to have a remedial class. We need to think about that. In a lower grade, such a student would be just as disturbing.

A teacher: The children in my sixth grade class have a poor memory. There must be an error in my teaching.

Dr. Steiner: You can’t say every child’s memory is weak.

A teacher: The children cannot retain things. They don’t have any clear pictures of Egypt, for example.

Dr. Steiner: How do you attempt to teach them a pictorial idea? A report about teaching geography is given.

Dr. Steiner: The children remember the pyramids and the obelisks. You need to ask yourself whether you did everything in detail. Did you give the children a picture of the true situation in Egypt, so that they do not have holes in their pictures of Egypt? If you simply emphasize Egypt and do not give a picture of how the children get from here to Egypt, if they don’t have a living picture, then it is very possible that they cannot remember. Perhaps you need to pay more attention to going into all the details so that the children have a completely living picture, one with no holes in it, about the location of Egypt in relationship to their own. The child would know something about pyramids and obelisks, but not that they are in Egypt. You should really think about whether you did all of these things that come together as a complete picture. Have you had the children draw only Africa? Perhaps you should make a special map, including Europe, which would give them an overview of the connections.

A teacher: I asked in which direction of the compass they would look for Egypt.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps you should have them find the cities they would pass through if they went from here to Egypt. This kind of memory problem arises from some kind of holes in what they have otherwise learned. Without doubt, the memory would be better if the children had a complete picture. That was not the situation in Mr. O’s class. The children were interested, they understood everything and were enthusiastic. They remembered nothing, though, because he emphasized specific things and did not give them the overall connections. A good way of improving memory is to create the large overview.

That is true in various ways for other areas of instruction. It is particularly true for such things as geography, but also for certain things in natural history. It is, of course, particularly true for history. In history, it is important that you find every possible way of giving the children concrete images.

When you discuss things like the Persian Wars, never neglect to emphasize some person, at least where there are important connections. Today, you did the Athenian runners. I would never have neglected creating a real picture for the children of how these people lived long ago. You could, for example, go back through the generations, grandfather, son, and so forth. I would construct the series right back to the Athenian runner. The result would be fifty-five or fifty-six people lined up in a row. In that way the children would have an idea of how far back the timeline reaches. I would ask, for instance, which one was a contemporary of the Mystery of Golgotha. Use such pictures and let the children think about them. Speak about Egypt and then show them how they can get from Stuttgart to Egypt. You could stop in Venice, and then try to lighten things a little with a joke about Venice. There should be some humor in the instruction since otherwise memory will suffer.

A teacher speaks about some of the weaker children in the 6a class, particularly W.G. He is so sanguine that he is nearly an idiot. He doesn’t write the letters together nor complete words. He says whatever occurs to him.

Dr. Steiner: In his soul, this is a young child. He is at the age of seven or eight in the development of his soul. The situation is that he would not care very much if you held him back. The question is, how do we handle the whole question of promoting children in principle? This child, W.G., is one who would come under consideration. It would be good for him to go through the material a second time. We should discuss the principles of the question.

A teacher: I would be unhappy to give him up.

Dr. Steiner: He would be the only one of those you have mentioned. We could put E.W. into the extra class.

A teacher: Many of the children cannot write properly yet.

Dr. Steiner: They would all come into the remedial class. W.E. is a clear candidate for that class. He cannot properly collect his thoughts. How is he in music? Most of them will be musical. He will also not be particularly diligent in handwork class. W.E. would be hypnotized by vibrant colors.

We need to give some consideration to forming a class for remedial instruction.

There is some discussion about some of the children in the fifth grade, particularly about E.E.

A teacher: He is not keeping up, but he is gifted in languages. He is clever and sly.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to pay attention to him, to speak with him with particular attention to his individuality. You need to vary that, but give particular attention to him.

A teacher: Shouldn’t he go into the remedial class?

Dr. Steiner: What would he do there? He loves being different. It would affect him deeply if you had him make a pair of shoes. We should do something like make shoes so that he can nail things together. They should be real boots for someone else. We should have him make shoes in the handwork class, that would be something good. He would have fun putting on the soles. He could even double-sole the shoes.

Discussion of the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was in the class, and I have to say it is going well, with the exception of three or four who will quickly catch up on what they cannot do. Some are weak in arithmetic, but others are quite good. I think it is a class that has suffered very little from having had three different teachers.

We can promote the whole class to the fifth grade. The previous teacher was extremely good in discipline. She was what people in bourgeois schools refer to as strict. The children liked her a lot. Then you came. Today, their discipline was exemplary.

A teacher: I made myself strict.

Dr. Steiner: You will see the result only after you have been with them for a longer time.

L.H. certainly has weak eyes and the axes of the eyes need to become more parallel. They converge too much. Try to get him used to holding his book a little further away, just a half finger’s length more than what he is used to now. Move the location of where his vision crosses a little further from his face.

I noticed B.E. He awoke for a day. The children were all very surprised that he said something.

A teacher: M.I.’s mother is quite concerned that he inherited something from his father.

Dr. Steiner: He has a touch of childishness. He is apparently a Prussian, a little one. He is not actually disturbed, but if you wanted, you could call him weakly disturbed. He was born in Berlin and has something sweet about him through the language. With good guidance, he can become quite normal.

A teacher: He is gathering statistics about electrical trains. He keeps himself apart.

Dr. Steiner: You need to guide him lovingly. The only concern is the statistics about railways. You need to try to get him interested in something else and to break him of that. He should learn German writing.

In the second grade, you have several children who are quite good. Your problem is that the class is so large. The disturbed children, G., H.N., and M.H., should also go into the remedial class. B.R. is not quite normal. He should receive particular help in the afternoon. That is difficult with some of your children. His brain is too small. You need only look at him. He is smaller than he should be. We should try to counteract that characteristic. It is not possible for him to completely pay attention. You should call upon him more often and discuss things with him in the corridor or on the street so that he has to think while he listens. His mother is just like him.

A teacher: Many children in the first grade already have new teeth, but some do not.

Dr. Steiner: None of the children in the first grade can have finished teething. That happens only at the age of eight. What is important in connection with school age is only that they have begun to change their teeth.

O.Nr. should also be considered for the remedial class. He transposes words. We could have him for a time in the remedial class where we can work with each child individually.

A teacher mentions T.M.

Dr. Steiner: The problem with T.M. has diminished. He is already healthier.

A teacher: He has asthma attacks at night.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him with moderate amounts of arsenic in the form of Levico Water. The boy has an irregularity in the astral body that we could cure physically. Give it to him twice a week diluted in a quarter glass of water. You will then be taking all of your students into the second grade.

A teacher asks about F.O. in the present 1a class.

Dr. Steiner: The remedial class should help him so that he can come into the present second grade and the future third grade. Now we are all done with the individual classes.

A report is given about foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: You can try to achieve something by dividing into groups. We can put them into groups so that we have all those with the same knowledge and capabilities together.

A teacher: I think it would be good if we gave the sixth grade something printed to read.

Dr. Steiner: How old are they? You would have to look for a moderately long story. You would need to find a short story, something that has some substance and is not superficial. They could read something historical from Mignet. They would also learn quite a bit from it.

We will need to divide the foreign languages differently. It is so difficult to satisfy the children there. You need to ask the children questions often in foreign languages. There is a prevalent opinion that the children are unhappy. They learn the most from the lectures. It is helpful when they find their way themselves into a good lecture. Rote learning is only a crutch. You should proceed sentence by sentence and with the younger ones, only speak.

A teacher: Should the children also write in the third grade foreign languages?

Dr. Steiner: You can begin writing short, easy sentences that express some simple thought.

A teacher asks whether three songs from Dr. Steiner could be printed.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly give these choruses to the publisher in Dornach. They will sell well.

A teacher: Can we count upon having texts for the children?

Dr. Steiner: There is already something for the youngest children. The “Springtime Song.” The instrumental music class is only a substitute, but we will have to leave that for now.

A teacher: I have used some things from curative eurythmy. Should I continue with that?

Dr. Steiner: I was very satisfied with what I saw today. In the fifth grade there are a number of boys who could have a class in gymnastics. Our school program already should include one hour of that. We will make it more spiritually expressive as soon as we can.

A teacher: We have already begun modeling in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was satisfied with what I saw.

Now I would like to ask you if we should prepare the reports as we did last year. Doing the reports that way is good, just as we did last year.

A teacher: We kept them positive.

Dr. Steiner: It is important to phrase the sentences properly. If you are not individual enough, something that is difficult, if you phrase the sentences too harshly, they will put people off. If someone is dawdling, you should write that it would be desirable for him to pull himself together next year. The way you say it is important. You should express deficiencies positively, but be careful about how you say it.

Then we agree that we will do the reports as we did last year. Give as true a picture as possible. At the bottom of each report, write a verse for each child that expresses the child’s individuality, that can act as a leitmotif for the future. I would also like to see, since the child will keep the report, that all of the teachers who worked with the child sign it. I would like each child to have all the signatures. It is important that the children have all the signatures of the teachers who worked with him or her. The class teacher’s name should be first, along with “Class Teacher,” so that the child knows to whom it belongs. The others should be below. It would be good if each teacher wrote some text. The class teacher should write the most and the others should write short remarks.

Concerning the question of promotion.

Dr. Steiner: We actually only have these two P. children, and then there would be almost no one else except F. H.M. could go into the remedial class, all the others would move ahead. Now we come to the question of the remedial class. The question is whether we need another teacher. Dr. Schubert should take it. A list of teachers who are to teach the main subjects is created.

Dr. Steiner: How would it be if we had Dr. Schwebsch from Berlin come by? He is supposed to be coming here on June 11.

In the fall, we will have Dr. Röschl for Latin and Greek. That will certainly be a very good addition. We also need help, a new teacher, for modern languages. Perhaps young Englert. He is still quite young. He should come here on June 11 or perhaps before to Dornach.

A report is given about the independent religious instruction. A class teacher mentions he had attended the religion class of his class to see that they behaved. He felt like a barking dog.

Dr. Steiner: In a certain sense, a kind of exception is possible. We should keep to what is included in our pedagogy. We must assume that the class and the teacher belong together. Since different classes are together in the religion class, I certainly think it is possible that the class teacher be in the classroom while another teacher gives the instruction. We can hardly get around trying to form smaller classes.

A teacher: There is not always an inner participation. There are too many children.

Dr. Steiner: The groups are too large. That is something that should not be if the children are to take in the instruction.

We need to awaken a feeling for the seasons in the children. We also need to pay more attention that the children have a living picture of Christ. That should be the center of their thoughts at all levels. We should always return to that and see that the earthly life of Christ is the center. We must care for the personal relationship to Christ, even at the lowest grades, so that it becomes a kind of inner religion. Care for the personal relationship of the children to Christ. We must create an ideal religion in the period. Symbolism and pictures should play a role so that they strongly carry the feeling along.

As a religion teacher, you are not a part of the school. You give it as though you were a minister in an anthroposophical church outside the school and only came here.

Concerning education from the age of fourteen, that is, the pedagogy for those over fourteen years of age, we will have to see that we have some time when I return on June 10. That relates to what you referred to as “bourgeois methods.”

A teacher: Last year we included social understanding as a part of technology.

Dr. Steiner: That is connected with the academics for the upper grades. We can best teach social studies, but then we would have to drop languages. The older teachers, those who have been here at this school for two years, would have to take on such things.

Concerning a special class for eurythmy.

A eurythmy teacher: The performance was extraordinarily fruitful. It did a great deal to make the Waldorf School known. It appears we will form an extra group.

Dr. Steiner: We can do two different things. Either we can give performances with the children of the Waldorf School, in which case we simply select some from the regular group of children, or we can forego that and form a group. The group would not be the children of the Waldorf School, so we could no longer present that to the public as an achievement of the Waldorf School. We can do those two things. Either we give performances with children from the Waldorf School, in which case we cannot form a special troupe, or we form a special department for eurythmy at the Waldorf School that operates in parallel. That is something we can do quite officially, but then we would say, “Performances with children of the special class at the Waldorf School.”

A teacher: If the children were to sing in a chorus, they would also need to be selected.

Dr. Steiner: It would hardly be positive if we formed a chorus of individual students. Either we accept the achievements as they are or we create a special department for eurythmy. We can do either, perhaps depending only upon sympathy or antipathy. There are a large number of capable eurythmists we can use in that way, but we can no longer claim it is a performance of the Waldorf School.

A teacher: We could form a group from the older girls.

Dr. Steiner: We may well be able to do that if we give performances from the Waldorf School, but the littlest kids have the greatest success. There could be a special group of the more advanced eurythmists. We would, however, excuse those who are also professional eurythmists from normal eurythmy practice. We could do such things. You would have to create something separate from the school.

I think there are some who have a burning desire to do eurythmy. However, I think it would be nice if at least some of the boys were included. In Dornach, we only have S., and he needs half a year to prepare for a performance, so we never see male eurythmists on stage. You can see what eurythmy really is in Munich. There, the men performed. We debuted with four men. But then masculinity moved more and more into the background. The women are more agile. Here, the students are very capable. It is quite curious that women are much better doctors than men.

A teacher: The children in the upper grades who want to develop themselves musically need to begin practicing. Could we excuse them from those classes that inhibit their dexterity with difficult physical work?

Dr. Steiner: We could change the curriculum for individuals. That is certainly possible. We should also think about having special practice rooms. What provides human education should remain, otherwise you can specialize.

A teacher: The children have asked about a student library, and whether they could read Dr. Steiner’s books. Should the older children get something socially directed?

Dr. Steiner: When we have the tenth grade, we can use reading to educate. In general, it is too early to give them such things. On the other hand, perhaps you could give them some cycles if they are appropriately printed. Christianity as Mystical Fact, perhaps. Or, maybe Theosophy. We would have to work out the preliminaries.

A teacher asks whether students could attend Dr. Steiner’s lectures.

Dr. Steiner: Do you think that such a lecture would be helpful? We will probably not be able to get around leaving such things up to the parents. We cannot make any rule about it. The parents need to do that themselves and also be responsible for it.

A question is asked about publishing a newsletter and also about putting on pedagogical conferences for teachers. The discussions with the teachers were quite favorable.

Dr. Steiner: What did you discuss there?

A teacher: We talked about the relationship of the school to the state and also a number of pedagogical things.

Dr. Steiner: I think it would be superfluous. People misunderstand the most important points. If you want to progress in the movement, you have to approach the consumers, not the factory owners. You can do that as a pleasant chat, but nothing comes of it. I have never resisted that. If you think you should do it, then go ahead. We have already wasted so much strength by always beginning new things that have no real possibility of success. In Switzerland you can enjoy the luxury of working with teachers. During the Easter course, I had the experience that the Swiss said their schools are independent. But, the Swiss schools are really only slaves. I don’t think that we need to hurry.

We can make the Waldorf School principle only a model. We will not be able to create a second school. It will remain a model, so we need do nothing more than maintain this school as a model until people get angry enough. The only thing that would make sense would be to oppose the school laws through a worldwide movement. It is high time for the World School Association to do something. It is important to bring the World School Association to life so that a gigantic movement for the independence of education and for the freeing of the school system arises throughout the world. For that reason, I think we should make this school with its students inwardly as complete as possible and extend it upward. Add a class each year and extend it upward.

Due to a lack of help, the newsletter will not be possible. Pedagogical conferences are a luxury. Is there something else?

A question is asked about the closing ceremony.

Dr. Steiner: We can hold the closing ceremony in the main hall of the art building. If it gives the children a closing point and they receive a few thoughts, then it would be good. It is a part of their soul experiences, for otherwise the children would simply leave and then begin a new school year. In the end, they would become indifferent. The closing ceremony is the conclusion of the entire school year. The fact that the holiday is only a week is an exception. Each class will begin a new year. That should not be prosaic.

Why have we not had any more monthly festivals? That is too bad. I think we should have them.

QUESTIONER:
Dr. Steiner has spoken to us about the importance of authority in education, but this is something with which our young people want nothing to do. Every teacher, not to mention every priest, experiences it. Various currents run through our younger generation and one can certainly notice an aloofness on their part toward anything connected with the question of authority, be the authority in the parental home or authority regarding spiritual matters. Parents sometimes have the feeling that they no longer have any say in anything and that one must simply let these young people go their own way. On the other hand, one sometimes also witnesses the disillusionment of such an attitude and it is then painful to see young people not finding what they were seeking. There is something in the air that simply seems to forbid a respectful attitude toward older people, something that is like a deep-seated sting, ever ready to strike against authority in whatever form. Perhaps Dr. Steiner would be kind enough to tell us something about the reasons for this strange ferment among the younger generation. Why are they not happy? Why do they take special pleasure in complaining? It saddens us that we are no longer able to reach them. I have sought help by studying books dealing with this problem, but I have so far not found a single one that could show me the way forward. I would therefore be very happy if Dr. Steiner could say something to give us insight into the soul of a young person.

RUDOLF STEINER:
This is, of course, a subject that, unfortunately, were I were to deal with it in any depth, would require a whole lecture of at least the same length as the one I have just given you—I say unfortunately because you would have to listen to me for such a long time! I would, however, like to say at least a few words in response to the previous speaker’s remarks.

During my life, which by now can no longer be described as short, I have tried to follow up various life situations related to this question. On one hand, I have really experienced what it means to hear, in one’s childhood, a great deal of talk about a highly esteemed and respected relative whom one had not yet met in person. I have known what it is to become thoroughly familiar with the reverence toward such a person that is shared by all members of the household, by one’s parents as well as by others connected with one’s upbringing. I have experienced what it means to be led for the first time to the room of such a person, to hold the door handle in my hand, feeling full of awe and reverence. To have undergone such an experience is of lasting importance for the whole of one’s life. There can be no genuine feeling for freedom, consistent with human dignity, that does not have its roots in the experience of reverence and veneration such as one can feel deeply in one’s childhood days.

On the other hand, I have also witnessed something rather different. In Berlin, I made the acquaintance of a well-known woman socialist, who often made public speeches. One day I read, in an otherwise quite respectable newspaper, an article of hers entitled, “The Revolution of our Children.” In it, in true socialist style, she developed the theme of how, after the older generation had fought—or at least talked about—the revolution, it was now the children’s turn to act. It was not even clear whether children of preschool age were to be included in that revolution. This is a different example of how the question of authority has been dealt with during the last decades.

As a third example, I would like to quote a proposal, made in all seriousness by an educationalist who recommended that a special book be kept at school in which at the end of each week—it may have been at the end of each month—the pupils were to enter what they thought about their teachers. The idea behind this proposal was to prepare them for a time in the near future when teachers would no longer give report “marks” to their pupils but pupils would give grades to their teachers.

None of these examples can be judged rightly unless they are seen against the background of life as a whole. This will perhaps appear paradoxical to you, but I do believe that this whole question can be answered only within a wider context. As a consequence of our otherwise magnificent scientific and technical culture—which, in keeping with its own character, is bound to foster the intellect—the human soul has gradually become less and less permeated by living spirit. Today, when people imagine what the spirit is like, they usually reach only concepts and ideas about it. Those are only mental images of something vaguely spiritual. This, at any rate, is how the most influential philosophers of our time speak about the spiritual worlds as they elaborate their conceptual theories of education. This “conceptuality” is, of course, the very thing that anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to overcome. Spiritual science does not want its adherents merely to talk about the spirit or to bring it down into concepts and ideas; it wants human beings to imbue themselves with living spirit. If this actually happens to people, they very soon begin to realize that we have gradually lost touch with the living spirit. They recognize that it is essential that we find our way back to the living spirit. So-called intellectually enlightened people in particular have lost the inner experience of living spirit. At best, they turn into agnostics, who maintain that natural science can reach only a certain level of knowledge and that that level represents the ultimate limit of what can in fact be known. The fact that the real struggle for knowledge only begins at this point, and that it leads to a living experience of the spiritual world—of this, generally speaking, our educated society has very little awareness.

And what was the result, or rather what was the cause, of our having lost the spirit in our spoken words? Today, you will find that what you read in innumerable articles and books basically consists of words spilling more or less automatically from the human soul. If one is open-minded and conversant with the current situation, one often needs to read no more than the first few lines or pages of an article or book in order to know what the author is thinking about the various points in question. The rest follows almost automatically out of the words themselves. Once the spirit has gone out of life, the result is an empty phrase-bound, cliché-ridden language, and this is what so often happens in today’s cultural life. When people speak about cultural or spiritual matters or when they wish to participate in the cultural spiritual sphere of life, it is often no longer the living spirit that speaks through their being. It is clichés that dominate their language. This is true not only of how individuals express themselves. We find it above all in our “glorious” state education. Only think for a moment of how little of real substance is to be found in one or another political party that offers the most persuasive slogans or “party-phrases.” People become intoxicated by these clichés. Slogans might to some degree satisfy the intellect, but party phrases will not grasp real life. And so it must be said that what we find when we reach the heights of agnosticism—which has already penetrated deeply into our society—is richly saturated with empty phrases. Living so closely with such clichés, we no longer feel a need for what is truly living in language. Words no longer rise from profound enough depths of the human soul. Change will occur only if we permeate ourselves with the spirit once more. Two weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Goetheanum under the heading, “Spiritual Life Is Buried Alive.” In it, I drew attention to the sublime quality of the writing that can still be found among authors who wrote around the middle of the nineteenth century. Only very few people are aware of this. I showed several people some of these books that looked as if they had been read almost continually for about a decade, after which they seemed to have been consigned to dust. Full of surprise, they asked me, “Where did you find those books?” I explained that I am in the habit, now and then, of poring over old books in second-hand bookshops. In those bookshops, I consult the appropriate catalogs and ask for certain chosen books to be delivered to wherever I am staying. In that way I manage to find totally forgotten books of all kinds, books that will never be reprinted but that give clear evidence of how the spirit has been “buried alive” in our times, at least to a certain extent.

Natural science is protected from falling into such clichés simply because of its close ties to experimentation and observation. When making experiments, one is dealing with actual spiritual facts that have their place in the general ordering of natural laws. But, excepting science, we have been gradually sliding into a life heavily influenced by clichés and phrases, by-products of the overspecialization of the scientific, technological development of our times. Apart from many other unhappy circumstances of our age, it is to living in such a phrase-ridden, clichéd language that we must attribute the problem raised by the previous speaker. For a child’s relationship to an adult is an altogether imponderable one. The phrase might well flourish in adult conversations, and particularly so in party-political meetings, but if one speaks to children in mere phrases, clichés, they cannot make anything of them. And what happens when we speak in clichés—no matter whether the subject is religious, scientific, or unconventionally open-minded? The child’s soul does not receive the necessary sustenance, for empty phrases cannot offer proper nourishment to the soul. This, in turn, lets loose the lower instincts. You can see it happening in the social life of Eastern Europe, where, through Leninism and Trotskyism, an attempt was made to establish the rule of the phrase. This, of course, can never work creatively and in Soviet Russia, therefore, the worst instincts have risen from the lower regions. For the same reason, instincts have risen up and come to the fore in our own younger generation. Such instincts are not even unhealthy in every respect, but they show that the older generation has been unable to endow language with the necessary soul qualities. Basically, the problems presented by our young are consequences of problems within the adult world; at least when regarded in a certain light, they are parents’ problems. When meeting the young, we create all too easily an impression of being frightfully clever, making them feel frightfully stupid, whereas those who are able to learn from children are mostly the wisest people. If one does not approach the young with empty phrases, one meets them in a totally different way. The relationship between the younger generation and the adult world reflects our not having given it sufficient warmth of soul. This has contributed to their present character. That we must not blame everything that has gone wrong entirely on the younger generation becomes clearly evident, dear friends, by their response to what is being done for our young people in the Waldorf school, even during the short time of its existence.

As you have seen already, Waldorf education is primarily a question of finding the right teachers. I must confess that whenever I come to Stuttgart to visit and assist in the guidance of the Waldorf school—which unfortunately happens only seldom—I ask the same question in each class, naturally within the appropriate context and avoiding any possible tedium, “Children, do you love your teachers?” You should hear and witness the enthusiasm with which they call out in chorus, “Yes!” This call to the teachers to engender love within their pupils is all part of the question of how the older generation should relate to the young. In this context, it seems appropriate to mention that we decided from the beginning to open a complete primary school, comprising all eight classes in order to cover the entire age range of an elementary school. And sometimes, when entering the school building, one could feel quite alarmed at the apparent lack of discipline, especially during break times. Those who jump to judgment too quickly said, “You see what a free Waldorf school is like! The pupils lose all sense of discipline.” What they did not realize was that the pupils who had come to us from other schools had been brought up under so-called “iron discipline.” Actually, they have already calmed down considerably but, when they first arrived under the influence of their previous “iron discipline,” they were real scamps. The only ones who were moderately well-behaved were the first graders who had come directly from their parental homes—and even then, this was not always the case. Nevertheless, whenever I visit the Waldorf school, I notice a distinct improvement in discipline. And now, after a little more than two years of existence, one can see a great change. Our pupils certainly won’t turn into “apple-polishers” but they know that, if something goes wrong, they can always approach their teachers and trust them to enter into the matter sympathetically. This makes the pupils ready to confide. They may be noisy and full of boisterous energy—they certainly are not inhibited—but they are changing, and what can be expected in matters of discipline is gradually evolving. What I called in my lecture a natural sense of authority is also steadily growing.

For example, it is truly reassuring to hear the following report. A pupil entered the Waldorf school. He was already fourteen years old and was therefore placed into our top class. When he arrived, he was a thoroughly discontented boy who had lost all faith in his previous school. Obviously, a new school cannot offer a panacea to such a boy in the first few days. The Waldorf school must be viewed as a whole—if you were to cut a small piece from a painting, you could hardly give a sound judgment on the whole painting. There are people, for instance, who believe that they know all about the Waldorf school after having visited it for only one or two days. This is nonsense. One cannot become fully acquainted with the methods of anthroposophy merely by sampling a few of them. One must experience the spirit pervading the whole work. And so it was for the disgruntled boy who entered our school so late in the day. Naturally, what he encountered there during the first few days could hardly give him the inner peace and satisfaction for which he was hoping. After some time, however, he approached his history teacher, who had made a deep impression on him. The boy wanted to speak with this teacher, to whom he felt he could open his heart and tell of his troubles. This conversation brought about a complete change in the boy. Such a thing is only possible through the inner sense of authority of which I have spoken. These things become clear when this matter-of-fact authority has arisen by virtue of the quality of the teachers and their teaching. I don’t think that I am being premature in saying that the young people who are now passing through the Waldorf school are hardly likely to exhibit the spirit of non-cooperation with the older generation of which the previous speaker spoke. It is really up to the teachers to play their parts in directing the negative aspects of the “storm and stress” fermenting in our youth into the right channels.

In the Waldorf school, we hold regular teacher meetings that differ substantially from those in other schools. During those meetings, each child is considered in turn and is discussed from a psychological point of view. All of us have learned a very great deal during these two years of practicing Waldorf pedagogy. This way of educating the young has truly grown into one organic whole.

We would not have been able to found our Waldorf school if we had not been prepared to make certain compromises. Right at the beginning, I drafted a memorandum that was sent to the education authorities. In it, we pledged to bring our pupils in their ninth year up to the generally accepted standards of learning, thus enabling them to enter another school if they so desired. The same generally accepted levels of achievement were to be reached in their twelfth and again in their fourteenth year. But, regarding our methods of teaching, we requested full freedom for the intervening years. This does constitute a compromise, but one must work within the given situation. It gave us the possibility of putting into practice what we considered to be essential for a healthy and right way of teaching. As an example, consider the case of school reports. From my childhood reports I recall certain phrases, such as “almost praiseworthy,” “hardly satisfactory” and so on. But I never succeeded in discovering the wisdom behind my teachers’ distinction of a “hardly satisfactory” from an “almost satisfactory” mark. You must bear with me, but this is exactly how it was. In the Waldorf school, instead of such stereotyped phrases or numerical marks, we write reports in which teachers express in their own style how each pupil has fared during the year. Our reports do not contain abstract remarks that must seem like mere empty phrases to the child. For, if something makes no sense, it is a mere phrase. As each child gradually grows up into life, the teachers write in their school reports what each pupil needs to know about him- or herself. Each report thus contains its own individual message, representing a kind of biography of the pupil’s life at school during the previous school year. Furthermore, we end our reports with a little verse, specially composed for each child, epitomizing the year’s progress. Naturally, writing this kind of report demands a great deal of time. But the child receives a kind of mirror of itself. So far, I have not come across a single student who did not show genuine interest in his or her report, even if it contained some real home truths. Especially the aptly chosen verse at the end is something that can become of real educational value to the child. One must make use of all means possible to call forth in the children the feeling that their guides and educators have taken the task of writing these reports very seriously, and that they have done so not in a onesided manner, but from a direct and genuine interest in their charges. A great deal depends on our freeing ourselves from the cliché-ridden cultivation of the phrase so characteristic of our times, and on our showing the right kind of understanding for the younger generation. I am well aware that this is also connected with psychological predispositions of a more national character, and to gain mastery over these is an even more difficult task.

It might surprise you to hear that in none of the various anthroposophical conferences that we have held during the past few months was there any lack of younger members. They were always there and I never minced my words when speaking to them. But they soon realized that I was not addressing them with clichés or empty phrases. Even if they heard something very different from what they had expected, they could feel that what I said came straight from the heart, as all words of real value do. During our last conference in Stuttgart in particular, a number of young persons representing the youth movement were again present and, after a conversation with them lasting some one-and-a-half or two hours, it was unanimously decided to actually found an anthroposophical youth group, and this despite the fact that young people do not usually value anything even vaguely connected with authority, for they believe that everything has to grow from within, out of themselves, a principle that they were certainly not prepared to abandon.

What really matters is how the adults meet the young, how they approach them. From experience—many times confirmed—I can only point out that this whole question of the younger generation is often a question of the older generation. As such, it can perhaps be best answered by looking a little less at the younger generation and looking a little more deeply into ourselves.

A PERSON FROM THE AUDIENCE:
Perhaps, at this point, a member of the younger generation might be allowed to speak up. Please forgive my speaking plainly, but the truth is that we younger people have lost all respect for authority, for older people. Why? because our parents, too, have lost it. When talking to them or to other adults, we find that all that they can do is to criticize all kinds of unimportant, niggling things in others—thus showing their own generation in a bad light. We young people sometimes feel that those who are trying to educate us have become walking compromises, incapable of making up their minds on which side they stand, unable to state from the fullness of their hearts what their opinions are, unable to stand up for what they believe in. And we all the time have the feeling that our parents and educators do not in fact want to learn what we young are really like. Instead, they keep criticizing and condemning us. I need only to think of how we in our youth circle work together and what kind of things we study. For instance, we have read and discussed together Blüchner and Morgenstern. Just imagine those two polar opposites! This sort of thing happens with us all the time. Events in the world buffet us and nowhere can we find a center to give us a firm grasp. Nowhere can we find a really living person who can stand above it all with a comprehensive viewpoint—not even a person who can do so conceptually. How is it possible to teach unless behind everything that is taught there is a real living human being, whom one can feel coming through his or her teaching? . . . If that were to happen, it would rouse our enthusiasm. But, as long as our teachers do not approach us as human beings, as long as they are afraid even, sometimes, to laugh at themselves, we simply cannot feel the necessary confidence in them. I can say with complete conviction that we young people are really seeking adults to whom we can look up as authorities. We are looking for a center, for a firm grip with which we can pull ourselves up and that would enable us to grow into the kind of life that has an inner reality. That is why we throw ourselves into everything new that appears on the horizon: we always hope to discover something that could have a real meaning for us. But whenever this happens, we find nothing but a confusion of opinions and attitudes. We find judgments that are not real judgments at all, but are at best only criticisms.

If I may say something to the first speaker, who asked for a book to explain why young people behave as they do, I say: Don’t read a book. To find an answer, read us young people! If you want to talk to the younger generation, you must approach them as living human beings. You must be ready to open yourself to them. Young people will then do the same and young and old will become clear about what each is looking for.

QUESTIONER:
As a teacher, I would like to ask Dr. Steiner whether he himself does not believe what the first speaker in today’s discussion brought up; namely, that a quite new mood and spirit are stirring among young people today. This might perhaps be more evident in the larger cities, where even teachers with a deeply human attitude are no longer able to cope with difficulties as they were able to some fifty years ago. The source of the problem has been rightly sought in the older generation. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that today’s youth, under the influence of social-democratic ideas, is pervaded by skepticism to the extent that a teacher of Dr. Steiner’s persuasion might not be able to imagine the kind of insolence and arrogance with which we have to put up. Socialistic contradictions are rife among the young, creating a false urge for independence in them that makes the teachers’ tasks far more difficult than they were some time ago. Indeed, our job is now often almost impossible. What Dr. Steiner said gave the impression that the behavior of our youth merely reflects the shortcomings of their teachers. Certainly, teachers must take their share of the blame, but is it all the teachers’ fault? Are all teachers to blame? That is the question. Is it not the case that the few good teachers, who are not to blame, nevertheless bluntly state that a new and different kind of youth has appeared and that lack of faith and skepticism among them makes the teacher’s task far more difficult?

RUDOLF STEINER:
Well, if you put the question in this way, it is impossible to move forward. Putting it thus will not produce anything fruitful. It is the wrong way to begin. To declare that young people have changed and that it might have been easier to deal with them fifty years ago is not the point at all; the crux of the matter is to find ways and means of coping with the problem. After all, the younger generation is there, growing up in our midst. Nor is it productive to speak of our youth as being led into skepticism by social-democratic prejudices. That is as futile as if one were to criticize something in nature because it was growing in an undesirable way—and that is what is happening with the young. They are growing up among us like products of nature. Rather than stating the fact that the young have changed, and that perhaps it was easier to deal with them fifty years ago, the only way forward is to find ways and means of enabling the older generation to cooperate with the young again. We shall find no answer if we merely point out that today’s youth is different from what it was fifty years ago, as if this were something to be accepted more or less fatalistically. That kind of attitude will never lead us to find an answer to this problem. Of course, the young have changed! And, if we observe life, we can see that the change has its positive aspects, too—that we could speak of it as a change toward something greater. Let me remind you, for instance, of the generational conflicts that we find expressed in literature. You can read them or see them performed on the stage. You still sometimes come across performances of plays from the late 1880s when the relationship between the younger and older generation was vividly portrayed. You will see that what we are discussing is an age-old problem. It has been regarded for centuries as a kind of catastrophe. By comparison, what is happening today is mere child’s play! But, as I said before, merely to state facts will not lead us further.

The question everywhere is how to regain the lost respect for authority in individual human beings that will enable you as teachers and educators to find the right relationship to the young. That it is generally correct to state that young people do not find the necessary conditions for such a respect and sense of authority in the older generation and that they find among its members an attitude of compromise is in itself, in my opinion, no evidence against what I have said. This striving for compromise can be found on a much wider scale even in world events, so that the question of how to regain respect for human authority and dignity could be extended to a worldwide level. I would like to add that—of course—I realize that there exist good and devoted teachers as described by the last speaker. But the pupils usually behave differently when taught by those good teachers. If one discriminates, one can observe that the young respond quite differently in their company.

We must not let ourselves be led into an attitude of complaining and doubting by judgments that are too strongly colored by our own hypotheses, but must be clear that ultimately the way in which the younger generation behaves is, in general, conditioned by the older generation. My observations were not meant to imply that teachers were to be held solely responsible for the faults of the young. At this point, I feel rather tempted to point to how lack of respect for authority is revealed in its worst light when we look at some of the events of recent history. Only remember certain moments during the last, catastrophic war. There was a need to replace older, leading personalities. What kind of person was chosen? In France, Clemenceau, in Germany, Hertling—all old men of the most ancient kind who carried a certain authority only because they had once been important personalities. But they were no longer the kind of person who could take his or her stance from a direct grasp of the then current situation. And what is happening now? Only recently the prime ministers of three leading countries found their positions seriously jeopardized. Yet all three are still in office, simply because no other candidate could be found who carried sufficient weight of authority! That was the only reason for their survival as prime ministers. And so we find that, in important world happenings, too, a general sense of authority has been undermined, even in leading figures. You can hardly blame the younger generation for that! But these symptoms have a shattering effect on the young who witness them.

We really have to tackle this whole question at a deeper level and, above all, in a more positive light. We must be clear that, instead of complaining about the ways in which the young confront their elders, we should be thinking of how we can improve our own attitude toward young. To continue telling them how wrong they are and that it is no longer possible to cooperate with them can never lead to progress. In order to work toward a more fruitful future, we must look for what the spiritual cultural sphere, and life in general, can offer to help us regain respect and trust in the older generation. Those who know the young know that they are only too happy when they can have faith in their elders again. This is really true. Their skepticism ceases as soon as they can find something of real value, something in which they can believe. Generally speaking, we cannot yet say that life is ruled by what is right. But, if we offer our youth something true, they will feel attracted to it. If we no longer believe this to be the case, if all that we do is moan and groan about youth’s failings, then we shall achieve nothing at all.

We will now speak of some further details of method, though of course in this short time I can only pick out a few examples to give you.

When we consider the whole period between the change of teeth and puberty we can see that it divides itself again into three sections, and it is these three sections that we must bear in mind when we have to guide the children through these early years of school life.

First we have the age up to the point of time which I have described to you here, when the child begins to differentiate himself from his environment and makes a distinction between “subject”—his own self, and “object”—the things which surround him in the outside world; up to this point of time it is essential for us to teach in such a way that everything within the child or without him bears the character of a unity. I have shown you how that can be done artistically. Then, in the second period, we saw how the transition to descriptions of the outside world can be made through our teaching of plant and animal life. You can treat these things in quite an elementary way up till the twelfth year. The third section extends from the twelfth year up to puberty, and it is really only at this time that we can pass on to lifeless nature, for it is only now that the child really begins to understand the inanimate world.

We might indeed say that from the seventh year to about nine-and-a-half or nine-and-one-third the child takes in everything with his soul. There is nothing that the child would not take in with his soul. The trees, the stars, the clouds, the stones, everything is absorbed by the child's soul life. From about nine-and-a-third to about eleven-and-two-thirds the child already perceives the difference between the soul quality which he sees in himself and what is merely “living.” We can now speak of the whole earth as living. Thus we have the soul quality and the living quality. Then from eleven-and-two-thirds to about fourteen the child discriminates between what is of the soul, what is living, and what is dead, that is to say, what is based on the laws of cause and effect.

We should not speak to the child of Inanimate things at all before he approaches his twelfth year. Only then should we begin to speak about minerals, physical phenomena, chemical phenomena and so on. We must make it clear to ourselves that this is really how things are: in the child between the change of teeth and puberty it is not the intellect but the fantasy that is predominantly active; we must constantly be thinking of the child's fantasy, and therefore, as I have often said, we must especially develop fantasy in ourselves. If we do not do this, but pass over to all kinds of intellectual things when the child is still quite young, then he cannot go through his development rightly even in his physical body. And much that is pathological at the present day arises from the fact that in this materialistic age too much attention has been paid to the intellect in children between the change of teeth and puberty.

We should only very gradually introduce the lifeless world when the child is approaching his twelfth year, for this lifeless world must be grasped by the intellect. At this time we can introduce minerals, physical and chemical phenomena and so on. But even here we should connect it up with life as far as possible, not simply start, for instance, with a collection of minerals, but start from the earth, the soil, and first describe the mountain ranges, how they bring about the configuration of the earth; then we can speak of how the mountains are surrounded with soil at their foot, and the higher we go the more bare they become and the fewer plants there are. So we come to speak of the bareness of the mountains and point out that here there are minerals. Thus we start with the mountains and lead on to the minerals.

Then when we have given a clear description of the mountains we can show the children a mineral and say: this is what you would find if you were to take this path up the mountain. This is where it is found. When you have done this with a few different minerals you can pass on to speak of the minerals themselves. But you must do the other first, here again proceeding from the whole and not from the part. This is of very great importance.

For physical phenomena also it is just as important to start from life itself. You should not begin your teaching of Physics as set forth in the text books of today, but simply by lighting a match for instance and letting the children observe how it begins to burn; you must draw their attention to all the details, what the flame looks like, what it is like outside, what it is like further in, and how a black spot, a little black cap is left when you blow out the flame; and only when you have done this, begin to explain how the fire in the match came about. The fire came about through the generation of warmth, and so on. Thus you must connect everything with life itself.

Or take the example of a lever: do not begin by saying that a lever consists of a supported beam at the one end of which there is a force, and at the other end another force, as one so often finds in the Physics books. You should start from a pair of scales; let the child imagine that you are going to some shop where things are being weighed out, and from this pass on to equilibrium and balance, and to the conception of weight and gravity. Always develop your Physics from life itself, and your chemical phenomena also.

That is the essential thing, to begin with real life in considering the different phenomena of the physical and mineral world. If you do it the other way, beginning with an abstraction, then something very curious happens to the child; the lesson itself soon makes him tired. He does not get tired if you start from real life. He gets tired if you start from abstractions.

The golden rule for the whole of teaching is that the child should not tire. Now there is something very strange about the so-called experimental education of the present day. Experimental psychologists register when a child becomes tired in any kind of mental activity, and from this they decide how long to occupy a child with any one subject, in order to avoid fatigue.

This whole conception is wrong from beginning to end. The truth of the matter is as follows: you can read about it in my books, especially in the book Riddles of the Soul and in various lecture courses; all I shall do now is to remind you that man consists of three members—the nerve-senses man, that is, all that sustains man in the activity of his mind and spirit; the rhythmic man, which contains the whole rhythm of breathing, the circulation of the blood and so on; and the metabolic-limb man, in which is to be found everything that is metamorphosed by means of the different substances.

Now if you take the physical development of the child from birth to the change of teeth you will find it is specially the head-organisation, the nerve-senses organisation that is at work.¹ The child develops from the head downwards in the early years of his life. You must examine this closely. Look first of all at a human embryo, an unborn child. The head is enormous and the rest of the body is still stunted. Then the child is born and his head is still outwardly the largest, strongest part, and out of the head proceeds the whole growth of the child.

This is no longer the case with the child between the seventh and fourteenth year. Rhythm of breathing, rhythm of the blood, the whole rhythmic system is what holds sway between the change of teeth and puberty. Only rhythm!

But what is the real nature of rhythm? Now if I think a great deal, particularly if I have to study, I get tired, I get tired in my head. If I have to walk far, which is an exertion for my limb organism, I also tire. The head, or the nerve-senses organism, and the metabolic-limb organism can get tired. But the rhythmic organism can never tire.

For just think; you breathe all day long. Your heart beats at night as well as in the day. It must never stop, from birth to death. The rhythm of it has to go on all the time, and cannot ever tire. It never gets tired at all.

Now in education and teaching you must address yourself to whichever system is predominant in man; thus between the change of teeth and puberty you must address yourself to rhythm in the child by using pictures. Everything that you describe or do must be done in such a way that the head has as little to do with it as possible, but the heart, the rhythm, everything that is artistic or rhythmic, must be engaged. What is the result? The result is that with teaching of this kind the child never gets tired, because you are engaging his rhythmic system and not his head.

People are so terribly clever, and in this materialistic age they have thought out a scheme whereby the children should always be allowed to romp about between lessons. Now it is certainly good to let them romp about, but it is good because of the soul qualities in it, because of the delight they have in it. For experiments have been made and it has been found that when the children are properly taught in lesson time they are less tired than when they play about outside. The movement of their limbs tires them more, whereas what you give them in their lessons in the right way should never tire them at all. And the more you develop the pictorial element with the children and the less you exert the intellect, by presenting everything in a living way, the more you will be making demands on the rhythmic system only, and the less will the child become tired. Therefore when the experimental psychologists come and make observations to see how much the child tires, what is it they really observe? They observe how badly you have taught. If you had taught well you would find no fatigue on the part of the children.

In our work with children of Elementary School age we must see to it that we engage the rhythmic system only. The rhythmic system never tires, and is not over-exerted when we employ it in the right way, and for this rhythmic system we need not an intellectual but rather a pictorial method of presentation, something that comes out of the fantasy. Therefore it is imperative that fantasy should hold sway in the school. This must still be so even in the last period of which we have spoken, from eleven-and-two-thirds to fourteen years; we must still make the lifeless things live through fantasy and always connect them with real life. It is possible to connect all the phenomena of Physics with real life, but we ourselves must have fantasy in order to do it. This is absolutely necessary.

Now this fantasy should above all be the guiding principle in what are called compositions, when the children have to write about something and work it out for themselves. Here what must be strictly avoided is to let the children write a composition about anything that you have not first talked over with them in great detail, so that the subject is familiar to them. You yourself, with the authority of the teacher and educator, should have first spoken about the subject with the children; then the child should produce his composition under the influence of what you yourself have said. Even when the children are approaching puberty you must still not depart from this principle. Even then the child should not just write whatever occurs to him; he should always feel that a certain mood has been aroused in him through having discussed the subject with his teacher, and all that he then himself writes in his essay must preserve this mood.

Here again it is “aliveness” that must be the guiding principle. “Aliveness” in the teacher must pass over to “aliveness” in the children.

As you will see from all this, the whole of your teaching and education must be taken from real life. This is something which you can often hear said nowadays. People say that lessons must be given in a living way and in accordance with reality. But first of all we must acquire a feeling for what is actually in accordance with reality. I will give you an example from my own experience of what sometimes happens in practice even when in theory people hold the most excellent educational principles.

I once went into a classroom—I will not say where it was—where an Arithmetic example was being given which was supposed to connect addition with real life. 14 2/3, 16 5/6 and 25 3/5 for example, were not simply to be added together, but were to be related to life. This was done in the following way: The children were told that one man was born on 25th March, 1895, another on 27th August, 1888, and a third on 3rd December, 1899. How old are these three men together? That was the question. And the sum was quite seriously carried through in the following way: from the given date in 1895 to 1924 [The date of this Lecture Course.] is 29 3/4; this is the age of the first man. The second one up to 1924 is about 26 1/2 years old, and the third, from 1899, as he was born on 3rd December, we may say 25. The children were then told that when they add up these ages they will find out how old they all are together.

But my dear friends, I should just like to ask how it is possible that they can make up a certain sum together with their ages? How do you set about it? Of course the numbers can quite well be made up into a sum, but where can you find such a sum in reality? The men are all living at the same time, so that they cannot possibly experience such a thing together in any way. A sum like this is not in the very least taken from life.

It was pointed out to me that this sum was actually taken from a book of examples. I then looked at this book and I found several other ingenious examples of the same kind. In many places I have found that this kind of thing has repercussions in ordinary life, and that is the important thing about it. For what we do at school affects ordinary life, and if the school teaching is wrong, that is if we bring such an unreality into an arithmetical example, then this way of thinking will be adopted by the young people and will be taken into ordinary life. I do not know if it is the same in England, but all over Central Europe when, let us say, several criminals are accused and condemned together, then you sometimes read in the papers: all five together have received sentences of imprisonment totalling 75 1/2 years. One has ten years, another twenty and so on, but it is all added up together. This you can find repeatedly in the newspapers. I should like to know what meaning a sum like that can have in reality. For each single prisoner who is sentenced, the 75 years together certainly have no meaning; they will all of them be free long before the 75 years are over, so that it has no reality at all.

You see, that is the important thing, to make straight for the reality in everything: you simply poison a child to whom you give a sum like this which is absolutely impossible in real life.

You must guide the child to think only about things that are to be found in life. Then through your teaching reality will be carried back into life again. In our time we suffer terribly from the unreality of men's thinking, and the teacher has need to consider this very carefully.

There is a theory in this age which, though postulated by men who are considered to be extraordinarily clever, is really only a product of education. It is the so-called Theory of Relativity. I hope you have already heard something of this theory which is connected with the name of Einstein; there is much in it that is correct. I do not want to combat what is right in it, but it has been distorted in the following way. Let us imagine that a cannon is fired off somewhere. It is said that if you are so many miles away, after a certain length of time you hear the report of the cannon. If you do not stand still but walk away from the sound, then you hear it later. The quicker you walk away the later you get the impression of the sound. If you do the opposite and walk towards the sound you will be hearing it sooner and sooner all the time.

But now if you continue this thought you come to the possible conception, which is however an impossibility in reality, that you approach the sound more quickly than it travels itself, and then if you think this out to its conclusion you come to the point of saying to yourself: then there is also a possibility of hearing the sound before the cannon is fired off!

That is what it can lead to, if theories arise out of a kind of thinking which is not in accordance with reality. A man who can think in accordance with reality must sometimes have very painful experiences. For in Einstein's books you even find, for instance, how you could take a watch and send it out into the universe at the speed of light, and then let it come back again; we are then told what happens to this watch if it goes out at the speed of light and comes back again. I should like to get an actual sight of this watch which, having whizzed away at this speed, then comes back again; I should like to know what it looks like then! The essential thing is that we never lose sight of reality in our thinking.

Herein lies the root of all evil in much of the education of today, and you find, for instance, in the “exemplary” Kindergartens that different kinds of work are thought out for the child to do. In reality we should make the children do nothing, even in play, that is not an imitation of life itself. All Froebel occupations and the like, which have been thought out for the children, are really bad. We must make it a rule only to let the children do what is an imitation of life, even in play. This is extremely important.

For this reason, as I have already told you, we should not think out what are called “ingenious” toys, but as far as possible with dolls or other toys we should leave as much as we can to the child's own fantasy. This is of great significance, and I would earnestly beg you to make it a rule not to let anything come into your teaching and education that is not in some way connected with life.

The same rule applies when you ask the children to describe something themselves. You should always call their attention to it if they stray from reality. The intellect never penetrates as deeply into reality as fantasy does. Fantasy can go astray, it is true, but it is rooted in reality, whereas the intellect remains always on the surface. That is why it is so infinitely important for the teacher himself to be in touch with reality as he stands in his class.

In order that this may be so we have our Teachers' Meetings in the Waldorf School which are the heart and soul of the whole teaching. In these meetings, each teacher speaks of what he himself has learnt in his class and from all the children in it, so that each one learns from the other. No school is really alive where this is not the most important thing, this regular meeting of the teachers.

And indeed there is an enormous amount one can learn there. In the Waldorf School we have mixed classes, girls and boys together. Now quite apart from what the boys and girls say to each other, or what they consciously exchange with each other, there is a marked difference to be seen in the classes according to whether there are more girls than boys or more boys than girls or an equal number of each. For years I have been watching this, and it has always proved to be the case that there is something different in a class where there are more girls than boys.

In the latter case you will very soon find that you yourself as the teacher become less tired, because the girls grasp things more easily than boys and with greater eagerness too. You will find many other differences also. Above all, you will very soon discover that the boys themselves gain in quickness of comprehension when they are in a minority, whereas the girls lose by it if they are in the minority. And so there are numerous differences which do not arise through the way they talk together or treat each other but which remain in the sphere of the imponderable and are themselves imponderable things.

All these things must be very carefully watched, and everything that concerns either the whole class or individual children is spoken of in our meetings, so that every teacher really has the opportunity to gain an insight into characteristic individualities among the pupils.

There is one thing that is of course difficult in the Waldorf School method. We have to think much more carefully than is usually the case in class teaching, how one can really bring the children on. For we are striving to teach by “reading” from the particular age of a child what should be given him at this age. All I have said to you is directed towards this goal.

Now suppose a teacher has a child of between nine and ten years in the class that is right for his age, but with quite an easy mind he lets this child stay down and not go up with the rest of the class; the consequence will be that in the following year this child will be receiving teaching which is meant for an age of life different from his own. Therefore under all circumstances we avoid letting the children stay down in the same class even if they have not reached the required standard. This is not so convenient as letting the children stay in the class where they are and repeat the work, but we avoid this at all costs. The only corrective we have is to put the very weak ones into a special class for the more backward children.²

Children who are in any way below standard come into this class from all the other classes.

Otherwise, as I have said, we do not let the children stay down but we try to bring them along with us under all circumstances, so that in this way each child really receives what is right for his particular age.

We must also consider those children who have to leave school at puberty, at the end of the Elementary School period, and who cannot therefore participate in the upper classes. We must make it our aim that by this time, through the whole tenor of our teaching, they will have come to a perception of the world which is in accordance with life itself. This can be done in a two-fold way. On the one hand we can develop all our lessons on Science and History in such a manner that the children, at the end of their schooling, have some knowledge of the being of man and some idea of the place of man in the world. Everything must lead up to a knowledge of man, reaching a measure of wholeness when the children come to the seventh and eighth classes, that is when they have reached their thirteenth and fourteenth year. Then all that they have already learnt will enable them to understand what laws, forces and substances are at work in man himself, and how man is connected with all physical matter in the world, with all that is of soul in the world, with all spirit in the world. So that the child, of course in his own way, knows what a human being is within the whole cosmos. This then is what we strive to achieve on the one hand.

On the other hand we try to give the children an understanding of life. It is actually the case today that most people, especially those who grow up in the town, have no idea how a substance, paper for instance, is made. There are a great many people who do not know how the paper on which they write or the material they are wearing is manufactured, nor, if they wear leather shoes, how the leather is prepared.

Think how many people there are who drink beer and have no idea how the beer is made. This is really a monstrous state of affairs. Now we cannot of course achieve everything in this direction, but we try to make it our aim as far as possible to give the children some knowledge of the work done in the most varied trades, and to see to it that they themselves also learn how to do certain kinds of work which are done in real life.

It is, however, extraordinarily difficult, in view of what is demanded of children today by the authorities, to succeed with an education that is really in accordance with life itself. One has to go through some very painful experiences. Once for instance, owing to family circumstances, a child had to leave when he had just completed the second class and begun a new year in the third. He had to continue his education in another school. We were then most bitterly reproached because he had not got so far in Arithmetic as was expected of him there, nor in Reading or Writing. Moreover they wrote and told us that the Eurythmy and Painting and all the other things he could do were of no use to him at all.

If therefore, we educate the children not only out of the knowledge of man, but in accordance with the demands of life, they will also have to know how to read and write properly at the age at which this is expected of them today. And so we shall be obliged to include in the curriculum many things which are simply demanded by the customs of the time. Nevertheless we try to bring the children into touch with life as far as possible.

I should have dearly liked to have a shoemaker as a teacher in the Waldorf School, if this had been possible. It could not be done because such a thing does not fit into a curriculum based on present-day requirements, but in order that the children might really learn to make shoes, and to know, not theoretically but through their own work, what this entails, I should have dearly liked from the very beginning to have a shoemaker on the staff of the school. But it simply could not be done because it would not have been in accordance with the authorities, although it is just the very thing that would have been in accordance with real life. Nevertheless we do try to make the children into practical workers.

When you come to the Waldorf School you will see that the children are quite good at binding books and making boxes; you will see too how they are led into a really artistic approach to handwork; the girls will not be taught to produce the kind of thing you see nowadays when you look at the clothes that women wear, for instance. It does not occur to people that the pattern for a collar should be different from that of a belt or the hem of a dress. People do not consider that here for example (see drawing a.) the pattern must have a special character because it is worn at the neck. The pattern for a belt (see drawing b.) must lead both upwards and downwards, and so on.

Or again, we never let our children make a cushion with an enclosed pattern, but the pattern itself should show where to lay your head. You can also see that there is a difference between right and left, and so forth. Thus here too life itself is woven and worked into everything that the children make, and they learn a great deal from it. This then is another method by which the children may learn to stand rightly in life.

We endeavour to carry this out in every detail, for example in the giving of reports. I could never in my life imagine what it means to mark the capacities of the children with a 2, or 3, or 21-. I do not know if that is done in England too, giving the children numbers or letters in their reports which are supposed to show what a child can do. In Central Europe it is customary to give a 3, or a 4. At the Waldorf School we do not give reports like this, but every teacher knows every child and describes him in the report; he describes in his own words what the child's capacities are and what progress he has made.

And then every year each child receives in his report a motto or verse for his own life, which can be a word of guidance for him in the year to come. The report is like this: first there is the child's name and then his verse, and then the teacher without any stereotyped letters or numbers, simply characterises what the child is like, and what progress he has made in the different subjects. The report is thus a description. The children always love their reports, and their parents also get a true picture of what the child is like at school.

We lay great stress upon keeping in touch with all the parents so that from the school we may see into the home through the child. Only in this way can we come to understand each child, and to know how to treat every peculiarity. It is not the same thing when we notice the same peculiarity in two children, for it has quite a different significance in the two cases.

Suppose for instance that two children each show a certain excitability. It is not merely a question of knowing that the child is excitable and giving him something to help him to become quiet, but it is a question of finding out that in the one case the child has an excitable father whom he has imitated, and in the other case the child is excitable because he has a weak heart. In every case we must be able to discover what lies at the root of these peculiarities.

This is the real purpose of the Teachers' Meetings, to study man himself, so that a real knowledge of man is continually flowing through the school. The whole school is the concern of the teachers in their meetings, and all else that is needed will follow of itself. The essential thing is that in the Teachers' Meetings there is study, steady, continual study.

These are the indications I wanted to give you for the practical organisation of your school.

There are of course many things that could still be said if we could continue this course for several weeks. But that we cannot do, and therefore I want to ask you tomorrow, when we come together, to put in the form of questions anything which you may have upon your minds, so that we may use the time for you to put your questions which I will then answer for you.

• 1. Dr. Steiner is here speaking of the process of organic development, not of the child's mental growth. There is no question of approaching the child's intellect during this first period of childhood when the head and nerves system is performing a function entirely different from later years. See Rudolf Steiner: The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.
• 2. Dr. Steiner then added that these children were at that time being taught by Dr. Karl Schubert who had a very special task in this domain and was particularly gifted for it.

I must begin with the gratifying observation that upon my return¹ I encountered a great many friends who are here in Dornach for the first time. They have come to inform themselves about what goes on in Dornach and what is meant to proceed from here into our anthroposophical movement. I cordially welcome all the newly arrived friends and hope that because of their stay with us they can carry back with them many new inspirations. Among the friends we can greet once again are many we have not seen for years. This fact along with much else undoubtedly indicates the difficulties of the age in which we live. I have just returned from a visit in Stuttgart, which was filled with the manifold tasks generated within our anthroposophical sphere of work. Among other matters, it included the ending of the first academic year of the Waldorf School² founded in Stuttgart. This Waldorf School belongs to those establishments which manifest most prominently the ideas of our anthroposophical spiritual movement. Even though one sets high standards for it, the completion of the first school year has demonstrated that there is cause for satisfaction. I can say this because it is possible to remain objective even if one is wholeheartedly involved in the project and even if, in a certain sense, one has been its instigator.

Above all it is gratifying to see how the Waldorf School teaching staff definitely understood how to proceed from a completely anthroposophical basis, as had always been the intention. Present-day conditions necessitated that this basis in anthroposophy should not produce a school that teaches a certain world view, a school in which anthroposophy would be taught. That was never the intention. With this in mind, therefore, we arranged the religious instruction so that children of Protestant parents, who wished them to have Protestant religious instruction, could be taught by a Protestant minister; Catholic children, by a priest. Only those who did not care to be numbered among the existing denominations were separately taught a form of anthroposophical religious instruction. Except for this, we certainly never considered the founding of an institution that teaches a specific world outlook. All efforts were directed toward the creation of a school in which the practical teaching impulses arising from the viewpoint and will of our spiritual science could for once be directly applied in the education and instruction of youth. It was our aim that the anthroposophic impetus should be expressed not in the content of the classes but in the way classes were taught, in the manner in which the whole school system was handled; that this impetus be manifested in the specific kind, and the different methods, of instruction. Once an anthroposophist has stimulated his classes through his anthroposophic will, the fertilization of the teaching process shows precisely what a vitalizing effect anthroposophy has when it is implemented in this way.

Throughout its first year, I always had the opportunity to observe the progress at the Waldorf School. Again and again, I was there for one or two weeks. I could supervise instruction and was able to watch the development of the different classes. I could see, for instance, how our friend, Dr. Stein,³ succeeded in enlivening his history class for older students by bringing anthroposophic impulses into history. Anthropology, as taught by Fräulein Dr. von Heydebrandt in the fifth grade, was lifted from the tedium prevailing ordinarily in our schools by imbuing it truly with anthroposophic will. I could cite many other instances from which you could clearly see that without in any way teaching abstract anthroposophy the subject matter comes alive by the method and the way it is treated and fertilized by anthroposophy. This practical application of anthroposophic strength of purpose shows that anthroposophy need not remain an abstract, remote philosophy, but can definitely influence human activity, even though we unfortunately have little opportunity to penetrate human affairs, except in limited areas like the Waldorf School. Now, when we ended the first year something happened that seemed to be only an exterior matter, but, as I am about to explain, it was an event that had great inner significance. A complete innovation took place. It concerned the report cards.

The report card system is truly one of the most miserable aspects of our schools. In a superficial, groping manner, teachers must grade their students from 1, 2, 3, 4 to 5 and so on,^T1 a procedure that stifles the very nature of schools in a most appalling way. Our report cards are based on actual educational psychology, on an absolutely practical application of human psychology. At the end of the first school year, the teachers were at the point where they were able to write a report card for every child corresponding to its own character and capabilities, individually indicating the possibility for continued growth and progress. No report card was like any other. There were no numbers indicating grades. Instead, through the teacher's individual insight into his pupil, the student received a characterization of his personality. Already in the course of the first school year, the teachers had so intimately sought to deepen their understanding of every child's soul that they were able to write into the report card an accompanying verse suited to each recipient's individual character.

These report cards are an innovation. Do not conclude, however, that it can be imitated or readily introduced somewhere else, because this change has been brought about by the whole spirit of the Waldorf School and is based on the fact that the most intensive educational psychology was practiced during the first school year. We carefully studied what was causing certain intimate manifestations in the faster or slower progress of a class, and already in the course of the first school year, we made a few discoveries that were in some ways surprising. We learned, for example, that the whole configuration of a class takes on a specific form if the number of boys and girls in that class is equal. The configuration is a quite different one if boys are in the majority and girls in the minority, and it changes again when there are more girls than boys in a class We have had all these examples in our classes. These imponderables, which elsewhere are not taken into consideration at all, are in many ways the essential element in a class.

When one attempts to express certain aspects of psychology, trying to define them in so many words, he is then already past the point that really matters. It is just the predominant and nonsensical custom of our time that one attempts to express things too rigidly in words. One cannot study matters thoroughly if one wants to express them in this constrictive word structure. One must be aware that by expressing things in this manner they can only be indicated approximately.

Of course, we always find ourselves in an odd position when we talk about the results of our anthroposophically oriented movement of spiritual science. The Waldorf School, whose teachers have proven themselves eminently suited to their tasks, could only justify itself because a group of human beings was gathered together who were most competent and pedagogically most qualified. It is unfortunate that in any effort to carry something out in a practical sense today, one encounters, much more than is generally realized, the one great obstacle, namely, a lack of qualified people. Today, the world has a paucity of people who are qualified for any real tasks in life. In our case the difficulty would be compounded should a second school be established. To find suitable, really proficient individuals capable of working in the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would be much more difficult because the one existing school has, of course, already attracted all those who could seriously be considered. Yet there can be no doubt that, for once, something has been accomplished in a certain area. I must say, however, that this is like an island. There, in the course of the first school year, a spiritual system of education has become manifest which truly evolved from the fundamentals of anthroposophy. It is an island, however, enclosed within its shores. Beyond these shores, the financial and economic connections of the school are affected by the great decline in the economic and political life of the present. This is where the problems lie. We can see that our prospects are not what they should be; they are not as good as they should be considering the nature of our achievement. Yet does anyone have even a slight understanding of what the Waldorf School has created based on the spirit?

The Waldorf School was founded by our friend Molt⁴ so that the children of the Waldorf Astoria Works could receive an education. Already in the first year, many children from the outside, who were unconnected to the factory, became students at the school; there must have been around 280 of them. Now, many new students have been registered, but from the Waldorf Astoria Works we have no more than were previously here, as well as the few who have meanwhile reached school age. If everything goes really well, and if economic and other problems can be solved, we shall, judging from the present applications, have more than four hundred students in our school. This means we shall have to build, hire more teachers, establish parallel classes. All this must happen! In a certain sense it will be a crucial test as to whether the financial understanding of our needs by those involved can keep pace with what induces so many people from the outside to bring us their children. It was somewhat ironical to me when the mother of one of our students was introduced to me in the school corridor as Frau Minister So and So. Even those connected with the present government are bringing their children to the Waldorf School now!

Some of these matters actually should be studied more closely in their social context as well. Then, perhaps, it would be possible to perceive the real needs of our society and how they are met by institutions such as the Waldorf School.

Now and then the Waldorf School was beset by a certain superficiality that is a characteristic of our times, as I have often pointed out. The leadership of the school was naturally confronted with people here and there who wanted to visit for a while, that is to snoop around a bit. Yet there is really not all that much to see. What does matter is the whole spirit at work in the school, and that is simply the anthroposophical spirit. People who can't make the effort to read anthroposophic books and who hope to set something from scouting round in the Waldorf School would be better served by deepening their knowledge of anthroposophy. For what bestows spirit on the Waldorf School and lies at its very foundation can only be seen in the spiritual impulses that are the Basis of anthroposophical spiritual life. I have often pointed out to those who have been attending my lectures for some time that today the anthroposophic spiritual life is not directed only toward the individual who seeks the way out of his soul's distress and life's afflictions in the spiritual forces of the world. Today, spiritual science must address itself to the need and decline of our time. Then, however, the comprehension of what spiritual science has to offer will be met by that special kind of understanding that a person today can generally bring to anything of a spiritual nature. When talking about spiritual science, it is often necessary to speak in an entirely different language than is customary. One could say that in a certain sense words acquire a new meaning through spiritual science. It is absolutely necessary to feel and to sense this.

Today I would like to acquaint you with some things that can illustrate how essential it is not only to be willing to hear a somewhat different world view expressed in customary terminology, but to learn to receive the words differently with one's feelings.

Let us begin with a specific case. When speaking about any ideology today, it is designated by an abstract name: materialism, idealism, spiritualism, and so forth, and people are quite sure that they can say which is correct, and which is incorrect. A materialist comes to a spiritualist, for example, and explains to him his way of thinking, how he sees man's thoughts and feelings as products of the brain. The spiritualist answers, “You think incorrectly. I can refute that logically!” Or, perhaps, “That is contradicted by the facts!” In short, the crux of the matter is that today, when people talk about issues concerning world views, one ideology is said to be right and the other one wrong. The spiritualist presumes that only he has the correct philosophy, and wishes to prove the materialist wrong and convince him that he would be better off if he became a spiritualist.

Spiritual science has nothing to do with such a way of proceeding. It does not wish to lead to a different logical insight from that of other world views. Spiritual science, if it really fulfills its task, must become action based on insight. In spiritual science, knowledge must turn into action, action in the whole cosmic world context. I will explain this by using a few definite examples. Today, when people look at the world naively but with a slight materialist tendency, when they direct their eyes and ears outward, hear sounds, notice colors, experience warmth and similar sensations, they perceive the external material world. Should they become scientists, or merely absorb through popular means what science wishes to represent, they will then form or simply accept certain concepts that have originated through the combination of all the color, sound and warmth elements and others that are to be observed in the external world. Now, there are people who maintain that everything one sees is, in the first place, only an external phenomenon. Yet this idea is generally not gone into thoroughly enough. People see a rainbow, for example. As a result of their education, when they look at the rainbow, they are already convinced that the rainbow is only an apparition, that they cannot go to the place where the rainbow is, neatly put a foot on it and march along the rainbow bridge as if it were a solid object. People are sure that it cannot be done, that the rainbow is merely an apparition, a phenomenon that arises and then disappears again. They are convinced that they deal only with apparitions because they cannot come into contact with this aspect of the external world through their sense of touch and feeling. According to their view, as soon as something can be grasped or touched, it is no longer a phenomenon to the same degree, even though recent philosophy may in some instances claim that it is. In any case, the impressions of the sense of touch, for instance, are intuitively taken as something that guarantees a different external reality than the phenomenal realities of the rainbow.

This notwithstanding, all that our external senses perceive comprises merely a world of phenomena, modified perhaps in respect to the apparition of the rainbow, but a world of phenomena nevertheless. Regardless of how far we direct our gaze, how far we can hear, in whatever is seen, heard or otherwise perceived, we deal only with phenomena. I have attempted to explain this in the introduction to the third volume of Goethe's scientific writings.⁵ We deal with a tapestry of phenomena. Whoever makes an effort through experimentation or any combination of pure reasoning to find matter in the realm of appearances is pursuing a dead end.^T2 There is no matter out there. One deals only with a world of phenomena.

This is precisely what the whole spirit of spiritual science reveals: In the external world, one deals only with a world of appearances. An exponent of a current world outlook will therefore conclude that it is wrong to look for matter at all in the realm of phenomena. Anthroposophy cannot agree with this attitude; it must put it differently by saying: Because of the whole configuration of man's mind, he comes to the point where he wants to seek for matter in the moving tapestry of phenomena, to seek out there for atoms, molecules and so on, which are resting points in the phenomenon. Some picture these as tiny, miniature pellets, others imagine them to be points of energy and are proud of the fact; others, prouder still, think of them as mathematical fiction.

What is important, however, is not whether one thinks of them as small pellets, sources of energy, or mathematical fiction, but whether one thinks of the external world in atomistic terms. This is what is important. For a spiritual scientist, however, it is not merely wrong to think atomistically. The kind of concept determining rightness or wrongness may be sound logic, but it is abstract, and spiritual science has to do with realities. I urge you to take it very seriously when I say that spiritual science has to do with realities!

This is why certain concepts that have become merely logical categories for today's abstract world-view must be replaced by something real. This is why, in spiritual science, we not only say that one who seeks atoms or molecules in the external world thinks in the wrong way; we must consider this manner of thinking an unhealthy, sick thinking. We must replace the merely logical concept of wrongness with the realistic concept of sickness, of unhealthiness. We must point to a definite sickness of soul—regardless of how many people it has seized—which expresses itself in atomistic thinking. This condition is one of feeblemindedness. It is not merely logically wrong for us, it is an expression of feeblemindedness to think atomistically; in other words, it is feebleminded to seek in the external world something other than phenomena which, when it comes right down to it, are an a par with the phenomenon of the rainbow. It is relatively easy for people with other world outlooks to set things straight: they do it by refutation. To have been able to refute something is considered an accomplishment. Yet, in a spiritual-scientific sense, no final conclusion has been reached by refutation; it is important to refer to the healthy or unhealthy soul life, to actual processes expressed in man's whole physical, soul and spiritual being. To think atomistically is to think unhealthily, not merely erroneously. An actual unhealthy process takes place in the human organism when we think atomistically. This is one thing we must become clear about regarding the phenomena of the external world and its character of appearance.

We must also become clear about our inner life. Many people seek the spirit inwardly. To begin with, the spiritual cannot be found in the inner realm of man. Truly objective evaluation of every abstract form of mysticism bears this out. What today is sometimes—nay, often—called mysticism consists of brooding over one's inner self, attempting to seek self-knowledge by introverted brooding. What is discovered by practicing such one-sided mysticism? One certainly finds interesting things. When we look into the human being and find all those inwardly pleasant experiences arising which we call mystical—what are they really? They are just the very things that point us toward material existence. We do not discover matter in the external world where the sense phenomena are found; we come upon matter in our inner being. This brings us to the point where we can characterize these things correctly. Regarded from the most comprehensive point of view, it is the body's metabolism that seethes and boils there within the human interior and which flames up into consciousness as one-sided mysticism, mistaken by many to be the spirit that can be found in the inner self. It is not the spirit, it is the flame of metabolism within man. We find matter not in the external world, we find it in ourselves. We find it precisely through one-sided mysticism. That is why a great many people who do not want to be materialists deceive themselves. They excuse their not wanting to be materialists by saying, “Out there is base matter; I shall rise above it and turn to my inner being, for there I will find the spirit.”

Actually, spirit is neither without nor within. Outside are the interweaving phenomena; within ourselves is matter, constantly seething and boiling substance. This metabolic processing of matter kindles the flames that leap into consciousness and form the mystic impressions. Mysticism is the inwardly perceived corporeal matter of the metabolism. That is something that cannot be logically refuted, but must be traced back to actual processes when man yields in a one-sided way to the metabolism.

Just as the belief that it is possible to find traces of matter in the external world indicates feeblemindedness—that is, a real illness of the spirit, soul and bodily being of man—so does one-sided preoccupation with mysticism indicate a corporeal indisposition. It points toward something that sounds somewhat insulting if put bluntly. Yet we must use an expression that is, as it were, spoken from yonder side of the Guardian of the Threshold and means, “Childishness.” In the same way that one incurs feeblemindedness through atomistic thinking concerning the outer world, one becomes childish when yielding to a mysticism that wants to feel the spirit in the seething of the inner metabolism.

Childishness, of course, has a good side, too. When we observe the child we see a lot of spirit in it, and geniality in many instances consists in man's preserving the childlike spirit all the way into advanced age. When we look at the world from the other side of the threshold we can see that it is the spirit which, for instance, forms the child's brain, that spirit which accompanies us from the spiritual world when we enter the physical world through conception or birth. This spirit is most active in the child. Later, it is lost. Therefore, the word childishness is not meant as an insult in this instance, it merely denotes that spirit which forms the brain out of a more or less chaotic mass. Later on, however, if this spirit, which actually shapes the child's brain, does not pour itself sufficiently into logicality, into experience, into what life presents; if, instead, it acts in a one-sided manner and excludes the individual physical experiences; if it goes on working in the way it did during the first seven years, then instead of becoming intellectually mature one becomes childish. Childishness is frequently found to be a characteristic of a great many mystics, particularly arrogant ones. They wish to weave and live in that spirit which is really what should be active in the child's organism. They have retained this spirit, however, and, greatly impressed by their own accomplishment, they gaze at it in wonder in their consciousness, believing, in their one-sided, abstract mysticism, that they are perceiving a higher spirituality, when it is only the matter of their own metabolism.

Again, we do not need merely to refute the one-sided mystic if we are really well grounded in an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We must show that it is the sign of an ailing constitution of the spirit, soul and body when man broods one-sidedly within his inner being, thereby attempting to find the spirit.

I have drawn these two examples, familiar to you from anthroposophical literature, in order to point out to you how serious from a certain viewpoint matters can become when, leaving the ordinary spiritual life of today, one immerses oneself in anthroposphical spiritual life. There, one no longer deals with something as insignificant as “right” or “wrong.” It now becomes a question of “healthy” or “sick” conditions in the organic functions. Thus, on a higher level, something that goes in one direction must be considered healthy, while something going in another direction must be considered sick. I would like you to understand from these implications how spiritual science is an active knowledge; how it cannot stand still on the level of the nature of ordinary knowledge but becomes something real. The process of knowledge, insofar as it expresses itself in spiritual science, is something that actually takes place in the human organism.

In a similar manner we must define the element that lives in the realm of will. When we talk of the realm of will in our age—an age permeated by that grandiose decline we have often discussed—when we speak of what develops into human will impulses and try to define their character, then we say: Man is good or evil. Again, we are dealing with ethical categories—good and evil—which are just as necessary, of course, as logical categories. Yet, from what arises out of the impulses of spiritual science, it is not merely a question of what is meant when one action of man is designated as good and another as evil. When one calls a human action good, even in a karmic connection, it is a question of balancing in some way or other the good with the evil. We refer to something that pertains to an ethical judgment of man.

Whenever we rise into the realm of the spiritual scientific, it is much more a question of recognizing that what is at work there is a certain manner of thinking, feeling and willing for human beings which leads upward to a fruitful development, to progress in evolution. On the one hand, we have abstract goodness. It is of outstanding moral value, but even that is ethically abstract. When it is a matter of spiritual-scientific impulses, however, man must not only do good, or only do the good which lets him appear as an ethically good person. He can do, think or feel only that which advances the world in its development in the external sense world; or he can do something that is not merely evil, leading to an ethical condemnation, but has a destructive effect on the world forces. This was already meant to be indicated in the Portal of Initiation,⁶ where Strader and Capesius are speaking and the following is pointed out: Everything that is done here in the sense world and is subject to ethical judgments of good and evil turns into phenomena behind the curtains of existence, having either a progressive, constructive effect or a destructive one, leading to decline. Just try to experience this entire scene that is permeated with thunder and lightning, where things are happening in a most realistic manner in the soul world while Capesius and Strader are discussing one or the other matter. Try to re-experience this scene and you will see how what we experience as the ethical sphere here on the physical plane is in reality very different there.

All this is to show you how serious world aspects become in that instance when, upon leaving today's customary way of judging by logical or outward human categories only, one ascends to the realities that confront us when we view the world from the spiritual scientific standpoint. Things become serious, yet they must be mentioned today because the world now demands a new kind of spiritual life. Things are happening in the world today that everyone sees but that nobody wishes to comprehend in their actual significance because one cannot take the step from external abstraction to reality. I want to give you a few other examples.

You find today that you live in a world where, among much else, there exist, for example in the social field, a great many party organizations—liberal, conservative and many other parties. Human beings are unaware of the actual nature of these parties. When they have to vote, they decide on one or the other party. They do not give much thought to what it really is that exists as party policy, pulsating through all of public life. They are incapable of taking these things seriously. There are quite a number of people who, in the nicest superficial manner, repeat all sorts of Orientalisms about the external world as Maya, but when it really comes to doing something in this external world they do not stick to what they repeat so abstractly. Otherwise, they would ask, “Maya? Then these parties must be Maya too. Then what is the reality to which this Maya points?”

If this matter is pursued in a spiritual-scientific way in more detail—and tomorrow we shall go deeper into this topic—one finds that these parties exist in the external world by having programs and principles, that is, they pursue abstract ideas. Everything that lives in the external physical world, however, is always the replica, the reflection of what is present as a reality in a much more intense form in the spiritual world. Here is the physical world (see drawing, red), but everything in it points toward the spiritual, and only above, in the spiritual world, can the actual reality of these physical things be found (red). Down here, for instance, you find the parties (orange). On the earth, they oppose each other, seeking to gather a great number of people under the umbrella of an abstract program. Then what are these parties a reflection of? What is up there in the spiritual world if these parties down here are Maya? No abstractions exist in the spiritual world above, only beings. Yet, political parties are rooted in abstraction. Above, one cannot profess adherence to a party program; there one can only be a follower of this or that being or hierarchy. There one cannot just subscribe to a program on the basis of the intellect; that cannot happen there. One must belong with one's whole being to another entity. What is abstract down here is being above that is, the abstract below is only the shadow of beingness above. If you consider the two main categories of parties, the liberal and conservative, you know that each has its own program. When you look above to see what each is a reflection of, then you discover that ahrimanic being is projected here (see drawing, lower part) into the conservative views, luciferic being in the liberal thoughts. Down here, one follows a liberal or conservative program; up there, one is a follower of an ahrimanic or a luciferic being of some hierarchy.

It can happen, however, that the moment you pass across the threshold it becomes necessary really to understand all this clearly, and neither be fooled by words nor succumb to illusions. It is quite easy to assume that one belongs to a certain good being. Just because you call a being good, however, does not make it so. Anyone can say, for instance, “I acknowledge Jesus, the Christ,” but in the spiritual world, one cannot follow a program. The whole manner in which the concepts and images of this Jesus, of Christ, fill such a person's soul indicates that it is merely the name of Jesus, the Christ, that he has in mind. Actually he is a follower of either Lucifer or Ahriman, but calls whichever it is by the name of Jesus or Christ.

I ask you: How many people today know that party opinions are shadows of realities in the spiritual world? Some do know and act according to their knowledge. I can point to some who know. The Jesuits, for instance, they know. Do not think that the Jesuits believe that when they write something⁶ against anthroposophy in their journals, for instance, they have hit upon something special and logically irrefutable. Refutations are not what counts there. The Jesuits know very well how their refutations could be countered. They are not concerned with a rational fighting for or against something, but with being followers of a certain spiritual being which I do not wish to name today, but which they call Jesus, their Leader, to whom they belong. Whoever this being may be, they call it Jesus. I do not wish to go into the facts more closely, but they call themselves soldiers and him their Leader. They do not fight to refute, they fight to recruit adherents for the companies, the army of Jesus—that is, the being they call Jesus. And they know very well that as soon as one Looks across the threshold, abstract categories, logical approval or disapproval no longer matter, only the hosts following one or the other being. Down on earth it is a matter of mere figures of speech. This is what mankind today is hardly willing to understand, namely, that if we wish to escape from the decline of our age it can no longer be a question of abstractions or merely of what one may think, but that we must deal with realities. We shall begin to ascend to realities when we stop talking about right or wrong and begin speaking about healthy or sick. We begin to rise to realities when we cease talking about programs of parties or world views, and instead speak about following real beings whom we encounter as soon as we become aware of what exists an yonder side of the threshold. It must be our concern today actually to take that serious step that leads from abstraction to reality, from merely logical knowledge to knowledge as deed. This alone can lead us out of the chaos now gripping the world.

The world situation, about which we shall speak tomorrow and the day after, can be judged in a sound way only by someone who examines it with the means that spiritual science is prepared to give him. Otherwise one will be unable to see in the right light the significant, existing contrasts between East and West. All that outwardly manifests itself in visible realities—what else is it but the inherently absurd expression of what lives as thoughts in people's heads? How, then, do these thoughts manifest themselves to us?

To answer this question and to conclude today's presentation, I would like again to call our attention to an obvious example. More than once, I have pointed out how Catholic clerical factions, especially here in Switzerland, are now resorting to a web of lies in order to destroy spiritual science. Those of you who have been here have witnessed a number of examples of what the Catholic Jesuits come up with in the attempt to destroy anthroposophy. Consider the attacks made by Jesuit seminarists with weapons that are certainly not nice. I need not characterize this; those who have not informed themselves can easily do so.

For Switzerland and Central Europe, where these things happen, are all part of the world. So, too, is America. I recently received a magazine published in America in which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is characterized, while, at the same time, the Jesuits in Europe denounced spiritual science as a threat to the Catholic Church and to Christianity. You know by now that Reverend Kully⁷ stated that there are three evils in the world. One is Judaism, the other Freemasonry, but the third—worse than all of them, even worse than Bolshevism—is what is taught here in Dornach. This originates from the Catholic side, and is how anthroposophy is characterized.

What about America? I want to read you a small paragraph from an American publication written at the same time Catholic journals over here printed their view of anthroposophy:

Just as the Catholic hierarchy has always insisted that the Roman church is the only one with any authority,

—Protestant sects do not come into consideration; according to the Roman church, these sects stand outside the gates; they are viewed merely as a great number of heretics?

so it is self-evident that the church which Steiner's glib tongue alludes to can be none other than the Roman Catholic church. This assumption is reinforced and indeed any doubt about the matter ceases, when one reads Steiner's other occult books. They all point to the same thing, namely, his writings are purely misleading; the sheepskin of a superficial occultism covering the wolf of Jesuitism.

So you see that in America anthroposophy is taken for Jesuitism, while in Europe the Jesuits strongly oppose anthroposophy as the biggest enemy of the Catholic church. That is how the world thinks today! That, however, is also how people think in Europe where they are living side by side; they are just not aware of it.

The American article concludes with several more nice sentences:

Steiner claims to be an initiate. That may be; but whether he is of the White Lodge or belongs to the Brothers of Shadow is something one can only decide when it is realized that he stood on the side of men of “blood and iron” ... and that a number of his students here (in America) were interned as German spies.

So you see, sometimes the wind blows from the Roman Catholic corner, sometimes from the American side! It just shows you how things are inside the heads of our contemporaries. Yet, from the thoughts hatched inside human heads, there developed what has led into the decline of the present, and the ascent must truly be sought in a different direction from the one where many seek it today.

Tomorrow, we shall continue with this subject.

• 1 . Reference to Rudolf Steiner's return from Stuttgart where, from July 24 until August 1, 1920, he had been giving lectures for the teachers of the Waldorf School, for the general public and the Anthroposophical Society.
• 2 . The Waldorf School: Founded by Emil Molt (1876–1936) in the year 1919 for the children of the workmen in the “Waldorf-Astoria” cigarette factory and the public as a coeducational elementary and high school under the leadership of Rudolf Steiner, who had also appointed the teachers and had given them preparatory courses.
• 3 . Dr. Walter Johannes Stein: 1891–1957, Dr. Caroline van Heydebrandt: 1866–1938; both teachers in the Waldorf School from 1919.
• T1. In the German educational system, the grade of 1 is equivalent to an A; 4 is a D and 5 would indicate a failing grade.
• 4 . See Preface and Introduction to Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner. Introductions to all the volumes written by Rudolf Steiner under the same title, Dornach, 1926.
• 5 . Rudolf Steiner: “The Portal of Initiation” contained in Four Mystery Play, GA 14 (Toronto, Steiner Book Centre, 1973).
• T2. The “dead end” alluded to here is the translation of the German expression “Holzweg,” literally, “wooden path.” Like all such expressions in a language, it springs from real experience. The “Holzweg” is a rough timber road, or a system of such roads, proceeding into the forest and used by woodcutters. It leads nowhere and may dead-end suddenly. Hence, it would be easy to get lost on it.
• 6 . “Stimmen der Zeit,” Freiburg i. Br., 1918–1920, Otto Zimmermann SJ, Josef Kreitmaier SJ, Konstantin Nopels SJ.
• 6 . “Stimmen der Zeit,” Freiburg i. Br., 1918–1920, Otto Zimmermann SJ, Josef Kreitmaier SJ, Konstantin Nopels SJ.
• 7 . Max Kully: 1878–1936, Catholic minister of Arlesheim near Basle. Reference to a calumnious article against Rudolf Steiner that he wrote in a Catholic Sunday paper, July 6, 1920.

In this [German] Edition the verses are given as Rudolf Steiner spoke them during the Christmas Conference of 1923, as shown by the complete and reliable record in shorthand made by Helene Finckh. Previous editions [in German] contained variations in some of the verses, especially in the rendering of 25 December. This is explained as follows:

Rudolf Steiner gave the verses in two versions, both of which are recorded in his own handwriting (see Facsimiles 1 and 4 in the Supplement). The first version was used during the Conference. The second version was made for the printed record in the report ‘Die Bildung der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft durch die Weihnachts-tagung 1923’ (The Formation of the General Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Conference of 1923) in the first number of Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht. Nachrichten für deren Mitglieder (What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for Members) of 13 January 1924. In this second version there are certain divergences from the text as spoken during the Conference. The most important of these are that the hierarchies are not named but approached under a general designation, and that the Rosicrucian motto is given in German and not in Latin.

The reason which moved Rudolf Steiner to make this alteration was given on a number of occasions by Marie Steiner, and recorded by one of her colleagues, Günther Schubert, as follows: ‘She spoke repeatedly about her memory of the great difficulty Rudolf Steiner experienced in reaching the decision to publish the verses of the 1923 laying of the Foundation Stone. In the end he toned down the direct approach to the hierarchies by making the salutation more abstract. He wanted this toned-down version to be the one used exclusively within members' circles too, for he said that there was a law attached to esoteric mantrams of such a cultic nature: The force with which they return equal to that with which they are sent forth, and it is therefore necessary to ask oneself whether one will be strong enough to endure this.’

Marie Steiner originally wanted to take this into account when she published this record of the Christmas Foundation Meeting. However, it was only possible in respect of the words spoken on 25 December, for on 29 December the call to the hierarchies by name was included in Rudolf Steiner's subsequent discussion of the ‘rhythms’. The relevant lines were not spoken on the other days.

In the present [German] edition the verses, including that of 25 December, are given as they were spoken and recorded in the shorthand report.

DR STEINER greets those present with the words:

My dear friends!

Let the first words to resound through this room today be those which sum up the essence of what may stand before your souls as the most important findings of recent years.^A

Later there will be more to be said about these words which are, as they stand, a summary. But first let our ears be touched by them, so that out of the signs of the present time we may renew, in keeping with our way of thinking, the ancient word of the Mysteries: ‘Know thyself.’

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man !
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

My dear friends! Today when I look back specifically to what it was possible to bring from the spiritual worlds while the terrible storms of war were surging across the earth, I find it all expressed as though in a paradigm in the trio of verses your ears have just heard.^B

For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness of man which enables him in the wholeness of his being of spirit, soul and body to revive for himself once more in a new form the call ‘Know thyself’. For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness. But only in the last decade have I myself been able to bring it to full maturity while the storms of war were raging.³⁸ I sought to indicate how man lives in the physical realm in his system of metabolism and limbs, in his system of heart and rhythm, in his system of thinking and perceiving with his head. Yesterday I indicated how this threefoldness can be rightly taken up when our hearts are enlivened through and through by Anthroposophia.

We may be sure that if man learns to know in his feeling and in his will what he is actually doing when, as the spirits of the universe enliven him, he lets his limbs place him in the world of space, that then—not in a suffering, passive grasping of the universe but in an active grasping of the world in which he fulfils his duties, his tasks, his mission on the earth—that then in this active grasping of the world he will know the being of all-wielding love of man and universe which is one member of the all-world-being.

We may be sure that if man understands the miraculous mystery holding sway between lung and heart—expressing inwardly the beat of universal rhythms working across millennia, across the aeons of time to ensoul him with the universe through the rhythms of pulse and blood—we may hope that, grasping this in wisdom with a heart that has become a sense organ, man can experience the divinely given universal images as out of themselves they actively reveal the cosmos. Just as in active movement we grasp the all-wielding love of worlds, so shall we grasp the archetypal images of world existence when we sense in ourselves the mysterious interplay between universal rhythm and heart rhythm, and through this the human rhythm that takes place mysteriously in soul and spirit realms in the interplay between lung and heart.

And when, in feeling, the human being rightly perceives what is revealed in the system of his head, which is at rest on his shoulders even when he walks along, then, feeling himself within the system of his head and pouring warmth of heart into this system of his head, he will experience the ruling, working, weaving thoughts of the universe within his own being.

Thus he becomes the threefoldness of all existence: universal love reigning in human love; universal Imagination reigning in the forms of the human organism; universal thoughts reigning mysteriously below the surface in human thoughts. He will grasp this threefoldness and he will recognize himself as an individually free human being within the reigning work of the gods in the cosmos, as a cosmic human being, an individual human being within the cosmic human being, working for the future of the universe as an individual human being within the cosmic human being. Out of the signs of the present time he will re-enliven the ancient words: ‘Know thou thyself!’

The Greeks were still permitted to omit the final word, since for them the human self was not yet as abstract as it is for us now that it has become concentrated in the abstract ego-point or at most in thinking, feeling and willing. For them human nature comprised the totality of spirit, soul and body. Thus the ancient Greeks were permitted to believe that they spoke of the total human being, spirit, soul and body, when they let resound the ancient word of the Sun, the word of Apollo: ‘Know thou thyself!’

Today, re-enlivening these words in the right way out of the signs of our times, we have to say: Soul of man, know thou thyself in the weaving existence of spirit, soul and body. When we say this, we have understood what lies at the foundation of all aspects of the being of man. In the substance of the universe there works and is and lives the spirit which streams from the heights and reveals itself in the human head; the force of Christ working in the circumference, weaving in the air, encircling the earth, works and lives in the system of our breath; and from the inmost depths of the earth rise up the forces which work in our limbs. When now, at this moment, we unite these three forces, the forces of the heights, the forces of the circumference, the forces of the depths, in a substance that gives form, then in the understanding of our soul we can bring face to face the universal dodecahedron with the human dodecahedron. Out of these three forces: out of the spirit of the heights, out of the force of Christ in the circumference, out of the working of the Father, the creative activity of the Father that streams out of the depths, let us at this moment give form in our souls to the dodecahedral Foundation Stone which we lower into the soil of our souls so that it may remain there a powerful sign in the strong foundations of our soul existence and so that in the future working of the Anthroposophical Society we may stand on this firm Foundation Stone.

Let us ever remain aware of this Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, formed today. In all that we shall do, in the outer world and here, to further, to develop and to fully unfold the Anthroposophical Society, let us preserve the remembrance of the Foundation Stone which we have today lowered into the soil of our hearts. Let us seek in the threefold being of man, which teaches us love, which teaches us the universal Imagination, which teaches us the universal thoughts; let us seek, in this threefold being, the substance of universal love which we lay as the foundation, let us seek in this threefold being the archetype of the Imagination according to which we shape the universal love within our hearts, let us seek the power of thoughts from the heights which enable us to let shine forth in fitting manner this dodecahedral Imagination which has received its form through love! Then shall we carry away with us from here what we need. Then shall the Foundation Stone shine forth before the eyes of our soul, that Foundation Stone which has received its substance from universal love and human love, its picture image, its form, from universal Imagination and human Imagination, and its brilliant radiance from universal thoughts and human thoughts, its brilliant radiance which whenever we recollect this moment can shine towards us with warm light, with light that spurs on our deeds, our thinking, our feeling and our willing.

The proper soil into which we must lower the Foundation Stone of today, the proper soil consists of our hearts in their harmonious collaboration, in their good, love-filled desire to bear together the will of Anthroposophy through the world. This will cast its light on us like a reminder of the light of thought that can ever shine towards us from the dodecahedral Stone of love which today we will lower into our hearts.

Dear friends, let us take this deeply into our souls. With it let us warm our souls, and with it let us enlighten our souls. Let us cherish this warmth of soul and this light of soul which out of good will we have planted in our hearts today.

We plant it, my dear friends, at a moment when human memory that truly understands the universe looks back to the point in human evolution, at the turning point of time, when out of the darkness of night and out of the darkness of human moral feeling, shooting like light from heaven, was born the divine being who had become the Christ, the spirit being who had entered into humankind.

We can best bring strength to that warmth of soul and that light of soul which we need, if we enliven them with the warmth and the light that shone forth at the turning point of time as the Light of Christ in the darkness of the universe. In our hearts, in our thoughts and in our will let us bring to life that original consecrated night of Christmas which took place two thousand years ago, so that it may help us when we carry forth into the world what shines towards us through the light of thought of that dodecahedral Foundation Stone of love which is shaped in accordance with the universe and has been laid into the human realm.

So let the feelings of our heart be turned back towards the original consecrated night of Christmas in ancient Palestine.

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men.
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine Christ-Sun !
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

This turning of our feelings back to the original consecrated night of Christmas can give us the strength for the warming of our hearts and the enlightening of our heads which we need if we are to practise rightly, working anthroposophically, what can arise from the knowledge of the threefold human being coming to harmony in unity.

So let us once more gather before our souls all that follows from a true understanding of the words ‘Know thou thyself in spirit, soul and body’. Let us gather it as it works in the cosmos so that to our Stone, which we have now laid in the soil of our hearts, there may speak from everywhere into human existence and into human life and into human work everything that the universe has to say to this human existence and to this human life and to this human work.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
And in the echo of the depths
The secret of the heights, resounding
Speaks:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul:
Through the spirits: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai,
Let there be fired, ye spirits, from the East
What through the West is formed,
And the fire of the East,
As it receives form from the West
Speaks:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light:
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted,
And when it is rightly understood
How it rings forth from Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi,
When from the depths is prayed
What in the heights can be answered,
Then speaks it through the world:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

My dear friends, hear it as it resounds in your own hearts! Then will you found here a true community of human beings for Anthroposophia; and then will you carry the spirit that rules in the shining light of thoughts around the dodecahedral Stone of love out into the world wherever it should give of its light and of its warmth for the progress of human souls, for the progress of the universe.

• A. In the 1985 German edition, from which this translation is made, the verses spoken here and in the subsequent sessions are given as shown in the shorthand report. See the Note on the Verses.
• B. At this point, and again in the final words of this meeting at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner changed for a moment from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)
• 38. For the first time in the public lecture in Berlin on 15 March 1917 in Rudolf Steiner Geist und Stoff, Leben und Tod (Spirit and Matter, Life and Death). GA 66, and in the chapter ‘Die physischen und die geistigen Abhängigkeiten der Menschenwesenheit’ ‘Physical and Spiritual Dependencies of the Being of Man’ in Rudolf Steiner Von Seelenrätseln (Of the Riddles of the Soul) GA 21.

My dear friends!

We are gathered together for the last time in this Conference from which much that is strong and important is to go forth for the Anthroposophical Movement. So now let me shape this final lecture in a way that connects it inwardly, in its impulse, with the various prospects thrown open to us by this series of lectures as a whole,⁷⁹ but also in a way that will allow us to gain a sense for the future, especially the future of anthroposophical endeavour.

When we look out into the world today we see something that has already been there for many years: a tremendous amount of destructiveness. There are forces at work that give us an inkling of the abysses into which western civilization is still to plunge. Looking at those individuals who externally are the cultural leaders in the various fields of life, we notice how they are enmeshed in a terrible cosmic sleep. They think, and until recently most people thought, that until the nineteenth century mankind was childlike and primitive in its insights and views, and that now that modern science has entered into all the various fields truth has at last arrived, truth that must be upheld forever.

People who think like this are, without knowing it, living in a state of tremendous arrogance. On the other hand, here and there amongst mankind today there are some inklings that things are perhaps not as the majority would like to imagine.

Some time ago I was able to give a number of lectures in Germany organized by the Wolff agency.⁸⁰ The audiences were exceptionally large, so that people here and there began to notice that Anthroposophy was something for which people were looking. All kinds of foolish voices were raised in antagonism, among them one which was not much more intelligent than any of the others but which nevertheless expressed a kind of presentiment. It consisted of a note in a newspaper referring to one of the lectures in Berlin. This notice in the newspaper said: Listening to stuff like this you get the impression—I am quoting the article approximately—that something is happening not only on the earth but also in the whole of the cosmos that is calling mankind to a form of spirituality that is different from what has existed so far; even the forces of the cosmos, not merely earthly impulses, are demanding something of mankind; a kind of revolution in the cosmos which must lead man to strive for a new spirituality.

So there was this voice, which was in its way quite remarkable. For it is true: The proper impulse for what must now go forth from Dornach must, as I have emphasized from various angles over the last few days, be an impulse arising not on the earth but in the spiritual world. Here we want to develop the strength to follow the impulses coming from the spiritual world. In the evening lectures during this Christmas Conference I have spoken about manifold impulses present in historical development so that your hearts might be opened to take in spiritual impulses which still have to stream into the earthly world and are not taken from the earthly world itself. Everything that has hitherto borne the earthly world in the right way has had its source in the spiritual world. And if we are to achieve something fruitful for the earthly world, we must turn to the spiritual world for the appropriate impulses.

My dear friends, this encourages me to point out that the impulses we are to bear away with us from this Conference must be linked to a great sense of responsibility.

Let us spend a few minutes on the great responsibility that is now incumbent on us as a result of this Conference. In recent decades it has been possible for someone with a sense for the spiritual world to wander, in spiritual observation, past many personalities, gaining bitter sensations with regard to the future destiny of mankind on earth. It has been possible to wander past one's fellow human beings in the manner available to spiritual insight, observing how they lay aside their physical and etheric bodies in sleep and live in the spiritual world with their ego and astral body. Wandering among the destinies of those egos and astral bodies while human beings slept has, in recent decades, given rise to experiences which can point to a heavy responsibility incumbent on the one who can know such things. These souls, having left behind their physical and etheric bodies between going to sleep and waking up, were often to be seen approaching the Guardian of the Threshold.

The Guardian of the Threshold has entered the awareness of human beings in many and various ways during the course of human evolution. Many a legend and many a saga—for this is the form in which the most important things are preserved, rather than that of historical records—many a legend and many a saga tells of the approach by one personality or another to the Guardian of the Threshold in order to receive instruction on how to enter the spiritual world and then return once more to the physical world. Entering rightly into the spiritual world must bring with it the possibility of returning to the physical world at any moment with the full ability to stand on both feet as a practical and thoughtful human being, not as a dreamer, not as a dreamy mystic.

Throughout all the thousands of years during which human beings have striven to enter the spiritual world, this has been the fundamental stipulation of the Guardian of the Threshold. But especially in the final third of the nineteenth century hardly any human beings were to be seen approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of wakefulness. And even more so in our own time, when mankind as a whole has the historical task of passing by the Guardian of the Threshold in one way or another, do you find, when wandering in the spiritual world, that souls are asleep when they approach the Guardian of the Threshold as egos and astral bodies. This most significant picture meets us today: There stands the Guardian of the Threshold surrounded by groups of sleeping human souls who do not have the strength to approach him in a waking state but who approach him instead while they are asleep.

Witnessing this scene, you become aware of a thought which is bound up particularly with what I would like to call the germination of a necessary great responsibility. The souls who thus approach the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep demand entry into the spiritual world. They demand to be allowed to wander across the threshold in a state of sleep; their consciousness is that of a sleeping human being—which so far as the waking state is concerned remains unconscious or subconscious. And countless times the voice of the grave Guardian of the Threshold is heard: For your own good, you may not cross the threshold; you may not gain entrance to the spiritual world. Go back! For if the Guardian of the Threshold were to allow them to enter without more ado, they could come over into the spiritual world with all the concepts passed on to them by today's schools, today's education, today's civilization; with all those concepts and ideas with which human beings have to grow up nowadays from their sixth year onwards right, you could say, until the end of their earthly lives.

These concepts and ideas have a particular characteristic: If you enter into the spritual world with them, with the way you have become with them through present-day civilization and schooling, you become paralysed in your soul. And on returning to the physical world you would be void of thoughts and ideas. If the Guardian of the Threshold did not gravely reject these souls, if he were not to reject many, many of today's human souls but were to let them step over into the spiritual world, then, waking up on their return, waking up at the decisive moment on their return, they would have the feeling: I cannot think; my thoughts do not grasp my brain; I have to live in the world without thoughts. For the world of abstract ideas which human beings today attach to everything is such that one can indeed go into the spiritual world with them but one cannot bring them out again. And when you watch this scene, which is experienced today by more souls than you would ordinarily imagine, you say to yourself: If only these souls could be successfully protected from experiencing also in death what they are now experiencing in sleep. For if the inner condition experienced before the Guardian of the Threshold were to endure for a sufficiently long period of time, if human civilization were to remain for a long time under the influence of what can be taken in in schools by way of what is traditionally passed down by civilization, then sleep would become ordinary life. Human souls would pass through the portal of death into the spiritual world and then be incapable of bringing any strength of ideas with them into their new life on earth. For though you can enter the spiritual world with today's thoughts, you then cannot leave it with them. You can only leave it in a state of soul paralysis.

You see, present-day civilization can be founded on the kind of cultural life that has been nurtured for so long. But life cannot be founded on it. It would be possible for this civilization to endure for a while. During their waking hours, the souls would have no inkling of the Guardian of the Threshold; then while they slept they would be turned away by him so that they should not become paralysed; and the final consequence would be that a human race would be born in the future without any understanding, without any possibility of applying ideas to life when they were born in this future time, so that the faculty of thinking and living in ideas would have disappeared from the earth. A sick human race, living only in instincts, would have to populate the earth. Terrible feelings and emotions alone, without orientation through the force of ideas, would come to dominate human evolution.

Indeed, the soul failing to gain entry into the spiritual world, and being turned away by the Guardian of the Threshold in the way I have just described, is not the only sad sight to meet the one who has spiritual vision. If such a one were to take with him a human being from eastern civilization on his journeyings to where the sleeping souls can be observed approaching the Guardian of the Threshold, then such an eastern human being would be heard to utter spirit words of terrible reproach towards the whole of western civilization: See, if this goes on, then the earth will have fallen into barbarism by the time those living today return for a new incarnation; people will live by instincts alone, without ideas; this is what you have brought about by falling away from the ancient spirituality of the orient.

Thus a glimpse like this into the spiritual world bears witness to a strong sense of responsibility for the task of man. And here in Dornach there must be a place where it is possible to speak, to those who wish to listen, about every important direct experience of the spiritual world. Here there must be a place where the strength is found to point to those little traces of the spirit not only in the cleverly put together dialectical and empirical scientific manner of the present time. If Dornach is to fulfil its task, then it must be a place where human beings can hear openly about what is going on historically in the spiritual world and about the spiritual impulses which then enter into the world of nature and govern it. Human beings must be able to hear in Dornach about genuine experiences, genuine forces and genuine beings of the spiritual world. This is where the School of true Spiritual Science must be. And we must henceforth not shy away from the demands of modern scientific thought which causes human beings to approach the earnest Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep in the way I have described. In Dornach it must be possible to win the strength, spiritually, to look the spiritual world in the eye, to learn about the spiritual world.

Therefore we shall not let loose a tirade of dialectics on the inadequacy of present-day scientific theory. Instead I had to draw your attention to the position in which this scientific theory, and its consequences in ordinary schools, places the human being with regard to the Guardian of the Threshold. If we can face up to this in our soul in all earnestness during this Conference, then this Christmas Conference will send a strong impulse into our souls which can carry them away to do strong work of the kind needed by mankind today, so that in their next incarnation human beings will be able to encounter the Guardian of the Threshold properly, or rather so that civilization as a whole will measure up to the Guardian of the Threshold.

Compare today's civilization with that of former times. In all former civilizations there were ideas, concepts, which were turned first of all towards the super-sensible world, towards the gods, towards the world which engendered, which created, which brought forth. Then with those concepts, which belonged above all to the gods, it was possible to look down onto the earthly world in order to understand it with concepts and ideas which were worthy of the gods. And if souls then approached the Guardian of the Threshold with these ideas which had been formed in a manner that was worthy of the gods and that had a value for the gods, then the Guardian said: You may pass, for you are bringing with you into the super-sensible world something that is directed towards this super-sensible world even during the time of your life on earth in a physical body; therefore when you return to the physical, sense-perceptible world sufficient strength will remain to prevent you from becoming paralysed through having seen the super-sensible world. Nowadays human beings elaborate concepts and ideas which, in accordance with the genius of the times, they want to apply solely to the physical, sense-perceptible world. These concepts and ideas deal above all with anything that can be weighed and measured, but they are not at all concerned with the gods. They are not worthy of the gods and they are of no value to the gods. That is why the souls who have fallen entirely under the spell of the materialism of these ideas which are unworthy of the gods and valueless for the gods are met, when they cross the threshold in sleep, by the thundering voice of the Guardian of the Threshold: Do not step across the threshold! You have misused your ideas for the sense-perceptible world; therefore you must remain with them in the sense-perceptible world; if you do not want to become paralysed in your soul, you cannot enter with them into the world of the gods.

Such things have to be said, not because it is necessary to brood upon them but so that heart and mind and soul may become filled to the brim with them. Then we may come into the mood that will be the right mood to bear away from this solemn Christmas Conference of the Anthroposophical Society. The most important thing of all is the mood of soul we bear away with us, a mood of soul for the spiritual world that gives us the certainty: In Dornach a central point for spiritual knowledge will be created.

That is why it was so good to hear Dr Zeylmans speak this morning about a field which is to be cultivated here in Dornach, the field of medicine, and to hear him say that it is no longer possible to build bridges from ordinary science to what is to be founded here in Dornach. If we have the ambition to make what grows in the soil of our own medical research into something that can stand the scrutiny of present-day clinical requirements, then we shall never achieve any definite goal in the things that really make up our task, for then other people will simply say: Well, yes, here is a new method; we too have initiated new methods once in a while.

The important thing is that a branch of practical life, such as medicine, should be taken up into anthroposophical life. I think I understood rightly this morning that this is what Dr Zeylmans longs for. Did he not say in connection with this goal that someone who today becomes a doctor longs for impulses from a new corner of the universe. Let me tell you that in the field of medicine the work here in Dornach is to be carried on just as has that in a number of other fields of anthroposophical work which have remained within the bosom of Anthroposophy. With Dr Wegman as my helper, work is already in train on a system of medicine based entirely on Anthroposophy, a system which is needed by mankind and which will be presented to mankind quite soon. Equally it is my purpose to bring about the closest ties between the Goetheanum and the Clinic in Arlesheim which is working so beneficially. In the very near future such ties are to be brought about so that all that is flourishing there may be truly oriented towards Anthroposophy, which is indeed the intention of Dr Wegman.

In what he said, Dr Zeylmans was indicating with reference to one particular field what the Vorstand in Dornach will make its task in all the fields of anthroposophical work. Thus in future the situation will be clear. No one will say: Let us first show people eurythmy; if they hear nothing about Anthroposophy, then they will like eurythmy; and then, having taken a liking to eurythmy, if they hear that Anthroposophy stands as the foundation for eurythmy, they will take a liking to Anthroposophy as well. No one will say: First we must show people how the medicines work in practice so that they see that they are proper medicines, and will buy them; then, if they later hear that Anthroposophy is behind the medicines, they will also approach Anthroposophy.

We must have the courage to regard such a method as dishonest. Not until we have the courage to regard such a method as dishonest, not until we inwardly detest such a method will Anthroposophy find its way through the world. So in future here in Dornach we shall fight for the truth, not fanatically but simply in an honest, straightforward love of the truth. Perhaps this will enable us to make good some of what has so sinfully been made bad in recent years.

With thoughts which are not easy but which are grave we must depart from this Conference that has led to the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. But I do not think that it will be necessary for anybody to go away with pessimism from what has taken place here this Christmas. Every day we have had to walk past the sad ruins of the Goetheanum. But as we have walked up this hill, past these ruins, I think that in every soul there has also been the content of what has been discussed here and what has quite evidently been understood by our friends in their hearts. From all this the thought has emerged: It will be possible for spiritual flames of fire to arise, as a true spiritual life for the blessing of mankind in the future, from the Goetheanum which is being built anew. They shall arise out of our hard work and out of our devotion. The more we go from here with the courage to carry on the affairs of Anthroposophy, the better have we heard the breath of the spirit wafting filled with hope through our gathering. For the scene which I have described to you and which can be seen so frequently, that scene of present-day human beings, the products of a decadent civilization and education, approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep, is actually not one which is found amongst the circle of sensitive anthroposophists. Here on the whole the circumstance is such that only a warning, one particular exhortation, resounds: In hearing the voice from the land of the spirit you must develop the strong courage to bear witness to this voice, for you have begun to awaken; courage will keep you awake; lack of courage alone could lead you to fall asleep.

The exhortation to be awake through courage is the other variation, the variation for anthroposophists in the life of present-day civilization. Those who are not anthroposophists hear: You must remain outside the land of the spirit, you have misused ideas for merely earthly objects, you have not gathered ideas which have value for the gods and which are worthy of the gods; you would be paralysed on your return to the physical, sense-perceptible world. But those souls who are the souls of anthroposophists hear: Your remaining test is to be that of your courage to bear witness to that voice which you are capable of hearing because of the inclination of your soul, because of the inclination of your heart.

My dear friends, yesterday was the anniversary of the day on which we saw the tongues of flame devouring our old Goetheanum. Today we may hope—since a year ago we did not allow even the flames to distract us from continuing with our work—today we may hope that when the physical Goetheanum stands here once more we shall have worked in such a way that the physical Goetheanum is only the external symbol for our spiritual Goetheanum which we want to take with us as an idea as we now go out into the world.

We have here laid the Foundation Stone. On this Foundation Stone shall be erected the building whose individual stones will be the work achieved in all our groups by the individuals outside in the wide world. Let us now look in spirit at this work and become conscious of the responsibility about which I have spoken today, of our responsibility towards the human being who stands before the Guardian of the Threshold and has to be refused entry into the spiritual world.

Certainly it should never occur to us to feel anything but the deepest pain and the deepest sorrow about what happened to us a year ago. But let us not forget that everything in the world that has any stature has been born out of pain. So let us transform our pain so that out of it may arise a strong and shining Anthroposophical Society by dint, my dear friends, of your work.

For this purpose we have immersed ourselves in those words with which I began, in those words with which I wish to close this Christmas Conference, this Christmas Conference which is to be for us a festival of consecration not merely for the beginning of a new year but for the beginning of a new turning point of time to which we want to devote ourselves in enthusiastic cultivation of the life of spirit:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being.
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
Speaking:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South,
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul.
Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai!
Let there be fired from the East
What through the West is formed
Speaking:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South,
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light.
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted
Speaking:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.^A

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men:
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

And so, my dear friends,^B bear out with you into the world your warm hearts in whose soil you have laid the Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, bear out with you your warm hearts in order to do work in the world that is strong in healing. Help will come to you because your heads will be enlightened by what you all now want to be able to direct in conscious willing. Let us today make this resolve with all our strength. And we shall see that if we show ourselves to be worthy, then a good star will shine over that which is willed from here. My dear friends, follow this good star. We shall see whither the gods shall lead us through the light of this star.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun,
Warm thou
Our hearts,
Enlighten thou
Our heads!

• 79. See Rudolf Steiner World History in the Light of Anthroposophy, op. cit.
• 80. See Note 3.
• A. According to the shorthand report, the final words of the verse were not spoken on this occasion.
• B. In the following sentences, as in the gathering on 25 December 1923 at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner once again changed from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)

Looking back at the past several meetings of this conference, I feel it is necessary to digress a little from our planned program and tell you something about the practical aspects of Waldorf education. From what you have heard so far, you may have gathered that the key to this form of education, both in its curriculum and in its methods, is the understanding of the human constitution of body, soul, and spirit as it develops throughout life. In order to follow this principle, it was necessary to take a new look at education in general, with the result that the Waldorf school is, in many ways, run very differently from traditional schools.

The first point we had to consider was how to make the most of the available time for teaching, especially in regard to the development of the student’s soul life. The usual practice is to split up the available time into many separate lessons, but this method does not bring enough depth and focus to the various subjects. For example, suppose you want to bring something to your students that will have lasting value for them, something they can take into later life. I will use the example of a subject taught in almost every school: history. Imagine that you want to introduce the era of Queen Elizabeth I, including the main events and people usually described to children. A teacher could do this by talking about the facts of that historical period in history lessons, and it might take, say, half a year. But you can also do this in a different way. After methodical preparation at home, a teacher can cultivate within a fine feeling for the salient facts, which then become a kind of framework for this period. The teacher allows these to work upon the soul, thus enabling the students to remember them without much difficulty. All additional material will then fall into place more or less naturally. If one masters the subject in this way, we can say without exaggerating that, in only three to four lessons, it is quite possible to give students something that might otherwise take half a year, and even in greater depth so that the students retain a lasting impression of the subject.

If you do a detailed survey of all that children are supposed to learn in school today, you will agree with the method I just described. In our present state of civilization, what our children are supposed to learn by the age of fourteen is such an accumulation of material that it is really beyond their capacity to absorb it all. No school is truly successful in teaching this much, but this fact is usually ignored. People merely pretend that the present system works, and the curricula are set accordingly.

The aim of Waldorf education is to arrange all of the teaching so that within the shortest possible time the maximum amount of material can be presented to students by the simplest means possible. This helps children retain an overall view of their subjects—not so much intellectually, but very much in their feeling life.

It is obvious that such a method makes tremendous demands on teachers. I am convinced that, if teachers apply this method (which I would call a form of teaching based on “soul economy”), they will have to spend at least two or three hours of concentrated preparation for each half hour they teach. And they must be willing to do this if they want to avoid harming their students. Such preparation may not always be practical or possible, but if the teacher wants to succeed in carrying a comprehensive and living presentation of the subject into the classroom, such private preparation is fundamental. It does make great demands on teachers, but such obligations are intrinsic to this calling and must be accepted in the best way possible.

Before we could practice this basic educational principle in our newly established Waldorf school, it was necessary to create a suitable curriculum and a schedule. Today I would like to outline this curriculum and its application, but without going into details, since this will be our task during the coming days.

And so, having prepared themselves as just described, the teachers enter the school in the morning. The students arrive a little earlier in the summer, at eight o’clock, and a little later in the winter. When they assemble in their classrooms, the teachers bring them together by saying a morning verse in chorus with the whole class. This verse, which could also be sung, embraces both a general human and a religious element, and it unites the students in a mood of prayer. It may be followed by a genuine prayer. In our “free” Waldorf school, such details are left entirely up to each teacher.

Then begins our so-called main lesson, which lasts nearly two hours; in traditional schedules, these are often broken up into smaller periods. But the principle of soul economy in teaching makes it necessary to alter the conventional schedule. Thus, during the first two hours of the morning, students are taught the same subject in “block” periods, each lasting four to six weeks. It is left to the class teacher to introduce a short break during the main lesson, which is essential in the younger classes. In this way, subjects like geography or arithmetic are taught for four to six weeks at a time. After that, another main lesson subject is studied, again for a block period, rather than as shorter lessons given at regular intervals through the year.

Thus one introduces the various main lesson subjects according to the principles we agreed on, which include a carefully planned economy of the children’s soul life. At all costs, one must avoid too much stress on the mind and soul of the child. Children should never feel that lessons are too difficult; on the contrary, there should be a longing in the child to keep moving from one step to the next. Students should never experience an arbitrary break in a subject; one thing should always lead to another. During the four to six weeks of a main lesson block, the class teacher will always try to present the material as a complete chapter—an artistic whole—that children can take into later life. And it goes without saying that, toward the end of the school year before the approaching summer holidays, all the main lesson subjects taught during the year should be woven together into a short, artistic recapitulation.

Just as we provide children with clothing with enough room for their limbs to grow freely, as teachers we should respond to their inner needs by giving them material not just for their present stage but broad enough for further expansion. If we give children fixed and finished concepts, we do not allow for inner growth and maturing. Therefore all the concepts we introduce, all the feelings we invoke, and all will impulses we give must be treated with the same care and foresight we use to clothe our children. We should not expect them to remember abstract definitions for the rest of their lives. At the age of forty-five, your little finger will not be the same as it was when you were eight, and likewise, concepts introduced at the age of eight should not remain unchanged by the time students reach the age of forty-five. We must approach the child’s organism so that the various members can grow and expand. We must not clothe our material in fixed and stiff forms so that, when our students reach forty-five, they remember it exactly as it was presented in their eighth or ninth year. This, however, is possible only if we present our subject with what I call “soul economy.” During the remaining hours of the morning, the other lessons are taught, and here foreign languages play the most important part. They are introduced in grade one, when the children first enter the Waldorf school in their sixth and seventh year. Foreign languages are presented so that the children can really go into them, which means that, while teaching a language, the teacher tries to avoid using the children’s native language.

The foreign language teacher naturally has to take into account that the students are older than they were when they first learned their own language and will arrange the lessons accordingly. This is essential to keep in harmony with the student’s age and development. The children should be able to get into the language so that they do not inwardly translate from their native tongue into the foreign language whenever they want to say something. Jumping from one language to the other should be avoided at all costs. If, for example, you want to introduce a particular word such as table or window, you would not mention the corresponding word in the child’s native language but indicate the object while saying the word clearly. Thus children learn the new language directly before learning to translate words, which might not be desirable at all. We have found that, during the early stages, if we avoid the usual grammar and all that this entails, children find their way into a new language in a natural and living way. More details will be given when we speak about the various ages, but for now I wanted to give you a general picture of the practical arrangements in the Waldorf school.

Another very important subject for this stage is handwork, which includes several crafts. Because the Waldorf school is coeducational, boys and girls share these lessons, and it is indeed a heart-warming sight to see the young boys and girls busy together engaged in knitting, crocheting, and similar activities. Experience shows that, although boys have a different relationship to knitting than do girls, they enjoy it and benefit from such activity. Working together this way has certainly helped in the general development of all the students. In craft lessons that involve heavier physical work, girls also participate fully. This is the way manual skills are developed and nurtured in our school.

Another subject taught during morning sessions could be called “worldview.” Please understand that a Waldorf school—or any school that might spring from the anthroposophic movement—would never wish to teach anthroposophy as it exists today. I would consider this the worst thing we could do. Anthroposophy in its present form is a subject for adults and, as you can see from the color of their hair, often quite mature adults. Consequently, spiritual science is presented through literature and word of mouth in a form appropriate only to adults. I should consider the presentation to students of anything from my books Theosophy or How to Know Higher Worlds the worst possible use of this material; it simply must not happen. If we taught such material, which is totally unsuitable for schoolchildren (forgive a somewhat trivial expression used in German), we would make them want “to jump out of their skin.” Naturally, in class lessons they would have to submit to whatever the teacher brings, but inwardly they would experience such an urge. Anthroposophy as such is not to be taught in a Waldorf school. It’s important that spiritual science does not become mere theory or a worldview based on certain ideas; rather, it should become a way of life, involving the entire human being. Thus, when teachers who are anthroposophists enter school, they should have developed themselves so that they are multifaceted and skillful in the art of education. And it is this achievement that is important, not any desire to bring anthroposophy to your students.

Waldorf education is meant to be pragmatic. It is meant to be a place where anthroposophic knowledge is applied in a practical way. If you have made such a worldview your own and linked it to practical life, you will not become theoretical and alienated from life but a skilled and capable person. I do not mean to say that all members of the anthroposophic movement have actually reached these goals—far from it. I happen to know that there are still some men among our members who cannot even sew on a trouser button that fell off. And no one suffering from such a shortcoming could be considered a full human being. Above all, there are still members who do not fully accept the contention that you cannot be a real philosopher if you cannot apply your hands to anything—such as repairing your shoes—if the need arises. This may sound a bit exaggerated, but I hope you know what I am trying to say.

Those who must deal with theoretical work should place themselves within practical life even more firmly than those who happen to be tailors, cobblers, or engineers. In my opinion, imparting theoretical knowledge is acceptable only when the other person is well versed in the practical matters of life; otherwise, such ideas remain alien to life. By approaching the classroom through anthroposophic knowledge, teachers as artists should develop the ability to find the right solutions to the needs of the children. If teachers carry such an attitude into the classroom, together with the fruits of their endeavors, they will also be guided in particular situations by a sound pedagogical instinct. This, however, is seldom the case in the conventional education today.

Please do not mistake these remarks as criticism against any teachers. Those who belong to the teaching profession will be the first to experience the truth of what has been said. In their own limitations, they may well feel they are the victims of prevailing conditions. The mere fact that they themselves had to suffer the martyrdom of a high school education may be enough to prevent them from breaking through many great hindrances. The most important thing while teaching is the ability to meet constantly changing classroom situations that arise from the immediate responses of one’s students. But who in this wide world trains teachers to do that? Are they not trained to decide ahead of time what they will teach? This often gives me the impression that children are not considered at all during educational deliberations. Such an attitude is like turning students into papier-mâché masks as they enter school, so that teachers can deal with masks instead of real children.

As mentioned before, it is not our goal to teach ideology in the Waldorf school, though such a thought might easily occur to people when hearing that anthroposophists have established a new school. Our goal is to carry our understanding gained through spiritual science right into practical teaching.

This is why I was willing to hand over the responsibility for religion lessons to those who represent the various religions. Religion, after all, is at the very core of a person’s worldview. Consequently, in our Waldorf school, a Roman Catholic priest was asked to give Roman Catholic religion lessons to students of that denomination, and a Protestant minister teaches Protestant religion lessons. When this decision was made, we were not afraid that we would be unable to balance any outer influence brought into the school by these priests, influence that might not be in harmony with what we were trying to do. But then a somewhat unexpected situation arose. When our friend Emil Molt established the Waldorf school, most of our students were from the homes of workers at his factory. Among them were many children whose parents are atheists, and if they had been sent to another school, they would not have received religious instruction at all. As such things often happen when dealing with children and parents, gradually these children also wanted to receive some form of religion lessons. And this is how our free, non-denominational, religion lessons came about. These were given by our own teachers, just as the other religious lessons were given by ministers. The teachers were recognized by us as religious teachers in the Waldorf curriculum. Thus, anthroposophic religious lessons were introduced in our school. These lessons have come to mean a great deal to many of our students, especially the factory workers’ children.

However, all this brought specific problems in its wake, because anthroposophy is for adults. If, therefore, teachers want to bring the right material into anthroposophic religious lessons, they must recreate it fresh, and this is no easy task. It means reshaping and transforming anthroposophic material to make it suitable for the various age groups. In fact, this task of changing a modern philosophy to suit young people occupies us a great deal. It means working deeply on fundamental issues, such as how the use of certain symbols might affect students, or how one deals with the imponderables inherent in such a situation. We will speak more about this later on.

I am sure you can appreciate that one has to make all kinds of compromises in a school that tries to base its curriculum on the needs of growing children in the light of a spiritual scientific knowledge of the human being. Today it would be quite impossible to teach children according to abstract educational ideas, subsequently called the “principles of Waldorf education.” The result of such a misguided approach would be that our graduates would be unable to find their way into life. It is too easy to criticize life today. Most people meet unpleasant aspects of life every day and we are easily tempted to make clever suggestions about how to put the world in order. But it completely inappropriate to educate children so that, when they leave school to enter life, they can only criticize the senselessness of what they find. However imperfect life may be according to abstract reason, we must nevertheless be able to play our full part in it. Waldorf students—who have probably been treated more as individuals than is usually the case—have to be sent out into life; otherwise, having a Waldorf school makes no sense at all. Students must not become estranged from contemporary life to the extent that they can only criticize what they meet outside.

This I can only touch on here. From the very beginning, we had to make the most varied compromises, even in our curriculum and pedagogical goals. As soon as the school was founded, I sent a memorandum to the educational authorities and requested that our students be taught according to the principles of Waldorf education, from the sixth or seventh year until the completion of their ninth year, or the end of the third class, without any outside interference. I meant that the planning of the curriculum and the standards to be achieved, as well as the teaching methods, were to be left entirely in the hands of our teaching staff, the “college of teachers,” which would bear the ultimate responsibility for the running of the school.

In my letter to the authorities, I stated that, on completion of the third school year, our students would have reached the same standards of basic education as those achieved in other schools, and thus would be able to change schools without difficulty. This implies that a child with a broader educational background than the students in this new class will nevertheless be able to fit into any new surroundings, and that such a student will not have lost touch with life in general. For us, it is not only important that teachers know their students well, but that there is also a corresponding relationship between the entire body of teachers and all the students of the school, so that students will feel free to contact any teacher for guidance or advice. It is a real joy, every time one enters the Waldorf school, to see how friendly and trusting the students are, not only with their class teachers but with all the teachers, both in and out of class.

Similarly, I said that our teaching between the end of the ninth and twelfth years—from the end of class three to the end of class six—is intended to achieve standards comparable with those of other schools and that our students would be able to enter seventh grade in another school without falling behind. We do not wish to be fanatical and, therefore, we had to make compromises. Waldorf teachers must always be willing to cope with the practical problems of life. And if a student has to leave our school at the age of fourteen, there should be no problems when entering a high school or any other school leading to a university entrance examination. So we try to put into practice what has been described.

Now, having established our school through the age of fourteen, every year we are adding a new class, so that we will eventually be able to offer the full range of secondary education leading to higher education. This means that we have to plan our curriculum so that young people will be able to take their graduation exams. In Austria, this exam is called a “maturity exam,” in Germany Abitur, and other countries have other names. In any case, our students are given the possibility of entering other schools of higher education. There is still no possibility that we will open a vocational school or university. Whatever we might try to do in this way would always bear the stamp of a private initiative, and, because we should never want to hold official examinations, no government would grant us permission to issue certificates of education without test results. Thus, we are forced to compromise in our Waldorf plan, and we are perfectly willing to acknowledge this. What matters is that, despite all the compromises, a genuine Waldorf spirit lives in our teaching, and this as much as possible.

Because we wanted a complete junior school when we opened our Waldorf school, we had to receive some students from other schools, and this gave us plenty of opportunity to witness the fruits of the “strict discipline” that characterizes other schools. At this point, we have a little more than two years of “Waldorf discipline” behind us, which, to a large extent, consists of our trying to get rid of the ordinary sort of school discipline. For example, just a few weeks ago we laid the foundation stone for a larger school building; until now, we have had to make do with provisional classrooms. To my mind, it seemed right that all our children would take part in this stone-laying ceremony. And, as so often happens in life, things took a little longer than anticipated, and by the time we were just getting ready for the actual ceremony, our students were already in the building. First I had to meet teachers and several others, but the children were there already. The adults had to meet in our so-called staff room. What could we to do with all those children? The chair of the college of teachers simply said, “We’ll send them back to their classrooms. They have now reached a stage where we can leave them unattended without bad consequences. They won’t disturb us.”

So, despite the dubious “discipline” imported from other schools, and despite having rid ourselves of so-called school discipline, it was possible to send the students to their classrooms without any disturbance. Admittedly, this peace was somewhat ephemeral; overly sensitive ears might have been offended, but that did not matter. Children who disturb overly sensitive ears are usually not overly disciplined. At any rate, the effects of imponderables in the Waldorf school became apparent in the children’s good behavior under these unusual circumstances.

As you know, various kinds of punishments are administered in most schools, and we, too, had to find ways to deal with this problem. When we discussed the question of punishment in one of our teacher meetings, one of our teachers reported an interesting incident. He had tried to discover the effects of certain forms of punishment on his students. His students had experienced our kind of discipline for some time, and among them there were a few notorious rascals. These little good-fornothings (as such students are called in Germany) had done very poor work, and they were to be punished according to usual school discipline and given detention. They were told to stay after lessons to do their arithmetic properly. However, when this punishment was announced in class, the other students protested that they, too, wanted to stay and do extra arithmetic because it is so much fun. So you see, the concept of punishment had gone through a complete transformation; it had become something the whole class enjoyed. Such things rarely happen if teachers try to make them happen directly, but they become the natural consequences of the right approach.

I am well aware that the problem of school discipline occupies many minds today. I had the opportunity to closely observe the importance of the relationship between a teacher and his students, a relationship that is the natural outcome of the disposition of both teacher and students. One could go so far as to say that whether students profit from their lessons or how much they gain depends on whether the teacher evokes sympathy or antipathy in the students. It is absolutely open to discussion whether an easygoing teacher—one who does not even work according to proper educational principles—may be more effective than a teacher who, intent on following perfectly sound but abstract principles, is unable to practice them in the classroom. There are plenty of abstract principles around these days. I am not being sarcastic when I call them clever and ingenious; their merits can be argued. But even when slovenly and indolent teachers enter the classroom, if they nevertheless radiate warmth and affection for their students, they may give their students more for later life than would a highly principled teacher whose personality evokes antipathy. Although the students of a genial but untidy teacher are not likely to grow into models of orderliness, at least they will not suffer from “nervous” conditions later on in life. Nervousness can be the result of antipathy toward a teacher—even one using excellent educational methods—who is unable to establish the right kind of contact with the students.

Such points are open to discussion, and they should be discussed if we take the art of education seriously. I once had to participate in a case like this, and my decision may evoke strong disapproval among some people. During one of my visits to the Waldorf school, I was told of a boy in one of the classes who was causing great difficulties. He had committed all kinds of misdemeanors, and none of his teachers could deal with him. I asked for the boy to be sent to me, because first I wanted to find the root of the trouble. You will admit that in many other schools such a boy would have received corporal punishment or possibly something less drastic. I examined the boy carefully and concluded that he should be moved into the next class above. This was to be his punishment, and I have not heard any complaints since. His new class teacher confirmed that the boy has become a model student and that everything seems to be in order now. This, after all, is what really matters. The important thing is that one goes into the very soul and nature of such a child. The cause of the trouble was that there was no human contact between him and his teacher, and because he was intelligent enough to cope with the work of the next class (there was no comparable class in his case), the only right thing was to move him up. Had we put him down into the next lower class, we would have ruined that child.

If one bears in mind the well-being and inner development of a child, one finds the right way teaching. This is why it is good to look at specific and symptomatic cases. We have no intention of denying that, in many ways, the Waldorf school is built on compromise, but as far as it is humanly possible, we always try to educate from a real knowledge of the human being.

Let us return to the curriculum. The morning sessions are arranged as described. Because it is essential for our students to be able to move on to higher forms of education, we had to include other subjects such as Greek and Latin, which are also taught in morning lessons. In these ancient languages soul economy is of particular importance. The afternoon lessons are given over to more physical activities, such as gym and eurythmy, and to artistic work, which plays a very special part in a Waldorf school. I will give further details of this in the coming days. We try, as much as possible, to teach the more intellectual subjects in the morning, and only when the headwork is done are they given movement lessons, insofar as they have not let off steam already between morning lessons. However, after the movement lessons they are not taken back to the classroom to do more headwork. I have already said that this has a destructive effect on life, because while children are moving physically, suprasensory forces work through them subconsciously. And the head, having surrendered to physical movement, is no longer in a position to resume its work. It is therefore a mistake to think that, by sandwiching a gym lesson between other more intellectual lessons, we are providing a beneficial change. The homogeneous character of both morning and afternoon sessions has shown itself beneficial to the general development of the students. If we keep in mind the characteristic features of human nature, we will serve the human inclinations best.

I mentioned that we found it necessary to give some kind of anthroposophic religious lessons to our students. Soon afterward, arising from those lessons, we felt another need that led to the introduction of Sunday services for our students. This service has the quality of formal worship, in which the children participate with deep religious feelings. We have found that a ritual performed before the children’s eyes every Sunday morning has greatly deepened their religious experience.

The Sunday service had to be enlarged for the sake of the students who were about to leave our middle school. In Germany, it is customary for students of this age to be confirmed in a special ceremony that signifies the stage of maturity at which they are old enough to enter life. We have made arrangements for a similar ceremony that, as experience has shown, leaves a lasting impression on our students.

In any education based on knowledge of the human being, needs become apparent that may have gone unnoticed in more traditional forms of education. For instance, in Germany all students receive school reports at the end of each school year, because it is considered essential to give them something like this before they leave for summer holidays. In this case, too, we felt the need for innovation. I have to admit that I would find it extremely difficult to accept the usual form of school reports in a Waldorf school, simply because I could never appreciate the difference between “satisfactory” and “near-satisfactory,” or between “fair” and “fairly good,” and so on. These grades are then converted into numbers, so that in Germany some reports show the various subjects arranged in one column, and on the opposite side there is a column of figures, such as 4½, 3, 3–4, and so on. I have never been able to develop the necessary understanding for these somewhat occult relationships. So we decided to find other ways of writing our school reports.

When our students leave for holidays at the end of the school year, they do receive reports. They contain a kind of mirror image, or biography, of their progress during the year, which has been written by their class teachers. We have found again and again that our children accept these reports with inner approval. They can read about the impression they have created during the years, and they will feel that, although the description was written with sympathetic understanding, they do not tolerate any whitewashing of the less positive aspects of their work. These reports, which are received with deep inner satisfaction, end with a verse, composed especially for each child. This verse is a kind of guiding motive for the coming years. I believe our kind of reports have already proved themselves and will retain their value in the future, even though in some parts of Germany they have already been referred to as “ersatz” reports.

Students have responded to life in the Waldorf school in an entirely positive way. To show how much they like their school, I should like to repeat something I recently heard from one of our mothers, for such an example helps to illustrate more general symptoms. She said, “My boy was never an affectionate child. He never showed any tender feelings toward me as his mother. After his first year in the Waldorf school—while still quite young—his summer holidays began. When they were nearly over and I told him that soon he would be going to school again, he came and kissed me for the first time.” Such a small anecdote could be considered symptomatic of the effects of an education based on knowledge of the human being and practiced in a human and friendly atmosphere. Our school reports also help to contribute towards this atmosphere. As an introduction to life in the Waldorf school, I felt it necessary to digress a little from our planned program. Tomorrow we shall continue with a more detailed account of the child’s development after the change of teeth. Meanwhile, I wanted to include here a description of what by now has become the outer framework of practical life in the Waldorf school.

From the things I have already said it may perhaps be clear to you what all education and teaching in the Waldorf School is designed to bring about. It aims at bringing up children to be human beings strong and sound in body, free in soul and lucid in spirit. Physical health and strength, freedom of soul and clarity of spirit are things mankind will require in the future more than anything else, particularly in social life. But in order to educate and teach in this way it is necessary for the teacher to get a thorough mastery of those things I have attempted to describe.

The teacher must have a complete vision of the child organism; and it must be a vision of the organism enabling him to judge physical health. For only one who is truly a judge of physical health and can bring it into harmony with the soul can say to himself: with this child this must be done, and with that child the other.

It is an accepted opinion to-day that a doctor should have access to schools. The system of school doctors is developing widely. But, just as it not good when the different branches of instruction, the different subjects, are given to different teachers who make no contact with one another, neither is it good to place the charge of physical health in the hands of a person who is not a member of the staff, not a member of the college of teachers. The situation presents a certain difficulty, of which the following incident will give you an example.

On an occasion when we were showing visitors over the Waldorf School there was a gentleman who, in his official capacity, was an inspector of schools. I was speaking of the physical health and the physical organism of the children and what one could observe in it, and I told him about one child who has a certain disorder of the heart, and another with some other disability etc. and then the man exclaimed in astonishment: Yes, but your teachers would have to have medical knowledge for this to be of any use in the school.

Well, yes, if it is truly a necessity for healthy education that teachers should have a certain degree of medical know-ledge, why then they must have it, they must attain it. Life cannot be twisted to suit the idiosyncrasies of men, we must frame our arrangements in accordance with the demands of life. Just as we must learn something before we can do something in other spheres, so must we learn something before we can do something in education.

Thus, for instance, it is necessary for a teacher to see precisely all that is happening when a child plays, a little child. Play involves a whole complex of activities of soul: joy, sometimes also pain, sympathy, antipathy; and particularly curiosity and the desire for knowledge. A child wants to investigate the objects he plays with and see what they are made of. And when observing this free activity of the child's soul—an activity unconstrained as yet into any form of work—when observing this entirely spontaneous expression, we must look to the shades of feeling and notice whether it satisfies or does not satisfy. For if we guide the child's play so as to content him we improve his health, for we are promoting an activity which is in direct touch with his digestive system. And whether or not a man will be subject in old age to obstruction in his blood circulation and digestive system depends upon how his play is guided in childhood. There is a fine, a delicate connection between the way a child plays and the growth and development of its physical organism.

One should not say: the physical organism is a thing of little account; I am an idealist and cannot concern myself with such a low thing as the physical organism. This physical organism has been put into the world by the divine spiritual powers of the world, it is a divine creation, and we must realise that we, as educators, are called upon to co-operate in this spiritual creation. I would rather express my meaning by a concrete example than in abstract sentences.

Suppose children show an extreme form, a pathological form of what we call the melancholic disposition; or suppose you get an extreme form, a pathological form of the sanguine temperament. The teacher must know, then, where the border-line comes between what is simply physical and what is pathological. If he observes that a melancholic child is tending to become pathological,—and this is far more often the case than one would think,—he must get into touch with the child's parents and learn from them what diet the child as been having. He will then discover a connection between this diet and the child's pathological melancholy. He will probably find,—to give a concrete instance, though there might be other causes,—he will probably find that the child has been getting too little sugar in the food he is given at home. Owing to lack of sugar in the food he gets, the working of his liver is not regulated properly. For the peculiarity of the melancholic child is that a certain substance i.e. starch, (German: Starke) is formed in the liver indeed, but not formed in the right measure. This substance is also to be found in plants. All human beings form starch in the liver but it is different from plant starch—it is an animal starch which in the liver immediately becomes transformed into sugar. This transformation of animal starch into sugar is a very important part of the activity of the liver. Now, m the melancholic child this is out of order, and one must advise the mother to put more sugar into the child's food; in this way one can regulate the glycogenic activity of the liver,—as it is called. And you will see what an extraordinary effect this purely hygienic measure will have.

Now, in the sanguine child you will find precisely the opposite: most likely he is being gorged with sugar; he is given too many sweets, he is given too much sugar in his food. If he has been made voracious of sugar precisely the opposite activity will come about. The liver is an infinitely important organ, and it is an organ which resembles a sense-organ much more closely than one would imagine. For, the purpose of the liver is to perceive the whole human being from within, to comprehend him. The liver is vital to the whole human being. Hence its organisation differs from that of other organs. In other organs a certain quantum of arterial blood comes in and a certain quantum of venous blood goes out. The liver has an extra arrangement. A special vein enters the liver and supplies the liver with extra venous blood. This has the effect of making the liver into a kind of world of its own, a world apart in the human being. [Literally “Aussenwelt,”—outer world.] And it is this that enables man to perceive himself by means of the liver, to perceive, that is, what affects his organism. The liver is an extraordinarily fine barometer for sensing the kind of relation the human being has to the outer world. You will effect an extraordinary improvement in the case of a pathologically sanguine child—a flighty child, one who flits nervously from thing to thing—you will get a remarkable improvement if you advise his mother to diminish somewhat the amount of sugar she gives him.

Thus, if you are a real teacher, through what you do, not in school, but at other times, you can give the child such guidance as shall make him truly healthy, strong and active in all his physical functions. And you will notice what enormous importance this has for the development of the whole human being.

Some of the most impressive experiences we have had with the children of the Waldorf School have been with those of fifteen or sixteen years old. We began the Waldorf School with eight classes, the elementary classes, but we have added on, class by class, a ninth, tenth and now an eleventh class. These upper classes,—which are of course advanced classes, not elementary classes,—contain the children of 15 and 16 years old. And we have with these very special difficulties. Some of these difficulties are of a psychical and moral nature. I will speak of these later. But even in the physical respect one finds that man's nature tends continuously to become pathological and has to be shielded from this condition.

Among girls, in certain circumstances, you will find a slight tendency to chlorosis, to anaemia, in the whole developing organism. The blood in the girl's organism becomes poor; she becomes pale, anaemic. This is due to the fact that during these 14th, 15th and 16th years the spiritual nature is separated out from the total organism; and this spiritual nature, which formerly worked within the whole being, regulated the blood. Now the blood is left to itself. Therefore it must be rightly prepared so that its own power may accomplish this larger task. Girls are apt, then, to become pale, anaemic: and one must know that this anaemia comes about when one has failed to arouse a girl's interest in the things one has been teaching or telling her. Where attention and interest are kept alive the whole physical organism participates in the activity which is engaging the inmost self of the human being, and then anaemia does not arise in the same way.

With boys the case is opposite. The boys get a kind of neuritis, a condition in which there is too much blood in the brain. Hence during these years the brain behaves as though it were congested with blood. (Blutuberfullt.) In girls we find a lack of blood in the body: in boys a superabundance, particularly in the head,—a superabundance of white blood, which is a wrong form of venous and arterial blood. This is because the boys have been given too many sensations, they have been overstimulated, and have had to hurry from sensation to sensation without pause or proper rest. And you will see that even the troublesome behaviour and difficulties among 14, 15 and 16 year old children are characteristic of this state and are connected with the whole physical development.

When one can view the nature of man in this way, not despising what is physical and bodily, one can do a great deal for the children's health as a teacher or educator. It must be a fundamental principle that spirituality is false the moment it leads away from the material to some castle in the clouds. If one has come to despising the body, and to saying: O the body is a low thing, it must be suppressed, flouted: one will most certainly not acquire the power to educate men soundly. For, you see, you may leave the physical body out of account, and perhaps you may attain to a high state of abstraction in your spiritual nature, but it will be like a balloon in the air, flying off. A spirituality not bound to what is physical in life can give nothing to social evolution on the earth: and before one can wing one's way into the Heavens one must be prepared for the Heavens. This preparation has to take place on earth.

When men seek entry into Heaven and must pass the examination of death, it is seldom, in these materialistic days, that we find they have given a spiritual nurture to this human physical organism,—this highest creation of divine, spiritual beings upon earth.

I will speak of the psychic moral aspect in the next section, and on Eurhythmy in the section following.

If there is a great deal to do in the physical sphere apart from the educational measures taken in the school itself, the same is true for the domain of the soul, the psychic domain, and for that of the spirit. The important thing is to get the human being even while at school to be finding a right entry into life. Once more I will illustrate the aim of the Waldorf School by concrete examples rather than abstract statements.

It is found necessary at the end of a school year to take stock of the work done by a child during the year. This is generally called: a report on the child's progress and attainment in the different subjects in respect of the work set. In many countries the parents or guardians are informed whether the child has come up to standard and how—by means of figures: 1, 2, 3, 4; each number means that a child has reached a certain proficiency in a given subject. Some-times, when you are not quite sure whether 3 or 4 expresses the correct degree of attainment, you write 3 ½, and some teachers, making a fine art of calculation, have even put down 3 ¼. And I must own that I have never been able to acquire this art of expressing human faculties by such numbers.

The reports in the Waldorf School are produced in another manner. Where the body of teachers, the college of teachers, is such a unity that every child in the school is known to some extent by every teacher, it becomes possible to give an account of the child which relates to his whole nature. Thus the report we make on a child at the end of the school year resembles a little biography, it is like an apercus of the experiences one has had with the child during the year, both in school and out.

In this way the child and his parents, or guardians, have a mirror image of what the child is like at this age. And we have found at the Waldorf School that one can put quite severe censure into this mirror-like report and children accept it contentedly. Now we also write something else in the report. We combine the past with the future. We know the child, and know whether he is deficient in will, in feeling or in thought, we know whether this emotion or the other predominates in him. And in the light of this knowledge, for every single child in the Waldorf School we make a little verse, or saying. This we inscribe in his report. It is meant as a guiding line for the whole of the next year at school. The child learns this verse by heart and bears it in mind. And the verse works upon the child's will, or upon his emotions or mental peculiarities, modifying and balancing them.

Thus the report is not merely an intellectual expression of what the child has done, but it is a power in itself and continues to work until the child receives a new report. And one must indeed come to know the individuality of a child very accurately—as you will realise—if one is to give him a report of such a potent nature year by year.

You can also see from this that our task in the Waldorf School is not the founding of a school which requires exceptional external arrangements. What we hold to be of value is the pedagogy and teaching which can be introduced into any school. (We appreciate the influence of external conditions upon the education in any school). We are not revolutionaries who simply say: town schools are no use, all schools must be in the country, and such-like; we say, rather: the conditions of life produce this or that situation; we take the conditions as they are, and in every kind of school we work for the welfare of man through a pedagogy and didactics which take the given surroundings into account. Thus, working along these lines, we find we are largely able to dispense with the system of “staying put,”—the custom of keeping back a child a second year in the same class so as to make him brighter.

We have been blamed at the Waldorf School for having children in the upper classes whom the authorities think should have been kept back. We find it exceedingly difficult, if only on humane grounds, to leave children behind because our teachers are so attached to their children that many tears would be shed if this had to be done. The truth is that an inner relationship arises between children and teacher, and this is the actual cause of our being able to avoid this unhappy custom, this “staying put.” But apart from this there is no sense in this keeping of children back. For, suppose we keep back a boy or girl in a previous class: the boy or girl may be so constituted that his mind unfolds in his 11th year, we shall then be putting the child in the class for 11 year-old children one year too late. This is much more harmful than that the teacher should at some time have extra trouble with this child because it has less grasp of the subjects and must yet be taken on with the others into the next class.

The special class (Hilfsklasse) is only for the most backward children of all. We have only one special class into which we have to take the weak, or backward children of all the other classes. We have not had enough money for a number of “helping” classes; but this one class has an exceptionally gifted teacher, Dr. Schubert. As for him, well, when the question of founding a special class arose, one could say with axiomatic certainty: You are the one to take this special class. He has a special gift for it. He is able to make something of the pathological conditions of the children. He handles each child quite individually, so much so that he is happiest when he has the children sitting around a table with him, instead of in separate benches. The backward children, those who have a feebleness of mind, or some other deficiency, receive a treatment here which enables them after a while to rejoin their classes.

Naturally this is a matter of time; but we only transfer children to this class on rare occasions; and whenever I attempt to transfer a child from a class into this supplementary class, finding it necessary, I have first of all to fight the matter out with the teacher of the class who does not want to give the child up. And often it is a wonderful thing to see the deep relationship which has grown up between individual teachers and individual children. This means that the education and teaching truly reach the children's inner life.

You see it is all a question of developing a method, for we are realistic, we are not nebulous mystics; so that, although we have had to make compromises with ordinary life, our method yet makes it possible really to bring out a child's individual disposition;—at least we have had many good results in these first few years.

Since, under present conditions, we have had to make compromises, it has not been possible to give religious instruction to many of the children. But we can give the children a moral training. We start, in the teaching of morality, from the feeling of gratitude. Gratitude is a definite moral experience in relation to our fellow men. Sentiments and notions which do not spring from gratitude will lead at most to abstract precepts as regards morality. But everything can come from gratitude. Thus, from gratitude we develop the capacity for love and the feeling for duty. And in this way morality leads on to religion. But outer circumstances have prevented our figuring among those who would take the kingdom of heaven by storm,—thus we have given over the instruction in Catholicism into the hands of the Catholic community. And they send to us in the school a priest of their own faith. Thus the Catholic children are taught by the Catholic priest and the Evangelical (protestant) children by the evangelical pastor. The Waldorf School is not a school for a philosophy of life, but a method of education. It was found, however, that a certain number of children were non-conformist and would get no religious instruction under this arrangement. But, as a result of the spirit which came into the Waldorf School, certain parents who would otherwise not have sent their children to any religion lesson requested us to carry the teaching of morality on into the sphere of religion. It thus became necessary for us to give a special religious instruction from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. We do not even in these Anthroposophical religion lessons teach Anthroposophy, rather we endeavour to find those symbols and parables in nature which lead towards religion. And we endeavour to bring the Gospel to the children in the manner in which it must be comprehended by a spiritual understanding of religion, etc. If anyone thinks the Waldorf School is a school for Anthroposophy it shows he has no understanding either of Waldorf School pedagogy or of Anthroposophy.

As regards Anthroposophy, how is it commonly under-stood? When people talk of Anthroposophy they think it means something sectarian, because at most they have looked up the meaning of the word in the dictionary. To proceed in this way with regard to Anthroposophy is as if on hearing the words: ‘Max Muller of Oxford,’ a man were to say to himself: ‘What sort of a man can he have been? A miller who bought corn and carted the corn to his mill and ground it into flour and delivered it to the baker.’ A person giving such an account of what the name of Miller conveyed to him would not say much to the point about Max Muller, would he? But the way people talk of Anthroposophy is just like this, it is just like this way of talking about Max Muller, for they spin their opinion of Anthroposophy out of the literal meaning of the word. And they take it to be some kind of backwoods' sect; whereas it is merely that everything must have some name.

Anthroposophy grows truly out of all the sciences, and out of life and it was in no need of a name. But since in this terrestrial world men must have names for things, since a thing must have some name, it is called Anthroposophy. But just as you cannot deduce the scholar from the name Max Muller, neither can you conclude that because we give Anthroposophical religious instruction in the school, Anthroposophy is introduced in the way the other religious instruction is introduced from outside,—as though it were a competing sect.

No, indeed, I mean no offence in saying this, but others have taken us to task about it. The Anthroposophical instruction in religion is increasing: more and snore children come to it. And some children, even, have run away from the other religious instruction and come over to the Anthroposophical religion lessons. Thus it is quite understandable that people should say: What bad people these Anthroposophists are! They lead the children astray so that they abandon the catholic and evangelical (protestant) religion lessons and want to have their religious instruction there. We do all we can to restrain the children from coming, because it is extraordinarily difficult for us to find religion teachers in our own sphere. But, in spite of the fact that we have never arranged for this instruction except in response to requests from parents and the unconscious requests of the children themselves,—to my great distress, I might almost say:—the demand for this Anthroposophical religious instruction increases more and more. And now thanks to this Anthroposophical religious instruction the school has a wholly Christian character.

You can feel from the whole mood and being of the Waldorf School how a Christian character pervades all the teaching, how religion is alive there;—and this in spite of the fact that we never set out to proselytise in the Waldorf School or to connect it with any church movement or congregational sect. I have again and again to repeat: the Waldorf School principle is not a principle which founds a school to promote a particular philosophy of life,—it founds a school to embody certain educational methods. Its aims are to be achieved by methodical means, by a method based on knowledge of man. And its aim is to make of children human beings sound in body, free in soul, clear in spirit.

Let me now say a few words on the significance of Eurhythmy teaching and the educational value of eurhythmy for the child. In illustration of what I have to say I should like to use these figures made in the Dornach studio. They are artistic representations of the real content of eurhythmy. The immediate object of these figures is to help in the appreciation of artistic eurhythmy. But I shall be able to make use of them to explain some things in educational eurhythmy. Now, eurhythmy is essentially a visible speech, it is not miming, not pantomime, neither is it an art of dance. When a person sings or speaks he produces activity and movement in certain organs; this same movement which is inherent m the larynx and other speech organs is capable of being continued and manifested throughout the human being. In the speech organs the movements are arrested and repressed. For instance, an activity of the larynx which would issue in this movement (A)—where the wings of the larynx open outward—is submerged in status nascendi and transformed into a movement into which the meaning of speech can be put,—and into a movement which can pass out into the air and be heard. Here you have the original movement of A (ah), the inner, and essentially human movement—as we might call it—

This is the movement which comes from the whole man when he breaks forth in A (ah). Thus there goes to every utterance in speech and song a movement which is arrested in status nascendi. But it seeks issue in forms of movement made by the whole human being. These are the forms of utterance in movements, and they can be discovered.

Just as there are different forms of the larynx and other organs for A (ah), I (ee), L, M, so are there also corresponding movements and forms of movement. These forms of movement are therefore those expressions of will which otherwise are provided in the expressions of thought and will of speech and song. The thought element, the abstract part of thought in speech is here removed and all that is to be expressed is transposed into the movement. Hence eurhythmy is an art of movement, in every sense of the word. Just as you can hear the A so can you see it, just as you can hear the I so can you see it.

In these figures the form of the wood is intended to express the movement. The figures are made on a three colour principle. The fundamental colour here is the one which expresses the form of the movement. But just as feeling pervades the tones of speech, so feeling enters into the movement. We do not merely speak a sound, we colour it by feeling. We can also do this in eurhythmy. In this way a strong unconscious momentum plays into the eurhythmy. If the performer, the eurhythmist, can bring this feeling into his movements in an artistic way the onlookers will be affected by it as they watch the movements.

It should be borne in mind, moreover, that the veil which is worn serves to enhance the expression of feeling, it accompanies and moves to the feeling. This was brought out in the performance over there (Tr: e.g. at Keble College). And you see here (Tr: i.e. in the figures) the second colour—which comes mainly on the veils—represents the feeling nuance in the movement. Thus you have a first, fundamental colour expressing the movement itself, a second colour over it mainly falling on the veil, which expresses the nuance of feeling. But the eurhythmy performer must have the inner power to impart the feeling to his movement: just as it makes a difference whether I say to a person: Come to me (commandingly), or: Come to me (in friendly request). This is the nuance of feeling, gradation of feeling. What I say is different if I say: Come to me! (1) or: Come to me (2). In the same way this second colour, here expressed as blue on a foundation of green, which then continues over into the veil (Tr.: where it can show as pure blue),—this represents the feeling nuance in the language of eurhythmy.

And the third thing that is brought out is character, a strong element of will. This can only be introduced into eurhythmy when the performer is able to experience his own movements as he makes them and express them strongly in himself. The way a performer holds his head as he does eurhythmy makes a great difference to his appearance. Whether, for instance, he keeps the muscles on the left of the head taut, and those on the right slack—as is expressed here by means of the third colour. (Showing figure) You see here the muscles on the left of the head are somewhat tense, those on the right relaxed. You will observe how the third colour always indicates this here. Here you see the left side is contracted, and down over the mouth here; here (in another figure) the forehead is contracted, the muscles of the forehead are contracted. This, you see, sets the tone of the whole inner character,—this that rays out from this slight contracting: for this slight contraction sends rays throughout the organism. Thus the art of eurhythmy is really composed of the movement, expressed in the fundamental colour; of the feeling nuance, expressed by the second colour, and of this element of will;—indeed the element of the whole art is will, but will is here emphasised in a special way.

Where the object is to exhibit the features of eurhythmy those parts only of the human being are selected which are characteristic of eurhythmy. If we had figures here with beautifully painted noses and eyes and beautiful mouths, they might be charming paintings; but for eurhythmy that is not the point; what you see painted, modelled or carved here is solely what belongs to the art of eurhythmy in the human being doing eurhythmy.

A human being performing eurhythmy has no need to make a special face. That does not matter. Naturally, it goes without saying, a normal and sound eurhythmist would not make a disagreeable face when making a kindly movement, but this would be the same in speaking. No art of facial expression independent of eurhythmic expression is aimed at: For instance, a performer can make the A movement by turning the axels of his eyes outwards. That is allowable, that is eurhythmic. But it would not do if someone were to make special oeilades (“Kinkerlitchen,” we call them) as is done in miming; these oeilades, which are often in special demand in miming, would here be a grimace. In eurhythmy everything must be eurhythmic.

Thus we have here a form of art which shows only that part of man which is eurhythmy, all else is left out; and thus we get an artistic impression. For each art can only express what it has to express through its own particular medium. A statue cannot be made to speak; thus you must bring out the expression of soul you want through the shaping of the mouth and the whole face. Thus it would have been no good in this case, either, to have painted human beings naturalistically; what had to be painted was an expression of the immediately eurhythmic.

Naturally, when I speak of veils this does not mean that one can change the veil with every letter; but one comes to find, by trying out different feeling nuances for a poem, and entering into the mood of the poem,—that a whole poem has an A mood, or a B mood. Then one can carry out the whole poem rightly in one veil. The same holds good of the colour. Here for every letter I have put the veil form, colour, etc. which go together. There must be a certain fundamental key in a poem. This tone is given by the colour of the veil, and in general by the whole colour combination; and this has to be retained throughout the poem,—otherwise the ladies would have to be continually changing veils, constantly throwing off the veils, putting on other dresses,—and things would be even more complicated than they are already and people would say they understood even less But actually if one once has the fundamental key one can maintain it throughout the whole poem, making the changes from one letter to another, from one syllable to another from one mood to another by means of the movements.

Now since my aim to-day is a pedagogic one, I have here set out these figures in the order in which children learn the sounds. And the first sound the children learn, when they are quite young, is the sound A. And they continue in this order, approximately,—for naturally where children are concerned many digressions occur,—but on the whole the children get to know the vowels in this order: A, E, I, 0, U, the normal order. And then, when the children have to practice the visible speech of eurhythmy, when they come to do it in this same order, it is for them like a resurrection of what they felt when they first learned the sounds of speech as little children,—a resurrection, a rebirth at another stage. In this language of eurhythmy the child experiences what he had experienced earlier. It affirms the power of the word in the child through the medium of the whole being.

Then the children learn the consonants in this order: M.B.P.D.T.L.N;—there should also be an NG here, as in sing, it has not yet been made—; then F.H.G.S.R. R, that mysterious letter, which properly has three forms in human speech, is the last one for children to do perfectly. There is a lip R, a palatal R, and an R spoken right at the back (Tr: a gutteral R).

Thus, what the child learns in speech in a part of his organism, in his speaking or singing organism, can be carried over into the whole being and developed into a visible speech.

If there should be a sufficient interest for this expressive art we could make more figures; for instance Joy, Sorrow, Antipathy, Sympathy and other things which are all part of eurhythmy, not the grammar only, but rhetoric, too, comes into its own in eurhythmy. We could make figures for all these. Then people would see how this spiritual-psychic activity, which not only influences the functions of man's physical body but develops both his spiritual-psychic and his organic bodily nature, has a very definite value both in education and as an art.

As to these eurhythmy figures, they also serve in the study of eurhythmy as a help to the student's memory—for do not suppose that eurhythmy is so easy that it can be learned in a few hours,—eurhythmy must be thoroughly studied; these figures then are useful to students for practising eurhythmy and for going more deeply into their art. You can see there is a very great deal in the forms themselves, though they are quite simply carved and painted.

I wished to-day to speak of the art of eurhythmy in so far as it forms part of the educational principle of the Waldorf School.

A teacher reports about the independent religious instruction in the beginning and intermediate classes. They discussed verses from the mystery plays and “Cherubinischen Wandersmann” (Cherubic wanderer).

Dr. Steiner: It is important that you don’t ignore the children’s level of feeling. Can you give a concrete example?

A teacher: In the upper class, I had the children recite, “Let me peacefully act in you.…”

Dr. Steiner: Do you think the children can work with that? Yes, then you can continue with it.

A teacher: Perhaps we could divide the courses.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly true. I think that if we divided the beginning class in two and left the upper class as it is, things would go well in all three groups.

That is, grades 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9.

A teacher reports that he had used three hours for the preparatory instruction for the Youth Festival.

Dr. Steiner: Isn’t that too much for the students? How many are there?

A teacher: Twenty-six.

Dr. Steiner: It will be difficult to say anything until we have seen a real success. It is certainly good to try that. If it is not successful, then we will need to see how we can do it differently.

A teacher reports about the course in social understanding. There were two hours per week in the sixth through eighth grades, and also some for fifth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, the age from eleven to fifteen is difficult, but this is a separate class.

A teacher: We are also visiting factories.

Dr. Steiner: If you do this really livingly, make it lively, and connect it with all the questions about life that arise at that age, then things will work. I would try to see if the children have too much to do, and then try to connect things to life concretely wherever possible.

I believe the children may be overworked now, and that will, of course, certainly come out in some odd place. It would be a good idea not to have eight hours on one day.

I don’t understand why it is necessary to spend three hours preparing for the Youth Festival. Why wasn’t one hour sufficient? In such questions, the amount of time is not so important as the time available for them. It would, perhaps, be better if we could limit those things we can definitely limit. We could do that for those children attending the Youth Festival by dropping the independent religious instruction as such and connecting it with the preparation for the Youth Festival.

A question is asked about who may attend the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly a problem. We had never thought that anyone other than the parents would attend. Of course, having begun in one way, it is difficult to set a limit. How should we do that? Why did you admit people who are not parents at the school? If we allow K. in, there is no reason we should send other members away. Where does that begin and where does it end? It’s mostly people who think this is just one more tea party. We have also had other disturbances by people from outside the school being at the school. The thing that disturbed me most was that people who have absolutely nothing to do with the school became involved in discipline. I certainly have nothing against strictly limiting the admission to the services to the parents, no siblings and no tea parties. We did not create that service for that. Now there are no limits. We should admit only the parents or those whom the faculty recognizes as moral guardians.

A teacher asks again about an older member in connection with the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: She should stay away. You need to make that clear to her in an appropriate way. That is the problem. The moment we allow someone in who has no child, it becomes difficult to draw the line. Where we need to make exceptions is in the Anthroposophical Society, or we simply leave it as it is.

A teacher: That has been impossible to do.

Dr. Steiner: The exceptions should perhaps only be for once or twice, but they grow.

A teacher: It should not be strictly a school affair. It is separate from the school.

Dr. Steiner: We hold the Sunday services within the context of the school. They are a part of the school in just the same way as, for instance, a class for a particular craft would be. That would also be something special that would be within the school, but not a part of the school. We can do things only in that way, otherwise we will have all these problems. I was recently asked if we could arrange to have a Sunday service in H. for their anthroposophical youth. At the present, when we are under attack from every direction, that is total nonsense. There are already such areas of attack, such as when Mr. L. stands up and conducts a service for the anthroposophical children. He has already received permission to observe our service. I would certainly deny any association with a Sunday service outside the school. It only makes sense if there are a number of children receiving religious instruction from an anthroposophical basis and there is a Sunday service in our school for these children. Thus, we would never admit someone from outside the school.

A teacher: Then we should leave it that way.

Dr. Steiner: We could leave things that way, but there are exceptions. It is difficult to understand how we could turn someone away when we say that Mrs. G. said they could come. Then we would have to turn away Mr. Leinhas, but he is a member of the Waldorf School Association. Eventually this will become a kind of right and will include everything connected to the school in any way.

A teacher: Can we include the wives of faculty members?

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we cannot admit them. If they have no children, they also have no right to it.

A teacher reports about the deportment lessons. An attempt was made to teach the children a soul diet. The children brought all kinds of gossip into school.

Dr. Steiner: It is unavoidable that the anthroposophical children hear things at home. That is not dangerous as long as the parents are reasonable. The healthy attitude of the parents will keep the children from becoming too wild, even though those things may go in deeply. The things we have often had to struggle against, such as those you mentioned about O.R. may arise because the parents talk about silly things.

You will have noticed that the instruction is bearing fruit. I would mention that particularly in critical cases, you have had good success with stories that have a particular moral. If you are certain a child has a specific kind of misbehavior, then you can think of a story in which that type of misbehavior becomes absurd. Even with very young children, you can rid them of their greed for sweets and such if the mother tells a story that makes that behavior absurd. If you think of something along the lines of the dog who goes over the bridge with meat in his mouth, that strongly affects the child and has a lasting effect. That is particularly true if you allow some time to go by between the misbehavior and telling the story. Generally, you can achieve more when the child has slept, and you return to the subject the next day. To take up the behavior immediately after it occurred is the worst thing. That sounds very theosophical, but it is also quite true.

It would also be a good idea if we, as the entire faculty, could take up individual children, or groups of children, who are a source of concern and speak about them. That seems to me to be something very desirable. It requires only that we give some interest to it.

This morning I asked about P.I. He has disappeared. You remember that his father had told me certain complaints he had. It would be a good idea if we could compare what is happening with the boy to what the father is complaining about. The father appears to be a rather useless complainer, always blaming things. I will talk with the boy. It seems to me that the father always complains and picks up small things that bother the boy. Then he expands them into fantasies so that the boy does things the father suggests. The boy certainly does not know what he wants to do.

That is a major problem in every school because it is so difficult to keep everything under control. Precisely in such questions, we must have complete clarity within the faculty about the individual students.

Some things are very interesting when you look at the statistics in detail. I have looked at all the classes. It is striking to me that there are very few children lacking in talent and also few who are gifted, but there are a large number of average children. One sign of that is that they are all making good progress. I always want to differentiate between progress as such and the content of the progress. It is possible that some things have not gone forward, but the tempo is good.

In the fourth grade, there are actually only two slow children and three who are not really moving along. However, the others, at least according to their writing, are sufficiently talented children. It is possible that there may be a number of pranksters, but those whom we have called such are actually gifted pranksters. That certainly hits the nail on the head.

All that relates to something else. When we raise the general level of morality, then things will even out. A characteristic of the Waldorf School students is that they are terribly jealous about their teachers. They only like their own teacher, and that is the one who does things right. That is certainly the case. But, on the other hand, although that has its good side, it also has a darker side. The main thing is not to pay too much attention to it. You shouldn’t feel flattered when you hear such things. That is readily apparent during class when Mr. A. is no longer a human being. The children see him almost as a saint.

Why shouldn’t the children laugh? That is more in keeping with the school. If you know anything, you will know the most important people were pranksters. If you connect that with life, you will see it has another aspect.

It would be good if they were not so loud. The fourth grade is terribly loud. But, we should not take these things so seriously. Morally, it is very significant if you have changed a child’s obtrusive characteristic. For instance, if you can achieve that the fourth grade is not so loud, or if you can break B.Ch.’s habit of throwing his school bag ahead of him. If you can change such an obvious characteristic, regardless of whether you view that as good or bad behavior. It has great moral significance if you can break the boys in the fourth grade from all that terrible yelling. I would say it is a question of general didactic efficiency, how far the speaking in chorus goes. If you develop it too little, the social attitude suffers. That is formed through speaking in chorus. If you go too far, the capacity to comprehend will suffer because that has a strongly suggestive force. When they speak as a group, the children will be able to do things they otherwise have no idea of. It is the same as with a mob in the street. The younger they are, the more they can fool you. It is a good idea to randomly request them to do the same thing again individually, so that each has to pay attention to what the other says. When you are telling a story, you can give some sentences and then let the children continue. You should do things I have done, for instance, when I said, “You there, in the middle row at the left end, continue on,” “You there in the corner, continue,” so that they have to pay attention and that you can make the children move along with you. Speaking in chorus too much leads to laziness. The tendency to shout in music confirms that.

Particularly in the fourth grade, you should pay attention to the intangibles. I am speaking of the very real intangibles that exist in the tension within the entire class. For example, there is the ratio between the number of girls and boys. I don’t mean you have to change that. You need to take life as it is, but you should at least try to pay some attention to such things. If I am not mistaken, in the fourth grade there is the highest ratio of boys to girls. It occurs to me that the physiognomy of the class is related to the ratio of boys to girls. In Miss Lang’s case, the situation is different. You should pay attention to such things. In Miss Lang’s class, there are significantly fewer boys than girls. Today, there were certainly twice as many boys in the fourth grade, twenty-five boys and eleven girls. In the sixth grade, there are twelve boys and nineteen girls. That is something you should certainly pay attention to, don’t you agree? The fifth grade is interesting for its balance. Today there were twenty-five to twenty-five. (Speaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) Today was certainly a good opportunity, because you had brought some very interesting material to the class. That is the proper way to bring anthroposophy. Such things are what we should pay attention to.

A teacher: I believe I have perceived a relationship between the phlegmatic children and a deep voice, the sanguine children and a middle tone, and a higher voice with the cholerics. Is that correct?

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly true with the first two. The question regarding the higher voices is rather interesting. In general, it is true that phlegmatics have lower voices and the melancholic and sanguine children, middle tones. The sanguine children are among the highest voices. The choleric children spread out over all three. There must be some particular reason. Do you thing that tenors are mostly choleric? Certainly on the stage. The choleric element spreads out everywhere.

A teacher: How can we have such differing opinions about the temperament of a child?

Dr. Steiner: We cannot solve that question mathematically. We can certainly not speak in that way. In judging cases that lie near a boundary, it is possible that one person has one view and another, another view. We do not need to mathematically resolve them. The situation is such that when we see and understand a child in one way or another, we already intend to treat it in a particular way. In the end, the manner of treating something arises from an interaction. Don’t think you should discuss it.

There is a further question about temperaments.

Dr. Steiner: The choleric temperament becomes immediately annoyed by and angry about anything that interrupts its activity. When it is in a rhythmic experience, it becomes vexed and angry, but it will also become angry if it is involved in another experience and is disturbed. That is because rhythm inwardly connects with all of human nature. It is certainly the case that rhythm is more connected with human nature than anything else and that a strong rhythm lies at the base of cholerics, a rhythm that is usually somewhat defective. We can see that Napoleon was a choleric. In his case, the inner rhythm was compressed. With Napoleon you will find, on the one side, something that tended to grow larger than he grew. He remained a half-pint. His etheric body was larger than his physical body, and thus his organs were so compressed that all rhythmical things were shoved together and continuously disturbed one another. Since such a choleric temperament is based upon a continuous shortening of the rhythm, it lives within itself.

A teacher: Can we say that one sense predominates in such a temperament?

Dr. Steiner: In cholerics, you will probably generally find an abnormally developed sense of balance (Libra) and an external display of that in the ear canal through an autopsy. The experience of rhythm, the sense of balance and sense of movement, the interaction of these, rhythmic experience. In sanguines (Virgo), in connection with the sense of balance and sense of movement, the sense of movement predominates. In the same way, in melancholics (Leo) the sense of life predominates and in phlegmatics (Cancer) the sense of touch predominates physiologically because the touch bodies are embedded in small fat pads. That is physiologically demonstrable.

Now, it is not so that the touch bodies transmit sense impressions. What occurs is a reflex action, just like when you compress a rubber ball and allow it to spring back. The little warts are there to transmit it to the I, to transmit the impression in the etheric body to the I. That is the case with each of the senses.

A report is given about the eurythmy instruction.

Dr. Steiner: The enthusiasm for eurythmy is somewhat theoretical. We always have the desire for the Eurythmeum before us, but we do not have enough rooms. If we did more tone eurythmy, we would want to have someone who played the piano. That might be necessary. We have until now done relatively little tone eurythmy. Miss X. started a children’s tone eurythmy group in Dornach and has been very successful with it. One thing we should take note of is that except for those older children who are more talented, the younger children more easily learn eurythmy, that is, they more easily develop their grace through it so that in fact eurythmy has been quite fruitful. With the older children, it is more difficult because they don’t want to get used to properly springing up, but the younger children learn it quite gracefully. It would never occur to people that having the younger children spread their legs is something ugly. It is certainly not ugly, but I am convinced that would never occur to them.

A teacher reports about gymnastics. Some children are cutting the class.

Dr. Steiner: We certainly have to ask if those children are avoiding gymnastics, or if they only want to sneak away to fool around.

A teacher: M.T. is very graceful in eurythmy, but outside he is clumsy.

Dr. Steiner: Just in his case, I can imagine he is avoiding things in order to do something else.

A teacher: He is lazy.

Dr. Steiner: Since he is fooling around so much, he is certainly very active. He is a very good boy.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: In my opinion, it is very good that O.N. copies the writing. You can see that in marriages where the husband often writes like the wife or vice versa.

There is a report about working in the garden and shop class. There are difficulties with some children who are unsocial and lagging and don’t want to help each other.

Dr. Steiner: Are there many? We can hardly do anything else than put all of them together, give them a certain area so they are ashamed when they don’t get anything done. They need something that would be obviously complete so that they will be ashamed of themselves when they finish only a quarter. But not a hint of ambition. What I said does not count upon ambition, but upon shame. We could also form a group that looks at what they have done in the presence of the children and brings some dissatisfaction to expression. I think that if Mrs. Molt and Mr. Hahn were called upon to look at what he did, then M.T. would certainly decide to work in order not to cause any words of displeasure. Another method would be that you take those children and keep them close to you during class, but that is difficult to do. We must make them feel ashamed when they do not finish. I would not arouse the feeling of ambition, but of shame.

A teacher asks if it might be possible to form a bookbinding shop.

Dr. Steiner: I am not certain if that is consistent with the school. Bookbinding is something normally contained in the curriculum for the continuing education school. We could, however, try binding. Is there someone here who could take up such a course for the continuing education school? One or two perhaps, since we can certainly develop bookbinding as an artistic craft. We had no transition from those beautiful old volumes, which are slowly disappearing, to these monstrous modern volumes. The things made now are mostly just trash. It is always intriguing to accomplish something through artistic craft. What are made today are really not books. We should make books again. That is something that falls within the realm of the crafts in the continuing education school.

As such, it is a simple job, but we certainly could accomplish something. Of course, we will need to master the technique. That would give the children something to improve upon. I mean, for instance, when it comes to gold leafing, there is certainly much that can be improved. What they need to learn is relatively simple, though. It is simply practice.

A teacher: I am not certain I could take that over.

Dr. Steiner: This is a question we must discuss in connection with the continuing education school.

A teacher: Should I give a few lessons in my class?

Dr. Steiner: Then we would come into the question of subject teachers. That is something we must avoid as long as we can. As long as someone is there who can do it properly, then that will do. A teacher: Two periods a week for handwork are not enough. Could we increase the number of hours?

Dr. Steiner: I notice that there is considerable ability in the handwork class. As soon as the Waldorf School Association provides us with many millions, we will be able to have many rooms and employ many teachers. Now we can hardly add more work time. We must accomplish everything else by dividing classes. Two hours per week should be sufficient. We must divide the classes and then that is only one hour.

A teacher: Should we take the boys and girls separately?

Dr. Steiner: I would not do that. I would prefer to begin by dividing the whole class into two halves. You let the boys do things other than knit in handwork, don’t you? The girls, of course, also. Nevertheless, I would not do it. I would not begin separating the boys and the girls. We need to find another solution.

A teacher: Should the preschool be like a kindergarten?

Dr. Steiner: The children have not started school yet. We cannot begin teaching them any subjects. You should occupy them with play. Certainly, they should play games. You can also tell stories in such a way that you are not teaching. But, definitely do not make any scholastic demands. Don’t expect them to be able to retell everything. I don’t think there is any need for an actual teaching goal there. We need to try to determine how we can best occupy the children. A teaching goal is not necessary. What you would do is play games, tell stories, and solve little riddles.

I would also not pedantically limit things. I would keep the children there until the parents pick them up. If possible, we could have them the whole day. If that is possible, why not? You could also try some eurythmy with them, but don’t spoil them. They shouldn’t be spoiled by anything else, either. As I said, the main thing is that you mother the children. Don’t be frivolous with them. You would not want to do anything academic with them. You can essentially do what you want.

In playing, the children show the same form as they will when they find their way into life. Children who play slowly will also be slow at the age of twenty and think slowly about all their experiences. Children who are superficial in play will also be superficial later. Children who say that they want to break open their toys to see what they look like inside will later become philosophers. That is the kind of thinking that overcomes the problems of life. In play, you can certainly do very much. You can urge a child who tends to play slowly, to play more quickly. You simply give that child games where some quickness is necessary.

There is a question about speaking in chorus.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that. You can also tell fairy tales. There are many fairy tales you should not tell to six-year-olds. I don’t mean the sort of things that the Ethical Culture Association wants to eliminate, but the stories that are simply too complicated. I would not have the little children repeat the tales. However, if they want to tell something themselves, then listen to it. That is something you will have to wait on and see what happens.

A teacher asks about student reports.

Dr. Steiner: We spoke about that already. You will need to emphasize some things, but not pedantically. You should try to have a little bit of personal history at the beginning, and then go into each child individually. For instance, you could write something like, “E. reads well and speaks interestingly,” and such things, so that you create the text yourself. You create a sentence freely written in which you emphasize what is otherwise simply a subject. You may need to speak about all subjects, but perhaps not. I would print the report form so that it has only the heading, “Independent Waldorf School, Yearly Report for …” and then leave room for you to write.

Each of you will describe a student in your own way. If more than one teacher has had the child, then each should write something. It would, however, be preferable if the various statements were not too contradictory. For example, one of you says, “He reads quite well,” and another says something that supports that. The best is that the class teacher begins the description of the child and the others go from there. It certainly will not do if the class teacher writes, “He is an excellent boy,” and then someone else writes, “He is really a terror.” You will have to put things together.

A teacher asks about the reports from the religion teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Well, they will have to write their two cents worth, also. We must also include the religion teachers. Here, they will have to control themselves, or they won’t be able to write anything.

A teacher: Do we need to have the parents sign the reports?

Dr. Steiner: I would simply have an introduction that says that those parents who want to have their children return the following year should sign the report. If the children are not returning, then we don’t need to do anything, but if they are, the parents should sign it. We made it through without any midyear reports. Do the parents want a midyear report?

Yes, the children will simply report and bring their report cards. They will receive them again at the end of the year when the report is already a booklet. It can certainly be a booklet, but perforated. Suppose at the beginning a child is not very good, then you could write a criticism. Perhaps later the child is better and would want to have the previous report removed. The booklet can be perforated.

Then you can write something that is not praise. You cannot give these two children reports that say their writing was very good, but you could phrase it in a way that describes how well the child writes without criticism. With little M., I would write, “He has not accomplished more than copying simple words. He often adds unnecessary strokes to the letters.” Describe the children.

Another question is asked.

Dr. Steiner: We hold the child back. I would only differentiate between those moving on to the next class, and those we have determined will go into the remedial class if they return. I don’t want to keep children back. In the case of these two children, they came only after Christmas. Now that we have the remedial class, it is possible to place those children who will be unable to meet the goals of the class into the remedial class; for example, those who are slow learners. It is not a good idea to begin failing the others. We should have held them back when they began school. It would certainly be preferable not to fail children. I don’t see how we could do that. In your class, there are at most three others who might be held back, aside from those two who we could place in the remedial class. For now, you will have to bring them along by not excessively praising them, but also not criticizing. Simply state that they have not quite reached the goals of the class. It was our responsibility to place the children in the proper classes when they entered the school. It would not be wise to fail them. It is important that we discuss H. and how we will treat her. We had to put her in the third grade; after we promised that, we had to put her there. In general, we should not keep the children the entire year, especially those who come from other schools, and then let them fail. But, now they are in this situation. The children we need to carry along are really not so bad, but we should never put a child into a class that is too advanced.

A teacher: How should we place children from other schools? Should we go according to their age, or is there some other way?

Dr. Steiner: In the future, when the children come at the age of six and go through all the grades, then this will no longer happen. For now, we must attempt to put the children in the grade that is appropriate for them, both according to their age and to their ability.

A teacher asks if a child can be placed in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t think that is possible. Particularly in the first grade you should not go too far in separating children into the remedial class. I have seen the child, and you are right. But, on the other hand, not so very much is lost if a child still writes poorly in the first grade. If we can do it, it would be very good for all of the children like that if we could do the exercises I discussed previously with you.

If you have her do something like this (Dr. Steiner indicates an exercise): Reach your right hand over your head and grasp your left ear. Or perhaps you could have her draw things like a spiral going inward, a spiral going to the right, and another to the left. Then she will gain much. You need exercises that cause the children to enter more into thinking.

Then we have writing. There are some who write very poorly, and quite a number who are really first class. The children will not improve much when you want to make them learn to write better by improving their writing. You need to improve their dexterity; then they will learn to write better.

I don’t think you will be able to accomplish much with your efforts at improving bad handwriting simply by improving the writing. You should attempt to make the children better in form drawing. If they would learn to play the piano, their writing would improve. It is certainly a truism that this really poor handwriting first started when children’s toys became so extraordinarily materialistic. It is terrible that such a large number of toys are construction sets. They really are not toys at all because they are atomistic. If a child has a simple forge, then the child should learn to use it. I wish that children had toys that moved. This is all contained in Education of the Child. The toys today are terrible, and for that reason the children learn no dexterity and write poorly.

It would be enough, though we can’t do this at school, if we had those children who write poorly with their hands, draw simple forms with their feet. That has an effect upon the hand. They could draw small circles or semicircles or triangles with their feet. They should put a pencil between their toes and draw circles. That is something that is not easy to do, but very interesting. It is difficult to learn, but interesting to do. I think it would be interesting also to have them hold a stick with their toes and make figures in the sand outside. That has a strong effect upon the hands. You could have children pick up a handkerchief with their feet, rather than with their hands. That also has a strong effect. Now, I wouldn’t suggest that they should eat with their feet. You really shouldn’t do this with everything. You should try to work indirectly upon improving handwriting, developing dexterity in drawing and making forms. Try to have them draw complicated symmetrical forms. (Speaking to Mr. Baumann) Giving them a beat is good for developing reasoned and logical forms.

A teacher asks about writing with the left hand.

Dr. Steiner: In general, you will find that those children who have spiritual tendencies can write without difficulty as they will, left or right-handed. Children who are materialistically oriented will become addled by writing with both hands. There is a reason for right-handedness. In this materialistic age, children who are left-handed will become idiotic if they alternately use both hands. That is a very questionable thing to do in those circumstances that involve reasoning, but there is no problem in drawing. You can allow them to draw with either hand.

A teacher asks if they can tell fairy tales where bloody things occur.

Dr. Steiner: If the intent of the fairy tale is that the blood portrays blood, then that is inartistic. The significant point in a fairy tale is whether it is tasteful or not. No harm is done if there is blood in it. I once mentioned to a mother that if she absolutely avoided mentioning blood when she told her children fairy tales, they would become too tender. Later, they would faint when seeing a drop of blood. That is a deficiency in life. You shouldn’t make children incapable of facing life by setting up such a rule.

A teacher asks about L.G. in the third grade. She is nervous and stutters.

Dr. Steiner: It would help if you made up some exercises. I am uncertain whether we have any sentence exercises with k and p. You should have her do those and walk at the same time, and then she would also be able to say those sentences. It would also be a good idea for her to do k and p in eurythmy. However, don’t take such things too seriously because they usually disappear later in life.

A teacher asks about E.M. in the fifth grade, who also stutters.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, didn’t you present her to me before? I must have seen her. You will need to know what the problem is, whether it is organic or lying in the soul. It could be either. If it is a problem in the soul, then you could have her do specially formulated sentences. If it is an organic problem, then you would need to do something else. I will need to take a look at her tomorrow.

A teacher asks about A.W. in the fifth grade. He adds titles to his name and underlines “I.”

Dr. Steiner: That is a criminal type. He might become a forger. He has a clear tendency toward criminality. He can write much better. Clearly a criminal type. You will need to undertake a corrective action with his soul. You will have to force him to do three (not recorded), one after the other. I will take a look at him tomorrow. His father is infantile.

A teacher asks about a closing ceremony.

Dr. Steiner: I would make the closing ceremony such that, assuming I will be there, I would speak, then Mr. Molt, and then all of the teachers. We should make a kind of symphony of what we have to say to the children. There should be no student presentations. They can do that in the last monthly festival. We could review the past school year and then look toward a summer vacation that will awaken hope, then give a preview of the next school year. That is what I think.

A teacher mentions a woman who intends to make a film about the Waldorf School and three-folding.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t have any idea what to do here. If, for example, someone wants to photograph the buildings, that will certainly hurt nothing. There is nothing wrong with that. If she wants to make a film publicizing the Waldorf School, we would have nothing against showing that publicly, since it is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is that the Waldorf School be properly run. We are not responsible for what she photographs any more than you are responsible for what occurs if you are walking along the street and someone offers you a ride. We can tell her we will do what we can do, but there is nothing we can do. She may want to photograph the eurythmy lessons. I did that in Dornach, but it was not very good. That is a technical question. I don’t think much will come of it. She wants to film the three-folding? I was thinking, why shouldn’t the film contrast something good with something bad? We certainly can have no influence if she creates a scene in the film where two people speak about the Waldorf School, but we do not need to let her into the classrooms. She can certainly not demand that we allow her to photograph anything more than a public eurythmy performance by the children. Since she wants to publicize eurythmy, that would be her contribution to the members’ work. It is rather senseless if she wants to film the classes. She could film any school, there is nothing particular to see. She could, for example, record that terrible yelling in the fourth grade.

It would certainly not be proper to suppress offhandedly, due to false modesty, somebody who wants to publicize three-folding and the school. It would be better if we could hinder everything that is tasteless, but, due to false modesty, I would be hesitant to hinder anything. We have much interest in making the school as perfect as possible, but there is certainly nothing to be gained by preventing someone from photographing it. If she had set up and filmed my lecture, what could I have done against that?

A question is asked regarding the trip to Dornach for the First Class of the Anthroposophical University of Spiritual Science (Sept. 26–Oct. 16, 1920).

Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, those things are not so easy. We want to have a course this fall where various people present lectures. We have invited Stein and Stockmeyer, and it would, of course, have been nice if many could come. But, finding lodging in Dornach is just as difficult as in Stuttgart. It is not so easy to invite people, the exchange problems, and so forth. It is, however, possible, if the exchange problems are resolved by then, that we could find room for a number of people. My desire is that everyone coming from the Entente will pay for two others coming from Central Europe. However, that does not need to be too cozy. We could do it as we did for the physicians’ course, that would be possible. However, you need to remember that we don’t have rich people in Dornach and Basel.

A teacher remarks that there are also difficulties in obtaining a visa.

Dr. Steiner: Generally, when people travel to Switzerland for vacation, they can obtain a visa. You only need to be careful that you are not going for another reason. You cannot travel in Switzerland in order to earn money. We are treated terribly there. Now they allow people to move there so that they will pay taxes. Otherwise, you cannot. We are being hit very hard. That is one of the major problems we have with the Goetheanum. If there is not another attitude toward the Goetheanum, people outside Switzerland will soon be unable to visit it.

There was some discussion about reproductions of the paintings in the cupola of the Goetheanum.

Dr. Steiner: What was painted in color in the cupola needs to be understood from the colors. If you reproduced it photographically, you could achieve something only if you enlarged it to the same size as in the cupola. It is just not something we can reproduce simply. The less the pictures correspond to those in the cupola, the better it is. Black and white only hints at something. It cries for color. I would never agree with those inartistic reproductions. They are only surrogates. I do not want to have any color photographs of the cupola paintings. The reproductions should not stand by themselves. I want to handle that so that what is not important is what is given.

It is the same with the glass windows. If you attempted to achieve something through reproductions, I would be against it. You should not attempt to reproduce such things exactly. It is not desirable that you reproduce a piece of music through some deceptively imitative phonograph record. I do not want that. I do not want to have a modern, technical human being. The way these paintings appear in the reproductions never reproduces them. The reproductions contain only what is novel, not what is important. You then have a feeling that this or that color must be there. That reminds me of something you can find in The Education of the Child—namely that you should not give children beautifully made dolls, but only those made from a handkerchief.