The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. Human Self-Education in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Contemporary cultural conditions—and in particular the outlook for the near future—will undoubtedly attach ever greater importance to what might be called human self-education. This evening, in the spirit of the spiritual-scientific worldview that I represent here, I shall speak at some length—albeit only briefly, given the breadth of the topic—about this self-education of the human being. Let me emphasize from the outset that today’s lecture is not primarily intended to address that form of self-education which might be called the education of the human being toward spiritual research. Rather, this evening’s discussion will focus on the kind of self-education that plays a role in ordinary, everyday life—that which, in a sense, must precede education for spiritual research—and which has significance and value not only for that purpose but for every human being in general.

[ 2 ] Now, undoubtedly, as soon as the term “self-education” is uttered, everyone will sense that, in a certain sense, this term actually implies something contradictory—or at least something whose implementation is fraught with great difficulties. Why is this? Well, for the very simple reason that education actually presupposes reliance on an external authority, on someone who stands above the person being educated. But when one speaks of self-education, one naturally means the kind of education that a person can bestow upon themselves—that is, the kind of education in which the person is, so to speak, both educator and pupil at the same time. This undoubtedly points immediately to a major difficulty in life.

[ 3 ] Let us now consider what can be said about the education of children and young people from the perspective of spiritual science. You will find everything that can be said on this subject summarized in my little book: The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science. Of course, it is impossible to even begin to touch upon today, by way of introduction, what is said in that little book. But it should be pointed out that when we consider the real, the actual human being—the whole human being—in the spirit of spiritual science, we come to accept, as it were, certain key principles of education by tracing the child’s development up to a certain degree of maturity. There we find that, roughly until a person reaches the age of seven—that is, until the teeth are replaced—education must be based on what can be called imitation, the child’s instinct to imitate. Now, that text emphasized that, fundamentally speaking, what the child sees and hears from the adults in its environment is more significant for the child’s upbringing during these early years than any moral rules or other forms of instruction. Moving on, we then come to that important phase in a child’s life that begins with the change of teeth and extends roughly until sexual maturity. Here again, if we free ourselves from all prejudices and look purely at the actual development of the human being and the real conditions of this development, we find that the most significant educational impulse for these years must be what we call authority. And a healthy upbringing for these years is achieved when the child, during this time, is faced with adults in whom he or she has trust and faith, so that—without intervening with any vague intellectual notion or any immature criticism—the child can form his or her principles and rules of conduct based on the authority of these people standing beside him or her. The authoritative principle is the fundamental educational principle for these years. You will find the reasoning behind this in that little booklet. And when we then consider human beings up to the ages of twenty or twenty-one, we find, based on the fundamental conditions of their development, that what is essential is what one might call intellectual maturity—and specifically, the aspiration toward an impersonal ideal grasped in the soul, that is, toward a purely spiritual educational impulse that transcends what a person at this age can be on their own. This is precisely the nature of the ideal: that we strive toward it and always have the feeling—especially in youth—that our entire behavior and our whole being fall short of the ideal, that the ideal hovers above us like a heavenly vision, and that we strive toward it with the awareness that we can never truly attain it. And only when these stages have passed does a person enter that epoch of their earthly existence in which, in essence, self-education begins—or where, in the narrower sense of the word, one can speak of self-education. With the exception of the last—the third—educational impulse, which, however, is such that even for the young person it is derived as an ideal from the great impulses of world history, and that other human ideals are given to them—which they thus also adopt from the outside—the remaining educational impulses, such as the authoritative principle, are grounded in an ideal, and also in what might be called a relationship to something still foreign—that is, to something that is presupposed as more perfect. The pupil thus faces the impulses that come to him for his education as something foreign; he looks up to them.

[ 4 ] If we are to speak of self-education in earnest, it goes without saying that we cannot speak of it in the same way we speak of the educational impulses that shape the first years of human life, and therein lies the contradiction—I am referring not merely to a logical contradiction, but to an ideal one. If a person is to become his own educator, one must assume that the impulses for this lie within him. But if a person is to become his own educator, isn’t it infinitely obvious that, through this self-education, he will not so much expand himself, perfect himself, or enrich his living conditions as he will, in fact, restrict them? Is it not obvious that he undertakes self-education based on certain things that are already within him—things he has set his mind on or adopted—and that he undermines the rich possibilities that might burst forth from within him, so that through such self-education he could easily limit himself instead of expanding and perfecting himself? Isn’t this contradiction quite obvious?

[ 5 ] Yes, we see that, because of the cultural conditions we currently face, self-education is necessarily becoming more and more of a focus of attention, just as views on self-education and on education for individuality and personality are emerging everywhere. We can understand this. We do not need to go back as far as ancient India or to what evolved from ancient India into the modern era; we do not need to go back to ancient Egypt and realize how, there, a certain caste system placed people from the outset in a specific position in life and made it impossible for them to develop freely, so to speak, and how the manner in which they were to conduct themselves was dictated to them—or is still dictated today—by the way they are situated within the social order. We need not go back to those ancient times. We can turn to the more recent times close to us, which still project their full character into our own, and we see how what we might call the determination of a person’s identity through—let us say—blood ties, tribal affiliation, caste membership, and so on—was present and, in part, still is. But on the other hand, we also see how, precisely in our own time, a completely different social structure is emerging from this one—one that increasingly pits human being against human being, so that human beings stand opposite one another within the social order. Indeed, we even see how not only do human beings stand face to face with one another, but how human beings are increasingly left to their own devices when they feel confronted by nature and the entire universe. We see how, in the course of life, they must rely on their own judgment, on the convictions formed within their own souls, and on the way in which they can think and reflect on moral, aesthetic, and religious relationships. It goes without saying that human beings, who are increasingly left to their own devices, must have this prerequisite: I must search in the depths of my soul for what sets me, as a human being, apart from others—indeed, what places me in the world in a satisfying way as a human being at all.

[ 6 ] We can understand that, under these circumstances, the call for human self-education must inevitably gain more and more ground. How a person should conduct themselves when they are expected to fit into life and the world according to very specific, time-honored rules—this can be incorporated into a child’s upbringing. However, as our lives develop more and more—and must continue to do so, for the conditions of this development cannot be reversed by any power in the world—it becomes clear that throughout their entire earthly existence, people must, in fact, feel called upon again and again to form an unbiased judgment in every situation in life where they may find themselves face to face with another person. To this end, they must work on themselves throughout their entire lives in order to attain ever greater and greater perfection in their overall relationship to the world. With regard to such behavior, the most important impulses are not actually provided during childhood; rather, when a person is to carve out his own place in the world—so that, in accordance with his age, he is left to his own devices—he must, at a time when he can no longer feel the urge to submit to other educators, begin to become his own guide, his own educator, that is, to become the one who makes him more and more perfect. And so we see how our literature and our public cultural life are flooded with all manner of reflections on the development of personality, on the development of individuality, on the striving to achieve harmony in life, and the like. This is certainly something that is understandable, even self-evident, for our time. But anyone who looks more deeply into these matters will very soon notice that, fundamentally, within such contemporary endeavors, what is often expressed is precisely what has just been characterized as an impulse that leads more toward the restriction of life than toward its perfection and enrichment.

[ 7 ] Here we see that one person strives toward this or that ideal in order to influence people through the instructions he wishes to give, through this or that approach to intellectual life. The other favors a more physical approach, prescribing to everyone what he himself perhaps likes best according to his personal taste and preferences, prescribing all sorts of physical exercises or this or that diet, this or that daily routine, and the like. As mentioned, our public life and our literature are virtually inundated with such principles. However, it should be made clear from the outset that the intention here is not to dismiss or criticize these endeavors; there may be much that is good in them. However, much of it can also seem one-sided, such as the efforts that build upon Ralph Waldo Trine’s book In Harmony with the Infinite. For it must be said that those who devote themselves to such endeavors, by forming a narrowly defined conception of how to develop, so to speak, a harmonious life, does not so much develop, enrich, or perfect his life forces as constrain, limit, and restrict them—even if, on the basis of such a restriction, he may experience a momentary sense of well-being, inner satisfaction, or perhaps even bliss. One might, however, overlook the fact that it is precisely in these endeavors today that the most curious oddities—one might say flights of fancy—creep in, giving everyone the opportunity, without having to concern themselves much with these matters, to extol as a universal human trait whatever happens to be the object of their personal sympathies. One must delve much deeper into human nature if one wishes to speak of self-education in the sense of spiritual science. This is precisely the distinctive feature of spiritual science: that it avoids the one-sidedness of other endeavors; that, in a sense, it encompasses these other endeavors as small circles around itself; and that it seeks to be the great circle that, through devotion to the total nature of the human being, seeks to recognize the conditions for individual human life. It is, of course, always easier to devote oneself to one-sided approaches that promise, for example, to restore one’s health in a short time, improve one’s memory, or bring about practical success in life. It is easier; the path of spiritual science is a more difficult and less comfortable one, but it is the one built upon the whole nature and the whole being of the human being.

[ 8 ] Now, when we speak of human self-education, we may perhaps gain some insight into how this self-education should be properly organized by considering how a certain form of self-education already comes into play at a time when a person is, so to speak, still called upon by virtue of their age to be educated by others. This might seem like an even greater contradiction than the one suggested earlier, but it is not. For spiritual science shows us that the human self is, in fact, broader than what is contained within the immediate personality. Indeed, the entire perspective of spiritual science is based on the fact that a person can, in a sense, transcend themselves—that is, go beyond what is confined within the limits of their personality—and yet never need to lose themselves. Is there already an example in everyday life of what spiritual science actually seeks to convey in a much more comprehensive way across all areas of existence? Yes, there are two things in everyday life that already show that a person can transcend their personal self and yet, so to speak, remain true to themselves—without losing themselves. One is what we call human compassion, shared joy, sympathy—what we call all-encompassing love. On what, then, is this love, this compassion, and this shared joy based? They only appear less mysterious than they actually are because human beings readily accept what is familiar. Just as a primitive person does not ask why the sun rises and sets, but simply accepts what is familiar, and a person only begins to reflect on the rising and setting of the sun once they become cultured, so too does a person living an ordinary life not reflect on shared joy or compassion. Only when one begins to seek enlightenment about the meaning and purpose of life do such things as human compassion and shared joy become life’s riddles, presenting themselves as life’s mysteries. We need only imagine one thing, and we will immediately see that shared joy and compassion are an extension of the human self, as it initially presents itself.

[ 9 ] Joy and suffering, as experienced by the human personality, are the most intimate, the most inner aspects of experience. When we are face to face with another person, and an impulse arises within us that mirrors that person’s suffering or joy, then we are not merely living within ourselves; we are living within the other. And all philosophical speculation that sensory impressions trigger something within us in some way cannot lead us beyond the reality of how, through the shared experience of another’s joys and sorrows, something active is created within us. Where we feel their joy and suffering in an intimate way, we have stepped outside ourselves and entered the innermost sanctum of the other person—that which we perceive within ourselves as our very essence. And we need only imagine—since we cannot cross over with our consciousness into the consciousness of another, a fact no one will deny— If, at the moment when we feel compassion or shared joy in a soul separate from our own, we were to experience ourselves within the other’s soul as if in a state of fainting, then there would be no way to pass from one personality into another without losing ourselves in the process. As strange as it sounds, it is just as significant for life: We penetrate a foreign being, and no fainting spell overtakes us; we step outside ourselves and live within the other, and we do not faint in the process.

[ 10 ] All development in the humanities proceeds exactly according to this same pattern; in no other way. Just as a person penetrates into a foreign being through shared joy and compassion without losing themselves, so too, in spiritual research, they penetrate into foreign beings through understanding without losing themselves in the process. In ordinary life, this is not possible, for when a person steps outside of themselves in ordinary life with awareness and perception, they simply fall asleep and are no longer present in the moment. In ordinary life, a person does not achieve what they accomplish in moral life—specifically, in the single instance of shared joy and compassion. Therefore, the distinctive behavior of a person in moments of shared joy and compassion serves as the model for all spiritual research; this research proceeds in the same way that normal life proceeds in moments of compassion and shared joy. This is the one instance in which a person transcends their own personality without losing themselves in the process.

[ 11 ] The other aspect that also pertains to ordinary life in the realm of morality is what we experience in the impulse of conscience. Anyone who examines conscience—and this topic has also been discussed here—knows that when a person hears the voice of conscience, they perceive something that transcends their personal sympathies and antipathies, and can even correct them in a powerful way. Moreover, our moral life is structured in such a way that, when we transcend ourselves through such judgments of conscience, we nevertheless do not lose ourselves or fall into powerlessness. All spiritual science is based on the fact that a person can enter a sphere, a realm that lies outside the personality encompassed by their consciousness and everyday life, and within which they do not lose themselves even as they move through it. Indeed, if we consider the matter without prejudice, does it not also rest on what we have repeatedly addressed in this series of lectures: the insight into repeated earthly lives and into the law of cause and effect extending from one life into the next? That, too, rests on this. The person who, with ordinary consciousness, encompasses what lies between birth and death learns through spiritual science to recognize that what he encompasses with his judgment—that over which his memory extends—may be addressed by him as his personal self. But they also come to recognize that when they leave this personal self behind through thought and ascend to a self that not only lives through the instrument of the body but also builds up this body itself—a self that does not merely live in a single body between birth and death but passes through many births and deaths and always appears on Earth—that this self is, after all, their true self. Even if a person, in normal consciousness, cannot recall earlier earthly stages and can be convinced only theoretically of the truth of repeated earthly lives and the effects of those causes that carry over from one earthly life into the next, can only be convinced of this theoretically, they can nevertheless assume that what is within them is not limited to their personality, but that this inner being is, as it were, supra-personal, and that what is now their personality is itself only created, only proves itself effective within it. Just as we, in our conscience, transcend ourselves through direct experience—with compassion and shared joy—so too does spiritual scientific research, through experience, transcend into a higher realm. But when a person is familiar with spiritual science, they can never admit that they themselves are lost in this higher realm; rather, there reigns something that is connected to them, to which they belong, and in which they do not in fact lose themselves at all, even if they initially lose themselves in it with their ordinary, normal consciousness.

[ 12 ] Thus, spiritual science is something that takes shape according to the model of a being that encompasses a higher self, just as we embrace other, foreign beings in compassion and shared joy without losing ourselves. If, then, we recognize our expanded self—through which we enter into the inner beings of others—we may already speak, even in the case of a child, of something existing beyond what we as educators can rely on—that which develops from normal consciousness—namely, a higher being situated outside the ordinary self that is already at work within the child. If we consider this, we may find something in the child where a kind of education is already taking place, whereas with our ordinary education we can address only the child’s personal self. Where do we find that which is active in the child as a higher self, as a higher being that belongs to the child but does not enter into consciousness? It may seem strange, yet it is true that this is at work within the child during rational, well-guided play. In the child’s play, we can only create the conditions for education. But what is accomplished through play is, in essence, accomplished through the child’s own activity—through everything we cannot confine within strict rules. Indeed, the very essence and educational value of play lie in the fact that we hold back with our rules and our pedagogical and educational methods, leaving the child to its own devices. For what does the child do when we leave it to its own devices? Then, through play, the child experiments with external objects to see whether this or that produces an effect through its own activity. It puts its own will into action, into motion. And in the way external things behave under the influence of the will, the child educates itself—albeit only through play—in a way entirely different from that achieved through the influence of a personality or its pedagogical principles. That is why it is so important that we interfere as little as possible with the child’s play through intellectual concepts. The more play takes place in what is not understood—in what is observed in its living reality—the better the play is. Therefore, when we give a child a toy in which, by pulling strings or in some other way, the movement of people or objects is simulated—whether in a picture book with moving animals or people, or in other toys—we educate the child through play more effectively than if we were to give them the most beautiful building sets. For too much intellectual activity is already involved in the latter, which belongs to a more personal principle than that groping around with the living and moving, which is not grasped intellectually but observed in its full activity. The less defined and contrived what appears in play is, the better it is, for the reason that something higher—which cannot be forced into human consciousness—can then enter precisely because the child approaches life through experimentation rather than through intellectual understanding. There we see how the child is already being educated by something that transcends the personal.

[ 13 ] In a certain sense, play remains an important educational factor throughout one’s entire life. Of course, this does not refer to card games, for all games that focus on the intellect and on combinatorial thinking are such that they engage the personal aspect of the human being—the aspect most closely tied to the brain as an instrument. No matter how many positive things are said about chess, it can never be a factor in self-education, because it relies on what is most closely tied to the brain as an instrument—the ability to make combinations. If, on the other hand, a person engages in athletic games or gymnastic exercises—where they must move their muscles in such a way that they cannot form any combinations at all, that they do not strain their intellect at all, but instead develop themselves directly through testing their muscles, that is, through action rather than understanding—then we are dealing with a self-educational game. From this we immediately gain insight into an important principle for all human self-education. That is, the person who must educate themselves—both through the education of their will and through the education of their intellect, and above all through the education of their will—will be dependent on acquiring this education of the will, this cultivation of the will, through the cultivation of interaction and the interplay with the external world. A person’s will cannot be developed through internal mental or imaginative training; rather, a person’s will is strengthened—so that the person has a firm inner foundation—when they seek this cultivation of the will through the interaction of their own will with the outside world. Therefore, it is downright harmful to a person’s ordinary, everyday self-education—and significantly detrimental to it—when a person attempts to strengthen their will for external life through internal means, through internal training.

[ 14 ] This brings us to various practices that are actively recommended today for personal self-development, and against which—from a truly spiritual-scientific perspective—one cannot warn strongly enough. People are advised on how to develop a self-assured demeanor that makes an impression on others, and how to train their will so that they can engage with life and carry out actions that correspond to their intentions. For example, it is recommended: perform exercises that consist of avoiding fear, curiosity, other passions, and negative feelings—in short, working on negative feelings and emotions. I know that some who are hearing this now will say afterward: “Today, arguments have been made against mastering fear, passion, and so on.” — But that is not the case; rather, it has been said that these demands a person places on themselves in this way cannot lead to a genuine cultivation of the will that is useful for external life. For this cultivation of the will, which a person needs for external life, must also be acquired through interaction with external life. And it is far more correct that when a person needs a strong will for life, they should seek to acquire it by having to demonstrate external strength—in the process exerting their body and paying attention with their eyes—that is, by truly engaging in the struggle with the immediate sensory world. This is what brings us into true harmony with the external world—the very external world from which our muscular activity and our entire physical organization are shaped, though, of course, shaped by the spirit.

[ 15 ] But by directing our self-education in this way, we also work on those parts of our spiritual organism that lead us to harmony with the external world that surrounds us at first. But if we work only inwardly—with thought concentration and the like, as described in books found in bookstores today—we work in isolation from the world, within this limited soul that is not in harmony with the world, but rather derives its very significance from its isolation. It is certainly true that the person who exposes himself to external dangers and seeks to overcome them engages in better self-education than the person who buys some books on self-education and then begins to do exercises aimed at achieving fearlessness, dispassion, and so on. Certainly, such simple practices can lead a person to gain all sorts of personal advantages, but always by developing what sets them apart from the world, whereas the first approach described allows them to place themselves selflessly within the world. I said that there might now be some who claim: “So you are speaking against fearlessness, dispassion, and all those things which one might say that overcoming them is part of what leads to a person’s education.” — But this must be emphasized only in one case: when it concerns the development of the will for the external physical world, when a person wishes to educate themselves to strengthen and fortify the will in the external world, because these very things bring about only inner work and are wrongly applied to the education of character and the education of the will. They are rightly applied to the education of our cognition.

[ 16 ] Anyone who wishes to attain knowledge, who wishes to penetrate and look into the supersensible world and has no other goal at first than to look into the supersensible world, is right to perform such exercises. Therefore, when such material is drawn from spiritual science in a professional manner, no instructions are given on “How does one acquire the powers to develop the will in the everyday world?”; rather, instructions are given on “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?” Where such instructions are given, great care is taken with such terminology. These things, as described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, also lead to a culture of the will—not directly, but indirectly—in that the person striving for this development into the higher worlds simply waits to see what follows. The development of the will must then come of its own accord; only then does it function in the proper sense and follow healthy paths.

[ 17 ] Thus we may say that the cultivation of the will—the self-education of the will—must first and foremost be based on the individual establishing a healthy relationship with the external world, particularly with regard to their ordinary, physical nature; whether this relationship pertains more to the cultivation of physical matters or whether what is sought relates more to the formation of character. Rather than brooding over how to become fearless, dispassionate, and so on, it is of far greater importance to face life head-on, to face others as human beings, and then to surrender to one’s uninhibited feelings, which play out in distinct shades and are filled here and there with varying degrees of sympathy or antipathy. By going through life in such a way that we develop our own share in every aspect of life, proceeding from this or that nuance of that share, we create for our will that interplay with the external world which can truly lead this will from one stage to the next. So facing life head-on, standing right in the midst of life with all the sympathies and antipathies it demands of us—that trains our will. In other words: whatever leads us beyond ourselves, toward the world, that shapes our will. Everything that leads us away from the world, that leads us inward toward ourselves, trains—and here it is on solid ground—our insight; it advances our inner life precisely through this process, if we wish to develop our own insight and our own inner life. Our own insights, however, lie in the realm of our own development—psychic development. Thus, we must admit that we become more harmonious in our outlook on life and in our ability to unravel life’s mysteries by cultivating our capacity for insight and by acquiring inner strengths. In contrast, for ordinary life, the will is properly trained only through life itself.

[ 18 ] We have thus shown where the teacher is actually to be found—who, in a certain sense, when we speak of a person’s self-education, ought to be the person themselves. No, it need not be the person in their narrow personality, and in particular, it need not be the person with regard to the self-education of the will. If, through spiritual science, we can elevate ourselves to the point where a person can step outside their personality without losing themselves, then—when we intervene directly in life and allow life to work upon us, specifically—and this comparison must not be misunderstood—in the same way that play works upon a child—then we educate our will. But how? Well, there is a way of understanding life, a view of life, that we acquire by seeking to penetrate everything with our intellect. In truth, this cultivation of the intellect does not advance our development; it therefore has no value for self-education. The element that must play the greatest role in a person’s self-education is what might be called that which extends beyond intellectuality and reason in the process of attaining maturity in life. Just as a child is best educated through play—not by being taught through the intellect, but by experimenting—so, with regard to the will, a person will best educate themselves through those life experiences that they do not comprehend with their intellect, but to which they approach with sympathy, with love, and with a sense that things are sublime or touch the sense of humor. That is what moves us forward. Herein lies the self-education of the will. Reason and intellectual culture usually have no effect on the will at all. Let us examine how direct experience affects the will.

[ 19 ] The moral philosopher who does not subscribe to the doctrine of reincarnation—Carneri—points out how a child’s character is something constant, yet it takes shape, and is shaped precisely by those elements that arise directly from life. He then asks: How can a person’s character change in a short period of time? And he says: It can change radically, for example, through a powerful love or through a friendship, in which the person suddenly develops a sympathy that does not judge but loses itself in the other person. — There, character can suddenly take a completely different turn for the simple reason that, in those spheres where character resides—that is, where the will acts—the states of mind in immediate life come into play. When we face a person and recognize them as this or that—an excellent or a bad person—and we act directly with our intellect, our character does not change; otherwise, judges would have to change their minds several times a week. But when these or those feelings of friendship arise, the entire configuration of a person’s character often changes. This is clear proof that the cultivation of our will depends on the unfolding and development of our emotional states in daily life. But since we can, in a certain sense, take control of our lives—that is, move ourselves, so to speak, toward a certain correction of our emotional states—we have, in a certain respect, control over our self-education with regard to the will. The point is simply that we must then pay attention to life—that we do not live recklessly and surrender ourselves to the flow of life in a complacent manner, but rather remain mindful. Thus we see that the person who has managed to gain some control over their emotional states is better able to be their own educator, whereas the worst educator of oneself is the person who never manages to gain control over their emotional states but is constantly lost to them. If, therefore, we wish to be self-educators of our will, then—since we seek to achieve this indirectly—we must turn to our feelings and sensations and, with wise self-knowledge, explore how we can work on them. When we have lost ourselves in a feeling of sympathy or antipathy, it is certainly not the time to work on ourselves. Therefore, we must seek out moments for the discipline of the will when we are not particularly caught up in our emotional states, but are instead in a position to reflect on our lives and our feelings. This means, then, that self-discipline must take place precisely when the required moments demand the least of us. Yet that is precisely when people do it the least, because their survival is not at stake. And whoever then succumbs to their moods again only realizes later that they have neglected something. But when one is, in a certain sense, free from the demands of daily life, one forgets it and does not think about it. This is one of the most important principles: that the will must be educated through life by the person wisely taking control of the course of their moods.

[ 20 ] On the other hand, the will always develops in a selfish, self-centered direction when a person seeks to train this will through intellectual culture—that is, when they try to make their will strong and vigorous for life through the intellect. Such exercises are directly beneficial for our culture of knowledge, for what we wish to achieve in the spiritual realm and, later, even in the psychic realm. In this regard, however, we can do nothing other than work on ourselves within our own souls. In doing so, it is of particular importance that a person, above all else, once again take into account the great contrast that exists between the self-cultivation of inner life and the self-cultivation of outer life. With regard to both the former and the latter, mistake after mistake is made in life, and we see one-sidedness upon one-sidedness at work. The human body—what isn’t recommended for it? It may have become less common, but even today there are still people who wrap themselves up particularly tightly and claim that wrapping up also protects against heat. The other approach is far more widespread: recommending a one-sided system of hardening, offering little protection against the cold and the harshness of the weather, while seeking to expose oneself extensively to fresh air and sun. The essential point is not that a person, for this or that purpose—which is usually highly unclear to them—exposes themselves to the sun’s heat for a certain period of time—which may be quite beneficial under certain circumstances but need not be a means of physical education—or that they repeatedly subject themselves to cold-water treatments; rather, the essential thing for physical health is, to put it simply, versatility—which enables the body to occasionally expose itself to the cold without catching a cold, or to walk across a completely unshaded area in the blazing heat of the sun. Therefore, one could say that wise self-education generally cannot agree with most of what is recommended today, but will instead ensure that, fundamentally, a little of everything should influence us in a certain harmony.

[ 21 ] It is precisely the opposite: what is good for our body is good for the mind and for the soul. While the physical body requires versatility and adaptation to external circumstances, the soul requires concentration for intellectual development—the ability to repeatedly trace the sum of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions back to a few fundamental ideas. And the person who, in his intellectual self-education, does not strive to reduce the scope of his knowledge to a few fundamental ideas capable of governing everything else will see his memory suffer as a result of this failure to reduce, as well as his nervous system and the way in which he is to position himself in life. Whoever has succeeded in reducing certain things to fundamental ideas will find that he faces external life—where it demands action from him—with great composure. But whoever simply goes through life without tracing what life offers him back to a few great fundamental ideas will, first of all, show that he has difficulty remembering, that he becomes unproductive in life; he will also show that he approaches life with a certain disharmony. And because there is so little faith in mental concentration in our time—and therefore so little pursuit of it—so many other ills arise that manifest as deficiencies in self-education, above all what is commonly called nervousness today. Just as one trains the will by allowing one’s muscles to interact with external life, so must one train one’s nervous system through mental concentration. In short, everything that works from within and ultimately manifests itself in the nervous system is fostered by memory—through the goal of directing our lives toward individual ideas. Caring for the nervous system and its spiritual foundation is necessary if a person wishes to face life with inner stability.

[ 22 ] When we discuss these questions, a more recent, materialistic view may seem to impose itself on us in this regard, even though the older view can be challenged in many ways from the standpoint of modern humanism. People usually confuse two things here. A person can become nervous not through the cultivation of their will, but through the improper cultivation of their will. The cultivation of the will can lead to nervousness if a person pursues it in the wrong way—that is, if, instead of engaging with the external world and tempering his will through its obstacles and hindrances, he seeks to achieve it through all manner of internal means that operate solely in the realm of the imagination. In this way, he can easily develop nervousness of the will. This nervousness is already viewed today in such a way that it must be treated with considerable leniency. Carneri recounts an interesting case in this regard. There was once a landowner who, although otherwise a thoroughly good-natured person, would sometimes fall into such a state of mind that he would beat his servants; and because this event belongs to our own time, it was called a special case of nervousness. The people suffered immensely from the landowner’s mental states, but in more recent times, those who, according to contemporary views, are the most understanding, have deeply lamented that he lives under such circumstances that he beats his servants time and time again. This went on until one day—as Carneri himself recounts—he came upon the wrongdoer, whom he also intended to beat soundly. But then the man in question took a stick himself and beat the landowner soundly, so that he had to stay in bed for a week. Now something happened: whereas the landowner had previously been pitied because of his mental state, people not only stopped pitying him, but after some time he was completely transformed. — I do not mean to recommend anything by this, but such a fact of life is nevertheless extraordinarily instructive. And if we examine it, we can see very clearly: if people had tried to talk the landowner out of it, his nervousness would have remained. If they had tried to influence his reason, he would not have entered into interaction with the outside world, and thus he would not have changed. But he did enter into interaction with the outside world—namely, with the other man’s stick. And through something he would never have comprehended in the truest sense of the word, he learned—as he faced life—the effect he had produced through his state of mind, his nervousness. Thus, the concept of “cultivation of the will” must first be clarified: the will can only be strengthened through contact with the outside world, even if we do not always wish to train our will in the same way as in the drastic case cited above.

[ 23 ] As for intellectual life in the context of a person’s self-education, the goal is to enable us to live in such a way internally that we awaken the element within us that nourishes our inner being—an element that is indeed present but can remain dormant or withered. We develop it by holding our store of perceptions together, by going through it again and again, looking back on certain ideas, and surveying what we have experienced in life, so that we can continually bring it before us. In particular, it is of special importance that we do not focus solely on the intellect and its cultivation—that we do not merely remember, think, and imagine—but, what is far more important and essential, that we ensure, through sound self-education, that we learn to forget in the right way. Forgetting is not to be recommended here as some special virtue; rather, when we are confronted with this or that in life, we very soon realize that we cannot at all carry what we experience fully from one moment of experience into a later one. We can sometimes do so with ideas, but only in the rarest of cases with the sensations, feelings, pains, and sufferings we have experienced. But how do these continue to work? They fade, and in the hidden depths of the soul they continue to work. What is forgotten there is a healthy element that descends into the hidden depths of our inner life. And through this descent of a healthy element, we have something that works within us, that can bring us forward step by step. It is not a matter of, so to speak, stuffing ourselves full of all kinds of material, but rather of attentively following things while retaining what we need—what we have otherwise experienced—and sinking it down into the depths of the soul. In this way, we nurture our intellectual element; we nurture something that is particularly important: the element of attention. Anyone who believes this isn’t particularly important will say, “Oh, what does it matter!” They don’t, so to speak, take much control of their own personality. But anyone who knows that what one forgets matters will say to themselves: I must take control of my life; I must not let everything simply wash over me. When I go into this or that social circle where nothing but nonsense is being chattered about, it may well be that, because I am an intellectual person, I forget it—but what really matters is whether I forget this nonsense or something wholesome and more sensible. — So it depends on what one includes in one’s forgetting. For from what is forgotten, something often rises up that becomes the object of our imagination—in the true sense of the word—our fantasy. And while the rational element is one that tires and exhausts life, everything that sets our soul’s powers in motion so that we invent something is a fertilizing, invigorating, and life-affirming element. This is something we must cultivate with particular care in wise self-education.

[ 24 ] We have thus also considered some aspects of self-education with regard to the intellect and the inner element of the soul, and if we cultivate this inner element of the soul with particular care and place the greatest emphasis on it, we will see that it flows quite naturally into the will and character as well, whereas all efforts we make to directly influence character tend to result in a weakening, because we do not place ourselves in a reciprocal relationship with the wider world.

[ 25 ] For all such things that can serve to further a person’s self-education, spiritual science provides a supportive element through the law of repeated earthly lives and the law of karma, that is, the fact that what I experience in this present life are the effects of past lives, and that what I experience now will in turn form the causes for what I will encounter in future lives. By incorporating the ideas of repeated earthly lives and karma into one’s life, one learns to strike the right balance between resignation and the drive to act. With regard to these two, we can commit the greatest sins in terms of our self-education. In our present age, even with regard to resignation and the drive for action, the situation is such that people are doing precisely the opposite of what would correspond to truly wise self-education. Anyone who stands on the foundation of repeated earthly lives will say to themselves: Whatever befalls me in life as my destiny—whether pain or joy, whatever brings me together with this or that person, and so on—I must view it from the perspective that, with my Self that transcends my narrow personality, I myself am the one who has brought all of this about. Then we arrive at something that might at first appear as if it could lead to weakness—to resignation to our fate, to yielding to our fate precisely because we know we have fashioned it ourselves. Just as things befall us, so must they befall us, because they have come about through us. If we have this acceptance, it is precisely such acceptance that will strengthen and fortify our will, because it is not brought about by an internal training of the will, but by a relationship to external fate—to what befalls us. There is nothing in self-discipline that can make our will stronger than resignation and surrender to fate—what is called serenity. Those who are grumpy at every opportunity and resent their fate weaken their will. Those who, through wise self-discipline, are able to resign themselves to their fate strengthen their will. Those people are the weakest-willed of all who, at every opportunity, feel as though this or that befalls them entirely undeservedly, as though they simply have to shake it off.

[ 26 ] This devotion is often not at all to the liking of people today. Instead, they develop another form of devotion all the more. Nowadays, we see this kind of resignation—with regard to the inner self—widespread everywhere: in relation to the intellect, the inner forces, and whatever pertains to inner forces. People immediately resign themselves to the nature of their inner soul and say right away: “Yes, if you don’t like that, it’s your fault; it’s because you aren’t paying enough attention.” — Today, the very people who are most indignant toward external fate are the ones who are most devoted to their inner selves. How self-satisfied people really are. And they are especially self-satisfied when they emphasize again and again that nothing really needs to be developed other than what is already within them today. Today’s doctrine of individuality is the purest doctrine of resignation. The idea that individuality must be elevated, and that no opportunity to do so should be left unused, is something that stands in stark contrast to the feelings of resignation held by today’s “people of action.”

[ 27 ] Striking a balance between inner humility and activity is what we must achieve—the proper swing of the pendulum. But we can only do this if we keep our attention open to what life has to offer. Keeping our attention and interest open is a demand we must place on ourselves, especially with regard to self-education. Thus we see that when a person looks toward the future, they say to themselves: What I am developing now—how I am maturing and unfolding my powers—will shape my existence in the future; it will enrich my destiny. — When a person expands their life beyond their present incarnation and looks toward what may emerge as an effect of their present existence, then the urge to act will awaken, and the person will rise above their present nature; and their sense of devotion will be expressed in the right way when they can perceive what befalls them in the present as having been shaped by themselves.

[ 28 ] Thus, the ideas of reincarnation and karma can provide exactly what people today need. And the numerous questions raised today about self-education will not receive a proper answer until spiritual science can become one with the innermost impulse, the inner longing of the truly seeking soul of the present. Spiritual science does not seek to agitate, but it does seek to give the present what must be the innermost urge of the modern human soul. It has always been the case that, while truth was meant to serve every age for which it was intended in an appropriate form, that same age has always rejected the truth. Therefore, even though spiritual science provides the surest foundation for all cultural questions of the present and the near future, it cannot escape the fate—however necessary it may be—of being misunderstood and finding itself opposed by what is today nothing more than a passing fad: the claim that it is empty fantasy, daydreaming, if not something worse. But it is precisely when one confronts such profoundly far-reaching questions that one sees the significance and scope of what spiritual science can and does offer as an elixir of life. Then, no matter how strongly opposition and scorn against spiritual science may be voiced, one can also sense what it is and what it can be as an elixir of life. One can apply to it a phrase that, for those who grasp its true depths and significance, can help them rise above all the opposition and misunderstandings directed against it—a phrase spoken by a man with whom one might not always agree, but who, in this particular regard, has hit the nail on the head. Arthur Schopenhauer’s words apply to the fate of that truth which, through spiritual science, must take root in humanity for all cultural questions of the present and the near future: “Throughout the centuries, poor truth has had to blush at the fact that it was paradoxical, and yet it is not her fault. She cannot assume the form of the enthroned universal error.” There she looks up with a sigh to her patron god, Time, who beckons to her with victory and glory, but whose wingbeats are so vast and slow that the individual perishes before they arrive. — And what Schopenhauer could not yet add, modern spiritual science can add by saying: May the patron god, Time, have such vast and sweeping wingbeats that the individual personality cannot perceive the truth of Time—that the personality must perish before the truth can triumph—yet the science of the spirit shows us that within this personality lives an eternal core of being that returns again and again and is not limited to the individual personality, but passes from life to life.

[ 29 ] Therefore, we can say to ourselves: And even if the wings of time beat so vast and so far that the individual perishes and does not live to see the victory of truth—what lives within us, our true self, can, if we transcend the personality, still experience this victory and all victories, for the ever-new life will always overcome the old death. — Spiritual science, drawing from the deep foundations of truth, will affirm Lessing’s words—which, as an essence distilled from earlier centuries, already shine out to us—as embodying the very victory of truth. What the spiritual researcher has to say about the all-encompassing essence of the human being—by looking at what he attains beyond his personality, without losing himself in the process—the soul is able to express as the deepest, most significant force of its life by saying to itself: “Is not all eternity mine?!”