The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] The public nurturance of spiritual and cultural life in education has in recent years become more and more a matter for the state. That the schools are the state's business is presently a notion so deeply rooted in people's minds that anyone who tries to dislodge it is regarded as an unworldly “ideologue.” Yet this is a sphere of life that presents matter for the most serious consideration. People who complain in this way of “unworldliness” have no idea of how far what they uphold is removed from the world. Our school system is marked especially by features that reflect the tendencies toward decline in modern cultural life. The social structures of modern governments have not followed the requirements of actual life. For instance, they have taken on a form that does not satisfy the economic demands of modern humanity. They have also set this same backward stamp upon the school system, which, having liberated it from the religious confessions, they have now brought into complete dependence on themselves. At every level, schools mold human beings into the form the state requires for doing what the state deems necessary. Arrangements in the schools reflect the government's requirements. There is much talk, certainly, of striving to achieve an all-around development of the person, and so on; but the modern person unconsciously feels so completely a part of the whole order of the state that he does not even notice, when talking about the all-around development of the human being, that what is meant is molding the human being into a useful servant of the state.

[ 2 ] In this regard, no good may be expected from the way of thinking of those today who hold socialist views. They are bent on transforming the old state into a huge economic organization. State schools are supposed to project themselves on into this economic organization. This would magnify all the faults of present-day schools in the most dubious way imaginable. Up until now, much that originated before the state took control of the educational system still has remained in the schools. One cannot, of course, wish a return to the old form of spirituality that has come down from those earlier times; rather, one should endeavor to bring the new spirit of evolving humanity into the schools. This spirit shall not be in the schools if the state is transformed into an economic organization and the schools are redesigned to turn out people meant to be the most serviceable labor machines for this economic organization. People today talk much about the comprehensive school [“Einheitsschule”]. It is beside the point that this imagined comprehensive school is in theory a very fine thing, for if they make it an organic part of an economic organization it cannot really be such a fine thing.

[ 3 ] The real need of the present is that the schools be totally grounded in a free spiritual and cultural life. What should be taught and cultivated in these schools must be drawn solely from a knowledge of the growing human being and of individual capacities. A genuine anthropology must form the basis of education and instruction. The question should not be: What does a human being need to know and be able to do for the social order that now exists?, but rather: What capacities are latent in this human being, and what lies within that can be developed? Then it will be possible to bring ever new forces into the social order from the rising generations. The life of the social order will be what is made of it by a succession of fully developed human beings who take their places in the social order. The rising generation should not be molded into what the existing social order chooses to make of it.

[ 4 ] A healthy relation exists between school and society only when society is kept constantly supplied with the new and individual potentials of persons whose educations have allowed them to develop unhampered. This can be realized only if the schools and the whole educational system are placed on a footing of self-administration within the social organism. The government and the economy must receive people educated by the independent spiritual-cultural life; they must not, however, have the power to prescribe according to their own wants how these human beings are to be educated. What a person ought to know and be able to do at any particular stage of life must be decided by human nature itself. Both the state and economic life will have to conform to the demands of human nature. It is neither for the state nor the economic life to say: We need someone of this sort for a particular post; therefore test the people that we need and pay heed above all that they know and can do what we want. Rather, the spiritual-cultural organ of the social organism should, following the dictates of its own independent administration, bring those who are suitably gifted to a certain level of cultivation, and the state and economic life should organize themselves in accordance with the results of work in the spiritual-cultural sphere.

[ 5 ] Since political and economic life are not something apart from human nature, but rather the outcome of human nature itself, there need never be any fear that a really free cultural life, placed on its own footing, will produce people who are unworldly. On the contrary, unworldliness results precisely when the existing governmental and economic institutions are allowed to shape educational matters according to their own dictates. For in the state and in economic life attitudes must necessarily be adopted in accordance with the existing order. The development of the growing human being requires entirely different kinds of thought and feeling as its guide. One can only do one's work as an educator when one stands in a free, individual relationship to the pupil one teaches. One must know that, for the guidelines of one's work, one is dependent only on knowledge of human nature, the principles of social life and such things; but not upon regulations or laws prescribed from outside. If one serously desires to transform the present order of society into one in which social attitudes prevail, then one must not be afraid to place the spiritual-cultural life (including the school and educational system) under its own independent control because from such a free, independent system within the social organism men and women will go forth with joy and zeal to take an active part in all its life. After all, only people who lack this joy and zeal can come out of schools ruled by the state and the economic system; these people feel as deadly blight the after-effects of a domination to which they should not have been subjected before they had become fully conscious citizens and co-workers in the state and the economic system. The growing human being should mature with the aid of educators and teachers independent of the state and the economic system, educators who can allow individual faculties to develop freely because their own have been given free rein.

[ 6 ] In my book, Toward Social Renewal, I have taken pains to show that the world view adopted by the leaders among party socialists is in all essentials simply a continuance (carried to a certain extreme) of the bourgeois world view of the last three or four centuries. The socialists cherish the illusion that their ideas represent a complete break with this world view. They do not represent a break, but rather only a peculiar coloring of the bourgeois world view with working-class feelings and sentiments. This is shown very markedly by the attitude these socialist leaders adopt toward cultural life and its place in the social organism. Owing to the predominance of economics in bourgeois society during the last few centuries, the spiritual and cultural life has fallen into great dependence on economic life. The consciousness of a self-sustaining spiritual-cultural life, in which the human soul partakes, has been lost. Industrialism and our view of nature have collaborated to bring about this loss. Linked to this loss is the particular way the schools were incorporated into the social organism in recent times. To make the human being serviceable for external life in state and industry—that became the main thing. That man is above all a being with a soul who therefore should be filled with the consciousness of his connection with a spiritual order of things, and that it is through his consciousness that he imparts sense to the state and economic system in which he lives—all this was considered less and less. Minds were directed ever less toward the spiritual order of the world, and ever more toward the conditions of economic production. In the middle class this became a manner of feeling, an instinctive psychological tendency. Working class leaders made it into a philosophy of life—or rather, into a dogma.

[ 7 ] This dogma would have disastrous consequences if it were to remain the foundation of the school system into the future. For in reality, since even at its best an economically-determined social organism cannot make suitable provision for any genuine cultural life (and, in particular, not for a productive educational system), this educational system would have to owe its existence first of all to a continuation of the old world of thought. The parties that claim to represent a new order would be obliged to leave the cultural life of the schools in the hands of the representatives of the old world views. However, since under such conditions there could be no question of any internal link between the newly rising generation and the old, artificially prolonged culture, cultural life would necessarily become more and more stagnant. The souls of this generaton would wither away after being sown on the rocky ground of a world view that can give them no inner source of strength. Men would grow up soulless beings within a social order arising out of industrialism.

[ 8 ] In order that this may not take place, the movement for the threefold social order strives for the complete disassociation of the educational system from government and industry. The place and function of educators within society should depend solely upon the authority of those engaged in this activity. The administration of the educational institutions, the organization of courses of instruction and their goals should be entirely in the hands of persons who themselves are simultaneously either teaching or otherwise productively engaged in cultural life. In each case, such persons would divide their time between actual teaching (or some other form of cultural productivity) and the administrative control of the educational system. It will be evident to anyone who can bring himself to an unbiased examination of cultural life that the peculiar vitality and energy of soul required for organizing and directing educational institutions will be called forth only in someone actively engaged in teaching or in some sort of cultural creativity.

[ 9 ] Today few will concede this fully—only those who are unbiased enough to see that a new source of cultural life must spring forth if our devastated social order is to be renewed. In the essay “Marxism and the Threefold Social Order,” I pointed out both the correctness and also the one-sidedness of Engels' notion: “The management of goods and control of the means of production takes the place of governing of people.” Correct though this is, it is nonetheless equally true that in the old order social life was possible only because along with the economic processes of production, people themselves were guided and governed. If this joint governance of people and economic processes ends, then people must receive their motivating impulses (which hitherto came from those governing them) from a free and independent cultural life.

[ 10 ] Moreover, there is something else: The life of the spirit prospers only when able to unfold as a unity. The same exercise of the soul's powers that leads to a humanly satisfying and sustaining world view must also supply the productive power that makes one a good co-worker in economic life. Men and women with a practical sense for outer life will emerge only from an educational system that is able to develop in a healthy way our innate longings for a loftier world view. A social order that only manages goods and controls processes of production must in the end go completely awry if it is not kept supplied with persons whose souls are healthily developed.

[ 11 ] If, then, there is to be any renewal of our social life, we must find the strength to introduce an independent, self-sustaining educational system. If men are no longer to “govern” their fellows in the old way, then it must be made possible for the free spirit in every human soul, with all the strength possible for the human individualities of any one age, to make itself the guide of life. This spirit will not allow itself to be suppressed. Institutions that tried to rule educational life from the point of view of the economic system alone would constitute an attempt at suppression. This would lead the free spirit to revolt constantly out of the depths of its own natural foundations. Incessant shocks to the whole social edifice would be the inevitable consequence of any system that tried to organize education in the same way it controlled the processes of production.

[ 12 ] For anyone who perceives these things clearly, one of the most urgent demands of the times shall be the founding of a human community that will strive with utmost energy to realize the freedom and self-determination of the educational system. Other necessary demands of the times cannot find satisfaction as long as what is proper for this sphere remains unrecognized. It really requires only an unbiased observation of our spiritual life in its present form—in its distraction and disunity, its lack of strength to sustain the human soul—in order to recognize that just this is proper.

[ 1 ] The sense for reality that lives in the idea of the threefold social organism will not be found by comparing it with that which traditional education and habits have taught people to think possible. The very reason for our present confusions in government and society is that these traditions have led to habits of thought and feeling that life itself has outgrown. Therefore anyone who objects that the idea of a threefold social order takes no account of the impulses that have formed until now the basis of all human institutions, are under the delusion that the overcoming of these old impulses is a sin against any possible social order. Rather, the threefold order is founded upon the recognition that a belief in the sustaining power of the old impulses is the worst obstacle to healthy and progressive steps which take into account our present stage of evolution.

[ 2 ] The impossibility of continuing to cultivate the old impulses should be clear from the fact that they have lost their power as an incentive to productive labor. The old econonomic motives of capital returns and wage earnings could maintain their power as incentives only as long as enough of the old treasured objects remained that could arouse people's inclination and love. These treasures have plainly become exhausted in the age that has just ended. Ever more numerous were the people who, as capitalists, no lon ger knew why they were amassing capital; ever more numerous, too, were wage earners who did not know why they were working.

[ 3 ] The exhaustion of the impulses that had kept together the nexus of the state was shown by the fact that in recent times many people have come almost as a matter of course to regard the state as an end in itself, and to forget that the state exists for the sake of human beings. To regard the state as an end in itself is possible only when one has so much lost the ability to assert one's inner, human individuality that one no longer expects from the state the kind of institutions this self-assertion would demand. Then one is indeed obliged to look for the essence of the state in all sorts of institutions that are quite contrary to its proper task. One will become determined to put more into the institutions of the state than is needed for the self-assertion of the human beings who compose it. However, every such more in the state evidences a less in the human beings who bear the burden of the state.

[ 4 ] In cultural life, the sterility of the old impulses is displayed in the mistrust with which people look on the spirit.What proceeds from life's unspiritual concerns arouses people's interest; they form views and concepts of it. What originates in spiritual productivity, people choose to regard as a private affair of the particular producer; they are inclined to hinder rather than help if it tries to find a place in public life. One of the most widespread characteristics of our contemporaries is that they remain closed to the individual spiritual achievements of their fellows.

[ 5 ] The present age needs to see clearly that it has exhausted its economic, political and cultural impulses. Such insight must kindle energetic will and social purpose. Until people recognize that our economic, political and cultural troubles are not due merely to external life circumstances, but also to the state of our souls, the necessary renewal has not yet been given its proper foundation.

[ 6 ] A split has come about in the constitution of the human soul. In the instinctive, unconscious impulses of human nature, something new is stirring. In conscious thought, the old ideas refuse to follow the instinctive stirrings. However, when the best instinctive promptings are not illuminated by corresponding thoughts, they became barbaric, animalistic. Modern humanity is rushing into a dangerous situation through this animalization of the instincts. Salvation can be found only in striving for new thoughts to meet a new world situation.

[ 7 ] Any cry for socialization that disregards this fact can lead to nothing salutary. Our disinclination to recognize ourselves as beings of soul and of spirit must be overcome. A one-sided transformation of the economic life, a one-sided reconstruction of political institutions without nurturing a socially healthy and productive state of soul, is more likely to lull humanity with deceptive dreams than to fill it with a sense for reality. It is because there are so few who can bring themselves to look on the problems of today and tomorrow as questions comprehending both external arrangements and inner renewal that we move so slowly along the road to a new social order. When many people say: Inner renewal takes a long time; it is a process that must not be hurried, behind such words lurks a fear of such renewal. For the right mood can only be this: to examine energetically everything that might lead to renewal, and then watch and see how slowly or quickly life's voyage proceeds.

[ 8 ] The events of recent years have cast a certain weariness about the souls of our contemporaries. For the sake of the coming generations, for the sake of the civilization of the near future, this weariness must be combatted. These are the feelings that have brought the idea of the threefold order before the public. Say that this idea is imperfect, say that it is all wrong; its supporters will understand if it is opposed from the standpoint of other new ideas. That it should so often be found to be “incomprehensible” because it contradicts the old and customary—this they cannot regard as a sign that such opponents can hear the present call of human evolution. One would think this call is sounding plainly enough for all to hear.

[ 1 ] Socialists tend to look upon the profit motive, which has functioned heretofore as the primary incentive to work, as something that must be eliminated if healthier conditions are to be brought about in society. For such people this becomes an urgent question: What will induce us to use our abilities with sufficient energy in the service of economic production, when egotism (which finds its satisfaction in profit) is no longer able to exert itself? This question cannot be said to receive adequate attention from those who are planning to institute socialism. The demand that in the future one shall not work for oneself but for the community, remains quite empty as long as one has no concrete idea how human souls can be induced to work as willingly “for the community” as they do for themselves. One may no doubt indulge in the notion that some central managing body will place each of us at his or her place of work, and that this organization of labor will also enable the central management to make a fair distribution of the products of the labor. Any such notion is, however, based on a delusion. While it takes into account that human beings have need of consumer goods, and that these needs must be satisfied, it does not take into account that mere awareness of the existence of these needs will not engender devotion to the work of production, if they are expected to produce not for themselves, but for the community. The mere awareness that one is working for society will not give any sensible satisfaction; accordingly it cannot provide an incentive to work.

[ 2 ] It should be obvious that a new incentive to work must he created the moment there is any thought of eliminating the old incentive of egotistical gain. An economic management that does not include this profit motive among the forces at work within the economy cannot of itself exert any effect whatever upon the human will to work. And precisely because it cannot do so, it meets a social demand that a large part of humanity has begun to raise in the present stage of development. This part of humanity no longer wants to be led to work by economic compulsion. They want to work from motives more befitting human dignity. Undoubtedly, for many of those who come to mind when this demand is raised, it is somewhat unconscious; but in social life such unconscious, instinctive impulses are of much more significance than the ideas people consciously express. Conscious ideas often owe their origin merely to the fact that people do not have the spiritual energy to see into what really goes on within them. If one deals with such ideas, one is moving within an insubstantial element. Therefore it is necessary to see through the deceptive ideas on the surface into the real demands (such as the one just mentioned), and to turn one's attention to these real demands. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in times like the present, when social life tosses about like wild waves, that the lower human instincts, too, run riot. However, the above mentioned demand for a dignified human existence is justified; one cannot dismiss it by arguing the turbulence of our lower instincts.

[ 3 ] If the economic system is to be organized in a way that can have no effect on our will to work, then our will to work must be stimulated in some other way. The threefold social order recognizes that at the present stage of human evolution, the economic sphere must limit itself exclusively to economic processes. The administration of such an economic order will be able, through its various organs, to determine the extent of consumers' needs, how the produce may best be brought to the consumers and the extent to which various articles should be produced. However, it will have no way of calling forth the will to produce; neither will it be in a position to cultivate the individual abilities that are the vital source of the entire economic process. Under the old economic system that still survives, people cultivated these abilities hoping they would bring personal profit. It would be a dire mistake to believe that the mere command of an administrative body overseeing only the economy could arouse a desire to develop men's individual abilities, or to believe that such a command would have power enough to induce them to put their will into their work. The threefold social order seeks to prevent people from making this mistake. It aims at establishing within an independent, self-sustaining cultural life a realm where one learns in a living way to understand this human society for which one is called upon to work; a realm where one learns to see what each single piece of work means for the combined fabric of the social order, to see it in such a light that one will learn to love it because of its value for the whole. It aims at creating in this free life of spirit the profounder principles that can replace the motive of personal gain. Only in a free spiritual life can a love for the human social order spring up that is comparable to the love an artist has for the creation of his works. If one is not prepared to consider fostering this kind of love within a free spiritual-cultural life, then one may as well renounce all striving for a new social order. Anyone who doubts that men and women are capable of being brought to this kind of love must also renounce all hope of eliminating personal profit from economic life. Anyone who fails to believe that a free spiritual life generates this kind of love is unaware that it is the dependence of spiritual and cultural life upon the state and the economy that creates desire for personal profit—this desire for profit is not a fundamental aspect of human nature. It is this mistake that makes people say constantly, “to realize the threefold order, human beings must be different than they are now.” No! Through the threefold order, people will be educated in such a way that they will grow up to be different than they were previously under the economic state.

[ 4 ] And just as the free spiritual life will create the impulses for developing individual ability, the democratically ordered life of the legal sphere will provide the impulses for the will to work. Real relationships will grow up between people united in a social organism where each adult has a voice in government and is co-equal with every other adult: it is relationships such as these that are able to enkindle the will to work “for the community.” One must reflect that a truly communal feeling can grow only from such relationships, and that from this feeling, the will to work can grow. For in actual practice the consequence of such a state founded on democratic rights will be that each human being will take his place with vitality and full consciousness in the common field of work. Each will know what he or she is working for; and each will want to work within the working community of which he knows himself a member through his will.

[ 5 ] It will be plain to anyone who understands the threefold social order that the vast syndicate with its state-like structure (such as the Marxist model) can supply impulses neither for the ability nor for the will to work. Anyone who understands will take care that the essence of human nature not be forgotten for the sake of the exigencies of outer life. For social thinking cannot reckon with external institutions alone; it must take into account what man is and what he may become.

[ 1 ] It appears that many people are kept from the idea of a threefold social order by the fear that it entails sundering things that in reality must work together as an undivided unity within society. Now it is true that a person engaged in economic activity is brought thereby into relationships with his fellow men that involve laws. It is also true that one's spiritual life is dependent on these legal relationships, and is also conditioned by one's economic position. In the human being, these three functions are united; in the course of life, one becomes involved in all three.

[ 2 ] Is this, however, a reason why these three life-functions should be governed from a single center? Does it necessitate all three being governed according to the same principles? In the human being and in his activities, many currents run together that have flowed from a great variety of sources. We are dependent on the qualities inherited from our fore-fathers. We think and act according to what our education has made of us, education we received from persons to whom we are not related. How strange it would be if anyone tried to assert that our unity were destroyed because we are influenced from different quarters by heredity and education. Should it not be said, rather, that we remain incomplete if heredity and education work from a single source to shape our lives?

[ 3 ] That such things from various sources must converge within us in order (through this very variety) to satisfy the many requirements of our nature—people can understand this, for to not understand it would be absurd. However, they will not see that the development of spiritual abilities, the regulation of legal affairs and the shaping of economic life afford us our proper place within the social order only when each is governed from its separate center and from its special viewpoint. An economy that governs the rights of human beings, and educates them according to its own interests, reduces the person to a mere cog in the economic machinery. It stunts the human spirit, which can develop freely only when it unfolds according to its own innate im-pulses. It stunts, too, those relations with our fellows that stem from the feelings, and refuse to be influenced by economic considerations—relations that are striving rather to be governed in accordance with the equality of all regarding what is purely human.

When the political sphere or the sphere of rights controls the development of our individual abilities, it weighs on this development like a crushing burden. For the interests that arise out of these spheres must naturally produce a tendency to develop such abilities according to the government's needs and not according to their own proper nature, however good may be the original intentions to allow for individual characteristics. Such a legal or political sphere also imposes an alien character upon economic matters. Those subject to this kind of political system become through constant tutelage spiritually cramped and economically hampered in the pursuit of interests inappropriate to their own nature.

A spiritual life that attempted to determine legal relations on its own terms would inevitably be led from the in-equality of human abilities to inequality in the law. It would be false to its own nature if it were to allow itself to be determined by economic interests. Under such a spiritual culture, people would never come to a true consciousness of what, in reality, the spirit may be for human life, for they would watch the spirit degrade itself through injustice and falsify itself through economic aims.

[ 4 ] What has brought humanity to the present state of affairs in the civilized world is that during the last few centuries these three spheres have in many respects grown together into a single, unified state. And the cause of the present unrest is that an enormous number of people are struggling (while unconscious of the real nature of their striving) toward a delimitation of these three spheres of life into separate systems of the social organism, so that the spiritual-cultural life may be free to shape itself according to its own spiritual impulses; that the sphere of rights may be built up democratically through the interaction (direct or representational) of people on equal terms; and that the economic life may extend solely to the production, circulation and consumption of commodities.

[ 5 ] Starting from any number of standpoints one can come to see the necessity of a threefold organization of society. One of these standpoints is an understanding of present-day human nature. From the standpoint of some particular social theory or party dogma, it may appear very unscientific or impractical to say that when arranging institutions for communal life, one should consult psychology to learn (so far as it can tell us) what is suited to human nature. Yet it would be a great misfortune if everyone who tried to give this “social psychology” its due in the shaping of social life were to be silenced. There are colorblind people who see the world as gray on gray; so, too, there are social reformers and social revolutionaries blind to psychology who would like to mold the social organism into an economic syndicate in which people would live and move like mechanical beings. These agitators have no idea of their blindness. They know only that there has always existed a legal and a spiritual life beside the economic life; and they imagine that if they fashion the economic life after their own ideas, all the rest will come “of itself.” It will not come; it will come to ruin. Thus it is very hard to arrive at any understanding with those blind to psychology; and thus it is, unfortunately, also necessary to take up against them—a battle begun not by those who can see, but by those who are blind.

[ 1 ] Ideas which take account of the realities that gave rise to the demands now agitating humanity, and are in harmony with the conditions under which it is possible for men to live together culturally, politically and economically—such ideas are drowned out by the clamor of others that are remote from life in both regards. People who long for something other than the traditional forms of life, or who have in fact already been torn out of these older forms by events, are people who until now have stood at such a remove from the forces that brought these circumstances to the surface of history that they lack any insight whatever into how they act and what they signify. Within the mass of the working classes, there is a dull consciousness that demands a change in their form of life, which they see as a result of capitalist forces dominating the economy. Yet the manner of their participation in economic life hitherto has not made them aware of the way these forces operate. Thus they are unable to conceive any fruitful way of transforming these forces. The intellectual leaders and agitators of the proletarian masses are blinded by utopian ideas and theories which derive from a social science still based on the old economic concepts that so urgently need changing. These agitators have not even the faintest idea that their notions about politics, economics and cultural life are in no way different from the “bourgeois notions” they are fighting, and that at bot-tom all they are striving for is to see the old notions realized by a new group. However, nothing really new ever comes about when different people do the same old thing in a slightly different way.

[ 2 ] One of these “old ideas” is the attempt to control economics by political and legal means. It is an “old idea” because it has brought a large part of humanity into an untenable position, as the catastrophe of World War I has shown. The new idea that must replace this old one is to liberate the administration of the economy from any kind of interference by political or national power, and to conduct the management of the economy along lines that are based entirely on economic principles and economic interests.

[ 3 ] But surely it is impossible to imagine a form of economic life that is not managed by businessmen using political and legal means! Such is the objection raised by those who believe the proponents of the threefold social order have no insight into what is socially self-evident. But actually those who make this objection refuse to see what a far-reaching transformation it would bring about in economic life if the political and legal views and institutions at work within the economy were not ruled from within the economic system itself according to its interests, but rather guided by something external to the economy, and subject only to considerations that lie within the competence of every adult. Why do so many people, even those of a socialist turn of mind, refuse to see this? The reason is that through their participation in political life they have learned to think about the way a political state governs, but not about the peculiar nature of the forces inherent in economic life. Thus they are able to conceive an economic process managed according to the principles on which a political state is governed; but they are unable to conceive of one structured according to its own economic principles and needs, one that takes its legal regulations from a different quarter altogether. This is true for most of the agitators and leaders of the proletariat. If the mass of workers themselves, from the circumstances previously dis-cussed, have insufficient insight into ways that economic life might possibly be transformed, their leaders are no better off. They exclude themselves from all such insight by confining their thinking wholly within the political arena.

[ 4 ] A consequence of this one-sided confinement to politics are the attempts being made in various quarters to establish Workers' Councils [Betriebsräte]. The current attempt to create such institutions must be consistent with the afore-mentioned “new idea,” if all labor expended on it is not to be wasted. This “new idea” requires, however, that Workers' Councils should be the first institutions with which the state has no concern, but which are free to form according to the purely economic considerations of those engaged in economic life. It should be left to the emerging corporation to promote associations that will create through economic cooperation what has been brought about hitherto by the egotistical competition of individuals. It is a question of free social coordination between the various complexes of production and consumption, and not one of centralized control according to political policies. The point is to promote the economic initiatives of the workers through such an association, not to submit them to the tutelage of a bureaucratic hierarchy. Whether economic life has a political ad-ministration imposed on it by state law, or whether a “system of industrial council boards” [Rätesystem] is planned by people who are able to think and organize only along political lines, the outcome is the same. Among these people there may perhaps be some who, in theory, demand a certain independence of the economic life; in practice, however, their demands can only result in an economy straight-jacketed by a political system because their scheme is the result of political thinking. Before one can conceive such institutions in a way required by the actual conditions of present-day life, one must have a clear idea of the way in which both the governmental and legal system and the spiritual-cultural sphere of the threefold social order should develop in their own manner apart from the economic system. It is possible to form a clear picture of an independent economic life only when one sees other things in their proper place within the whole structure of the social organism—those things that should not fall within the orbit of the economy. If one does not see clearly the proper place for the unfolding of cultural and legal impulses, one will always be tempted to fuse them somehow with economics.

[ 1 ] Judging from the fruitless discussions now going on in many circles over the Works Councils [Betriebsräte], it is plain to see how very little understanding there is of the demands that the historical evolution of humanity has created for the present age and the near future. That democracy and a social form of life represent two impulses struggling to realize themselves within present-day human nature is an insight that has escaped entirely the vast majority of participants in such discussions. Both impulses will continue to cause unrest and destruction in public life until institutions are provided within which they can unfold themselves; but the social impulse that must live in the economic process cannot, because of its essential nature, manifest itself democratically. The aim of this social impulse is that people engaged in economic production should pay attention to the legitimate needs of their fellows. The kind of management that this impulse demands is one that regulates the economic process on the basis of what individuals engaged in it actually do for one another. What they do, however, must be based upon contractual agreements that arise from the economic positions of the individuals concerned. If these contractual agreements are to have a social effect, two things are necessary. First, these agreements must originate as a free initiative of those concerned—an initiative that is based on insight. Second, these individuals must live in an economic body that enables one through such agreements to convey in the best possible way the services of each to the community. The first demand can be fulfilled only when there is no sort of political influence intervening between those working within the economy and their personal relationship to the sources and interests of economic life itself. The second demand will be satisfied when agreements are made not according to the demands of an unregulated market, but rather according to the conditions that result when branches of industry associate with each other and with associations of consumers as dictated by real needs, so that the circulation of goods is managed as these associations see fit. Such associations represent a model for determining how, in each particular case, economic activity should be governed contractually.

[ 2 ] There can be no politicking when the economy is run in this way. There is only the competence and skill of each person in some special branch of industry, and the structuring of these to the best possible social advantage. What is done in an economic body of this kind is decided not by counting votes, but by the voice of real needs: it will necessarily concern itself with finding those most competent to perform certain tasks, and then conveying products to the consumers deemed appropriate by the cooperating associations.

[ 3] However, just as in a natural organism one single organic system would destroy itself through its specific activity if there were no other systems to keep it in balance, so does one function of the social organism need to be kept in balance by another. Work within the economic sphere would, over time, inevitably lead to comparable damage, unless it were counteracted by the political system of laws—that must rest on a democratic basis, just as the economic life cannot. In the sphere of democratic law-making, politicking is appropriate. What is done there works within economic activity to counteract its innate tendency to cause damage. If one were to harness economic life to the administration of the state, one would deprive it of its efficiency and freedom of movement. Those engaged in economic work must receive the law from somewhere outside of economic life, and only apply it in the economic life itself.

[ 4 ] It is matters such as this that should be taken up by those who are busy planning Works Councils. Instead, there is a great deal of oration on viewpoints consistent with the old principle of shaping political legislation according to economic interests. That presently there happen to be different groups pursuing this same principle does not change the fact that a new spirit is still lacking today in places where it is already so urgently needed.

[ 5 ] Today's circumstances are such that there can be no return to health in public life until a sufficiently large number of people recognize the real social, political and spiritual demands of the times, and have the good will and energy to pass on this vital understanding to others. To the extent that this understanding is spread, the remaining obstacles to social health would disappear. For it is merely a political superstition that these obstacles have any objective existence beyond the reach of human insight; it is an assertion made only by people who can never understand the actual relationship between theory and praxis. They are the people who say, “These idealists have quite excellent, well-meant ideas. However, as matters now stand, these ideas cannot be put in practice.” This is not at all the case; the only obstacle to the practical realization of certain ideas at present are those who hold this belief and have the power to use it as an obstacle. And such power is possessed also by those who have gathered around them the masses of the people from former party groups; the masses obediently follow them, their “leaders.” Therefore, one of the fundamental conditions for a return to social health is the disbanding of these old party groupings, and a heightened understanding for the kinds of ideas that grow out of real practical insight in-dependent of any connection with old parties and groups. An immediate and burning question is how to find ways and means to replace the old party creeds with this independent judgement so that they can become a nucleus around which people of all party affiliations can gather—people who are able to see that the existing parties have had their day and that the present social conditions are sufficient proof that their day is over.

[ 6 ] It is understandable that those who need to recognize this do not find it easy. The rank and file do not find it easy because they do not have the time or the leisure (and very often not the training) this recognition requires. It is not easy for the leaders because both their prejudices and their power are bound up with all they have stood for until now. This situation obliges us all the more urgently to look beyond the party traditions of the day and seek the real progress of humanity outside, not within them. Today it is not enough merely to know what should take the place of existing institutions. What is necessary is to elaborate this new way of thinking in a way that will lead as quickly as possible to the disbanding of the old party system and will guide people's efforts toward new goals. Whoever lacks the courage to do this can contribute nothing toward a new and healthy social order. Whoever is deluded by the belief that such efforts are utopian, builds on sinking ground.

[ 1 ] There are conflicting views on the profits made by economic entrepreneurs. Its defenders say that human nature is such that we will engage our talents for the good of the whole only when induced to do so by the expectation of profit. It is true, they say, that profit is the offspring of egotism; yet profit performs a service to the community—a service the community would have to do without were it to eliminate profit from the economic process. The opponents of this viewpoint say that production should not be pursued with a view to profit, but rather with a view to consumption. One must devise institutions that will motivate men to continue to employ their powers for the benefit of the community even when not enticed to do so by the expectation of profit.

[ 2 ] When there are such conflicting opinions in public life, usually people do not think them out to the end, but rather let power decide. If one is democratically-minded, one thinks it quite right that institutions should be established (or allowed to remain) that correspond to the interests and wishes of the majority. If one is single-mindedly convinced of the legitimacy of one's own interests, then one's aim is an authoritarian central power that shall develop institutions to conform to these particular wishes and interests. One then desires only to obtain sufficient influence over this central power to ensure its accomplishing what one wants. What is today called “the dictatorship of the proletariat” stems from this attitude. People who demand this “dictatorship” are motivated by their wishes and interests; they make no at-tempt to think correctly so as to discover whether their demand entails institutions that are in themselves really possible.

[ 3 ] Humanity is presently at a point in its evolution when it is no longer possible to conduct human affairs simply by insisting upon what is wished. Quite apart from what this or that person, this or that group may want, from now on in the sphere of public life only efforts proceeding from ideas that have been thought through to the end will promote social health. However strongly human passions may resist it, in the end people will be obliged to introduce into social life these thoroughly considered ideas demanded by the spirit of humanity, because people will see the pathological consequences that result from their opposite.

[ 4 ] The view that a threefold structuring of the social organism is a necessity is one such idea thought through to its logical conclusion. In light of this intent, it is certainly odd that many of its opponents think the idea an unclear one. The reason for this is that these opponents are interested not in clear thinking, but merely in agreement with their interests, wishes and prejudices. When faced with ideas that have been fully and concretely considered, they can see nothing in them but opposition to their preconceived opinions; they justify themselves unclearly in their own eyes, by saying that the opposition is unclear.

[ 5 ] In estimating the economic significance of profits, im-pertinent opinions often intrude. Certainly profit-making is an egotistical aim. However, it is unjustified to use this egotism as an argument for eliminating profit from economic activity. For there must be something in the economy that can serve to indicate whether there is a need for a manufactued article. In the modern form of economics, the only indicator of this need is the fact that the article yields profits. An article can be manufactured if it yields profits that, in the economic context, are sufficiently large. An article that yields no profits must not be produced because it will upset the price balance of articles in actual circulation. Profits may represent what they will in ethical terms; in conventional economic terms, they represent an indicator for the need to produce an article.

[ 6 ] The further evolution of economics does require the elimination of profits, but for the following reason: because they make the production of articles dependent on accidents of the market, which the spirit of the age demands be abolished. One clouds one's judgement if one argues against profit because of its egotistical nature. Real life demands that within any field one must mount arguments appropriate to the particular situation. Arguments drawn from another field of life may be perfectly true in themselves, but they cannot guide one's judgement toward the real facts.

[ 7 ] What is necessary for economic life is that profits as indicators should be replaced by groups tasked with establishing a rational correspondence between production and consumption that will abolish accidents of the market. The change from profits-indicator to a rational coordination of production and consumption, if correctly understood, will result in the elimination of the motives that have hitherto clouded judgment on this issue by removing them to the legal and cultural spheres.

[ 8 ] Only when people recognize that the idea of the threefold social order has been shaped by an effort to create sound bases for realistic and practical conduct in each of life's different spheres, will they begin to do this idea justice and to have a proper estimation of its practical value. So long as motives proper to the legal and spiritual-cultural spheres are expected to proceed indiscriminately from the administration of economic life (which can be practical only when ruled solely by businesslike considerations and transactions)—so long will social life remain unhealthy. Today's party groupings are still quite removed from what the spirit of the age is shown here to demand. Thus it is inevitable that the idea of the threefold social order should meet with much prejudice stemming from opinions prevalent in these party groupings. However, it is time to put an end to the belief that any change can be effected in today's unsound social conditions through further activity along the old party lines. The very first thing to be considered is rather a change in these party opinions themselves. The way to do this, however, is not by splitting off sections of existing par-ties and establishing ourselves as representatives of “true” party opinion, while reproaching others for deserting “the true party views.” This only leads from fighting over ideology to a much worse struggle for the power of specific groups of people. What is needed now is not this, but rather an unprejudiced insight into the demands of the “spirit of the age.”

[ 1 ] Many people today speak of “socialization” as though it could imply a number of external institutions in the state or in the social community, through which certain requirements of modern humanity might be satisfied. To them, the right institutions do not yet exist; that is why there is general social discontent and confusion. Once these institutions are in existence, orderly social life and social cooperation among men must follow. That so many people harbor this belief more or less consciously is the reason for the development of so many harmful notions about “the social question.” There is no form one can give to external institutions by which these institutions can, of themselves, enable us to lead a socially satisfying life. Such institutions will be good in a technical sense if they enable commodities to be produced and conveyed to human use in the most efficient manner possible. However, they will be good in a social sense only if socially-minded people administer the commodities produced in the service of the community. No matter what the institutions may be, there is always some conceivable way human individuals or groups can operate them antisocially.

[ 2 ] One should not give oneself over to the illusion that any kind of satisfying social life can be created without “socially-minded” human beings; such illusions are a hindrance to really practical social ideas. The idea of the threefold social order aims at complete freedom from such illusions; therefore it is not surprising that it is vehemently opposed by everyone still living within these illusory mists. The first of the three spheres of the threefold social order aims at a form of cooperation among men to be based entirely on free intercourse and free association between individuals. Here human individuality will not be forced into an institutional mold. How one person assists another, how one helps another advance will simply arise from what one, through his own abilities and accomplishments, is able to be for the other. It is no great wonder that presently many people are still able to imagine nothing but a state of anarchy as a result of such free human relations in the spiritual-cultural branch. Those who think so simply do not know what powers of our inmost nature are stunted when we are forced to develop according to patterns imposed by the state and the economic system. Such powers, deep within human nature, cannot be developed by institutions, but only through what one being calls forth in perfect freedom from another being. The effect of what arises in this way is not antisocial, but rather deeply social. The socially active inner person is stunted only when instincts originating in the prerogatives of the state or in economic advantage are engrained or handed down.

[ 3 ] Through its cultural branch, the threefold social order will uncover perpetual springs of social initiative. These springs will imbue the legal relations that are regulated by the democratic state with a social spirit, and they will spread the same spirit into the conduct of economic life.

[ 4 ] Within the economy, the forms of modern life afford no means of counteracting the antisocial tendency. For the whole community is best served when the individual is left unchecked to apply his abilities to the common good. To do this, however, it is necessary that individuals should accumulate capital, and be free to combine with others in utilizing it. The socialists have been deluded in thinking that these masses of ever-accumulating capital could in the end simply be transferred from their private owners to the cornmunity, and that thereby a socialist society would necessarily be realized. In reality, the economic productivity of capital would inevitably be lost in such a transference, for this productivity rests upon the private abilities of the individual. One must admit to oneself quite frankly that the economy will have the greatest vitality not when it is deprived of the antisocial element within its own domain, but instead when it is kept supplied from another domain—the cultural branch of the social order—with forces that will constantly correct antisocial tendencies as they arise and convert them back into social ones.

[ 5 ] In my Toward Social Renewal I have tried to show that a truly social way of thinking will not aim at a transference of capital from the control of private persons (or groups) to the community as a whole; on the contrary, it is essential that the private individual should have means, by the use of capital, of placing his abilities, unopposed, at the service of the community. When this individual is no longer willing or able to direct his abilities to the use of capital, this use must be transferred to another person of similar abilities. It will not be transferred by state prerogative or by economic power, but by finding out, on strength of the training acquired under the free spiritual life, which person will make the most suitable successor from the social point of view.

[ 6 ] Whoever speaks in this manner about the remedy for our social malaise sees in his mind's eye the scorn of all those today who consider themselves experts in the practicalities of life. For the moment he must endure this scorn, knowing well that the other's way of thinking is what brought about the dreadful human catastrophe of recent years. The scorn may continue awhile; then, however, even the most obstinate of such people will no longer be able to resist the hard lessons of social realities. The phrase: “Schemes such as the threefold order may be all very fine, but the people to carry them out aren't there,” will be silenced. The coiners of this phrase are certainly not “the people to do so.” Therefore, it is to be hoped they will retire and will not, with their brute force, block the way of those who are doing fruitful work and who would gladly provide a free spiritual life for the development of social impulses in men.

[ 1 ] Among the various objections that can be made to the threefold social order is one that can be phrased somewhat as follows: The efforts of political thinkers in recent years have been directed in part towards creating legal provisions appropriate to the existing conditions of economic production. It might be said that the idea of the threefold order totally disregards all the work done in this direction and wants merely to detach the legal sphere from the economic altogether.

[ 2 ] Those who raise this objection imagine that thereby they can dismiss the idea of the threefold order as something that throws practical experience to the winds and claims a role in the reconstruction of society without this experience. How-ever, the reverse is true. The opponents of the threefold social order say: “One should reflect on the difficulties that have attended every attempt to arrive at a legal system adapted to modern conditions of production. One should consider the obstacles met by all who have made such at-tempts.” However, the adherents of the threefold order must answer: These very difficulties are proof that people were taking the wrong road. They persisted in trying to contrive a social form in which certain demands of modern times were to be satisfied through a single combined economic and legal sytem. They ought, however, to recognize that economic life, when conducted expediently, promotes conditions that necessarily tend to counter the sense of right and justice, unless this tendency is deliberately counteracted from outside the economy. It is to the advantage of economic life that individuals or groups who have special qualifications for a particular business of production are able to accumulate capital for their business. Presently, the best services can be rendered to the community as a whole only by qualified persons through the control of large sums of capital. However, the nature of economics dictates that such services can only consist of the most efficient production of the goods that the community needs. A certain amount of economic power flows into the hands of the people who pro-duce such goods. It cannot be otherwise, and the threefold social order recognizes this. Accordingly, it aims to bring about a society in which this economic power will still arise, but out of which no social evils can grow. The threefold idea does not propose to hinder the accumulation of large sums of capital in individual hands; it recognizes that to do so would be to lose the possibility of employing socially the abilities of these private individuals in the service of the general public. It proposes, however, that the moment an individual can no longer attend to the management of the means of production within his sphere of power, these means of production should be transferred to another capable person. The latter will not be able to obtain these means of production through any economic power he may possess, but solely because he is the most capable person. In practice, however, this can only be realized when the transfer is directed according to principles that have nothing to do with the means of economic power; such principles become possible only when the people themselves, with their interests, are engaged in spheres of life other than the economic. If men are joined together on a legal foundation which produces interests other than economic ones, these other interests will then be able to assert themselves. If the human being is absorbed by economic interests alone, those other interests never develop. If the person who possesses the means of production is to have any feeling whatever that the best and most efficient person in any economic position is one who obtains it by ability and not by economic power, such a feeling must grow in a sphere established apart from the economic. In and of itself, the economic life can call forth a sense for economic power but not, simultaneously, a sense for social justice. Therefore, all attempts to conjure out of economic thought itself a code of social justice were bound to fail.

[ 3 ] Such matters are based upon the actual realities of life; these are the things taken into account by the idea of the threefold social order. It is guided by the practical experiences met by those who attempted to create legal structures for the modern economic forms; but it will not be led by these experiences to add a new attempt that resembles the many that have already failed. Its aim is not to try to produce social laws in a field of life where they cannot grow, but to bring about that life itself from which such laws can grow. In modern times this life has been absorbed into the economy; the first step is to restore its independence. To perceive clearly the idea of the threefold order, one must be willing to understand that the economic life needs to have its own forces continually corrected from outside, if it is not to call forth out of itself obstacles to its own growth. This necessary corrective will be supplied when there is an independent cultural life and corresponding independent legal sphere to make provision for it. The unity of social life is not thereby destroyed; in reality, it arises thereby for the first time in its true sense. This unity cannot be brought about by the ordinances of a central authority; it must be allowed to arise out of the interaction of those forces that each need to exist separately in order to live as a whole. Experiences met with in attempting to create for modern economic life legal relations that are drawn from the economy itself, should not therefore be regarded as arguments against the threefold social order. On the contrary, these experiences should be seen to lead directly to the recognition that the threefold organism is the idea modern life demands.

[ 1 ] The aims Emil Molt is trying to realize through the Waldorf School are connected with quite definite views on the social tasks of the present day and the near future. The spirit in which the school should be conducted must proceed from these views. It is a school attached to an industrial undertaking. The peculiar place modern industry has taken in the evolution of social life in actual practice sets its stamp upon the modern social movement. Parents who entrust their children to this school are bound to expect that the children shall be educated and prepared for the practical work of life in a way that takes due account of this movement. This makes it necessary, in founding the school, to begin from educational principles that have their roots in the requirements of modern life. Children must be educated and instructed in such a way that their lives fulfill demands everyone can support, no matter from which of the inherited social classes one might come. What is demanded of people by the actualities of modern life must find its reflection in the organization of this school. What is to be the ruling spirit in this life must be aroused in the children by education and instruction.

[ 2 ] It would be fatal if the educational views upon which the Waldorf School is founded were dominated by a spirit out of touch with life. Today, such a spirit may all too easily arise because people have come to feel the full part played in the recent destruction of civilization by our absorption in a materialistic mode of life and thought during the last few decades. This feeling makes them desire to introduce an idealistic way of thinking into the management of public affairs. Anyone who turns his attention to developing educational life and the system of instruction will desire to see such a way of thinking realized there especially. It is an attitude of mind that reveals much good will. It goes without saying that this good will should be fully appreciated. If used properly, it can provide valuable service when gathering manpower for a social undertaking requiring new foundations. Yet it is necessary in this case to point out how the best intentions must fail if they set to work without fully regarding those first conditions that are based on practical insight.

[ 3 ] This, then, is one of the requirements to be considered when the founding of any institution- such as the Waldorf School is intended. Idealism must work in the spirit of its curriculum and methodology; but it must be an idealism that has the power to awaken in young, growing human beings the forces and faculties they will need in later life to be equipped for work in modern society and to obtain for themselves an adequate living.

[ 4 ] The pedagogy and instructional methodology will he able to fulfill this requirement only through a genuine knowledge of the developing human being. Insightful people are today calling for some form of education and instruction directed not merely to the cultivation of one-sided knowledge, but also to abilities; education directed not merely to the cultivation of intellectual faculties, but also to the strengthening of the will. The soundness of this idea is unquestionable; but it is impossible to develop the will (and that healthiness of feeling on which it rests) unless one develops the insights that awaken the energetic impulses of will and feeling. A mistake often made presently in this respect is not that people instill too many concepts into young minds, but that the kind of concepts they cultivate are devoid of all driving life force. Anyone who believes one can cultivate the will without cultivating the concepts that give it life is suffering from a delusion. It is the business of contemporary educators to see this point clearly; but this clear vision can only proceed from a living understanding of the whole human being.

[ 5 ] It is now planned that the Waldorf School will be a primary school in which the educational goals and curriculum are founded upon each teacher's living insight into the nature of the whole human being, so far as this is possible under present conditions. Children will, of course, have to be advanced far enough in the different school grades to satisfy the standards imposed by the current views. Within this framework, however, the pedagogical ideals and curriculum will assume a form that arises out of this knowledge of the human being and of actual life.

[ 6 ] The primary school is entrusted with the child at a period of its life when the soul is undergoing a very important transformation. From birth to about the sixth or seventh year, the human being naturally gives himself up to everything immediately surrounding him in the human environment, and thus, through the imitative instinct, gives form to his own nascent powers. From this period on, the child's soul becomes open to take in consciously what the educator and teacher gives, which affects the child as a result of the teacher's natural authority. The authority is taken for granted by the child from a dim feeling that in the teacher there is something that should exist in himself, too. One cannot be an educator or teacher unless one adopts out of full insight a stance toward the child that takes account in the most comprehensive sense of this metamorphosis of the urge to imitate into an ability to assimilate upon the basis of a natural relationship of authority. The modern world view, based as it is upon natural law, does not approach these fact of human development in full consciousness. To observe them with the necessary attention, one must have a sense of life's subtlest manifestations in the human being. This kind of sense must run through the whole art of education; it must shape the curriculum; it must live in the spirit uniting teacher and pupil. In educating, what the teacher does can depend only slightly on anything he gets from a general, abstract pedagogy: it must rather be newly born every moment from a live understanding of the young human being he or she is teaching. One may, of course, object that this lively kind of education and instruction breaks down in large classes. This objection is no doubt justified in a limited sense. Taken beyond those limits, however, the objection merely shows that the person who makes it proceeds from abstract educational norms, for a really living art of education based on a genuine knowledge of the human being carries with it a power that rouses the interest of every single pupil so that there is no need for direct “individual” work in order to keep his attention on the subject. One can put forth the essence of one's teaching in such a form that each pupil assimilates it in his own individual way. This requires simply that whatever the teacher does should be sufficiently alive. If anyone has a genuine sense for human nature, the developing human being becomes for him such an intense, living riddle that the very attempt to solve it awakens the pupil's living interest empathetically. Such empathy is more valuable than individual work, which may all too easily cripple the child's own initiative. It might indeed be asserted—again, within limitations—that large classes led by teachers who are imbued with the life that comes from genuine knowledge of the human being, will achieve better results than small classes led by teachers who proceed from standard educational theories and have no chance to put this life into their work.

[ 7 ] Not so outwardly marked as the transformation the soul undergoes in the sixth or seventh year, but no less important for the art of educating, is a change that a penetrating study of the human being shows to take place around the end of the ninth year. At this time, the sense of self assumes a form that awakens in the child a relationship to nature and to the world about him such that one can now talk to him more about the connections between things and processes themselves, whereas previously he was interested almost exclusively in things and processes only in relationship to man. Facts of this kind in a human being's development ought to be most carefully observed by the educator. For if one introduces into the child's world of concepts and feelings what coincides just at that period of life with the direction taken by his own developing powers, one then gives such added vigor to the growth of the whole person that it remains a source of strength throughout life. If in any period of life one works against the grain of these developing powers, one weakens the individual.

[ 8 ] Knowledge of the special needs of each life period provides a basis for drawing up a suitable curriculum. This knowledge also can be a basis for dealing with instructional subjects in successive periods. By the end of the ninth year, one must have brought the child to a certain level in all that has come into human life through the growth of civilization. Thus while the first school years are properly spent on teaching the child to write and read, the teaching must be done in a manner that permits the essential character of this phase of development to be served. If one teaches things in a way that makes a one-sided claim on the child's intellect and the merely abstract acquisition of skills, then the development of the native will and sensibilities is checked; while if the child learns in a manner that calls upon its whole being, he or she develops all around. Drawing in a childish fashion, or even a primitive kind of painting, brings out the whole human being's interest in what he is doing. Therefore one should let writing grow out of drawing. One can begin with figures in which the pupil's own childish artistic sense comes into play; from these evolve the letters of the alphabet. Beginning with an activity that, being artistic, draws out the whole human being, one should develop writing, which tends toward the intellectual. And one must let reading, which concentrates the attention strongly within the realm of the intellect, arise out of writing.

[ 9 ] When people recognize how much is to be gained for the intellect from this early artistic education of the child, they will be willing to allow art its proper place in the primary school education. The arts of music, painting and sculpting will be given a proper place in the scheme of instruction. This artistic element and physical exercise will be brought into a suitable combination. Gymnastics and action games will be developed as expressions of sentiments called forth by something in the nature of music or recitation. Eurythmic movement—movement with a meaning—will replace those motions based merely on the anatomy and physiology of the physical body. People will discover how great a power resides in an artistic manner of instruction for the development of will and feeling. However, to teach or instruct in this way and obtain valuable results can be done only by teachers who have an insight into the human being sufficiently keen to perceive clearly the connection between the methods they are employing and the developmental forces that manifest themselves in any particular period of life. The real teacher, the real educator, is not one who has studied educational theory as a science of the management of children, but one in whom the pedagogue has been awakened by awareness of human nature.

[ 10 ] Of prime importance for the cultivation of the child's feeling-life is that the child develops its relationship to the world in a way such as that which develops when we incline toward fantasy. If the educator is not himself a fantast, then the child is not in danger of becoming one when the teacher conjures forth the realms of plants and animals, of the sky and the stars in the soul of the child in fairy-tale fashion.

[ 11 ] Visual aids are undoubtedly justified within certain limits; but when a materialistic conviction leads people to try to extend this form of teaching to every conceivable thing, they forget there are other powers in the human being which must be developed, and which cannot be addressed through the medium of visual observation. For instance, there is the acquisition of certain things purely through memory that is connected to the developmental forces at work between the sixth or seventh and the fourteenth year of life. It is this property of human nature upon which the teaching of arithmetic should be based. Indeed, arithmetic can be used to cultivate the faculty of memory. If one dis-regards this fact, one may perhaps be tempted (especially when teaching arithmetic) to commit the educational blunder of teaching with visual aids what should be taught as a memory exercise.

[ 12 ] One may fall into the same mistake by trying all too anxiously to make the child understand everything one tells him. The will that prompts one to do so is undoubtedly good, but does not duly estimate what it means when, later in life, we revive within our soul something that we acquired simply through memory when younger and now find, in our mature years, that we have come to understand it on our own. Here, no doubt, any fear of the pupil's not taking an active interest in a lesson learned by memory alone will have to be relieved by the teacher's lively way of giving it. If the teacher engages his or her whole being in teaching, then he may safely bring the child things for which the full under-standing will come when joyfully remembered in later life. There is something that constantly refreshes and strengthens the inner substance of life in this recollection. If the teacher assists such a strengthening, he will give the child a priceless treasure to take along on life's road. In this way, too, the teacher will avoid the visual aid's degenerating into the banality that occurs when a lesson is overly adapted to the child's understanding. Banalities may be calculated to arouse the child's own activity, but such fruits lose their flavor with the end of childhood. The flame enkindled in the child from the living fire of the teacher in matters that still lie, in a way, beyond his “understanding,” remains an active, awakening force throughout the child's life.

[ 13 ] If, at the end of the ninth year, one begins to choose descriptions of natural history from the plant and animal world, treating them in a way that the natural forms and processes lead to an understanding of the human form and the phenomena of human life, then one can help release the forces that at this age are struggling to be born out of the depths of human nature. It is consistent with the character of the child's sense of self at this age to see the qualities that nature divides among manifold species of the plant and animal kingdoms as united into one harmonious whole at the summit of the natural world in the human being.

[ 14 ] Around the twelfth year, another turning point in the child's development occurs. He becomes ripe for the development of the faculties that lead him in a wholesome way to the comprehension of things that must be considered without any reference to the human being: the mineral kingdom, the physical world, meteorological phenomena, and so on.

[ 15 ] The best way to lead then from such exercises, which are based entirely on the natural human instinct of activity without reference to practical ends, to others that shall be a sort of education for actual work, will follow from knowledge of the character of the successive periods of life. What has been said here with reference to particular parts of the curriculum may be extended to everything that should be taught to the pupil up to his fifteenth year.

[ 16 ] There need be no fear of the elementary schools releasing pupils in a state of soul and body unfit for practical life if their principles of education and instructions are allowed to proceed, as described, from the inner development of the human being. For human life itself is shaped by this inner development; and one can enter upon life in no better way than when, through the development of our own inner capacities, we can join with what others before us, from similar inner human capacities, have embodied in the evolution of the civilized world. It is true that to bring the two into harmony—the development of the pupil and the development of the civilized world—will require a body of teachers who do not shut themselves up in an educational routine with strictly professional interests, but rather take an active interest in the whole range of life. Such a body of teachers will discover how to awaken in the upcoming generation a sense of the inner, spiritual substance of life and also an understanding of life's practicalities. If instruction is carried on this way, the young human being at the age of fourteen or fifteen will not lack comprehension of important things in agriculture and industry, commerce and travel, which help to make up the collective life of mankind. He will have acquired a knowledge of things and a practical skill that will enable him to feel at home in the life which receives him into its stream.

If the Waldorf School is to achieve the aims its founder has in view, it must be built on educational principles and methods of the kind here described. It will then be able to give the kind of education that allows the pupil's body to develop healthily and according to its needs, because the soul (of which this body is the expression) is allowed to grow in a way consistent with the forces of its development. Before its opening, some preparatory work was attempted with the teachers so that the school might be able to work toward the proposed aim. Those concerned with the management of the school believe that in pursuing this aim they bring something into educational life in accordance with modern social thinking. They feel the responsibility inevitably connected with any such attempt; but they think that, in contemporary social demands, it is a duty to under-take this when the opportunity is afforded.