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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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293. The Study of Man: Lecture II 22 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

It is impossible for you to comprehend the being of man unless you understand the difference between the elements of sympathy and antipathy in man. These elements, as I have described, find their full expression in the soul world after death.
Here we come to a very important fact about the human being. You must learn to understand the whole man, spirit, soul and body. Now in man there is something continually being formed which always has the tendency to become spiritual.
Now you will have seen, from what I have here developed, that really the human being can only be understood in connection with the cosmos. For when we make mental pictures we have what is cosmic within us.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture III 23 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

The teacher of the present day should have a comprehensive view of the laws of the universe as a background to all he undertakes in his school work. And clearly, it is particularly in the lower classes, in the lower school grades, that education demands a connection in the teacher's soul with the highest ideas of humanity.
But as modern philosophy will have nothing to do with the elements through which alone the human being can be fully comprehended, it produces this law of the conservation of energy; a law which, in a sense, does no harm when applied to the other kingdoms of nature, to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—but which applied to man destroys all possibility of a true understanding and knowledge. As teachers it will be necessary for you on the one hand to give your pupils an understanding of nature, and on the other hand to lead them to a certain comprehension of spiritual life.
Of course certain circles of people to-day would find it exceedingly hard to understand such a thought. But unless we permeate ourselves with such conceptions we cannot possibly become true educators.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture IV 25 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

For when the human being develops motives, something is sounding quietly in the depths, and this gentle undertone must now be very, very carefully observed. I beg you to distinguish what I call this undertone very carefully from anything of a mental image, or conceptual nature.
The intention which a man has is the more important thing, not the repentance—the endeavour to do the same thing on another occasion. And in this intention wish sounds as an undertone; so that we may well ask the question: What is this undertone of wish which accompanies our intention?
Of course we must not make too much of such things. Much good may live underneath them. But they give a good impression of what the future has in store for the life of culture.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture V 26 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

Thus actually we can only say that will activity is chiefly will activity and has an undercurrent of thought within it; and thought activity is chiefly thought activity and has an undercurrent of will.
This takes place in a comprehensive way if we bring ideals, moral ideals, into our mere instincts. And now you will understand better the true significance of antipathy in this connection. If the impulses that we notice in the little child were throughout our life to remain only sympathetic, as they are sympathetic in childhood, we should develop in an animal way under the influence of our instincts.
Anyone who has a real understanding for these things will see from a dispute of this kind that neither the psychologists nor the logicians have discovered the real facts of the case, namely that the soul activities are always flowing into one another.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture VI 27 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

Up to now we have tried to understand the human being from the point of view of the soul, in so far as this understanding is necessary in the education of the child.
We count upon these external hypotheses in our actions; we are convinced that the two posts supporting the beam will not give way if they are of a certain thickness. But we cannot understand the whole process which is connected with this, any more than we can understand the movements of our legs when we move forwards.
It is only when you see things in such connections as these that you can come to a true understanding of the form of the human body.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture VII 28 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

We must get away from the words and come to the spirit of things. If we want to understand something we must not immediately think of the word each time, but we must seek the real connections.
These are the people who most of all believe that they understand something of reality, but when they begin to talk they make use of the veriest husks of words. This was only an interpolation with reference to the current trend of our times. But the teacher must understand also the times in which he lives, for he has to understand the children who out of these very times are entrusted to him for their education.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture VIII 29 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

We saw yesterday that we can only understand memory, the power of remembering, if we connect it with sleeping and waking, which are more open to outer observation.
It will help us to bring remembering and forgetting ever more under our control, if we know that in remembering and forgetting, conditions of sleeping and waking are playing into the waking life.
But reality consists in contradictions. We do not understand reality unless we see the contradictions in the world. The human being has altogether twelve senses.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture IX 30 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

But this knowledge must be truly real, which means it must rest upon a true understanding of the world of facts. Now in order to come to a real knowledge of the human being we have sought to place him before our minds from the standpoint first of the soul, and then of the spirit.
Man could not express himself in speech unless he were continually uttering conclusions nor could he understand what another person said to him unless he were continuously receiving conclusions. Academic logic usually dismembers conclusions, thus falsifying them at the outset, in so far as conclusions appear in ordinary life.
It is not until you have formed this judgment that you can understand the particular concept “lion.” The first thing you form is a conclusion; the second is a judgment; the last thing you come to in life is a concept.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture X 01 Sep 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

The third principle is the limb man. How can we understand the limb man? We can only understand this third member when we realise that certain parts of the spherical form remain visible, as with the breast portion, only in this case they are different parts.
You can regard all outer forms as revelations of what is within. And indeed you can only understand the outer forms when you look upon them as revelation of what is within. I have always found that for most men there is a great difficulty in understanding the connection between the tubular bones of the arms and the legs and the shell-like bones of the head.
If you go into the school with egotistic feelings you need all kinds of wires—words—in order to make yourself understood by the children. If you have great feelings for the universe which arise from ideas such as we have discussed to-day, then an underground current will pass between you and the child.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture XI 02 Sep 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

In yesterday's lecture I treated of the bodily nature of man from the standpoint of spirit and of soul, and if you understand this survey you will readily be able to fit into it all that you need to know of the body's structure and growth.
For this reason it is so important to be conscious in our teaching and education that we cannot really undertake much with the head. At birth the head brings with it what it is destined to become in the world.
And we can only come to know these mutual relations if we adjust ourselves and adapt our understanding to them. That is, we must use our power of understanding not in strict definition of everything, but in exercising mobility, so that the child can himself transform what he has acquired—transform it inwardly, in thought.

Results 5571 through 5580 of 6552

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