The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] If you can first gain an overview—from the perspective presented in the previous lecture—of the human physical being as it relates to the spirit and the soul, then you will quickly be able to integrate into the structure and development of this human physical being everything you need. Therefore, before we move on to the physical description of the human being in the remaining lectures, we will continue this examination from the spiritual-soul perspective.

[ 2 ] Yesterday you were able to see how the human being is divided into three parts: the head, the torso, and the limbs. And you saw that the relationship of each of these three parts to the world of the soul and the spirit is different.

[ 3 ] Let us first consider the formation of the human head. As we said yesterday, the head is primarily body. We had to regard the chest-human as “bodily” and soulful. And the limb-human as “bodily,” soulful, and spiritual. But of course, the nature of the head is not exhausted by saying that the head is primarily physical. After all, in reality, things are not sharply separated from one another, and we may therefore just as well say: the head is soulful and spiritual in a different way than the chest and the limbs. From the moment a human being is born, the head is primarily physical; that is to say, what initially constitutes the head has, so to speak, taken shape in the form of the physical head. This is why the head looks the way it does—it is, after all, the first part to develop in human embryonic development—so that what is generally human in a spiritual-soul aspect first manifests itself in the head. What is the relationship between the physical head and the soul and the spirit? Because the head is a physical form that is as fully developed as possible—because it has already undergone everything necessary for its formation through the transition from the animal to the human realm in earlier stages of development—it can therefore be the most fully developed in physical terms. The soul is so connected to this head that the child, upon being born and even as it develops during the first years of life, dreams all that is soul-related within the head. And the spirit sleeps within the head.

[ 4 ] We now have a remarkable combination of body, soul, and spirit within the human head. We have a highly, highly developed body in the form of the head. Within it we have a dreaming soul—a soul that dreams vividly—and a spirit that is still asleep. The task now is to see this fact, which has just been characterized, in harmony with the entire development of the human being. Up until the change of teeth, this development is such that the human being is primarily an imitative being. The human being does everything that he observes in his surroundings. He is able to do this precisely because his head spirit is asleep. This allows him to dwell with this head spirit outside the head-body. He can remain in his surroundings. For when one sleeps, one is outside the body with one’s spiritual-soul aspect. The child is outside the head with its spiritual-soul aspects, with its sleeping spirit and its dreaming soul. It is with those in its surroundings; it lives with those in its surroundings. That is why the child is an imitative being. That is also why love for one’s surroundings—especially love for one’s parents—develops out of the dreaming soul. When a person gets their second set of teeth—that is, when they go through the process of losing their baby teeth and getting permanent ones—this actually marks the final stage of head development. Although the head is already fully formed at birth, it undergoes a final phase of development during the first seven years of a person’s life. What the child experiences during this time finds its conclusion, so to speak, with the loss of baby teeth and the growth of permanent ones.

[ 5 ] What, exactly, has been completed here? You see, the process of form-building has been completed. Here, the human being has poured into his body that which strengthens him, that which primarily shapes him into a form. When we see the second set of teeth emerging from the human being, we can say: The first engagement with the world has been completed. - The human being has done what is necessary for his or her shaping and formation. As the human being integrates his or her form and shape from the head outward during this period, something else happens to him or her as a “chest-human.”

[ 6 ] In the chest, things are fundamentally different than in the head. The chest is an organism that, from the very beginning—when a human being is born—is both physical and soulful. The chest is not merely physical like the head; the chest is both physical and soulful, with only the spirit still existing outside of it as a dreamer. So when we observe the child in its early years, we must keenly note the greater alertness and liveliness of the chest members compared to the head members. It would be entirely incorrect to view the human being as a single chaotic entity.

[ 7 ] When it comes to the limbs, the situation is different again. From the very first moment of life, spirit, soul, and body are intimately connected; they interpenetrate one another. It is also here that the child is fully awake from the very earliest moment. Those who have the task of raising this wriggling, kicking little being in the early years notice this. Everything is awake, but everything is still undeveloped. This is, in fact, the mystery of the human being: when a person is born, their head spirit is already very, very developed, but it is asleep. Their head soul is very developed at birth, but it is only dreaming. They must first awaken little by little. As a being of limbs, the human being is, upon birth, fully awake, but still undeveloped and unformed.

[ 8 ] Actually, we only need to educate the “limb-human” and part of the “chest-human.” For the “limb-human” and the “chest-human” then have the task of awakening the “head-human,” so that it is here, in fact, that you first encounter the true nature of education and instruction. You develop the limb-human and a part of the chest-human, and you have the limb-human and a part of the chest-human awaken the other part of the chest-human and the head-human. From this you can see that the child already offers you something considerable. It offers you what it carries within itself at birth—its perfect spirit and its relatively perfect soul. And all you have to do is nurture that which it offers you in terms of its imperfect spirit and even more imperfect soul.

[ 9 ] If that were not the case, then education—true education and teaching—would be impossible. For just think: if we wanted to nurture and educate the entire mind that a person is born with as a potential, then we, as educators, would always have to be fully developed to match what a person is capable of becoming. Well, you would soon have to give up on education, because you could only raise people who are as intelligent and as brilliant as you are yourself. Naturally, you find yourself in the position of having to raise people who are much more intelligent and much more brilliant than you are in any given field. This is only possible because, in education, we are dealing with only a part of the human being—that part of the human being which we can nurture even if we are not as intelligent or as brilliant, and perhaps not even as good, as that person is naturally inclined to be in terms of brilliance, intelligence, and goodness. The very best we can achieve through education is the training of the will and a part of the training of the soul. For what we educate through the will—that is, through the limbs—and what we educate through the soul—that is, through a part of the breast-human—we can bring to the degree of perfection that we ourselves possess. And just as not only a servant but also an alarm clock can be trained to wake up a person far more intelligent than itself, so too can a person who is far less gifted—and even far less good—educate someone who is predisposed to be better than he or she is. However, we must be clear about this: with regard to all intellectual matters, we need not be at all a match for the developing human being; but because what matters is the development of the will—as we now see from this perspective as well—we must strive for everything possible in goodness that we are capable of striving for. The pupil can become better than we are ourselves, but most likely will not unless our own upbringing is supplemented by another form of education provided by the world or by other people.

[ 10 ] In these lectures, I have suggested to you that a certain genius lives within language. The genius of language, I said, is brilliant; it is smarter than we are. We can learn a great deal from the way language is structured, from the way it embodies its spirit.

[ 11 ] But genius is present in our surroundings in ways other than language. Let us consider what we have just learned: that human beings enter the world with a sleeping spirit, with a dreaming soul as regards the head; that we therefore actually need, from very early on—from birth—to educate human beings through the will, because if we could not act upon them through the will, we would not be able to reach their sleeping head spirit at all. But we would create a huge gap in human development if we could not somehow reach their head spirit. A human being would be born with their head spirit still asleep. We cannot yet encourage the child with the wriggling legs to do gymnastics or eurythmy, for example. That is not possible. Nor can we yet provide the child with a proper musical education when it is merely wriggling its legs and, at most, bellowing a bit with its mouth. We cannot yet approach it through art either. We have not yet found a clearly defined bridge from the will to the child’s sleeping spirit. Later, when we can somehow reach the child’s will, then we can influence the sleeping spirit—if only we can speak the first words to the child—for there is already an impact on the will at that point. Then what we set in motion through the first words in the vocal organs continues as an act of the will into the sleeping spirit of the head and begins to awaken it. But in the very earliest stages, we do not yet have a proper bridge. No current flows from the limbs—where the will is awake and the spirit is awake—to the sleeping spirit of the head. Another mediator is still needed there. As human educators, we cannot provide many such means in the earliest stages of a person’s life.

[ 12 ] Here something emerges that is also genius, that is also spirit, outside of us. Language contains its own genius, but in the very earliest stages of a child’s development, we cannot yet appeal to the spirit of language. But nature itself contains its own genius, its own spirit. If it did not, we humans—through the gap created in our development during the very earliest stages of childhood—would wither away. There, the genius of nature creates something that can serve as this bridge. Out of the development of the limbs, out of the “limb-human,” it brings forth a substance which, because it is also connected to the “limb-human” in its development, contains something of this “limb-human” within itself—that is milk. Milk is produced in the female human in connection with the upper limbs, with the arms. The milk-producing organs are, as it were, that which continues inward from the limbs. In the animal and human kingdoms, milk is the only substance that has an inner kinship with the limb being, that is, in a sense, born out of the limb being, and which therefore still contains within itself the power of the limb being. And when we give milk to the child, milk acts—at least in essence—as the only substance that awakens the sleeping spirit. This, my dear friends, is the spirit that is present in all matter, which manifests itself where it is meant to manifest. Milk carries this spirit within itself, and this spirit has the task of awakening the child’s sleeping spirit. It is not merely a metaphor, but a deeply grounded scientific fact that the genius inherent in nature—which brings forth the substance of milk from the mysterious depths of nature—is the awakener of the sleeping human spirit within the child. Such profoundly mysterious connections in the existence of the world must be understood. Only then does one begin to grasp what wondrous laws are actually contained within this universe. Only then does one gradually come to understand that we actually become appallingly ignorant when we formulate theories about material substance as if this material substance were merely an indifferently extended entity that breaks down into atoms and molecules. No, that is not what matter is. Matter is such that a component of it—such as milk—as it is produced, has the most intimate need to awaken the slumbering human spirit. Just as we can speak of “need” in humans and animals—that is, of the force underlying the will—so too can we speak of “need” in matter in general. And we view milk in its entirety only when we say: Milk, as it is produced, desires to be the awakener of the child’s human spirit. In this way, everything in our surroundings comes to life when we look at it correctly. Thus, we never truly become free from the relationship between everything that exists in the outside world and human beings.

[ 13 ] You can see from this that the early stages of human development are provided for by the genius of Nature itself. And by further developing and educating the child, we, in a certain sense, relieve the genius of Nature of its work. When we begin to influence the child through the will—by means of language and our actions, which the child imitates—we continue the activity that we have seen the genius of nature perform by nourishing the child with milk and allowing human beings merely to serve as instruments in carrying out this nourishment. But this also shows you that nature educates naturally. For its nourishment through milk is the first means of education. Nature educates naturally. We humans begin—by exerting an educational influence on the child through language and our actions—we humans begin to educate the soul. That is why it is so important that we become aware in our teaching and education: as educators and teachers, we cannot actually accomplish all that much with the child’s intellect alone. The child brings into this world, already at birth, what he or she is meant to become. We can awaken what is within the child, but we cannot actually instill it into the child.

[ 14 ] But this, of course, raises the need to realize that only very specific things can be brought into physical earthly existence through birth. The spiritual world does not concern itself with what has arisen solely through external convention in the course of cultural development. That is to say, our conventional means of reading, our conventional means of writing—I have already explained this from other perspectives—are, of course, not something the child is born with. Spirits do not write. Nor do spirits read. They do not read books, nor do they write with a pen. The idea that spirits speak a human language and even write is merely an invention of the spiritualists. What is contained in language and writing is a cultural convention. It exists here on Earth. And only when we do not merely teach the child this cultural convention—this reading and writing—through the mind, but when we also teach the child this reading and writing through the chest and limbs, do we do the child good.

[ 15 ] Of course, when the child turns seven and starts elementary school—we didn’t just give it to them at birth, but they did something themselves, it has helped itself by imitating the adults, it has ensured that its intellectual spirit has awakened in a certain sense—then we can use what it has awakened in its own intellectual spirit to teach it to read and write in the conventional way; but then we begin to damage this intellectual spirit through our influence. That is why I have told you: In good teaching, reading and writing instruction must not be taught in any other way than through the arts. The first elements of drawing and painting, the first elements of music—these must come first. For they affect the limb-human and the chest-human, and only indirectly the head-human. But then they awaken what lies within the head-human. They do not mistreat the “limb-human,” as we do when we merely teach the child to read and write—in the conventional, intellectual manner that has become standard. If we first let the child draw and then develop written forms from what it has drawn, we educate it from the “limb-human” toward the “head-human.” We demonstrate to the child—let’s say an “F.” If the child must then look at the “F” and trace it, we are first acting upon the intellect through observation, and then the intellect trains the will. That is the wrong approach. The correct approach is to awaken the intellect as much as possible through the will. We can only do this if we transition from artistic education to intellectual education. Thus, even in these early years of instruction, when the child is entrusted to us, we must proceed in such a way that we teach the child to read and write in an artistic manner.

[ 16 ] You must keep in mind that, while you are teaching and raising the child, the child also has other things to do besides what you are doing with him or her. The child has all sorts of things to do that, in a sense, fall only indirectly within your purview. The child must grow. It must grow, and you must be clear that, while you are educating and teaching, the child must grow properly. But what does that mean? It means: You must not disrupt this growth through your teaching and education. You must not interfere with the growth in a disruptive way. You must educate and teach only in such a way that your education and teaching go hand in hand with the child’s need to grow. What I am about to say is of particular importance for the elementary school years. For while the formative phase—from the head outward—takes place up to the change of teeth, the period of elementary school coincides with the development of life—that is, growth and everything associated with it—up to sexual maturity, precisely during the elementary school years. Sexual maturity marks the culmination of the life development that originates from the breast-stage human. Therefore, even during the elementary school years, you are primarily dealing with the breast-stage human. You cannot manage this effectively unless you understand that while you are teaching and educating the child, the child is growing and developing through its breast-stage organism. You must, so to speak, become a partner with nature, for nature develops the child through the breast organism—through breathing, nutrition, movement, and so on. And you must become a good partner in nature’s development. But if you are completely unaware of this natural development, how can you become a good partner in nature’s development? For example, if you have no idea how your approach in teaching or upbringing—on a psychological level—slows down or accelerates growth, how can you teach and raise children well? To a certain extent, you even have the psychological power to disrupt those forces of growth in the growing child, causing it to shoot up prematurely, which could be harmful under certain circumstances. To a certain extent, it is within your power to unhealthily inhibit a child’s growth, so that the child remains small and stunted—though only to a certain extent—but it is within your power. You must therefore have insight specifically into the conditions of human growth. You must have this insight from both a spiritual and a physical perspective.

[ 17 ] How, then, can we gain insight into the conditions of growth from a psychological perspective? To do so, we must turn to a better form of psychology than ordinary psychology. This better psychology tells us that everything that accelerates the forces of human growth—everything that shapes these forces in such a way that a person really flourishes—is connected to what, in a certain sense, is the formation of memory. For if we place too great a burden on memory, we turn the human being, within certain limits, into a stunted being. And if we place too great a burden on the imagination, we hold the human being back in their growth. Memory and imagination are mysteriously connected to the forces of human development. And we must train ourselves to pay some attention to these connections.

[ 18 ] For example, the teacher must be able to do the following: he must take a kind of overview of his class at the beginning of the school year, especially at the start of the life stages I have mentioned to you, which correspond to the ages of nine and twelve. In a sense, he must review their physical development and take note of how his students look. And then, at the end of the school year or another period, he must review this again and observe the changes that have taken place. And the result of these two assessments must be that he knows: one child has not grown as well during this time as he or she should have; the other has shot up a bit. Then he must ask himself: How do I establish the right balance between imagination and memory in the next school year or the next school period so that I can counteract this anomaly?

[ 19 ] You see, that is why it is so important to keep the same students throughout all their school years, and that is why it is such a senseless practice to hand the students over to a different teacher every year. But the same is true in reverse. At the beginning of the school year and at the start of the developmental stages (seventh, ninth, and twelfth grades), the teacher gradually gets to know his or her students. He or she gets to know students who are distinctly the “imaginative type,” who transform everything. And he or she gets to know students who are distinctly the “memorization type,” who are good at remembering everything. The teacher must also become familiar with this. After all, he becomes acquainted with them through the two assessments I have mentioned. But he must expand this understanding in such a way that he recognizes—not only through outward physical growth but also through imagination and memory—whether the child is in danger of “shooting up” too quickly—which would happen if the child has too good a memory—or whether the child is in danger of becoming too stocky if the child has too much imagination. One must not only acknowledge the connection between body and soul through all sorts of sayings and phrases, but one must also be able to observe the interplay of body, soul, and spirit in the developing human being. Imaginative children grow differently than children gifted with a good memory.

[ 20 ] Today, for psychologists, everything is settled; memory exists, and it is described in psychological theories; imagination exists, and it is described; whereas in the real world, everything is interconnected. And we only come to understand these interrelationships if we are willing to adapt our understanding of them a little. That is to say, if we do not use this understanding in such a way that we seek to define everything correctly, but rather make this understanding itself flexible, so that it can, in turn, change what it has recognized—change it internally, conceptually.

[ 21 ] You see, the spiritual-soul aspect naturally leads over into the physical-bodily aspect. It leads over to such an extent that we can say: Through the influence of the body, through milk, the genius of nature educates the child in the very earliest stages. We then educate the child—from the time the baby teeth begin to fall out—by instilling art in the child in the manner of elementary school. And as the end of elementary school approaches, this changes again in a certain way. From the later stages of life, the child’s independent power of judgment, sense of personality, and independent will begin to shine through more and more. We take this into account by structuring the curriculum in such a way that we actually make use of what is coming to the fore.