The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Moral Education from the Perspective of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Anthroposophy, as I have taken the liberty of characterizing it here over the past two days, is not intended to be merely a theoretical view through which a person can rise above the unpleasant, painful, and unfortunate aspects of life and take refuge in a mystical world; rather, it is intended to be something capable of intervening specifically in a person’s practical life. It must become a practical matter of existence for the reason that the spiritual knowledge of which I spoke yesterday and the day before is indeed meant to lead to a genuine penetration of, and a genuine perception of, the spiritual world—a world that does not merely exist in isolation but intervenes in all material events. When we encounter a human being in life, we are not dealing merely with what our eyes can perceive in him, what our capacity for language can understand through his speech, or what we might otherwise receive in the form of expressions or revelations of his being that we might otherwise receive through ordinary consciousness; rather, we are dealing with a spiritual being that lives within him—a spiritual, supersensible being that continually intervenes in his material constitution.

[ 2 ] With the knowledge we acquire through our ordinary sensory perception—and through the intellect, which is bound to this sensory perception—we can never truly comprehend much of the world. It is true that we indulge in the illusion that one day, when science—as they say—becomes more perfect, we will understand more of the world through reason, sensory observation, and experimentation than we do at present. But anyone who can assess the whole relationship between human beings and the world as it emerges from the two lectures I was permitted to give here knows that sensory perception and the intellect can only grasp the mineral kingdom. Even when it comes to the plant kingdom, one must be clear that something far more subtle—in terms of law and power—intervenes in the plant world from the universe than what the intellect and the senses can grasp. This is even more the case with the animal world, and most of all with human beings. For plants—least of all—animals, and human beings are, even in their physical organization, such that the forces acting within them in the material realm operate like an ideal magic. And anyone who believes that they can observe any process they have observed in the laboratory in exactly the same way within an animal or the human organism is greatly mistaken. For in the animal and human organisms, the purely physical process is enshrouded in an ideal magic. And we truly understand something within the human being when we see through this ideal magic—that is, when we are able to assess the human being in such a way that we look, as it were, through his material processes to see how the spiritual is constantly at work within him.

[ 3 ] An understanding of such spiritual magic can come to a person only through the insights I spoke of here yesterday and the day before. I have been able to show that a first stage of this insight reveals to a person that they do not merely have a relationship with the world in the present moment, but that they can transport themselves back to the stages of life they have gone through since their birth on Earth. One can, I said, transport oneself back to the time when one was eighteen or fifteen years old, and one experiences what one experienced back then—not merely as a faint memory, but in such a way that one is immersed in it with the same intensity and force as one was back then. One becomes fifteen, twelve years old again, and so on. One undergoes this spiritual metamorphosis within oneself. Through this, however, one is able to perceive in the human being a second organism, a subtle organism—which can be called “etheric” because it has no weight like the physical body—such a more subtle organism. This more subtle organism, however, is a temporal organism. Suddenly, in a comprehensive view, one has within oneself everything that constitutes this etheric organism as a process in time. But one knows that one nevertheless possesses an organism, and one learns to recognize that the human being is situated within this finer temporal organism just as he is otherwise situated within the spatial organism.

[ 4 ] If, for example, one notices that a person is suffering from, say, a certain type of headache, one must be able to recognize that the cure may need to be brought about from within some internal organ of the body; that one cannot by any means limit the cure to the head alone, but must address an organ that lies far removed from the head. In the spatial organism that we carry within us, everything is interconnected. But the same is true of the etheric time organism, which is particularly active in early childhood but remains dynamic throughout one’s entire life and contains forces that work, for example, in the following way: Suppose a thirty-five-year-old has the opportunity to face a new life situation; if they are now up to the task of this life situation, so that they are able to do the right thing in it, they may become aware that they once—perhaps as a twelve-year-old or an eight-year-old child—learned the most important aspects of what now enables them to quickly find their bearings in this situation. And a certain joy radiates in the thirty-fifth year from what was imparted to the child in the eighth or twelfth year by the educator or teacher, because what takes place in the human etheric body in the eighth or tenth year through the educator and through instruction has the same effect as an organ located far from the head that influences the head’s healing when we treat it. In the same way, what was experienced in the sixth or twelfth year continues to have an effect in the thirty-fifth year and beyond, giving rise to a joyful mood or a depression. A person’s entire constitution, even in the latest stages of adulthood, depends on what the educator shapes within the person’s etheric body, just as one organ of the human physical body depends on another. When one considers this, one must say to oneself: The insight that arises from an understanding of how this etheric body develops, and how its individual aspects are interconnected—only this insight can provide the proper foundation for the educational treatment of the human being. And if one thinks through what I have just said in the right way, one will say to oneself: Yes, just as the painter or other artist must learn the technique of their art, so it is necessary for the educator, for the teacher, to acquire a technique of education—and I mean this in the most ideal sense. Just as the painter must observe forms in his own way—not like the layman—just as he must observe colors and their harmonies or dissonances, and just as he must derive from this observation what then goes into his handling of colors and his handling of the brush, just as he must acquire something that works through his whole being, and which is based on the ability to observe correctly—so too must the educator, must the teacher, be able to make use of what results from observing what works spiritually within the human being and what makes the entire course of their life an organic unity. For education cannot be a science; education must be an art. In art, one must acquire: first, the special gift of observation; second, one must master the handling of what one encounters in constant observation and in the ongoing struggle with the subject matter. Thus, spiritual science, as understood here—that is, anthroposophical spiritual science—is what can serve as the foundation for a genuine, true art of education.

[ 5 ] But it is also true in another respect: If education is to be truly effective, it must nurture in the right way that which, as childhood, seeks to develop within a person from the very depths of their being. This art of education must be fully capable of assessing the child in such a way that it appears to the educator as if the child had been entrusted to them through a divine-moral mission. Only that which, as educators or teachers, morally elevates us inwardly through education—that which permeates our educational actions like a religious devotion—provides the power that enables us to work alongside the child in such a way that all the potential lying within it is unfolded from within. In other words: every act of education and instruction must itself be a moral act; it must spring entirely from moral impulses. And these moral impulses must be applied to an understanding and observation of human nature of the kind I have just described.

[ 6 ] If we keep this in mind, however, we see that a person’s life is marked by certain stages in a much more distinct way than is commonly thought. Usually, this is observed in an external way; for example, when a person is around seven years old, they get their second set of teeth. People sometimes notice the physical changes that accompany this change of teeth, but they do not look more closely at the transformation taking place within the person during this process. Anyone who is able to correctly assess what a person was like before the age of seven and what they are like afterward will see that, after this seventh year of life, forces develop from the depths of the human being that were previously hidden deep within the organism. If we look at the matter correctly, we must say the following: The change of teeth is not merely a one-time, sudden event in human life. The change of teeth, which occurs at the age of seven—and which, though it does not repeat itself—is an event that fills the entire life span from the emergence of the first teeth until the change of teeth. Throughout this entire period, the forces that ultimately cause the second set of teeth to emerge from the child are at work within the human organism. And the change of teeth merely marks the conclusion of what has been at work throughout the child’s entire first stage of life. Now, the child does not go through another teething process in its life. What does that mean? It means that by the age of seven, the child has developed forces within its physical organism that it needs until it has received its permanent teeth; once it has them, it no longer needs these forces for its physical organism, because it will not undergo another teething process. What becomes of these forces?

[ 7 ] We recognize these forces again when, through supersensible perception, we are able to observe the human being in the transformed inner life of the child between the change of teeth and puberty; this inner life changes. A different kind of memory function becomes integrated into the soul. The child relates to its surroundings in a different way. And if we are able to observe not merely physically but also mentally and spiritually, then the situation presents itself in such a way that we must say to ourselves: What we see in the child’s soul from approximately the seventh to the fourteenth year was previously active in the child’s physical organism; it was, in other words, an activity that is interconnected, with a single link in the process of tooth replacement, but which brings about many processes in the human organism, and which now, at the age of seven, ceases to be active in a physical sense and begins to be active in a soul-related sense. We can therefore say: If you wish to assess what acts as special forces in the child’s soul between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, you must look at what is happening physically in the child from birth until the change of teeth. It is there that the soul forces are at work, forces that then manifest themselves as soul-spiritual within the physical organism. And the consequence of this is that, if we observe the child correctly—most of all while it is still an infant, but also in a certain sense up until the change of teeth—the child is, in a more subtle rather than a coarse sense, entirely a sensory organ. In a more subtle sense, I would say, the child is entirely a kind of groping eye. Just as the eye, by seeing the objects around it, internally reproduces what is outside—so that a person has an inner image of what the external objects represent, just as the eye has an inner image—so too does the child, in the earliest stages of life, have not a visual image, but a different kind of perceptual image. It is entirely a sensory organ, if I may put it that way. I would like to illustrate this as follows: Let us take the infant. We as adults have our sense of taste on the tongue and in the palate, and the child—as spiritual science, which I have been speaking to you about here these past few days, shows us—has a hint of taste permeating its entire organism: it is entirely an organ of taste. It is also entirely an organ of smell, and in a certain inner sense, an inner organ of touch as well. Thus, its entire constitution has a sensory nature, and this sensory nature radiates throughout the child’s entire organism. As a result, up to the age of seven, the child is predisposed to inwardly re-create everything that takes place in its surroundings and to develop itself accordingly. Anyone who observes a child—with that sense which becomes more finely attuned when one is also able to perceive through spiritual science—as the child relates every gesture made by those around them to itself, internally recreates it, and seeks to perform it, and who sees how the child lives so completely within what the people around them are doing, will recognize that the child is an imitative being until the change of teeth. And it is from this imitation that what is the most essential gift for the child’s early years emerges. Human language emerges, based entirely on the fact that the child immerses itself in who the people around it are and what they do, and develops language through imitation, by inwardly adapting to what is happening in its environment. Therefore, when we as educators stand alongside the young child during this first stage of life, we have no choice but to regard this imitative principle as the most important factor in education. And we must then tell ourselves: We can educate the very young child only by bringing about in its environment those activities and processes that the child is to imitate, so that it may become strong in mind, soul, and body. For what is imprinted there—not only on its mind and soul, but also on its body, as its organs are strengthened from within—remains as a constitution throughout its entire life. The way I behave around a four-year-old child is something the child will carry with them throughout their life, right up to the age of sixty; so that, even in their later years, they will perceive my behavior toward them as their destiny.

[ 8 ] We can illustrate this with an example like the following: When you deal with such matters, people come to you and say, for example, something like this: “Oh, my child was always such a good child; he never did anything wrong, and now my child has committed a terrible wrongdoing!” — If you ask for more details about what happened, you might learn, for example: “Yes, the child stole money from the mother.” — If you’re familiar with these matters, your first question is: “How old is the child?” — “Five years old!” — So, first and foremost, the principle of imitation is still at work in the child. It becomes clear: the child has seen every day that the mother takes money out of the cabinet; the child imitates this, having not yet developed any sense of right and wrong whatsoever, but only the impulse to do what is done in its surroundings. If we believe that we can achieve anything with the child by imposing rules about right and wrong, we are succumbing to the strongest illusion. Through the means by which we can educate, we can only achieve something if we present the child with a role model that it can imitate. This extends right into the realm of thought. Oh, there is a subtle, inner, spiritual connection between the one who is to educate and the child! And when we are in the child’s presence, we should strive to have only those thoughts and feelings that the child can also inwardly imitate as thoughts and feelings. For, you see, the child is, in its soul, pure sense, and it perceives what is happening in its surroundings through the most subtle stirrings—stirrings of which our adult senses cannot even dream.

[ 9 ] As the child has gone through the process of losing its baby teeth, those forces that were previously deeply embedded within its organism have become spiritual forces. Now, whereas the child was previously at the mercy of its surroundings, it can also face them as soul to soul, in a sense that is now—as opposed to mere imitation—a surrender to the self-evident authority. It is indeed true that in the early years of childhood, up until the change of teeth, we are such that we wish to connect completely with our surroundings and surrender ourselves entirely to them. This is, I would say, the physical counterpart of religious feeling. Religious feeling surrenders itself in spirit to the Spirit; the child surrenders itself with its body to its physical environment. It is the physical correlate, the physical counterpart of the religious.

[ 10 ] Once the child has passed the age of seven, it no longer relates to its physical environment through its body, but through its soul. The teacher stands by the child’s side, and it is essential for the child to regard the teacher as the source of all that is good and evil for the child, so that the child now pays just as much attention to what the teacher says and to the way the teacher guides the child as the child previously paid to gestures and external activities in the environment. And now, between the ages of seven and fourteen or so, the child feels an urge to surrender to a self-evident authority, so that the child wants to become like that authority. Love for this self-evident authority and listening to it are now just as much a guiding principle as imitation was before.

[ 11 ] Anyone who, like me, wrote a *Philosophy of Freedom* in the early 1990s, you would not suspect of advocating any unjustified principle of authority here. What I mean is this: it is a law of nature in human life that, between the ages of about seven and fourteen, a person must relate to the teacher or educator in such a way that, intellectually speaking, the child does not judge things as “this is good,” “this is true,” “this is evil,” “this is false,” or “this is ugly”; rather, the child judges: “this is good because the teacher or educator considers it good”; that is beautiful because the educator finds it beautiful. All the mysteries of the world must reach the child through the intermediary of the beloved teacher or educator. This is the principle of human development roughly between the ages of seven and fourteen. Thus we can say that, in the first phase of life, the child is permeated, as it were, by a religious devotion to its surroundings that has been translated into the physical realm. From the time of teething until puberty, the child is imbued with an aesthetic perception of the environment—an aesthetic perception of the environment permeated by love. The child demands to find pleasure in whatever the teacher or educator presents to them and to take a dislike to whatever the teacher or educator seeks to keep from them. Whatever is intended to have an educational effect at this stage of life must find its way into the child’s inner perception. Thus we must say: The teacher and educator must be a role model for the first stage of life; in the second stage, they must be an authority in the noblest sense—a natural authority that they can and should embody through their very being and character. Then, as teachers, we already carry within us that which enables the child, alongside us—one might even say—to educate itself in the right way. The most important aspect of self-education is moral education. I will begin to speak about this shortly, once the first part has been translated.

---

[ 12 ] If one can say that, up to the age of seven, the child is entirely a sensory organ, then after the change of teeth—after the age of seven—one must view the child in such a way that the principle of sensory perception has come more to the surface of the human organism and has withdrawn from the inner being. But it is still the case with the child that sensory impressions cannot yet intervene in the sensory organs in an organizing, regulating way. And so we see that from the time of the change of teeth until sexual maturity, the child has within itself a tendency to want to surrender its entire sensory organization to the soul, but that it does not yet participate in this sensory organization from within through the will. Participating in the sensory organization from within is what makes us intellectual beings. We only become such intellectual beings after reaching sexual maturity. In fact, it is only then that we are properly predisposed to judge the world through the intellect. For to judge intellectually means to judge personally, out of inner freedom. We acquire this ability only once we have entered the stage of sexual maturity. This, however, necessitates that we do not educate children of school age—that is, from the time of tooth replacement until sexual maturity—in an intellectualistic manner, nor do we educate them in a moral-intellectual way. During the first seven years of life, the child wants to have before them in the external sensory reality that which they can imitate. After the age of seven, the child then wants to hear from their educational authority what they can and cannot do, what they should or should not consider true, what is wrong, and so on.

[ 13 ] But now, sometime between the ages of nine and ten, something extraordinarily important begins to stir within the child. The educator who is truly an observer of human nature knows that at some point between the ages of nine and ten, the child has a particularly strong need for something. The child does not, to be sure, have intellectual doubts, but it does have an inner restlessness; it has something of what I would call an inner question—in a childlike way—about the course of life, something it cannot put into words, something it does not yet need to express; but it senses it in a half-dreamlike, half-unconscious way. One need only observe, with the right educator’s eye, how children approach this very stage of life. They know exactly this: they want something very special from the educator whom they look up to with love. Usually, one cannot answer them by simply responding to an intellectual question. Rather, it is a matter of fostering a particularly intense and intimate relationship of trust at this very age, so that the child feels: at this age, one speaks to them especially often, and one is especially kind to them. In this reception of love, in this development of trust toward the educator, lies the answer to a child’s fundamental question of the utmost importance. For what does this fundamental question consist of? — As I said, the child does not pose it with the intellect; it poses it with feeling, with the whole of its subconscious being. But we can formulate it, whereas the child cannot. Here we must say: up to this age, the child has naively and unquestioningly accepted the authority of the beloved educator. Now a need has awakened within the child: to perceive good and evil in a new way, as if they were forces present in the world. Up until now, the child looked up to the teacher, so to speak; now it wants to see through the teacher and be able to say to itself: this teacher is not merely the person who says that something is good or evil, but this teacher says it because he is a messenger of the spirit, a messenger of God—he knows it from higher worlds. — As I said, the child does not tell itself this through reason, but it feels it. And its particular question, which also arises emotionally, tells one: this and that is suitable for this child. So that it truly becomes apparent: what we call good or evil, true or false, is rooted in something “deeper.” Then the child gains new trust.

[ 14 ] But this is also the point in time when one can move beyond mere imitation in moral education—or simply telling the child that something is good or bad. It is this period between the ages of nine and ten when one can begin to present moral concepts to the child in a pictorial way—for the child is entirely absorbed in the senses, without the involvement of the intellect. In fact, throughout the entire school-age period—from the change of teeth to puberty—the child must be educated pictorially, through images, through images that engage all the senses. For even if it is no longer entirely a matter of reason, the child still lives through its senses, which now manifest themselves on the surface of its body. How one should generally educate a child from the age of six or seven through reading and writing is something I will discuss in detail tomorrow in the evening lecture. For now, I would like to focus solely on the moral aspect of education.

[ 15 ] Once the child has reached this stage between the ages of nine and ten, we may begin to show them images that, above all, stimulate their imagination—images of good people, images of people who evoke in them a feeling of sympathy for what these people do. Please note: I am not saying that one should lecture the child on moral precepts; I am not saying that one should approach the intellect with moral judgment. — One should approach the child through aesthetics and the imagination. One should also awaken a sense of approval or disapproval toward what is good or bad, right or wrong, toward the sublime, toward moral deeds, or even toward the compensation brought about in the world for wrongful actions. If one previously had to present oneself to the child as a moral regulator, one must now add images—images that no longer affect anything other than the imagination as it unfolds within the sensory being. Thus, until reaching sexual maturity, the child should first absorb morality as a feeling. The child should become firmly established in the emotional judgment: This is something for which I feel sympathy—the good; this is something for which I feel antipathy—the evil. — Sympathies and antipathies, emotional judgments, should constitute the foundation of morality.

[ 16 ] If one understands, as I have explained, that the human body is an organism in which everything is interconnected, then one will say to oneself: what matters is doing the right thing for the child at the right time. You cannot make a plant grow in such a way that it blooms immediately. Blooming must come later. You must first tend to the plant’s roots. If you tried to make the root bloom, you’d be doing something absurd. If you tried to teach the child intellectually formulated moral judgments between the change of teeth and puberty, it would be like trying to make the plant’s root bloom. You must first nurture the seed, the root; that is: morality in feeling. Once the child has cultivated morality in their feelings, they will awaken to intelligence after reaching puberty, and then they themselves will carry forward—through puberty and inner development—what they had felt between the loss of baby teeth and puberty. Then moral and intellectual judgment can awaken within them. And this is something so important for life that all moral education must be based on it! Just as you cannot make a plant’s root bloom immediately, but must wait until the root unfolds and the plant finally comes into bloom—unfolding into bloom—so, in a sense, you must nurture the moral root in emotional judgment, in sympathy for what is moral. And then you must allow the individual, through the inherent power of the human being, to carry his or her own feelings into the intellect. Then they will have the deep inner satisfaction that, in later life, they do not merely carry memories of what their educators told them was right or wrong in moral matters, but rather that this lives within them with inner joy and inner strength, filling their entire soul life in such a way that their own moral judgment has awakened freely at the right time. The fact that one does not raise the child in a slavish manner toward any particular moral direction, but rather prepares the ground for that moral direction so that it springs forth from the freely developing soul of the human being itself—this equips the person not only with moral judgment but also with moral strength. And this is what reminds us time and again, as we strive for a spiritual foundation for education, that we must present everything to the developing human being in the right way and at the right time.

[ 17 ] Now you will ask me: Yes, if I am to raise the child in such a way that I instill in him a moral and empathetic sense of judgment between the time his baby teeth fall out and puberty, and not by giving him commandments or appealing to his intellect, then what should I appeal to? — Yes, that self-evident relationship of authority—it leads to intangible factors between the educator and the child! I’ll illustrate this with an example. I might want to teach the child, in a figurative way, something about the immortality of the human soul—teach it figuratively, not through scientific methods. Science, after all, is essentially irrelevant to the child until puberty. I must weave nature and spirit into one, and I might say something to the child that I shape into an artistic image: Look, there’s the butterfly chrysalis; the butterfly is crawling out of the chrysalis. Just as the butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis, so does the soul leave the human body when the human body succumbs to death. — In this way I stimulate the child’s imagination; I present a vivid moral image to the child’s soul. I can do this in two ways. I can say: “I am, after all, a seasoned educator, incredibly wise; the child is small, incredibly foolish, and because the child has not yet risen to my level, I create an image for the child.” I shape the image this way: I know it has no value for me, but I form it for the child. If I tell myself this and, with this attitude, try to teach the child the image, it has no effect on the soul; it goes out again just as it went in; for there are intangible forces at work between the educator and the child. — But if I say: “I’m actually not much wiser than the child”—or perhaps: “The child is much wiser than I am in the subconscious”—if I have reverence for the child, and say to myself regarding this image: “Yes, I am not creating this image myself at all, but nature itself has placed the image before us in the emerging butterfly,” I believe in this image with the same intensity as the child is meant to believe—if I possess this strength of faith within myself, then the image takes root in the child’s soul, and then those things come into play that do not lie in the gross world, but live in the finer world between the educator and the child. And those intangible forces that play out in this way between the teacher and the child more than make up for all the intellectual instruction that might otherwise be passed on from the teacher to the child! In this way, the child is given the opportunity to develop freely alongside the teacher. The teacher tells himself: I live in the child’s environment; I must create the opportunities through which the child educates himself as much as possible. But then I must also stand beside the child in such a way that I do not feel immensely superior, but merely as a person who is a few years older. After all, one does not always—and this applies only in a relative sense—become wiser; so one need not always elevate oneself above the child, but should simply be a helper in the child’s development. When tending to a plant as a gardener, one does not force the flow of sap from the root to the flower; rather, one prepares the surrounding environment so that the flow of sap can unfold naturally. As an educator, one must be so selfless that the child’s inner forces can unfold; then one becomes a good educator, and then the child will be able to flourish in the right way.

---

[ 18 ] When the moral aspect of a human being is developed in this way, it takes shape, just as with a plant, one part after another. First, the moral aspect develops exactly as it corresponds to human nature, revealing itself in the imitative human organism. There it becomes firmly established, so to speak, in the manner described, so that later in life the person will also have the necessary inner strength—supported by the physical organism—to be secure in moral matters; otherwise, the physical organism might cause the person to lose vigor, become weak, and—even while possessing good moral judgment—be unable to act upon it. If the role model during the first stage of childhood was one that had a strong and intense influence, moral steadfastness develops. If, from the time of tooth replacement through puberty, the forces of sympathy and antipathy for good and against evil have taken hold of the person in the right way, then later in life the person will also experience the proper moral elevation in the face of those depressions that prevent them from doing what is necessary for morality. As an imitative being, they have developed within their organism what is necessary for their soul, in the same way that their moral sense, their feelings, and their sympathies and antipathies were cultivated during the second stage of human life. And in the third stage of life, within free human development and oriented toward life for the spirit, moral judgment awakens in the intellect, just as a plant awakens to bloom and bear fruit in the sunlight. In the spirit, the moral takes root properly only when what has been prepared for the moral in the body and soul awakens through life, freely—just as the flower and fruit of a plant awaken freely in the sunlight.

[ 19 ] But then, when the moral aspect is developed within a person in such a way that the person is, so to speak, respected in his or her inner freedom, the moral impulse becomes so closely connected with the person’s inner being that the person can truly feel: this is something that belongs to him or her. And they then feel their moral powers and moral actions in the same way that they physically feel the circulation of their blood and their growth forces. Just as they must regard natural life as belonging to them in such a way that it pulses through and energizes their entire body right down to the surface of the skin, so too do they feel the moral, because they have developed it within themselves in the proper way.

[ 20 ] And what comes next? Then it occurs to a person to say to himself: If I am not moral, I am mutilated. — Just as one says to oneself regarding the physical: “If I am missing a limb, I am crippled”—so, through the moral development alluded to, one learns to say to oneself: “If I do not fill myself with morality, if I do not allow my outward actions to be permeated by morality, I am a crippled human being.

[ 21 ] To instill in a person—even one who has otherwise received a sound upbringing—the conviction that he is an incomplete human being if he is not moral is the strongest moral impulse that can be developed in a person at all. For one need only develop the person in the right way, and then he will want to be a complete human being. But when a person is developed in such a way that he desires to be a whole human being, he then develops—entirely of his own accord, precisely through this approach of morality to his own being—an inner inclination toward the spiritual within himself. And then he regards that which permeates the world as the Good as being just as active within him as he regards the forces of nature as being active within his body. Then he understands—if one were to explain it to him figuratively: Yes, there lies a horseshoe, a piece of iron shaped like a horseshoe. Someone comes along and says: This horseshoe can be used as a magnet, for it has inner forces! — But then another person comes along and says: “Oh, come on, iron is iron; I don’t care about that; I’ll use this horseshoe to shoe my horse.” — Yes, you see, much like the latter, so is the person who, through the various stages of life’s development, cannot come to see the spiritual aspect of life in the whole human being. The one of the two who looks only at the outward appearance—not at what reigns and weaves spiritually within the human being—is the kind of person who uses a magnet shaped like a horseshoe simply for shoeing a horse. This means that people are not being educated to have the right perspective on life, nor to develop the right forces in life. When this is grasped in a spiritual sense, felt, and translated into the will, it becomes the strongest driving force in social life as well.

[ 22 ] Well, today’s discussion is centered on the social question. This social question is certainly entirely justified, and I would be happy to say more about it, but my speaking time has come to an end. I would just like to say briefly: this social question has an extraordinary number of facets, and much is required to get close enough to all the details of this social question so that what emerges is what a person who is unbiased today must nevertheless hope for—a transformation of social life for the future of humanity. But everything we might conceive of and actually implement as external institutions—everything we might otherwise devise in the many schemes that exist today regarding social life—appears to the person who views the moral in the light of the spiritual in such a way that he says: “To address the social question without the moral question is like having a room without light and trying to find the objects in it without any light inside.”

[ 23 ] The social question can only be placed in the proper context for evaluation through a genuine understanding of the moral question. Anyone who considers life in its entirety will have to admit: The moral question is like the light that must illuminate social life if the social question is to attain, in a truly human sense, what is called the religious. Therefore, it is necessary above all—even in a social context—that people today develop a standpoint on the moral question. And I think it may have been possible to show that what I call here a spiritual science—an anthroposophical spiritual science—also approaches the great questions of our time honestly in this sense, and that it takes the moral question and the education of the moral human being seriously.