The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] If you recall what I said yesterday in our semi-public lecture, you will be able to see why particular emphasis must be placed on the development of the will and the mind in future education and instruction. I said yesterday: Although it is always emphasized—even by those who do not consider any reform of the educational system—that the will and the character must be given special attention in education, in reality, despite all good intentions, not much can be done from this side to foster the development of the will and character. They are increasingly left to so-called chance because there is no understanding of the true nature of the will.

[ 2 ] To begin with, I would like to make the following observation: Only when one truly recognizes the will can one also recognize at least some of the other emotional stirrings, some of the feelings. We can ask ourselves: What, exactly, is a feeling? A feeling is very closely related to the will. The will, I would say, is simply the feeling put into action, and the feeling is the will held back. The will that has not yet truly expressed itself, that remains within the soul—that is the feeling; a dulled will is the feeling. Therefore, one will understand the nature of the feeling only when one has penetrated the nature of the will.

[ 3 ] Now, as you can see from my previous discussions, everything that lives in the will does not fully unfold in the life between birth and death. When a person carries out a volitional decision, there is always something left over that is not exhausted in the life leading up to death; there remains a residue that lives on within the person and that is carried forward through death by every volitional decision and every act of the will. This residue must be taken into account throughout one’s entire life, and especially during childhood.

[ 4 ] We know that when we consider the whole human being, we consider him in terms of body, soul, and spirit. The body is born first—at least in its more gross aspects. You can find more detailed information on this in my book *Theosophy*. The body is thus incorporated into the stream of heredity, bears the inherited characteristics, and so on. The soul is, for the most part, that which, from the prenatal existence, unites with the physical and descends into the physical. But the spiritual is, in the human being of the present—it will, of course, be different in the human being of a more distant future—actually present only in potential. And here, where we wish to lay the foundations for sound pedagogy, we must take into account what, in human beings of the present epoch of development, exists as the spiritual only in potential. Let us first make it perfectly clear to ourselves what such potentials exist in human beings for a distant future of humanity.

[ 5 ] First of all, there is—albeit only in potential—what we call the Spirit-Self. We cannot simply include the Spirit-Self among the components, among the elements of human nature, when we speak of modern human beings; but a clear awareness of the Spirit-Self is present, in particular, in those people who are able to perceive the spiritual realm. They know that the entire Eastern consciousness, insofar as it is an educated consciousness, calls this Spirit-Self “Manas” and that Eastern spiritual culture certainly speaks of Manas as something living within the human being. But even among Western humanity, unless it has become strictly “educated,” a clear awareness of this Spirit-Self is present. And I say this deliberately: a clear awareness exists; for among the people—or at least it did before the people were completely taken over by a materialistic mindset—what remains of a human being after death is called the Manes. It is said that after death the Manes remain; Manas = the Manes. I said: the people have a clear awareness of this; for in this case the people use the plural, “the Manes.” We, who scientifically relate the Spirit-Self more to the human being before death, speak in the singular: “the Spirit-Self.” The people, who speak of the Spirit-Self more from a sense of reality and from a naive understanding, use the plural when they speak of the manes, because at the moment a person passes through the gate of death, they are received by a multitude of spiritual beings. I have already alluded to this in another context: We have our personal guiding spirit from the hierarchy of the Angeloi; but above them we have the spirits from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi, who intervene immediately when a person passes through the gate of death, so that the person then immediately experiences their existence, in a certain sense, in the plural, because many Archangeloi are involved in their existence. People sense this very clearly, because they know that, in contrast to their existence here—which appears as a unity—a person then perceives themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, as a multiplicity. Thus, the Manes are something that lives in the naive popular consciousness through this Spirit-Self—Manas—which exists in the plural.

[ 6 ] A second, higher component of the human being is what we call the Life-Spirit. This Life-Spirit is already very barely perceptible within the human being of today. It is something of a very spiritual nature within the human being that will develop in the distant future of humanity. And then the highest aspect within the human being—which currently exists only as a very slight predisposition—is the true Spirit-Man.

[ 7 ] But even if these three higher aspects of human nature are present only as potential in human beings living here on Earth between birth and death, they do develop—albeit under the protection of higher spiritual beings—in a very significant way between death and a new birth. Thus, when a person dies and re-enters the spiritual world, these three aspects—which, in a sense, foreshadow a future human existence—develop very clearly. Just as a human being develops spiritually and psychologically between birth and death in his present life, so too does he undergo a distinct development after death—only that he is then attached, as it were, by an umbilical cord, to the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies.

[ 8 ] Let us now add to the higher aspects of human nature—which are barely perceptible today—that which we can already perceive. First and foremost, this is what manifests in the conscious soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the sensory soul. These are the actual soul components of the human being. If we wish to speak today of the human soul as it lives within the body, we must speak of the three soul components just mentioned. If we wish to speak of the human body, we speak of the sensory body—the finest body, also called the astral body—the etheric body, and the gross physical body, which we see with our eyes and which external science dissects. With this, we have the whole human being before us.

[ 9 ] Now you know that the physical body, as we possess it, is also characteristic of animals. Only when we compare this whole human being—according to these nine members—with the animal world do we gain a mental image of the relationship between humans and animals that is useful for grasping the concept of the will, provided we know: just as the human being is clothed in the physical body within the soul, so too is the animal clothed in a physical body; however, the animal’s physical body is structured differently from that of the human being in many respects. The human physical body is not, strictly speaking, more perfect than that of the animal. Think of animals from the higher order, such as the beaver, when it builds its lodge. A human being cannot do this unless he learns it—unless he undergoes very complex training for it, unless he studies architecture and the like. The beaver builds its lodge as a natural extension of its bodily organization. Its outer, physical body is simply shaped in such a way that it fits into the external physical world, allowing it to use what lives within the forms of its physical body to construct its lodge. Its physical body itself is its teacher in this regard. We can observe wasps, bees, and even the so-called lower animals, and we will find in the form of their physical bodies that something is anchored within them that is not present in the human physical body to this extent or with this strength. All of this is what we encompass with the concept of instinct; so that we can in reality study instinct only when we consider it in connection with the form of the physical body. If we study the entire animal kingdom as it manifests outwardly, we will find within the forms of the animals’ physical bodies the guidance needed to study the various types of instincts. If we wish to study the will, we must first seek it out in the realm of instinct and become aware that we find instinct in the forms of the physical bodies of the various animals. If we were to observe and sketch the main forms of the individual animals, we would be able to depict the various realms of instinct. What instinct is as will is, in the image, the form of the physical body of the various animals. You see, this brings meaning into the world when we can apply this point of view. We survey the forms of the animals’ physical bodies and see in them a drawing that nature itself creates from the instincts through which it seeks to realize what lives in existence.

[ 10 ] Now, the etheric body lives within our physical body, shaping and permeating it entirely. It is supersensible and invisible to the external senses. But when we look at the nature of the will, we see that just as the etheric body permeates the physical body, so too does it take hold of what manifests in the physical body as instinct. Then instinct becomes a drive. In the physical body, the will is instinct; as soon as the etheric body takes hold of the instinct, the will becomes a drive. It is then very interesting to observe how, when viewed as a drive, the instinct—which can be grasped more concretely in its outer form—becomes internalized and also more unified. When speaking of instinct, one will always say that, when it is found in animals or, in a weakened form, in humans, it is imposed on the being from the outside; with the drive, however, one must already bear in mind that what expresses itself in a more internalized form also comes more from within, because the supersensible etheric body takes hold of the instinct, thereby transforming the instinct into a drive.

[ 11 ] Now, human beings also have the sensory body. This is even more inward. It, in turn, takes hold of the impulse, and then not only is an internalization produced, but instinct and impulse are also raised up into consciousness, and thus desire arises from this. You will also find desire in animals, just as you find instinct in them, because animals, after all, also possess all three members: the physical body, the etheric body, and the sensory body. But when you speak of desire, you will, quite instinctively, have to accept that desire is something very inner. When speaking of the instinct, you describe it as manifesting uniformly—I would say—from birth to old age; when speaking of desire, you speak of something that is energized by the soul, something that is energized more as a one-time occurrence. A desire need not be character-based; it need not be attached to the soul, but rather it arises and passes. In this way, desire reveals itself as more characteristic of the soul than the mere instinct.

[ 12 ] Now let us ask ourselves: If a human being—which is no longer possible in the case of animals—takes into his “I,” that is, into his sensory soul, intellectual or emotional soul, and conscious soul, that which lives in his physical body as instinct, impulse, and desire, what then becomes of it? Here we do not make such strict distinctions as we do within the physical realm, because in the soul—especially in modern human beings—everything is, in fact, more or less intermingled. This is, after all, the bane of modern psychology: psychologists do not know whether they should strictly separate the components of the soul or allow them to flow into one another. Among some psychologists, the old strict distinctions between will, feeling, and thinking still haunt them; among others—for example, among psychologists of the Herbartian school—everything is shifted more toward the side of mental images, while among the Wundtians, it is shifted more toward the side of the will. So there is no clear idea of what one is actually supposed to do with the division of the soul. This stems from the fact that, in practical life, the ego does indeed permeate all the soul’s faculties, and because, in modern human beings, the distinction between the three parts of the soul does not emerge clearly even in practice. Consequently, language lacks the words to distinguish what is of a volitional nature in the soul—instinct, drive, desire—when it is grasped by the ego. But in general, we refer to that which, in human beings, is grasped by the “I” as instinct, impulse, or desire as a “motive,” so that when we speak of the volitional impulse in the true soul, in the “I,” we speak of a motive and thereby know: Animals may well have desires, but they have no motives. It is only in human beings that desire is elevated by their incorporating it into the soul, and this gives rise to the powerful impulse to form a motive within. It is only in humans that desire becomes a true motive of the will. By saying that instinct, impulse, and desire—inherited from the animal world—still live within humans, but that humans elevate these to the level of motives, we have, when we speak of the will, what is present in modern humans. This is clearly evident. And anyone who observes human beings at all with regard to the nature of their will will say to themselves: If I know what a person’s motives are, then I understand them. But not entirely! For something resonates softly within when a person develops motives, and this soft resonance must now be taken very, very seriously.

[ 13 ] I now ask you to carefully distinguish between what I mean by this “resonance” in the impulse of the will and what is more of a mental image. I am not referring to what is more of a mental image in the impulse of the will. For example, you might have the mental image: “What I wanted or did there was good”—or you might have a different mental image. That is not what I mean; rather, I am referring to what still faintly resonates within the will. First, there is something that, even when we have motives, still operates within the will: the desire. I’m not referring to the strongly pronounced desires from which cravings then arise, but rather to that faint echo of desires that accompanies all our motives. They are always present. We perceive this desire particularly strongly when we carry out something that springs from a motive in our will, and when we reflect on it afterward and say to ourselves: “What you’ve just done, you could have done much better.”—But is there anything we do in life where we couldn’t be aware that we could do it even better? It would be sad if we could be completely satisfied with anything, for there is nothing we couldn’t do even better. And it is precisely this that distinguishes the culturally superior person from the inferior one: the latter always wants to be satisfied with himself. The superior person never wants to be truly satisfied with himself, because a quiet desire to do better—or even to do things differently—always resonates as a motive. Many sins are committed in this area. People see something—who knows how great—in regretting an action. But that is not the best one can do with an action, for remorse is often based on mere selfishness: one wishes one had done something better in order to be a better person. That is selfish. Our striving becomes unselfish only when we do not wish to have done the action already accomplished better, but when we place much greater value on doing the same action better the next time. The resolution one forms in this way—the effort to do something better next time—is the highest good, not regret. And this resolution still resonates with a desire, so that we may well ask ourselves: What is it that resonates there as a desire? - For those who can truly observe the soul, it is the first element of all that remains after death. It is part of what we feel: We should have done it better; we wish to do it better. — This already belongs to the Spirit-Self: the desire in the form I have described.

[ 14 ] Now the desire can become more concrete; it can take on a clearer form. Then it becomes similar to a resolution. Then one forms a kind of mental image of how one would do the action better if one had to do it again. But I do not place great value on this mental image; rather, I focus on the emotional and volitional aspects that accompany every motive—the motive to do something a little better the next time a similar situation arises. This is where what is known as the human subconscious exerts a powerful influence. In your ordinary consciousness, when you perform an action today out of your own will, you will not always form a mental image of how you could carry out a similar action better next time. But the human being who still lives within you—the second human being—always develops—though not through imagination but through will—a clear picture of how he would carry out the action if he were to find himself in the same situation again. Do not underestimate such insight! Do not underestimate this second human being who lives within you at all.

[ 15 ] Today, that so-called scientific school of thought—which calls itself analytical psychology, or psychoanalysis—talks a great deal about this second type of person. This school of psychoanalysis usually starts with a textbook example when presenting its case. I have already recounted this textbook example, but it is quite good to bring it to mind once again. It goes as follows: A man is hosting an evening party at his home, and the plan is for the lady of the house to leave immediately after the party ends to go to the spa. Various people are attending the party, including a lady. The party takes place. The lady of the house is prompted to leave for the spa. The rest of the party leaves, and the one lady goes with them. Just like the other guests, she is startled at an intersection by a horse-drawn cab that is just turning the corner from another street, so that they don’t see it until they are very close to it. What do the members of the group do? Of course, they all step aside to the right and left to avoid the cab—except for that one lady. She runs as fast as she can, right down the middle of the street, always ahead of the horses. The cab driver doesn’t slow down either, and the other members of the group are absolutely terrified. But the lady runs so fast that the others cannot keep up with her; she runs until she reaches a bridge. Even then, it does not occur to her to step aside. She falls into the water, but is rescued and then brought back to the host’s house. There she can now spend the night. — You will find this incident cited as an example in many accounts of psychoanalysis. However, it is almost always misinterpreted. For one must ask: What underlies the entire sequence of events? Underlying it is the woman’s desire. What, exactly, did she want? She wanted to return to the host’s house after the lady of the house had left, because she was in love with the man. But this was not a conscious desire; rather, it was something rooted entirely in the subconscious. And this subconscious of the second person, who resides within the individual, is often far more sophisticated than the person in their own mind. In this case, the subconscious was so sophisticated that the woman carried out the entire sequence of events—right up to the moment she fell into the water—in order to return to the host’s house. She even prophetically foresaw that she would be rescued. - Psychoanalysis now seeks to approach these hidden powers of the soul, but it speaks only in general terms of a “second self.” We, however, can know that what is at work in the subconscious powers of the soul—and often manifests itself in an extraordinarily subtle way, far more subtle than in a normal state of mind—is present in every human being.

[ 16 ] Deep within every person, as it were underground, lies the other person. Within this other person also lives the better person, who always resolves, after committing an act, to do better the next time in a similar situation, so that the resolution—the unconscious, subconscious resolution—to perform an action better in a similar situation always resonates quietly within.

[ 17 ] And only once the soul has been freed from the body will this intention become a resolution. The intention remains in a purely embryonic state within the soul; the resolution follows later. And the resolution resides in the Spirit-Man just as the intention resides in the Life-Spirit and the pure desire resides in the spiritual self. So if you consider the human being as a willing being, you can find all these components: instinct, impulse, desire, and motive—and then, faintly resonating, that which already lives in the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man as wish, intention, and resolution.

[ 18 ] This is of great significance for human development. For what lives quietly within us—preserved for the time after death—manifests itself in human life between birth and death. There, we describe it using the same words. In our imagination, we also experience desire, intention, and resolve in this context. But we will experience these desires, intentions, and resolutions in a manner appropriate to human nature only if these qualities are developed in the right way. What desires, intentions, and resolutions actually are in the deeper human nature does not come to the fore in the outer human being between birth and death. The images emerge in the life of the imagination. If you develop only ordinary consciousness, you do not even know what a desire is. You always have only the mental image of desire. That is why Herbart believes that there is already a striving force present in the very mental image of desire. It is the same with intention; of it, too, you have only the mental image. You want to do this or that—which actually takes place deep within the soul—but you do not know what underlies it. And now, of all things, the resolution! Who really knows anything about it? General psychology speaks only of a general will. — And yet the teacher and educator must intervene in all three of these soul forces in a regulating and ordering manner. One must work precisely with what takes place in the depths of human nature if one wishes to educate and instruct.

Spirit-Man: Decision
Life-Spirit: Resolution
Spirit-Self: Desire

Consciousness Soul Motif
Intellect Soul Motif
Feeling Soul Motif

Sensory Body: Desire
Etheric Body: Drive
Physical Body: Instinct

[ 19 ] It is always of the utmost importance for educators and teachers to realize that it is not enough to structure lessons based on ordinary human interaction; rather, these lessons must be shaped out of an understanding of the inner being.

[ 20 ] It is precisely this mistake—organizing education according to the ordinary social interactions of people—that popular socialism seeks to make. Just imagine for a moment that the school of the future were to be shaped according to the ideal of ordinary Marxist socialists. This has already happened in Russia; that is why the Lunacharsky school reform there is something truly dreadful. It is the death of all culture! And even though a great deal of evil stems from Bolshevism in general—the worst of it will be the Bolshevik method of instruction! For if it were to prevail, it would thoroughly eradicate everything that has been handed down from earlier times in terms of culture. It will not achieve this in the very first generation, but it will be all the more certain to succeed with future generations, and then, very soon, all culture will vanish from the face of the earth. Some people need to realize this. For just imagine that we are now living under the amateurish demands of a moderate socialism. Amid all this, voices are heard that seek to shape socialism in the most perverse way. Good and evil resound together there. You have heard it yourselves in this very room—you have heard people singing the praises of Bolshevism who have absolutely no idea that, in doing so, they are driving the very essence of evil into socialism.

[ 21 ] Particular attention must be paid here. There must be people who understand that social progress demands an ever more intimate understanding of the human being on the part of education. Therefore, one must realize that it is precisely the educator and teacher of the future who must tap into the very core of human nature, that one must live in harmony with this core of human nature, and that ordinary social interaction, as it occurs among adults, must not be applied in the classroom. What, then, do ordinary Marxists want? They want to make schools socialist, they want to abolish the principal’s office without replacing it with anything, and they want, as far as possible, to let children educate themselves. The result is something terrible!

[ 22 ] We were once at a rural boarding school and wanted to observe the most uplifting class there: the religion class. We entered the classroom. There, on the windowsill, was a young rascal, lounging with his legs dangling out the window; a second was crouching on the floor, and a third was lying on his stomach somewhere, looking up. That was roughly how all the students were scattered around the room. Then the so-called religion teacher came in and, without any particular introduction, read aloud a short story by Gottfried Keller. As he did so, the students once again accompanied his reading with all sorts of lounging about. Then, when he had finished, the religion class was over, and everyone went outside. This experience conjured up the image in my mind that next to this rural boarding school was a large sheep pen—and just a few steps away from it lived this student body. —Certainly, these things should not be harshly criticized. There is a great deal of good will behind them, but it is a complete misunderstanding of what needs to happen for the culture of the future.

[ 23 ] What, then, is the goal of today’s so-called socialist program? — The aim is to have children interact with one another in the same way that adults do. But that is the most misguided thing one can do in education. One must be aware that a child has to develop something entirely different in terms of spiritual and physical powers than what adults develop through their interactions with one another. Education and instruction must therefore be able to address what lies deep within the soul; otherwise, one will not make any progress. Therefore, one must ask: What aspects of instruction and education influence the human will? — This question must be seriously addressed at some point.

[ 24 ] If you think back to what was said yesterday, you will recall: Everything intellectual is already a senile will; it is already the will in old age. Thus, all conventional instruction in the intellectual sense, all conventional admonitions, everything that is conceptualized for the purpose of education, has no effect at all on the child at the age relevant to education. Now let us summarize the matter once more, so that we know: feeling is will in the making, not yet fully formed; but the whole human being lives in the will, so that we must also take into account the child’s subconscious decisions. Let us simply guard against the belief that everything we think we have carefully devised has an influence on the child’s will. We must therefore ask ourselves: How can we exert a positive influence on the child’s emotional nature? We can do this only through what we establish as a recurring practice. It is not by telling the child once what is right that you can bring the impulse of the will to its proper effect, but by allowing the child to do something today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. The right approach is not, at first, to set out to give the child admonitions or rules of conduct, but rather to direct the child toward something you believe will awaken a sense of what is right within the child and to let the child do this repeatedly. You must elevate such an action to the level of a habit. The more it remains an unconscious habit, the better it is for the development of this sense; the more the child becomes aware of performing the action out of devotion through repetition—because it should be done, because it must be done—the more you elevate this to a genuine impulse of the will. Thus, more unconscious repetition cultivates the feeling; fully conscious repetition cultivates the actual impulse of the will, for this increases the power of decision. And the power of decision, which otherwise remains only in the subconscious, is stimulated by having the child consciously repeat things. Therefore, when it comes to the cultivation of the will, we must not focus on what is of particular importance in intellectual life. In intellectual life, we always count on the following: you teach a child something, and the better the child has understood it, the better. Great importance is placed on teaching something just once; then the child is simply expected to retain and remember it. But what is taught once and can then be retained does not affect the feelings and will; rather, what affects the feelings and will is what is done again and again and what is regarded as the right thing to do given the circumstances.

[ 25 ] The earlier, more naively patriarchal forms of education applied this in a similarly naive and patriarchal manner. It simply became a way of life. In all these practices, there is certainly something pedagogically sound. Why, for example, do we have children recite the same Lord’s Prayer every day? If people today were expected to read the same story every day, they simply wouldn’t do it—they would find it far too boring. People today are conditioned to seek novelty. People of earlier generations all experienced not only praying the same Lord’s Prayer daily, but they also had a book of stories that they read at least once a week. As a result, they were stronger in will than those who emerge from today’s educational system; for the cultivation of the will is based on repetition and conscious repetition. This must be taken into account. Therefore, it is not enough to say in the abstract: “One must also educate the will.” For people will then believe that if they themselves have good ideas for developing the will and teach these to the child through some sophisticated methods, they are contributing to the development of the will. But in reality, this is of no use at all. Those whom one seeks to admonish regarding morality will only become weak, nervous people. People will become inwardly strong if, for example, one says to the children: “You will do this today, and you will do that today, and both of you will do the same tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.”—Then they do it out of respect for authority, because they realize that someone must give orders at school. So: assigning each person a specific task for every day, which they then carry out every day—possibly throughout the entire school year—is something that has a very strong effect on the development of the will. First, this creates a bond among the students; second, it strengthens the teacher’s authority and engages people in a repetitive activity that has a powerful effect on the will. Why, then, does the artistic element have such a particular effect on the development of the will? Because, first of all, artistic practice is based on repetition; second, because what a person acquires artistically brings them joy time and again. One enjoys the artistic time and again, not just the first time. It inherently possesses the capacity not only to inspire a person more than once, but also to bring them immediate and repeated joy. And that is why what we aim for in our lessons is, in fact, intrinsically linked to the artistic element. We will explore this further tomorrow.

[ 26 ] Today I wanted to show that the process of forming one’s will must be approached differently than the development of the intellect.