The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Anthroposophy and the Art of Education

[ 1 ] This past fall, in September and October, we held university courses at the Goetheanum in Dornach, in which we sought to apply the anthroposophical perspective to a wide variety of scientific disciplines as well as to various areas of practical life. The aim of these university courses in particular was not merely to discuss anthroposophy as such, but rather to bring together experts from a wide variety of sciences, artists, and practitioners of life, practitioners in the commercial and industrial spheres, and the very point was for them to demonstrate how the anthroposophical perspective—the anthroposophical way of examining life and the world—can be applied to enrich the most diverse scientific and practical areas of life.

[ 2 ] As you know, despite the great triumphs—particularly in the field of natural science—that are now fully recognized even by Spiritual Science, scientists today encounter certain limits wherever questions arise that simply cannot be answered using the methods and means of understanding currently accepted by official science. One might then be tempted to say: Well, there are insurmountable limits to human cognitive capacity, to the power of human cognition, and human beings simply cannot transcend these limits. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science aims precisely to show how the research methods, the modes of thinking and perception that have been brought about by the more materialistically oriented scientific and philosophical outlook of modern times can be enriched when one transitions to an entirely different kind of cognition, to an entirely different way of perceiving the world.

[ 3 ] And here, right at the outset, I will address the point that still earns anthroposophy as such the most opponents—indeed, enemies—in the present day. Opposition to anthroposophy does not so much stem from certain logical grounds or from scientific, well-founded objections; rather, this opposition comes from a quarter that recently—entire books are now appearing, almost one every week, refuting anthroposophy—a licentiate in theology described it in the following way: He said that anthroposophy is irritating, that it is intolerable and upsetting. — So a certain antagonism does not arise from logical grounds, but, one might say, from emotion. And this stems from the fact that anthroposophy does not simply accept the knowledge that humanity has developed to this day, which is structured in such a way that one says: Human beings have inherited certain faculties for cognition; these gradually come to the fore through their natural development; through ordinary education, they are then further trained to become useful members of human society—and so on and so forth. With what one acquires on the one hand, one then also approaches knowledge itself, scientific life. One then attempts to develop various methods: observational methods, experimental methods, logical methods, and so on. But when one surveys the entire methodology of modern science, it is based on the assumption that one has already attained a certain level of cognitive power under normal circumstances, and it does not go beyond that. No matter how much one arms oneself with the microscope, the telescope, the X-ray machine, and so on—one does not go beyond a certain level of cognitive ability, which today is regarded as that of the average human being. One advances further in scientific life by refining this ordinary method of cognition in complex ways or by delving into the details, but above all, one does not consider what anthroposophy considers first and foremost. It proceeds from what I would like to call “intellectual humility.” And this is precisely what makes it so provocative to people today, who, in a sense, refuse to accept such a thing from the outset. But one cannot help but present the facts as they are, unvarnished.

[ 4 ] You see, if a five-year-old child gets his hands on a volume of Goethe’s poems, he may not know what else to do with it other than tear it up. When the child is ten years older, he will do something quite different with that volume of Goethe’s poems. It will delve into what is written on each individual page. It has grown along with the child. The child has matured. The child has drawn from within itself something that was not there ten years ago. A real—not merely a logical—process has taken place. The child has, in a sense, become a different being.

[ 5 ] Intellectual humility, I said, is a must for anyone who wishes to become a researcher of the soul in the anthroposophical sense. At a certain point in their life, they must be able to say to themselves: Just as a real process takes place in a child between the ages of five and fifteen—just as powers of the soul that had not previously manifested themselves actually come to light after ten years—so too can one further develop what the faculty of cognition, and indeed the powers of the soul in general, are in ordinary life. One can move beyond the scientific standpoint that is generally accepted as the norm; one can undergo a real process in one’s understanding. One can also take what most people today already regard as the limit of cognitive ability—and which, in science, is at most further developed logically or through experimental arrangements—and develop it even further by drawing forth additional powers from within the soul. And the anthroposophical method is based on this drawing forth of forces slumbering within the soul. It is based—and I will characterize this quite concretely in a moment—on the fact that what is otherwise present as thinking merely in relation to the external world is completely subordinated to the will.

[ 6 ] How do we actually think in everyday life? How do we think in science? In science, we think by surrendering ourselves to the external world or to our experiences. We, so to speak, follow the thread of experiences or phenomena. We do, to a certain extent, apply our will to thinking—in judgment and in drawing conclusions—but something entirely different arises when that which otherwise lives within a person as a thought—arising involuntarily and logically—is, if I may use this comparison, taken entirely into the person’s own hands through self-education.

[ 7 ] When a person spends years practicing the art of bringing easily comprehensible mental images into his consciousness—that is, bringing certain mental images—which I expressly describe as easily comprehensible—into the center of his consciousness entirely through his own will, not through stimuli from the outside world, and then, again by exerting his full will, rests upon such inner mental images—rests inwardly, diverts his attention from everything else, and rests inwardly upon a complex of mental images that he himself has placed at the center of his consciousness—he can in this way exercise the soul’s powers in a different manner than is done in ordinary life and even in science. And just as a muscle gains a certain strength when it is exercised, so the soul forces gain a certain strength through practice. They are developed in a very specific direction when one applies these inner methods—these intimate methods of the soul that I have described—to oneself as a researcher of the spirit. I have described these methods in detail in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in my *Secret Science*, and in other books; there one can read in full detail what I now wish to characterize only in principle. I have called what the soul undertakes there—which is an inner, intimate method of the Spiritual Science—meditation and concentration. But I wish to emphasize: these things cannot be accomplished in a short time; rather, it is certainly the case—though, depending on one’s individual disposition, it may take more or less time—that, in general, research in the field of Spiritual Science takes no less time than, for example, research in clinics, chemical laboratories, or observatories. Just as one must master the methods there through years of practice, so too must one—with a strong inner power of concentration and even greater conscientiousness—draw out of the soul itself the soul faculties that otherwise lie dormant within the human being.

[ 8 ] And then, when one applies such methods to the soul, one’s capacity for knowledge expands. One then comes to see, however, how a person can perceive things quite differently from what they can perceive through their physical eyes and through the combination of phenomena presented by the physical eyes—or by the senses in general.

[ 9 ] That is one path. It involves concentration and the power of imagination, and through it one attains inner vision—what I have called in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul* the human capacity for vision, or contemplative knowledge.

[ 10 ] There is also another way to develop the powers of the soul—indeed, one must do so if one truly wants to achieve anything. One must also develop what you all know well in its simplest form: attention. We do not merely relate to external life and inner phenomena by surrendering ourselves to them passively; rather, we direct our memory and our attention toward something that we single out—I might say, isolate—from our surroundings. Even in scientific research, we must place something in particular at the center of our investigations and relate other things to it. Then, when one cultivates this ability to pay attention through inner will, through the application of the most active powers of the soul—when one engages in exercises specifically designed to develop that power, which one notices we apply it when directing our attention to something—if we practice this power of focusing, this gathering of the soul to concentrate on something set apart from life, if we practice this again and again—then we make a remarkable discovery. One discovers that one gradually develops more and more that very soul force which otherwise confronts us only in what we call interest in the external world. We direct more interest toward one object and less toward another. Here a sequence of stages becomes apparent in our soul’s attitude toward the inner world. This interest takes on an immense liveliness; it becomes so lively that one can truly say: it becomes something entirely different from what it is in ordinary life and in science. It becomes what one might call: one feels oneself becoming one with things. The soul forces gradually become imbued with the essence of things. — And this experience of heightened interest goes even further. It now extends to the development of a special power that is otherwise only brought to bear in another sphere of life, but which, through anthroposophical Spiritual Science, becomes a power of knowledge.

[ 11 ] We have once again reached a point where, quite understandably, one is simply regarded as an amateur or a dreamer in the eyes of contemporary thinking when one speaks of things that are simply reality within anthroposophy and manifest themselves as such. That which is, at first, attention itself is transformed into the power of interest through which one experiences so clearly how the whole human being is to be drawn out of the world; how one need not first prove or formulate hypotheses as to whether red is based on these or those wave vibrations, or blue on these or those vibrations, but rather how one grows together with red and blue; where what Goethe so brilliantly elaborated in the chapter “The Sensual-Moral Effect of Color” in his Theory of Colors is further developed—where the human being truly feels, as it were, his or her soul life flowing out into the world, so that his or her power of cognition becomes like an outflow of his or her soul life into the phenomena of the world. And his power of cognition is transformed precisely into that which we otherwise call love in life. Love, through which we become one with another being, is present in ordinary life—I would say only in its initial stages; through the soul exercises described, it becomes a power of the soul that flows out in a spirit of recognition throughout the entire environment.

[ 12 ] And so one can say—I can only hint at all this here; it is presented in greater detail in my books—: By cultivating the power of imagination on the one hand, and on the other hand the power of attention, the power of interest, and the power of love that underlie the life of the will, new powers of cognition develop, and the human being experiences an expansion of their cognition. What is otherwise called the limit of cognition—and what is often described as insurmountable, particularly by contemporary researchers— can only be transcended through the cultivation of the inner powers of the soul—not by arming the eye with a microscope, telescope, or X-ray machine, but solely through the cultivation of the human inner being itself, by developing that power of cognition which takes us beyond the sensory realm and the intellectual synthesis of the sensory. What now reveals itself to the human being is not, say, a second version of the sensory world—it is the true spiritual world. And as the human being awakens in this way what works within them as spiritual life in a supersensory way — for this is awakened by the two forces I have mentioned — by awakening this within themselves and bringing it to true precision, just as mathematics alone otherwise achieves precision, they are led beyond the sensory world not through speculation about atoms and molecules, but through the direct experience and perception of what the senses present. And the human being learns to recognize that which, as the supersensible world, underlies him just as his physical body underlies him as something physical. The human being comes to know the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, which originates at the Goetheanum in Dornach, should not be confused with what many today attempt to do in their study of the spirit by imitating methods that are otherwise laboratory methods. There are certain people—one need only think of spiritualism—who believe today that they can penetrate more deeply into the essence of things through external activities and experiments; they wish to recognize the supersensible through sensory research. Yet this is precisely the crux of the matter: that the supersensible can be recognized only through supersensible powers. And since these supersensible powers initially lie dormant within the human being —because, as he is constituted between birth and death, he must first become capable of functioning in the sensory world—he must, through the development of supersensory powers, come to know that which transcends birth and death, that which belonged to him even before he entered this existence through birth, and that which he retains when he passes through the gate of death.

[ 14 ] I would just like to briefly mention how, in fact, by advancing to this supersensible faculty of cognition, human beings gain access to realms that cannot be accessed in any other way—namely, precisely that which lies beyond birth and death. Today, it is almost entirely left to the faith of the creeds to teach people anything at all about what lies beyond death. But our language itself testifies that, in this regard, we are actually proceeding in a fundamentally one-sided manner. We have the word “immortality.” It does not, however, stem from knowledge; it stems from faith. But this immortality refers only to the life that lies beyond death. Spiritual Science demonstrates, through its exploration of the supersensible worlds, how human beings existed in the spiritual world even before birth—or, let us say, before conception. And the fact that we do not have the word “unbornness” testifies to the fact that we have not yet recognized true Spiritual Science in the present. As soon as a person penetrates the supersensible world through knowledge—not merely through faith—the prospect opens up not only to the immortality of their being, but also to the unborn aspect of their being.

[ 15 ] I can only briefly touch on all of this, for my task today is to show how this anthroposophical Spiritual Science—which is intended to be modeled after a very exact science, yet is also drawn entirely from within the human being: mathematics—can indeed lead us, through insight, into the spiritual-supernatural life. We draw mathematics from within, and if someone knows the Pythagorean theorem, then even if thousands or millions of people were to come and deny it—he would simply know, by virtue of having this content in his consciousness, the truth of the mathematical realm. The same is true of the inner experiences of the supersensible, as they are brought to light through Spiritual Science. This Spiritual Science is already well-developed in many details today, and it can—as I indicated in my introduction—have a fruitful effect on both the individual sciences and practical life. Although this Spiritual Science is already actively conducting research in the medical and therapeutic fields, for example, I myself held a course in Dornach this past spring for physicians and medical students, in which I attempted to show how one can advance toward a much more rational form of therapy than is currently practiced through spiritual scientific considerations.

[ 16 ] We have also already established institutions for practical life, such as the “Futurum” in Dornach, which is intended to be a purely practical enterprise and to establish an association uniting various branches of industry in order to make greater progress through rational management than has been achieved in the era that has led us so deeply into economic catastrophe. Everything in practical life today bears witness to the fact that humanity stands at a threshold that must be crossed.

[ 17 ] Well, I do not intend to dwell today on the other areas in which the Spiritual Science is already seeking to demonstrate its fruitfulness through practical life itself; rather, I wish to speak primarily about the enrichment that the field of education—the art of pedagogy—can derive from this Spiritual Science.

[ 18 ] First of all, it should be noted that the kind of knowledge and understanding gained in the manner I have just described is not the same as that which has been presented to humanity in particular over the last three to four centuries. This knowledge of the last three to four centuries, despite being based on experiment and observation, is essentially a kind of knowledge formed by the intellect and addressed solely to the intellect. It is essentially intellectual knowledge. The knowledge and insight gained through anthroposophical Spiritual Science speaks to the whole human being. It does not merely engage the intellect, but spreads in such a way that what can be recognized there simultaneously permeates our emotional life. We do not, for example, derive insight from emotion—that would be a form of obscurity, a nebulous mysticism. Insight is attained through contemplation. But what is attained in this way then affects the human emotional life; it stimulates the human life of the will; it leads the human being to develop this knowledge, this insight, right into daily life, so that it permeates him like the blood of the soul, which in turn communicates itself to the activities, the impulses of the physical body, and the impulses of practical life. And so one can say: the whole human being is transformed.

[ 19 ] And that is precisely why this anthroposophical Spiritual Science, when it permeates the individual, serves as a foundation for the very task that the educator and teacher have toward the developing human being. As you know, it is constantly emphasized today that the art of education must be based on psychology, on the study of the soul. But if one looks around at what constitutes the study of the soul for our contemporaries, one must say: this study of the soul reveals, precisely through the many assessments and discussions that exist, just how much of it is mere rhetoric, and how little this contemporary science—which has achieved such great triumphs in the study of external nature—is able to penetrate into the actual knowledge of the human being. This is the distinctive feature of anthroposophical Spiritual Science: that it does not acquire this knowledge through external experimental psychology—against which, however, nothing is to be said, for its results become all the more fruitful when they are also enriched by anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. What one must grasp in the study of the soul if one wishes to become an educator or teacher is acquired by allowing oneself to be inspired by anthroposophical Spiritual Science. One learns to recognize what actually lives within the human being as body, soul, and spirit when one approaches the anthroposophical methods and, through them, comprehends the human being from within.

[ 20 ] I have, after all, described how anthroposophical Spiritual Science, with its special methods of knowledge, strives to achieve an inner grasp of that which lives in our surroundings. But when it comes to human beings—especially when one wishes to approach them from an educational perspective—one must penetrate their inner being. And the issue here is that our age is fundamentally incapable of building a bridge between the soul-spiritual on the one hand and the physical-bodily on the other. All manner of psychological hypotheses regarding the interaction between body and soul have been put forward—up to and including “psychophysical parallelism”—in an effort to bring this mystery—which confronts us in the relationship between body and soul, or between the spiritual-soul aspect and the physical-bodily aspect—as close to the human being as is necessary if he or she is to become an educator or teacher. But our psychology—precisely because it does not conduct research using methods of Spiritual Science—is by no means advanced enough to provide any foundation for true pedagogy, for the true art of teaching. And I must point out something here that I initially presented only in a suggestive manner in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*, but which is, for me, the result of thirty years of research. I would not have allowed myself to speak out earlier about what I now have to say and what I hinted at in that book after thirty years of research. It is this: today it is commonly believed that soul life is mediated solely through the nervous system. The nervous system is regarded as the sole physical foundation of human soul life. This is not the case! It can be shown, down to the finest details—and I have also hinted at such details in my book *Mysteries of the Soul*—that only what we call the life of the imagination has the nervous-sensory system as its physical basis, and that the actual organ of the life of feeling in human beings is not the nervous-sensory system, but directly the rhythmic system—the respiratory and circulatory systems. Just as the nervous system underlies the life of the imagination, so the rhythmic system underlies the emotional life of human beings, and the metabolic system underlies the life of the will.

[ 21 ] These three systems, however, are all that a human being experiences in terms of inner processes. Human beings are threefold beings. But one must not form a mental image of these three aspects of the human being—the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic system—existing side by side. No, they are interwoven, and one must distinguish them from one another in a spiritual-psychic sense if one is to truly understand the nature of the human being; for, of course, the nerves must also be nourished. The metabolic system thus also influences the nervous system and the organs of the rhythmic system; but the organs of the rhythmic system serve only the will to the extent that metabolism influences them; whereas, to the extent that they represent actual rhythmic movements, they serve the life of feeling. And again, when our rhythmic nature exerts an influence—when, for example, our breathing rhythm indirectly affects our nervous system via the cerebrospinal fluid—this gives rise to an interaction between the life of feeling and the life of imagination. In short, the human being is a more complex being than is generally believed. Even the most accurate physical understanding one can ultimately have of the human being cannot be attained through today’s scientific methods, but only through inner contemplation, through growing together with the human being himself in the kind of insight I have described.

[ 22 ] When one grows together with the essence of the human being in this way, when one sees the soul working its way into the physical body, then the growing human being also appears in a new light. After all, for a person who does not merely grasp things with a sober, dry intellect, but who can perceive the world through feeling, the growing child is a wondrous mystery—how, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, the outer form increasingly reveals an inner reality. That which we cannot perceive merely with abstract cognitive faculties—that which we can perceive only when we ourselves can immerse ourselves inwardly in what is revealed on the face, in the movements, in the development of language, and so on—can only be truly grasped through a form of knowledge that penetrates the outer world from within.

[ 23 ] And such insight reaches us not merely by engaging our intellect—with this intellect we then seek to recognize, on an external level, the methods we should apply to raise and educate the child—no, anthroposophical Spiritual Science encompasses the whole human being. And by revealing to the whole human being the developing child in the interplay of body, soul, and spirit, anthroposophical insight permeates—I would say in a manner as natural as the blood, enlivened by the breath, permeates the human body—our emotional life and our will. We stand there not only with our intellect, but also with our feelings, inwardly connected to the child. We stand there with our will, knowing directly: when we recognize how the child develops, we know what we must do in this or that year of the child’s development. Just as the air sets our blood in motion, just as the organism comes into its functions through what the external world brings to life within it—as it is moved by what the external world accomplishes in it—so too is our soul-spiritual nature moved by the kind of living insight we gain through anthroposophical Spiritual Science. And then, then what develops within the human being as his individuality is revealed to us, and we learn to treat this individuality in an inner, educational, and instructive way.

[ 24 ] Do not expect anthroposophical Spiritual Science to establish new principles of education. Educational principles—and I mean this in all seriousness—profoundly insightful pedagogical rules: the great educators have discovered them, and Spiritual Science, of all things, is the last to object to the genius of the great educators of the 18th and 19th centuries. But there is something here that must be pointed out very clearly.

[ 25 ] You see, people say today—and have been saying for decades—that education should not consist merely of imparting knowledge to the child; rather, one must develop what is within the child—its inner individuality. One must draw everything out of the child. In an abstract sense, Spiritual Science must also say this. Yet it is precisely for this reason that Spiritual Science is misunderstood. If I wish to make myself understood, I would like to recall something I am using as a comparison. It was in 1858 when the socialist Proudhon was accused of throwing society into disorder, and after the judges had presented him with various charges, he said that it was by no means his goal to throw human society into disorder, but rather to lead human society toward better conditions. To this the judges replied: “Yes, that is what we all want; we want exactly the same thing as you.” — So says Spiritual Science: We want to develop human individuality. In a certain abstract form, it has long been said that human individuality should be developed. But what is at stake here is not merely stating such a principle in abstract terms; what is at stake is actually seeing this human individuality develop through living observation, and truly being able to grasp the human being from within.

[ 26 ] And now I would like to illustrate how the developing human being appears in terms of what Spiritual Science can discover in him. First of all, we have clearly distinguishable stages of life in the human being. We begin with a stage that extends from birth until approximately the time of tooth replacement, around the age of seven. Then, if one observes carefully—and this reveals itself very intensely—a profound transformation takes place in the human being—physically, psychically, and spiritually. Development then continues until approximately puberty, when a new transformation takes place. Within these individual stages of life, there are in turn smaller stages. I would like to say: within each of these stages, we can in turn distinguish three smaller stages, which can only be properly understood through observation that penetrates into the inner being of the human being. That is what this is all about. For what we wish to know about the human being is at the same time the driving force behind pedagogy, in that pedagogy is to become an art.

[ 27 ] First and foremost, the early stage of life up to the age of seven shows us above all how the human being, as a spiritual, soul, and physical being, is entirely inclined to be an imitative being. If one penetrates the human being during this stage of life to the point of seeing how strongly he is predisposed to surrender himself entirely to his surroundings, to internalize and express what becomes vivid to him in his environment, then one understands the human being. But one must truly be able to observe this in concrete terms. One must then see how, for example, in the first two and a quarter years of life—these are, of course, all approximate figures —what occurs in the child does not yet manifest as actual imitation; one sees inner organizing forces at work, which, however, as the child progresses into the third year of life, manifest in such a way that the child becomes more attentive to his fellow human beings through these forces, directing them, as it were, toward what emanates from those around him. And then, around the age of five, the period begins in which the human being becomes a truly imitative being. And here one must be able to observe, in a truly intimate way, the relationship between one person and another—including that between the educator and the child. One must recognize that this is profoundly significant for the entire course of human development, that this stage of life tends toward imitation.

[ 28 ] For someone who deals with such matters—I would say professionally—there are many things that come up, such as complaints from a mother or father. They come and say: “My child has stolen something!”—Well, one asks: “Well, what did the child actually do?” — “It opened the drawer in the cabinet, took out some money, and—I’m telling you about a specific case—didn’t even use that money just to treat itself, but actually distributed what it bought among its classmates!” —One must then say: “Yes, my dear lady, at this age that can’t really be called theft at all, because the child has clearly seen how you yourself go to the cabinet every day and open the drawer; the child did nothing other than try to do the same thing. The child is imitating you.” During the first seven years, there is no other way to reach a child than by setting an example and allowing the child to closely imitate what is to be instilled in them through education. That is why it is of such great importance during the first seven years of life that—because, I would say, to convey these “imponderables” from the educator and the parents to the child, one must not only be exemplary in outward actions—so that everything can be imitated—but also, down to the very depths of one’s thoughts and feelings, think and feel only what the child is capable of thinking and feeling. There is no boundary between the person who has a child in their environment and that child. Through mysterious forces, even our innermost thoughts are transmitted to the child. A moral person, a truthful person, moves differently, has different expressions, and carries themselves differently than a person who is deceitful. This is something visible on the outside that becomes completely blurred to us later in life—but for the child, it is there. The child does not merely perceive the moral character of those around it through its own mental images, but rather the child perceives—not through intellectual knowledge, but through a subconscious knowledge resting deep within its innermost being—what it is meant to imitate from mysterious hints in the way a person expresses themselves. There are imponderables not only in nature; there are certainly imponderables in human life as well.

[ 29 ] Then, once the child has moved beyond the imitative stage, the next phase begins—the one that the child brings with them to school—and it is particularly important to ensure that teaching and education truly help the developing human being, in terms of their individuality, to progress in a way that is consistent with human nature and human dignity. We have already made a practical attempt in this regard. The Waldorf School has been in existence for more than a year in Stuttgart, and there, instruction is conducted entirely in accordance with the principles that arise from this anthroposophical worldview and approach to science.

[ 30 ] The Waldorf School in Stuttgart is not an ideologically-based school. We have no interest in, for example, presenting anthroposophy to the children in a theoretical way as if it were a religion. Oh no, that is not what we consider to be the main point. We fully respect the freedom of the parents and the children themselves—because, given the current circumstances, it simply cannot be any other way. Those who wish to be taught according to the Protestant faith are taught by the Protestant pastor; those who wish to be taught according to the Catholic faith are taught by the Catholic pastor; and to those who wish to have free religious instruction in accordance with their parents’ wishes or their own will, we provide it. We cannot help it that the number of the latter—not by our own choice, but in accordance with the circumstances of our time—is particularly large in Waldorf schools. However, we have no interest in turning the Waldorf School into a school based directly on a particular worldview; rather, we want to allow what anthroposophical insight offers to flow into the art of education and into the practice of this educational art. How one works with the child—not what one imparts to the child—that is what matters to us.

[ 31 ] And so we see that, as the child goes through the process of losing baby teeth and passes this significant milestone in life, the capacity for imitation continues to be active well into the seventh and eighth years of life. The capacity for imitation continues to be active until approximately the eighth year of life and beyond. It is particularly during this period that the aspect of the child that corresponds to the element of will in human beings is especially strong.

[ 32 ] At this stage, when the child enters school, one should by no means focus solely on the intellectual aspect, but rather engage the whole person. I would like to illustrate this immediately with a concrete example. In Waldorf schools, we take this into account. We do not begin by teaching the child to write simply by teaching them the letters. Today’s letters actually speak only to the intellect; they have already become conventional symbols. This requires a one-sided strain on the mind. We therefore teach writing by starting with drawing or even painting of visual forms. We first introduce the child to something that is an artistic element and then develop the forms of the letters out of the artistic process—out of drawing and painting. It is not so important to go back to the study of primitive and indigenous peoples, who, after all, developed writing in a similar way; rather, one can certainly trace the individual letters back to what one can make of them oneself in terms of painting and drawing. But the essential point is that one methodically proceeds from what engages the whole person—not merely something to be thought about, but something through which the will finds expression. In what the child accomplishes through painting, the whole human being lives; there, the whole human being becomes, as it were, one with what the child is capable of creating. Then, on the one hand, one can also develop what is meant to engage the intellect from that which engages the whole human being.

[ 33 ] Thus, we begin with what initially influences the child’s volitional nature. And even what manifests as intellectualism in writing instruction, we first develop out of the will. The soul then plays a particularly significant role. The child feels something by first developing the form and then allowing those forms to transition into the existing symbols. Only then do we develop reading further from what writing has become. So that, as I said, we appeal to the whole person, not just the head. And when we carry out something like this, it becomes clear what a difference it makes whether one simply teaches the person—from the standpoint of present-day external social life—something to which they have no connection yet, or whether one brings forth that which is drawn from their entire inner being, that which is inherently present within them.

[ 34 ] During this period, from the age of seven until puberty, we see how the child, through its inner development, is no longer oriented toward imitation—which continues to have an effect well beyond the age of eight, requiring a particular exertion of the will—but rather, we now gradually see a completely different force entering the child’s life. This is what I would like to call the natural sense of authority. This is something that is perhaps mentioned to a greater or lesser extent today, but which is not properly understood. Just as a plant must possess its growth forces if it is to develop its blossoms at a specific time and in a specific way, so too must the child—from the change of teeth to puberty, because this is part of its physical, soul, and spiritual growth forces—develop within itself this elementary sense of authority. It must rely on the teacher and educator, and it must accept the things it then believes—the things that then come to it, that become the content of its feeling and willing— it must now accept them—just as it lived through imitation until the change of teeth—on the basis that it sees them in the teacher’s behavior, that it hears them expressed by the educator, and that the child looks up to its educator in such a way that what lives within the educator serves as a guiding force for the child. This is not something that one—let us say, in a more free-thinking age than today’s, which one believes one ought to counteract—can hope to achieve through anything else. No, nothing can replace what simply grows within us through this fundamental sense of authority, through devotion to the educator or teacher. And throughout one’s entire life, it is of immense importance whether, between the ages of seven and fourteen, one has been in the company of teachers or educators toward whom one has developed a natural sense of authority.

[ 35 ] This touches on a point where the materialistic mindset strays far too far, where, for example, it is said: “After all, what difference does the teacher’s individuality make in terms of its effect on the child? We should teach the child primarily through observation; we should lead the child to think for itself and to develop its own feelings.” Well, I do not even wish to speak of the triviality to which we have sunk in some methodological guides by insisting that we should present to the child only what it already understands itself, so that it can, as it were, analyze this on its own through its own perceptions. I would like to draw attention to the following: In this stage of life I am now discussing, it is of particular importance that we accept and take in what is presented to us on the basis of authority—even if we do not understand it immediately—and that we do not merely acquire what is concrete and perceptible. For just as the willpower underlies the impulse to imitate in the first seven years of life, so now, between the age of seven and the onset of puberty, everything related to memory underlies the child’s expressions. Under the influence of the sense of authority, the child seeks to assimilate things through memory. And precisely what is said against this kind of assimilation through memory shows that, fundamentally, all manner of practical life today is built upon theories, without taking the whole of human life into account.

[ 36 ] Anyone who wishes to reduce everything to sensory perception fails to take two things into account: First, there are vast areas of the world that cannot be made perceptible. These are the realms of beauty; but above all, they are the moral and religious realms. Anyone who wants to base everything on intuition fails to consider that what is most valuable—without which human beings cannot exist—namely, the moral-religious realm and its impulses, cannot be presented to people in a concrete way—especially not at this stage of life—but must instead speak to them on a supersensory level. In these years of life, when the time is right, this can only happen through a sense of authority. That is one aspect.

[ 37 ] But the other point is this. When one surveys the whole of human life—not just a single phase of life from a theoretical perspective—then one knows what it means to be thirty-five or forty years old and to look back on something one experienced or accepted in childhood without having understood it at the time, simply because one told oneself: ‘The person who lives beside me as a teacher knows this; it must be so.’ One accepts it. Decades later—it resurfaces. Now one is mature enough to understand it. It has become a life force. It is a marvelous thing in human life when you see something emerge from the depths of the human soul—something for which you are now ready in later life, but which was already planted in your youth. It is an antidote to aging; it is a life force. You possess an immense amount of what you absorbed in childhood.

[ 38 ] It is not a matter of demanding something out of some prejudice, of accepting something out of a sense of authority, of accepting something literally based on mere authority or from memory; rather, it is a matter of demanding this for the sake of human salvation. Why do people’s souls age so quickly today? Because they lack vital forces within themselves. One must know in detail which forces must be instilled in the child if such forces are to emerge with a rejuvenating effect in later decades of life.

[ 39 ] I will now give another example. Anyone who truly understands how a child plays during the first years of life—say, up to the age of five—and who tailors the child’s play to suit the child’s entire character, prepares something within the child that will then find expression much later in life. To do this, one must understand how to view human life in its entirety. The botanist considers the plant in its entirety. What claims to be “psychology” today only ever considers the moment. Anyone who observes a person at, say, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight years of age—or somewhat earlier—when they are supposed to be finding their way into life experience, establishing a relationship with the practical realities of life, and becoming a capable person, a purposeful person—who knows how to observe a person at this age appropriately and precisely—sees how, in children’s play—between birth and about the age of five—the nature of play foreshadows the way in which, in their twenties, a person finds their way into life as a practical person, as a capable, purposeful person. In early childhood, we instill—I would say, as the root of development—what will later emerge as a flower. But this must be understood through the kind of inner insight offered by anthroposophy, which delves deeply into human nature. It must be recognized through the observation of the whole human being. In a sense, if we wish to be teachers and educators, we must feel as though we have taken upon ourselves the entire burden of the human being. We must feel what we can learn from each individual, from the innate qualities we find in the child.

[ 40 ] And so we can see that, up until about the age of nine, a child does not yet distinguish properly between subject and object. The external world merges with the internal one. Therefore, during these years, one should present to the child only that which lives—I would say—more in the form of fantasy, in images; everything one wishes to teach during these years [should be] shaped in this way. The observation of plants, simple natural science, and history can only be taught to the child starting at age nine. Physics, or aspects of history that are not biographical but rather the interconnection of historical epochs, should only be taught to the child after age twelve, because only then does it build upon something akin to the child’s own nature. And again, this must be done not by merely adhering to the abstract principle that one should develop individuality, but by actually being able to observe this individuality from week to week.

[ 41 ] This is what has emerged as a fruitful method in the Waldorf school, and what, by its very nature, must indeed be recognized as such a fruitful method. When the teacher is permeated and inspired by what can be stirred in his mind and will, he enters into a completely different relationship with his children. I would like to illustrate this with an example. It is not merely the broad line that runs from the educator to the child—or from the teacher to the child—as perceived by the external, materialistic mode of observation; rather, the intangible factors are constantly at play. Let us suppose that one is to teach a child, at an appropriate age, the idea of immortality. Now, this idea of immortality can be conveyed very easily through imagery, and up until the age of nine, one should actually teach entirely through imagery. Everything should be transformed into an image. But if one first constructs the image with one’s own intellect—if one proceeds abstractly in shaping the image—then one is not actually within the image. For example, one can say to the child: Look at a butterfly chrysalis; the butterfly is crawling out of the chrysalis. Just as the butterfly here visibly crawls out of the chrysalis, so the human being’s immortal soul breaks free from the body. - But if I have first shaped this image out of my own inner abstraction—if I am not present in the process myself, but merely arrange everything for the child—then I am not teaching the child anything. It is a peculiar mystery that, when one regards all of nature as spiritualized—as is self-evident in Spiritual Science—one does not merely arrange the image for oneself, but knows: What lives on a certain higher level as immortality is not preformed by my intellect, but by the things themselves; for example, the butterfly struggling out of its chrysalis—that is presented as an image by nature itself. I believe in what I tell the child; I hold the same faith and the same conviction that I wish to pass on to the child. Anyone who observes closely can see for themselves that it has a completely different effect on the child when I teach it an image in which I myself can believe—one that I do not merely present to the child intellectually and have articulated simply because I am so clever and the child is still so foolish.

[ 42 ] This shows what imponderables are at play here. And there is one more thing I would like to mention. During elementary school, the situation is such that, initially—roughly up to the age of nine—the predominant will continues to exert its influence through imitation. But then something occurs in the child that enables it to learn to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Anyone who is truly capable of observing children knows that it is only between the ages of nine and ten that the child actually begins to distinguish properly between subject and object, between itself and its surroundings. Everything must be organized with this in mind. But one would view many things in life differently than one currently does—and, in particular, shape them differently than one does—if one were to focus on one thing: During the same phase of life in which the child, between the ages of nine and ten, truly learns to distinguish itself from its surroundings—during this phase, it is indispensable for the child’s entire moral life in the future that it be able to attach itself, with the utmost respect and a profound sense of authority, to someone who is its teacher or educator.

[ 43 ] If a child crosses this Rubicon between the ages of nine and ten without this feeling, they will have a deficiency throughout their entire life and will later be able, at best and only with great effort, to reclaim from life itself what should have been naturally imparted to the child at this point in their life. Therefore, we should organize our education and instruction in such a way that, precisely in the class where the child crosses this Rubicon between the ages of nine and ten, we stand before the child in such a way that, through our own inner morality—through the inner truthfulness and spiritual substance we possess—we can truly be a source of inspiration to the child; that we do not merely serve as role models for them, but that everything we say to them is perceived by them as the truth. And we must instill in the child the sense of the social relationships that must exist in social life between the maturing child, the adult, and the elderly. The fact that this child experiences a sense of reverence at this stage of life between the ages of nine and ten is also the foundation of what constitutes moral and religious education. An overly early development of intellectuality, a failure to take into account that the will must be influenced through images—particularly from elementary school onward—and that one must not immediately delve into the abstract aspects of reading and writing: such an understanding of human nature simultaneously fails to provide those feelings and sensibilities that become useful when we wish to teach the child moral maxims, ethical principles, and religious sentiments. They do not take hold later on, nor do they exert an influence through a sense of authority, if we are not able to draw upon the child’s individual disposition—arising from the whole person—beginning, for example, in elementary school, or around the age of seven.

[ 44 ] And in this way, one can truly follow the child’s development in concrete terms. The teacher and educator becomes a pedagogical artist when he allows what he has learned about the human being through anthroposophical Spiritual Science to take effect within himself. We do not wish to establish new abstract educational principles; rather, we believe that the whole personality of the human being is stimulated by what anthroposophy can give the human being as the breath of life—the spiritual and soul-life breath. Just as blood naturally enlivens the organism, so should Spiritual Science enliven those whose profession is education and teaching, so that they truly become one with the child and education and teaching become something natural. We want everyone who walks through the doors of their classroom at the Waldorf School to approach the children with this attitude.

[ 45 ] It is not because we want to add our two cents in every possible field—we also discuss the art of education and cultivate it—but because, based on our insights, we must believe that a new source of inspiration is indeed necessary here. The events of life have, after all, led us into such terrible times that they demand a new inspiration. Not out of some frivolous attitude or ideology, nor because it seeks to agitate for anything, but out of a recognition of the true needs of our time, anthroposophy also seeks to have a revitalizing effect on the art of education. It seeks to truly understand and feel what must underlie all genuine education and all genuine teaching. A true sense of this can be summed up in the words with which I wish to conclude today, because I believe that if anthroposophy demonstrates that it has an understanding of these words—a deepest, truest understanding—then no one will deny its calling to have a say in the art of education and in the science of pedagogy. It does not seek to do this out of some revolutionary sentiment; it seeks to do so out of the needs of the times, and it seeks to do so out of the great truths of humanity that lie in the realization that: Oh, the future of humanity—humanity’s immediate future, the future of the next generation—is entrusted to the hands of the educator, to the hands of the teacher. The manner in which a person is educated—how a human being, as a developing individual, is introduced into life—determines, first and foremost, the degree of inner, harmonious stability with which they can lead their own life as an individual toward inner fulfillment. And it determines the extent to which they become a useful and wholesome member of human society. After all, a person fulfills their destiny only if, first, they possess inner harmony and stability, so that they cannot be frivolously content with themselves, but can continually draw from this harmony the strength to work, the strength to act, and the ability to empathize with their surroundings, and if, on the other hand, through his competence and his attunement to the needs of the times and of the humanity surrounding him, he is a useful and beneficial member of society as a whole. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science seeks to contribute to making him such a person, for the reason that it believes that, by following its path, one can discover a very special understanding of human nature and, through this, also a very special art of dealing with people.

[ 46 ] Q&A

[ 47 ] Rudolf Steiner: First of all, a written question has been received here:

How should play influence a child's individuality?

[ 48 ] Spiritual Science referred to here must be thoroughly grounded in reality and must never operate as an abstraction or on the basis of theories; therefore, those questions that are otherwise usually answered—I would say, in short, in a sweeping, general way—cannot be answered briefly in Spiritual Science. But one can at least always point to the direction in which Spiritual Science sees the path. One will, after all, be dealing with this in play with the youngest children. Play is most characteristic up to about the age of five. Of course, children continue to play afterward, but by then all sorts of other things have already mixed into the play, and the play loses its character of flowing entirely—I would say—out of the inner will. Now, if one wishes to guide play appropriately, one must above all keep an eye on what are called the child’s temperamental predispositions, and other factors related to these predispositions. The issue here is that people usually believe one should set a child—who, for example, exhibits a phlegmatic character—on the right path through something particularly lively that excites them; or that a child who shows a tendency toward a more introverted nature—such as a melancholic temperament—even if this does not yet manifest as such in the child but may be present as a predisposition—should be set on the right path through something uplifting. Basically, especially as far as play is concerned, this is not a very sound approach; on the contrary, one should try to study the child’s fundamental character—let’s say, whether the child is slow or quick—and then try to adapt the play accordingly. So for a child who is slow, one should, so to speak, maintain a slow pace even in play; for a child who is quick, one should maintain a quick pace in play as well, and seek only a gradual transition. One should offer the child precisely what flows from within them. After all, the worst mistakes in education are made precisely because one believes that like should not be treated like, but rather that opposites should be treated with opposites. There is one point here that is particularly often overlooked.

[ 49 ] There are excitable children. Naturally, one wants to calm these excited children down, and one might think that buying them toys in darker colors—that is, in less stimulating colors like blue and the like—or buying them clothes in blue would be good for the child. In my little book *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*, I pointed out that this is not the case—that one should give the excited child toys in reddish hues, and the laid-back child, the less lively child, toys in blue and violet. Through all these things, one will discover what is suitable for the child precisely according to his or her particular individual disposition. There is simply an extraordinary amount to take into account. You see, people usually believe—as I said—that if one has a lively, or rather too lively, child, one should counteract this with dark colors, such as blue or violet; but you can see for yourself that when you look at red—at a red surface—and then look away at a white one, you have an inner tendency to perceive the so-called complementary color as a subjective image. Thus, it is precisely the opposite color that is internally stimulated. Dark colors are experienced internally in contrast to light ones. That is why, when a child is agitated, it is good to provide them with toys and clothing in light colors, so that they are stimulated internally. Thus, these things, too, must be viewed only in such a way that one, so to speak, penetrates into the innermost essence of human nature and being.

[ 50 ] I would like to point out that, as a rule, one does not at all capture a child’s individuality—or any individuality at all—if one focuses too much on combinatorial aspects through play. Therefore, from his perspective, the scholar of Spiritual Science must actually regard everything that constitutes combinatorial games—building blocks and the like—as of lesser value, because it appeals too strongly to the child’s intellect; in contrast, everything that brings more life to the child—varied appropriately according to the child’s individuality—will prove to be a particularly beneficial toy. I have long strived to somehow spark a movement—though it is, of course, so difficult these days to inspire people about such trifles, these apparent trifles—to bring back more of those movable picture books for children. There used to be such picture books that had illustrations, and you could pull on strings at the bottom; the pictures would move, and entire stories would unfold from the illustrations. This is something that, when varied in different ways, can have a particularly positive effect on children. In contrast, anything that remains static and that specifically relies on combination—such as the building-block story—is something that is actually not suitable for children’s play, and building blocks themselves are merely a byproduct of our materialistic age.

[ 51 ] I would also like to point out that, when it comes to games, one must pay particular attention to the extent to which a child’s imagination is at work. You can destroy the finest qualities in a person by giving him—the developing human being—a “beautiful” Bajazzo as a boy or a very “beautiful” doll as a girl—for such dolls are, after all, always hideous from an artistic standpoint, yet people strive for “beautiful dolls.” The child is best served when, as far as possible, one allows the imagination itself the greatest possible freedom in dealing with precisely such toys. Deep down, the child feels happiest when it can make a doll or a Bajazzo out of its handkerchief, which is tied at the top and has a little head. This is something that should be encouraged. Essentially, the child’s mental activity should be stimulated. One will certainly get it right if one has an eye for the child’s temperament—for example, by giving a particularly excitable child toys that are as complex as possible and a slow child toys that are as simple as possible, and then proceeding in the same way when it comes to handling them. After all, what the child does with itself at this stage will be of particular importance in later years. One can also observe this in whether a child is allowed to run fast or slow: an excited child is allowed to run fast, while a laid-back child—one who is mentally lazy—is encouraged to run slowly in various games and the like. So the point is that, when adapting the game to the child’s individuality, one should treat like with like and not with its opposite. This will take one very far who truly strives in this direction to treat children appropriately.

Question: How should we go about introducing fairy tales to a child? For example, if we present the image of the butterfly chrysalis and the butterfly, we can believe in it ourselves; but if we tell them stories such as those about the “Easter Bunny” or “St. Nicholas”—stories that we ourselves do not believe in but that nevertheless make children so happy—does this have a harmful effect on the child, or is it harmless, simply as an image?

[ 52 ] Rudolf Steiner: It’s simply a matter of approaching these things in the right way. After all, there are certainly things that must be explained to a child in a way appropriate to their age, and that will be the case with such matters, because the image is somewhat removed from what is actually at stake. But I certainly cannot say, for example, that I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny! So it’s simply a matter of finding the path to that belief. Please forgive me for making such an open confession. But in this particular area, there is nothing that I couldn’t believe, for example, if only I could find the path to it. The point is that when things aren’t as straightforward as with the butterfly—but more complicated—one must then also go through a certain more complex inner process in order to cultivate within oneself the spiritual disposition that conveys this to the child in the right, credible way. There is indeed a reason why, in certain regions of the Orient, the legend persists that upon his death, the Buddha was transported to the moon, where he looks down upon us in the form of a hare. These things, which are originally rooted in deeper legends, point everywhere to the fact that profound mysteries of nature underlie all things.

[ 53 ] I would like to point out that such matters are extremely difficult to assess today. There is a very famous philosophical naturalist—a naturalist-philosopher—named Ernst Mach. Most of you will be familiar with the name. Mach goes so far as to claim that the time has passed for teaching children fairy tales or the like; that is not fitting for an age as enlightened as ours. He asserts that he raised his children entirely without fairy tales or the like. Now, Mach has also given us a curious example of his inability to grasp the human self at all. Mach once said—and I certainly do not mean to disparage his significance in the limited field where he has achieved it; but we live in an age in which even such a man can say something like this—he said: Self-knowledge is actually something quite foreign to a person, for once—when he was quite tired—he was walking down the street; a bus happened to come along, so he jumped on and saw a strange person getting on from the other side—as if the bus could have been boarded from that side as well. He was puzzled by this, but he saw a person approaching, and he thought to himself: What a degenerate schoolmaster is getting on there! Only then did he realize that there was a mirror on the other side and that he knew his own outward appearance so poorly that he hadn’t recognized his own reflection. - Another time, the same thing happened to him as he was walking along the sidewalk and saw himself in a slightly crooked windowpane, so that he saw himself there without immediately recognizing himself.

[ 54 ] Here, he offers this as a kind of justification for how little a person actually penetrates to their true self. He also views this self-knowledge solely from a very external standpoint. Driven by the same impulse, he rejects fairy tales. Now, the point is that, of course, given the way fairy tales are often presented today, it seems that as an adult one cannot relate to them with inner involvement or with a certain inner conviction; but this is actually somewhat deceptive. If one goes back to what is actually experienced there, one arrives at something entirely different.

[ 55 ] In this regard, in particular, it is truly most regrettable that certain early developments—which, according to Spiritual Science, had actually been pointing in this direction for a long time—were never fully developed, My old friend Ludwig Laistner wrote his two-volume work *The Riddle of the Sphinx* in the 1880s, in which he demonstrates what a foolish notion it is to believe that myths, sagas, and legends arose because the people made up stories about the clouds, the sun, the earth, and the like; that spring myths arose because the popular imagination ran wild. Ludwig Laistner—in this respect, his book is of course imperfect, because he knows nothing of what the mental constitution of earlier people was actually like; it was simply more oriented toward the direct perception of reality—attributes everything to dreams, but at least he goes so far as to attribute an experience, even if it is a dream experience, to every mythical construct.

[ 56 ] Well, let us now consider the dream. It certainly does not correspond to the kind of knowledge we have during the day, when we perceive things through our senses; but anyone who studies the life of dreams closely—and of course, this doesn’t mean you have to turn to dream dictionaries—will see that the life of dreams is also an expression of reality. You dream of a tiled stove, feel the heat radiating toward you—and wake up with your heart pounding. The dream has symbolized an inner process for you. You dream—and I am describing real things here—of snakes that represent all sorts of things to you; you wake up with some kind of pain in your intestines; the pain in your intestines is symbolized by the snakes. Every dream is, in essence, indicative of a person’s inner processes, and these inner processes are, in turn, an expression of the great processes of the soul. Truly, the world is far deeper than we imagine it to be today in our so-called Enlightened Age. And anyone who actually studies fairy tales will find in them such significant insights into human nature, for example, that there is already a way to believe in fairy tales—so that the degree of inner spiritual disposition I use to teach a child something about “Snow White” or the “Easter Bunny” or “St. Nicholas” is such that a feeling can certainly arise that holds a belief within me. I need only be inwardly imbued with a connection to the subject. Take “St. Nicholas”: St. Nicholas is indeed the figure who traces back to the ancient Germanic Wotan; he is actually the same as the ancient Germanic Wotan, and this leads us to the World Tree, and we find a clue in the branch that St. Nicholas carries. It is this branch—the Christmas tree is, after all, barely one hundred and fifty years old, still quite young—that gradually develops into the Christmas tree. You can see that there are inner connections everywhere. It is simply necessary to find one’s way into these inner connections, but that is indeed possible. And then there are entirely different intangible factors that extend from the mind of the teacher and educator to the mind of the child. — I don’t know if I’ve answered your question exactly with this response; this is part of what it’s about.

Question [not recorded verbatim]: What is the relationship between psychoanalysis and Spiritual Science?

[ 57 ] Rudolf Steiner: You see, with regard to many things, anthroposophical Spiritual Science is in a position where it must speak out. There are small circles, and together they form a large circle; the small one is contained within the large one, but the large one is not contained within the small one, and most often the people who belong to the small circles are the most fanatical. Anthroposophy is the absolute opposite of any form of fanaticism. Isn’t it true that psychoanalysis contains a quarter or half of the truth? One tries to draw out from within the “provinces of the soul” and so on—the isolated “provinces of the soul” and so on. There is some truth in that, but one must dig deeper if one wants to find the actual foundation. So that, as we find with so many views, one can say: Yes, but the other person does not return the same goodwill; he thinks that, because one must present it more comprehensively, one is contradicting him.

[ 58 ] I’ll just remind you of the prime example that is cited in almost every book on psychoanalysis. You’ll recall it if you’ve studied the subject: A lady is invited to an evening party. The lady of the house—not the guest—is supposed to leave that very evening to go to a spa, and the master of the house is to remain home alone. Now the evening gathering takes place; the lady of the house is sent off to the spa, the master returns, and the gathering disperses. People are walking down the street. A horse-drawn carriage comes racing around the corner—not a car, a horse-drawn carriage. The party members scatter to the left and right, but one lady runs ahead of the horses, running and running and running, no matter how hard the others try to stop her and no matter how much the coachman shouts and curses; she keeps running until she reaches a stream. She knows full well that one cannot drown in that stream—she throws herself into it and is, of course, rescued. The people know nothing else to do: she is brought back to the house from which she had just come, where the master of the house is, and where the mistress of the house has just been sent to take a bath.

[ 59 ] Well, isn’t that right? A true Freudian—I’ve been following this from the very beginning and was very well acquainted with Dr. Breuer, who initially developed psychoanalysis together with Freud—yes, a true Freudian looks for some kind of hidden psychological complex: When she was seven or eight years old, back when the lady was still a child, she was chased by a horse; that is a repressed psychological complex that is now coming to the surface. — But things aren’t quite that simple. I must now ask for your forgiveness, but the fact is that the subconscious can sometimes be quite cunning. This subconscious has been at work in the lady all along: If only, after the other woman is sent off to the bathroom, if only she could be with the man! And now she’s setting everything up—in her conscious mind, of course, the woman would be terribly ashamed to do this; you wouldn’t expect her to do it on a conscious level—but the deeper part, the subconscious, is much more cunning, much more wicked—she knows exactly how to arrange everything, she foresees it quite clearly: If she runs ahead of the horse and throws herself into the water, she’ll be carried back into the house, because the others know nothing [of her true intention].

[ 60 ] Sometimes you have to look at things from a completely different perspective. There is far too much artificiality in the method of psychoanalysis today, even though it essentially points to a part of the truth. It is simply an attempt made with inadequate means, which is understandable given the materialistic mindset of our time, in which even the spiritual is initially sought through materialistic methods.