The Rudolf Steiner Archive

79. On Pedagogy I

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] The present is the age of intellectualism. Scientific development [of the last] century has celebrated its greatest triumphs precisely under the influence of intellectualism. And even if it is true that science itself has, for the most part, provided many answers today precisely because of its specialization, one must nevertheless say that the way of thinking of all people—one can already say today: of all people—is profoundly influenced by intellectualism. If one wishes to characterize this intellectualism, one must say: a person becomes an intellectualist by forming thoughts through mere thinking and mental images. — This may seem like a paradox; yet it describes a reality. For one can also say that in earlier periods of human development, people had thoughts that struggled their way out from within them. Such thoughts were once also regarded as “scientific”; because these thoughts struggled their way from the innermost depths of the human being to the surface of the soul, they always conveyed something of the human soul and its inner experiences themselves. One was given something of the soul’s warmth and clarity; one was given something of what a human being is in their innermost being. And when a natural science was developed in those times, the chemical processes of nature were described in such a way that something of the human soul was incorporated into the description.

[ 2 ] Today, this is called anthropomorphism. But by applying this term—“anthropomorphism”—in the way it is used today, one succumbs to a certain error in thinking. In ancient times, people would have drawn this from their imagination and would have projected these fantastical [elements] into the external natural processes and beings; people of earlier times once possessed a magnificent state of mind and, in a very elementary way, held together what they [took in] from the external things and processes of nature with what today nourishes us only spiritually. Today we have color or other non-warming elements to offer. But this is part of human development and actually arose only with the conviction that people have an inner tendency toward abstract thoughts—thoughts that are developed solely through logical reasoning, thoughts that are formed in such a way that every thought process involves mental activity. These thoughts do not spring from the deepest inner being of the human being; the person does not infuse them with anything from their soul. That is why they become cold. One senses no warmth of the soul in these thoughts. This is the distinctive characteristic of human development in modern times: that it is intellectualistic.

[ 3 ] “Artists have the most cause to lament this intellectualism. The artistic person within one practically recoils from the intellectualist who seeks only to ‘explain’ his revelation. For through such an explanation, through such an imposition of cold, intellectualistic thoughts, the warmth from which the artist is reborn is virtually repelled. The artist cannot find that warmth again in cold clarity! And that which has long accompanied his works—the inner warmth of the soul, that which he has given to the work as its inner soul—is repelled. For this reason, artists do not appreciate the aesthetic approach when it seeks to be scientific. They do not appreciate it because aesthetics first emerged at the very moment when intellectualism broke out, and because this aesthetics then also took on a decidedly intellectualistic character. What really matters to the artist is that the warmth that permeates the artistic work—and of which it is composed—can also be transmitted to the viewer. This is not possible if one approaches the work with mere coldness.

[ 4 ] This intellectualism then manifests itself in people’s social lives. In social life, people must, after all, act within the community, and the way in which one individual acts and behaves has an effect on others. The well-being and misfortune of others depend on what one person does. In our intellectualistic age, however, people’s actions—especially those in public life, but also the actions of the vast majority of people, including the intellectualist—arise from impulses that are conceived or otherwise derived from mere intellectual life. Those who act this way—whether of their own accord or because some community from which they must act compels them to do so, or those who act out of a mere cold impulse—do not imbue their actions or activities with any social warmth. As a result, the actions themselves take on a cold, sober character. Through the intellectualistic element, true social life—which can take place only between soul and soul, not between mind and mind—is undermined! People become estranged from one another, and chasms open up between them.

[ 5 ] All of this has, in recent times, been recognized in its /missing word], and it has been particularly felt by prominent scholars in the fields of education and child-rearing. For a long time now, therefore, scholars in the fields of education and child-rearing have been calling for the following: Children must be taught using methods that do not merely appeal to the development of the child’s intellect, so that the child is expected to accomplish, as far as possible through reason alone, what is required for their education and instruction; rather, it is demanded that the child be treated in such a way that, alongside the head, the heart develops, and alongside understanding, practical skill; that the child learns and learns to work from the whole person. The aim is to support intellectual development in the child through educational and teaching methods that address the soul and the child’s emotional perception. But this view, this demand, is presented in such a way that it is said: The child should not be educated and taught with a focus on intellectualism; rather, the child should receive an education of the heart in all areas of life that have long been under the influence of a rational, intellectualistic education.

[ 6 ] But one could not approach the question in this way alone, for: If something other than what is based on intellectualistic foundations is to be developed in the child—indeed, then it is necessary, above all, that pedagogy and methodology themselves be imbued with spirit, so that pedagogy and methodology themselves possess a soul within them—so that they are not merely comprehensible or intellectualistic, but arise from the whole human being, from human foundations, so that souls emerge. There are quite considerable obstacles to this in the present day. Even today’s parents have an almost unshakable faith in scientific authority. Parents willingly submit to [science], to what modern science—which is, at its core, essentially a science of the senses—says about their child’s health and illness, and about how the child should develop physically and spiritually. [But also] the teacher, who is training here to become a teacher by profession, demands a higher level of education for himself—an education that has been shaped precisely by what is generally recognized as a science of the senses.

[ 7 ] And this science of the senses merely forms thoughts that have been emptied of all inner spiritual life, that lack the warmth of the soul. These thoughts receive no content from within the human being. Therefore, they must necessarily obtain their content from somewhere other than the human inner life. These thoughts must derive their content through the [appraisal] of the senses, through experimentation—which is the [appraisal] itself. What the experiment reveals is clothed in thoughts that are virtually devoid of everything that springs from the human soul. Such an approach to the world of thought—or such a psychologically liberated approach to the world of thought—is particularly suited to what is today called natural science. For one arrives at a scientific understanding that contains nothing of the human subject, that encompasses in thought only what the senses themselves perceive, through what the experiment [proves]. The thoughts are entirely dehumanized. Nothing can be objected to regarding this natural science, its aims, or its fully conscious character. From a human perspective, this natural science is purely intellectualistic.

[ 8 ] Through pure observation and experimental inquiry, [and through their long-term interaction, entirely new possibilities emerged]. These possibilities of modern life have now brought about yet another development. [The age of the development of the consciousness soul begins around the middle of the fifteenth century.] But with this other one, it was achieved that the warmth of the soul remains dull without human consciousness. /[Unclear passage in the stenographic record], this could only be achieved in the intellectualistic age. Indeed, this intellectualistic age has uplifted humanity, given humanity the natural sciences—which form the foundation of technology, which, after all, requires nothing subjectively human—and [thereby] granted humanity wisdom for all time, for wisdom can only flourish when thoughts contain nothing trivial, nothing instinctive, nothing of what the soul does not bring forth from within itself in full consciousness, but rather when thoughts are such that moral impulses—created purely spiritually—are then poured into them.

[ 9 ] It is certainly true that this era produced great achievements for humanity through intellectualism. But we have just seen that intellectualism is harmful to a child’s upbringing. Based on an examination of this harmful effect, people have [resolved] to say that children simply must not be raised in the spirit of intellectualism. But at that time, people had only a sensory-scientific way of thinking. From this sensory-scientific way of thinking, one comes to know human beings only insofar as they are physical beings. One learns to educate them only to the extent that the senses can perceive them. But the senses cannot develop such spiritual aspects, much less observe them—and so one fell into [gap in the transcript]). I would like to say—[this may be a bit of an exaggeration]—that people don’t always say it out loud, but they do mean it today: Yes, they say, scientific content has nothing to offer educational and teaching methods; this science can be intellectualistic—that is true. But what scientific observation tells us about human beings [unclear passage in the transcript]

[ 10 ] Physiology, and ultimately experimental psychology as well, have shown that this does not lead into the true realm of the soul or the true realm of the spirit. Therefore, we once again appeal to humanity’s simple, elementary instincts for education.

[ 11 ] Perhaps people already say this—they don’t always say it, but this is what they actually mean: One should not be misled by what has been scientifically proven or what is scientifically accepted, but should instead focus on what emerges from the tools of education.

[ 12 ] One might agree with this if it were possible. But it simply isn’t possible. It is not without reason that intellectualism has emerged in human beings. The reason it has emerged is precisely that the instincts have diminished in strength, that human beings no longer possess the instincts they once had. Human beings have moved from the stage of instinctual activity to the stage of full deliberation; that [illegible word] can be achieved through full deliberation. But this is possible only if the demand is not made that one should return to one’s instincts, return to one’s [illegible word]—to a state of uncertainty, to a low point. After all, one wants all sorts of things and considers all sorts of things to be right.

[ 13 ] Just take a look at what’s coming out of this kind of “instinct-based pedagogy” today—where virtually everyone can see the results—from all sorts of educational and teaching methods. One person tries this out in the city school. Another says: There’s no hope for city schools; we have to move schooling out to a rural boarding school. A third person, however, wants to do things differently. So everyone draws on their instincts to find something that may seem nice and cute, but which only shows that their instincts have all fallen into uncertainty and confusion.

[ 14 ] It is indeed true that we no longer live in the age of instinctive humanity. Therefore, calling for an “instinct-based pedagogy” today is simply a sign that one does not understand the times we live in. What is referred to here as “anthroposophical education” sees through this reality. This anthroposophical education tells us: Instincts have been weakened, and we must strive for the full deliberateness of intellectualism. We must reckon with this deliberateness of intellectualism. It is inconvenient, because today virtually anyone can, without having to learn anything, establish a community somewhere, set up programs; and [anyone can] say what is right. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, one can be completely convinced of this: If ten or twelve people get together today—they’re all intellectual and clever, by the way; I don’t mean that ironically at all—people today are very often clever in their thinking—they can draw up educational programs with nice paragraphs. Paragraph 1, 2, 3, and so on. One can then also establish communities and attract many followers, and one can trumpet it to [society] so that everyone [unclear passage in the transcript].

[ 15 ] Anthroposophy, however, states that humanity has entered the age of intellectualism. We must take this into account; that is to say, we must establish a Spiritual Science that is just as carefully grounded as intellectualistic, naturalistic science—as intellectualistic sensory science is. First, one must learn something. One must even think in order to know what one is supposed to do within the framework of such a Spiritual Science. One must first engage in learning—which is more uncomfortable than proceeding without the education of the spirit. The spiritual researcher states what is correct and has a [illegible passage in the stenographic record].

[ 16 ] We must establish a Spiritual Science for this kind of education of the future. In most cases, it would turn out that if people who initially intend to use what they believe to be right as the basis for the teaching and educational methods of the future were first required to learn something, they would give up on the idea. And this can lead to an unconscious hesitation, so that once they have been awakened, they can no longer do what they had intended to do. And out of this unconscious hesitation—if one could only consciously know something about the reality that anthroposophy teaches—one holds back and says: “Anthroposophy is fanciful; it conjures up something that isn’t natural at all.” They can use the objections raised against anthroposophy as a basis, and this unconscious reluctance frightens them.

[ 17 ] If one takes that [illegible word], distinguished guests, it may well apply to one aspect or another of life. But in education, it is not enough simply to be an educator; only those who truly know human beings can educate. And one can only come to know human beings if one does not view them through a scientific lens or intellectual logic, nor merely as physical beings, but rather insofar as they are beings of soul and spirit. Therefore, above all else—and before the requirement to educate children without an intellectualistic approach can be fulfilled—a different course of study must be established: To train teachers in such a way that a pedagogy is built up within their souls—one that views the soul and spirit of the human being with the same equanimity as intellectualistic science views nature. I shall take the liberty of discussing further how such a pedagogy should be pursued once this first part of the exposition has been translated.

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[ 18 ] If, then, someone—compelled by observation of the child—does admit that the human being possesses a spiritual aspect just as it possesses a physical one, the physical aspect is nevertheless studied by the sensory sciences merely in its physicality. From the observation of the physical, a set of conclusions is then drawn about what is healthy, what is sick, and what is psychologically active within the child’s physical organism. And then one thinks that if one already acknowledges the existence of a soul, and if—in accordance with this sensory science—one genuinely cares for the child’s psychological health through intellectual nourishment as prescribed by this science, through intellectually oriented physical exercise, climate, and the like, then one can now determine, based on certain psychological and [illegible word] conclusions, one can now determine what one should teach the child in the classroom.

[ 19 ] One would have had to assert entirely different demands regarding the spiritual realm, even if one admits that, in light of what has been recognized, one simply defers to the findings of science. One then merely parrots the scholars’ statements about what science says regarding the physical realm, and one becomes incredibly amateurish when speaking about the soul. And the psychological aspect—which, after all, constitutes a large part of our current teaching, our so-called psychological teaching—has become entirely amateurish. For example, those who are willing to acknowledge the existence of the psychological but do not wish to adopt a method to truly understand it—these people view the soul from a psychological perspective, even though it can be demonstrated that it exists independently of the physical body— [from those who wish to accept the spiritual in psychological terms] someone comes along and demands a psychology based on depth psychology. And whatever one is unwilling to develop observational methods for in the mind, one simply relegates it all to the vast reservoir of the unconscious or subconscious. This is not a particularly ingenious method. It is just as if someone wanted to talk about there being a museum in the city, and instead of going into the museum and looking at it—in order to understand why the city’s residents went there, what they took into their souls by contemplating the museum’s contents—[he is content] to say: “I’m not going to get involved in that; I don’t want to go in there first. For me, the museum is just the institution, the establishment.” That’s roughly how we deal with the psychological realm. We register what presents itself to external observation; the rest remains unconscious, and so on.

[ 20 ] It is simply not the case that one can accept what science has discovered about human beings as reality; that is an abstraction. Human beings are not merely this physical organism in which some sort of soul—or even a soul of some kind—resides somewhere. Human beings are a unity of soul, body, and spirit—and the soul acts within the physical body. If one judges only the physical aspect, one knows nothing of the soul. For the soul must be studied alongside the physical human being, especially in a true school of humanity.

[ 21 ] This becomes particularly evident when it comes to truly understanding a child at different stages of life. The transition to permanent teeth marks a significant phase in a child’s life. Anyone who observes—even if only superficially—will find that everything changes in the child around the age of seven, when the permanent teeth begin to come in. In the child’s organism, we then observe that the second teeth have erupted, the first teeth have been shed, and the second teeth have come in. But we must also recognize that what underlies this eruption of the second teeth are certain forces of the psychic organism. These forces do not arise all at once when a second tooth erupts. They have been fully active since the child’s birth, even during embryonic life; they are active throughout the entire organism, and as the child continues to grow, it does not, of course, develop third or fourth sets of teeth. If the same forces that were active in the organism from embryonic life through the change of teeth—and which led to the eruption of the second set of teeth—were to remain active in the same way, one would surely develop third and fourth sets of teeth—and yet one does not. Thus, these forces have ceased to be within the organism what they were up to the age of seven, but they do not disappear; they become something else.

[ 22 ] You see, anthroposophical Spiritual Science must introduce people to such stages of life experience and appropriately supplement mere scientific observation with the observation of soul and spiritual life. Of course, in just two lectures I can only sketch out very briefly what I would actually want to say in a series of many lectures, if it is to be explained with any degree of clarity. But I do want to set forth the principles today and tomorrow [gap in the transcript].

[ 23 ] When we consider the child’s organism, it is already a human organism. But anthroposophical Spiritual Science demonstrates, through appropriate methods of observation—which I explained today [illegible words in the stenographic record]—that integrated into the human physical body are an etheric organism and, beyond that, a special soul organism, which can also be called the astral organism—and without these, human beings cannot actually function. And this shows that for a child’s life up to the age of seven, it is already beneficial to observe the connection between the physical body and the etheric organism.

[ 24 ] If I may sketch this out on the blackboard, the situation is this: the human being is integrated into a physical realm, into a physical organism. [Gap in the transcript] [It becomes apparent that, beyond that,] he has a finer organism, the etheric organism. I would now like to sketch this etheric organism as it [gap in the transcript] can be observed when captured at this very moment. I say, if it [gap in the transcript] can be captured in sketch form at this very moment. For this etheric organism is not something permanently spatial, as the physical organism is a spatial entity that remains in one place; rather, this etheric organism is in a state of constant becoming, in constant fluctuation—it is, in fact, a temporal organism. And one can no more paint it than one can paint a flash of lightning. One can only capture a moment of the flash in a painting. Just as one can capture the flash—even though it is in motion—for a moment, so too can one do this with an etheric organism. This etheric organism thus permeates the human physical organism. This etheric organism develops from within itself the thought—the actual power of growth and nutrition. It stimulates nutrition; it [illegible word] into growth forces [gap in the stenographic record]

[ 25 ] Now, the fact is that in a child, up until the age when the teeth begin to change—that is, around the age of seven—this etheric organism is evenly distributed throughout the physical organism. Thus, whatever is present in the etheric organism extends its activity to the physical organism. Everything in the physical organism is under the influence of the etheric organism. This changes around the age of seven, which is the age when the teeth begin to change.

[ 26 ] It becomes apparent that a human being separates a part of their etheric organism from the rest of it. The rest of the etheric organism remains integrated as it was before. But a part of the etheric organism becomes independent, emancipating itself from the activity that was previously exerted on the physical organism. I will illustrate this part here in the following way: It is highly developed in the head and then extends [illegible word] into the rest of the organism. When the entire etheric organism was active as an organization uniformly permeating the physical organism, the forces that pushed through the second set of teeth were also active within this etheric organism. These forces, which pushed these teeth through in the etheric organism, break away from the physical organism; they no longer want anything to do with it, and therefore they are no longer present as tooth-forming forces.

[ 27 ] [And once the child has grown its permanent teeth, this part can then permeate the physical organism as a force of growth and nutrition.] This is the part shown here in red, which is now becoming independent. This part of the etheric organism, which becomes independent, now clothes itself with a higher aspect of human nature—the actual soul life. It has become free from the physical. It permeates the head organs and part of the remaining organs. This is what we are dealing with when, after the age of seven, we focus on the child and carry out certain activities involving its soul life. We then address the soul, which is now contained within this emancipated part of the etheric body. Just as the entire etheric body was previously embedded in the physical body, we now see the soul as being carried by this liberated part of the etheric body. The soul is now contained within it.

[ 28 ] The principle of these things alone has not yet [achieved] in and of itself; rather, progress is made only when the subject becomes a free education in life and an art of living—that is, when, through an anthroposophy that is not merely anthropology and is not merely intellectualistic, the teacher or instructor is trained to the point where they can now observe what is taking place in the physical organism up to the age of seven, when the etheric organism is fully active within it. Today, under the influence of science, people learn human anatomy and physiology that actually stem from what can be placed on the dissection table after death, and from what can be gleaned from disease, or from comparing humans with what can be achieved in animal experiments, and so on. And from this, people then form mental images of how the human being is composed of the liver, kidneys, heart, and so on.

[ 29 ] Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this person whose mental image one has does not exist at all; he is an abstraction. There is only a certain inner human [cosmos] that exists up to the age of seven. There, everything—the liver, the stomach, the lungs—is permeated by the etheric in a completely different way than later on, until a part of the etheric body has broken away and becomes part of the soul.

[ 30 ] Here again is the fear people have when they realize that anthroposophy does not stem from anthropology. Yes, things are comfortable for them now—they learn what the liver is, what the lungs are. And now they hear about this terrible (said ironically) anthroposophy, where one is supposed to learn what the liver is up to the age of seven, what it becomes up to sexual maturity, then on until the age of 21, and so on. They should learn properly from the physiologists. But for practical life [this only becomes fruitful if it can be taught and instilled through education, if one doesn’t stop at theory], but rather moves on to real practice, and that [illegible passage in the transcript] … what is at work here in the liver (after all, it’s not just working on the teeth). Something similar has happened with the liver as with the teeth; metabolism, too, has changed. One must gradually learn to see through the human being, from [illegible word in the transcript] onward, so that one cannot say: The human being has a physical organism, which one studies purely physically according to science; rather, one must always know what the soul and spirit are within it. Physical labor differs at every stage of life. True anthroposophy—not merely an anthropology based on sensory science—must form the foundation of true pedagogy. —Whatever else can be said on this subject may perhaps be shared in the third part following the translation.

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[ 31 ] If you consider the artistic aspect, you will be able to say to yourself: Because of the special way in which the etheric organism—which is evenly distributed throughout the physical organism—is active in human beings, everything that happens to the child—and within the child—up until the change of teeth must find physical expression. Only in a limited sense—which we will explore tomorrow—is there anything in the child that does not take on a physical expression. In other words: Whatever the child accomplishes up until the change of teeth, it accomplishes only by transforming the effects of whatever makes an impression on it into a movement or activity of the body. This makes the child an imitative being; it perceives what is in its environment. And since it [perceives] everything that is in its environment, and since this perception expresses itself as an impulse of an etheric organism—which, however, because of its connection to the physical, immediately translates into some process that must take place within the physical organism—the child’s entire activity, which was under the influence of the environment, consists in imitating precisely what the child perceives and sees. Another, distinct mental activity—one that is not an imitation of what is happening in the environment—is found in the child only to a very limited extent.

[ 32 ] Therefore, all education and instruction of the child up until the time of tooth replacement can be effective solely by presenting the child with what one wishes to be imprinted upon its organism. The child absorbs every lesson emotionally. What is presented to the child stimulates the etheric body, which in turn stimulates the physical body; it is imitated. You see, the entire process of learning to speak, for example, becomes immediately clear when one understands this [imprinting] of the etheric body on the child’s physical body and recognizes the child as an imitative being. The child hears the sound, which vibrates within its etheric organism; this stimulates the physical organism to imitate it; the child imitates the sound as it develops, and so everything one presents to the child up until the change of teeth must be geared toward imitation.

[ 33 ] A child experiences itself quite differently than an adult does later in life. I would like to draw attention to another aspect: how a child experiences itself in the very earliest stages of life. As an adult, one has the taste of food one has eaten in one’s mouth and on one’s palate. For a child, this is not the only sensation; the child also has a dull, dark sensation of taste that forms in the stomach. As the child suckles breast milk, the sensation of taste extends, as it were, from the mouth into the stomach—except that the child does not lead as alert a soul life as an adult, but rather a more dreamlike one.

[ 34 ] But impulses enter into this dreamlike inner life that certainly play a role in the child’s soul, and among these is the development of a sense of taste in the stomach. This stems from the fact that, in the child, the etheric body is more intimately connected with the physical body than it is later in life. The child is, in a sense, relatively different—entirely a sensory organ. It perceives certain impressions through the body, and based on these perceptions, it recreates them. And the child perceives in the most subtle way. One might say that extraordinarily intimate things are at play within this imitative activity of the child. [This goes so far that the perception we have in our later years is far too coarse to be able to create a mental image of it.]

[ 35 ] Children still perceive and imitate things in a dreamlike way. If we admit—and this is no exaggeration, but can indeed be observed by the science I refer to here as anthroposophy—that we harbor thoughts that are too frivolous or too immoral: each such thought continues to live on, albeit in more intimate processes, within the physical organism.

[ 36 ] The adult has a crude faculty of perception. He perceives nothing of all that the child—who is, in his very being, a sensory organ—perceives. The child perceives even what lies in the unfolding of thought in his surroundings and also perceives the unspoken thought within. In this sense, one should not focus on external thoughts, but rather on inner thoughts [illegible passage in the stenographic record]

[ 37 ] One should therefore be the kind of educator to the child who, in class, holds only those thoughts toward the child that the child is allowed to imitate and can understand, so that the child may become a good person in life once the child has passed through the stage of losing baby teeth. Then, I said, a part of the etheric becomes emancipated from the physical and is no longer fully active in the physical body. Thus, this emancipated part of the etheric body no longer provides the stimulus for inner imitation [illegible passage in the stenographic record], but rather this receptive part of the etheric organism now flows into the soul, much like the receptacle of an air pump when we make an opening. As a result, the child will now not only imitate what I demonstrate to it, but will also begin to receive an impression of what I do not actually say, but which [however] lies within my words.

[ 38 ] Until the child’s teeth come in, it is an imitative being. From the time of tooth replacement until sexual maturity—a period during which a similar transformation takes place, which I will describe tomorrow—the child is such that it already possesses an emancipated part of the etheric body with a soul element incorporated within it; however, this is not yet sufficient to take in what is in the environment through the power of judgment, but is sufficient to take it in openly as images, to take it in based on immediate impression, and now not merely to incorporate it into the body through imitation, but to incorporate it into the soul /gap in the stenographic record], but not yet what [reaches] the child when we place too much value on its rational judgment; rather, with the change of teeth, the child transforms into a being for whom that which it perceives—that which is spoken, becomes binding, and is placed into the environment by the teacher or educator as “the good”—is good.

[ 39 ] Likewise, the child regards as beautiful whatever is presented to it in this way by its surroundings. And the same applies to the true. From the time of tooth replacement until sexual maturity, the child does not consider something to be true simply because it is proven to him, but because—within [his] constitution—which consists of the emancipated etheric organism and the soul that has flowed into it—he extracts the entirely elemental from this organism, [because] he is under the influence of authority here.

[ 40 ] From being an imitative being, the child becomes one who seeks to participate, so that its soul is given direction in the sense that it receives this direction through the fact that the respected educators or teachers regard something as true, beautiful, or good. This is what now develops within the ethereal organism described above, which is permeated by the soul. What flows into the child does not come through what the teacher says, but through what he is; and through the fact that the child receives a feeling, a sense of empathy, from what he is—that he lives the truth, lives beauty, lives goodness.

[ 41 ] It is no longer—one might say—automatically imitated; rather, it is absorbed into the child’s inner life, and through the indirect process of inner spiritual stimulation, the child models his or her behavior after it. It is a higher form of activity than imitation, but it is a more immediate process than the one that develops when we appeal to the child’s power of judgment. [illegible passage in the transcript]

[ 42 ] Therefore, it is necessary that what the teacher himself presents to the child at that age—[what he] imparts to the child through teaching between the loss of baby teeth and puberty—be [presented] in an artistic manner. Whatever the child is to learn or observe—whatever is living in the etheric realm at that moment—[should] be presented in an artistic manner. Teaching must evolve from a purely instructional approach to an artistic one. To the same extent that we succeed in transforming pedagogy from something that constantly seeks to build upon intellectualistic science into a fully considered art—so that the truth, the presentation of something that seeks to unfold before the child, [illegible passage in the stenographic transcript] is a work of art that the child can perceive artistically.

[ 43 ] Only if education can be transformed into an art in this way will it come very close to what many people today actually demand unconsciously—what they instinctively sense on an educational level—but which can be founded only on a genuine anthroposophy that contemplates the spiritual and the soul.

[ 44 ] One might expect a person who is constantly looking at their watch to also see the inner workings of the watch. However, intellectualist pedagogy is said to constantly lead to [illegible words].

[ 45 ] People presume they can treat a child the same way they treat a clock. But they know no more about the child than they do about the clock. One must truly come to understand what the ethereal organism develops within the child’s organism from year to year, indeed from month to month. But one must then know how, during the school-age period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the very different organs work within the child from month to month. Then one can experiment a bit with this living material; [then] what one has [learned] from listening [gap in the transcript] through instruction and upbringing can be put to use as a work of art, and this is essential if pedagogy is to move in a direction that will enable the human being of the future [illegible word] healing [gap in the transcript]—what the human being is capable of. And how pedagogy can develop beyond the age discussed today—that is what I intend to explore tomorrow.