The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Community from the Perspective of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Great Questions of Humanity ^{1The transcript of this lecture was found in the Federal Archives in Bern among the files pertaining to Rudolf Steiner’s application for naturalization. It may be assumed that it was transcribed on behalf of the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office by a man named von Bircher.} are knocking at the door. The Spiritual Science movement, whose outward manifestation is the well-known building in Dornach, seeks to provide an answer to these questions. I wish to speak here about the educational and social implications that arise from this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. First, I would like to outline the essence of the entire Spiritual Science movement. This is not something sought outside of the human being, something that could be demonstrated through human experimentation, but rather a matter of the innermost human experience—one that nevertheless hopes to be translated into the most practical of applications. Spiritual Science does not seek to overturn the foundations of all previous worldviews, but rather to add something new to them: the vision of a real spiritual life beyond the experience of the natural sciences, and the recognition of the spiritual-soul nature of the human being.

[ 2 ] For three to four centuries, the fundamental concepts of scientific thinking have dominated our views. Spiritual Science does not stand in opposition to these. It acknowledges the great triumphs of the scientific worldview, but seeks to be more scientific than the scientific worldview itself; it does not wish to retreat before the so-called limits of human knowledge, but rather to attain true knowledge of the human being. Whereas it has been said until now that science ends where supernaturalism begins, Spiritual Science seeks to work scientifically in this very realm as well. To achieve this goal, it must first adopt a stance of intellectual humility. To draw a comparison: if you give a five-year-old child a volume of lyric poetry, the child will play with it and tear it apart; ten to twelve years later, the child will be able to use the volume appropriately. We must believe in these potentials for development that lie dormant within the five-year-old child.

[ 3 ] The spiritual researcher says that what lies within us is not limited to what has been shaped by birth, heredity, and ordinary upbringing. The powers of human nature are capable of developing even beyond that. Through intimate inner soul work, a person gradually comes to be able to draw from the depths of the soul abilities of which one has no inkling in ordinary life or [in ordinary] science. The fundamental principle here is that a person must truly and methodically repeat this inner experiment over and over, persistently making a clearly visualized thought the guiding star of their consciousness. One places this self-created thought at the center of one’s consciousness and gathers all one’s soul forces to set nothing but this thought as one’s goal. The foundation for this is intellectual humility and faith in the possibility of development. After such an exercise in patience, we experience that human experience breaks free from the physical body. One attains a life of thought that one knows is not bound to the human body, but flows into the spiritual-soul realm. It is a momentous occasion when one can say to oneself: You live in the spiritual-soul realm. One then recognizes that there truly are higher spiritual insights that extend beyond life between birth and death. Something is created similar to the power of memory—a power of imagination, a life that we can call prenatal life. This prenatal life appears before the soul as an experience, as an inner experience. Immortality is no longer merely a subject of philosophical speculation. The spiritual researcher uses the powers that others employ for philosophizing to develop new abilities and to attain different kinds of experiences. The power of the will, too, can be cultivated. The spiritual researcher takes control of his own path of development; he seeks to exercise self-discipline of the will. By resolving to adopt this or that habit, the will is cultivated. This insight may be received by many, just as the insights of a Copernicus or a Giordano Bruno were received when humanity still believed in the limits of the firmament.

[ 4 ] Those who become spiritual researchers themselves gain a new perspective on the world and a deep understanding of humanity. Not everyone can become a spiritual researcher. But thanks to the current state of global development, anyone can enter the spiritual worlds.

[ 5 ] How, then, can the Spiritual Science enrich educational life? A practical experiment has been conducted at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Today there is so much talk about the need for change in the classroom. Nevertheless, it would be an act of ingratitude toward the history of thought and a falsehood in the context of world history to say that educational science lags far behind in the realm of scholarship. When I set out to put my ideas into practice at the Waldorf School, I was convinced that it was not educational science that was primarily in need of reform, but rather that we needed a worldview capable of directly enriching all the arts—and thus also education—so that we might be enabled to apply the excellent principles of education that already exist everywhere.

[ 6 ] Spiritual Science does not merely speak to the intellect; it engages the whole person. Above all, a profound understanding of human nature is necessary. It is only through Spiritual Science that we can penetrate into a person’s real life. Through it, we acquire the ability to observe a person from the stage of life when they begin to lose their baby teeth. It is only through Spiritual Science that we truly develop a more refined power of observation. This teaches us to recognize how, in the first seven years of life, a human being is a purely imitative creature. An example: A five-year-old boy has taken money from a drawer. The parents are deeply distressed. Unjustly so. The boy has simply seen how his mother always takes money out of that drawer.

[ 7 ] Let us focus on something else. When the child gets its second set of teeth at the age of seven, this also marks an internal organic phase. Once one has learned to observe the spiritual and soul forces, one learns to recognize how these forces have reached a point of transition here (Goethe’s Law of Metamorphosis). In this year, human mental images begin to take shape in the child in such a way that they can be absorbed by the memory. The forces detach themselves from the organism, become spiritual-soul-related, and appear as a distinct power of imagination. These observations are as firmly grounded as chemical observations.

[ 8 ] They reveal that the abilities a child develops through play up to the age of seven reappear later, but not until the 1920s. In the meantime, they remain, so to speak, beneath the surface. During this time, these abilities are used to gain life experience. From the age of seven onward, play becomes a social activity. Individual play only comes to life again in one’s twenties as a force derived from life experience.

[ 9 ] It is all well and good when educational principles state that one must bring out the child’s latent potential. However, what matters is not these principles, but rather knowing what the child is capable of developing into.

[ 10 ] After the age of seven—approximately—the drive to imitate is joined by the drive toward authority. Anyone familiar with human nature knows that, from the time teeth begin to fall out until sexual maturity, there is a predisposition toward devotion to an external authority.

[ 11 ] The ninth year becomes a Rubicon once again. The child detaches itself from its surroundings in its inner consciousness and distinguishes itself from them. It distinguishes itself from its authority figure, yet surrenders to that figure in love.

[ 12 ] These experiences must be taken into account in practical instruction. The initial activities in elementary school must be geared toward the will, not toward intellectual development. It is through the detour of art that one advances toward the conventional. Thus, writing is best developed through drawing and painting.

[ 13 ] Other experiments have been conducted in Stuttgart. We have created a visible language. The movements of the larynx, perceived through supersensory observation, are translated into animated movement (eurythmy), in which every movement becomes the vehicle of a soul-spiritual process. The languages a child is to learn should be introduced as early as possible. Through lively interaction with the teacher, we teach English and French to children as young as seven and eight, so that the child grows up with these languages. We teach languages because we know that this develops the whole being of the human person.

[ 14 ] Between the time of tooth replacement and sexual maturity, one should not yet expect the child to possess the capacity for judgment, but rather teach every mental image to the child through imagery. For example, if one wishes to explain the immortality of the human soul to a child in conceptual terms, one can illustrate the life cycle of a butterfly. However, it is essential that the teacher himself believe in the image being presented.

[ 15 ] At the age of nine, the child begins to set itself apart from its surroundings. Now we can appeal to its independent judgment.

[ 16 ] The Spiritual Science, then, derives the curriculum from the observed development of the child. It takes the world as it truly is and is therefore eminently practical. Technical issues, such as determining the number of students per class, take a back seat. If the teacher is fulfilled in his or her task, the necessary individual attention to each student will not suffer, even with a large class size. The students will individualize [themselves].

[ 17 ] (The speaker remarked in passing that he had predicted the World War as early as the spring of 1914, when all the cabinets believed that world peace was secure for the foreseeable future.)

[ 18 ] We must approach practical life from a place of inner experience. The next generation must not be in the same state as the generation that brought misfortune upon Europe in recent years. Anyone who has examined the education system from a perspective of Spiritual Science knows that spiritual life must be allowed to stand on its own. This brings us to the social significance of the entire issue.

[ 19 ] Today, the world is more antisocial than ever. It is necessary to recognize that intellectual life can only flourish when it is placed under its own administration.

[ 20 ] Spiritual Science recognizes that new movements, which had previously lain dormant, are constantly rising to the surface from the depths of humanity. Such phenomena cannot be explained by the law of cause and effect. For example, what is called democracy first emerged in the 15th century and has continued to develop ever since. If one is sincere about this democracy, one must separate from it everything that has absolutely nothing to do with it. Only that which affects every person who has come of age in the same way can be administered democratically: public legal life. Intellectual life, however, cannot be governed by the state. It must be placed under its own administration. Those who guide intellectual life should also administer it.

[ 21 ] Economic life, too, is a matter that only experts can judge. This, too, must be removed from democratic administration. It must not be governed from a central authority. Separate administrative organizations must be formed from within the circles of consumers and producers.

[ 22 ] This threefold structure of the social state is not a parallel to the Platonic division into the military class, the teaching class, and the productive class. Rather, every individual must participate in all three members. Our current chaos stems precisely from the fact that people exist side by side. In threefold socialism [the social organism], however, they are to develop their powers organically.

[ 23 ] In the unitary state, the words equality, freedom, and fraternity have remained a lofty ideal. In threefold socialism [the social organism], in which everyone is organically connected to all three parts, these ideals can be realized. Freedom will reign in spiritual life; the democratic administration of legal life will bring equality to all; and economic life, left to its own devices, will flourish in brotherhood.