The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] My dear friends, we have now been at the Waldorf School for almost two years, and—especially in light of the fact that we will be adding a very important class to the Waldorf School at the start of the next school year—we would like to discuss some pedagogical and didactic matters once again. However, I actually plan to begin that discussion tomorrow and would like to use today’s session to discuss with you some matters that, in a sense, represent a kind of outcome of our two years of work—an outcome insofar as this work has given rise to all sorts of perspectives that may prove fruitful for our future work.

[ 2 ] Perhaps you will not misunderstand what I am saying today if I note from the outset that, in my observation, our Waldorf School has made significant progress in the two years since it began; that the method and the systematic approach to teaching and education are now so well established that one can say: Our dear teachers have progressively found their way into their tasks and have grown together with their goals in an exceptionally positive way. — But we must still look at specific details that can provide the foundation for further positive development. I believe that when you survey the lessons and let the educational results we have achieved sink into your hearts, you will all initially have the feeling: work has been done with the children, and this work has led us ourselves to become increasingly adept at applying our teaching methods. But there is one thing we may still sorely miss, and that is: it may be easier for us to present the lesson material to the children, to guide the children at that moment toward a certain understanding of what we wish to convey to them, yet we have not yet fully achieved what leads to a lasting mastery of what we have taught the child—namely, a mastery so deep that these things have become an integral part of the children’s very being, so that they truly carry them into life with them, just as we have often urged them to do on certain solemn occasions.

[ 3 ] We must certainly teach in such a way that our teaching is a living process; that is to say, we must not merely ensure that the child acquires certain mental images, certain feelings, and certain skills, but that, depending on the child’s innate disposition and the development of that disposition, the child brings something living into this life. Just as with a living being, as long as it is growing, its limbs become larger, more complex, and develop—so too must we not impart ready-made mental images, ready-made feelings, or ready-made skills to the child, but rather those that carry within them the potential for growth. When we teach a child something, we must ensure that what is taught does not remain as it is, but rather that it grows along with the child, that it becomes something different in the course of development, and that the person, so to speak, still possesses at age 30 or 40 what they learned at age 8; that it has grown with them just as their complex limbs grow with them—or, at the right time, diminish as they grow, and so on. We must therefore continually instill in the child something that is capable of life—or, one might say, capable of dying. For this, it is necessary that the child retain as their own what we teach them. The question arises within us as a burning one, arising directly from our teaching practice: How can we better ensure that we transform it into the child’s lasting possession? And the answer to this question actually arises from premises quite different from what one usually thinks.

[ 4 ] My dear friends, what we need above all is to strive more and more to truly penetrate human nature—that is, as teachers, to penetrate the nature of the child—into the whole being, in terms of the spiritual, the soul, and the physical, so that we may gain ever greater awareness of what actually exists within the human being. Then we will also gain a true understanding of what actually happens to a child when we teach them this or that, and learn to work in the right way based on this understanding. And so today, let us devote this lesson primarily to gaining, so to speak, a general overview of teaching and education.

[ 5 ] First, I would like to point out one thing: There are so many false mental images of human nature. A great many teachers, in particular, hold the mental image that we impart something to children—whether through observation, storytelling, or by having them participate in the process themselves—and that in doing so, we teach the child certain skills, concepts, and feelings, which the child then retains as such. - But that is not the case. Let us assume, for example, that we teach a child certain mental images—from history, literary history, arithmetic, geography, or whatever it may be—and that we expect the child to retain these mental images, that is, to make them part of their inner spiritual life. This is a mental image: the concepts taught to the child go off somewhere into the lower regions of the soul’s life—into the unconscious or subconscious—where they reside in some way, and are then retrieved when necessary; this is said to be memory. But that is not the case; a mental image, for example, that we teach the child—one that the child works out together with us—exists in the form in which it lives while we are working with the child. Then, when the child is no longer engaged with the mental image—perhaps immediately afterward—it no longer exists within the child as the very same mental image it was immediately before. There is no question of a concept floating around in the same form in the subconscious and then being retrieved from it as a memory. That is by no means the case. The mental image we have developed with the child does not exist anywhere at all when the child is not thinking about it. This mental image does not, therefore, linger; it does not exist as such. What happens when the child recalls such a mental image from memory is something entirely different from what is commonly assumed—namely, that the mental image is retrieved from the subconscious.

[ 6 ] We can not only compare remembering with perception, but also, in a certain sense, regard them as one and the same. When we perceive—that is, when we direct the child’s mental activity toward some external object and work out a mental image with the child—this is entirely a self-directed activity on the part of the child. The child develops this mental image on its own; we call this perception. When the child recalls something, it is the same process, only directed inward; something is taking place within. And what takes place within is developed from within just as perception is developed from without. What continues to live on within a person when a mental image is no longer present in the conceptual sense involves, however, very, very complex inner processes, and in each individual case it will be extraordinarily difficult to truly describe this process that takes place within a person when a mental image ceases to be present and then prepares to connect with the person, only to resurface later in memory—that is, to prepare for the process that consists of once again perceiving something that is happening internally. When one remembers, one perceives something from within just as one perceives something from without. Nor is it actually necessary to know and describe what is taking place within a person; rather, what is necessary is something else: When we look at the enduring aspect of the life of imagination, which then reemerges as memory, the sum of the processes leading to what is remembered is actually present in the same region of the human soul in which the life of feeling is present. The emotional life—with its joy, pain, pleasure, and displeasure, tension and relaxation, and so on—this emotional life is what actually serves as the vehicle for the enduring aspects of the mental image, and from which memory is in turn drawn. Our mental image is indeed transformed into emotional stirrings, and it is these emotional stirrings that we then perceive and that lead to memory.

[ 7 ] This is important to know because we must take it into account in a very special way in pedagogy and didactics. If, as is so often believed today in a completely misguided approach to education, we only ever teach a child through visual examples and ensure that the child looks closely at everything—and does nothing but look—then the child has very few aids to memory. In contrast, there are many memory aids available to the child if we try to accompany the lesson with emotional elements, with a certain inner temperament and in a spirited manner; in other words, if we approach the lesson in such a way that we continually intersperse it with the possibility that the child might be moved to a gentle, inner, not entirely outwardly expressed humorous smile at one thing or another, or even to a certain poignancy or sadness; in short, if we strive never to remain solely at the level of the purely intellectual, but to move on to the emotional aspects of teaching. This is of extraordinary importance, although in a certain sense it is uncomfortable and inconvenient for the teacher, for he must naturally place greater demands on his presence of mind here if he wishes to inspire the children to engage emotionally with the material being presented, rather than simply teaching them by narrating or pointing to visual examples. Emotional responses need not, by any means, be tied in a pedantic sense to the very subject being covered. One can expand the train of thought or the emotional flow—perhaps even extending it to tangential matters—but strive to ensure that the child experiences emotional responses throughout the lesson.

[ 8 ] Such emotional responses are essential aids to memory. And we really must not overlook that. For example, even in physics class, geometry class, or the driest of lessons, we should try to stimulate the child’s emotional life. We should redirect whatever is currently on our minds to something immediately relevant—that is to say, by connecting with one child or another, by attributing something to one child or another: “If you do this and this happens to you”—something that is always connected, more or less closely, to the train of thought—and in this way infuse the lesson with sensory and emotional elements, specifically those that create tension in the child, that generate expectations, and that lead to the relaxation that should occur when we guide the child toward something.

[ 9 ] Do not underestimate the impact of the unknown or the semi-known in the classroom. This impact of the unknown or the semi-known on a child’s emotions is of immense significance. If you now teach a child for an hour and teach him all sorts of things, and at the end you say, “Tomorrow this or that will come”—the child doesn’t need to understand any of it, but only to have an anticipation of something unknown, an anticipation that is instilled in such a way that it lingers, so that the child is curious about what will come tomorrow. Let’s say, for example, that you have taught the child about the quadrilateral, and you have introduced the quadrilateral before the triangle; now the child knows nothing yet about the triangle, but I say: “Tomorrow we’ll move on to the triangle”—the child knows nothing about the triangle; it is unknown to them. But precisely because an unknown element is at play—precisely because this unknown, as an unknown, creates a certain sense of anticipation and makes the child look forward to the next lesson with eager expectation—this has an immensely supportive effect on the entire lesson. We should definitely make use of the unknown and the semi-known to make it easier for the child to synthesize this or that into a unified whole. We really should not overlook such things. - As we become increasingly accustomed to immersing ourselves in such matters, we first of all connect education with instruction in a very fundamental way, and we then cultivate within ourselves the need to understand human nature—and the nature of the child—more and more deeply and precisely. And as we reflect, drawing on our anthroposophical insight, on this human nature and this human wisdom, many things then become clear that translate into teaching skill. — It would be extraordinarily important if this were further developed—which is even less common among us—this process of each individual child making the material taught their own as a genuine personal possession.

[ 10 ] If we were to break it down a bit—teaching essentially consists of two parts that, however, always interact with one another: the first part, where we teach the child something that engages them with their dexterity and their entire physical being—in other words, where we lead the child into a kind of self-activity. We need only think of eurythmy, music, and gymnastics—and even when we think of writing or the outward act of calculating—we engage the child in a certain kind of activity. The other part of teaching is the contemplative part, where we let the child observe, where we draw the child’s attention to something.

[ 11 ] These two aspects, although they are always intertwined in the classroom, are fundamentally different from one another, and people usually have no idea how much a teacher—especially one who focuses on contemplative instruction, such as in history class—owes to another teacher who is more focused on developing skills and proficiency. You see, if children were taught only in matters of contemplation, their lives would wither terribly as they grow older. Children who are trained or taught solely in contemplation become dazed individuals later in life. They become filled with a certain weariness toward the world. They even become superficial in their contemplation as they grow older. They are no longer inclined, in later life, to engage in much contemplation or to give the necessary attention to the external world if they have been taught only history, cultural history, or anything of a contemplative nature. Indeed, when we have something of a contemplative nature to teach a child, we owe a great deal to the handicrafts teacher, the music teacher, or the eurythmy teacher. The history teacher actually draws on the music teacher and the singing teacher, and conversely, the singing teacher and the music teacher draw on what has been taught to the child in terms of history or contemplative subjects.

[ 12 ] Now, if we are to draw the child’s attention to something concrete by name, if we engage the child in such a way that the child sits there and must focus attention on something we are telling the child, or on something that challenges the child’s judgment—even the child’s moral judgment— no matter how hard we try to encourage independent thinking—if the child simply sits there listening or thinking about something—this is, if I may use this paradoxical expression, a state of waking sleep for the child. The child’s mental and soul life is, in a certain sense, outside the body, and only because it is not entirely outside—as it is during sleep—is it sustained by the body’s active participation. To a lesser degree, contemplative instruction actually elicits the same phenomenon in the organism as sleep does, namely, a certain rise in organic activity from the lower to the upper regions. Children to whom we tell stories develop, organically, the same activity that a person develops during sleep, when metabolic products also rise into the brain. When we have the children sit and engage them in such a way that they must contemplate, it is as if we were inducing a gentle, sleep-like activity of the organism within them.

[ 13 ] People generally have the mental image that sleep is only restorative for the body; any morning one wakes up with a headache could, of course, teach us the reality of the matter. We must be absolutely clear that whatever is diseased in our organism is held back by the waking activity of the higher organs, preventing it from rising to the surface. When we sleep and there is something diseased in our organism, that is when it truly rises to the surface. And this rising to the surface of everything that is not quite right in a child’s organism is constantly taking place while we observe the child. In contrast, when we teach the child eurythmy, when we let the child sing, when we let the child engage in musical activities, when we let the child do gymnastics, indeed even when we let the child write—insofar as the child develops self-activity in the process—or when we let the child do handicrafts, there is an activity present that we must compare in the same way to the waking activity; there is an intensified waking activity.

[ 14 ] Through singing and eurythmy—even if this is not at all the intention—a hygienic, indeed even therapeutic, activity is carried out. This cannot be denied. And perhaps this health-promoting and therapeutic activity is at its healthiest when we do not approach it with an amateurish medical intent, but rather when we simply leave it to our healthy imagination and our healthy outlook on life. But as teachers, it is good for us to know how we work together—that is, to know that the healthy rise of bodily fluids, which we need when we teach the child subjects that require contemplation—such as history, for example—is something the child owes to yesterday’s singing lesson or yesterday’s eurythmy lesson. It is good to view the entirety of the curriculum in this interconnected way; for this will naturally prompt us, whenever something seems amiss, to collaborate with the other teacher. And only then will it become clear that we are giving each other sound advice, that we are consulting with one another in the right way—say, as a history teacher with the singing teacher, for example—regarding what should be done for one child or another. If we simply adopt this as a routine in our teaching, not much will come of it; if we turn it into a rigid formula, then nothing will come of it. Only when we take a broad view of things and, from that perspective, find the motivation to discuss specific cases here and there will something come of it.

[ 15 ] And one can be certain that the physics teacher, when he notices this or that in his students, may—as he gradually gains such an overview—come to the conclusion that he should speak with the music teacher about how to remedy the situation by taking this or that into account in singing. The music teacher will be better equipped to determine what needs to be taken into account than the physics teacher; but the music teacher will be grateful when the physics teacher draws his attention to this or that. Only in this way can a truly vibrant collaboration among the teaching staff actually begin to take shape. And it is precisely through such actions that we take the whole person into consideration, and one thing then develops from the other.

[ 16 ] Simply by making our entire approach to education and teaching more flexible in this way, we naturally develop the right sense of humor that we need in one situation or another. This sense of humor determines not only whether we find the right unknown or semi-known element at a given moment—and thereby create the tensions and releases that serve as memory aids— Something else also depends on it: If, as teachers, we make our thinking ever more flexible and accustom ourselves to thinking beyond the curriculum to the whole person, then we will be able to identify the individual perspectives through which we can expand this or that aspect in our lessons. And this is of such extraordinary importance that we draw the corresponding lines from any subject matter in every direction—namely, lines pointing in a direction that I will mention shortly.

[ 17 ] Take physics class, for example. It is certainly not advisable to structure physics class in such a way that we carry the apparatus into the physics lab and methodically develop one concept or another using it. We can proceed with extraordinary ingenuity, building one concept upon another, and so on. Certainly, it may then appear as though we have achieved an extraordinary amount in the moment. But the point can never be simply to achieve a great deal in the moment. The point can only be to truly equip young people with something for life. To do this, however, we must continually expand our concepts. We must, so to speak, develop some phenomenon in optics, hydraulics, and so on, but at every moment when the opportunity arises, be ready to move from one thing to another. Let’s say, for example, that when the opportunity arises to build on this or that, we immediately move on to weather phenomena, to phenomena of the entire world, perhaps to something quite distant, so that the student realizes: there are connections everywhere in the world, and the emotional experience he is going through—the very experience he undergoes when he is led from one thing to another—brings him into states of tension and relaxation, and through this he particularly internalizes these things.

[ 18 ] But of particular importance is the connection we should establish wherever possible: the connection to human beings as such. We should seize every opportunity to establish this connection to human beings as such. What I mean is, whether we’re discussing an animal, a plant, or a thermal phenomenon, there is always the possibility—without disrupting the lesson or, so to speak, distracting the child—to relate the subject to something that concerns human beings. Why shouldn’t we be able to move from a thermal phenomenon to a fever? Why shouldn’t we be able to move from the study of, say, elastic balls—which we cover in physics—to human vomiting, which is, after all, a reaction similar to the rebound of elastic balls? Conversely, when we teach the child about the reflex phenomena of the human organism, why shouldn’t we be able to move from there to the simple phenomenon of the rebound of elastic balls, and so on?

[ 19 ] Establishing these connections between all areas of life—we can begin this, in a certain way, though naturally at a basic level, even with the youngest children—and in this way gradually accustom the child to seeing in the human being a convergence of everything that exists within the human being, just as in a small world—a convergence of all worldly phenomena within the human being. It is indeed true that when we speak with a child about things outside of the human being—about natural phenomena—there is always a tendency for the child to forget what we teach them in this way. On the other hand, when we relate whatever we are discussing to the human being—when we can discuss the corresponding phenomenon within the human being—there is always a different tendency: namely, one cannot create a mental image of anything that relates to the human being, especially as a child, without associating a feeling with it. You cannot explain the ear without the child having emotional associations with it, nor can you explain the heart without the child having certain emotional associations with it. And by relating things from the world to human beings, you always bring them into the realm of emotion. And that is so important.

[ 20 ] Therefore, for those fields of study that deal so closely with the objective—and for which people today prefer to remain objective—it is particularly important that we turn our attention to the human being, that we always seek a connection from physics to the human being. It is easiest to direct our attention toward the human being when dealing with the most purely objective subjects, because the entire world can truly be found within the human being. And here, too, we have a means of helping the child with retention. If a child has learned something in physics, they will surely forget it, even if they recall it automatically; but it does not become a living part of their own knowledge, especially not in visual instruction. But when we translate these things into something that happens to the person themselves, then it becomes their own. It becomes their own when it is explained to them through the person themselves, and in particular, it is so very necessary that we try to avoid the abstract on the one hand, and to avoid what Schlegel once called the “crude, material, concrete.”

[ 21 ] In particular, it is important to avoid such things in the classroom and in education. I’d like to point out an example that caught our attention recently—it was in 8th grade—while we were explaining the comic and the tragic. The topic at hand was discussing the comic, the humorous, and the tragic. Well, one can find very beautiful definitions of what is comic, what is humorous, what is tragic, what is beautiful, and so on. And our conventional aesthetics certainly contain such beautiful ideas, but they all operate more or less on the level of abstraction, and one doesn’t really get a vivid mental image of these things when discussing them in such an abstract form. In reality, however, when we feel something tragic or sad, it has a very strong effect on our metabolism—it actually slows it down. Any feeling of sadness slows down our metabolism. In fact, with regard to the physical aspect of the human being, there is a similarity between what remains in our stomach—what we cannot quite digest, what the stomach cannot quite pass through the intestines—and that which makes us sad. When we have a deeply sad experience, we have a hardening effect—in the most literal sense—on our metabolism. Even if these are subtle processes, this is how it is. In fact, when you become truly sad inside, you are actually working against your digestion. It is the same as when food sits in your stomach like a stone. This is merely a grossly material process, but one that is qualitatively comparable to the spiritual process. For when digestion proceeds properly, the chyme passes through the stomach into the intestines, is absorbed by the intestinal villi, and enters the bloodstream; and for the higher self, it penetrates the mediastinum everywhere, breaks through the diaphragm, and rises above the diaphragm. We can say: A healthy life process truly depends on our bringing the digested matter up above the diaphragm and distributing it throughout the upper human being. — From a physical standpoint, this is a process that is qualitatively very similar to what happens when we laugh, when we artificially cause the diaphragm to vibrate in the same way it does when we laugh. Laughter is in fact a process that makes us organically healthy; it acts like proper, healthy, undisturbed digestion.

[ 22 ] Now we come to the point of relating humor and cheerfulness to the digestive process; we learn to think like the Greeks, we learn to understand why the Greeks spoke of hypochondria and abdominal rigidity. This is, in fact, something that gives our perception its absolute correctness. And it is this striving toward the higher human being—this setting the diaphragm in motion, as stimulated by healthy digestion and thereby discharged into the outside world—that is, in fact, what links the humorous mood to the physical nature of the human being. By not explaining it abstractly—that humor is what causes a person to rise above a situation—we achieve a convergence of the abstract with the concrete. We create a unity. We guide the child to create mental images of both the spiritual-soul aspect and the physical-bodily aspect at the same time, to envision them together. We, in turn, push back against this absolutely harmful modern mental image that one should constantly teach people about the spiritual and soul aspects without any reference to the physical and bodily, and then again—which is, of course, merely the opposite of this—that when one speaks of the physical and bodily, one is speaking of the coarse and material. Neither one nor the other actually exists; rather, the correct approach is this convergence of both. And we must be able—in order to develop comprehensive mental images—to link humor and tragedy not merely through abstract concepts, but through the diaphragm. And in this way, we are not, as one might easily believe, fostering materialism. Oh no! Precisely by showing how the spiritual-soul aspect expresses itself in the physical, precisely through this, we lead people to form a mental image of the entire material world as something that actually derives its life from the spiritual-soul aspect. If one can imagine how a person, when laughing, is conscious of the spiritual-soul aspect, yet how this has something to do with the diaphragm, then we naturally arrive at a mental image of how the spiritual-soul aspect works when it rains, flashes with lightning, or thunders. We arrive at this in a healthy way. We are led to this when we bring everything to the human being.

[ 23 ] When we approach human beings in this way, it is important that we do not place too much emphasis on having them reflect on themselves. And this self-reflection, if applied exclusively, would indeed lead to contemplative egoism. But if, in our approach to contemplation, we connect everything to the human being—simply by pointing out that they are at once body, soul, and spirit—we create within them, spiritually and emotionally, a disposition that serves as the best foundation for them to become active once again from the depths of their being, whether through dexterity or through what arises from the physical. If we teach in such a way that we relate the subject matter to the human being in this manner, then through history, geography, and physics we educate our children to become true singers, true musical human beings. For by influencing the human being in this way—by allowing them, as it were, to think what they themselves physically desire—we create within them something that we should, in fact, be creating continuously.

[ 24 ] But in doing so, we must familiarize ourselves with certain concepts. After all, we cannot view a person as if they were always sated. We cannot give a person food and say, “Now you are sated.” —He must become hungry again, eat again. This must come alive; it must follow a rhythm. A person must become musical again; he must live in rhythm. And he must live in such a rhythm that, so to speak, his being turned back upon himself is brought to the highest tension, and that tension must in turn be released. Teach people about their stomach, their lungs, their liver, and this will create within them a disposition that is worked out through singing, just as hunger is worked out through eating; and the rhythm emerges. We must not believe that we come to life through anything other than rhythm, and so, by properly addressing the observable aspects within a person, we cultivate abilities that then manifest themselves accordingly through other subjects.

[ 25 ] If, for example, one were not merely to tell the child what Caesar did, but were at the same time to instill in the child an imaginative conception of Caesar—to paint, as it were, a historical scene—so that the child is compelled to I would say, to have a sort of shadow image, a sort of hazy image of Caesar in their imagination—to see him walking, to follow him as he walks; if the child's mental image were to be of this nature that, so to speak, it not only copies him but also remakes him in its imagination, and if, after doing something like this with the child, you then send it to needlework class, then you can be sure that it will knit better than it would have without Caesar.

[ 26 ] These are mysterious connections, just like those between hunger and satiety. And if one does not take these mysterious connections into account, then all sorts of other things happen. For example, it turns out that if you’ve been talking to a child for a whole hour without stimulating their imagination, stomach acid builds up, and the child then has too much pepsin in their stomach. It is impossible to prevent the accumulation of pepsin through vivid, contemplative instruction; but this pepsin does not merely serve to acidify the food that enters the stomach—all these things also have a spiritual purpose. Everything material is at the same time spiritual. When the child comes to the singing teacher, the pepsin has the task of evoking the inner tingling sensation that the child is meant to experience while singing. This tingling sensation cannot be evoked if the pepsin remains in the folds of the stomach. And it remains in the folds of the stomach if one merely tells a story without appealing to the imagination. But if one appeals to the imagination, this “pepsin” is carried throughout the entire body, and the result is that the singing teacher has a child who can experience a tingling sensation in all their organs; whereas, if one has merely told a story, the teacher has a child who has the “pepsin” trapped in the folds of the stomach and lacks it entirely in the other organs; now he has a child who, above all, lacks anything stimulating in the vocal organs. The result is a reluctance toward singing or, more generally, the failure to produce anything worthwhile.

[ 27 ] I say these things not so much to cite them for their content, but rather as examples, so that you can see how immensely important it is to rethink the entire educational system—to gradually come to recognize everything that exists within a school as a single unit. You don’t learn this by sticking your nose into everything that’s none of your business. — Of course, the individual must be free to act. But one learns this by engaging with the nature of the developing human being—the child—and by bringing to the children precisely what inspires one and what is important for the child. And one discovers an immense amount when proceeding in this way.

[ 28 ] To do this, however, it is necessary to develop a keen interest in the nature of the human being. And a properly understood anthroposophy truly provides sufficient inspiration for this. I recommend this to you in particular—from a purely pedagogical and didactic standpoint, and especially as a teacher—that you try not to get stuck in the abstract when forming your own concepts, but rather strive to truly understand the human being in terms of his or her constitution. You must, in fact, be pioneers in a certain direction. You must tell yourselves: Today, on the one hand, we have the abstract sciences—history, geography, even physics, and so on. All of this is approached in an immensely abstract way. We acquire concepts. On the other hand, we have the study of the human being—anatomy, physiology. There we actually come to know the human being as if his organs were cut out of leather and then pieced together—truly as if cut out of leather—for there is not much difference between the anatomical description of a human being and a structure cut out of leather. We do not describe human beings in terms of their spirituality, but simply in terms of their physicality. But you could be the pioneers, and you will bring this to the benefit of pedagogy and didactics: on the one hand, by extracting from abstract considerations that which is currently presented to people in a completely lifeless, abstract way, and on the other hand, in contrast to that which is presented in this crudely materialistic manner. You could teach both, but only to bring them together in a living way, to weave them into one another. You could teach history to bring anatomy to life, and you could teach anatomy to bring history to life. For example, when studying the function of the liver, you could learn how to approach the history of later Egypt, for the nuance—the particular nuance of presentation, I might say, the flavor—that one must imbue the later period of Egyptian history with is something one acquires by observing the function of the liver within the organism. You get the same overall impression. That is how you could interweave these things. And in doing so, you will not only pass on something of civilizational interest to humanity, but you will also satisfy a pedagogical need by bringing together the so-called physical—which does not exist in and of itself—and the abstract spiritual—which likewise does not exist. Through this, you will see that you enter the classroom in such a way that your words truly carry weight and, at the same time, take flight. In other words, you will have both—not merely presenting the child, on the one hand, with words that merely float away, and, on the other hand, teaching skills in which only heaviness resides.