The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Human Development and Education from the Perspective of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! I must once again apologize today for the cold I caught yesterday, which I haven’t quite shaken off yet, so I’m not sure if my voice will hold out for the duration of the lecture.

[ 2 ] Now—my esteemed audience—when we listen to the most ancient voices that have resounded throughout the course of human development, speaking to us about the very nature of the human being and the quest for knowledge of this human nature, one of the most significant sayings we hear echoing down to us from Greek antiquity, for example, is undoubtedly this: “Know thyself.” When this exhortation is addressed to humanity from the ancient centers of wisdom, it certainly does not mean that one should merely bring one’s physical inner experiences to a kind of self-knowledge; rather, it means that human beings should strive to fathom their own nature—that which constitutes their dignity as human beings and in which their purpose as human beings lies. And one can certainly say: Ever since this phrase resounded through the history of human development—through ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, despite all its aberrations, right up to the present day—it has become a guiding principle. And a large part of the scope of human intellectual endeavors, a large part of what has been brought to light from the deepest recesses of spiritual life—all of this has culminated in the quest to fathom the human being itself in connection with the nature of the world and with the development of the world.

[ 3 ] And precisely during the heyday of scientific development—that period in the course of the nineteenth century when science achieved its great, inestimable successes—it was during that very time that humanity, especially in its most enlightened minds, increasingly began to despair of the possibility of such self-knowledge, of such knowledge of humanity. People came to regard as accessible to human knowledge only that which, so to speak, expresses itself through material, sensually perceptible experiences; insofar as one must acknowledge that something weaves and lives within the human being—such as a soul or a spirit—people told themselves—precisely because they believed they were correctly perceiving the limits of scientific knowledge—they told themselves: True knowledge—which, after all, can only be knowledge of nature—cannot approach this actual human being, this human consciousness. And so doubt arose more and more regarding the attainment of that which had been set before humanity as the highest demand in the “Know thyself!” of the ancient centers of wisdom.

[ 4 ] One could certainly say: If that were the case, human beings would have to forgo the fulfillment of that ancient demand, and with it would be lost the possibility for human beings to have solid ground for their spiritual life beneath their feet. It would be lost to humanity because the recognition of its dignity, its essence, and its purpose would be lost; humanity would also lose the opportunity to develop a clear sense of purpose and a joyful, cheerful, yet energetic zest for work in the world.

[ 5 ] It was therefore no wonder that, at a time when, on the one hand, the natural sciences were increasingly drawing attention to how they themselves—and they believed they were the only possible form of scientific knowledge —could not, in and of itself, lead to a true understanding of humanity, people—because they cannot truly live without such self-knowledge—sought, out of the deep longing of their souls, to attain this self-knowledge and an understanding of their connection to the world through paths other than that of science.

[ 6 ] And so, in recent times, dissatisfaction with the natural sciences themselves has led many people to feel an ever-increasing need to turn to mysticism. While, on the one hand, natural science established its limits, the mystic believed that by delving into the inner human being, he could penetrate to the eternal core of that being—and thereby also to the point within the human being where the human is connected to the divine-spiritual, where the human is connected to the moral world order, and so on and so forth.

[ 7 ] It must be said: Wonderful descriptions of inner experiences are often the result of this mystical contemplation. Mystics believe, after all, that in this way—and in many other ways as well—they can indeed do without the clear scientific method of inquiry, arriving at a satisfactory understanding of the relationship between humanity and the world simply through contemplation of the inner self.

[ 8 ] Caught between these two cliffs—the scientific on one side, the mystical on the other—is the study of the world, the principles of whose inquiry and striving I had the privilege of explaining to you yesterday, my esteemed audience.

[ 9 ] This research into worldviews is not merely natural science, although—as I emphasized yesterday—it certainly seeks to learn its methodology of knowledge and its scientific responsibility from natural science in its most exact form. Nor, however, is this spiritual research mysticism; for precisely when one advances along the paths I described yesterday toward genuine human self-knowledge, one simultaneously discovers that what is today almost exclusively called mysticism is, in essence, merely a further deepening of the ordinary human capacity for memory or recollection. Understandably, only the mystics fail to see this more clearly. Whether the mystic draws forth from within—from their own inner being—that which is drawn from the innermost depths, or whether it emerges through the often very, very dubious channels of mediumistic predisposition via other people, it is nothing other than a bringing to the surface of that which, at some point—however hidden, however unconscious it may have remained—entered the soul through external observation in ordinary earthly life, developed within the soul, and then sank into the physical-bodily organization; so that the mystic explores nothing other than how his own memory images have been transformed by the organic forces of the physical-bodily-etheric human being. This is precisely what the person who, in the manner described yesterday, honestly pursues true research into the soul and spirit comes to understand.

[ 10 ] If what I described yesterday is pursued further, it will lead, on the one hand, to the precipice of natural science, but on the other hand, also to the precipice of mere mysticism. Natural science rightly tells us, from its own perspective: There are certain limits that cannot be crossed using the scientific method, the deductive mind, measurement, counting, calculation, or experimentation with scales. When natural science asserts these limits from its own perspective, one must certainly agree with it—but only if it sticks to the assertion that: “With all that can be discovered by this method, which respects the usual limits of scientific knowledge, one cannot approach the human being.”

[ 11 ] This is the first experience one has, ladies and gentlemen. Natural science introduces us in a marvelous way to the realms of external nature, insofar as these contain essences governed purely by natural laws. Natural science also leads us up to that which human beings carry within themselves from external nature—from its organization—and to what they absorb from this external nature. However, this external natural science distances us from the human being. It does not allow us to approach the true essence of the human being.

[ 12 ] The nature of this matter, my esteemed audience, is what ultimately reveals why we actually have limits to scientific knowledge. How is it, then, that we reach certain points beyond which we cannot go with scientific knowledge?

[ 13 ] Well, as I mentioned yesterday—and probably to give the pure scientists a slight shudder—I pointed out that a power of the human soul can become a power of knowledge if it is developed further and further in the sense I described yesterday: This is the power of human love. Love, you see, can be developed in such a way that it complements scientific research. What, after all, is the aim of scientific research? It seeks to examine things and processes objectively. It seeks to ensure that human beings do not add anything from their imagination or their prejudices to the entities of nature or to the processes of nature; that human beings can set themselves entirely aside and allow the things and entities of nature to speak for themselves. That is the ideal of natural science.

[ 14 ] The next step can no longer be taken theoretically, nor through observation; the next step can only be seen in an even greater self-denial. One is already practicing self-denial when one sets aside all prejudices, all subjective desires—indeed, everything subjective—while studying nature. If one goes a step further, one arrives at love as a power of cognition, in which one completely surrenders oneself and fully identifies with the things and processes one wishes to investigate. Then, by making love a power of cognition, one advances the study of nature a significant step further into the spiritual realm.

[ 15 ] This, my esteemed audience, also leads us to recognize that all talk of boundaries still stems from a final remnant of human egoism—perhaps even from a very hidden form of human egoism. Human beings do not want to step outside themselves. They want to assert themselves. They want to remain firmly rooted in their ego. Therefore, they set limits on their knowledge that they do not wish to cross; when they say, “He wants,” they must step outside themselves, must enter the world, must make love the driving force of their power of knowledge.

[ 16 ] All the talk of the limits of knowledge throughout the nineteenth century was nothing more than an unnoticed assertion: As human beings, we want to remain self-centered in our understanding; we do not want to step outside ourselves; we want to set boundaries that limit our [nature], boundaries we do not wish to cross into the essence of things.

[ 17 ] Well, my esteemed audience, once this insight emerges among humanity with the right sensibility, with deep feeling, and with the necessary impulses of the will: Talking about the limits of knowledge is the last remnant of human egoism—but it is the assertion of a well-hidden egoism—then, only then will the great impulse truly arise to no longer regard the limits of natural science in relation to the spiritual as insurmountable. For transcending these limits would then mean nothing other than casting off the last unnoticed—and therefore all the more tenaciously defended—forces of human egoism.

[ 18 ] So it is, I would say, a scientific-ethical trait that stands on one side like a shining ideal [of] spiritual research, set against one precipice—natural science. And, I would say, the other—the mystical—precipice is alluring and seductive, for it is, in turn, connected to what human beings need in order to stand as independent beings in life at all.

[ 19 ] After all, human beings need their memory during their earthly life. This memory must become embedded in the physical organism. The thoughts of memory make use of the physical organism. That is where the human being feels at home in their own being. And when, as a mystic, they then conjure up the transformed memory image—or when they allow a medium to conjure up the transformed memory image for them—they associate with what has been transformed through their own being such inner delight, such inner satisfaction, that they are happy to linger there and gladly surrender to the illusion: That which satisfies him so deeply from the depths of his own being—I would almost say—with sensual delight must also be connected to what is most precious in the world; it must point to that which connects the human being to the eternal sources of existence.

[ 20 ] You see—distinguished guests—these are the reasons why spiritual research, as it is understood here and as I am here to present it to you, can neither remain confined to mere natural science nor fall into mysticism; rather, this spiritual research recognizes that mere natural science can never come close to understanding the human being. Mere natural science investigates the external, humanless, desolate world and can only acknowledge that in this world of animal—inorganic, plant, and animal—organization, the human being is the culmination—not a distinct entity—but the most highly developed animal, the culmination of non-human evolution.

[ 21 ] Natural science does not come out of the world toward humanity. And mysticism enters into humanity, but it does not come out of humanity again; it does not come from humanity to the world; just as natural science does not come from the world to humanity, so mysticism does not come from humanity to the world!

[ 22 ] To cultivate an understanding of the world and of humanity by grappling—with what one has acquired in terms of spiritual culture, spiritual discipline, and scientific responsibility—with the limits of natural science on the one hand, and then, [on the other hand], like the true mystic, but not in a dreamy way into one’s own memory, but rather immerses oneself with clear concepts to which one surrenders—as I described yesterday—in a heightened and activated state of thinking. Through this, one first arrives at an understanding of what I described yesterday—not initially at an external understanding of the world, nor at an inner exploration of one’s own human being—insofar as the physical body is involved, as is always the case in mysticism —but rather one arrives at that tableau of life where, as if in a single moment, one surveys all that has worked within one—as in a temporal body—since one descended from the spiritual world and was clothed in a physical, earthly body; that which appears there as human self-knowledge, that mighty tableau of life in which one sees how, in the course of one’s earthly life, one has found one’s way—out of one’s inner forces, out of the forces of sympathy and antipathy—to this or that person, to this or that other life event; in this tableau of life, one feels oneself lifted out of one’s physical body for the first time. One grasps the higher human being—not yet the highest, but the higher human being—and for the moments of this realization, one forgets the physical organism to which one must, of course, return again and again.

[ 23 ] Well, my esteemed audience, I explained yesterday at the same time that one is capable of ascending to a higher level of awareness, that one is capable of erasing this self-awareness, this tableau of life.

[ 24 ] But then one comes to the realization of that which emerges from the deep silence of the human soul, where everything has first been erased—even that which constitutes the course of earthly life. But then, when one maintains an alert consciousness within the inner silence of the soul—after having erased not only all other thoughts but also the very content of one’s own soul, as I explained yesterday—one arrives at an insight into one’s even higher self: the human being one was before descending from the spiritual-soul world into the physical world of the Earth. One comes to a vision of what one was in a purely spiritual-soul world among spiritual-soul beings, among whom one lived before embarking on earthly existence, just as one lives here in earthly existence among human beings and among the other beings of the natural kingdoms.

[ 25 ] Well, my esteemed audience, such knowledge does not merely fill the human powers of cognition; it does not merely fill the human mind. Yesterday I hinted at how it arises from the whole human being. Therefore, it also penetrates back into the whole human being. It teaches us to understand the human being in his development; it provides us with the foundation for guiding the human being’s development in earthly life in the right way. For when we permeate our entire soul being with such insight, we look up to that which in the human being has entered into the child—that is, to that which first appears to us in its physical organization, which has entered into this physical organization of the child, having entered as a soul-spiritual being that has received from the parents its earthly, physical body.

[ 26 ] As educators, for example, we stand before the developing human being with the awareness that within this developing human being, the spiritual-soul aspect—which he was before his earthly existence—is revealed more and more in the physical-sensory realm from day to day, week to week, and year to year. This teaches us a new way of relating to the developing human being.

[ 27 ] It is indeed a marvelous thing to see how the child’s vague features gradually become more and more defined, and how the chaotic movements that the child directs out into the world from its innermost being become more and more purposeful. One is confronted with the greatest mystery of the universe when observing the developing child. And this mystery—it dawns on us, it gradually becomes clear—when we see how, within this childlike physical organization, that which has descended from the spiritual and soul worlds increasingly permeates the physical, shaping it—I would say, permeating it with moral and hygienic qualities. One learns to look at human development in a new way.

[ 28 ] Such a view of human development includes—if I may put it this way, my esteemed audience — above all, that inner courage of the soul which ordinary natural science and even ordinary mysticism do not provide, but which one learns to develop when, on the one hand, one cultivates active thinking, as I described yesterday, and, on the other hand, cultivates the deep silence of the soul. And finally, love as a power of knowledge. Then one acquires that courage which enables one to judge human beings in the same way that natural science judges external natural phenomena. Only the result is something entirely different through such—I would say truly natural, because it transcends the limits of conventional natural science—if I may use the paradox—scientific spiritual research.

[ 29 ] There, we observe the child and recognize very clearly how certain stages of life unfold within the child. We observe how the child develops up to the significant stage of tooth replacement around the age of seven.

[ 30 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Let us take a moment to consider the truly remarkable process that occurs with the change of teeth after the first stage of human life. Consider this: the process of tooth replacement is something conclusive. As a person receives their permanent teeth, forces spring forth from within them—forces that give rise to these permanent teeth and reach their culmination with them. For a person undergoes no further tooth replacement. It is a final event of its kind. One simply has to look at such things in the right way.

[ 31 ] And on the other hand, we must be clear about this: What pushes its way out and sprouts from the teeth is, after all, rooted within the entire human organism. These are forces and impulses that permeate and animate the whole person during the first seven years of life. The change of teeth appears as an external manifestation, as a symptom. But the entire human organism, the whole human being, brings something to a close with this event of the change of teeth. What is being brought to a close? From such an understanding of the world and of human beings, as I have described yesterday and today, one gains the courage to now explore these things in the right way. One then says to oneself the following: Yes, but with this change of teeth, something immense also changes in relation to the human soul.

[ 32 ] Thus, more and more—those who have learned to observe this can indeed see it—as the change of teeth occurs around the age of seven, what can truly be called memory begins to emerge more and more. Now, someone will surely come along—someone who has become quite knowledgeable through modern psychology—and say: “Yes, but we know that the child has memory and recollection even before the age of seven, and that this is precisely when recollection is particularly well developed.” At first glance, this seems correct. But anyone who makes this claim is relying solely on things they do not actually understand, for in truth, around the age of seven, what we previously called “memory” transforms into something entirely different—something we should only call “memory” after the age of seven.

[ 33 ] For what is this in a child up to the age of seven? It is the habitual performance of the same mental processes that the child has practiced, which it learns by imitation from its surroundings. The fact that a particular thought recurs constantly in a child’s mind has the same cause as a specific, practiced hand movement being performed over and over again out of habit.

[ 34 ] Everything, my esteemed audience, that we refer to as “memory” up to the age of seven is not, in reality, memory, but rather habits of the soul. By the age of seven, these habits—these habits of the soul—become more refined, and what we call memory in the true sense of the word emerges: an imaginative, inner movement through the phenomena of life. That which was still entirely bound to the organism—and functioned in conjunction with the organism as habits of the soul—separates from it at the age of seven and becomes spiritual-soul-related for the first time.

[ 35 ] You see, ladies and gentlemen, this gives us the opportunity to say: Yes, what was alive in the child during the first stage of life, up to the time of the first set of teeth—when, for example, the child’s brain develops most plastically up to the age of seven—after which it is essentially already developed in accordance with its inner needs—what, then, is alive down there in the body? That, my esteemed audience, is what lives down in the body—that which later emancipates itself from the body and becomes an independent power of imagination and memory.

[ 36 ] In modern physical science, we have the courage to say this: In certain processes within bodies, heat remains hidden—what we call latent heat—because this heat is released through certain processes. We can measure it with a thermometer. We speak, after all, of bound and free heat. We cannot measure bound heat with a thermometer; we can measure free heat with a thermometer. The physicist has this courage to explore external processes. The spiritual researcher must acquire it and make it applicable to the practice of life.

[ 37 ] What we will see in the child from the age of seven onward—precisely the year we first enroll them in elementary school—becoming increasingly spiritual and increasingly independent in its spirituality, was not yet so independent during the first seven years of life. It existed as growth forces within the physical body. It existed as formative, plastic forces within the physical body and, as a whole, ceases to exist within the physical body when the teeth begin to change.

[ 38 ] You see—my esteemed audience—once one becomes aware of such an important transition, of such a significant metamorphosis in human experience, one naturally goes further. Then one observes what the child is like up until this change of teeth. And then one discovers something most remarkable in this child. One discovers how, up until this change of teeth, the child is, I would say, entirely a sensory organ. The child is completely attuned to its surroundings!

[ 39 ] And if we want to compare it to something that exists in this childlike organization of the first stage of life, then we must point, for example, to the human eye or the human ear—in short, to a sensory organ. For the child is, in fact, all eye, all ear—only in a more soul-spiritual way! Just as the eye simply takes in what acts upon it from its surroundings and imitates it inwardly, so the child takes in every gesture, every word, everything that happens in its surroundings—the child takes it all in, like a complete sensory organ, and imitates it within itself. Therefore, during the first seven years, everything that is alive in the child’s environment permeates the child’s entire physical constitution. The child takes everything in on a soul-spiritual level, and it permeates the physical constitution.

[ 40 ] Let’s imagine: A quick-tempered father lives alongside the child. Anyone who can observe these things can see how this quick-tempered father, who lives alongside the child, is not only perceived by the child in such a way that the child sees the gesture of the outburst and is somehow repelled by everything that comes from it, but the child also senses the moral quality of the outburst—that which the outburst carries within itself as a moral value! The child senses the moral qualities of its surroundings—through gestures, through what it experiences internally and imitates.

[ 41 ] This, however, draws our attention to the need to observe how the child truly experiences the moral and intellectual aspects of its surroundings. We should be fully aware of the intangible forces at work here, to the extent that we should not even allow ourselves to have impure or immoral thoughts in the child’s presence. For it is through the subtlest gestures, a twinkle of the eye, the emphasis on a word, and countless other details—of which we, with our coarse adult intellect, have no concept at all—that the child perceives precisely what has an effect, especially during the first seven years, and carries it down into its physical constitution.

[ 42 ] What grows out of the father’s irascibility, out of the mother’s negligence, does not merely become some psychological quality in the child; rather, it becomes, within the child, the density of the vessel walls, the efficiency or inefficiency of blood circulation, in respiration, in the finest ramifications, and in the finest functions. What the child acquires through imitation from its surroundings during the first seven years of life enters directly into the physical organism—an organism in which even memory is initially merely a habit bound up with the physical organism itself. The spiritual-soul aspect becomes emancipated with the change of teeth. And as we bring the child into school, this entire life of the child, as I have described it, undergoes another metamorphosis.

[ 43 ] In the first years of life, the child is entirely a sensory being. The child attentively takes in what is happening in the environment and responds through gestures or various actions. The child is devoted to the actions of its surroundings—not merely in a sensory sense, but also in a moral sense! With the change of teeth, however, the child begins more and more to be devoted to that which is no longer merely a gesture or an action, but rather what is revealed in the gesture or action through speech.

[ 44 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Let us not understand language solely—although that is the primary form of language—as what we outwardly express through words and spoken language, but let us understand as language everything that constitutes our behavior in life—in that what we do becomes an expression of our human character— if we consider everything that a person reveals as their own essence—just as they reveal it through language—then we must say that from the time their baby teeth fall out until they reach sexual maturity, a child becomes receptive to this linguistic expression of other people, namely those who educate and instruct them. Until the change of teeth, the child is an imitative being in the manner described; from the change of teeth until sexual maturity, the child becomes a being who lives entirely under the self-evident authority of those in their environment who express themselves to the child through language.

[ 45 ] Ladies and gentlemen! You will not expect the man who wrote *The Philosophy of Freedom* thirty years ago and is now speaking before you to seek to instill in you, in any unwarranted way, a reactionary, passive desire, or to speak of authority in an unwarranted manner. But precisely the person who wishes to see freedom represented in human life in the way I attempted to portray in my *Philosophy of Freedom* as early as the beginning of the 1890s knows that this true sense of freedom, this true experience of freedom, can come to a person only if, between the time of losing their baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity, the child possesses a natural sense of authority toward teachers and educators.

[ 46 ] Today, people do not truly appreciate what it means for one’s entire future life to have looked up with deep reverence to the truth, beauty, and goodness that were bestowed upon them through the person of a teacher. Between the ages of about seven and fourteen, a person is not yet developed enough to perceive truth, beauty, and goodness in and of themselves. At that stage, a person is developed in such a way that truth, goodness, and beauty must be revealed to them through an adult!

[ 47 ] One gains a great deal later in life if, at this age, one has challenged an authority taken for granted, and has stated as a matter of course: Something is true because this authority recognizes it as true; something is good because this authority recognizes it as good and lives by it; something is beautiful because this authority finds it beautiful! The world must reach the child through the medium of the human being.

[ 48 ] Ladies and gentlemen! This is how we gradually learn to look at human beings in their earthly lives—when we become aware, through the method of research as I described it yesterday—as I could only hint at today—that a spiritual-soul being lived as a human being before becoming an earthly human through conception. We were all spiritual-soul beings among other spiritual-soul beings before we descended into earthly life. If we look in the right way at the developing human being on Earth to see what that prenatal, pre-earthly existence was, then we also stand—I would say with the proper reverence, but also with the proper admiration—toward that which, day by day, week by week, is so wonderfully and so mysteriously revealed, developed, and manifested in the developing human being, in the child.

[ 49 ] But then one also looks at what emerges as a connection between the spiritual-supersensory life of the human being and the physical-sensory life. One sees the child, surrendered to its surroundings, imitating those surroundings. And now one recalls that the highest form of spiritual existence that a human being can attain—through loving devotion, through the development of love as a power of knowledge— only because the human being—having been in a spiritual-soul world before their earthly existence and after their death—knows how selfish they are here on Earth; thus, they must then be devoted to the other spiritual beings.

[ 50 ] When one sees how deeply the human being is immersed in the spiritual-soul world in the supersensible realm, one comes to understand how the human being has brought with them into childhood what they were in their pre-earthly existence—before this changes during the loss of baby teeth or sexual maturation, when they become increasingly selfish—and how they physically re-enact in this life what they were in that pre-earthly existence. And one learns to look at the child in the right way: How does the child actually live in the world? Although it may sound paradoxical, one may say: The child lives in complete devotion to its surroundings! But that is the religious feeling. That is to say: The child lives—I would say—in a physical-religious way; through its nature, through the elemental nature of its constitution, the child is physically and religiously devoted to its surroundings. This continues until the child’s teeth begin to fall out; up to that point, the child is completely immersed in a religious devotion within its physical constitution—a religious devotion to its surroundings. You see, this devotion becomes spiritual and psychological in the second stage of life, between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity.

[ 51 ] We must be clear that what was, I would say—if I may use this paradox—a state of physical-religious disorganization, we must now, as teachers and educators, bring into the spiritual-soul realm. We foster this when we ourselves stand before the child as the self-evident authority for truth, beauty, and goodness. Then we gradually bring about a process whereby what was initially in the lower physical body of the child—up until the change of teeth—works its way up into the spiritual-soul realm. Then, as the child reaches sexual maturity, it becomes entirely spirit. It presents itself to us as that which we call religion in social human life.

[ 52 ] How can we best ground this religion in social life, given our understanding of human upbringing? We ground it best when we allow the child, from the earliest years of life until the change of teeth, to imitate what is right in the proper way; when we do not seek to give the child commandments, but rather stand before the child in such a way that, until the change of teeth, the child can imitate us, and after the change of teeth, until sexual maturity, the child can regard us as the model of truth, beauty, and goodness. Then, in complete freedom, the child develops into a religious human being, as the spiritual awakens from the soul with sexual maturity, just as the soul awakens from the physical with the change of teeth. In this way, we gradually learn to understand how the human being develops, and we also learn to apply such human development as an educational, pedagogical principle.

[ 53 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Spiritual research, as described here, is not a theory; it leaves that to the natural sciences alone, and to those who, for quite understandable reasons, are opponents of spiritual science today and consider themselves practical people. Their reasons are well known. For the spiritual researcher first familiarizes himself with what the opponents might say. Only when he has become sufficiently acquainted with this does he feel the full responsibility to advocate for what grows out of the very foundation of spiritual research itself.

[ 54 ] Spiritual research certainly aims to be practical; it seeks to bring the fullness of life into practice. But when it comes to the fullness of life, it is precisely those people who today consider themselves particularly clever in a materialistic sense—they are much like the farmer who finds a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron. Someone says to him, “Look, that’s a magnet—it attracts other pieces of iron, and you can use it very well for all sorts of important things!” “Oh, come on,” says the farmer, “a magnet? I don’t see anything that looks like a magnet—I’ll just use it to shoe my horse!” That’s how the theoretical materialists who want nothing to do with spiritual research strike one. They regard everything as a horseshoe because they see nothing of the magnet! The supersensible is hidden only from those who wish to see only the outwardly material. If one truly wants to be practical, if one wants to use the forces of the world in the right way for the advancement of culture and civilization, then one must be able to truly shine a light into the physical-material realm in the manner described.

[ 55 ] That is why spiritual research—I would say, by its very nature—did not remain stuck in theory. Through the forces developed from social thinking by Emil Molt in Stuttgart—we were able to found the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, where it is truly demonstrated how, out of an awareness of the full spiritual, moral, and religious nature of the human being, an educational practice can be developed that genuinely takes into account the development of the human being in all respects.

[ 56 ] This Waldorf school was founded a little over three years ago with about 150 children. Today it has well over 700 children in six classes, and we have to run most of the classes as parallel classes. And the teaching staff—which has now grown to include many teachers—is striving to educate students in all aspects of human understanding, based on human development and on what must be grounded in these principles of development, understanding, and education, so that each person can then grow into practical life from a place of full humanity.

[ 57 ] For the spiritual science advocated here—as I mentioned yesterday—grows out of the fullness of human nature, and therefore it does not wish to remain confined to theoretical descriptions, but rather to flow directly into life, so to speak.

[ 58 ] Let me conclude by illustrating this with a few sentences using a specific example. I have been advocating for the humanities, as represented here, for more than two decades. I have also had the privilege of speaking here in Kristiania for many years on a wide variety of topics within the humanities.

[ 59 ] Now, after spiritual science had been active for a decade, the idea arose in certain individuals—who were wholly devoted, with their sound common sense, to the truth of this spiritual science—to establish a separate institution for this spiritual science. Specifically, my Mysteries—in which I sought to express artistically that which flows not from some hollow symbolism or allegory, but from a truly artistic source, yet from the same source as the idea of spiritual science—this is what I attempted to portray in my Mysteries. At first, they had to be performed in ordinary theaters. But that was to change through these individuals who, in the manner described, had dedicated themselves to spiritual science and were willing to make sacrifices to erect a building of their own for it. This building was to be erected for the cultivation of this spiritual science and, in particular, for the performance of my Mystery Dramas. Fate brought this building to Dornach, near Basel in Switzerland—in the northwestern part of the country: Dornach, near Basel.

[ 60 ] Ladies and gentlemen! If any other spiritual movement had found itself in a situation where it wished to build a house, a home, for the cultivation of what it seeks to cultivate in the world, it would have gone to some architect and had a building constructed in an antique, Renaissance, or Rococo style—in short, in any style—and within that building it would have expressed its worldview. That could never have happened with anthroposophical spiritual science if one were faithful to it with one’s whole being. Why not?

[ 61 ] Well, spiritual science seeks to be something that unfolds in ideas only in one particular direction; but it is not grounded in theories, nor is it grounded in ideas; rather, it is grounded in living spiritual life, in that living spiritual perception of the world and of human beings, as I described it yesterday and today.

[ 62 ] Ladies and gentlemen, three branches spring from the same source: One branch—knowledge—expresses itself in ideas. Then there is the second branch—art—which expresses itself in forms: in the form of sounds, colors, sculpture, and architectural forms. Then there is the third branch—the religious-ethical, the moral branch.

[ 63 ] What anthroposophy is as a science is not intended to be the founding of a sect or the establishment of a religion. But it leads to the source from which religious life also flows, and artistic life flows from the same source. I have often used the following image:

[ 64 ] Imagine—my dear friends here today—a nut in a shell. You cannot imagine that the nut is surrounded by a shell that is externally constructed around it; rather, the shell must be composed of the same forces and laws of form from which the nut itself is made. You can see this in the nut shell: it is formed according to the same laws of form as the nut itself.

[ 65 ] That is life, where everything that comes into being arises from the same impulses, from the same laws of form.

[ 66 ] Anthroposophical spiritual science is not abstraction; it is life that manifests itself—as I have described—in education; that manifests itself in the social sphere; that manifests itself in the religious sphere. Since a house is to be built for it, it is the nut, and the house must be built according to the same laws of form; it must have its own style, which is not merely an idea symbolically translated into artistic forms—that would be hollow symbolism—but must be its own genuine, authentic artistic creation. But this, as the second branch, can spring from the same sources from which anthroposophy derives its ideas.

[ 67 ] And so, in Dornach near Basel—building on the fact that I myself had drawn the foundation for my research from Goethe— the Goetheanum was built near Basel—the work of ten years—designed in such a way that in every pillar, every column, every piece of the architrave, every color scheme, and everything one saw, one could perceive the appropriate artistic setting for what was taking place on the podium in this building, designed to accommodate 900 people.

[ 68 ] When one stood on the podium and spoke, one could feel how the word one had to shape—in order to convey the spiritual vision to the audience—was forged as an idea from the Idea, in exactly the same way as — as the person who worked out every detail in wax in the model of what was built in Dornach can attest —, just as that which appeared outwardly to people in forms and colors; [Whoever] heard the words spoken from the podium in this Goetheanum itself, whoever saw the eurythmy artists there unfolding their art of movement, whoever heard recitations there, whoever saw any other performance there—such a person saw that what took place and was spoken on stage and the podium was simply the other form of what the architectural and painterly forms revealed. And when the music rang out from the organ at the other end of the hall, the musical tones that filled the space were, in turn, simply a continuation of what was expressed in the forms of the columns and in the shapes and colors of the entire building. In short, this building for the anthroposophical worldview could not be constructed as an external Renaissance, Rococo, classical, or Gothic shell. A new architectural style had to emerge, because anthroposophy is not a one-sided theory, but rather that which, on the one hand, can manifest itself in all ideas of knowledge and can manifest itself as art. And as art—as the visual arts—it should now find expression in its own home.

[ 69 ] It must be emphasized time and again: Anthroposophy does not seek to establish a new religion, has no interest in sectarianism, and aims to proceed in exactly the same purely objective, purely scientific manner as any other scientific discipline. But by advancing with true scientific precision, yet with a spiritual-scientific perspective, it also draws near to the source of religiosity.

[ 70 ] This led to the decision to place, at one of the most prominent points in the Goetheanum, a [nine-and-a-half] meter-tall wooden sculpture group, the central figure of which is Christ Jesus himself. Thus, my esteemed audience, a worldview that recognizes as its ideal the embodiment of the human mystery of Golgotha in one of the most prominent spots within its home is to be provided by anthroposophy. This is precisely a line of thought whose objectives are rooted in the religious, even though it does not wish to act as a sect or a religion in its own right, but rather to remain firmly grounded in the realm of the artistic and the realm of knowledge.

[ 71 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The last time I had the privilege of speaking here in Kristiania, my thoughts turned to the Home for Spiritual Research in Dornach with a different perspective, for that home was consumed by flames on New Year’s Eve 1922–1923, burned to the ground down to its concrete foundation, and a now stands in its place—a dreadful ruin where once stood that which, in its outward forms, had revealed to thousands upon thousands of visitors over the years what could be expressed in words from the depths of the heart about human eternity, human development on Earth, human existence, cosmic existence, and knowledge of the cosmos.

[ 72 ] It goes without saying that the small insurance payouts we may receive once the judicial investigations into the Dornach fire have been concluded will not be sufficient to rebuild this structure, the Goetheanum. And we live today under different circumstances than before the war, when numerous adherents of anthroposophical spiritual research came together with a truly deep spirit of sacrifice to make the construction of the Goetheanum possible. And time and again, such friends have come forward to help. How the Goetheanum can be rebuilt will depend precisely on whether, in the current, such a difficult global situation, the same sacrifices that were possible before will once again be possible. In some form or another, it must be rebuilt; for the intention was to give visible expression through it to what anthroposophical spiritual research seeks to convey today regarding the deepest longings of contemporary humanity.

[ 73 ] I said it yesterday, too: In the people of today—in many people of today—there lives, as a deepest longing, even if they are not aware of it, even if it exists only in subconscious feelings and sensations, the urge to rediscover the spiritual, to reconcile faith with knowledge once more. This was what one sought to express outwardly through the very forms of the Goetheanum.

[ 74 ] Well, this is also expressed outwardly in the forms of human beings themselves. But that which is physical and sensory—my dear friends here today—can be consumed by material flames and thus perish, just as the Goetheanum in Dornach did. In the same way, the physical-sensory sheaths of human beings are also destroyed. But spiritual science, in particular, shows us vividly how an eternal core of the human being descends from the spiritual and soul worlds, merely clothes itself in the physical sheath, passes through the gate of death once more, and continues to live on in the spirit.

[ 75 ] That which concerns the spiritual human being finds expression in the thoughts of anthroposophy, which also aspire to be spiritual. This had its transitory outer form in that building—whose passing is so painful to us, so wistful, for us who have grown so fond of this building, this structure—just as human beings themselves, in relation to their true being, have their transitory outer form in their earthly bodies.

[ 76 ] Anthroposophy, however, seeks to speak of the eternal aspect of the human being, but to do so in such a way that this very eternal aspect comes fully to the fore in a truly practical manner—as I have indicated today with regard to a certain point—in the most diverse areas of life. To fully bring the eternal to life in the temporal, to be practical while remaining spiritual—that is precisely what true anthroposophical spiritual knowledge strives for.

[ 77 ] It will prove that the deepest longings of the human soul can, after all, be fulfilled more and more over time. And this spiritual insight can wait. It knows that the Copernican system of the world was also, at first, considered folly, but later became a matter of course. So anthroposophy knows that it may well be considered folly by many people today. It, too, will wait—and it can wait! It, too, will become a matter of course. For it speaks of what must be close to the human heart when, truly feeling his way, he wishes to turn once more to the ancient—I would say sacred—command: “Know thyself!” If human beings wish to develop this magnificent, powerful word of truth and warning in any way in a modern form, then they must arrive at a knowledge of the world that reveals, through supersensible perception, how the spiritual speaks from all the realms of nature—from clouds and stars, from the movements of clouds and stars—and how this world, which in truth can only be known when perceived in the spirit, ultimately says: “My goals lie within the human being.” Knowledge of the world is only perfected through knowledge of the human being. And one does not view the human being through mystical confusion and illusions, but rather, as I described yesterday and today, by turning one’s gaze toward the human being in order to fathom their essence. Thus, by fathoming the human being, one arrives at the recognition of the human being’s spiritual-soul, pre-earthly, and post-death nature—where the human being is poured out into the world, even though he possesses a higher self-awareness than here on earth; there, through true knowledge of the human being, one discovers cosmic beings within the human being. Just as there is no true knowledge of the world without knowledge of the human being—because the world reveals that its goal is the human being—so there is no true knowledge of the human being without perceiving in the human being a reflection of the entire world, without penetrating through knowledge of the human being to knowledge of the world in the spirit.

[ 78 ] This is what we can already see today, unconsciously, as a scientific, ethical, and religious striving at the very core of many human souls. This is what troubles many human souls today, without their even realizing it. This is what anthroposophical understanding of humanity and the world seeks to convey to people, so that what the people of the present—and especially the people of the near future—will need may truly come to pass: truly authentic knowledge of humanity through true spiritual knowledge of the world—real, authentic knowledge of the world suited to social action and religious feeling—through genuine, true knowledge of humanity grasped in the spirit.