The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Issues in Education, Teaching, and Practical Life from the Perspective of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] In my first lecture, which I gave here in Amsterdam on the 19th of this month, I attempted to explore how an anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to position itself within humanity’s present-day civilization. This anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, which today already has an outwardly artistic center at the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum in Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, seeks to supplement the tremendous, great achievements of natural scientific knowledge—which it fully acknowledges—with supersensible insights gained through precise spiritual scientific methods. And in my last lecture here on February 19, I took the liberty of pointing out that, in the present day, numerous souls yearn for a form of knowledge that is just as securely grounded as the knowledge currently regarded as scientific, but one that extends into realms of the world with which the eternal in the human soul is connected.

[ 2 ] I pointed out that these supersensible insights can be attained only by developing certain abilities inherent in the human soul. However, in many circles of our educated society today, people still do not want to hear anything about these abilities. But it is precisely this refusal to acknowledge these abilities that underlies the catastrophic nature of our times, which is evident to everyone.

[ 3 ] If one is to even begin to approach what is meant here by “Spiritual Science,” one must start with what I called “intellectual humility” in my lecture on February 19. This intellectual humility will be perceived as a paradox precisely in an age that takes particular pride in its intellectuality. But anyone who wishes to penetrate the supersensible worlds—to which the human soul, with its true essence, belongs—needs this starting point of intellectual humility. And I would like to repeat the parable I used recently to illustrate this intellectual humility, since I must assume that, due to the change in lecture hall, a large number of those gathered here today were not present at my first lecture.

[ 4 ] If we have a five-year-old child in front of us and we put a volume of Shakespeare in his hands, he will play with it; he might tear it apart—but in any case, he will not do what is appropriate for a volume of Shakespeare. But once the child has grown another ten or fifteen years, the abilities that were previously latent in the child’s soul will have been developed through education and instruction; the child will then read the volume of Shakespeare. The child has ascended to a higher stage of human existence and, after fifteen to twenty years, has become a different being in terms of its soul.

[ 5 ] If one truly wishes to penetrate the supersensible world, one must be able to say to oneself: Perhaps, as an adult, one is in the same position with regard to nature—with its mysteries and its deeper laws—as a five-year-old child is with regard to a volume of Shakespeare; and perhaps there are powers lying dormant within the soul that one must first bring to the surface. If, as an adult, one approaches the powers and abilities slumbering within the soul with this intellectual humility, one will come to develop within oneself insights that are higher than those of everyday life and conventional science.

[ 6 ] First, the faculty within the human soul that is commonly known as memory must be developed. Through this faculty of memory, we bring coherence to our lives. Through this power of memory, images of what we have experienced up to a very early age in childhood conjure themselves up before our soul. This power of memory makes lasting what would otherwise flit by as mental images. If we could only surrender ourselves to the external world, if we could only surrender ourselves to mental images of the fleeting events and experiences, our entire soul life would indeed be different. - If one now further develops what is indeed present in memory as lasting mental images, one arrives at an entirely different capacity for insight. And one can develop this through methods that I have described in my book *How Does One Attain Insights into the Higher Worlds?*, in my *Esoteric Science*, and in other writings of mine. One can develop this through certain processes of meditation and concentration, through a devotional resting on certain, easily comprehensible mental images that must not be reminiscences and must not be based on any form of autosuggestion; therefore, they must be easily comprehensible.

[ 7 ] One must rest with the entire structure of one’s soul upon such mental images. And these studies, which the true spiritual researcher must undertake regarding the insights into the supersensible worlds, are no easier than the studies conducted in a hospital, a physics or chemistry laboratory, or an observatory, and they by no means take less time. This meditation—this focusing of one’s entire soul’s power on certain mental images that one continually forms and upon which one rests—must be continued for years. The powers of cognition lying deep within the soul—of which a person otherwise has no inkling—must be brought to the surface. Once they are brought to the surface, one is able to perceive, through these higher powers of cognition, that which surrounds us just as the physical-sensory world surrounds us. At first, one perceives one’s own experiences, but not as the indeterminate stream extending back nearly to one’s birth—where fragments of memory surface—but rather, one initially perceives, as a unified, all-at-once panorama of life, the entire overview of what one has lived through in this life since birth. —And once one comes to know this, one experiences what it means to live in one’s soul outside the body. Materialism usually asserts—and at first glance this seems justified—that all ordinary mental images, all ordinary memories, all ordinary feelings, and all ordinary volitions are bound to the physical body. But in ordinary life, this feeling, this volition, and this mental image are interrupted. Every day, sleep interrupts what constitutes the ordinary, body-bound life of the soul. People simply do not grasp deeply enough that significant, enigmatic question connected with falling asleep, sleeping, and waking up again. After all, the human being must be present during sleep; otherwise, he would have to come into being anew each time he wakes up. But one only learns to recognize the form in which the human being is present while sleeping when one completes those exercises to which I have now alluded.

[ 8 ] If one actually reaches a state in which one can create a mental image of oneself in which—one does not rely on the physical eyes, nor on other senses, nor even on the ordinary intellect bound to the brain, but only on the purely spiritual-soul aspect—and one arrives at this by training the power of memory in the way I have described— then one comes to know that from the moment of falling asleep until waking up, the human being does indeed exist as a spiritual-soul being outside of the body, and that it is only the desire to return to the body that then asserts itself. And this desire obscures consciousness.

[ 9 ] Anyone who develops their memory in the way I have described will be able to behave exactly like a sleeping person—that is, not perceiving with the senses, nor combining sensory perceptions with the intellect—except that they remain fully conscious. They perceive the spiritual-soul aspect independently of the body. Through this, they also come to recognize this spiritual-soul aspect—before birth or conception and after death—in its true essence and in connection with the rest of the supersensible world.

[ 10 ] And if he then goes on to further develop a second spiritual power that also exists in ordinary life—namely, the power of love—and if he transforms the power of love into a power of cognition, then the human being comes to know the images that he otherwise experiences as a supersensory panorama in their immediate reality as well. If one develops the capacity for love in the way I have already described, then supersensible knowledge becomes, to a certain degree, perfect. And what we thereby attain is not merely a spiritual satisfaction; it is not merely something that satisfies our theoretical need, but it is essentially also a practical result in life. That is why everything that originated in Dornach sought from the very beginning to have an impact on practical life. And we have already succeeded in many things precisely for the sake of practical living.

[ 11 ] Today I would like to draw attention to something that, in the truest sense, is an integral part of a way of life that should be of interest to everyone. I would like to highlight the ways in which the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science referred to here can enrich the art of education and teaching.

[ 12 ] What, then, does one actually gain from a Spiritual Science such as I have now outlined in very general terms with regard to its methods? Above all, one gains a true understanding of human nature. Without being able to look into the supersensible realm, it is indeed impossible to have an understanding of human nature. After all, the human being is not merely the external physical organism, about which the external scientific worldview provides us with such magnificent, powerful insights that cannot be sufficiently appreciated. Human beings are also soul and spirit. Human beings harbor within themselves the eternal core of being that passes through births and deaths, that possesses consciousness after death, because it then has no longing for the body that lies in bed during sleep and for which it longs while asleep—a longing that extinguishes its consciousness during ordinary sleep.

[ 13 ] When this ordinary physical body is shed at death, the human being attains an all the more luminous consciousness, because he has not extinguished his consciousness through any desire for a body. Through all of this—and through much more that I do not wish to describe here, but which you can read about in my writings—a person attains what constitutes true knowledge of the human being. And only from this true knowledge of the human being can the true art of teaching and the true art of education arise.

[ 14 ] We have sought to address precisely this aspect of practical life at the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I direct and whose pedagogy and didactics stem entirely from anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. First of all, the very attitude of the teaching staff is such that with every lesson, with every new morning, something is brought into the classroom that transforms education and teaching into a kind of spiritual service. Is it not something special, after all, to know through anthroposophical Spiritual Science: This human being, who reveals himself to us in such a mysterious and wondrous way in the growing child, has descended from the spiritual worlds through conception or birth? If this is a true insight, if it is conveyed through anthroposophical Spiritual Science, then one approaches the developing human being—the child—in such a way that one recognizes this as a task entrusted to us by the spiritual worlds. Then one sees how the eternal, which has descended from the spiritual worlds, works its way out day by day, week by week, year by year, from the child’s initially indeterminate physiognomic features and indeterminate movements toward ever greater definiteness. One sees the spiritual-soul aspect at work in the physical formation of the human being.

[ 15 ] The intention here is not to offer any kind of thoughtless criticism of what was produced by educational geniuses throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Certainly, many fine principles have been articulated, particularly with regard to pedagogy. For example, it is rightly emphasized that: Yes, pedagogy does have principles such as “one should not impose anything from the outside onto children; one should draw everything one wishes to impart to children from their own innate dispositions and abilities.” Quite right, an excellent principle—but abstract and theoretical. And so it is precisely the vast majority of our practical life that confronts us in the form of abstractions, of theoretical programs. For what is needed to carry out something like drawing out of the individuality that which the child is to develop within itself—for this, one needs a true understanding of human nature. An understanding of human nature that penetrates to the very depths of the human being. Yet such an understanding of human nature cannot be possessed by the science that has existed thus far in modern civilization, despite its great triumphs.

[ 16 ] I would now like to demonstrate to you, in very concrete terms, certain things that will show you how the Spiritual Science—as it is understood here—arrives at a true understanding of the human being. There is a trite saying that is thoughtlessly repeated time and again: “Nature does not make leaps!” —But nature does, in fact, constantly make leaps, and this expression, as I said, is based solely on thoughtlessness. Think of a plant: it develops green leaves, then makes the leap to the calyx, then the leap to the colorful petals, the stamens, and so on. And so it is with all life. It is merely a cliché to say that nature takes no leaps. And this is especially true in human life. In human life, if we can observe it impartially through the insights provided by anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, we find clearly distinct life phases. The first life phase extends from birth until the change of teeth, around the age of seven. It thus ends in the year when we enroll the children in elementary school. If one possesses the necessary insight and objectivity in observation—if one accustoms oneself to observing life on a higher level in the same way that one otherwise observes it at the lowest level in the natural sciences—one can sharply characterize the great differences between the first and second phases of human life. The first phase of life ends with the change of teeth; the second with sexual maturity. These two phases of life are quite distinct from one another. The first phase reveals the child as an imitative being. Even in play, the child is an imitative being. Certainly, some believe that a certain imaginative quality manifests itself in play. That is indeed the case, but if you study play in its deepest essence, you will perceive moments of imitation everywhere, especially in children’s play. And in connection with this play, I would like to note right away how immensely significant an understanding of the human being—an understanding of the human being in terms of their totality—is for an education and pedagogical art that is full of life and truly engages with existence.

[ 17 ] You see, every child plays differently. Anyone with an unbiased eye for observation can clearly distinguish how one child plays from how another does. Even if the difference isn’t a big one—you have to be a psychologist to observe something like that, if you want to become an educator at all. But if you can do that, then you have to relate the different types of play to a completely different stage of human life. When it comes to observing people, external science is such that it merely strings one thing after another. But that doesn’t get you very far. What can be observed in children’s play does not persist into the next stage of life. During the period from the loss of baby teeth to sexual maturity, the child is focused on other things. Even if the child continues to play, the actual “play age” no longer manifests itself as characteristically as it did before. The passions of play recede into the depths of the soul and only resurface at a much later stage of life: in the second half of one’s twenties, when a person is expected to engage with practical life. One person tackles the tasks of fate with great skill, while another becomes a dreamer detached from the world, and between the two, the most varied nuances are possible. The way in which a person can engage with practical life during these years can be fully explained if one knows how that person played at the ages of four, five, six, and seven.

[ 18 ] Therefore, it is of the utmost importance for educators and teachers to guide children’s play; to observe what the child wants to express, and to steer away from what should not be expressed, because that would make the child clumsy in later life. For when we guide a child’s play in the right way at the earliest age, we are giving the child something that will serve them in the practical aspects of life—aspects that do not fully develop until their twenties. A person’s entire life is interconnected, and what we plant in the child’s soul during youth only comes to light much later in life in the most diverse forms. Only a comprehensive understanding of human nature, such as that provided by anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, can truly penetrate connections as far apart as the twenties and childhood, such as the process of finding one’s way into practical life and the instincts for play; only such Spiritual Science can look so deeply into life. This will give you a mental image of the breadth of human understanding from which this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to draw in order to develop the art of education.

[ 19 ] “A child is an imitative being,” I said, “until about the age of seven.” And I truly do not mention the number seven out of any mystical inclination, but because the change of teeth is, in fact, a significant milestone in the child’s overall development. - Through imitation, the child learns the specific nature of its movements, as well as its language; it even develops the form of its thoughts in this way. Because the relationship between the child’s environment and the child itself does not depend solely on external factors but also involves intangible elements, parents or educators who live in the child’s environment must be clearly aware of how the child adapts not only to what the adults around them do outwardly—not just what they say—but also to what they perceive, what they feel, and what they think. In our materialistic age, people generally do not believe that there is a difference in the child’s development depending on whether we indulge in noble or base thoughts in the child’s presence, because they view the interrelationships of life solely in terms of external, material entities, and not in terms of how things are internally connected through intangible factors. This becomes clear when one truly observes life according to its inner structures.

[ 20 ] I’d like to use an example to illustrate what really matters in such situations: A father once came to me, complaining bitterly—and I could cite many similar examples—that his five-year-old son had stolen something. He was very upset about it. I said: Let’s see if the five-year-old boy really did steal. — I asked him to describe the incident. What had actually happened? The boy had taken some money from the drawer where his mother kept her pennies—which she always needed for small daily expenses—and used it to buy snacks; he hadn’t even done it out of selfishness, but had shared the snacks with other children. I said to the father: “The child did not steal; rather, the child considers it right to do what the mother always does—that he is allowed to do it—because at the age of five, he is still very much a creature of imitation. We must be aware of this: we do not influence children through admonitions or commands, but solely through what we do in their presence.”

[ 21 ] And we can only arrive at a sound judgment regarding the child’s entire psychological makeup once we understand that, with the change of teeth, this psychological makeup undergoes a fundamental transformation. At that point, mere imitation gives way to the child’s psychological attitude toward the environment as a natural authority. And throughout the entire school years, we are confronted with this desire on the part of the child for the self-evident authority of the teacher, the educator, or whoever else surrounds the child. One need only} realize what it means for one’s entire life to have looked up, during this childhood period from the age of seven to fifteen, with a genuine, profound inner reverence toward those adults in our environment who held educational authority—people who related to us in such a way that what we considered true and false stemmed from the way these educators viewed truth and falsehood; from whatever served as the standard of truth and falsehood for the educators themselves. It is into the human realm, not into anything abstract, that we enter when we seek to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, at this age of childhood.

[ 22 ] You will not believe that I advocate this necessity—that all instruction and education between the ages of seven and fifteen must also be based on self-evident authority—out of any preference for conservative or reactionary ideas, when I tell you that as early as 1892 I wrote a short treatise in which I emphatically presented individual human freedom as a fundamental social requirement. But no one can become a truly free person; no one can find the proper social relationship with their fellow human beings in freedom unless, between the ages of seven and fifteen, they have recognized a natural authority alongside themselves and, based on this, learned to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, so that only afterward can they arrive at an independent standard of rational or other purely internal, autonomous judgment.

[ 23 ] And at this stage of life, the child’s soul is still such that it is, at first, completely intertwined with its surroundings. It is only when we reach the end of this phase of life, which falls around the twelfth or thirteenth year, that we see the child clearly distinguishing itself from its surroundings, that it knows: the “I” is internal, nature is external. Certainly, self-awareness is naturally present in very early childhood, but there it is more of a feeling. If one wishes to educate properly, one must know that between the ages of nine and ten and a half, there is an extraordinarily important point in a child’s development. It is the point at which the child becomes so inwardly absorbed that it learns to distinguish itself from nature and the rest of the external world in every respect. Before this point—which marks a major turning point in human life—the child essentially perceives its surroundings in images, because they are still intertwined with its own inner life, in images that are often symbolic. It thinks about its surroundings in a symbolic way. Afterward, a new phase begins. The child distinguishes itself from nature and the external environment. It is of immense importance that the educator be able to assess this stage of life—which occurs somewhat later for one child and somewhat earlier for another—in the right way. For the way the teacher and educator behaves between the ages of nine and ten—guiding the child across this Rubicon in a fatherly, friendly, and loving manner—has a profound impact on human life that remains with the child for the rest of their existence, right up to physical death. Whether a person can retain a zest for life in decisive moments, or whether they carry an inner spiritual desolation through life, depends in many respects—though not in every one—on how the teacher and educator behaved toward the child between the ages of nine and ten and a half. Sometimes it is simply a matter of finding the right word at the right moment—perhaps when a boy or girl happens to meet you in the hallway and asks a question—and of making the right expression while answering. The art of education is not something that can be learned or taught in the abstract—any more than painting, sculpture, or any other art—but rather it is something based on infinite details that arise from spiritual sensitivity. This spiritual sensitivity, however, is derived precisely from anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

[ 24 ] It now becomes clear how one must distinguish between what should be introduced to the child before this important stage of life—between the ages of nine and ten and a half years—and afterward. Above all, we must bear in mind that in our present, advanced civilization, we have something that has become external, abstract, and symbolic. Go back to ancient civilizations; take any pictographic writing—there, what the mind could still grasp was captured. It was made into an image with which the human being was connected, through which the human being lived by sensation and feeling. Today, all of that has become mere symbols. We must not introduce reading and writing to the child as something foreign, because before the age of nine the child wants to become one with its surroundings; we must not teach it from that abstract realm, as is done today. In the Waldorf school, we begin instruction in a thoroughly artistic way by first letting the child draw—even in color—and paint forms that arise from the fullness of human nature. We let the child do this at first, and then, as we guide the child further in this drawing and painting approach, we develop the letter forms—writing—from this drawing. We proceed from the artistic; from the artistic we first draw out writing, then reading. In this way, we truly respond to what lies within the child.

[ 25 ] It is not a matter of making some abstract statement in pedagogy that one should simply draw out what is already within the child—one must know how to go about this in practice so as to truly touch human nature. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is never mere theory, but always genuine practice. That is what enables it to develop such an art of education.

[ 26 ] What I have mentioned about authority can lead us to something else that may seem paradoxical to you. In today’s materialistic age, an extraordinary amount of emphasis is placed on so-called “visual instruction.” To anyone who understands the true nature of the child, it is a terrible sight to see the abstract calculators and all the other things with which children are so often bombarded today. Today, children are expected to understand everything immediately. The aim is to structure instruction so that nothing exceeds the comprehension level of an average eight- or nine-year-old. This seems extraordinarily scientific. — Believe me, my esteemed audience, even a person thoroughly educated in anthroposophy can grasp the logic of such a principle, just as well as those who defend such principles today as something that should be taken for granted. What is self-evident, however, is that the child—especially between the ages of seven and fourteen—must develop a healthy sense of memory and a healthy sense of authority in the manner I have just described.

[ 27 ] Anyone who insists on nothing but clarity and clarity tailored to a child’s understanding does not realize the following: They do not know what it means for one’s entire life when, say, at the age of eight or nine, or between the ages of ten and fifteen, one has absorbed something based on the teacher’s authority; because the revered, authoritative figure tells you so, you take it as true. It still lies beyond one’s horizon, yet one takes it into one’s soul. Perhaps only in one’s thirty-fifth or fortieth year does one bring it back to the surface. What one already had in one’s memory, one now understands through one’s more matured faculties. This awareness of having matured—this awareness of being able to bring something to the surface—refreshes and invigorates the soul’s strength in a way that is not appreciated in ordinary life, whereas the soul becomes desolate when one tries to tailor everything to the understanding of a child in the eighth, ninth, or twelfth year. — This is something that must be said today, because, out of their materialistic cleverness, people are no longer at all capable of seeing what is natural, right, and essential in such matters.

[ 28 ] And from the depths of human nature—from that which is taking shape, that which seeks to develop from week to week, from year to year—the curriculum of a school such as the Waldorf School is derived. This curriculum arises entirely from an understanding of the essence of the human being. It is not an abstract curriculum, but rather something that underlies the pedagogy of this school, just as the ability to paint underlies the work of a painter, and the art of sculpting underlies the work of a sculptor.

[ 29 ] You see, here I have described to you, in the context of education and teaching, how anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science is integrated into everyday life. But consider for a moment what the spiritual life must be like if such educational and teaching practices are to truly take root! Today we are accustomed to viewing this spiritual life merely as an appendage of the state, or perhaps as an appendage of economic life. Today we are accustomed to having the most important part of spiritual life—namely, education and teaching—dictated to us by the state. What anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science must now assert for modern civilization—based on a truly profound understanding of teaching and educational methods that stem from a genuine understanding of the human being—is that spiritual life, and the system of teaching and education, must be placed under its own free administration. I would like to put it in very concrete terms: Teachers and educators should not only teach and educate, but they should also have full control over the entire administration of teaching and education, free and independent of the state and economic life. From the lowest elementary school all the way up to the highest institutions of learning, every teacher and educator should be engaged in teaching to such an extent that they still have enough time left to also serve as administrators of the educational system. And only those who are still actively engaged in teaching and education—the true teachers and educators in any field, not those who have become government officials and have left the educational system—should also be the administrators of the educational system. Nothing should influence the educational system except that which also influences knowledge, art, and a religious worldview. People refuse to acknowledge that what was necessary for one epoch of historical development—and may even have been exceptionally good—does not apply to every epoch of history. When the modern era dawned with its centrally organized state, it was a good and natural thing that schools were taken away from the old denominational administrations. At that time, this was a boon for the development of humanity. But now we have reached a point in human development where this can no longer remain the case; where what the state could contribute of good to the school system has been exhausted, and where free spiritual life—the spiritual life that draws from genuine spiritual sources—calls for the independent administration of the school system.

[ 30 ] Here, the issue of schooling and education intersects directly with the broader social issue—with everything that constitutes the very essence of the social issue. You see, when it comes to the social question, many believe that its essence lies in external institutions, that one need only look at these external institutions to understand the social question, and that one must work on these external institutions to do something about the social question. — Anyone who has truly come to know life cannot think this way. I have come to know proletarian thinking. I had the opportunity to do so not only during my own youth, but also because, for many years, I worked as a teacher of various subjects at a workers’ educational school and saw what actually lives within the broadest strata of the proletariat—a class that, fundamentally speaking, has emerged only through modern technology.

[ 31 ] It is not external institutions, nor even questions of bread and butter, from which the actual social question springs; rather, it is the state of mind associated with the fact that the kind of intellectual life that has developed among the ruling classes over the last three to four centuries has spread like a kind of religion to the broad masses of the proletariat. I have seen this worldview emerge from materialist foundations in people to be taken seriously—in souls of profound depth who were part of the bourgeoisie, who belonged to the ruling classes—and in doing so I have learned the following: Such souls of profound depth said to themselves: Let us take the external, scientific worldview seriously; let us observe how it shows that the Earth has developed from some nebulous states through purely natural necessities to its present stage, and how the various living beings have gradually evolved alongside it, right up to the human being. And a time will come again when the Earth will either face glaciation or heat death—one may form a mental image of it in one way or the other—but then the great graveyard will be there. What will then have become of what humanity must surely regard as the noblest aspect of human nature, what arises within us as moral ideals, as religious impulses, as art, as science? I have met people who have seriously pondered this question, while the vast majority of modern people thoughtlessly juxtapose these two worlds: the world of external natural necessity and the world of what is truly human and valuable—moral ideals, religious convictions, knowledge, and artistic creation. Then serious souls say to themselves: “Yes, human beings become aware of what wells up from the soul; but that is an illusion, it is like smoke rising from the material foundation. But one day there will be the great graveyard, and what we call the great ideals will have vanished and faded away.”—I have come to know the tragedy and pessimism to which deeply inclined people have arrived. But I have also witnessed how this worldview then penetrated the proletarian soul and how a single word confronted one there with immense power—a word that, however, signifies so much. If one understands how it lives within the proletarian soul, then one knows a great deal about the foundations of contemporary civilization and its social issues. For the word “ideology” lives within the souls of the proletariat . What these proletarian souls recognize as spiritual life—as custom, law, science, art, and religion—they call a “superstructure” built upon the processes of production, which, historically speaking, are the only reality for them. This is the legacy of the worldview I have just described as tragic, one that desolates the souls of the proletariat—those millions of souls.

[ 32 ] One might seem like an idealist today if one seeks the true proletarian question in what that dreadful word “ideology” expresses. But these idealists—they will be right. And those who believe they have a monopoly on human wisdom and life experience in large numbers will see that history will march right over them. — This “ideology” means that the souls of these masses remain desolate, having no connection to the living spirit—just as the ruling classes do not, who deny the proletariat access to this science.

[ 33 ] And here I would like to say something that is essentially intended to illustrate to you the task and mission of Dornach—of the Goetheanum in Dornach—in today’s age of civilization. Some people today recognize that enlightenment and science must be brought to the broad masses. Public libraries, adult education centers, and all sorts of institutions are being established to bring the science found in our universities and secondary schools to the people. Dornach cannot participate in this. Dornach intends to carry out what was the purpose of that fall course we organized in the fall of 1920 and which we will repeat on a smaller scale, in keeping with our modest circumstances, at Easter. The aim there was for the individual sciences to be enriched by Spiritual Science. Thirty lecturers from all branches of science—including industrialists, businesspeople, and artists—presented at this fall course to demonstrate how all branches of science, art, and life can be enriched by the Spiritual Science. The aim here is to renew science. The aim is to introduce the spiritual into the sciences—to introduce a spirit that does not spring from an intellectual culture, but arises from the fullness of humanity.

[ 34 ] This, then, is the purpose of the Goetheanum in Dornach: to bring a new spirit into the schools of higher learning; only then will it be able to take root among the people. — We want to carry the spirit of our school of higher learning out into the people—can we not see in modern civilization what good this spirit has done for those who possess it? This spirit must be renewed. It is not that public education must be carried out from these schools; rather, an education imbued with this spirit must first be brought into the schools. — This is what distinguishes Dornach from everything else that is supposed to be happening in this direction today. For in this field, people certainly take the position that, while they may pretend to be very open-minded, they actually succumb to a terrible belief in authority, particularly when it comes to mainstream science. I truly say this not out of contempt for modern scientific thought, but out of decades of engagement with all branches of this thinking. We must work toward the liberation of spiritual life and, with it, the liberation of the school and educational systems, just as the state was once compelled to take education and instruction into its own hands and wrest them from the old denominations.

[ 35 ] I know what objections can be raised to establishing the free spiritual life as the first member of the threefold social organism. But when people come and express their fear that parents would then probably not send their children to these free schools, that simply means they are looking at the matter the wrong way. The issue is not whether people voluntarily send their children to school or not, but rather that a free system of instruction and education is a necessity for humanity today, and that we must therefore ensure that children attend school regardless. This cannot be an objection to a free spiritual life; rather, it must simply lead to reflection on how, despite a free spiritual life, to bring the children of negligent or unscrupulous parents into school. This is the first link in the impulse toward the threefold social order—which the anthroposophical worldview also regards as the correct path toward solutions to social issues: the free spiritual life, administered solely by those who work in the spiritual realm.

[ 36 ] One can easily find superficially logical concepts that offer all sorts of arguments both to defend this necessary freedom of spiritual life and to attack or denounce it. But that is not the point. For anthroposophy always proceeds from the practice of life and the observation of life. Anyone who knows what a true Spiritual Science will once again mean for humanity also knows how necessary the liberation of spiritual life is. People speak of ideology because spiritual life consists of abstractions, because they have no concept that a mental image—that which lives in the soul—is something other than the image of something, because they no longer know that the ancient religions taught humanity that a living spirit dwells within every human being, that human beings, with their eternal essence, belong to the living spirit, and that it is not merely formless, abstract images that live within their souls. The living spiritual world that fills us from within and connects us to the eternal is not an ideology. It is in this rise of ideology that we find the root of what has led to the catastrophes of our age. But a school and educational system that seeks to reintroduce the living spirit into humanity must be as free a school system as I have described. This free school system strikes me as something that, in the most eminent sense, must be recognized as a necessity by modern humanity—insofar as it is sincere in its concern for human well-being and progress.

[ 37 ] Therefore, I consider it—and I say this without wishing to agitate—absolutely necessary, in order to counteract the many forces of decline present in our modern civilization with forces of renewal, that something be established on the broadest possible international basis, something I would like to call a World School Association. This World School Association would have to encompass all nations and the broadest possible circles of people. These people would have to be aware that a free spiritual life must be created. It is of no use at all if people think that our Waldorf School in Stuttgart is merely a practical matter that one must observe for a few hours or a few weeks. To want to observe something that arises from an entire spiritual life is like cutting out a piece of the Sistine Madonna to get a mental image of the entire painting. One cannot experience the spirit of the Waldorf School by simply observing classes, but rather by becoming acquainted with anthroposophy—the anthroposophical Spiritual Science—which lives in every teacher, in every lesson, in the children, and which also lives in the report cards. I would like to briefly describe how, in the Waldorf School, we gradually come to know each child intimately according to their individuality, even though we have large classes. We do not give them grades or report cards that say “almost satisfactory” or “barely passing”—that is all nonsense. You can’t grade that way. Instead, we actually give the children a description of their character—one that serves as a mirror for them throughout the coming year—and a motto chosen from the depths of their souls. We have also seen just how valuable these very report cards have become for the Waldorf school children. We have thus experienced what has entered this Waldorf school as the anthroposophical spirit.

[ 38 ] But we do not wish to see as many independent schools as possible established along the lines of the Waldorf School; rather, what we want is for the realization to take hold in the broadest possible circles internationally: we must combat the old-fashioned mindset that seeks to build the school system solely on a state-run basis. We must strive to ensure that free spiritual life can create its own fully legitimate, free school. We do not want to establish small, isolated schools at the state’s mercy; we will not lend a hand to that end. Rather, what is necessary is an understanding of a League of Nations of the kind that would be embodied spiritually and intellectually in a World School Association. This would bring people together across the globe in a great, a colossal undertaking.

[ 39 ] That is what I would like to say first about the first member of the threefold social organism. As for the other parts—since they pertain to practical life in other areas—I can only touch on them briefly. —Over the course of the last four to five centuries, we have developed the unitary state precisely within today’s civilized world. On the one hand, it has absorbed spiritual life through the school and educational systems; it has also absorbed economic life, at least to a large extent. And social democracy, after all, strives to use the entire state—the state framework—to essentially establish a kind of militarized economy, thereby destroying all economic freedom and all individuality, as we see in Trotskyism, in Leninism, and especially in what has come of it—what is now, in such a terrible way, throwing humanity into convulsions across Eastern Europe and into Asia. The point is for people to learn what certain things are necessary for humanity today.

[ 40 ] Economic life has its own conditions just as much as intellectual life does. Anyone who, like me, has spent thirty years—half their life—in Austria, which was, after all, the testing ground for the forces of social destruction—which is why this Austria also became the first victim of this global catastrophe—anyone who has lived in this Austria with open eyes could already see as early as the 1870s how it was rushing toward its end. I can cite an example of how, on a large scale, this Austria was engineered into decline. In the 1870s, there was also a push to establish a democratic parliamentary system. How was this done? Four curiae were established: the Curia of Large Landowners, the Curia of Chambers of Commerce, the Curia of Cities, Markets, and Industrial Centers, and the Curia of Rural Communities. Purely economic interests were drawn into the parliament. The representatives of mere economic interests in these four curiae were supposed to make decisions on all matters of state. Naturally, they made these decisions based on economic interests. As a result, neither legitimate state interests nor economic interests were given due consideration.

[ 41 ] I could list hundreds and hundreds of reasons that would show you that, just as intellectual life must be separated from actual political life on the one hand, economic life must likewise be separated on the other. Just as intellectual life must be organized around the fully free individual and the governance of free individuals, so too must economic life be organized according to the principle of association.

[ 42 ] What does an “associative principle” mean? Well, we already see a trend today toward the formation of consumer cooperatives. Consumers are banding together. And we have a movement in which producers from a wide variety of circles are joining forces. But ultimately, what we actually have is merely a surrogate, made up of consumers and producers. Only when production is organized not according to the barometer of profit but according to need—when the relationships between consumers and producers are guided by those who serve as experts and specialists in various economic sectors—and when we take seriously our striving for totality in spiritual life— but never in economic life—where one interacts with people in other sectors—as soon as we take this seriously, the principle of association will take hold in economic life. Association will not be organization. Although I spent part of my life in Germany, the word “organization” has a terrifying connotation for me, and it was precisely in Germany that I learned what it means to want to organize everything possible. Terrible things happen when one always tries to organize everything from a central authority. Associating is not organizing. There, individualities remain fully effective; they come together so that a collective judgment emerges through this union. You can read more about this in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question* and in the book *In Implementation of the Threefold Social Order*, which compiles a number of articles I have published in the Stuttgart journal *Die Dreigliederung*, edited by the Association for the Threefold Social Order.

[ 43 ] In it, I have shown how these associations can be formed out of real, practical economic life; how these associations will lead to fair pricing, to affordable pricing. Whereas today we have only random price formation, this will be a form of price formation that truly arises from the associative cooperation between consumers and producers. For in economic life, the question of price is the central issue of the entire economic existence. Anyone who fails to recognize that prices must be regulated first and foremost through associations—not through statistics or the like, but through the dynamic interaction within associations—does not understand what really matters. There is no need to fear bureaucracy; it will certainly not be any greater than it is today. But because the very people who are actively involved in practical business life will also be the leaders, this will simplify the entire process. And we will achieve a situation where everyone who produces something will receive enough to cover what they consume for themselves and their families, as well as the other necessities they must provide for, until they have once again produced an equivalent product. Roughly speaking: if I make a pair of boots, I must receive enough in return to produce another pair of boots. But this is not to be determined in some utopian way; rather, it will emerge as the ultimate result once the associations are organized in the manner I have described in the book *The Key Points of the Social Question*. This is the essence of this impulse toward the threefold social order: that it contains nothing utopian, but is born entirely out of practical life and the demands of the times. Practical and technical knowledge must guide spiritual life, and practical and technical competence must guide economic life within associations that unite to form a large global economic association independent of national borders.

[ 44 ] With regard to intellectual life and economic life, majority decisions are an absurdity; there, everything must develop on the basis of expertise and professional competence. Majority decisions—true democracy—are possible only for those matters in which every person is competent. There is a vast field of political and legal matters that remain between a free intellectual life and an economic life based on the principle of association. These are all those matters in which every person who has come of age faces others as an equal in parliamentary life, where all the issues are decided that naturally remain outside the economic and intellectual spheres.

[ 45 ] Strangely enough, the experts have objected that while they understand that the threefold social organism must include a free spiritual life and an associative economic life, there would then be nothing left for political life. — That is very telling. Modern political life has absorbed economic and spiritual life so strongly—even in its ideas—that it has failed to develop precisely the most important things, with the result that experts have absolutely no idea what roles political life can play.

[ 46 ] What I have presented to you today is only a rough outline. It is discussed in greater detail in the books mentioned. However, it is fundamentally rooted in the most pressing historical necessities.

[ 47 ] We see the great ideals of humanity—liberty, equality, and fraternity—shining down from the 18th century into our own age. How could we fail to feel the significance of these three great human impulses! And yet—there have been wise people throughout the 19th century who have irrefutably demonstrated that freedom, equality, and fraternity cannot coexist within a unitary state. So, on the one hand, we have the curious phenomenon that our hearts beat faster when we hear of these three great ideals of humanity, when we feel them deep within; yet on the other hand, the wise statesman—and I say this without any irony—can demonstrate that these three ideals are incompatible within a unitary state. What is going on here? What is at work here is that people in the 18th century perceived freedom, equality, and brotherhood as irrefutable human ideals and impulses. However, they were still under the impression that the unitary state must provide for everything. Today we must mature toward the threefold social organism. Only within it will true freedom, equality, and brotherhood be able to be realized. In a free spiritual life—which I hope could truly be brought to light through a World School Association—true human freedom will prevail. In public life, which stands between the free spiritual life and economic life, everything will be built on equality; its administration will involve only those matters in which every person who has attained maturity is truly competent and can stand as an equal before other people who have likewise attained maturity. In economic life, consumer and producer interests will unite within associations, find a balance, and ultimately culminate in a system of pricing that is worthy of human dignity.

[ 48 ] We will have an opportunity to incorporate the three great ideals of human development into our society if we free ourselves from the notion of a unitary state by striving for: freedom in spiritual life; equality in public life—or political and legal life—the second member of the social organism; and brotherhood in economic life, organized on an associative basis, arising from the objectivity of production and consumption.

[ 49 ] Freedom in intellectual life, equality in political life, fraternity in economic life: this is what gives the three greatest social ideals of humanity—freedom, equality, and fraternity—their true meaning.