The Rudolf Steiner Archive

To-day I have to add to what I said yesterday concerning old ways to spiritual knowledge yet a further example, namely the way of asceticism as practised in former ages, asceticism in the widest sense of the word. And here I shall be describing a way that is even less practicable in our own times than the way described yesterday. For in our time, in our civilisation, men's thoughts and customs are different from those of the days when men sought high spiritual knowledge by means of asceticism. Hence just as we must replace the way of Yoga to-day by something more purely spiritual and psychic, so must we replace the way of asceticism by a modern way. But we shall more easily apprehend the modern way into spiritual life if we train our ideas in grasping the way of asceticism.

Asceticism essentially is a matter of certain exercises. These exercises can extend to spiritual and psychic things, I wish, for the moment, to deal with the use made of these exercises for eliminating the human body in a special way, at certain times, from the sum of human experience. It is just by eliminating the body that experience of spiritual worlds is called up. These exercises consisted in training the body by means of pain and suffering, by mortification, until it was capable of enduring pain without causing too much disturbance to the mind; until the ascetic could bear physical suffering without his whole mind and soul being overwhelmed in the suffering. Mortification and enhanced en-durance were pursued because it was a matter of experience that as the physical was repressed so the spiritual nature emerged, got free and brought about immediate spiritual perception, direct experience.

Now it is a matter of experience—notwithstanding that these methods are not to be recommended today—it is yet a matter of experience that in whatever measure the physical body is suppressed in the same measure man is enabled to receive into himself psychic and spiritual being. It is simply a fact that spirit becomes perceptible when the activity of the physical is suppressed.

Let me make my meaning clear by an example: Suppose we observe the human eye. This human eye is there for the purpose of transmitting impressions of light to the human being. What is the sole means whereby the eye can make light perceptible to man? Imaginatively expressed: by wanting nothing for itself. The moment the eye wants something for itself—so to speak—the moment the organic activity, the vital activity of the eye loses its own vitality, (if some opacity or hardening of the lens or eyeball sets in)—namely, as soon as the eye departs from selflessness and becomes self-seeking, in that moment it ceases to be a servant of human nature. The eye must make no claim to be anything for its own sake. This is meant relatively of course, but things must be stated in a somewhat absolute manner when they have to be expressed. Life itself will make it relative. Thus we can say: The eye owes its transparency to light to the fact that it shuts itself off from the being of man, that it is selfless.

When we want to see into the spiritual world—this seeing is meant of course in a spiritual-psychic sense—then we must, as it were, make our whole organism into an eye. We must now make our whole organism transparent—not physically as in the case of the eye,—but spiritually. It must no longer be an obstacle to our intercourse with the world.

Certainly I do not mean to say that our physical organism as it stands to-day would become diseased—as the eye would be diseased—if it claimed life on its own account. For ordinary life our physical organism is quite right as it is, it is quite normal. It has to be opaque. In the lectures that follow we shall see how it is that our organism cannot be an “eye” in ordinary life, how it must be non-transparent. Our normal soul-life can repose in our organism just because it is non-transparent, and because we do not perpetually have the whole spiritual world of the universe about us when we gaze around. Thus, for ordinary life, it is right, it is normal for our organism to be non-transparent. But one can know nothing of the spiritual world by means of it,—just as one can know nothing of light by means of an eye that has cataract. And when the body is mortified by suffering and pain, and by self-conquests, it becomes trans-parent. And just as it is possible to perceive the world of light when the eye lets the light show through it—so it is possible for the whole organism to perceive the spiritual world surrounding it when we make the organism transparent in this way.

What I have just described is what took place in ancient times, the times which gave rise to those mighty religious visions which have come down to our age in tradition, not through the independent discovery of modern men; and it is this that led up to that bodily asceticism that I have been attempting to elucidate.

Nowadays we cannot imitate this asceticism. In earlier ages it was an accepted thing that if one sought enlightenment, if one wanted tidings of the super-sensible, the spiritual world, one should betake oneself to solitary men, to hermits—to such as had withdrawn from life. It was a universal belief that one could learn nothing from those who lived the ordinary life of the world; but that knowledge of spiritual worlds could only be won in solitude, and that one who sought such knowledge must become different from other men.

It would not be possible to think like this from our modern standpoint. Our tendency is to believe only in a man who can stand firmly on his feet, who can use his hands to help his fellow men, one who counts for something in life, who can work and trade and is at home in the world, That solitude which former ages regarded as the pre-requisite of higher knowledge has now no place in our view of life. If we are to believe in a man to-day he must be a man of action, one who enters into life, not one who retires from it. Hence it is impossible for us to acquire the state of mind of the ascetic in relation to knowledge, and we cannot learn of spiritual worlds in his way.

Now this makes it necessary for us to-day to win to clairvoyance by psychic-spiritual means without damaging our bodies' fitness by ascetic practices. And this we can do. And we can do it because through our century-old natural-scientific development we have acquired exact concepts, exact ideas. We can discipline our thinking by means of this natural-scientific development. What I am now describing is not something antagonistic to the intellect. Intellectuality must be at the basis of it all, there must be a foundation of clear thinking. But upon the basis of this intellectuality, of this clear thought, there must be built what can lead into the spiritual world.

To-day it is exceptionally easy to fulfil the demand that man shall think clearly. This is no slight on clear thinking. But in an age which comes several centuries after the work of Copernicus and of Galileo clear thinking is almost a matter of course.—The pity is that it is not yet a matter of course among the majority of people.—But in point of fact it is easy to have clear thought when this clear thought is attained at the expense of the fullness, of the rich content of thought. Empty thoughts can easily be clear. But the foundation of our whole future development must be clear thoughts which have fullness, clear thoughts rich in content.

Now, what the ascetic attained by mortification and suppression of the physical organism we can attain by taking in hand our own soul's development. By asking ourselves, for instance, at some definite stage of our life “What habits have I got? What characteristics? What faults? What sympathies and antipathies?” And when one has reviewed all this clearly in one's mind, one can try imagining—in the case of some very simple thing to start with—what one would be like if one were to evolve a different kind of sympathy or antipathy, a different content of soul.

These things do not come as a matter of course. It often takes years of inward work to do what otherwise life would do for us. If we look at ourselves honestly for once we shall concede: “What I am to-day I was not ten years ago.” The inner content of the soul, and the inner formation of the soul also, have become quite different. Now what has brought this about? Life itself. Unconsciously we have given ourselves up to life. We have plunged into the stream of life. And now: can we ourselves do what otherwise life does? Can we look ahead, for example, to what we shall be in ten years' time, and set' it before us as an aim, and proceed with iron will to bring it about? If we can compass all life within the confines of our own ego—that vast life which otherwise works on us,—if we can thus intensify in our own will [Literally—“in the will of our own ego.”] the power which is usually spread abroad like a sea of life,—if we can work at our own progress and make something out of ourselves:—then we shall achieve inwardly what the ascetic of old achieved by external means. [By Translator—It is interesting to read Kipling's “If” in the light of this knowledge.] He rendered the body weak so that will and cognition should arise out of the weakened body, and the body should be translucent to the spiritual world. We must make our will strong, and make strong our powers of thought, so that they may be stronger than the body, which goes on its own way; and thus we shall constrain the body to be transparent to the world of spirit. We do the precise opposite of the ascetics of old.

You see, I have treated of these things in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. And what is there described, which differs completely from the old ascetic way, has been confused by many people with asceticism, has been taken to be the old asceticism in a new form. But anyone who reads it carefully will see that it differs in every respect from the way of asceticism in the past. Now this new “asceticism” which does not require that we should withdraw from life and become hermits, but keeps us active in the world—this new way can only be achieved by looking away from the passing moment to Time itself.

One has to consider, for instance, what one will be like in ten years' time. And this means that one has to take into consideration the whole span of a man's life between birth and death. Man is prone to live in the moment. But here the aim is: To learn to live in time, within the whole span of life. Then the world of spirit will become visible to us. We do indeed see a spiritual world around us when our body has thus become transparent.

For instance, everything described in my book Occult Science, rests entirely on knowledge such as this I obtained when the body is as transparent to spirit as the eye is to light.

Now you will say: Yes, but we cannot require every teacher to attain such spiritual cognition before he can become an educator or instructor. But, as I said yesterday in the case of Yoga, let me repeat: This is not in the least necessary. For the body of the child itself is living witness of spiritual worlds and it is here that our higher knowledge can begin. And thus a teacher with right instinct can grow naturally into a spiritual treatment of the child. But our intellectual age has departed very much from such a spiritual treatment and treats everything rationally. So much so that we have reached the stage of saying: You must so educate as to make everything immediately comprehensible to the child at whatever stage he may be. Now this lends itself to triviality—no doubt an extremely convenient thing to those engaged in teaching. We get a lot done in a given time when we put as many things as possible before the child in a trivial and rudimentary form, addressed to its comprehension. But a man who thinks like this, on rational grounds, is not concerning himself with the whole course of man's life. He is not concerned with what becomes of the sensation I have aroused in the child when the child has grown into an older man or woman, or attained old age. He is not taking life into consideration; for instance, he is not considering the following: suppose it is evident knowledge to me that it is advisable for a child between the change of teeth and puberty to rely mainly on authority; and that for him to trust to an example he needs to have an example set: In that case I shall tell the child something that he must take on trust, for I am the mediator of the divine, spiritual world to the child. He believes me; and accepts what I say, although he does not yet understand it. So much of what we receive in childhood unconsciously we do not understand. If in childhood we could only accept what we understood we should receive little of value for our later life. And Jean Paul, the German poet and thinker, would never have said that more is learned in the first three years of life than in the three years at the university.

But just consider what it means when, say, in my thirty-fifth year some event or other brings about the feeling: “Something is swimming up into your mind. Long ago you heard this from your teacher. You were only nine or ten years old, may-be, at the time, and you did not understand it at all. Now it comes back. And now, in the light of your own life, it makes sense. You appreciate it.”

A man who in later life can thus fetch from the depths of his' memory what he now understands for the first time has within him a well-spring of life. A refreshing stream of power continually flows within him. Such a thing—this swimming up into the soul of what was once accepted on trust and is only now understood—such a thing as this can show us that to educate rightly we must not merely consider the immediate moment, but the whole of life. In all that we teach the child this must be kept in view.

Now I have just been told that exception was taken to the image used for showing the child how man partakes of immortality. I was not speaking of “eternity,” but of “immortality.” I said “The image of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis is there to be seen.” This image was only taken to represent the sensation we can have of the soul leaving the physical body.

The image itself refutes this objection; it was expressly used to meet the objection that the emerging of the butterfly is not a right concept of immortality. In the logical sense, naturally, it is not a right concept. But we are considering what kind of concept we are to give the child, what image we are to place before his soul so as to avoid confronting him with logic prematurely. What is thus given in picture form to a child of eight or nine years, (for it was of children we were speaking, and not of introducing things in this way to a philosopher)—what is thus given can grow into the right concept of immortality.

Thus it all depends on the what (on what is given)—on having a living grasp of existence. It is this that is so terribly hard for our rationalistic age to grasp. It is surely obvious that the thing we tell the child is different from that into which it is transformed in later years—what would be the sense of calling a child unskilled, immature, “childish” (zappelig) if we were simply speaking of a grown man? An observer of life finds not only younger and more grown-up children, but childish and grown-up ideas and concepts. And to a true teacher or educator it is life we must look to, not adulthood.

It seems to me a good fate that not before 1919 did it fall to me to take on the direction of the Waldorf School—founded that year by Emil Molt in Stuttgart. I had been concerned with education professionally before that time; nevertheless, I should not have felt in a position to master so great an educational enterprise earlier to the extent that we can master it now, with the college of teachers of the Waldorf School—(master it, that is, relatively speaking—to a certain extent). And the reason is this: before that time I should not have dared to form a college of teachers consisting so largely of men and women with a knowledge of human nature—and therefore of child nature—as I was able to do that year. For, as I have already said, all true teaching, all true pedagogy must be based on knowledge of human nature. But before one can do this one must possess the means of penetrating into human nature in the proper way. Now,—if I may say so—the first perceptions of this entering into human nature came to me more than 35 years ago.

These were spiritual perceptions of the nature of man. Spiritual, I say, not intellectual. Now spiritual truths behave in a different manner from intellectual truths. What one perceives intellectually, what one has proved,—as it is called, one can also communicate to other men, for the matter is ready when the logic is ready. Spiritual truths are not ready when the logic is ready. It is in the nature of spiritual truths that they must be carried with a man on his way through life, they must be lived with before they can fully develop. Thus I should never have dared to utter to other men certain truths about the nature of man in the form in which they came to me more than 35 years ago. Not until a few years back, in my book “Von Seelen Ratzeln” (Riddles of the Soul) did I venture to speak of these things for the erst time. A period of thirty years lay between the first conception and the giving out of these things to the world. Why? Because it is necessary to contemplate such truths at different stages of one's life, they have to accompany one throughout different periods of life. The spiritual truths conceived when one was a young man of 23 or 24 are experienced quite differently when one is 35 or 36, or again at 45 or 46. And as a matter of fact it was not until I had passed my fiftieth year that I ventured to publish these outlines of a Knowledge of Man in a book. And only then could I tell these things to a college of teachers; and give them so the elements of education which every teacher must make his own and use with every single child.

Thus I may say: when my little booklet The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy appeared, I was speaking on education there as one who disagrees with much in modern education, who would like to see this or the other treated more fundamentally, and so on. But at the time this little book was written I should not have been able to undertake such a thing as directing the Waldorf School. For it was essential for such a task to have a college of teachers with a knowledge of man originating in a spiritual world. This knowledge of man is exceedingly hard to come by to-day; in comparison it is easy for us to study natural science. It is comparatively easy to come to see what the final member of organic evolution is. We begin with the simplest organism and see how it has evolved up to man. And man stands at the summit of evolution, the final member of organic development. But we know man only as the end product of organic development. We do not see into man himself. We do not look into his very being. Natural science has attained great perfection and we have every admiration for it and intend no disparagement—but when we have mastered this natural science we only know man as the highest animal, we do not know what man is in his essential nature. Yet our life is dominated by this same natural science. Now in order to educate we need a human science,—and a practical human science at that—a human science that applies to every individual child. And for this we need a, general human science.

To-day I will only indicate a few of the principles which became apparent to me more than thirty years ago, and which have been made the basis for the actual training of the staff of the Waldorf School. Now it must be borne in mind that in dealing with children of elementary school age (7-14) we have to do with the life of the soul in these children. In the next few days I shall have to speak also of quite little children. But, much though it grieves me, we have as yet no nursery school preliminary to the Waldorf School because we have not the money for it, and so we can only take children of 6 and 7 years old. But naturally the ideal thing is for children to receive education as early as possible.

When we receive them into the primary school, the elementary school, it is their souls that concern us;—that is to say their essentially physical education has been accomplished—or has failed of accomplishment—according to the lights of parents and educators. Thus we can say: The most essential part of physical education (which will, of course, be continuous as we shall see when I describe the particular phases of education), the most essential part belongs to the period ending with the change of teeth. From that time on it is the soul of the child we have to deal with, and we must conduct the development of his soul in a way that strengthens physical development.

And when the child has passed the age of puberty he enters upon the age in which we must no longer speak of him as a child—the age in which young ladies and gentlemen come into full possession of their own minds, their own spirits. Thus man progresses from what is of the body, by way of the soul, into the spiritual. But, as we shall see, we cannot teach what is of the spirit. It has to be freely absorbed from the world. Man can only learn of spiritual things from life.

Where we have children of primary school age we have to deal with the child's soul. Now soul manifests, roughly speaking, through thinking, feeling and willing. And if one can thoroughly understand the play of thinking, feeling and will—the soul's life—within man's whole nature, one has the basis for the whole of education.

To be sure the multiplication table is not the whole of mathematics, but we must learn the multiplication table before we can advance as far as the differential and integral calculus. In education the matter is somewhat different; it is not a wonderfully advanced science that I am now about to set forth, but the elements, the fundamentals. The advanced science here, however, cannot be built up as the differential and integral calculus is built up on elementary mathematics,—it must be founded on the practical use made of these elementary principles by the teachers and educators.

Now when people speak of the nature of the human soul to-day, in this materialistic age—if they allow the existence of the soul at all (and one even hears of a psychology, a science of the soul, devoid of soul), but if they allow the existence of the soul, they commonly say: The soul, now, is a thing experienced inwardly, psychically, and it is connected somehow—I will not enter into the philosophical aspect—with the body. Indeed, if one surveys the field of our exceptionally intelligent psychology one finds the life of the soul—thought, feeling and will—related, for the most part, to the human nervous system—in the broadest sense of the word. It is the nervous system which brings the soul to physical manifestation—which is the bodily foundation of the soul's life.

It is this that I realised 35 years ago to be wrong. For the only part of our soul life as adult human beings (and I expressly emphasize this, since we cannot consider the child until we understand the man), the only part of our soul life bound up with the nervous system is our thinking, our power of ideation. The nervous system is only connected with ideation.

Feeling is not directly bound up with the nervous system, but with what may be called the Rhythmic system in the human being: it is bound up with rhythm, the rhythm of breathing, the rhythm of blood circulation, in their marvellous relation-ship to one another. The ratio is only approximate, since it naturally varies with every individual, but practically speaking every adult human being has four times as many pulse beats as he has breaths. It is this inner interplay and relationship of pulse rhythm and breath rhythm, and its connection in turn with the more extended rhythmic life of the human being, that constitutes the rhythmic nature of man,—a second nature over against the head or nerve nature. The rhythmic system includes the rhythm we experience when we sleep and awaken. This is a rhythm which we often turn into non-rhythm nowadays—but it is a rhythm. And there are many other such rhythms in human life. Human life is not merely built up on the life of nerves, on the nervous system, it is also founded in this rhythmic life. And just as thinking and the power of thought is bound up with the nervous system, so the power of feeling is connected immediately with the rhythmic system.

It is not the case that feeling finds its direct expression in the nervous life; feeling finds its direct expression in the rhythmic system. Only when we begin to conceive of our rhythmic system, when we make concepts of our feelings, we then perceive our feelings as ideas by means of the nerves, just as we perceive light or colour outwardly. Thus the connection of feeling with the nerve life is an indirect one. Its direct connection is with the rhythmic life. And one simply cannot understand man unless one knows how man breathes, how breathing is related to blood-circulation, how this whole rhythm is apparent, for instance, in a child's quick flushing or paling; one must know all that is connected with the rhythmic life. And on the other hand one must know what processes accompany children's passions, children's feelings and the loves and affections of children. If one does not know what lives immediately in the rhythmic life, and how this is merely projected into the nerve life, to become idea (concept) one does not understand man. One does not understand man if one says: “The soul's nature is dependent on the nerve-nature”, for of the soul's nature it is only the life of thought, thinking, that is dependent on the nerves.

What I say here I say from out of direct observation such as can be made by spiritual perception. There are no proofs of the validity of this spiritual observation as there are proofs for the findings of intellectualistic thinking. But everyone who can entertain these views without prejudice can prove them retrospectively by normal human understanding, and, moreover, by what external science has to say on these matters.

I may add to what I have already said that a great part of the work I had to do 35 years ago, when I was engaged in verifying the original conception of this membering of man's nature which I am now expounding, was to find out from all domains of physiology, biology and other natural sciences whether these things could be verified externally. I would not expound these things to-day if I had not got this support. And it can be stated in general with certainty that much of what I am saying to-day can also be demonstrated scientifically by modern means.

Now, in the third place, over against thinking and feeling, we have willing,—the life of will. And willing does not depend directly on the nervous system, willing is directly connected with human metabolism and with human movement.—Metabolism is very intimately connected with movement. You can regard all the metabolism which goes on in man, apart from movement proper, as his limb system. The ‘movement system’ and ‘metabolic system’ I hold to be the third member of the human organism. And with this the will is immediately bound up. Every will impulse in man is accompanied by a particular form of the metabolic process which has a different mode of operation from that of the nerve processes which accompany the activity of thinking. Naturally a man must have a healthy metabolism if he wants to think soundly. But thinking is bound up directly with an activity in the nervous system quite other than the metabolic activity; whereas man's willing is immediately bound up with his metabolism. And it is this dependence of the will on the metabolism that one must recognise.

Now when we conceive ideas about our own willing, when we think about the will, then the metabolic activity is projected into the nervous system. It is only mediately, indirectly, that the will works in the nervous system. What transpires in the nervous system in connection with the will is the faculty of apprehending our own will activity.

Thus, when we can penetrate the human being with our vision we discover the relationships between the psychic and the physical nature of man. The ACTIVITY OF THOUGHT in the soul manifests physically as NERVOUS ACTIVITY; the FEELING NATURE in the soul manifests physically as the rhythm of the BREATHING SYSTEM and the BLOOD SYSTEM, and this it does directly, not indirectly by the way of the nervous system, not through the nervous system. THE ACTIVITY OF WILL manifests in man's physical nature as a fine METABOLISM. It is essential to know the fine metabolic processes which accompany the exercise of the activity of the will, a form of combustion process in the human being.

Once one has acquired these concepts, of which I can here only indicate to you the general outline—they will become clear in the next few days in all their detail, when I show their application,—once you have these elementary principles, then your eyes will be opened also to everything which confronts you in child-nature. For things are not as yet in the same state in child nature. For instance the child is entirely Sense Organ, namely, entirely Head; as I have already explained the child is entirely SENSE ORGAN. (Note by Translator: i.e. a baby, or child under 7.)

It is of particular interest to see by means of a scientific spiritual observation how a child tastes in a different manner from an adult. An adult, who has brought taste into the sphere of consciousness; tastes with his tongue and decides what the taste is. A child—that is to say a baby in its earliest weeks—tastes with its whole body. The organ of taste is diffused throughout the organism. It tastes with its stomach, and it continues to taste when the nourishing juices have been taken up by the lymph vessels and transmitted to the whole organism. The child at its mother's breast is wholly permeated by taste. And here we can see how the child is—as it were—illuminated and transfused with taste, with something of a soul nature, (Note by Translator: i.e. the sensation of taste.) which later we do not have in our whole body, which later we have only in our head.

And thus we learn how to watch a tiny child, and how to watch an older child, knowing that one child will blush easily for one thing or another and another child will easily turn pale for this or that cause, one child is quick to get excited, or quick to move his limbs; one child has a firm tread, another will trip lightly, etc. Once we have these principles and can recognise the seat in the metabolic system of what comes to psychic expression as will, or in the rhythmic system of what comes to psychic expression as feeling, or in the nervous system of what manifests in the soul as thought, then we shall know how to observe a child, for we shall know whither to direct our gaze.

You all know that there are people who investigate certain things under the microscope. They see wonderful things under the microscope; but there are also people who have not learned how to look through a microscope; they look into it and no matter how they manipulate it they see nothing. First one must learn to see by learning how to manipulate the instrument through which one sees. When one has learned how to look through a microscope one will be able to see what is requisite. One sees nothing of man until one has learned to fix the gaze of one's soul, of one's spirit, upon what corresponds to thinking, to feeling and to willing. The aim was to develop in the staff of the Waldorf School a right orientation of vision. For the teachers must first of all know what goes on in the children, then they achieve the right state of mind—and only from a right attitude of mind can right education come.

It was necessary at the outset to give some account of the three-fold organisation of man so that the details of the actual educational measures and educational methods might be more readily comprehensible to you.

It might perhaps appear as if the art of education described in these lectures would lead away from practical life into some remote, purely spiritual region: as though this art of education laid too much stress on the purely spiritual domain. From what I have said so far in describing the spiritual foundation of the education, this might appear to be the case. But this is only in appearance. For in reality the art of education which arises from this philosophy has the most practical objects in view. Thus it should be realised that the main object of speaking of spiritual facts here is to answer the educational question: how can we best develop the physical organism in childhood and youth?

That a spiritual philosophy should consider firstly the development of the physical organism may seem to be a fundamental contradiction. The treatment of my theme in the next few days, however, will do more towards dispelling this contradiction than any abstract statements I could make at the outset. To-day, I would merely like to say that when one speaks on educational questions at the present day one finds oneself in a peculiar situation. For if one sees much that needs reforming in education, it is as much as to say that one is not satisfied with one's own education. One implies that one's own education has been exceedingly bad. And yet, as a product of this very bad education, of this education in which one finds so much to criticise—for other-wise why be a reformer?—one sets up to know the right way to educate! This is the first thing that involves a contradiction. The second thing is one which gives one a slight feeling of shame in face of the audience when speaking on education,—for one realises that one is speaking of what education ought to be and how it must be different from present day practice. So that it amounts to saying: you are all badly educated. And yet one is appealing to those who are badly educated to bring about a better education. One assumes that both the speaker and the audience know very well what good education should be in spite of the fact that they have been exceedingly badly educated.

Now this is a contradiction, but it is one which life itself presents us, and it can really only be solved by the view of education which is here being described. For one can perfectly well know what is the matter with education and in what respects it should be improved, just as one can know that a picture is well painted without possessing the faintest capacity for painting a picture oneself. You can consider yourself capable of appreciating the merits of a picture by Raphael without thinking yourself capable of painting a Raphael picture. In fact it would be a good thing to-day if people would think like this. But they are not content with merely knowing, where education is concerned, they claim straightaway to know how to educate; as though someone who is no painter and could not possibly become a painter, should set up to show how a badly painted picture should be painted well.

Now it is here contended that it is not enough to know what good education is but that one must have a grasp of the technique and detail of educational art, one must acquire practical skill. And for this, knowledge and understanding are necessary. Hence yesterday I tried to explain the elementary principles of guidance in this ability, and I will now continue this review.

It is easy to say man undergoes development during his lifetime, and that he develops in successive stages. But this is not enough. Yesterday we saw that man is a three-fold being: that his thinking is entirely bound up physically with the nerve-senses-system of his organism, his feeling is bound up with the rhythmic system, particularly the breathing and circulation system, and that his will is bound up with the system of movement and metabolism.

The development of these three systems in man is not alike. Throughout the different epochs of life they develop in different ways. During the first epoch which extends to the change of teeth—as I have repeatedly stated—the child is entirely sense organ, entirely head, and all its development proceeds from the nerve-senses system. The nerve-senses system permeates the whole organism; and all impressions of the outside world affect the whole organism, work right through it, just as, later in life, light acts upon the eye,

In other words, in an adult light comes to a standstill in the eye, and only sends the idea of itself, the concept of light, into the organism. In a child it is as if every little blood corpuscle were inwardly illumined, were transfused with light—to express it in a somewhat exaggerated and pictorial way. The child is as yet entirely exposed to those etheric essences, (effluvia), which in later life we arrest at the surface of our bodies, in the sense organs,—while we develop inwardly something of an entirely different nature. Thus a child is exposed to sense impressions in a far greater degree than is the adult.

Observe a concrete instance of this: take a person who has charge of the nurture of a very young child, perhaps a tiny baby; a person with his own world of inner experience. Let us suppose the person m charge of the child is a heavy hearted being, one to whom life has brought sorrow. In the mature man the physical consequences of the experiences he has been through will not be obvious, but will leave only faint traces. When we are sad our mouth is always a little dry. And when sadness becomes a habitual and continuous state, the sorrowful person goes about with dry mouth, with parched tongue, with a bitter taste in the mouth and even a chronic catarrh. In the adult these physical conditions are merely faint undertones of life.

The child who is growing up in the company of the adult is an imitator; he models himself entirely on the physiognomy of the adult, on what he perceives:—on the adult's sad manner of speaking, his sad feelings. For there is a subtle interplay betwixt child and adult, an interplay of imponderables. When we have an inner sadness and all its physical consequences, the child being an imitator, takes up these physical effects through inward gestures: through an inward mimicry he takes up the parched tongue, the bitter taste in the mouth; and this—as I pointed out yesterday—flows through the whole organism. He absorbs the paleness of the long sad face of the adult. The child cannot imitate the soul content of the sorrow, but it imitates the physical effects of the sorrow. And the result is that, since the spirit is still working into the child's whole organism, his whole organism will be permeated in such a manner as to build up his organs in accordance with the physical effects which he has taken up into himself. Thus the very condition of the child's organism will make a sad being of him. In later life he will have a particular aptitude for perceiving everything that is sad or sorrowful. Such is the fine and delicate knowledge that one must have in order to educate in a proper way.

This is the manner of a child's life up to the changing of the teeth. It is entirely given up to what its organism has absorbed from the adults around it. And the inner conflict taking place here is only perceptible to spiritual science; this struggle which goes on can only be described as the fight between inherited characteristics and adaptation to environment.

We are born with certain inherited characteristics.—This can be seen by anybody who has the opportunity of observing a child during its first weeks or years. Science has produced an extensive teaching on this subject.—But the child has more and more to adapt itself to the world. Little by little he must transform his inherited characteristics until he is not merely the bearer of a heredity from his parents and ancestors, but is open in his senses and soul and spirit to receive what goes on at large in his environment. Otherwise he would become an egotistic man, a man who only wants what accords with his inherited characteristics.

Now we have to educate men to be susceptible to all that goes on in the world: men who each time they see a new thing can bring their judgment and their feelings to meet this new thing. We must not educate men to be selfishly shut up within themselves, we must educate men to meet the world with a free and open mind, and to act in accordance with the demands of the world.

This attitude is the natural outcome of such a position as I described yesterday.

Thus we must observe in all its details the inner struggle which takes place during the child's early years between heredity and adaptation to environment. Try to study with the utmost human devotion the wonderful process that goes on where the first teeth are replaced by the second. The first teeth are an inherited thing. They seem almost unsuitable for the outer world. They are inherited. Gradually above each inherited tooth another tooth is formed. In the modelling of this tooth the form of the first tooth is made use of, but the form of the second tooth, which is permanent, is a thing adapted to the world.

I always refer to this process of the teeth as characteristic of this particular period of life, up to the seventh year. But it is only one symptom. For what takes place in the case of the teeth conspicuously, because the teeth are hard organs, is taking place throughout the organism. When we are born into the world we bear within us an inherited organism. In the course of the first seven years of our life we model a new organism over it. The whole process is physical. But while it is physical it is the deed of the spirit and soul within the child. And we who stand at the child's side must endeavour so to guide this soul and spirit that it goes with and not against the health of the organism. We must therefore know what spiritual and psychic processes have to take place for the child to be able to model a healthy organism in the stead of the inherited organism. We must know and do a spiritual thing in order to promote a physical thing.

And now, if we follow up what I said to you to-day in the introduction we come to something else. Suppose that as a teacher or educator we enter a classroom. Now we must never think that we are the most intelligent of human beings, men at the summit of human intelligence—that, indeed, would mean that we were very bad teachers. We really should think ourselves only comparatively intelligent. This is a sounder state of mind than the other. Now with this state of consciousness we enter the classroom. But as we go in we must say to ourselves: there may be among the children a very intelligent being, one who in later life will be far more intelligent than we. Now if we, who are only comparatively intelligent, should bring him up to be only as intelligent as ourselves, we should be making him a copy of ourselves. That would be quite wrong. For the right thing would be so to educate this very intelligent individual that he may grow up to be far more intelligent than we are ourselves or ever could be. Now this means that there is something in a man which we may not touch, something we must regard with sensitive reverence if we are to exercise the art of education rightly. And this is part of the answer to the question I asked.

Often, in earlier life, we know exceedingly well what we ought to do—only we cannot carry it out. We feel unequal to it. What it is that prevents us from doing what we ought to do is generally very obscure. It is always some condition of the physical organism,—for example, an imitated disposition to sadness such as I spoke of. The organism has incorporated this, it has become habitual. We want to do some-thing which does not suit an organism with a bent to sadness. Yet such is our organism. In us we have the effects of the parched tongue and bitter taste from our childhood, now we want to do something quite different and we feel difficulty.

If we realise the full import of this we shall say to our-selves: the main task of the teacher or educator is to bring up the body to be as healthy as it possibly can be; this means, to use every spiritual measure to ensure that in later life a man's body shall give the least possible hindrance to the will of his spirit. If we make this our purpose in school we can develop the powers which lead to an education for freedom.

The extent to which spiritual education works healthily upon the physical organism, and thus upon man as a whole, can be seen particularly well when the great range of facts provided by our magnificent modern natural science is brought together and co-ordinated in a manner only possible to spiritual science. It then becomes apparent how one can work in the spirit for the healing of man. To take a single instance. The English doctor, Dr. Clifford Albert, has said a very significant thing about the influence of grieving and sadness in human beings upon the development of their digestive organs, and—in particular—upon the kidneys. People who have a lot of trouble and grief in life show signs after a time of malformation of the kidneys, deformed kidneys. This has been very finely demonstrated by the physician Dr. Clifford Albert. That is a finding of natural science.

The important thing is that one should know how to use a scientific discovery like this in educational practice. One must know, as a teacher or educator, that if one lets the child imitate one's own sorrow and grief, then through one's sorrowful bearing one is damaging the child's digestive system to the utmost degree. In so far as we let our sorrow overflow into the child we damage its digestive system. You see, this is the tragedy of this materialistic age, that it discovers many physical facts,—if you take the external aspect, but it lacks the connections between them;—it is this very materialistic science which fails to perceive the significance of the physical and material. What spiritual science can do is to show, on all hands, how spirit and what is spiritual work within the physical realm. Then instead of yearning in dreamy mysticism for castles in the clouds, one will be able to follow up the spirit in all its details and singular workings. For one is a spiritual being only when one recognises spirit as that which creates, as that which everywhere works upon and shapes the material:—not when one worships some abstract spirit in the clouds like a mystic, and for the rest, holds matter to be merely the concern of the material world.

Hence it is actually a matter of coming to realise how in a young child, up to the seventh year, nerve-senses activity, rhythmic breathing and circulation activity, and the activity of movement and metabolism are everywhere interplaying:—only the nerve-senses activity predominates, it has the upper hand; and thus the nerve-senses activity in a child always affects his breathing. If a child has to look at a face that is furrowed with grief, this affects his senses to begin with; but it reacts upon the manner of his breathing, and hence in turn, upon his whole movement and metabolic system.

If we take a child after the change of teeth, that is after about the seventh year, we find the nerve-senses system no longer preponderating; this has now become more separate, more turned towards the outer world. In a child between the change of teeth and puberty it is the rhythmic system which preponderates, which has the upper hand. And it is most important that this should be borne in mind in the primary school. For in the primary school we have children between the change of teeth and puberty. Hence we must know here: the essential thing is to work with the child's rhythmic system, and everything which works upon some-thing other than the rhythmic system is wrong. But now what is it that works upon the rhythmic system? It is art that works upon the rhythmic system, everything that is conveyed in artistic form.

Consider how much everything to do with music is connected with the rhythmic system. Music is nothing else but rhythm carried over into the rhythmic system of the human being himself. The inner man himself becomes a lyre, the inner man becomes a violin. His whole rhythmic system reproduces what the violin has played, what has sounded from the piano. And as in the case of music, so it is also, in a finer, more delicate way, in the case of plastic art, and of painting. Colour harmonies and colour melodies also are reproduced and revived as inner rhythmic processes in the inner man. If our instruction is to be truly educational we must know that throughout this period everything that the child is taught must be conveyed in an artistic form. According to Waldorf School principles the first consideration in the elementary school period is to compose all lessons in a way that appeals to the child's rhythmic system.

How little this is regarded to-day can be seen from the number of excellent scientific observations which are continuously being accumulated and which sin directly against this appeal to the rhythmic system. Research is carried on in experimental psychology to find out how soon a child will tire in one activity or another; and the instruction must take account of this fatigue. This is all very fine, splendid, as long as one does not think spiritually. But if one thinks spiritually the matter appears in a very different light. The experiments can still be made. They are very good. Nothing is said here against the excellence of natural science. But one says: if the child shows a certain degree of fatigue in the period between its change of teeth and puberty, you have not been appealing, as you should do, to the rhythmic system, but to some other system. For throughout life the rhythmic system never tires. Throughout the whole of life the heart beats night and day. It is in his intellectual system and in his metabolic system that a man becomes tired. When we know that we have to appeal to his rhythmic system we know that what we have to do is to work artistically (Manuscript defective.); and the experiments on fatigue show where we have gone wrong, where we have paid too little attention to the rhythmic system. When we find a child has got overtired we must say to ourselves: How can you contrive to plan your lesson so that the child shall not get tired? It is not that one sets up to condemn the modern age and says: natural science is bad, we must oppose it. The spiritual man has no such intention. He says rather: we need the higher outlook because it is just this that makes it possible to apply the results of natural science to life.

If we now turn to the moral aspect, the question is how we can best get the child to develop moral impulses. And here we are dealing with the most important of all educational questions. Now we do not endow a child with moral impulses by giving him commands, by saying: you must do this, this has to be done, this is good,—by wanting to prove to him that a thing is good, and must be done. Or by saying: That is bad, that is wicked, you must not do that,—and by wanting to prove that a certain thing is bad. A child has not as yet the intellectual attitude of an adult towards good and evil, towards the whole world of morality,—he has to grow up to it. And this he will only do on reaching puberty, when the rhythmic system has accomplished its essential task and the intellectual powers are ripe for complete development. Then the human being may experience the satisfaction of forming moral judgment in contact with life itself. We must not engraft moral judgment onto the child. We must so lay the foundation for moral judgment that when the child awakens at puberty he can form his own moral judgment from observation of life.

The last way to attain this is to give finite commands to a child. We can achieve it however if we work by examples, or by presenting pictures to the child's imagination: for instance through biographies or descriptions of good men or bad men; or by inventing circumstances which present a picture, an imagination of goodness to the child's mind. For, since the rhythmic system is particularly active in the child during this period, pleasure and displeasure can arise in him, not judgment as to good and evil,—but sympathy with the good which the child beholds presented in an image,—or antipathy to the evil which he beholds so presented. It is not a case of appealing to the child's intellect, of saying ‘Thou shalt’ or ‘Thou shalt not,’ but of fostering aesthetic judgment, so that the child shall begin to take pleasure in goodness, shall feel sympathy when he sees goodness, and feel dislike and antipathy when he beholds evil. This is a very different thing from working on the intellect, by way of precepts formulated by the intellect. For the child will only be awake for such precepts when it is no longer our business to educate him, namely, when he is a man and learns from life itself. And we should not rob the child of the satis-faction of awakening to morality of his own accord. And we shall not do this if we give him the right preparation during the rhythmic period of his life; if we train him to take an aesthetic pleasure in goodness, an aesthetic dislike of evil; that is, if also here, we work through imagery.

Otherwise, when the child awakens after puberty he will feel an inward bondage, He will not perhaps realise this bondage consciously, but throughout his subsequent life he will lack the important experience: morality has awakened within me, moral judgment has developed. We cannot attain this inner satisfaction by means of abstract moral instruction, it must be rightly prepared by working in this manner for the child's morality.

Thus it is everywhere a case of ‘how’ a thing is done. And we can see this both in that part of life which is concerned with the external world and that part of life concerned with morality: both when we study the realm of nature in the best way, and when we know how best morals can be laid down in, the rhythmic system—in the system of breathing and blood circulation. If we know how to enter with the spirit into what is physical, and if we can come to observe how spirit weaves continuously in the physical, we shall be able to educate in the right way.

While a knowledge of man is sought in the erst instance for the art of education and instruction, yet in practice the effect of such a spiritual outlook on the teacher's or educator's state of mind is of the greatest importance. And what this is can best be shown in relation to the attitude of many of our contemporaries.

Every age has its shadow side, no doubt, and there is much in past ages we have no wish to revive; nevertheless anyone who can look upon the historical life of man with certain intuitive sense will perceive that in this our own age many men have very little inner joy, on the contrary they are beset by heavy doubts and questions as to destiny. This age has less capacity than any other for deriving answers to its problems from out of the universe, the world at large. Though I may be very unhappy in myself, and with good reason, yet there is always a possibility of finding something in the universe which can counterbalance my unhappiness. But modern man has not the strength to find consolation in a view of the universe when his personal situation makes him downcast. Why is this? Because in his education and development modern man has little opportunity to acquire a feeling of gratitude: gratitude namely that we should be alive at all as human beings within this universe. Rightly speaking all our feelings should take their rise from a fundamental feeling of gratitude that the cosmic world has given us birth and given us a place within itself. A philosophy which concludes with abstract observations and does not flow out in gratitude towards the universe is no complete philosophy. The final chapter of every philosophy, in its effect on human feeling at all events, should be gratitude towards the cosmic powers. This feeling is essential in a teacher and educator, and it should be instinctive in every person who has the nurture of a child entrusted to him. Therefore the first thing of importance to be striven for in spiritual knowledge is the acquiring of thankfulness that a child has been given into our keeping by the universe.

In this respect reverence for the child, reverence and thankfulness, are not to be sundered. There is only one attitude towards a child which can give us the right impulse in education and nurture and that is the religious attitude, neither more nor less. We feel religious in regard to many things. A flower in the meadow can make us feel religious when we can take it as the creation of the divine spiritual order of the world. In face of lightning lashes in the clouds we feel religious if we see them in relation to the divine spiritual order of the world. And above all we must feel religious towards the child, for it comes to us from the depths of the universe as the highest manifestation of the nature of the universe, a bringer of tidings as to what the world is. In this mood lies one of the most important impulses of educational technique. Educational technique is of a different nature from the technique devoted to un-spiritual things. Educational technique essentially involves a religious moral impulse in the teacher or educator.

Now you will perhaps say: nowadays, although people are so terribly objective in regard to many things—things possibly of less vital importance—nowadays we shall yet find some who will think it a tragic thing that they should have a religious feeling for a child who may turn out to be a ne'er-do-well. But why must I regard it as a tragedy to have a child who turns out a ne'er-do-well?—To-day, as we said before, there are many parents, even in this terribly objective age, who will own that their children are ne'er-do-wells whereas this was not the case in former times; then every child was good in its parents' eyes. At all events this was a better attitude than the modern one.—Nevertheless we do get a feeling of tragedy if we receive as a gift from spiritual worlds, and as a manifestation of the highest, a difficult child. But we must live through this feeling of tragedy. For this very feeling of tragedy will help us over the rocks and crags of education. If we can feel thankfulness even for a naughty child, and feel the tragedy of it, and can rouse ourselves to overcome this feeling of tragedy we shall then be in a position to feel a right gratitude to the divine world; for we must learn to perceive how what is bad can also be a divine thing,—though this is a very complicated matter. Gratitude must permeate teachers and educators of children throughout the period up to the change of teeth, it must be their fundamental mood.

Then we come to that part of a child's development which is based principally on the rhythmic system, in which, as we have seen, we must work artistically in education. This we shall never achieve unless we can join to the religious attitude we have towards the child a love of our educational activity; we must saturate our educational practice with love. Between the Change of Teeth and Puberty nothing that is not born of Love for the Educational Deed itself has any effect on the child. We must say to ourselves with regard to the child: clever a teacher or educator may be, the child reveals to us in his life infinitely significant spiritual and divine things. But we, on our part, must surround with love the spiritual deed we do for the child in education. Hence there must be no pedagogy and didactics of a purely intellectual kind, but only such guidance as can help the teacher to carry out his education with loving enthusiasm.

In the Waldorf School what a teacher is is far more important than any technical ability he may have acquired in an intellectual way. The important thing is that the teacher should not only be able to love the child but to love the method he uses, to love his whole procedure. Only to love the children does not suffice for a teacher. To love teaching, to love educating, and love it with objectivity—this constitutes the spiritual foundation of spiritual, moral and physical education. And if we can acquire this right love for education, for teaching, we shall be able so to develop the child up to the age of puberty that by that time we can really hand him over to freedom, to the free use of his own intelligence.

If we have received the child in religious reverence, if we have educated him in love up to the time of puberty, then our proper course after this will be to leave the youth's spirit free, and to hold intercourse with him on terms of equality. We aim,—that is not to touch the spirit but to let it be awakened. When the child reaches puberty we shall best attain our aim of giving the child over to free use of his intellectual and spiritual powers if we respect the spirit and say to ourselves: you can remove hindrances from the spirit, physical hindrances and also, up to a point, hindrances of the soul. What the spirit has to learn it learns because you have removed the impediments. If we remove impediments the spirit will develop in contact with life itself even in very early youth. Our rightful place as educators is to be removers of hindrances.

Hence we must see to it that we do not make the children into copies of ourselves, that we do not seek forcibly and tyrannically to perpetuate what was in ourselves in those who in the natural course of things develop beyond us. Each child in every age brings something new into the world from divine regions, and it is our task as educators to remove bodily and psychical obstacles out of its way; to remove hindrances so that his spirit may enter in full freedom into life. These then must be regarded as the three golden rules of the art of education, rules which must imbue the teacher's whole attitude and all the impulse of his work. The golden rules which must be embraced by the teacher's whole being, not held as theory, are: reverent gratitude to the world in the person of the child which we contemplate every day, for the child presents a problem set us by divine worlds: Thankfulness to the universe. Love for what we have to do with the child. Respect for the freedom of the child—a freedom we must not endanger; for it is to this freedom we educate the child, that he may stand in freedom in the world at our side.

If the process of the change of teeth in a child is gradual even more gradual is that great transformation in the bodily, psychic and spiritual organism of which I have already spoken. Hence, in education it is important to remember that the child is gradually changing from an imitative being into one who looks to the authority of an educator, of a teacher. Thus we should make no abrupt transition in the treatment of a child in its seventh year or so—at the age, that is, at which we receive it for education in the primary school. Anything further that is said here on primary school education must be understood in the light of this proviso.

In the art of education with which we are here concerned the main thing is to foster the development of the child's inherent capacities. Hence all instruction must be at the service of education. The task is, properly speaking, to educate; and instruction is made use of as a means of educating.

This educational principle demands that the child shall develop the appropriate relation to life at the appropriate age. But this can only be done satisfactorily when the child is not required at the very outset to do something which is foreign to its nature.

Now it is a thoroughly unnatural thing to require a child in its sixth or seventh year to copy without more ado the signs which we now, in this advanced stage of civilisation, use for reading and writing.

If you consider the letters we now use for reading and writing, you will realise that there is no connection between what a seven-year old child is naturally disposed to do—and these letters. Remember, that when men first began to write they used painted or drawn signs which copied things or happenings in the surrounding world; or else men wrote from out of will impulses, so that the forms of writing gave expression to processes of the will, as for example in cuneiform. The entirely abstract forms of letters which the eye must gaze at nowadays, or the hand form, arose from out of picture writing. If we confront a young child with these letters we are bringing to him an alien thing, a thing which in no wise conforms to his nature. Let us be clear what this ‘pushing’ of a foreign body into a child's organism really means. It is just as if we habituated the child from his earliest years to wearing very small clothes, which do not fit and which therefore damage his organism. Nowadays when observation tends to be superficial, people do not even perceive what damage is done to the organism by the mere fact of introducing reading and writing to the child in a wrong way. An art of education founded in a knowledge of man does truly proceed by drawing out all that is in the child. It does not merely say: the individuality must be developed, it really does it. And this is achieved firstly by not taking reading as the starting point. For with a child the first things are movements, gestures, expressions of will, not perception or observation. These come later. Hence it is necessary to begin, not with reading, but with writing—but a writing which shall come naturally from man's whole being.

Hence, we begin with writing lessons, not reading lessons, and we endeavour to lead over what the child does of its own accord out of imitation, through its will, through its hands, into writing. Let me make it clear to you by an example: We ask the child to say the word “fish,” for instance, and while doing so, show him the form of the fish in a simple sketch; then ask him to copy it;—thus we get the child to experience the word “fish.” From “fish” we pass to f (F), and from the form of the fish we can gradually evolve the letter f. Thus we derive the form of the letter by an artistic activity which carries over what is observed into what is willed:

By this means we avoid introducing an utterly alien F, a thing which would affect the child like a demon, something foreign thrust into his body; and instead we call forth from him the thing he has seen himself in the market place. And this we transform little by little into ‘ f .’

In this way we come near to the way writing originated, for it arose in a manner similar to this. But there is no need for the teacher to make a study of antiquity and exactly reproduce the way picture writing arose so as to give it in the same manner to the child. What is necessary is to give the rein to living fantasy and to produce afresh whatever can lead over from the object, from immediate life, to the letter forms. You will then find the most manifold ways of deriving the letter form for the child from life itself. While you say M let him feel how the M vibrates on the lips, then get him to see the shape of the lips as form, then you will be able to pass over gradually from the M that vibrates on the lips to M.

In this way, if you proceed spiritually, imaginatively, and not intellectually, you will gradually be able to derive from the child's own activity, all that leads to his learning to write. He will learn to write later and more slowly than children commonly do to-day. But when parents come and say: My child is eight, or nine years old, and cannot yet write properly, we must always answer: What is learned more slowly at any given age is more surely and healthily absorbed by the organism, than what is crammed into it.

Along these lines, moreover, there is scope for the individuality of the teacher, and this is an important con-sideration. As we now have many children in the Waldorf School we have had to start parallel classes—thus we have two first classes, two second classes and so on. If you go into one of the first classes you will find writing being taught by way of painting and drawing. You observe how the teacher is doing it. For instance, it might be just as we have been describing here. Then you go into the other Class I., Class I. B; and you find another teacher teaching the same subject. But you see something quite different. You find the teacher letting the children run round in a kind of eurhythmy, and getting them to experience the form from out of their own bodily movements. Then what the child runs is retained as the form of the letter. And it is possible to do it in yet a third and a fourth manner. You will find the same subject taught in the most varied ways in the different parallel classes. Why? Well, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the teacher who has to take a lesson has one temperament or another. The lesson can only be harmonious when there is the right contact between the teacher and the whole class. Hence every teacher must give his lesson in his own way. And just as life appears in manifold variety so can a teaching founded in life take the most varied forms.

Usually, when pedagogic principles are laid down it is expected that they shall be carried out. They are written down in a book. The good teacher is he who carries them out punctiliously, 1, 2, 3, etc. Now I am convinced that if a dozen men, or even fewer, sit down together they can produce the most wonderful programme for what should take place in education; firstly, secondly, thirdly, etc. People are so wonderfully intelligent nowadays;—I am not being sarcastic, I really mean it—one can think out the most splendid things in the abstract. But whether it is possible to put into practice what one has thought out is quite another matter. That is a concern of Life. And when we have to deal with life,—I ask you now, life is in all of you, natural life, you are all human beings, yet you all look different. No one man's hair is like another's. Life displays its variety in the manifold varieties of form. Each man has a different face. If you lay down abstract principles, you expect to find the same thing done in every class room. If your principles are taken from life, you know that life is various, and that the same thing can be done in the most varied ways. You see, for instance, that Negroes must be regarded as human beings, and in them the human form appears quite differently. In the same way when the art of education is held as a living art, all pedantry and also every kind of formalism must be avoided. And education will be true when it is really made into an art, and when the teacher is made into an artist. It is thus possible for us in the Waldorf School to teach writing by means of art. Then reading can be learned afterwards almost as a matter of course, without effort. It comes rather later than is customary, but it comes almost of itself.

While we are concerned on the one hand in bringing the pictorial element to the child—(and during the next few days I shall be showing you something of the paintings of the Waldorf School children)—while we are engaged with the pictorial element, we must also see to it that the musical element is appreciated as early as possible. For the musical element will give a good foundation for a strong energetic will, especially when attention is paid—at this stage—not so much to musical content as to the rhythm and beat of the music, the experience of rhythm and beat; and especially when it is treated in the right manner at the beginning of the elementary school period. I have already said in the introduction to the eurhythmy demonstration that we also introduce eurhythmy into children's education. I shall be speaking further of eurhythmy, and in particular of eurhythmy in education, in a later lecture. For the moment I wished to show more by one or two examples how early instruction serves the purpose of education in so far as it is called out of the nature of the human being.

But we must bear in mind that in the first part of the stage between the change of teeth and puberty a child can by no means distinguish between what is inwardly human and what is external nature. For him up to his eighth or ninth year these two things are still merged into one. Inwardly the child feels a certain impression, outwardly he may see a certain phenomenon, for instance a sunrise. The forces he feels in himself when he suffers unhappiness or pain; he supposes to be in sun or moon, in tree or plant. We should not reason the child out of this. We must transpose ourselves into the child's stage of life and conduct everything within education as if no boundary existed as yet between inner man and outer nature. This we can only do when we form the instruction as imaginatively as possible, when we let the plants act in a human manner—converse with other plants, and so on,—when we introduce humanity everywhere. People have a horror nowadays of Anthropomorphism, as it is called. But the child who has not experienced anthropomorphism in its relation to the world will be lacking in humanity in later years. And the teacher must be willing to enter into his environment with his full spirit and soul so that the child can go along with him on the strength of this living experience.

Now all this implies that a great deal shall have happened to the teacher before he enters the classroom. The carrying through of the educational principles of which we have been speaking makes great demands on the preparation the teachers have to do. One must do as much as one possibly can before-hand when one is a teacher, in order to make the best use of the time in the class room. This is a thing which the teacher learns to do only gradually, and in course of time. And only through this slow and gradual learning can one come really to have a true regard for the child's individuality.

May I mention a personal experience in this connection, Years before my connection with the Waldorf School I had to concern myself with many different forms of education. Thus it happened that when I was still young myself I had corded to me the education of a boy of eleven years old who was exceedingly backward in his development. Up to that time he had lied nothing at all. In proof of his attainment I was shown an exercise book containing the results of the latest examination he had been pushed into. All that was to be seen in it was an enormous hole that he had scrubbed with the india-rubber; nothing else. Added to this the boy's domestic habits were of a pathological nature. The whole family was unhappy on his account, for they could not bring themselves to abandon him to a manual occupation—a social prejudice, if you like, but these prejudices have to be reckoned with. So the whole family was unhappy. The family doctor was quite explicit that nothing could be made of the boy. I was now given four children of this family to educate. The others were normal, and I was to educate this one along with them. I said: I will try—in a case like this one can make no promises that this or the other result will be achieved,—but I would do everything that lay within my power, only I must be left complete freedom in the matter of the education. So now I undertook this education. The mother was the only member of the family who understood my stipulation for freedom, so that the education had to be fought for him in the teeth of the others. But finally the instruction of the boy was confided to me. It was necessary that the time spent in immediate instruction of the boy should be as brief as possible. Thus if I had, say, to be engaged in teaching the boy for about half-an-hour, I had to do three hours' work in preparation so as to make the most economical use of the time. Moreover, I had to make careful note of the time of the music lesson, for example. For if the boy were overtaxed he turned pale and his health deteriorated. But because one understood the boy's whole pathological condition, because one knew what was to be set down to hydrocephalus, it was possible to make such progress with the boy—and not psychical progress only,—that a year and a half after he had shown up merely a hole rubbed in his exercise book, he was able to enter the Gymnasium. (Name given to the Scientific and Technical School as distinct from the Classical.) And I was further able to help him throughout the classes of the Gymnasium and follow up the work with him until near the end of his time there, Under the influence of this education, and also because everything was spiritually directed, the boy's head became smaller. I know a doctor might say perhaps his head would have become smaller in any case. Certainly, but the right nurture of spirit and soul had to go with this process of getting smaller. The person referred to subsequently became an excellent doctor. He died during the war in the exercise of his profession, but only when he was nearly forty years old.

It was particularly important here to achieve the greatest economy in the time of instruction by means of suitable preparation beforehand. Now this must become a general principle. And in the art of education of which I am here speaking this is striven for. Now, when it is a question of describing what we have to tell the children in such a way as to arouse life and liveliness in their whole being, we mast master the subject thoroughly beforehand and be so at home with the matter that we can turn all our attention and individual power to the form in which we shall present it to the child. And then we shall discover as a matter of course that all the stuff of teaching must become pictorial if a child is to grasp it not only with his intellect but with his whole being. Hence we mostly begin with tales such as fairy tales, but also with other invented stories which relate to Nature. We do not at first teach either language or any other “subject,” but we simply unfold the world itself in vivid and pictorial form before the child. And such instruction is the best preparation for the writing and reading which is to be derived imaginatively.

Thus between his ninth and tenth year the child comes to be able to express himself in writing, and also to read as far as is healthy for him at this age, and now we have reached that important point in a child's life, between his ninth and tenth year, to which I have already referred. Now you must realise that this important point in the child's life has also an outward manifestation. At this time quite a remarkable change takes place, a remarkable differentiation, between girls and boys. Of the particular significance of this in a co-educational school such as the Waldorf School, I shall be speaking later. In the meantime we must be aware that such a differentiation between boys and girls does take place. Thus, round about the tenth year girls begin to grow at a quicker rate than the boys. Growth in boys is held back. Girls overtake the boys in growth. When the boys and girls reach puberty the boys once more catch up with the girls in their growth. Thus just at that stage the boys grow more rapidly.

Between the tenth and fifteenth year the outward differentiation between girls and boys is in itself a sign that a significant period of life has been reached. What appears inwardly is the clear distinction between oneself and the world. Before this time there was no such thing as a plant, only a green thing with red flowers in which there is a little spirit just as there is a little spirit in ourselves. As for a “plant,” such a thing only makes sense for a child about its tenth year. And here we must be able to follow his feeling. Thus, only when a child reaches this age is it right to teach him of an external world of our surroundings.

One can make a beginning for instance with botany—that great stand-by of schools. But it is just in the case of botany that I can demonstrate how a formal education—in the best sense of the word—should be conducted. If we start by showing a child a single plant we do a thoroughly unnatural thing, for that is not a whole. A plant especially when it is rooted up, is not a whole thing. In our realistic and materialistic age people have little sense for what is material and natural otherwise they would feel what I have just said. Is a plant a whole thing? No, when we have pulled it up and fetched it here it very soon withers. It is not natural to it to be pulled up. Its nature is to be in the earth, to belong with the soil. A stone is a totality by itself. It can lie about anywhere and it makes no difference. But I cannot carry a plant about all over the place; it will not remain the same. Its nature is only complete in conjunction with the soil, with the forces that spring from the earth, and with all the forces of the sun which fall upon this particular portion of the earth. Together with these the plant makes a totality. To look upon a plant in isolation is as absurd as if we were to pull out a hair of our head and regard the hair as a thing in itself. The hair only arises in connection with an organism and cannot be understood apart from the organism. Therefore: In the teaching of botany we must take our start, not from the plant, or the plant family but from the landscape, the geographical region: from an understanding of what the earth is in a particular place. And the nature of plants must be treated in relation to the whole earth.

When we speak of the earth we speak as physicists, or at most as geologists. We assume that the earth is a totality of physical forces, mineral forces, self-enclosed, and that it could exist equally well if there were no plants at all upon it, no animals at all, no men at all. But this is an abstraction. The earth as viewed by the physicist, by the geologist, is an abstraction. There is in reality no such thing. In reality there is only the earth which is covered with plants. We must be aware when we are describing from a geological aspect that, purely for the convenience of our intelligence, we are describing a non-existent abstraction. But we must not start by giving a child an idea of this non-existent abstraction, we must give the child a realisation of the earth as a living organism, beginning naturally with the district which the child knows. And then, just as we should show him an animal with hair growing upon it, and not produce a hair for it to see before it knew anything of the animal—so must we first give him a vivid realisation of the earth as a living organism and after that show him how plants live and grow upon the earth.

Thus the study of plants arises naturally from introducing the earth to the child as a living thing, as an organism—beginning with a particular region. To consider one part of the earth at a time, however, is an abstraction, for no region of the earth can exist apart from the other regions; and we should be conscious that we take our start from something incomplete. Nevertheless, if, once more we teach pictorially and appeal to the wholeness of the imagination the child will be alive to what we tell him about the plants. And in this way we gradually introduce him to the external world. The child acquires a sense of the concept “objectivity.” He begins to live into reality. And this we achieve by introducing the child in this natural manner to the plant kingdom.

The introduction to the animal kingdom is entirely different—it comes somewhat later. Once more, to describe the single animals is quite inorganic. For actually one could almost say: It is sheer chance that a lion is a lion and a camel a camel. A lion presented to a child's contemplation will seem an arbitrary object however well it may be described, or even if it is seen in a menagerie. So will a camel. Observation alone makes no sense in the domain of life.

How are we to regard the animals? Now, anyone who can contemplate the animals with imaginative vision, instead of with the abstract intellect, will find each animal to be a portion of the human being. In one animal the development of the legs will predominate—whereas in man they are at the service of the whole organism. In another animal the sense organs, or one particular sense organ, is developed in an extreme manner. One animal will be specially adapted for snouting and routing (snuffling), another creature is specially gifted for seeing, when aloft in the air. And when we take the whole animal kingdom together we find that what outwardly constitutes the abstract divisions of the animal kingdom is comprised in its totality in man. All the animals taken together, synthetically, give one the human being. Each capacity or group of faculties in the human being is expressed in a one-sided form in some animal species. When we study the lion—there is no need to explain this to the child, we can show it to him in simple pictures—when we study the lion we find in the lion a particular over-development of what in the human being are the chest organs, the heart organ. The cow shows a one-sided development of what in man is the digestive system. And when I examine the white corpuscles in the human blood I see the indication of the earliest, most primitive creatures. The whole animal kingdom together makes up man, synthetically, not symptomatically, but synthetically woven and interwoven.

All this I can expound to the child in quite a simple, primitive way. Indeed I can make the thing very vivid when speaking, for instance, of the lion's nature and showing how it needs to be calmed and subdued by the individuality of man. Or one can take the moral and psychic characteristics of the camel and show how what the camel presents in a lower form is to be found in human nature. So that man is a synthesis of lion, eagle, ape, of camel, cow and all the rest. We view the whole animal kingdom as human nature separated out and spread abroad.

This, then, is the other side which the child gets when he is in his eleventh or twelfth year. After he has learned to separate himself from the plant world, to experience its objectivity and its connection with an objective earth, he then learns the close connection between the animals and man, the subjective side. Thus the universe is once more brought into connection with man, by way of the feelings. And this is educating the child by contact with life in the world.

Then we shall find that the requirements we always make are met spontaneously. In theory we can keep on saying: You must not overload the memory. It is not a good thing to burden the child's memory. Anyone can see that in the abstract. It is less easy for people to see clearly what effect the overburdening of memory has on a man's life. It means this, that later in life we shall find him suffering from rheumatism and gout—it is a pity that medical observation does not cover the whole span of a man's life, but indeed we shall find many people afflicted with rheumatism and gout, to which they had no predisposition; or else what was a very slight predisposition has been in-creased because the memory was overtaxed, because one had learned too much from memory. But, on the other hand, the memory must not be neglected. For if the memory is not exercised enough inflammatory conditions of the physical organs will be prone to arise, more particularly between the 16th and 24th years.

And how are we to hold the balance between burdening the memory too much or too little? When we teach pictorially and imaginatively, as I have described, the child takes as much of the instruction as it can bear. A relationship arises like that between eating and being satisfied. This means that we shall have some children further advanced than others, and this we must deal with, without relegating less advanced children to a class below. One may have a comparatively large class and yet a child will not eat more than it can bear—spiritually speaking—because its organism spontaneously rejects what it cannot bear. Thus we take account of life here, just as we draw our teaching from life.

A child is able to take in the elements of Arithmetic at quite an early age. But in arithmetic we observe how very easily an intellectual element can be given the child too soon. Mathematics as such is alien to no man at any age. It arises in human nature; the operations of mathematics are not foreign to human faculty in the way letters are foreign in a succeeding civilisation. But it is exceedingly important that the child should be introduced to arithmetic and mathematics in the right way. And what this is can really only be decided by one who is enabled to overlook the whole of human life from a certain spiritual standpoint.

There are two things which in logic seem very far removed from one another: arithmetic and moral principles. It is not usual to hitch arithmetic on to moral principles because there seems no obvious logical connection between them. But it is apparent to one who looks at the matter, not logically, but livingly, that the child who has a right introduction to arithmetic will have quite a different feeling of moral responsibility from the child who has not. And—this may seem extremely paradoxical to you, but since I am speaking of realities and not of the illusions current in our age, I will not be afraid of seeming paradoxical, for in this age truth often seems paradoxical.—If, then, men had known how to permeate the soul with mathematics in the right way during these past years we should not now have bolshevism in Eastern Europe. This it is that one perceives: what forces connect the faculty used in arithmetic with the springs of morality in man.

Now, you will understand this better probably if I give you a very small illustration of the principles of arithmetic teaching. It is common nowadays to start arithmetic by the adding of one thing to another. But just consider how foreign a thing it is to the human mind to add one pea to another and at each addition to name a new name. The transition from one to two, and then to three,—this counting is quite an arbitrary activity for the human being. But it is possible to count in another way. And this we find when we go back a little in human history. For originally people did not count by putting one pea to another and hence deriving a new thing which, for the soul at all events, had little connection with what went before. No, men counted more or less in the following way: They would say: What we get in life is always a whole, something to be grasped as a whole; and the most diverse things can constitute a unity. If I have a number of people in front of me, that can be a unity at first sight. Or if I have a single man in front of me, he then is a unity. A unity, in reality, is a purely relative thing. And I keep this in mind if I count in the following way: One | = | two | = | = | three | = | = | = | four | = | = | =| = | and so on, that is, when I have an organic whole (a whole consisting of members): because then I am starting with unity, and in the unity, viewed as a multiplicity, I seek the parts. This indeed was the original view of number. Unity was always a totality, and in the totality one sought for the parts. One did not think of numbers as arising by the addition of one and one and one, one conceived of the numbers as belonging to the whole, and proceeding organically from the whole.

When we apply this to the teaching of arithmetic we get the following: Instead of placing one bean after another beside the child, we throw him a whole heap of beans. The bean heap constitutes the whole. And from this we make our start. And now we can explain to the child: I have a heap of beans—or if you like, so that it may the better appeal to the child's imagination: a heap of apples,—and three children of different ages who need different amounts to eat, and we want to do something which applies to actual life. What shall we do? Now we can for instance, divide the heap of apples in such a way as to give a certain heap on the one hand and portions, together equal to the first heap, on the other. The heap represents the sum. Here we have the heap of apples, and we say: Here are three parts, and we get the child to see that the sum is the same as the three parts. The sum = the three parts. That is to say, in addition we do not go from the parts to arrive at the sum, but we start with the sum and proceed to the parts. Thus to get a living understanding of addition we start with the whole and proceed to the addenda, to the parts. For addition is concerned essentially with the sum and its parts, the members which are contained, in one way or another, within the sum.

In this way we get the child to enter into life with the ability to grasp a whole, not always to proceed from the less to the greater. And this has an extraordinarily strong influence upon the child's whole soul and mind. When a child has acquired the habit of adding things together we get a disposition which tends to be desirous and craving. In proceeding from the whole to the parts, and in treating multiplication similarly, the child has less tendency to acquisitiveness, rather it tends to develop what, in the Platonic sense, the noblest sense of the word, can be called considerateness, moderation. And one's moral likes and dislikes are intimately bound up with the manner in which one has learned to deal with number. At first sight there seems to be no logical connection between the treatment of numbers and moral ideas, so little indeed that one who will only regard things from the intellectual point of view, may well laugh at the idea of any connection. It may seem to him absurd. We can also well understand that people may laugh at the idea of proceeding in addition from the sum instead of from the parts. But when one sees the true connections in life one knows that things which are logic-ally most remote are often in reality exceedingly near.

Thus what comes to pass in the child's soul by working with numbers will very greatly affect the way he will meet us when we want to give him moral examples, deeds and actions for his liking or disliking, sympathy with the good, antipathy with the evil. We shall have before us a child susceptible to goodness when we have dealt with him in the teaching of numbers in the way described.

The importance for the educator of knowing man as a whole is seen particularly clearly when we observe the development of boys and girls between their eleventh and twelfth years. Usually only what we might call the grosser changes are observed, the grosser metamorphoses of human nature, and we have no eye for the finer changes. Hence we believe we can benefit the child simply by thinking: what bodily movements should the child make to become physically strong P But if we want to make the child's body strong, capable and free from cramping repressions we must reach the body during childhood by way of the soul and spirit.

Between the 11th and 12th year a very great change takes place in the human being. The rhythmic system—breathing system and system of blood circulation—is dominant between the change of teeth and puberty. When the child is nearly ten years old the beat and rhythm of the blood circulation and breathing system begin to develop and pass into the muscular system. The muscles become saturate with blood and the blood pulses through the muscles in intimate response to man's inner nature—to his own heart. So that between his 9th and 11th years the human being builds up his own rhythmic system in the way which corresponds to its inner disposition. When the 11th or 12th year is reached, then what is within the rhythmic system and muscular system passes over into the bone system, into the whole skeleton. Up to the 11th year the bone system is entirely embedded in the muscular system. It conforms to the muscular system. Between the 11th and 12th years the skeleton adapts itself to the outer world. A mechanic and dynamic which is independent of the human being passes into the skeleton. We must accustom ourselves to treating the skeleton as though it were an entirely objective thing, not concerned with man.

If you observe children under eleven years old you will see that all their movements still come out of their inner being. If you observe children of over 12 years old you will see from the way they step how they are trying to find their balance, how they are inwardly adapting themselves to the leverage and balance, to the mechanical nature of the skeletal system. This means: Between the 11th and 12th year the soul and spirit nature reaches as far as the bone-.system. Before this the soul and spirit nature is much more inward. And only now that he has taken hold on that remotest part of his humanity, the bone-system, does man's adaptation to the outer world become complete. Only now is man a true child of the world, only now must he live with the mechanic and dynamic of the world, only now does he experience what is called Causality in life. Before his 11th year a human being has in reality no understanding of cause and effect. He hears the words used. We think he under-stands them. But he does not, because he is controlling his bone system from out of his muscular system. Later, after the 12th year, the bone system, which is adjusting itself to the outer world, dominates the muscular system, and through it, influences spirit and soul. And in consequence man now gets an understanding of cause and effect based on inner experience,—an understanding of force, and of his own experience of the perpendicular, the horizontal, etc.

For this reason, you see, when we teach the child mineralogy, physics, chemistry, mechanics before his 11th year in too intellectual a way we harm his development, for he cannot as yet have a corresponding experience of the mechanical and dynamical within his whole being. Neither, before his 11th year can he inwardly participate in thy causal connections in history.

Now this enlightens us as to how we should treat the soul in children, before the bone system has awakened. While the child still dwells in his muscular system, through the intermediary of his blood system, he can inwardly experience biography; he can always participate when we bring before him some definite historical picture which can please or displease him, and with which he can feel sympathy or antipathy. Or when we give him a picture of the earth in the manner I described yesterday. He can grasp in picture everything that belongs to the plant kingdom, because his muscular system is plastic, is inwardly mobile. Or if we show him what I said of the animal kingdom, and how it dwells in man—the child can go along with it because his muscular system is soft. But if before his 11th year we teach the child the principle of the lever or of the steam engine he can experience nothing of it inwardly because as yet he has no dynamic or mechanic in his own body, in his physical nature. When we begin physics, mechanics and dynamics at the right time with the child, namely about his 11th or 12th year, what we present to him in thought goes into his head and it is met by what comes from his inner being,—the experience the child has of his own bone-system. And what we say to the child unites with the impulse and experience which comes from the child's body. Thus there arises, not an abstract, intellectual understanding, but a psychic understanding, an understanding in the soul. And it is this we must aim at.

But what of the teacher who has to make this endeavour? What must he be like? Suppose for example, a teacher knows from his anatomy and physiology that “the muscle is in that place, the bones here; the nerve cells look like this”:—it is all very fine, put it is intellectual; all this leaves the child out of account, the child is, as it were, impermeable to our vision. The child is like black coal, untransparent. We know what muscles and nerves are there; we know all that. But we do not know how the circulation system plays into the blood system, into the bone-system. To know that, our conception of the build of a human being, of man's inner configuration must be that of an artist. And the teacher must be in a position to experience the child artistically, to see him as an artist would. Everything within the child must be inwardly mobile to him.

Now, the philosopher will come and say: “Well, if a thing is to be known it must be logical.” Quite right, but logical after the manner of a work of art, which can be an inner artistic representation of the world we have before us. We must accept such an inward artistic conceiving—we must not dogmatise: The world shall only be conceived logically. All the teacher's ideas and feelings must be go mobile that he can realise: If I give the child ideas of dynamics and mechanics before his 11th year they clog his brain, they congest, and make the brain hard, so that it develops migraine in the latter years of youth, and later still will harden;—if I give the child separate historical pictures or stories before his 11th year, if I give him pictures of the plant kingdom which shows the plants in connection with the country-side where they grow, these ideas go into his brain, but they go in by way of the rest of his nervous system into his whole body. They unite with the whole body, with the soft muscular system. I build up lovingly what is at work within the child. The teacher now sees into the child, what to one who only knows anatomy and physiology is opaque black coal now becomes transparent. The teacher sees everything, sees what goes on in the rows of children facing him at their desks, what goes on in the single child. He does not need to cogitate and have recourse to some didactic rule or other, the child himself shows him what needs to be done with it. The child leans back in his chair when something has been done which is unsuitable to him; he becomes inattentive. When you do something right for the child he becomes lively.

Nevertheless one will sometimes have great trouble in controlling the children's liveliness. You will succeed in controlling it if you possess a thing not sufficiently appreciated in this connection, namely humour. The teacher must bring humour into the class room as he enters the door. Some-times children can be very naughty. A teacher in the Waldorf School found a class of older children, children over 12 years old, suddenly become inattentive to the lesson and begin writing to one another under their desks. Now a teacher without humour might get cross at this, mightn't he? There would be a great scene. But what did our Waldorf School teacher do? He went along with the children, and explained to them the nature of—the postal service. And the children saw that he understood them. He entered right into this matter of their mutual correspondence. They felt slightly ashamed, and order was restored.

The fact is, no art of any kind can be mastered without humour, especially the art of dealing with human beings. This means that part of the art of education is the elimination of ill-humour and crossness from the teachers, and the development of friendliness and a love full of humour and fantasy for the children, so that the children may not see portrayed in their teacher the very thing he is forbidding them to be. On no account must it happen in a class that when a child breaks out in anger the teacher says: I will beat this anger out of you! That is a most terrible thing! And he seizes the inkpot and hurls it to the ground where it smashes. This is not a way to remove anger from a child. Only when you show the child that his anger is a mere object, that for you it hardly exists, it is a thing to be treated with humour, then only will you be acting educationally.

Up till now I have been describing how the human being is to be understood in general by the teacher or educator. But man is not only something in general. And even if we can enter into the human being in such detail that the very activity of the muscular system before the 11th year is transparent to us, and that of the bone system after the 11th year, there will yet remain something else—a thing of extraordinary vitality where education is an art—namely the human individuality. Every child is a different being, and what I have hitherto described only constitutes the very first step in the artistic comprehension and knowledge of the child.

We must be able to enter more and more into what is personal and individual. We are helped provisionally by the fact that the children we have to educate are differentiated according to temperaments. A true understanding of temperaments has, from the very first, held a most important place in the education I am here describing, the education practised at the Waldorf School.

Let us take to begin with the melancholic child; a particular human type. What is he like? He appears externally a quiet, withdrawn child. But these outward characteristics are not much help to us. We only begin to comprehend the child with a disposition to melancholy when we realise that the melancholic child is most powerfully affected by its purely bodily, physical nature; when we know that the melancholy is due to an intense depositing of salt in the organism. This causes the child of melancholic temperament to feel weighed down in his physical organism. For a melancholic child to raise a leg or an arm is quite a different matter than for another child. There are hindrances, impediments to this raising of the leg or arm. A feeling of weight opposes the intention of the soul. Thus it gradually comes about that the child of melancholic disposition turns inward and does not take to the outside world with any pleasure, because his body obtrudes upon his attention, because he is so much concerned with his own body. We only gain the right approach to a melancholic child when we know how his soul which would soar, and his spirit which would range are burdened by bodily deposits continuously secreted by the glands, which permeate his other bodily movements and encumber his body. We can only help him when we rightly understand this encroaching heaviness of the body which takes the attention prisoner.

It is often said: Well, a melancholic child broods inwardly, he is quiet and moves little. And so one purposely urges him to take in lively ideas. One seeks to heal a thing by its opposite. One's treatment of the melancholic is to try and enliven him by telling him all sorts of amusing things. This is a completely false method. We can never reach the melancholic child in this way.

We must be able, through our sympathy and sympathetic comprehension of his bodily gravity, to approach the child m the mood which is his own. Thus we must give him, not lively and, comical ideas, but serious ideas like those which he produces himself. We must give him many things which are in harmony with the tone of his own weighted organism.

Further, in an education such as this, we must have patience; the effect is not seen from one day to the next, but it takes years. And the way it works is that when the child is given from outside what he has within himself he arouses in himself healing powers of resistance. If we bring him something quite alien, if we bring comic things to a serious child—he will remain indifferent to the comic things. But if we confront him outwardly with his own sorrow and trouble and care he perceives from this outward meeting what he has in himself. And this calls out the inner action, the opposite. And we heal pedagogically by following in modern form the ancient golden rule: Not only can like be known by like, like can be treated and healed by like.

Now when we consider the child of a more phlegmatic temperament we must realise: this child of more phlegmatic temperament dwells less in his physical body and more in what I have called, in my descriptions here, the etheric body, a more volatile body. He dwells in his etheric body. It may seem a strange thing to say about the phlegmatic child that he dwells in his etheric body, but so it is. The etheric body prevents the processes of man's organic functions, his digestion, and growth, from coming into his head. It is not in the power of the phlegmatic child to get ideas of what is going on in his body. His head becomes inactive. His body becomes ever more and more active by virtue of the volatile element which tends to scatter his functions abroad in the world. A phlegmatic child is entirely given up to the world. He is absorbed into the world. He lives very little in himself hence he meets what we try to do with him with a certain indifference. We cannot reach the child because immediate access to him must be through the' senses. The principle senses are in the head. The phlegmatic child can make little use of his head. The rest of his organism functions through interplay with the outer world.

Once again, as in the case of the melancholic child, we can only reach the phlegmatic child when we can turn ourselves into phlegmatics of some sort at his side, when we can transpose ourselves, as artists, into his phlegmatic mood. Then the child has at his side what he is in himself, and in good time what he has beside him seems too boring. Even the phlegmatic finds it too boring to have a phlegmatic for a teacher at his side! And if we have patience we shall presently see how something lights up in the phlegmatic child if we give him ideas steeped in phlegma, and tell him phlegmatically of indifferent events.

Now the sanguine child is particularly difficult to handle. The sanguine child is one in whom the activity of the rhythmic system predominates in a marked degree. The rhythmic system, which is the dominant factor between the change of teeth and puberty, exercises too great a dominion over the sanguine child. Hence the sanguine child always wants to hasten from impression to impression. His blood circulation is hampered if the impressions do not change quickly. He feels inwardly cramped if impressions do not quickly pass and give way to others. So we can say: The sanguine child feels an inner constriction when he has to attend long to anything; he feels he cannot dwell on it, he turns away to quite other thoughts. It is hard to hold him.

Once more the treatment of the sanguine child is similar to that of the others: one must not try to heal the sanguine child by forcing him to dwell a long time on one impression, one must do the opposite. Meet the sanguine nature, change impressions vigorously and see to it that the child has to take in impression after impression in rapid succession. Once again, a reaction will be called into play. And this cannot fail to take the form of antipathy to the hurrying impressions, for the system of circulation here dominates entirely. With the result that the child himself is slowed down.

The choleric child has to be treated in yet a different way. The characteristic of the choleric child is that he is a stage behind the normal in his development. This may seem strange. Let us take an illustration. A normal child of 8 or 9 of any type moves his limbs quickly or slowly in response to outer impressions. But compare the 8 or 9-year old child with a child of 3 or 4 years. The 3- or 4-year old child still trips and dances through life, he controls his movements far less. He still retains something of the baby within him. A baby does not control its movements at all, it kicks—its mental powers are not developed. But if tiny babies all had a vigorous mental development you would find them all to be cholerics. Kicking babies—and the healthier they are the more they kick—kicking babies are all choleric. A choleric child comes from a body made restless by choler.

Now the choleric child still retains something of the rompings and ragings of a tiny baby. Hence the baby lives on in the choleric child of 8 or 9, the choleric boy or girl. This is the reason the child is choleric and we must treat the child by trying gradually to subdue the “baby” within him.

In the doing of this, humour is essential. For when we confront a real choleric of 8, 9, 10 years or even older, we shall affect nothing with him by admonition. But if I get him to re-tell me a story I have told him, which requires a show of great choler and much pantomime, so that he feels the baby in himself, this will have [For further descriptions of the alternation between sympathy and antipathy in children and its place in education see Steiner's educational writings passim.] the effect little by little of calming this “tiny baby.” He adapts it to the stage of his own mind. And when I act the choleric towards the choleric child—naturally, of course, with humour and complete self-control—the choleric child at my side will grow calmer. When the teacher begins to dance—but please do not misunderstand me—the raging of the child near him gradually subsides. But one must avoid having either a red face or a long face when dealing with a choleric child, one must enter into this inner raging by means of artistic sensibility. You will see the child will become quieter and quieter. This utterly subdues the inner raging.

But there must be nothing artificial in all this. If there is anything forced or inartistic in what the teacher gives the child it will have no result. The teacher must indeed have artist's blood in him so that what he enacts in front of the child shall have verisimilitude and can be accepted unquestioningly; otherwise it is a false thing in the teacher, and that must not be. The teacher's relation to the child must be absolutely true and genuine.

Now when we enter into the temperaments in this manner it helps us also to keep a class in order, even quite a large one. The Waldorf teacher studies the temperaments of the children confided to him. He knows: I have melancholies, phlegmatics, sanguines and cholerics. He places the melancholies together, unobtrusively, without its being noticed of course. He knows he has them in this corner. Now he places the cholerics together, he knows he has them in that corner; similarly with the sanguinis and the phlegmatics. By means of this social treatment those of like temperament rub each other's corners off reciprocally. For example the melancholic becomes cheerful when he sits among melancholies. As for the cholerics, they heal each other thoroughly, for it is the very best thing to let the cholerics work off their choler upon one another. If bruises are received, mutually it has an exceedingly sobering effect. So that by a right social treatment the—shall we say—hidden relationship between man and man can be brought into a healthy solution.

And if we have enough sense of humour to send out a boy when he is overwrought and in a rage—into the garden, and see to it that he climbs trees and scrambles about until he is colossally tired,—when he comes in again he will have worked off his choleric temper on himself and in company with nature. When he has worked off what is in him by overcoming obstacles, he will come back to us, after a little while, calmed down.

Now the point is, you see, to come by way of the temperaments into ever closer and closer touch with the individuality of the child, his personality. To-day many people say you must educate individually. Yes, but first you must discover the individual. First you must know man; next you must know the melancholic—Actually the melancholic is never a pure melancholic, the temperaments are always mixed. One temperament is dominant—But only when you rightly understand the temperament can you find your way to the individuality.

Now this shows you indeed that the art of education is a thing that must be learned intimately. People to-day do not start criticising a clock—at least I have not heard it—they do not set up to criticise the works of a clock. Why? Because they do not understand it, they do not know the inner working of a clock. Thus you seldom hear criticism of the working of a clock in ordinary conversation. But criticism of education—you hear it on all hands. And frequently it is as though people were to talk of the works of a clock of which they haven't the slightest inkling. But people do not believe that education must be intimately learned, and that it is not enough to say in the abstract: we must educate the individuality. We must erst be able to find the individuality by going intimately through a knowledge of man and a knowledge of the different dispositions and temperaments. Then gradually we shall draw near to what is entirely individual in man. And this must become a principle of life, particularly for the artist teacher or educator.

Everything depends upon the contact between teacher and child being permeated by an artistic element. This will bring it about that much that a teacher has to do at any moment with an individual child comes to him intuitively, almost instinctively. Let us take a concrete illustration for the sake of clarity. Suppose we find difficulty in educating a certain child because all the images we bring to him, the impressions we seek to arouse, the ideas we would impart, set up so strong a circulation in his head system and cause such a disturbance to his nervous system that what we give him cannot escape from the head into the rest of his organism. The physical organism of his head becomes in a way partially melancholic. The child finds it difficult to lead over what he sees, feels or otherwise experiences, from his head to the rest of his organism. What is learned gets stuck, as it were, in the head. It cannot penetrate down into the rest of the organism. An artist in educating will instinctively keep such a thing in view in all his specifically artistic work with the child. If I have such a child I shall use colours and paint with him in quite a different way than with other children. Because it is of such importance, special attention is given to the element of colour in the Waldorf School from the very beginning. I have already explained the principle of the painting; but within' the painting lesson one can treat each child individually. We have an opportunity of working individually with the child because he has to do everything himself.

Now suppose I have by me such a child as I described. I am taking the painting lesson. If there is the right artistic contact between teacher and child—under my guidance this child will produce quite a different painting from another child.

I will draw you roughly on the black-board what should come on the paper painted on by the child whose ideas are stuck in his head. Something of this sort should arise:

Here a spot of this colour (yellow), then further on a spot of some such colour as this (orange), for we have to keep in mind the harmony of colours. Next comes a transition (violet), the transition may be further differentiated, and in order to make an outer limit the whole may be enclosed with blue. This is what we shall get on the paper of a child whose ideas are congested in his head.

Now suppose I have another child whose ideas, far from sticking in his head, sift through his head as through a sieve; where everything goes into the body, and the child grasps nothing because his head is like a sieve—it has holes, it lets things through. It sifts everything down. One must be able to feel that in the case of this child the circulation system of the other part of the organism wants to suck everything into itself.

Then instinctively, intuitively, it will occur to one to get the child to do something quite different. In the case of such a child you will get something of this sort on the painting paper; You will observe how much less the colours go into curves, or rounded forms; rather you will find the colours tend to be drawn out, painting is approximating to drawing, we get loops which are proper to drawing. You will also notice that the colours are not much differentiated; here (in the first drawing) they are strongly differentiated: here in this one they are very little differentiated.

If one carries this out with real colours—and not with the nauseating substance of chalk, which cannot give an idea of the whole thing—then through the experience of pure colour in the one case, and of more formed colour in the other, one will be able to work back upon the characteristics of the child which I described.

Similarly when you go into the gymnasium with a boy or girl whose ideas stick in his head and will not come out of it, your aim will be different from that with which yon would go into it with a child whose head is like a sieve, who lets everything through into the rest of his body and into the circulation of the rest of his body. You take both kinds of children into the gymnasium with you. You get the one kind,—whose heads are like a sieve, where everything falls through—to alternate their gymnastic exercises with recitation or singing. The other gymnastic—group—those whose ideas are stuck fast in their heads—should be got to do their movements as far as possible in silence. Thus you make a bridge between bodily training and psychic characteristics from out the very nature of the child himself. A child which has stockish ideas must be got to do gymnastics differently from the child whose ideas go through his head like a sieve.

Such a thing as this shows how enormously important it is to compose the education as a whole. It is a horrible thing when first the teacher instructs the children in class and then they are sent off to the gymnasium—and the gymnastic teacher knows nothing of what has gone on in class and follows his own scheme in the gymnastic lesson. The gymnastic lesson must follow absolutely and entirely upon what one has experienced with the children in class. So that actually in the Waldorf School the endeavour has been as far as possible to entrust to one teacher even supplementary lessons in the lower classes, and certainly everything which concerns the general development of the human being.

This makes very great demands upon the staff, especially where art teaching is concerned; it demands, also, the most willing and loving devotion. But in no other way can we attain a wholesome, healing human development.

Now, in the following lectures I shall show you on the one hand certain plastic, painted figures made in the studio at Dornach, so as to acquaint you better with Eurhythmy—that art of movement which is so intimately connected with the whole of man. The figures bring out the colours and forms of eurhythmy and something of its inner nature. On the other hand I shall speak tomorrow upon the painting and other artistic work done by the younger and older children in the Waldorf School.

When we speak of organisation to-day we commonly imply that something is to be organised, to be arranged. But in speaking of the organisation of the Waldorf School I do not and cannot mean it in this sense, for really one can only organise something which has a mechanical nature. One can organise the arrangements in a factory where the parts are bound into a whole by the ideas which one has put into it. The whole exists and one must accept it as an organism. It must be studied. One must learn to know its arrangements as an organism, as an organisation.

A school such as the Waldorf School is an organism in this sense, as a matter of course,—but it cannot be organised, as I said before in the sense of making a program laying down in paragraphs how the school shall be run: Sections: 1, 2, 3, etc. As I said, I am fully convinced—and I speak without irony—that in these days if five or twelve people sit down together they can work out an ideal school plan, not to be improved upon, people are so intelligent and clever nowadays: Paragraphs 1, 2, etc., up to 12 and so on; the only question which arises is: can it be carried out in practice? And it would very soon be apparent that one can make charming programs, but actually when one founds a school one has to deal with a finished organism.

This school, then, comprises a staff of teachers; and they are not moulded out of wax. Your section 1 or section 5 would perhaps lay down: the teacher shall be such and such. But the staff is not composed of something to be moulded like wax, one has to seek out each single teacher and take him with the faculties which he has. Above all it is necessary to understand what these faculties are. One must know to start with, whether he is a good elementary teacher or a good teacher for higher classes. It is as necessary to under-stand the individual teacher as it is, in the human organism, to understand the nose or the ear if one is to accomplish something. It is not a question of having theoretical principles and rules, but of meeting reality as it comes. If teachers could be kneaded out of wax then one could make programs. But this cannot be done. Thus the first reality to reckon with is the college of teachers. And this one must know intimately. Thus it is the fundamental principle of the organisation of the Waldorf School that, since I am the director and spiritual adviser to the Waldorf School, I must know the college of teachers intimately, in all its single members, I must know each single individuality.

The second thing is the children, and here at the start we were faced with certain practical difficulties in the Waldorf School. For the Waldorf School was founded in Stuttgart by Emil Molt from the midst of the emotions and impulses of the years 1918 and 1919, after the end of the war. It was founded, in the first place as a social act. One saw that there was not much to be done with adults as far as social life was concerned; they came to an understanding for a few weeks in middle Europe after the end of the war. After that, they fell back on the views of their respective classes. So the idea arose of doing something for the next generation. And since it happened that Emil Molt was an industrialist in Stuttgart, we had no need to go from house to house canvassing for children, we received the children of the workers in his factory. Thus, at the beginning, the children we received from Molt's factory, about 150 of them, were essentially proletarian children. These 150 children were supplemented by almost all the anthroposophical children in Stuttgart and the neighbourhood; so that we had something like 200 children to work with at the beginning.

This situation brought it about that the school was practically speaking a school for all classes (Einheitschule). For we had a foundation of proletarian children, and the anthroposophical children were mostly not proletarian, but of every status from the lowest to the highest. Thus any distinctions of class or status were ruled out in the Waldorf School by its very social composition. And the aim through-out has been, and will continue to be, solely to take account of what is universally human. In, the Waldorf School what is considered is the educational principles and no difference is made in their application between a child of the proletariat and a child of the ex-Kaiser—supposing it to have sought entry into the school. Only pedagogic and didactic principles count, and will continue to count. Thus from the very first, the Waldorf School was conceived as a general school.

But this naturally involved certain difficulties, for the proletarian child brings different habits with him into the school from those of children of other status. And these contrasts actually turned—out to be exceedingly beneficial, apart from a few small matters which could be got over with a little trouble. What these things were you can easily imagine; they are mostly concerned with habits of life, and often it is not easy to rid the children of all they bring with them into the school. Although even this can be achieved if one sets about it with good will. Nevertheless, many children of the so-called upper classes, unaccustomed to having this or that upon them, would sometimes carry home the unpleasant thing, whereupon unpleasant comments would be made by their parents.

Well, as I said, here on the other hand were the children. These were what I might call the tiny difficulties. A greater difficulty arose from the fact that the ideal of the Waldorf School was to educate purely in accordance with knowledge of man, to give the child week by week, what the child's own nature demanded.

In the first instance we arranged the Waldorf School as an elementary school of 8 classes, so that we had in it children from 6 or 7 to 14 or 15 years old. Now these children came to us at the beginning from all kinds of different schools. They came with previous attainments of the most varied kinds; certainly not always such as we should have considered suitable for a child of 8 or 11 years old. So that during the first year we could not count on being able to carry out our ideal of education; nor could we proceed according to plan: 1, 2, etc., but we had to proceed in accordance with the individualities of the children we had in each particular class. Nevertheless this would only have been a minor difficulty. The greater difficulty is this, that no method of education however ideal it is must tear a man out of his connections in life. The human being is not an abstract thing to be put through an education and finished with, a human being is the child of particular parents. He has grown up as the product of the social order. And after his education he must enter this social order again. You see, if you wanted to educate a child strictly in accordance with an idea, when he was 14 or 15 he would no doubt be very ideal, but he would not find his place in modern life, he would be quite at sea. Thus it was not merely a question of carrying out an ideal, nor is it so now in the Waldorf School. The point is so to educate the child that he remains in touch with present-day life, with the social order of to-day. And here there is no sense in saying: the present social order is bad. Whether it be good or bad, we simply have to live in it. And this is the point, we have to live in it and hence we must not simply withdraw the children from it. Thus I was faced with the exceedingly difficult task of carrying out an educational idea on the one hand while on the other hand keeping fully in touch with present-day life.

Naturally the education officers regarded what was done in other schools as a kind of ideal. It is true they always said: one cannot attain the ideal, one can only do one's best under the circumstances. Life demands this or that of us. But one finds in actual practice when one has dealings with them that they regard all existing arrangements set up either by state authorities or other authorities as exceptionally good, and look upon an institution such as the Waldorf School as a kind of crank hobby, a vagary, something made by a person a little touched in the head.

Well you know, one can often let a crank school like this carry on and just see what comes of it. And in any case it has to be reckoned with. So I endeavoured to come to terms with them through the following compromise. In a memorandum, I asked to he allowed three years grace to try out my ‘vagary,’ the children at the end of that time, to be sufficiently advanced to be able to enter ordinary schools. Thus I worked out a memorandum showing how the children when they had been taken to the end of the third elementary class, namely in their 9th year, should have accomplished a certain stage, and should be capable of entering the 4th class in another school. But during the intermediate time, I said, I wanted absolute freedom to give the children week by week, what was requisite according to a knowledge of man. And then I requested to have freedom once more from the 9th to the 12th year. At the end of the 12th year the children should have again reached a stage such as would enable them to enter an ordinary school; and the same thing once again on their leaving school. Similarly with regard to the children,—I mean, of course, the young ladies and gentlemen—who would be leaving school to enter college, a university or any other school for higher education: from the time of puberty to the time for entering college there should be complete freedom: but by that time they should be far enough advanced to be able to pass into any college or university—for naturally it will be a long time before the Free High School at Dornach will be recognised as giving a qualification for passing out into life.

This arrangement to run parallel with the organisation of ordinary schools was an endeavour to accord our own intentions and convictions with things as they are, to make a certain harmony. For there is nothing unpractical about the Waldorf School, on the contrary, on every point this ‘vagary’ aims at realising things which have a practical application to life.

Hence also, there is no question of constructing the school on the lines of some bad invention—then indeed it would be a construction, not an organisation,—but it is truly a case of studying week by week the organism that is there. Then an observer of human nature—and this includes child nature—will actually light upon the most concrete educational measures from month to month. As a doctor does not say at the very first examination everything that must be done for his patient, but needs to keep him under observation because the human being is an organism, so much the more in such an organism as a school must one make a continuous study. For it can very well happen that owing to the nature of the staff and children in 1920—say—one will proceed in a manner quite different from one's procedure with the staff and children one has in 1924. For it may be that the staff has increased and so quite changed, and the children will certainly be quite different. In face of this situation the neatest possible sections 1 to 12 would be of no use. Experience gained day by day in the classroom is the only thing that counts.

Thus the heart of the Waldorf School, if I speak of its organisation, is the teachers' staff meeting. These staff meetings are held periodically, and when I can be in Stuttgart they are held under my guidance, but in other circumstances they are held at frequent intervals. Here, before the assembled staff, every teacher throughout the school will discuss the experiences he has in his class in all detail. Thus these constant staff meetings tend to make the school into an organism in the same way as the human body is an organism by virtue of its heart. Now what matters in these staff meetings is not so much the principles but the readiness of all teachers to live together in goodwill, and the abstention from any form of rivalry. And it matters supremely that a suggestion made to another teacher only proves helpful when one has the right love for every single child. And by this I do not mean the kind of love which is often spoken about, but the love which belongs to an artistic teacher.

Now this love has a different nuance from ordinary love. Neither is it the same as the sympathy one can feel for a sick man, as a man, though this is a love of humanity. But in order to treat a sick man one must also be able—and here please do not misunderstand me—one must also be able to love the illness. One must be able to speak of a beautiful illness. Naturally for the patient it is very bad, but for him who has to treat it it is a beautiful illness. It can even in certain circumstances be a magnificent illness. It may be very bad indeed for the patient but for the man whose task it is to enter into it and to treat it lovingly it can be a magnificent illness. Similarly, a boy who is a thorough ne'er-do-well (a ‘Strick’ as we say in German) by his very roguery, his way of being bad, of being a ne'er-do-well can be sometimes so extraordinarily interesting, that one can love him extraordinarily. For instance, we have in the Waldorf School a very interesting case, a very abnormal boy. He has been at the Waldorf School from the beginning, he came straight into the erst class. His characteristic was that he would run at a teacher as soon as he had turned his back, and give him a bang. The teacher treated this rascal with extraordinary love and extraordinary interest. He fondled him, led him back to his place, gave no sign of having noticed that he had been banged from behind. One can only treat this child by taking into consideration his whole heredity and environment. One has to know the parental milieu in which he has grown up, and one must know his pathology. Then, in spite of his rascality one can effect something with him, especially if one can love this form of rascality. There is something lovable about a person who is quite exceptionally rascally.

A teacher has to look upon these things in a different way from the average person. Thus it is very important for him to develop this special love I have spoken of. Then in the staff meeting one can say something to the point. For nothing helps one so much in dealing with normal children as to have observed abnormal children.

You see healthy children are comparatively hard to study for in them every characteristic is toned down. One does not so easily see how it stands with a certain characteristic and what relation it has to others. In an abnormal child, where one character complex predominates one very soon finds the, way to treat this particular character complex, even if it involves a pathological treatment. And this experience can be applied to normal children.

Such then, is the organisation; and such as it is it has brought credit to the Waldorf School in so far as the number of children has rapidly increased; whereas we began the school with about 200 children we now have nearly 700. And these children are of all classes, so that the Waldorf School is now organised as a general school [‘Einbeitschule.’] in the best sense of the word. For most of the classes, particularly in the lower classes, we have had to arrange parallel classes because we received too many children for a single class; thus we have a first class A, and a first class B and so on. This has made, naturally, increasingly great demands on the Waldorf School. For where the whole organisation is to be conceived from out of what life presents, every new child modifies its nature; and the organism with this new member requires a fresh handling and a further study of man.

The arrangement in the Waldorf School is that the main lesson shall take place in the morning. The main lesson begins in winter at 8 or 8:15, in summer a little earlier. The special characteristic of this main lesson is that it does away with the ordinary kind of time table. We have no time table in the ordinary sense of the word, but one subject is taken throughout this erst two hour period in the morning—with a break in it for younger children,—and this subject is carried on for a space of four or six weeks and brought to a certain stage. After that, another subject is taken. For children of higher classes, children of 11, 12, or 13 years old what it comes to is that instead of having: 8 – 9 Religion, 9 – 10 Natural History, from 10 – 11 Arithmetic,—that is, instead of being thrown from one thing to another,—they have for example, in October four weeks of Arithmetic, then three weeks of Natural History, etc.

It might be objected that the children may forget what they learn because a comprehensive subject taken in this way is hard to memorise. This objection must be met by economy in instruction and by the excellence of the teachers. The subjects are recapitulated only in the last weeks of the school year so as to gather up, as it were, all the year's work. In this manner, the child grows right into a subject.

The language lesson, which, with us, is a conversation lesson, forms an exception to this arrangement. For we begin the teaching of languages, as far as we can,—that is English and French—in the youngest classes of the school; and a child learns to speak in the languages concerned from the very beginning. As far as possible, also, the child learns the language without the meaning being translated into his own language. (Translator's Note: i.e. direct method). Thus the word in the foreign language is attached to the object, not to the word in the German language. So that the child learns to know the table anew in some foreign language,—he does not learn the foreign word as a translation of the German word Tisch. Thus he learns to enter right into a language other than his mother tongue; and this becomes especially evident with the younger children. It is our practice moreover to avoid giving the younger children any abstract, theoretical grammar. Not until a child is between 9 and 10 years old can he understand grammar—namely, when he reaches an important turning point of which I shall be speaking when. I deal with the boys and girls of the Waldorf School.

This language teaching mostly takes place between 10 and 12 in the morning. This is the time in which we teach what lies outside the main lesson—which is always held in the first part of the morning. (The Waldorf School began at 8 a.m.) Thus any form of religion teaching is taken at this time. And I shall be speaking further of this teaching of religion, as well as about moral teaching and discipline, when I deal with the theme ‘the boys and girls of the Waldorf School.’ But I want for the moment to emphasise the fact that the afternoon periods are all used for singing, music and eurhythmy lessons. This is so that the child may as far as possible participate with his whole being in all the education and instruction he receives.

The instruction and education can appeal the better to the child's whole nature because it is conceived as a whole in the heart of the teachers' meetings, as I have described. This is particularly noticeable when the education passes over from the more psychic domain into that of physical and practical life. And particular attention is paid in the Waldorf School to this transition into physical and practical life.

Thus we endeavour that the children shall learn to use their hands more and more. Taking as a start, the handling little children do in their toys and games, we develop this into more artistic crafts but still such as come naturally from a child.

This is the sort of thing we produce (Tr. Note: showing toys etc.) this is about the standard reached by the 6th school year. Many of these things belong properly to junior classes, but as I said, we have to make compromises and shall only be able to reach our ideal later on—and then what a child of 11 or 12 now does, a child of 9 will be able to do. The characteristic of this practical work is that it is both spontaneous and artistic. The child works with a will on something of his own choosing, not at a set task. This leads on to handwork or woodwork classes in which the child has to carve and make all kinds of objects of his own planning. And one discovers how much children can bring forth where their education is founded in real life. I will give an example. We get the children to carve things which shall be artistic as well as useful. In this for instance: (Tr. Note: holding up a carved wooden bowl) one can put things. We get the children to carve forms like this so that they may acquire feeling for form and shape sprung from themselves; so that the children shall make something which derives its form from their own will and pleasure. And this brings out a very remarkable thing.

Suppose we have taken human anatomy at some period with this class, a thing which is particularly important for this class in the school (VI). We have explained the forms of the bones, of the skeletal system, to the children, also the external form of the body and the functions of the human organism. And since the teaching has been given in an artistic form, in the manner I have described, the children have been alive to it and have really taken it in. It has reached as far as their will, not merely to the thoughts in their heads. And then, when they come to do things like this (Carved bowl) one sees that it lives on in their hands. The forms will be very different according to what we may have been teaching. It comes out in these forms. From the children's plastic work one can tell what was done in the morning hours from 8 – 10, because the instruction given permeates the whole being.

This is achieved only when one really takes notice of the way things go on in nature. May I say a very heretical thing: people are very fond of giving children dolls, especially a ‘lovely’ doll. They do not see that children really don't want it. They wave it away, but it is pressed upon them. Lovely dolls, all painted! It is much better to give children a handkerchief, or, if that can't be spared, some piece of stuff; tie it together, make the head here, paint in the nose, two eyes etc.—healthy children far prefer to play with these than with ‘lovely’ dolls, because here is something left over for their fantasy; whereas the most magnificent doll, with red cheeks etc., leaves nothing over for the fantasy to do. The fine doll brings inner desolation to the child. (Tr. Dr. Steiner demonstrated what he was saying with his own pocket handkerchief.)

Now, in what way can we draw out of a child the things he makes? Well, when children of our VI^th class in the school come to produce things from their own feeling for form, they look like this,—as you can see from this small specimen we have brought with us. (Wooden doll.) The things are just as they grow from the individual fantasy of any child.

It is very necessary, however, to get the children to see as soon as possible that they want to think of life as innately mobile not innately rigid. Hence, when one is getting the child to create toys,—which for him are serious things, to be taken in earnest,—one must see to it that the things have mobility. You see a thing like this—to my mind a most remarkable fellow—(carved bear)—children do entirely themselves, they also put these strings on it without any outside suggestion,—so that this chap can wag his tongue when pulled: so (bear with attached strings). Or children bring their own fantasy into play: they make a cat, not just a nice cat, but as it strikes them: humped, without more ado and very well carried out.

I hold it to be particularly valuable for children to have to do, even in their toys, with things that move,—not merely with what is at rest, but with things which involve manipulation. Hence children make things which give them enormous joy in the making. They do not only make realistic things, but invent little fellows like these gnomes and suchlike things (Showing toys).

They also discover how to make more complicated things like this; they are not told that this is a thing that can be made, only the child is led on until he comes to make a lively fellow like this of his own accord. (Movable raven. ‘Temperaments Vogel’)—now you can see he looks very depressed and sad.

(The head and tail of the temperament bird can be moved up or down. Dr. Steiner had them both up at first, and then turned them both down.)

And when a child achieves a thing like this (a yellow owl with movable wings) he has wonderful satisfaction. These things are done by children of 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 years old. So far only these older ones have done it, but we intend to introduce it gradually into the younger classes, where of course the forms will be simpler.

Now we have further handwork lessons in addition to this handicraft teaching. And here it should be borne in mind that throughout the Waldorf School boys and girls are taught together in all subjects. Right up to the highest class boys and girls are together for all lessons. (durcheinandersitzen: i.e.=sit side by side, or beside each other.) So that actually, with slight variations of course (and as we build up the higher classes there will naturally have to be differentiation)—but on the whole the boys actually learn to do the same things as the girls. And it is remarkable how gladly little boys will knit and crochet and girls do work that is usually only given to boys. This has a social result also: Mutual understanding between the sexes, a thing of the very first importance to-day. For we are still very unsocial and full of prejudice in this matter. So that it is very good when one has results such as I will now proceed to show.

In Dornach we had a small school of this kind. Now in the name of Swiss freedom it has been forbidden, and the best we can do is to undertake the instruction of more advanced young ladies and gentlemen; for Swiss freedom lays it down that no free schools shall exist in competition with state schools.—Well, of course, such a thing is not a purely pedagogical question.—But in Dornach we tried for a time to run a small school of this nature, and in it boys and girls did their work together. This is a boy's work; it was done in Dornach by a little American boy of about nine years old. (Tea cosy; Kaffee Warmer.) This is the work of a boy not a girl. And in the Waldorf School, as I have said, boys and girls work side by side in the handwork lessons. All kinds of things are made in handwork. And the boys and girls work together quite peaceably. In these two pieces of work, for instance, you will not be able to decide without looking to the detail what difference is to be seen between boys' and girls' work. (Two little cloths).

Now in the top classes which, at the present stage of our growth, contain boys and girls of 16 and 17, we pass on to the teaching of spinning and weaving as an introduction to practical life for the children, so that they may make a con-tact with real life; and here in this one sphere we find a striking difference: the boys do not want to spin like the girls, they want to assist the girls. The girls spin and the boys want to fetch and carry, like attendant knights. This is the only difference we have found so far, that in the spinning lesson the boys want to serve the girls. But apart from this we have found that the boys do every kind of handwork.

You will observe that the aim is to build up the hand-work and needlework lesson in connection with what is learned in the painting lesson. And in the painting lesson the children are not taught to draw (with a brush) or make patterns (‘Sticken’). But they learn to deal freely and spontaneously with the element of colour itself. Thus it is immensely important that children should come to a right experience of colour. If you use the little blocks of colour of the ordinary paint box and let the child dip his brush in them and on the palette and so paint, he will learn nothing. It is necessary that children should learn to live with colour, they must not paint from a palette or block, but from a jar or mug with liquid colour in it, colour dissolved in water. Then a child will come to feel how one colour goes with another, he will feel the inner harmony of colours, he will experience them inwardly. And even if this is difficult and inconvenient—sometimes after the painting lesson the class-room does not look its best, some children are clumsy, others not amenable in the matter of tidiness—even if this, way does give more trouble, yet enormous progress can be made when children get a direct relation to colour in this way, and learn to paint from the living nature of colour itself, not by trying to copy something in a naturalistic way. Then colour mass and colour form come seemingly of their own accord upon the paper. Thus to begin with, both at the Waldorf School and at Dornach, what the children paint is their experience of colour. It is a matter of putting one colour beside another colour, or of enclosing one colour within other colours. In this way the child enters right into colour, and little by little, of his own accord he comes to produce form from out of colour. As you see here, the form arises without any drawing intervening, from out of the colour. (showing paintings by Dornach children). This is done by the some-what more advanced children in Dornach, but the little children are taught on the same principle in the Waldorf School Here, for instance, we have paintings representative of the painting teaching in the Waldorf School which shows the attempt to express colour experience. Here, what is attempted, is not to paint some thing, but to paint experience of colour. The painting of something can come much later on. If the painting of something is begun too soon a sense for living reality is lost and gives place to a sense for what is dead.

If you proceed in this way, when you come to the treatment of any particular object in the world it will be far livelier than it would be without such a foundation. You see children who have previously learned to live in the element of colour, can make the island of Sicily, for instance, look like this, (coloured map) and we get a map. In this way, artistic work is related to the geography teaching.

When the children have acquired a feeling for colour harmony in this way they come on to making useful objects of different kinds. This is not first drawn, but the child has acquired a feeling for colour, and so later he can paint or shape such a thing as this book cover, or folio. The important thing is to arouse in the child a real feeling for life. And colour and form have the power to lead right into life.

Now sometimes you find a terrible thing done: the teacher will let a child make a neckband, and a waist band and a dress hem, and all three will have on them the very same pattern. You see this sometimes. Naturally it is the most horrible thing in the world to an artistic instinct. The child must be taught very early that a band designed for the neck has a tendency to open downwards, it has a downward direction; that a girdle or waistband tends in both directions, (i.e. both upwards and downwards); and that the hem of the dress at the bottom must show an upward tendency away from the bottom. Hence one must not perpetrate the atrocity of teaching the child simply to make an artistic pattern of one kind on a band, but the child must learn how the band should look according to whether it is in one position or another on a person.

In the same way, one should know when making a book cover, that when one looks at a book, and opens it so, there is a difference between the top and the bottom. It is necessary that the child should grow into this feeling for space, this feeling for form. This penetrates right into his limbs. This is a teaching that works far more strongly into the physical organism, than any work in the abstract. Thus the treatment of colour gives rise to the making of all kinds of useful objects; and in the making of these the child really comes to feel colour against colour and form next to form, and that the whole has a certain purpose and therefore I make it like this.

These things in all detail are essential to the vitality of the work. The lesson must be a preparation for life. Now among these exhibits you will find all sorts of interesting things. Here, for instance, is something done by a very little girl, comparatively speaking.

I cannot show you everything in the course of this lecture, but I would like to draw your attention to the many charming objects we have brought with us from the Waldorf School. You will find here two song books composed by Herr Baumann which will show you the kind of songs and music we use in the Waldorf School. Here are various things produced by one of the girls—since owing to the customs we could not bring a great deal with us—in addition to our natural selves. But all these things are carried out plasticly, are modelled, as is shown here. You see the children have charming ideas: (apes); they capture the life in things; these are all carved in wood. (Showing illustrations of wood-carving by children of the Waldorf School reproduced by one of the girls.)

You see here (maps) how fully children enter into life when the principle from which they start is full of life. You can see this very well in the case of these maps: first they have an experience of colour and this is an experience of the soul. A colour experience gives them a soul experience. Here you see Greece experienced in soul. When the child is at home in the element of colour, he grows to feel in geography: I must paint the island of Crete, the island of Candia in a particular colour, and I must paint the coast of Asia Minor so, and the Peleponesus so. The child learns to speak through colour, and thus a map can actually be a production from the innermost depths of the soul.

Think what an experience of the earth the child will have when this is how he has seen it inwardly, when this is how he has painted Candia or Crete or the Peleponesus or Northern Greece; when he has had the feelings which go with such colours as these; then Greece itself can come alive in his soul the child can awaken Greece anew from his own soul. In this way the living reality of the world becomes part of a man's being. And when you later confront the children with the dry reality of everyday life they will meet it in quite a different way, because they have had an artistic, living experience of the elements of colour in their simple paintings, and have learned to use its language.

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.

I alluded yesterday to what takes place when the boys and girls one is educating come to be 14 or 15 years old and reach puberty. At this stage, a teacher who takes his responsibilities seriously will encounter many difficulties. And these difficulties are particularly apparent in a school or college where the education is derived from the nature of man. Now it is out of the question to overcome these difficulties by extraneous discipline. If they are repressed now they will only re-appear later in life in all manner of disguises. It is far better to look them squarely in the face as an intrinsic part of human nature and to deal with them. In a school like the Waldorf School where boys and girls are educated together and are constantly in each others company such difficulties occur very frequently.

We have already referred to the difference between boys and girls which begins to appear about the 10th year. At this age girls begin to grow more vigorously and, particularly, to shoot up in height. Boys growth is delayed until round about puberty. After that, the boys catch up with the girls. For one who observes the one interplay between spirit, soul and body from the standpoint of a true human knowledge, this is of great significance. For growing, the overcoming of the earth's gravity by growth, engages the fundamental being of man, his essential manhood, whereas it is not essentially a concern of the human being whether a certain organic phenomenon appears at one stage or another of his life. For, actually, certain cosmic, extra-human influences which work in upon the human being from the external world affect the female organism more intensely between the 10th and 12th year than they do the male organ-ism. In a certain sense the female organism between the 10th and 12th year partakes even bodily of the super-sensible world.

Please realise the importance of this: between the 10th and 12th year, or the 13th and 14th, the female organism qua organism begins to dwell in a spiritual element. It becomes permeated by spirit at this period. And this affects the processes of the blood in girls in a very special way. During these years the blood circulation is, as it were, in contact with the whole universe. It must take its time from the whole world, from the universe, and be regulated by it. And experiments carried out to find the relationship between the rhythm of pulse and breath between 10 and 12 years, even if done with external instruments, would find the results among girls other than among boys.

The boy of 13 or 14 begins to show a nature hitherto unrevealed, and he also begins to grow more than the girls do. He grows in all directions. He makes up for the delay in his growing. At the same time his relationship to the outer world is quite other than it was in the earlier periods of his life. And so in boys it is the nervous system which is now affected, rather than the circulation of the blood. Thus, it can easily happen that the boy's nervous system gets overstrained if the instruction at school is not given him in the right way. For in these years, the form and content of language, or of the languages he has learned, have an enormous influence upon him. The ideas of men enshrined in language, or in foreign languages, press upon the boy, beset him as it were, while his body grows more delicate. And so at this age the whole world drones and surges within a boy—the world, that is, of this earthly environment.

Thus: in girls a year or two sooner is implanted some-thing of the surrounding universe; in boys earthly environment is implanted through the medium of language. This is apparent externally in the boy's change of voice. And indirectly, in connection with this transformation in the voice enormously important things take place in the boy's whole organism. In the female organism, this rounding off of the voice is very slight. On the other hand in connection with the quickened growing, there has been a preparation in the organism, which is, as it were, a flowing into the maiden of supernal worlds. The recent advances of materialistic science of the world come into their own on a spiritual view.

You see when people hear that a spiritual outlook or spiritual values are upheld somewhere, they are apt to say: O yes, those are queer cranks who scorn the earth and all material things. And then comes the natural scientist and cites the marvellous advances of purely material science in recent centuries. And so people believe that anyone who advocates a thing so alien to the world—not that I mean that Anthroposophy is alien to the world—but that the world is alien to Anthroposophy—but when a strange thing like Anthroposophy appears, people think it is not concerned with material things, or with practical life. But it is precisely Anthroposophy which takes up the latest discoveries of the natural sciences, takes them up with immense love and saturates them with the knowledge that can be got from the spiritual world. So that it is precisely among those who support spiritual philosophy that there exists a true appreciation of materialism, a proper appreciation of materialism. The spiritualist can afford to be a materialist. But the pure materialist loses knowledge of matter when he loses the spirit, all he can observe is the outer appearance of matter. It is just the materialist who loses all insight into material happenings. I call attention to this as it seems to me of great significance.

And you see, when you have the attitude of a Waldorf teacher towards the children you look in quite a different way upon a child who has reached puberty—a child who has just passed through that stage of development which includes the organic changes I have alluded to—you look upon this child in quite a different way from that of a person who knows nothing of all this, who knows nothing of it, that is, from the spiritual point of view.

A boy of 14 or 15 years old echoes in his being the world around him. That is to say: words and their significant content are taken up unconsciously into his nervous system, and they echo and sound on-in his nerves. The boy does not know what to do with himself. Something has come into him which begins to feel foreign to him now that he is 14 or 15. He comes to be puzzled by himself, he feels irresponsible. And one who understands human nature knows well that at no time and to no person, not even to a philosopher, does this two legged being of the Earth called Anthropos seem so great a riddle as he does to a fifteen year old boy. For at this age all the powers of the human soul are beset by mystery. For now the will, the thing most remote from normal consciousness, makes an assault upon the nervous system of the 15 or 16 year old boy.

With girls it is different. But when we aim, as we should aim, at equal treatment for both sexes, at an equal recognition,—a thing which must come in the future—it is all the more important to have clearly in view the distinction between them. So, now, whereas for the boy his own self becomes a problem, he is perplexed by himself,—for girls at this time the problem is the world about them. The girl has taken up into herself something not of the earth. Her whole nature is developing unconsciously within her. And a girl of 14 or 15 is a being who faces the world in amazement, finding it full of problems; above all, a being who seeks in the world ideals to live by. Thus many things in the outer world become enigmatic to a girl at this age.

To a boy the inner world presents many enigmas. To a girl it is the outer world.

One must realise, one must come to feel, that one now has to deal with quite new children—not the same children as before. And this change in each child comes, in some cases, remarkably quickly,—so that a teacher not alive to the transformation going on in the children in his charge may fail to perceive that he is suddenly confronting a new person.

You see, one of the most essential things in the training of the Waldorf School teachers themselves is receptivity to the changes in human nature. And this the teachers have acquired relatively quickly for reasons which I shall explain. A Waldorf teacher—if I may express myself paradoxically—a Waldorf teacher has to be prepared to find a thing completely different tomorrow from what it was yesterday. This is the real secret of his training. For instance: one usually thinks in the evening: tomorrow the sun will rise and things will be the same as they are to-day. Now,—to use a somewhat drastic mode of expression which brings out my meaning—the Waldorf teacher must be prepared for the sun not to rise one day. For only when one views human nature afresh like this, without prejudice from the past, is it possible to apprehend growth and development in human beings. We may repose in the assurance that things out there in the universe will be somewhat conservative. But when it is a case of that transition in human nature from the early years of childhood into the 14th, 15th and 16th year, why then, ladies and gentlemen, the sun that rose earlier often does not rise. Here, in this microcosm, Man, in this Anthropos, so great a change has come about that we face an entirely new situation. As though nature upon some day should confront us with a world of darkness, a world in which our eyes were of no use.

Openness, a readiness to receive new wisdom daily, a disposition which can subdue past knowledge to a latent feeling which leaves the mind clear for what is new,—this it is that keeps a man healthy, fresh and active. And it is this open heart for the changes in life, for its unexpected and continuous freshness, which must form the essential mood and nature of a Waldorf teacher.

How the relationship between boys and girls of this age and their teachers is significantly affected by this change can be seen from an episode which occurred last year in the Waldorf School. One day when I was back once again at the Waldorf School for the purpose of directing the teaching and education—a thing I can only do intermittently—a girl of the top class came to me between lessons, in—what I might call—a mood of suppressed aggression. She was very moved, but she said to me with prodigious inner determination: ‘Can we speak to you to-day—it is very urgent—may the whole class speak to you to-day? (i.e. the top class). But we only want to do it if you wish it.’ You see, she had constituted herself leader of the class and wished to speak to me in the presence of the whole class. What was the reason? The reason was that the boys and girls had come to feel for their part that they were not in touch with the teachers; they found it hard to get in touch with the teachers, to make a right contact with them.

This had not arisen from any grudge against the teachers. For among the children of the Waldorf School there is no grudge against the teachers. On the contrary, even in the short time of the School's existence, the children have come to love their teachers. But these children of the top class, these boys and girls of 15 and 16 now had a terrible fear that owing to the new relationship which had come about between pupils and teachers they might lose this love, this love might diminish. They had a most extraordinary fear of this. And in this case I did not do what perhaps would have been done in past times if children had blurted out this sort of thing,—namely snub them and put them in their places—but I went out to meet them and talked to them. And I spoke to the children—but at this age of course one should call them young ladies and gentlemen, as I said before—I spoke to them in such a way that they could realise I was prepared then and there to discuss the question with them, and together with them come to a conclusion. We will talk to one another without restraint and arrive at some decision together when we see what the matter is:

And then, what came out was what I have just described: a great anxiety lest they should be unable to love the teachers in the same way as before. For an enormous wonder, a great curiosity concerning certain things in the world had entered into the children. And since Waldorf School pedagogy is evolved day by day every occurrence must be carefully studied and educational measures are founded upon living experience.

Now the children said a great deal that was rather remote from the issue, but it seemed immensely important to themselves, and they felt it deeply. Then I said a good many things to them, don't you know, of how one finds this or that in life as time goes on, to which the children eagerly assented. And all that was necessary was to arrange a slight shifting of teachers for the following school year. At the outset of the next school year, I allotted the teaching of languages to a different teacher; I changed the teachers round. What is more, we realised in the college of teachers that this was the method we should use throughout the school, to come to decisions from out of a working in common. But in order to stomach this new position—this meeting with young ladies and gentlemen of this age on equal terms, where one was formerly an authority—in order to be equal to this situation it is essential to have what the Waldorf teachers have—an open outlook on the world, to be a man of the world. We call it in German: to have a Weltanschauung, (a philosophy). Not merely to have taken a training in teaching method, but to have one's own answers to questions as to the fate of humanity, the significance of historical epochs, the meaning of present day life, etc. And these questions must not buzz in one's head, but must be borne in one's heart, then one will have a heartfelt experience of them in company with the children. For in the course of the last four or five hundred years of western civilisation we have entered deeply into intellectualism; this however is unnoticed by the majority of men. But intellectualism is a thing suited naturally only to men of advanced years. The child is naturally averse to intellectualism. And yet all our modern thinking is tinged with intellectualism. The only people who are not intellectual so far are the people over there in Asia and in Russia as far as Moscow (i.e. Asiatic Russia). But west of Moscow as far as America, intellectualism is universal. We are not aware of it, but in so far as we belong to the so-called cultured classes we think a kind of mental language that is incomprehensible to children. And this accounts for the gulf there is nowadays between grown-up people and children. This gulf must be bridged by teachers such as the Waldorf school teachers. (literally: this chasm must be filled up).

And it can only be bridged when one can see deeply into human nature. Allow me therefore, to tell you something of a physiological nature which is not usually taken into account, since it can only be rightly appreciated when it confronts one as a fact of spiritual science, a fact of spiritual knowledge. Now people think that it is a great accomplishment when a thing is put in the form of a concept, when there is an idea, a notion of a thing. But only people who judge everything according to their heads believe this. Truths are often terribly paradoxical. For if we enter into the unconscious, into the heart nature, the feeling nature of man, we find that all concepts, all ideas are bound up for every man—even for a philosopher—with a slight feeling of antipathy; there is something distasteful, disgusting, in the formulating of ideas: whether one is conscious of it or not, there is always something distasteful. Hence it is so enormously important to know that one must not accentuate this hidden unconscious disgust in children by surfeiting them with concepts and ideas. Now you see it comes from the fact that when a man has been thinking, when he has thought hard the inside of his brain presents a curious formation—unfortunately I can only give you results in this account, it would take many lectures to demonstrate it to you physiologically; I can now only give the facts. Now the brain is permeated throughout by deposits, compounds of phosphorus lie all about the brain. These have been deposited during the process of thought. Particularly if one is thinking oneself, thinking one's own thoughts, the brain becomes filled with unreason—forgive the word—full of deposited products such as phosphoric acid compounds; they litter the brain and be-slime it. These excretions, these deposits are only removed from the organism when a man sleeps or rests.

Thus, corresponding to the process of thought is not a process of growth or a process of digestion, but a catabolic process, a breaking down of substances. And when I follow a train of thought with some-one of a certain degree of maturity, i.e. over 14, 15, or 16 years old, together with him I am setting up a catabolic process, a depositing of substance. It brings about the breaking down of substance. And in this separation, this eliminating of substance, he experiences his humanity. (Tr. Note: i.e. it provides a basis for self-consciousness).

Now if, on the other hand, I simply dictate ideas to him, if I give him finite concepts which have been formulated dogmatically I put him into a peculiar state. For these finite concepts can get no hold in human nature, they jostle and press upon one another and can find no entry into the brain, but they beat up against the brain and thus cause it to use up over again in its nerve activity the old deposited substances which lie about.

The effect brought about by all finite intellectual concepts is to compel a man to use over again the cast-off substances which lie about within him; and this gives the human being a feeling of slight disgust, which remains unconscious but which influences his whole disposition so much the more. You see, unless one knows these things, one cannot appreciate their importance. And people do not realise that thinking is a breaking down of substance (ein Absondern), and that thinking in mere ideas forces man to use once again what he has thrown off, to knead up over again all his cast-off phosphoric acid salts.

Now this is of enormous importance in its application to moral education: if we give the child definite precepts in conceptual form, we oblige him to come to morality in the form of ideas, and then antipathy arises; man's inner organism sets itself against abstract moral precepts or commandments, it opposes them. But I can encourage the child to form his own moral sentiments direct from life, from feeling, from example and subsequently lead him on to the breaking down, to the catabolic stage, and get him to formulate moral principles as a free autonomous being. In this case I am helping him to an activity which benefits his entire being. Thus, if I give a child moral precepts I make morality distasteful, disgusting, to him, and this fact plays an important part in modern social life. You have no idea how much disgust human beings have felt for some of the most beautiful, the noblest, the mast majestic of man's moral impulses because they have been presented to them in the form of precepts, in the form of intellectual ideas.

Now the Waldorf teacher comes to learn such things as this through spiritual science. It is indeed this that gives him insight into these material processes. Let me repeat: materialism takes its true place in life only when looked at from the spiritual standpoint. For this gives insight of what is really going on in man. Only through adopting the spiritual standpoint can one become a truly practical educator in the physical sphere.

But such a thing is only possible when the teacher or educator has himself a philosophy of life; when his own view of the world makes him feel the deep significance of the problem of the universe and of man's fate.

And here again I must say an abstract thing, but in reality it is a very concrete thing. It is only apparently abstract. You see, man confronts the riddle of the universe, and he seeks a solution to this riddle. But people suppose nowadays that the solution of the riddle could be put down in some book, stated and expressed in some form of ideas. Remember, however, that there are people—and I have met some of them—who have an extreme horror of such a solution of the riddle of the universe. For they say: if it should really happen that a solution of the riddle of life were discovered and written down in a book, what in Heaven's name are other people who come after them to do? It would be most terribly boring. All contributions to the solution of the world riddle are there to hand, they only require to be learned. And people think this would be colossally boring. I don't altogether blame them; the world really would be a boring place if someone wrote a book containing the answer to the riddle of the universe once and for all, and we could read the book, and then—why then what indeed would remain for us to do in the world?

Now you see there must be something in existence which, when we have the key to it, the so-called solution, calls for further effort on our part, calls upon us to go on and to work on. The riddle of the universe should not be stated as a thing to be solved and done with: the solution of it should give one power to make a new start. And if world problems are rightly understood this comes about. The world presents many problems to us. So many, that we cannot at once even perceive them all By problems I do not only mean those things for which there are abstract answers, but questions as to what we shall do, as to the behaviour of our will and feelings, as to all the many details of life. When I say the world sets us many problems, I mean such questions as these. What then is the real answer to these many problems? The real answer is none other than: man himself. The world is full of riddles and man confronts them. He is a synthesis, a summary, and from man comes to us the answer to the riddle of the universe.

But we do not know man as he should be known. We must begin at the beginning. Man is an answer that takes us back to the beginning. And we must learn to know this answer to our problem, Man, this Oedipus. And this drives us to experience anew the mystery of our own selves. Every new man is a fresh problem to be worked at.

If one desires to be a Waldorf teacher, which means to work from a true philosophy of life, this mysterious relationship between man and the world must have become second nature; (literal translation: it must become an unconscious wisdom of the feelings.) Certainly people take alarm to-day if one says: the Waldorf teachers start from Anthroposophy: this gives them their vision. For how if this Anthroposophy should be very imperfect? That may be. Produce other philosophies then, which you think are better. But a philosophy is a necessity to one who has to deal with human beings as an artist. And this is what teaching involves.

How far the anthroposophical attitude to things contains something helpful alike to education and teaching will be the subject of the third part of my lecture to-day.

When I look back over these nine lectures, I find much to criticise, much that is imperfect, but the most regrettable thing about them is that I should have given them at all in the form in which I have given them. I would far rather not have had to give these lectures—paradoxical as this may sound. That I should have had to give them is in keeping with the spirit of the time, far too much so, for it seems to me that there is an incredible amount of talk about the nature of education and teaching in our age, far too rich; people seem, driven far too much to discuss the question: how shall we educate, how shall we teach? And when one has to enter into these questions oneself, even though it is from a different stand-point, one realises how much too much of it there is.

But why is it there is so much talk today about education and teaching? Almost every little town you come to announces lectures on how to educate, how to teach. Now how does it come about that there is so much discussion of this subject, so many conferences and talks everywhere? If we look back to earlier ages of human history we shall not find people talking nearly so much about education. Edu-cation was a thing people did naively, by instinct, and they knew what they were about.

Now I have said that a truly healthy education, a healthy instruction, must be based on a knowledge of man, and that the staff of the Waldorf School has to acquire this knowledge of man in the way I have shown, and it may well be asked: did the men of earlier ages then possess a knowledge of man so infinitely greater than ours? Strange as it may seem, the answer is: yes. Certainly men of former ages were not so enlightened in the domain of natural science as we are; but earlier men knew more about man in their own way than we do. I mentioned before in these lectures that man has gradually come to be regarded by us as a final product. We contemplate all the other creatures in the world and say: they have evolved up to man, the final product; and here we stop and we say extraordinarily little about man himself. Our physiology even tries to find explanations of man in the experiments done upon animals. We have lost the ability to give man a position in the world as a thing in himself. To a large extent we have lost the being of man.

Now anthroposophy seeks to give mankind once more that knowledge of the world which shall not exclude man himself, which shall not regard him at most as the latest of the organisms. But a knowledge of the world where what one knows about the world truly gives a power to see into the real nature of man, to know him in soul, in body and in spirit. Further, that one shall be able to know what the spirit actually does in man; that one shall know: the intellectual form of the spirit breaks down substances, in the way I described. Now our present way of considering history does not attain this. It makes a halt on reaching man and classifies him with the animals. It formulates a biology, and connects this with physiology; but there is no grasp of what man is. As a result, men act to-day a great deal out of instinct; but as an object of knowledge, of science, there man is not favoured.

The teacher requires a science which will enable him to love man once more—because he can first love his own knowledge. There is much wisdom behind the fact that formerly men did not speak simply of acquiring knowledge, but they spoke of philosophia, of a love of knowledge. Anthroposophy would bring it about that mankind should once more have knowledge which can lead to knowledge of man.

Now, when one knows the human being, when all know-ledge and science centres in man, then one can find the answer to educational questions in every part of one's philosophy. The discoveries and the knowledge required, even about children, are to be found on all hands. And it is this that we need. It is because our ordinary science can tell us nothing about education or instruction that we make extra institutions and have to talk so much about education and teaching. Such lectures as these will only have achieved their object when they shall have become superfluous, namely, when there shall no longer be any necessity to treat this as a special theme, when we shall once again possess a philosophy, a knowledge of the world in which education is implicit so that a teacher having this knowledge is also possessed of the art of education, and can exercise it spontaneously, instinctively. Our need to talk so much about education shows how little impulse for education is contained in the rest of our knowledge.

We need a complete change of direction.

This is the real reason why the Waldorf Teachers do not cultivate a definite and separate pedagogy and didactic, but cultivate a philosophy of life which by teaching them knowledge of man makes it possible for them to have spontaneous impulses for education, to be naive once more in education. And this explains why, in speaking of a Waldorf Teacher one must speak of man as a whole.

This also precludes there being anything fanatical about Waldorf School education. Fanaticism—which is so rife among men—is here ruled out. Fanaticism is the worst thing in the world, particularly in education,—a fanaticism which makes a man press on in one direction and push ahead regardless of anything but his one aim, reduced to precise slogans.

But if one looks at the world, without prejudice one will concede: views and opinions are but views and opinions. If I have a tree here and photograph it, I have one view of it; the view from here has a definite form; but the view is different from here, and again different from over there; so that you might think it was not the same tree if you only had the pictures to go by. In the same way there are points of view in the world, there are outlooks. Each one only regards one aspect of things. If you know that things must be looked upon from the most manifold standpoints you avoid fanaticism and dwell in many-sidedness, in a universality.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if one realises that what people say in the world is for the most part not wrong, only one-sided: that one needs to take the other view into consideration, that all that is necessary is to see the other side also—then one will find goodness everywhere. Hence it is so strange when one is talking of Waldorf education and A. comes and says: Yes, we do this already, but B. does it all wrong. And then B. comes and says: We do this, but A. does it badly. Now a Waldorf teacher would say A. has his good points and R. has his good points; and we seek to use what can be found universally. That is why one hears so often: Waldorf School pedagogy says the same things that we say ourselves. But this is not so, rather we say things which others afterwards can assent to because we know that a fanatical pursuit of one definite line works the utmost damage. And it is essential for the Waldorf teacher to be free from any kind of fanaticism, and confront purely the reality of the growing child.

True, many people may say: there is an Anthroposophical movement, we have met many fanatics in it. But if they look into things more closely they will find: the aim of Anthroposophy is to make knowledge universal and to spiritualise it. That it is called Anthroposophy is a matter of indifference, as I have explained. Actually, it has no other object but the making universal once more what has become one-sided. If, nevertheless, people have found fanaticism, dogmatism, a swearing by definite precepts, within the Anthroposophical movement, this has come in from outside, it is not inherent in the movement; for much is caned into the movement which does not accord with its nature and being. Therefore when it is said that there is also a sect of some kind behind the Waldorf School principles, where people indulge all kinds of crazes, one should study the matter properly and find out the facts and what it is the Waldorf School lives by. Then one will see that Anthroposophy can indeed give life to education and teaching, and that, far from pursuing anything preposterous or falsely idealistic it seeks only to realise the human ideal in living human beings.

And with this indication that the life that speaks through the Waldorf teacher is derived from this source I will bring these lectures to a close. And let me add that although I said that I regretted that these lectures had had to be given—nevertheless it has been a great, joy to me to give them and I thank the honourable audience for the attention and interest they have accorded them.

At the opening of this conference, I want to extend my warmest greetings to you all. Had you come some four or five months earlier, I would have welcomed you in the building we called the Goetheanum, which stood over there. The artistic forms of its architecture and its interior design would have been a constant reminder of what was intended to go out into the world from this Goetheanum. However, the misfortune that befell us on New Year's night and inflicted such grievous pain on all who loved this building, has robbed us of the Goetheanum. And so, for the time being, we shall have to nurture the spirit—without its proper earthly home—that would have reigned within this material, artistic sheath.

It gives me great joy to welcome those of you who have come from Switzerland, and who have displayed, through your coming, real evidence of your interest in our educational goals, even though they have been received recently in Switzerland with enmity. With equal joy and gratification I want to welcome the many friends of Waldorf Education—or those wishing to become its friends—who have come from Czechoslovakia. Your presence confirms to me that education involves one of the most crucial questions of our time, and that it will receive the impetus it needs and deserves only if it is seen in this light by the various members of the teaching profession.

Furthermore, I welcome those of you who have come from other countries, and who show, through your presence, that what is being worked toward here in Dornach is not just a matter of cosmopolitan interest, but is also a matter of concern for all of humanity.

And finally I want to greet our friends, the teachers of the Waldorf School. Their primary goal in coming here is to contribute to this conference from their own personal experience. They are deeply connected with our cause, and expressed the wish to support this conference. This is greatly appreciated.

Today, as an introduction, I want to prepare the ground for what will concern us during the next few days. Education is very much in the news today, and many people connected with educating the young are discussing the need for reform. Many different views are expressed—often with considerable enthusiasm—about how education should go through a change, a renewal. And yet, when hearing the various ideas on the subject, one cannot help feeling a certain trepidation, because it is difficult to see how such different views could ever lead to any kind of unity and common purpose, especially since each viewpoint claims to be the only valid one.

But there is another reason for concern. New ideas for education do not cause undue concern in themselves, for the necessities of life usually blunt the sharp edges, causing their own compensations. When one hears nearly everyone call for a renewal in education, yet another problem comes to mind—that is, where does this praiseworthy enthusiasm for better education spring from?

Isn't it prompted by people's memories of unhappy childhood days, of their own deep-seated memories of an unsatisfactory education? But as long as the call for educational reform comes only from these or similar feelings, it merely serves to emphasize personal discontent with one's own schooling. Even if certain educational reformers would not admit this to themselves or to others, by the very nuance of their words they imply dissatisfaction with their own education. And how many people today share this dissatisfaction! It is little wonder if the call for a change in education grows stronger every day.

This educational dilemma, however, raises two questions, neither of which is comforting. First, if one's education was bad, and if as a child one was exposed to its many harmful effects, how can one know what constitutes proper educational reform? Where can better ways of educating the young be found? The second question arises from listening to what certain people say about their own education. And here I want to give you a practical example because, rather than presenting theories during this conference, I want to approach our theme in practical terms.

A few days ago a book appeared on the market that, in itself, did not draw my particular interest. Nevertheless it is interesting because in the first few chapters the author, an outstanding person who has become world-famous, speaks very much about his early school days. I am referring to the memoirs of Rabindranath Tagore,¹ which have just been published. Although I do not have the same interest in this person that many Europeans do, in regard to educational matters his memoirs do contain some noteworthy and pertinent details.

I am sure that you would agree that the most beautiful memories of one's early school days—however wonderful these may have been—will hardly consist of fragmentary details of what happened in certain lessons. Indeed, it would be sad if this were so, because what affects children during lessons should become transformed into life habits and skills. In later life we should not be plagued by the details of what we once learned at school, for these must flow together into the great stream of life. Couldn't we say that our most beautiful recollections of school are concerned with the different teachers we had? It is a blessing if, in later years, one can look back with deep, inner satisfaction at having been taught by one or another admired teacher. Such an education is of value for the whole of one's life. It is important that teachers call forth such feelings in their pupils; this also belongs to the art of education.

If we look at some of the passages in Tagore's memoirs from this perspective, we find that he does not talk of his teachers with much reverence and admiration. To quote an example, he says, “One of our teachers in the elementary school also gave us private lessons at home. His body was emaciated, his face desiccated, and his voice sharp. He looked like a veritable cane.” One might easily imagine—especially here in our Western civilization, often criticized strongly in the East—that the wrongs of education would hardly be so vehemently emphasized by an Asian. But here you have an example of how an Eastern personality, now world-famous, looks back at his school days in India. And so I shall use a word that Tagore also mentions in his book—that is, “miserable school.” The meaning of this expression is not confined to European countries, but seems to express a worldwide cultural problem. Later on we shall have to say much more about what teachers must do to kindle genuine interest for what they bring to their pupils.

But now I shall give you another example from Tagore's memoirs of how his English teacher approached this task. Tagore writes, “When I think back on his lessons, I cannot really say that Aghor Babu was a hard taskmaster. He did not rule us with the cane.” To us, such a remark would point to times long past, long superseded. The fact that Tagore speaks so much in his book about the cane indicates something we would consider culturally primitive. I believe that such a comment is justified when reading Tagore's description, not just about one of his teachers “looking like a veritable cane,” but also when he points out that another teacher actually did not use the cane. Speaking of this other teacher, Tagore continues, “Even when reprimanding us he did not shout at us. But, whatever his positive sides may have been, his lessons were given in the evening, and his subject was English. I am sure that even an angel would have appeared to a Bengali boy like a true messenger of Mamas (The God of Death), had he come to him in the evening after the `miserable school' of the day, kindling a comfortless, dim lamp, in order to teach English.”

Well, here you have an example of how a famous Indian speaks about his education. But Tagore also writes about how each child brings certain needs to education. He points out in a very practical way how such needs should be met, and how this did not happen in his case. I will leave it to you to interpret this situation in Western terms. To me it seems very good to look at such matters from a global perspective, matters that—if quoted in a European context—could very well arouse strong criticism. Tagore continues:

From time to time Aghor Babu tried to introduce a refreshing scientific breeze into the dry routine of the class room. One day he pulled from his pocket a little parcel wrapped in paper, saying, “Today I want to show you one of the Creator's wonderful works of art.” Unwrapping the paper, he showed a human larynx, which he used to explain to us the wonders of its mechanism.

I still remember the shock this gave me, for I had always thought that speech came from the entire human being. I did not have the slightest inkling that the activity of speaking could thus be isolated from the whole human organism. However perfect the mechanism of each single part might be, surely it would always amount to less than the complete human being. Not that I consciously realized this, but at the bottom of my feelings it was distasteful. The fact that the teacher had lost sight of such a truth must have been the reason why his pupil could not share in his enthusiasm for this kind of demonstration.

Well, this was the first shock when the nature of the human being was introduced to the boy. But another one, worse still, was to follow. Tagore continues:

On another occasion he took us into the dissecting room of the local medical school.² The corpse of an old woman was lying on a table. This in itself did not particularly disturb me. But an amputated leg, which was lying on the floor, completely threw me off my balance. The sight of a human being in such a state of fragmentation seemed so dreadful, so utterly lacking in sense to me, that I could not shake off the impression of this dark and expressionless leg for many days to come.

This example illustrates the reaction of a young person introduced to anatomy. Fundamentally speaking, this procedure is adopted in education only because it is in line with the orthodox scientific approach. And since the teacher has indeed gone through scientific training, it is naturally assumed to be a wonderful idea to demonstrate the mechanics of human speech with a model of the larynx, or to explain physiological anatomy with the aid of an amputated leg, for contemporary scientific thinking does not consider it necessary to look at the human being as a whole.

However, these are not yet the primary reasons for selecting certain passages from Tagore's memoirs—of which we will say more later on, not because of their connection with Tagore, but because they belong to the theme of our conference. First, I want to make another point.

Anyone judging Tagore's literary merits will correctly recognize in him an outstanding individual. In the autobiography of this distinguished author we read about his dreadful education. Doesn't this encourage a strange thought—that his poor education did not seem to harm his further development? Couldn't one conclude that a thoroughly bad education doesn't necessarily inflict permanent or serious harm? For did Tagore not demonstrate that despite this, he was able to grow into a good, even a famous person? (Examples like this could be multiplied by the hundreds, though they may be less spectacular.)

Considering the myriad impulses for educational reform, one could easily be pulled in two directions. On the one hand, how can anyone possibly be in a position to improve education if one has had the misfortune of suffering from a bad one? On the other hand, if “miserable school” has not prevented someone from becoming, not just a good, but even a great and famous person, then a bad education cannot do permanent harm. Is there any point in lavishing so much care on attempts to improve education? From a superficial perspective, one might conclude that it would be better to occupy oneself with matters that are more useful than educational reform.

If anthroposophy, which has been much maligned, were merely to offer even more ideas for educational reform, as is generally done, I would not even consider it worthwhile to attempt these in practice. But in reality, anthroposophy is something very different from what most people imagine it to be, for it springs from the deepest needs of our present culture.

Anthroposophy does not proceed, as so many of its enemies do, by shamefully denigrating everything that does not agree with its own principles. Anthroposophy is more than prepared to recognize and acknowledge what is good, wherever it is found. More of this later, for, as I have said already, today's content is intended only as an introduction.

Anthroposophy points to the importance of the scientific achievements of the last three to four centuries and, above all, to those of the nineteenth century, all of which it fully recognizes. At the same time, however, anthroposophy also has the task of observing how these great scientific successes affect the human soul. It would be foolish to think that the ideas of a relatively few scientifically trained experts have little consequence for society as a whole; for even people who know little or nothing about science are influenced by contemporary science in their soul mood and in their life's orientation. Even people of a strictly orthodox religious faith, born of tradition and habit, nevertheless owe their world orientation to the results of orthodox science. The attitude of modern people is colored increasingly by the scientific view with all its tremendous achievements, which cannot be praised highly enough.

Yet the constitution of the human soul has been strangely affected by modern science. Having revealed more and more of outer nature, science has, at the same time, alienated human beings from themselves. What happens when the human being is observed from a scientific perspective? Our attention is drawn first to what has already been discovered very thoroughly in the inert, lifeless world. Then the human being is analyzed according to physiological and chemical components and what was established in the laboratories is then applied to the living human being.

Or else our attention is directed to other realms of nature, to the plant and animal kingdoms. Here scientists are fully aware that they have not been able to establish laws as convincing as those applied to inorganic nature. Nevertheless—at least in the animal realm—what has been discovered is then also related to the human being. This is the reason why “the man in the street” sees the human being as the final evolutionary stage of animals. The evolutionary ladder of the animal species ends with the emergence of the human being. The animals are understood up to a certain point. Their bony structures or muscular configurations are then simply transferred to the human being who, as a result, is considered to represent the most developed animal.

As yet, no true picture of the human being has arisen from these methods, and this will become poignantly clear to us when we focus on education. One could say that whereas in earlier times human beings occupied a central position within the existing world order, they have been displaced, crushed by the weight of geological data, and eliminated from their own sphere by the theory of animal evolution. Merely to trace back one of the ossicles of the human middle ear to the square-bone (Quadratbein) of a lower animal is praised as real progress. This is only one small example, but the way human physical nature reflects the soul and spiritual nature seems to have been entirely disregarded by modern research.

This kind of thing easily escapes notice, because the orthodox approach is simply taken for granted. It is a by-product of our modern culture, and properly so. Indeed, it would have been a sad situation if this change had not occurred, for, with the soul attitude that prevailed before the age of science, humanity could not have progressed properly. Yet today a new insight into human nature is called for, insight based on a scientific mode of thinking, and one that will also shed light on the nature of the entire universe.

I have often tried to show how the general scientific viewpoint—which in itself, can be highly praised—nevertheless can lead to great illusions, simply because of its innate claims of infallibility. If one can prove science wrong on any specific point, the whole thing is relatively simple. But a far more difficult situation arises when, within its own bounds, a scientific claim is correct.

Let me indicate what I mean. What led to a theory such as that of Kant-Laplace?³ Using this theory—which has been modified recently, and is known to practically every educated person—scientists attempt to explain the origin of our Earth and planetary system. In their calculations, some of these scientists went back over long periods of time. When one scientist spoke of some twenty million years, soon enough he was considered naïve by others who spoke in terms of two hundred million years. Then other scientists began to calculate the length of time of certain processes taking place on Earth today. This is a perfectly correct thing to do, because from a strictly material point of view there is nothing else one can do. Sedimentation or metamorphosis of rocks was observed and, from the data gained, a picture was built up that explained certain changes, and the length of time involved was then calculated. For example, if the waters of Niagara Falls have been falling on the rocks below for such and such a period of time, one can calculate the degree of erosion of these rocks. If one now transfers this calculation to another spot somewhere else where considerably more erosion has been found, one can calculate the time this must have required through simple multiplication. Using this method, one might arrive at, let's say, twenty million years, which is quite correct as far as the calculation is concerned.

Similarly, one may start with the present time and, according to another well-known theory, calculate the time it will take for the Earth to become subject to heat death, and so on.

Yet, such a procedure might equally well be applied to a very different situation. Observe, for example, how the human heart changes from year to year. Noting the differences, one could investigate—following the same method applied in the case of Niagara Falls—how this heart must have looked some three hundred years ago, and what it would look like some three hundred years from now. Technically speaking, this method would be analogous to that of determining the times of geological changes and in this sense it would be correct. Observing the heart of a person aged about thirty-five, one would be basing one's calculations on an organ that has been functioning for a considerable length of time. However, one obvious detail has been overlooked—that this particular heart did not exist three hundred years ago, nor will it be there three hundred years from now. Though mathematically speaking the calculation is correct, it has no relationship to reality.

In our current intellectual age we are too preoccupied with whether or not something is correct, whether or not it is logically correct; but we have lost the habit of asking whether it conforms to actual real-life situations. We will confront this problem again and again this week. But it can happen sometimes that, when we follow apparently correct theories, even fundamental issues are simply overlooked. For example, you may have witnessed—I am not implying that as teachers you have actually carried out this experiment yourselves, for present company is always excluded when negative assertions are being made—you may have witnessed how the rotation of the planets around the Sun was graphically illustrated even to a class of young children. A piece of cardboard is cut into a disc and its center is pierced with a pin. A drip of oil is then put onto its surface before the disc is floated on water. When the pin is twirled around to rotate the floating disc, little droplets of oil will shoot off at a tangent, making “little planets”—little oil planets—and in this way a most convincing model of a planetary system has been fabricated. Needless to say, this experiment is supposed to prove the accuracy of the Kant-Laplace theory. Well, as far as one's own morality is concerned, it is virtuous enough to be self-effacing, but in a scientific experiment of this sort, the first requirement is certainly not to omit any essential detail—however small—and to include all existing criteria. And isn't the teacher spinning the disc the most important factor involved? Therefore, this hypothesis would make sense only if it were assumed that, long, long ago, a gigantic schoolmaster once twirled round an immense world-pin, thus spinning our entire planetary system! Otherwise one should not use such a hypothetical experiment.

And so, many elements of an unrealistic soul attitude can be detected where science appears to be most correct, where its findings cannot be contested. Consequently these elements of error easily creep into education. For those who teach are inevitably a product of their own time, and this is as it should be. When they come across such geological calculations or astronomical analogies, everything seems to fit together very nicely. Sometimes one cannot help but feel amazed at the incredible ingenuity of scientific interpretations that, despite their apparent power of conviction, nevertheless, can lead us away from reality. However, as educators we must never deviate from actual reality. In teaching, we face reality all the time, and this must spur us on to greater knowledge of human nature as it really is. In a certain sense this failure to penetrate human nature has already crept into modern-day educational thinking and practice.

I would like to illustrate this point with an example. Whenever you are dealing with children in the classroom, you will find that some are more gifted in one or another subject than others. Most of you will be familiar with the current thoughts and methods regarding this problem. I am referring to them here only to establish mutual understanding. There are different degrees of abilities in children. And how are these dealt with, especially in today's most progressive centers for educational science? From your study of educational literature you probably know about the so-called correlation coefficients recently introduced in schools. According to this method, the correlation coefficient one is written down if a pupil shows an equal aptitude for two different subjects. (Such a thing actually never occurs, but hypothetically it is simply assumed.) If, on the other hand, a natural gift exists for two subjects that are mutually incompatible, the correlation coefficient zero is given. The idea of this method is to test and measure the pupils' various gifts. For example, you may find that drawing and writing carry the correlation coefficient of, let us say, .7. This means that more than half the children who are gifted in drawing also have a natural skill for writing. One also looks for correlation coefficients in other combinations of talents. For example, writing is linked to a pupil's ability to deal with the mother tongue and, in this case, the correlation coefficient is .54. Arithmetic and writing carry the correlation coefficient of .2, arithmetic and drawing .19, and so on. From this it can be seen that arithmetic and drawing are the least compatible partners, whereas writing and drawing are matched most frequently. A natural gift for both the mother tongue and for drawing is found to be equally present in approximately fifty percent of the pupils.

Please note that, on principle, I do not object to this kind of scientific research. It would be wrong to declare that such things should not be investigated. As a matter of fact, I find these things extraordinarily interesting. I am not in the least against such experimental or statistical methods of psychology.

But if their results are directly implemented in education, it is as if you were to ask someone to become a painter without mentioning the importance of having to deal with color. It is as if one were to say instead to such a person, “Look, here is a good book on esthetics. Read the chapter about painting and, in itself, that will make you into a good painter.”

A well-known painter in Munich once told me a story that I have quoted several times. While he was a student at the local arts school, Carriere, [Moritz Carriere (1817–1895) German thinker; published Aesthetics in 1815.] the famous professor of esthetics, was lecturing in Munich. One day the painter and some of his fellow students decided to go and see this famous expert who also lectured on painting. But one visit was enough for them, because, as they put it, all he did was “crow with esthetic delight.”

This is how it strikes me if people think they can benefit their educational practice with the kind of thing mentioned above. Though these experiments may be interesting from a scientific perspective, something very different is needed for the practical classroom situation. It is necessary, for example, that teachers can penetrate human nature so deeply that they can recognize the origin of the skills for drawing and writing within the inner functions, or recognize what enables a pupil to speak the mother tongue well. To achieve such a faculty, a living observation of the human being is required, which eventually may lead one to discover how specific capacities flow out of some children for, let us say, drawing or the skill for their native language. Here, statistics are of little use. One must take a cue from what children reveal of themselves. At most, such statistical evidence may serve as an interesting confirmation afterward. Statistics do have their value, but to believe that they are tools for educational practice only shows the degree of one's alienation from real human nature.

Today, many people look at statistics as a key to understanding human beings. In certain areas of life this is justified. It is possible to build a statistical picture of the human being, but such a picture will not allow us to understand the human being in depth. Think, for instance, of how useful statistics are in their appropriate sphere, such as in insurance. If I want to take out a life insurance policy, I will be asked how old I am, and I must give evidence for the state of my health, and so on. From such data the level of my premium can be worked out very neatly, depending on whether I happen to be a youngster or an old fogy. My life expectancy is then calculated and these details meet exactly the needs of the insurance business. But what if, in my thirty-seventh year, I had taken out a life insurance policy for, let us say, twenty years? Would this make me feel obliged to die at the age of fifty-seven, simply because of what was calculated on paper? To enter fully into the stream of life is something very different from following certain established criteria, however logically correct they may be, or however beneficial they may be in their proper sphere.

When considering the question of aptitude for writing and drawing in children who have recently entered school, one must remember that they have reached the stage of their second dentition. In the coming lectures you will hear more about the different stages of children's development, and about how their ages can be divided into three groups: the period from birth to the change of teeth; from the second dentition to puberty; and the time following puberty. Later we shall go into more detail about what happens in children during these three periods.

For now let us consider this question of writing and drawing. Science, having scrutinized so minutely the three kingdoms of nature that surround us, now transfers the knowledge gained to the human being. Knowledge of the outer world and the mode of thinking about outer nature now becomes the key to understanding the human individual. And yet, if one observes the human being within the human sphere, one will come to recognize the true situation. One only needs the courage to do so with the same accuracy and objectivity used to study outer nature. Current research shows such courage only when observing external nature, but shrinks from applying the same methods in the study of the human being.

Let's look at how the child develops from birth to the change of teeth. This change of teeth is a unique event in life, inasmuch as it occurs only once in life. Now, if you can experience something similar to the feelings Tagore expressed when he saw the amputated leg, you will realize that what is revealed in the change of teeth does not just happen in the jaws, but encompasses the entire human being. You will feel that something must be pervading the whole child until around the age of seven, and that some activity must reach a climax in the change of teeth. This activity is there in its original form until the seventh year, and then it is no longer present in its original state.

When studying physics, for example, scientists have the courage to speak of latent heat as distinct from the various forms of liberated heat. According to this concept, there must be some form of heat that cannot be determined with a thermometer, but can be measured after it has been released. When characterizing these phenomena that occur in nature, scientists have shown courage in their interpretations. However, when the human being becomes the object of study, this courage is no longer there. Otherwise they would not hesitate to state: What has been working until the seventh year in the child, working toward liberation during the change of teeth, must have been connected with the physical organism before becoming freed and reappearing in a different guise as the child's inner soul properties. This same process can also be recognized in other areas of the child's bone formation. One would realize that these newly emerging powers must be the same, although transformed, as what had been active previously in the child's physical organism.

Only courage is needed to look at the human being with the same cognitive powers used to study outer nature, but modern science will not do this. However, if we do this, our attention is drawn toward all that belongs to the bony system, to everything that hardens the human form to give it structure and support. Orthodox physiology might eventually go this far—if not today, then certainly in due time. The most important branches of science are going through considerable changes just now, and the time will come when they will follow the course indicated.

But something else must also be considered. In later years, the child will be introduced to many different subjects, such as geometry. In today's intellectual age, one has an abstract concept of three-dimensional space, to choose a very simple example. One imagines: three lines at right angles to one another hovering about in space and extending to infinity. It is possible to form such a concept abstractly, but in such a case it is not inwardly experienced. And yet, three-dimensional space wants to be experienced as reality. This does happen in a young child, although unconsciously, at the crawling stage when, losing its balance time and again, it will eventually learn to acquire the upright position and achieve equilibrium in the world. Here we have a case of actual experience of three-dimensional space. This is not merely a question of drawing three lines in space, because one of these three dimensions is identical with the human upright position (which we can test by no longer assuming it—that is, by lying horizontally or sleeping). This upright position signals the most fundamental difference between the human being and the animal, because, unlike the human backbone, the animal's spinal column runs parallel to Earth's surface. We experience the second dimension unconsciously every time we stretch our arms sideways. The third dimension moves from our front toward the back.

In reality these three dimensions are experienced concretely as above and below, right and left, forward and backward. What is done in geometry is merely an abstraction. Human beings do experience with their bodies what is shown in geometrical constructions, but only during the age when they are still largely unconscious and dreamy. Later on, these experiences rise into consciousness and assume abstract forms.

With the change of teeth, the forces that cause an inner firmness, an inner consolidation and support, have reached a certain climax. From the moment when the child can stand upright until the inner hardening processes manifest in the change of teeth, the child inwardly tries, although unconsciously, “body geometry” as an activity akin to drawing. When the teeth change, this becomes a soul activity—that is, it enters the realm of the child's soul. We might understand this transformation better through an analogy; just as a sediment falls to the bottom when a chemical solution cools, and leaves the upper part clearer, so there is also a physiological aspect to the hardening process—the sediment, as well as its counterpart: the clear solution within the child's soul realm, which manifests as a faculty for geometrizing, for drawing, and so on.

After this period, we can see the child's soul qualities streaming outward. Just think about how such a discovery engenders real interest in the human being. We shall observe this streaming out in greater detail, and how it is reflected back again, later on.

In this respect everything in life is linked together. What we do to the child not only has an immediate effect, but influences the whole lifetime. Only a few people are prepared to observe a human life as a whole, but most focus their attention on present circumstances only. This is the case, for example, when one creates an experiment concerned only with the present. On the other hand, have you ever observed how the mere presence of some old people can be like a blessing for the others present? They need not even say a word. Goodness radiates from their presence simply through what they have become. And if you now search the biography of such old people, you may find that when they were children they learned to feel reverence quite naturally, without any outer compulsion. I could say equally that they learned how to pray, by which I mean praying in its widest sense, which includes a deep respect and admiration for another human being. I would like to express this thought in the form of a picture. Those who have not learned to fold their hands in prayer during childhood, cannot spread them in blessing in old age.

The different phases of life are all interconnected and it is of great importance in education to take this into full account. We learn a great deal about the child when we recognize how soul forces well forth after they have completed their task of working in the physical body up to the end of the first seven-year period.

Psychologists have made the strangest hypotheses about the interplay of soul and body, whereas one period of life actually sheds light on another. What we can see in the child between the change of teeth and puberty will tell us something about the soul forces previously engaged in working within the child's physical realm. Facts speak for themselves and shed light on one another. Think of how such things will stimulate interest in education! And genuine interest in the human being is needed in education today. Far too many people think about the relationship of body and soul—or of soul and body—only in abstract terms. And because so little of real value has emerged, a rather amusing theory has been formulated—that is, the theory of the so-called psycho-physical parallelism. According to this theory, processes of soul and body run side by side on a parallel course. There is no need to bother about points of intersection, no need to bother about the relationship between body and soul at all, because they supposedly meet at infinity! That is why this theory sounds like a joke.

However, if one allows the guidance of practical experience, one can discover the actual interrelationship between body and soul. One only needs to look over a person's whole life-span. Let us take the example of someone who develops diabetes or rheumatism at a certain age. When trying to find a remedy for such an illness, usually only the present conditions are considered; this, in itself, is quite justified. It is certainly proper to make every effort to heal a sickness whenever it occurs. But if one surveys the whole life of the patient, one may discover that many times diabetes is due to a memory that was overtaxed or developed in the wrong way between the change of teeth and puberty. Health during later years is largely conditioned by the way a person's soul life was developed during childhood. The way a child's memory is trained will affect the metabolism after a certain period of time. For example, if undigested vestiges of memory remain in the soul of a child between seven and fourteen, they will be released approximately between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five as physical residues, which can then lead to rheumatism or diabetes.

It is not an understatement to suggest that teachers should have at least a modicum of medical knowledge at their disposal. It is not right for them to leave everything concerning the child's health to the school doctor, who usually doesn't even know the children. If any profession in our time requires a wider background, education needs it most of all.

This is what I wanted to tell you as an introduction to our conference theme, so that you can judge for yourselves when you hear people say that anthroposophy now dabbles also in education, whereas others believe that it has something valid to say on the subject. Those who are ready to listen will not be swayed by those who have the opinion that there is no real need for education, or that there is no point in discussing it simply because their own experiences in this area have been so frustrating. Anthroposophy begins with an entirely different attitude. It does not simply want to correct old ideas, but begins with a true picture and knowledge of the human being, because, in keeping with human progress, these things have become necessary today.

If you go back to the earlier forms of education, you will discover that they have all arisen from the general culture of their time, from the universal nature of human feelings and experiences. We must rediscover a universal approach, flowing from human nature itself. If I had my way, I would give anthroposophy a new name every day to prevent people from hanging on to its literal meaning, from translating it from the Greek, so they can form judgments accordingly. It is immaterial what name we attach to what is being done here. The only thing that matters is that everything we do here is focused on life's realities and that we never lose sight of them. We must never be tempted to implement sectarian ideas.

And so, looking at education in general, we encounter the opinion that there are already plenty of well-considered educational systems; but since we are all suffering so much from the intellectualism of our times, it would be best if the intellect were banished from education. This is very correct, but then it is concluded that, instead of developing a science of education, again we should appeal to our inherent pedagogical instincts. However desirable this may sound, it is no longer possible today because humankind has moved to a further stage of development. The healthy instincts of the past are no longer with us today. A new and unbiased look at education has to be backed by fully conscious cognition, and this is possible only if our understanding can penetrate the very nature of the human being. This is what anthroposophy is all about.

One more point: intellectualism and abstractions are rampant today to the degree where there is a general feeling that children should be protected from an education that is too intellectual, that their hearts and feelings should also be educated. This is entirely correct, but when looking into educational literature and current practice, one cannot help noticing that such good intentions are not likely to go very far because, once again, they are formulated in a theoretical and abstract way. It is even less clear that this request should be made, not just on behalf of the child, but should be addressed also to the teachers and, most of all, to the pedagogical principles themselves. To do this is my goal. We must not give mere lip service when stating how we wish to educate the heart of the child and not just the intellect, but we should ask ourselves how we can best meet this challenge.

What do we have to do so that education can have a heart again?

• 1. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Indian Bengali poet and novelist; won Nobel prize for literature in 1913; knighted by England, but resigned knighthood (1919) in protest against English repression in Punjab.
• 2. There can be no doubt that Aghor Babu wanted to give his boys a special treat.
• 3. Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827) French astronomer and mathematician. Immanuel Kant (1724–1895) German philosopher.

Once again we would like to try to give you an impression of eurythmy. It is an artistic movement that draws on previously unfamiliar sources and makes use of a new language of forms. Therefore it may be appropriate to say a few words first. I do not intend to explain the performance, which would be inartistic. Every art must speak for itself, and, one should especially not attempt detailed explanations of an art form created to be seen. It should simply be watched.

You will see human figures performing gesture-like movements on stage, primarily with their arms and hands—the most expressive of our limbs—but also with other members of the human organism. You will see individual figures as well as groups of eurythmists, the groups spread in certain spatial relationships and performing various forms and patterns as they move around. None of all these movements and gestures, however, should be viewed as arbitrary or fortuitous, because they are intended to communicate a definite, visible language, or visible music.¹ This is why eurythmy is accompanied either by recitation and declamation—as in the case of poetry—or by various kinds of music.

During the course of life, a human being progresses from the first babbling sounds of a baby, which express only feelings and sensations in primitive form, to articulated speech later on. Similarly, it is also possible to progress from the primitive and natural gestures (“babbling gestures,” I would call them) of ordinary life, which lend clarity, emphasis, or feeling to the spoken word, toward a visible form of speech, created by movements of the entire human organism.

Therefore, what you are about to see on stage is not based on artificially contrived movements, but on exact and careful study (according to Goethe's method of what he called “sensible-supersensible seeing”) of how the spoken word and human song come to be; because, in this case also, one is involved with a kind of gesturing. This form of gesturing, however, does not occur within the ordinary visible human organism, but within the outflowing breath. Naturally, the breath is always directed, partly by human will forces aided by the relevant physical organs, and partly by human thought.

We know that, in speaking, air is moved. If we made a detailed study of the forms of these air movements through which human beings communicate with each another, we would find that a definite flow-form of out-streaming air corresponds to each sound, to each word figuration and to the configuration of each sentence.

Air-forms that flow out more radially from a speaking person arise from the region of the human will, though always through the agency of physical organs, of course, as already mentioned. Sounds that shape these air-gestures into waves of a more “cross-sectional” type—if I may use such a term—stem from human thinking. If we could see these moving-air gestures, just as we can see the human being in motion (and this is possible through sensible-supersensible seeing) we would be presented with a kind of air-image of the human being, or at least of part of the human being. And within this image we would see movement, the movement of flowing air.

These air movements are being studied carefully. But instead of letting the larynx and the other speech organs transform the air-gestures into speech or song, they are turned into gestures performed by the arms, the hands, or the entire human figure, and also by groups of eurythmists moving in specific patterns. Through this arrangement, what happens in ordinary speech or song has now been made visible, and the only difference is that the thought element has been left out of these movements. The thought element always tends to be inartistic and prosaic.

Poets have to struggle against the thought element to express themselves artistically through the medium of language. They have to extract from the thought sphere what language offers them. In a certain sense they try to loosen thoughts from language, retaining only its will element, which they then use to express their soul experiences.

This is why we do not express the more undulating forms of air gestures, which emanate from the thoughts, but rather those that stream radially outward in sound, word, or sentence formation. In performing the appropriate eurythmy movements that accompany the spoken word, a unique opportunity is presented for outwardly expressing, clearly and visibly, what poets have experienced within the soul.

The belief that human souls and spirits are linked to any particular part of the physical body is certainly a kind of prejudice, because in reality the human soul permeates completely the entire organism, even the outermost periphery. It lives in everything expressed outwardly, in every physical manifestation.

Poets experience the meaning of a poem with their entire being, but, strictly speaking, they have to restrain what wants to flow into their limbs. Admittedly, there are only a few poets who really go through this experience. I think one could safely say that of everything being produced in the art of poetry, some ninety-nine percent could just as well be ignored without causing too great a loss in the field of art. But any deeply experienced poetry is encountered by the whole human being, and then soul and spirit are pouring into the individual's entire being. What a poet tries to accomplish through imagination, through the formative, pictorial qualities of sound formation, or through the element of rhythm and beat, as well as through the musical and thematic treatment of sound production, is all achieved basically by allowing the prose meaning of the words to recede, while giving voice to what is truly poetic and artistic. Consequently, for the art of speech to do justice to a poet's work, it must not place the primary emphasis on prose meaning—something that has become much too popular in our inartistic time—but it should concentrate on how the spoken word is formed.

This has been strived for in the art of speech being cultivated here, to which Mrs. Dr. Steiner has devoted herself for a considerable while. If the meaning of the spoken word is stressed in speech, the result will be essentially prose. Although this may seem interesting and intriguing, because it is believed that the personality of the speaker will then be in the limelight, it nevertheless remains inartistic. The artistic approach is in the speaker's ability to bring out various qualities, such as passionate feelings, emotions, and, in the case of thoughts, communication of the ideas themselves, through the pictorial element and plasticity of the sounds as they follow one another; and this is also done through the way diverse sound-nuances mutually affect each other. This cannot be achieved by concentrating on meaning alone. For a thought to be expressed poetically, the form of the thought has to be toned down. The poetic quality of language has to be looked for solely in the way speech is formed.

Apart from the image-creating quality and the plasticity of speech, the essence of recitation is found equally in its musical, beat-directed, and rhythmical aspects. In prose, verses are obviously out of place, but in poetry they are very much necessary, because they offer a kind of meeting ground that, with its rhythmical and musical qualities, is fundamentally important in speech.

In the work of a genuine poet, therefore, a hidden eurythmy is already present in the way language is treated. Thus, there is nothing artificial in eurythmy—indeed, it is entirely natural—and it manifests outwardly what the true poet has subdued, at least to a certain extent. With their entire being poets want to give to the world what they bring down into earthly incarnation. But, being restricted to the medium and use of language, they must artificially restrain certain aspects of what they want to express with a full human quality. This is all released again when transformed into visual expression through the medium of eurythmy. Hearing the speaker's recitation while, at the same time, seeing the soul-spiritual counterpart (which ordinarily flows into the spoken word) in the movements of the performing eurythmists, a direct picture of the full poetic experience is received. Eurythmy really wants to make this inherent poetic experience visible through movement “painted in space.”

If you want to allow eurythmy to work on the soul properly, you must not confuse it with the neighboring arts of mime and dancing; eurythmy is neither one. However, nothing derogatory must be read into my words, because the importance of those two arts is not meant to be minimized or disputed in any way. Nevertheless, eurythmy has its own and distinctly different aspirations. And if some of its gestures appear close to mime, it can only be the result of what I would like to call a “mood of mockery” or scorn inherent in the poetry, or because of an attempt to rise above a given situation. One could compare it to someone making a wry mouth or winking an eye while speaking. Any quasi-mimic eurythmy gestures need to be regarded in this light, and if eurythmists choose to make them, they are justified in doing so. However, I am not referring to the actual art of mime, but only to the odd occasion when eurythmy may slide into a style akin to mime, which, strictly speaking, is unwarranted, because eurythmy then loses its innocence.

Likewise, what I am going to say does not refer to dancing as an art in and of itself, but only to an improper aberration of eurythmy into dancing. It is certainly possible for eurythmy movements to pass over into dancelike movements—for example, if a poem speaks of a person hitting or attacking another, or displaying otherwise passionate conduct. In such instances, eurythmy movements, which are usually entirely contained within the realm of the physical body, can turn into dancelike movements. However, if eurythmy unjustifiably degenerates into dancing, if dancing invades the realm of eurythmy for its own sake, it has a brutalizing effect. Again, I am not saying that the art of dancing is brutal, but that, if eurythmy slides into a form of dancing, it is being brutalized. A genuine appreciation of eurythmy certainly entitles one to state very clearly: Eurythmy is neither a form of mime, which is communicated through suggestive movements, nor is it a form of dance with extravagant and passionate movements, no longer contained within the dancers' sphere of consciousness.

Eurythmy occupies an intermediate position. It neither indulges in ardent or exuberant dance movements, nor does it use pantomimic gestures, which always lean toward becoming intellectual. In eurythmy, expressive and meaningful gestures are performed, which are meant, in their own way, to have an esthetic and artistic effect. These gestures are neither intellectually thought out, nor are they excessive by nature. They are neither to be explained away, nor should they be overpowering to the eurythmist or the onlooker. Through the immediacy of its line and through the entire mode of movement, eurythmy should appear both pleasing and beautiful in the eye of the beholder.

Seeing song or music expressed in movement will also convey a proper impression of what eurythmy is. Soon you will hear pieces of music performed in eurythmy. This tone eurythmy is not dancing either. If done properly, it differs essentially from any kind of dancing. It is singing, not with voices, but with physical movements. It is precisely this singing transformed into visible movement that enables one to differentiate eurythmy from its neighboring arts. Seeing it on stage will help you to gain a true idea of what I have been talking about.

Eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development, and it will need a long time to reach some stage of perfection. This is why, before each performance, I have to ask the audience to be tolerant. During its earlier stages only one side of eurythmy was developed. But, for example, we have added stage lighting to enhance the visual effects of the performing eurythmists. These changing colored lights on the stage are intended to work as a kind of “light eurythmy,” to serve and accompany the movements of the eurythmists, so that the entire stage picture actually becomes one eurythmic expression. However, there is no doubt that stage presentation of eurythmy will be improved in many ways during the coming years.

One can be confident of this future perfecting because eurythmy uses the most perfect instrument available for any artistic expression—that is, the human being, who is a microcosm, a whole world in a small space, containing all the secrets and inherent laws of the universe. For this reason, if all the potentialities offered by the human organism were fully realized, the moving eurythmist would essentially present a true and artistic image of all cosmic secrets and laws. The art of mime uses only one side of the human being, as do the other arts, which also treat the human individual as an instrument, each in its own way. One could say: Eurythmy does not depend on an external instrument, nor on any one part of the human being, but transforms the human entity, and especially the most expressive members—that is, the arms and hands—into visible speech and visible song or music.

One may hope that when the possibilities inherent in eurythmy have been fully developed, a time will come when this youngest of arts will find its place, side by side with the older arts, in its own right.

Regarding Recitation and Eurythmy:

Rudolf Steiner: It is a pity that Mrs. Dr. Steiner, who has developed the art of recitation here in Dornach, has been ill these last few days, and is therefore unable to give us examples of recitation.² The point is this: eurythmy requires one to revive the kind of recitation and declamation cultivated in times more open to an artistic approach to speech than our present times. Our current age is hardly sensitive to artistic refinement. For example, people today would not readily understand why Goethe, like a musical conductor, used a baton when rehearsing his iambic dramas with his actors. In our time, in recitation and declamation—which have to be strictly distinguished from one another—the prose meaning is usually given primary consideration. At least, since the 1890s a strong tendency has developed to assign a more secondary place to the artistic formation of speech, while the prose meaning of a poem is considered to be most important. And yet, the essentials in speech have to be seen in the imaginative formation of the sounds, in the structure of the verses, in the musical and thematic treatment, in rhythm, beat, and in the melodious themes, all of which are fundamental aspects of poetry. Through the way speech is treated, they all have to be lifted to a higher level than possible through prose meaning alone.

The feeling for the artistic element in speech has declined completely in more recent times, as some of our present cultural phenomena will confirm. For instance, I don't believe there are many today who remember, or who have noticed, which university chair the well-known Professor Curtius originally occupied at the University of Berlin. He has been lecturing on art history and other related subjects, but these were not the subjects for which he was originally engaged. In fact, he began his university career as “Professor of Eloquence,” and his real task was to lecture on rhetoric. But interest in this subject waned to the extent that it eventually appeared unnecessary that he continue lecturing about it, and so he quietly slipped into another university chair. Similar symptoms can be encountered frequently today.

If the art of speech is to be resuscitated—preferably more in form of a narrative style, or as the kind of poetry developed by the ancient Greeks—and to revive also the art of declamation, which the older Germanic poetry is based on, it is necessary to do something about speech formation. This is the point.

I don't know what caused this question to be raised, but what matters is that one achieves, through the way speech is treated, what is achieved in prose through the word meaning.

Here the emphasis is not on the prose meaning, but on the way different sounds follow each other, or the uses of rhymes, alliterations, and rhythms—in other words, the element of form in language—which must draw out what the present emphasis on prose meaning achieves today.

Recitation is more closely allied to measure and to the plasticity of language. Its qualities are realized through either a lengthening or shortening of syllables, something that can be especially significant in ballads. In declamation, on the other hand, particular qualities are created by altering the pitch to a higher or lower tone of voice.³ This is not a question of art, but merely a matter of interpretation. It depends entirely on whether the speaker places the main value on the first syllable or on both syllables equally; in other words, “Tell her I send greet-ings,” or, “Tell her I send greet-ings.”

Question: Doesn't this shift the weight of the rhyme?

Rudolf Steiner: This could happen only if one neglected to adapt the other syllables accordingly. It is all a question of mood rather than of how speech is treated.

Question: Isn't there an inherent law expressed in a person's interpretation?

Rudolf Steiner: No; one's interpretation must remain free. It is completely possible to render artistically the same poem in the style of either declamation or recitation. There is room for a great variety of views, just as a musical work can be interpreted in very many ways. There is not just one way of dealing with a poem. What matters is its innate essence, so that when either reciting or declaiming, one no longer has the feeling of doing this with the larynx but of speaking with the air. To develop the gift of shaping air is most important in recitation. When singing, one shapes the air. When reciting there has to be the same tendency, but in speech the melody is already within the sound. The essentials have to be brought out in the way speech is treated, and not through meaning. In this context it is helpful to consider what happened when Schiller wrote his most important poems—that is, he had a general melody in his soul to which he could then write the text he was looking for.⁴ One has to aim at expressing the essentials, on the one hand, through the musical element and, on the other, through the formative and painterly qualities of language.

Question: In the art of dancing, various dancers have different styles. This, presumably, is not the case in eurythmy—or are its movements not always the same?

Rudolf Steiner: You would hardly say that if you saw very much eurythmy! Let us say, for example, that you recited a poem, and another person recited the same poem. Even if you treated the poem in the same way, from an artistic point of view there would still be two different vocal ranges, and so on. This kind of difference already shows very strongly in eurythmy, where you could soon perceive individual characteristics of the various eurythmists; for these differences are there. And if they have not yet become more prominent, it is only because eurythmy has not been developed far enough. That will happen when eurythmy has advanced to the point where eurythmists really become one with their art. Then a more individual interpretation will become more noticeable.

Certainly, in eurythmy all movements are based on fundamental laws. You could find a parallel in speech. If I wish to say “man,” I must not say “moon.” I must not pronounce an oo instead of an a. The eurythmist therefore has to make the appropriate eurythmy gesture for a, but this underlying law in eurythmy still permits a multiplicity of possibilities for bringing out an individual interpretation. We are not concerned here with pedantic or stereotypical movements. You will also see a great difference between a beginner practicing eurythmy and someone who has done it for years, not only in regard to movement skills, but also in the artistry demonstrated. Likewise, an inborn artistic gift will also be clearly perceptible, even more than in other art forms.

Eurythmy is essentially built into the human organism. The human organism incorporates so that—like the other arts, such as painting—it is not absorbed rationally, but nevertheless consciously, whereas dancing goes into the emotional sphere. Other difficulties may arise there. Dancing is not really purely artistic. Eurythmy is an art already.

The course participants expressed the wish to start an association in order to open a Waldorf School in Switzerland. During various discussions the question was raised about the priority to be given the rebuilding of the Goetheanum and to starting a Swiss Waldorf School, since the realization of both projects seemed completely unrealistic.

Rudolf Steiner: To build the Goetheanum again is more or less a matter of course, not just among Swiss circles, but among the wider circles of anthroposophists in the world. During the years when it was standing, the Goetheanum gradually came to be seen as something intended to represent the center of the entire anthroposophical movement. And there will hardly be any doubt among the majority of anthroposophists in the world that the Goetheanum will have to be built again. Hindrances toward this goal could come only from the Swiss authorities. There can be no other hindrances. Unless the authorities make it impossible for us, the Goetheanum will certainly be rebuilt.

On the other hand, while the Goetheanum was standing, the need was felt to open at least a small school.⁵ For whatever springs from the impulses of anthroposophy must, by its very nature, find practical application in life. As you already know, many other practical activities are the outcome of anthroposophical work—for example, in the field of medicine. I want to mention this only for the sake of clarification.

Regarding the possibility of anthroposophical medicine, I also had to stipulate that, if the thought should ever arise of working in medicine on the basis of anthroposophical research, it would be essential for those wishing to dedicate themselves to such a task to be in constant touch with those who are ill through their personal care. This is why our hospitals were opened here in Arlesheim and in Stuttgart. This is only one example to show that, if any impulses in one or another direction are to grow out of anthroposophy, these and other institutions are certain to spring up from sheer necessity. And so, in building this small school, which is closely affiliated with the Goetheanum, and which we shall endeavor to keep going, we have done the only possible thing; we started it because a number of parents, who were convinced of the rightness of Waldorf education, wanted to send us their children. These children were taken away from us again only through the interference of the local authorities. Due to Swiss legislation we were unable to do, even on a smaller scale, what had been possible in Stuttgart, where, due to less restrictive local educational laws, we could open the Waldorf School.

In this regard, world progress has shown some very strange features. Please do not think I am trying to promote conservative or reactionary tendencies by what I am going to say, but it is true that, inasmuch as education is concerned, there was greater freedom during the times when liberalism was nonexistent—not to mention democracy. Lack of freedom has crept in only during the times of liberalism and democracy. I do not even maintain that a lack of freedom and liberalism, or a lack of freedom and democracy, definitely belong together, but that during the course of history they have shown themselves to be closely connected. And the least free of all educational systems (shall I say “in the civilized world?”) is in that part of Europe looked upon by so many West-European “democrats” as a kind of paradise—in Soviet Russia. There freedom is being exterminated root and branch through the most extreme form of “democracy” (as it is called), and an educational system has been set up that presents a caricature of human freedom and activity.

To return to our question: I want to strongly emphasize that rebuilding the Goetheanum is a necessity and that it could be prevented only by outer circumstances. In any case, it should be strived for. As a matter of course, this goal will be resolutely pursued by all those who are serious about anthroposophy. As soon as official matters have been finalized, we shall certainly make every effort in that direction. One can take only one step at a time, if one does not want to proceed in a theoretical way.

It is possible, of course, to make all kinds of decisions, and to think up all kinds of plans, but if one stands firmly on the ground of reality, this can be done only if and when there is a strong enough basis to warrant it.

Naturally, the ideal solution would be to complement naturally what can begin toward a general spiritual and social life through building a new Goetheanum, by also building a Waldorf School. But to move forward in this way, one would first have to overcome the obstacles put in the way by inhibiting interests in this country. For my part, I feel convinced that, if only enough people can be found—and here I am not thinking in terms of majorities—who recognize that such a school is necessary, it will eventually be opened. There is no question that ways and means will be found for it to come into being. Concerning the building of the Goetheanum, matters are not so simple. To bring that about out of the will-forces of Switzerland—if I may put it this way—is not so easy. This would have to be a matter of international effort and cooperation.

Primary schools, on the other hand, arise from the various folk cultures, and in such cases, neither our Waldorf teachers nor I, nor anyone else, has any say in the matter except our dear Swiss friends and visitors. And because of this we feel a great need to hear more about their feelings and attitudes about this point.⁶

After further contributions from various conference members, Rudolf Steiner was asked to speak some final words.

Rudolf Steiner: It is our chairman's opinion that I should say a few words in conclusion. In response, I express my deep inner satisfaction about the best of will and the best of intentions that our honored visitors, gathered here, have shown during this conference. And I must say that every time we come together like this is a joyful event, because it causes those who participate to realize that what is being cultivated here in Dornach is very different from the current misrepresentations among so many people. If there are enough people who, through their own experience, come to realize how many falsehoods are being spread about what is really happening in Dornach, then the time will come when the intentions here—however feeble our beginnings may be—will reach the world more freely.

Of course, not everyone is in a position to perceive clearly the strange distortions of what is happening here in Dornach. There are moments when one cannot help feeling amazed at the lack of morality shown by the public, and at the general indifference toward flagrant distortions and falsifications, which really belong to the realm of immorality. One can only wonder how it is possible that such perversions of truth are taken in with particular apathy. Matters have gone so far that if this subject is touched on, one is almost met with incredulity.

Just yesterday the name of a person who commands a large audience here in Switzerland was mentioned. If now one feels it necessary to state that this person criticized my book Towards Social Renewal even before it was published—that is, before he could possibly have read a single word contained in it—the untruth of such criticism spread by a considerably famous person will hardly raise an eyebrow.⁷ This is how great and widespread the general apathy is today concerning ethical matters. Through such apathy, these negative influences gather momentum. They increase tremendously.

About two years ago, a certain matter was spoken of repeatedly—that a theologian had written a booklet in Switzerland, in which the bizarre words were printed that, here in Dornach, a wooden sculpture was to be erected, which could already be seen in the studio, and which bore luciferic features in the upper part and animal-like features below.⁸ The fact is that the main figure of this sculpture shows the features of Christ in ideal form, while the lower part of the carving is still incomplete. When he was called on it, the author of the booklet simply declared that he had copied the offending words from somebody else's writings; and this despite the fact that the author of the pamphlet was a well-known person in Switzerland! This incident has been brought to the notice of our circle here several times, and not without a decisive edge. But, due to the general indifference concerning moral matters, our words have fallen on deaf ears, instead of being passed to widest circles as an example of how strong the inclinations are—even in famous people—to distort anthroposophy and everything belonging to it by spreading untruths and gross inaccuracies.

Well, one could continue in this vein, but I am afraid that if I were to tell you even a small part of the untruths, real untruths being spread about anthroposophy, we could not go home before sunrise and, naturally, we have no desire for that. Nevertheless, the situation is such that it must again be pointed out how everything is becoming so difficult for us because of the falsehoods about Dornach and all that belongs to it, untruths being disseminated in most underhanded ways, and also because of the general indifference toward these perversions of the truth. I am not begging you to come to the defense of Dornach—certainly not. And yet, there is something of real significance in all this.

Many people hold the view that there must be complete freedom to express one's opinion. Certainly, everybody is entitled to a personal opinion, and no one can support this point of view more strongly than I do. It is a matter of course that everyone must be free to have an individual opinion and also to express it. But no one should spread lies in the world without hearing an appropriate and authoritative answer. It is the spreading of lies that causes the greatest disturbances in the world. To make people see this is one of the most difficult things we have to contend with here in Dornach. We have very many good friends, but the enthusiasm for defending the truth by rectifying false accounts of what emanates from Dornach has not yet become very strong. Our difficulties are more connected with these things than one might think.

For example, not long ago I was faced with a large number of lies, of untrue judgments, personally aimed at me. Since, in this particular case, it was very important for me to rectify judgments that people might form on the basis of these lies, I asked, “What would happen if, in order to disprove all these untruths, I were to submit within a short time documentary evidence, clearly set out and concisely written for quick and easy reading?” The answer was: “It would not alter the situation in any way.” Here you have some indication of the difficulties that could be said to be at the root of our troubles. Rectifying the many falsehoods about Dornach, scattered far and wide, would certainly be a most desirable thing. The collection of funds for the creation of a Swiss School Association would not be so difficult if there were less distrust everywhere.

But I believe this lack of trust will persist as long as one is not in the position of placing the actual facts side by side with lies, and as long as one cannot count on a enough people who are not only capable of discriminating between truth and untruth, but who are also willing to stand up for the truth.

Things have come to such a state that, very recently, I had to say to a number of people: “To prove the truth about our anthroposophical cause would bring us the greatest of harm because we would be much less unpopular if the lies about us were correct. In that case people could vilify us without any qualms. But those who stand behind these lies about Dornach and anthroposophy know very well that they are scattering lies. Thus, to prove them wrong would cause them the greatest of discomfort. This is also how things are where personal matters are concerned. I am not exposing this situation to you merely to talk about it once again, but rather to look at it as the shadow cast by light. In order to give light its proper brightness, there has to be some shadow, and the brighter the light, the darker the accompanying shadow.

I put these things before you as the counterpart of the positive side. But just because they are there, you may believe me that it gives me all the more joy to have witnessed how so many among you have spoken tonight about your deeply-felt desire to do something for the cause represented here. In expressing my heartfelt satisfaction to you, I also wish to put the light next to the shadow, which—as already said—was placed before you only to let the light shine more brightly. Because so many of our honored visitors, dear to us, have spoken with voices of such deep concern about our anthroposophical cause, this light has been shining especially brightly.

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, An Introduction to Eurythmy, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1984; and Eurythmy as Visible Speech, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1984.
• 2. In cooperation with Rudolf Steiner, Marie Steiner-von Sivers (1867–1948) developed the Goethean stage arts—that is, Speech Formation and Eurythmy. See: Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Speech and Drama, Anthroposophic and Rudolf Steiner Press, Hudson, NY, 1959.
• 3. The questioner had noticed that in the word greeting, the first and second syllable had been pronounced with equal stress.
• 4. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German poet, playwright, and critic; he had been a surgeon and history professor, and became a friend of Goethe.
• 5. The Fortbildungsschule was opened in 1921 for the children of co-workers in the Goetheanum. However, since private schools for young pupils were not permitted in the Swiss Canton of Solothurn, this edict being nullified only in 1976, it had to be closed down again. The school was reopened later for pupils fourteen and older.
• 6. This remark led to an exchange of views. As early as January 1923, in response to Rudolf Steiner's advice, the “Swiss Association for Freedom in Education” was founded in order to open a Waldorf school in Basel. Rudolf Steiner actively participated in the preparations for the formation of this association and became a leading member of it. He also worked toward opening the school. Together with Albert Steffen, he called on the Director of Education in Basel to clarify various practical points, and he found Privy Councilor Hauser helpful and cooperative. The Basel Waldorf school was finally opened in 1926, about a year after Rudolf Steiner's death. The second Goetheanum, built after Steiner's model, was begun in 1924 and completed in 1928.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, Towards Social Renewal, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977.
• 8. The then-unfinished statue of The Representative of Humankind, as Rudolf Steiner called it, was still in the studio when the Goetheanum burned down. Today it can be seen in the “Group Room” in the second Goetheanum.

To begin with we will try to understand more fully the nature of the growing human being, bearing in mind the later stages in life, in order to draw conclusions about education from our findings.

Knowledge of the human being made possible through anthroposophical research—as outlined briefly yesterday—fundamentally differs from the findings of modern science and other research. The knowledge of the human being produced by our contemporary civilization is based mainly on what remains when the human spirit and part of the human soul are ignored. Such knowledge rests on what can be found, both anatomically and physiologically, when one looks at a corpse. Furthermore, it is supported by investigations into pathological changes, due to illness or other causes, from which conclusions are drawn with regard to the healthy human being. What is gained through this approach then forms the background for the attitude from which judgments are made regarding the living, healthy human being.

The anthroposophical approach begins by looking at the human being as an entity, an organization of body, soul, and spirit. It attempts to comprehend the human being not in an abstract and dead way, but through a living mode of observation that can recognize and comprehend with living concepts the human totality of spirit, soul, and body. This approach enables us to perceive accurately the various metamorphoses that take place during a lifetime. Children are different beings depending on whether they are going through the development between birth and change of teeth, or between the second dentition and puberty—the latter period being the time when they are in the care of the class teacher—or during the stage following puberty. Human beings are completely different creatures depending on which of these three stages they are going through. But the differences are so deeply hidden that they escape a more external form of observation. This external method of observation does not lead to a clear perception and judgment of how body, soul, and spirit are permeated by spirit in entirely different ways during each of the first three periods of life.

It would surely not be proper for teachers to first acquire theoretical knowledge and then to think: What I have learned in theory I will now apply in my teaching in one way or another. With this attitude they would only distance themselves from the child's true being. Teachers need to transform their knowledge of the human being into a kind of higher instinct whereby they can respond properly to whatever comes from each individual child. This is another way that anthroposophical knowledge of the human being differs from the usual kind, and can lead to a routine approach to education at best, but not to a firmly founded pedagogical sense and teaching practice. To achieve this, one's knowledge of human nature must be capable of becoming pedagogical instinct the moment one has to deal with a child, so that in response to all that comes from the child one knows instantly and exactly what must be done in every single case. If I may use a comparison, there are all kinds of theories about what we should eat or drink, but in ordinary life we do not usually follow such theoretical directions. We drink when thirsty and eat when hungry, according to the constitution of the human organism. Eating and drinking follow a certain rhythmical pattern for good reasons, but usually one eats and drinks when hungry or thirsty; life itself sees to that.

Now, knowledge of the human being, which forms the basis of a sound and practical way of teaching, must create in the teachers, every time they face a child, something like the relationship between hunger and eating. The teachers' response to a given pedagogical situation has to become as natural as satisfying a sensation of hunger by eating. This is only possible if knowledge of the human being has permeated flesh and blood as well as soul and spirit, so that you intuitively know what needs to be done every time you face a child. Only if your knowledge of human beings has such inner fullness that it can become instinctive can it lead to the proper kind of practical teaching. It will not happen on the basis of psychological experiments leading to theories about pupils' powers of memory, concentration, and so on. In that case, intellectual ideas are inserted between theory and practice. This presents an unreal situation that externalizes all educational methods and practice. The first thing to be aimed for is a living comprehension of the child in all its pulsing life.

Let's look now at young children as they grow into earthly life. Let our observations be straightforward and simple, and we shall find that there are three things with which they have to come to terms, three activities that become a decisive factor for the entire life to come. These are what are simply called walking, speaking, and thinking.

The German poet Jean Paul—this is the name he gave himself—once said: “The human being learns more for the whole of life during the first three years than he does during his three years at university.”¹ This is entirely true; it is a fact. For even if academic studies nowadays extend over longer periods of time, their gain for life amounts to less than what is acquired for the whole of life during the time when children are learning how to walk, speak, and think.

What does it actually mean when we say the child is learning to walk, speak, and think? The capacity to walk comprises far more than is generally realized. It is by no means simply a case of the young child—after the stage of crawling—managing to stand up and take the first steps in order to develop what will eventually become an individual and characteristic way of walking. An inner adjustment underlies learning to walk; there is an inner orientation of the young child. The equilibrium of the organism, with all its possibilities for movement, becomes related to the equilibrium and all the possibilities for movement of the whole universe, because the child stands within it. While learning to walk, children are seeking to relate their own equilibrium to that of the entire cosmos.

They are also seeking the specifically human relationship between the activities of arms and hands and those of the lower limbs. The movements of arms and hands have a special affinity to the life of the soul, while those of the legs lag behind, serving more the physical body. This is of immense importance for the whole of later life. The differentiation between the activities of legs and feet and those of arms and hands represents the human quest for balance of soul that is lifelong.

When raising themselves up, young children are first of all seeking physical balance. But when freely moving arms and hands, they are also seeking balance of soul. There is infinitely more than meets the eye hidden behind what is commonly called “learning to walk,” as everyone can find out. The expression “learning to walk” signifies only the most obvious and outwardly important aspect perceptible to our senses. A deeper look at this phenomenon would make one wish to characterize it in the following way. To learn to walk is to learn to experience the principles of statics and dynamics² in one's own inner being and to relate these to the entire universe. Better still, to learn to walk is to meet the forces of statics and dynamics both in body and soul and to relate these experiences to the whole cosmos. This is what learning to walk is all about. But through the fact that the movements of arms and hands have become emancipated from those of the legs and feet, something else has happened. A basis has been created for attaining a purely human development. Thus, the child who is learning to walk adapts itself outwardly to the external, visible world with its own rhythms and beat, as well as inwardly with its entire inner being.

So you see that something very noteworthy is woven into the development of the human being. The activities of the legs, in a certain way, have the effect of producing in the physical and soul life a stronger connection with what is of the nature of beat, of what cuts into life. In the characteristic attunement of the movements of right and left leg, we learn to relate ourselves to what lies below our feet. And then, through the emancipation of the movements of our arms from those of our legs, a new musical and melodious element is introduced into the beat and rhythm provided by the activities of our legs. The content of our lives—or one might say, the themes of our lives—comes to the fore in the movements of our arms. Their activity, in turn, forms the basis for what is being developed when the child is learning to speak. Outwardly, this is already shown through the fact that with most people, the stronger activity of the right arm corresponds to the formation of the left speech organ. From the relationship between the activities of legs and arms, as you can observe them in a freely moving human being, yet another relationship comes into being. It is the relationship that the child gains to the surrounding world through learning to speak.

When you look at how all this is interconnected and belongs together, when you see how in the process of sentence formation the legs are working upwards into speech, and how the content, the meaning of words, enters into the process of sound production—that is, into the inner experience of the structure of the sentences—you have an impression of how the beat-like, rhythmical element of the moving legs works upon the more musical-thematic and inward element of the moving arms and hands. Consequently, if a child walks with firm and even steps, if its walk does not tend to be slovenly, you have the physical basis—which, naturally, is a manifestation of the spirit, as we shall see later—for a good feeling for the structure of both spoken and written sentences. Through the movement of the legs, the child learns to form correct sentences. You will also find that if a child has a slouching gait, it will have difficulties finding the right intervals³ between sentences, and that the contours of its sentences become blurred. Likewise, if a child does not learn to move its arms harmoniously, its speech will become rasping and unmelodious. In addition, if you cannot help a child to become sensitive in its fingertips, it will not develop the right sense for modulation in speech.

All this refers to the time when the child learns to walk and talk. But something else can also be detected. You may have noticed that in life the proper timing of certain processes is sometimes disturbed, that certain phases of development make their appearance later than one would expect according to the natural course of development. But in this context you can also see that the proper sequence of events can be safeguarded if children are encouraged to learn to walk first, that is, if one can possibly avoid having children learn to speak before they can walk. Speech has to be developed on the basis of the right kind of walking and of the free movement of the arms. Otherwise, children's speech will not be anchored in their whole being. Instead, they will only babble indistinctly. You may have come across some people whose speech sounded not unlike bleating. In such a case, not enough attention was paid to what I have just tried to characterize.

The third faculty the child must learn on the basis of walking and speaking is thinking, which should gradually become more and more conscious. But this faculty ought to be developed last, for it lies in the child's nature to learn to think only through speaking. In its early stages, speaking is an imitation of the sounds that the child hears. As the sounds are perceived by the child in whom the characteristic relationship between the movements of the legs and arms is deeply rooted, it learns intuitively to make sense of the sounds that it imitates, though without linking any thought to what it has heard. At first, the child only links feelings to the sounds coming toward it. Thinking, which arises later, can develop only out of speech. Therefore, the correct sequence we need to encourage in the growing child is learning to walk, learning to speak, and finally, learning to think.

We must now enter a bit more deeply into these three important processes of development. Thinking, which is—or ought to be—the last faculty developed, always has the quality of mirroring, or reflecting, outer nature and its processes. Moral impulses do not originate in the sphere of thinking, as we all know. They arise in that part of the human being we call the conscience, about which we shall have more to say later on. In any case, human conscience arises in the depths of the soul before penetrating the sphere of thinking. The faculty of thinking, on the other hand, that we acquire in childhood, is attuned only to perceiving the essence of outer nature and its processes. Thus all of the child's first thinking is aimed at creating images of outer nature and its processes.

However, when we turn to learning to speak, we come across quite a different situation. With regard to the development of this faculty, present-day science has been able to make only tentative observations. Orthodox science has achieved quite wonderful results, for instance in its investigations into the animal world. And when it compares its findings with what happens in a human being, it has made many discoveries that deserve our full recognition. But with regard to the comprehension of the processes taking place when a child is learning to speak, contemporary science has remained rather in the dark.

The same applies to animal communication through sound. And here a key question needs to be answered first. In order to speak, the human being uses the larynx and other speech organs. The higher animals also possess these organs, even if in a more primitive form. If we disregard certain animals capable of producing sounds that in some species have developed into a kind of singing, but think instead of animals that emit only very primitive sounds, an obvious question comes to mind (and I raise this question not only from a causal, but also from quite a utilitarian point of view). Why should such animals have a larynx with its neighboring organs, since these are used for speech only by the human being? Though the animal is not capable of using them for speaking, they are there nevertheless, and this even very markedly. Comparative anatomy shows that even in relatively dumb animals—dumb in comparison with the human being—organs of this kind exist.

It is a fact that these organs, at least to a certain extent, have possibilities destined to be realized only by the human being. Though incapable of making use of these organs for speech, the animal nevertheless possesses them. What is the meaning of this? A more advanced physiology will come to discover that the animal forms of the various species depend, in each case, upon the animal's larynx and its neighboring organs. If, for instance, a certain animal grows into a lion, the underlying causes have to be looked for in its upper chest organs. From there, forces are radiating out that create the form of a lion. If an animal grows into a cow, the cause of this particular form is to be found in what becomes the speech organ in the human being. From these organs, the forces creating the animal forms radiate. One day this will have to be studied in detail in order to learn how to approach morphology more realistically. Then one will find out how to correctly study animal forms, how to grasp the nature of the upper chest organs and the way these pass over into the organs of the mouth. For it is from this region that forces radiate creating the entire animal form.

Human beings form these organs into speech organs on the basis of their upright walk and freely moving arms. They take in what works through sound and speech from their surroundings—if we are dealing with present times. And what is it they absorb in this way? Think of how the potential to give form to the entire human organism lies in these organs. This means that if, for instance, a child hears an angry or passionate voice, if it is surrounded by loud and ill-tempered shouting, it will absorb something the animal keeps out. The animal lets itself be shaped only by the larynx and its neighboring organs, but members of the human species allow vehement or passionate voices to enter their inner being. These sounds flow into the human form, right into the structure of the most delicate tissues. If children hear only gentle speech in their surroundings, this too flows right into the structure of their finest tissues. It flows into their very formation, and especially so into the more refined parts of their organization. The coarser parts are able to withstand these influences, as in the case of the animal. But whatever is taken in through speech flows into the finer parts of the child's organization. This is how the differing organizations of the various nations come about. They all flow out of the language spoken. The human being is an imprint of language. You will therefore be able to appreciate what it means that in the course of human evolution so many people have learned to speak several languages. It has had the effect of making such people more universal. These things are of immense importance for the development of humankind.

And so we see how during the early period of childhood the human being is inwardly predisposed, right down to the blood circulation, by what comes from the environment. These influences become instrumental for the orientation of a person's thought life. What happens in a human being through learning to speak is something I ask you to consider most seriously.

This human faculty might best be understood in its essence by comparing it with animal development. If an animal could express what lives in its forming and shaping, emanating from its upper chest organs, it would have to say, My form conforms with what streams from my upper chest and mouth organs, and I do not allow anything to enter my being that would modify this form. So would the animal speak if it were able to express this relationship. The human being, on the other hand, would say, I adapt the upper organs of my chest and mouth to the world processes that work through language, and I adjust the structure of my innermost organization accordingly.

The human being adapts the most inward physical organization to what comes from the surroundings through language, but not the outer organization, which develops in a way similar to that of animals. This is of immense importance for an understanding of the entire human being. For out of language, the general orientation of thought is developed, and because of this the human being during the first three years of life is given over entirely to what comes from the outer world, whereas the animal is rigidly enclosed within itself.

For this reason, the way that we find our relationship during these three years to statics and dynamics, then to speech, and finally to thinking, is of such profound importance. It is essential that this process develops in the right way. No doubt you are all aware that this can happen in the most varied ways in each individual human being.

On what does it depend that these processes take their prper course? It depends on many things. But the most fundamental factor during the first stage of childhood is the right relationship between the child's times of sleeping and waking. This means that we have to acquire an instinctive knowledge of how much sleep a child needs and how long it should be awake. For example, suppose that a child sleeps too much, relatively speaking. In this case it will develop a tendency to hold back in the activity of its legs. If a child gets too much sleep, inwardly it will lose the will to walk. It will become lethargic in its walking, and, because of this, it will also become lazy in its speech. Such a child will not develop a proper flow in its speech and it will speak more slowly than it should according to its natural disposition. When we meet such a person in later life—unless this imbalance has been put right during the subsequent school years—we sometimes despair because he or she gives us the opportunity, one might say, to go for a little walk between every two words spoken. There are such people who have difficulties in finding their way from one word to the next. And if we come across them and look at their childhood, we will find that when they were learning to walk, they were allowed to sleep too much.

Now let us take the case of a child whose parents or those in charge did not ensure that it had the relatively long hours of sleep appropriate to its age. The inner being of such a child is incapable of gaining the necessary control over its leg movements. Instead of walking normally, the child will have a floppy gait. In its speech, instead of controlling the sequential flow of words with the forces of the soul, it will let the words fall out of its mouth. The words of the sentences will not cohere.

This is quite different from the case of a child who has difficulties in finding the right words. Here an overabundance of speech energy prevents it from getting from one word on to the next. Thus, in the instance mentioned previously, I was referring to the opposite, namely to a lack of the necessary energy. The words, as they follow each other, are not carried along by the flow of the soul; instead, the child waits for the right moment to “click in” the next word. If this reaches extreme proportions, the result is stammering. If one finds a tendency toward stammering in people, especially in their twenties and thirties, one can be sure that as young children they were not given enough sleep.

From this you can see how knowledge of the human being can give us the fundamentals of what needs to be done.

Now let us consider the entire human organism and see how during the first three years it adapts itself to earthly conditions of life, how it allows the principles of statics and dynamics, underlying the faculty of autonomous movement, to flow into what is produced through shaping the air in speech. In this process there is much more involved that is of consequence for the development of thinking. Compare this situation with that of an adult, and you will see that in the child there is a much stronger working together of these inner dynamics—of walking, fidgeting, movements of arms, and creating mental images. In the child all this flows together into a unity far more than in the adult. The child remains a far more homogeneous being than a grown-up in other respects as well.

If, for instance, we as adults suck a sweet (which we really shouldn't do), this merely amounts to a titillation of the tongue, for the sweet taste does not go much further than that. But the child is in a different position. There the taste continues to spread. Children don't tell us this and we don't notice it; nevertheless, the taste continues to have an effect upon the child. Many among you will surely have observed how, according to their individual makeup, certain children are strongly permeated by soul and spiritual forces and how this quality comes to outer expression in them. It is far more interesting to watch the arms and legs of such a lively child than its mouth, when it is standing some distance away from a table where there is a bowl full of sugar. What the mouth says is more or less obvious, but the way such a child develops desire right down to its toes, or in the arms, as it steers toward the sugar bowl: you can clearly see it is not just a matter of the tongue anticipating sweetness, but changes are taking place throughout the entire being of the child. Here, tasting flows throughout the whole human being. If you enter into these things without preconceptions, you will come to realize that the young child, in a certain sense, is really just one great sense organ. Mainly this is so during the very first years (and more generally so between birth and the change of teeth) and is, naturally, less so in later years. What has become localized in the sense organs on the periphery of the human body in the adult, permeates the child's entire organism. Of course, you must understand these things with a certain discernment, but fundamentally they are real. Their existence is so real that orthodox physiology will one day be able to prove them with regard to the most conspicuous of all our sense organs, namely the human eye.

People come to me quite frequently and ask, Considering the present state of science, what would you recommend as a suitable theme for a thesis? (Theses, too, belong to the chapter on “school misery.”) If such a question is asked by students of physiology, I refer them to a topical problem. I tell them to observe the developmental phases of the human eye as seen in the embryo, and then to compare these with the corresponding phases of the entire embryo from its germinal stage onward. This will lead them to a kind of inverted parallel between the eye and the whole embryo as its development progresses. They will discover that, in a certain way, the eye begins its development later, it omits the first stages. In contrast, the embryo as an entity never reaches its final stage—as the eye does—but stops short beforehand. This points to something of great significance for embryology. If one looks at the whole development of the embryo, one will come to recognize that in these beginning stages we may observe ideal stages that exist only as an indication. The eye continues to develop into a perfected sense organ, whereas the embryo remains behind in its development only to continue its further growth later on.

But the situation in the young child is still one where, in its entire soul and spiritual development, the child's senses are poured out, as it were, over all of its corporeality. In a certain way the child is entirely a sense organ and it confronts the world as such. This has to be borne in mind, not only with regard to educational matters, but concerning everything that is happening in the child's environment before the change of teeth. We shall go into questions relating to more practical methods of teaching at a later stage. But it is only if one can see the fundamentals in the right light that one will be able to find the correct answers to particular human questions. One of these has been handed to me, which is of extraordinary importance for anyone who does not merely look at human evolution from external and well-known aspects of history.

As you know, in the past, as you know, there was far more discussion of sin and original sin than is customary today. Now I do not wish to go into this question in detail, I only want to outline what this expression implied to those who studied such questions as we study general scientific subjects today (not in its present popular sense where such matters have undergone a certain coarsening). To those inquiring minds, original sin stood for all inherited characteristics.⁴ This means that what a person had inherited from his or her forebears was considered to represent original sin. Such was the actual concept of this expression; only later on was it changed to what we associate it with today. In earlier times, it was definitely felt that physical features inherited from one's ancestors gave rise to sinfulness.

And what do we say today? We not only believe in studying inherited characteristics most carefully, but we even encourage their cultivation! If an earlier form of science had been asked to judge the modern attitude, it would have responded, With all your progress you have managed to come up with a most extraordinary principle—you have actually taught society to cultivate what is of sinful origin in the human being! Because we know of historical events only from what is rather superficially recorded in history books, we do not notice such subtle changes of interpretation.

However, if you look into what I have told you today—namely how the child, through its relationship to dynamics and statics, through learning to speak and to think, adapts itself to the environment—then you will be able to distinguish between the part played by purely physical heredity and that of the environmental influences, which are far stronger than is generally realized. Often we hear it said that someone has inherited a particular trait from either the father or the mother, whereas in reality it is simply the result of imitating a certain way of walking, or a characteristic gesture of hands, or a specific manner of speaking, from those close to the person in his or her early childhood. The child's total surrender to the influences of the environment is what is of preeminent importance during the first years and not heredity as such. In their proper place, theories of heredity have their justification, but these also need to be seen within the context of what I said yesterday, when speaking about soft ground into which footmarks were imprinted.

If now some hypothetical Martian were to appear on the Earth, a being unacquainted with the human race, it might explain the origin of these footprints in the following way: Certain forces have pushed up the Earth, more in some places and less in others, which has caused the configuration of these footmarks. This is how some people would explain the nature of the human soul on the basis of heredity and as a result of the working of the brain. Just as the footprints have been pressed into the Earth from outside, so have environmental influences, experienced during the childhood stage of imitation, through learning to walk, speak, and think, been imprinted in the body, and particularly so in the brain and the nervous system.

What orthodox physical psychology maintains is perfectly correct. The brain is a clear imprint of what the human individual is as a being of soul. One only has to know that the brain is not the cause, the creator of the soul element, but the ground on which the soul develops. Just as I cannot walk without the ground under my feet, neither can I, as a physical being, think without a brain. This is obvious. But the brain is no more than the ground into which the activities of thinking and speaking imprint what is received from the surrounding world. It is not a matter of heredity.

Perhaps now you can see that people tend to have only unclear notions about what is happening in the child during these first three “nonacademic” years. During that time, to a large extent, the foundations are being laid for a person's whole inner life and configuration. I have already spoken of how thinking, which develops later, turns toward the outer world. It forms images of the natural world and its processes. But the faculty of speaking, which is developed earlier, absorbs—at least in nuances and in modified form—what lives spiritually in language. And language, coming from the child's environment, works upon the child's soul. Through language we take in from our surroundings what we make our own in the realm of the soul. The entire soul atmosphere of our surroundings permeates us through the medium of language. And we know that the child is one great sense organ; we know that inner processes are inaugurated through these soul impressions.

So that, for example, if a child, is frequently exposed to the outbursts of an over-choleric father who utters his words as if in constant anger, it will inwardly experience its father's entire soul background through the way he forms his words. And this has an effect not only on the child's soul, but, through the atmosphere of anger surrounding it, causes the activity of fine glandular secretions to increase as well. Eventually, the glands of such a child become accustomed to an enhanced activity of secretion, and this can affect the whole life of such a child. Unless these harmful influences are balanced through the right kind of education later on, a tendency will develop toward nervous anxieties in any angry atmosphere. Here you have an example of how a certain soul condition directly enters and affects the physical organization. The attempt is often made to comprehend the relationship between the human soul and body, but a fact such as this, where during the first period of life a physical condition directly manifests itself as a symptom in the realm of the soul, simply goes unnoticed.

And now, while the child enters into the realm of statics and dynamics working through its surroundings, it does something unconsciously that is of great importance. Think for a moment of how much trouble it means for many an older pupil to learn the laws of statics and dynamics and to apply them, even if only in the field of mechanics. The young child does this unconsciously. It incorporates statics and dynamics into its entire being. Anthroposophical research shows us that what most accomplished experts in the field of statics and dynamics manage to think out for the external world is child's play compared with the way the child incorporates these complicated forces while learning to walk. It does so through imitation. Here is an opportunity to observe the strange outer effects of imitation in just this situation. You can find many examples in life. I will give you one.

There once were two girls of roughly the same age, who could be seen walking side by side. This case happened many years ago, in a town in central Germany. When they walked next to each other, they both limped with one leg. While both were performing the same limb movements, they displayed a marked difference between the movements of their more mobile right arms and right fingers and a somewhat paralyzed way they carried their left arms and left fingers. Both children were exact copies of each other. The slightly younger one was a true copy of the older one. And yet, only the older sister had a damaged left leg. Both legs of the younger one were perfectly normal. It was only by sheer imitation that she copied the movements of her handicapped sister. You can find similar cases everywhere, though many of them, being less conspicuous, may easily escape your notice.

When a child learns to walk, when it makes the principles of statics and dynamics its own, it takes in the spirit in its environment. One could formulate it in this way: In learning to walk, we take hold of the soul element of our milieu. And in what the child ought to learn first after entering earthly life, it takes hold of the spirit in its surroundings.

Spirit, soul, and body—spirit, soul, and nature—this is the right order in which the surrounding world approaches the human being. But as we take hold of the soul element in our surroundings, we also lay the foundations for our future sympathies and antipathies in life. These flow into us quite unnoticed. The way we learn to speak is, at the same time, also the way we acquire certain fundamental sympathies and antipathies. And the most curious aspect of it all is that whoever is able to develop an eye for such matters (an eye of the soul, of course) will find in the way a child walks—whether it does so more with the heel or with the toes, whether it has a firm footstep or whether it creeps along—a preparation for the moral character the child will develop in later life. Thus, we may say that together with the spiritual element the child absorbs while learning to walk, there also flows into it a moral element emanating from the environment. And it is a good thing if one can learn to perceive how the characteristic way a child moves its legs portends its moral character, whether it will develop into a morally good or bad person. For the most naturalistic quality belongs to what we take in through our thinking during childhood. What we absorb through language is already permeated by an element of soul. What we make our own through statics and dynamics is pervaded by moral and spiritual powers. But here statics and dynamics are not of the kind we learn about in school; here they are born directly out of the spirit.

It is most important to look at these matters in the right way, so that one does not arrive at the kind of psychology that is based primarily on physical aspects. In this kind of psychology one reads in fair detail what the author has managed to establish in the first thirty pages of print, only to find that relevant aspects of the soul are stuck on artificially. One must no longer speak today of the human spirit, since an Ecumenical Council abolished it, declaring that the human being does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but only of body and soul, the latter having certain spiritual properties.⁵

The trichotomy of the human being was dogmatically forbidden during the Middle Ages, and today, our contemporary “unbiased” science begins its psychology with the declaration that the human being consists of body and soul only. Blissfully unaware of how little “unbiased” its findings are, it is still adhering to medieval dogmatism. The most erudite university professors follow this ancient dogma without having the slightest notion of it. In order to arrive at an accurate picture of the human being, it is essential to recognize all three constituent parts: body, soul, and spirit.

Materialistic minds can grasp only human thinking—and this is their tragedy. Materialism has the least understanding of matter because it cannot see the spirit working through matter. It can only dogmatize—there is only matter and its effects. But it does not know that everywhere matter is permeated with spirit. If one wants to describe materialism, one has to resort to a paradoxical definition. Materialism is the one view of the world that has no understanding of what matter is.

What is important is to know exactly where the borderlines are between the phenomena of body, soul, and spirit, and how one leads over into the other. This is of special importance with regard to the child's development during the first period of life.

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• 1. Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter) (1763–1825) German poet.
• 2. The terms statics and dynamics, the principles of rest or equilibrium and of movement, are used by Steiner in various ways in this and the following lectures. These polar forces, active in the young child, work in full coordination in walking, while the body's weight is being transferred from one leg to the other. The way that a child gradually learns to control these forces is not only highly individual, but is significant for the child's entire life.—Translator.
• 3. The German word Intervall refers to differences in pitch only, and not to a break in the flow of time.—Translator.
• 4. The German word for “original sin” is Erbsunde, which means literally “inherited sin.”—Translator.
• 5. The Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in A.D. 869.