The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we began with a reflection that I described as a kind of examination of conscience appropriate to the times—one that is actually necessary for teachers and educators when they find themselves confronted with precisely that stage of childhood that corresponds to the ages of 14 and 15, which outwardly signifies sexual maturity and which should actually be taken into account—not only when dealing with this stage of human development in education and instruction, but throughout the entire period of schooling and upbringing. It has therefore been deemed necessary for teachers and educators today to engage in a kind of deeper self-examination when dealing with this stage of life, because the very way in which we ourselves were educated and taught in the past means that we are, in fact, left without understanding when confronted with what we encounter in human beings precisely at this stage of life.

[ 2 ] We will be able to form a picture of what is actually at work here if we proceed as follows: First, consider a person in their twenties—that is, from age 21 to 28. In Spiritual Science, we refer to this period as the birth of the “I,” the time when the “I” truly comes into its own in life. We have emphasized that for a girl around the ages of 14 or 15, this “I” dissolves, so to speak, into the astral body and is thus still not independent, whereas the astral body already acquires a certain degree of independence by the ages of 14 or 15. In the case of the boy, we have said that the “I” does not dissolve into the astral body but leads a kind of withdrawn life, and we have explained how what we encounter, on the one hand, in the girl and, on the other hand, in the boy from ages 14 to 21, appears entirely as a result of this inner reality of the human being. But when, at around the age of 21, the “I” comes fully into its own, then it is the case that the human being seeks and finds another human being—and at this age, in the fullest sense of the word: the human being seeks the human being. This is peculiar because, if, say, a twenty-four-year-old—or even someone slightly younger, but not younger than 21—meets another person who is no older than twenty-eight, the two stand opposite one another in such a way that they interact with one another on a completely equal footing: mind, soul, and body. At this stage of life, people actually face one another as complete equals in their mutual interaction. Observing this in life is of great importance, especially for those who wish to work in education. All the psychological nonsense that is often peddled today consists solely of all sorts of platitudes. If one truly wants to understand life today, one must study something like this particular nuance that exists in people when they encounter one another while both are between the ages of 21 and 28.

[ 3 ] Let’s consider the other scenario: we have a young person between the ages of 14 and 21 and an older person between the ages of 28 and 35. These two people, regardless of their gender, are in a relationship where a relationship based on complete equality cannot develop; and yet, once again—or at least it can be—if certain conditions are met, which we will discuss shortly, a very meaningful understanding can be achieved. When the fourteen-, fifteen-, or sixteen-year-old encounters the twenty-eight-, twenty-nine-, or thirty-year-old, the situation is as follows: That which develops more physically, through the astral body, in the fourteen- to twenty-one-year-old—manifesting more in outward behavior, in the way these young, still childlike people find their way in life, through becoming more skilled or through having ideals—this entire process of relating to the outside world that develops there—is, to a greater extent, I would say, imbued with the same unconsciousness that characterizes the physical body when it develops outwardly, and this manifests in a more inner, soul-based form in people between the ages of 28 and 35. That is why a person between the ages of 28 and 35 is best suited to feel, sense, and perceive on a psychological level what is taking place in a person aged 14 to 21. And in turn, the latter are particularly suited to look up to those who are 28 to 35 years old, because they see, as it were, in action and inner activity what, in their own case, takes physical form outwardly while remaining largely unconscious.

[ 4 ] This relationship was still very much alive among the Greeks—the relationship between people aged 28 to 35 and the next generation, the children aged 14 to 21. This relationship was simply experienced instinctively. Greek children looked up to their elders in such a way that—though not entirely consciously, but rather instinctively—they would say: “They possess in their soul what we have in our physical body; what we have on the outside is reflected back to us in a refined form.” And when a Greek man reached the age of 28 or 29, he took immense pleasure in what was developing and revealing itself in the fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds. This instinctive aspect of human life—where relationships are not merely abstract, from person to person, as they are for us, but where the different stages of life enter into a relationship with one another; this instinctive life, in which one is something to the other simply by being younger or older—this instinctive relationship was still extraordinarily strong among the Greeks and truly had an effect between people.

[ 5 ] And now consider what it was actually like in ancient Greece. There, children grew up revering the thirty-year-old, yet they felt strongly: “Now that you’ve passed your twenties, you must seek out your peers.” This fostered diversity and inner depth. It also gave social life a certain structure. And that is precisely what must be emphasized, because today—when this instinctual life is no longer present in human beings—we, especially as teachers and educators, are essentially at a loss, particularly when it comes to the age that begins at 14 or 15. It remains a mystery to us because, as I emphasized yesterday, we have never absorbed mental images and concepts that can influence our sensory and emotional life in such a way that these instincts—which we have lost through natural evolution—can be revived in a more conscious manner. And unless we also engage with anthroposophical Spiritual Science in the fields of pedagogy and didactics—and thereby reawaken within ourselves such refinements of sensation and feeling—we will gradually create ever wider rifts between older people, including teachers and educators, and these older children in particular. We will create these rifts to such an extent that, in the end, we will be able to retreat to nothing more than issuing commands through our words: this or that must be done. We will count on the fact that, when we ourselves can no longer issue commands in school, the police sergeant will be there—the one people know is present when they do not obey, when they do not behave as they have been ordered. But the inner essence of the teacher-student relationship—we cannot achieve that unless, however theoretical this may sound, we inspire our whole being with thoughts that, in turn—and now consciously—awaken within us what the instinctual life once gave to human beings.

[ 6 ] That is why I told you yesterday: What we learn today—that the individual substances and entities of natural existence are composed of some 70 elements—applies to us only once we have died and lie as corpses in the grave; it applies to our corpses. What is demonstrated there by chemistry and physics has absolutely nothing to do with what is human. It relates to human beings only insofar as their physical bodies decay and decompose according to the same laws that govern these 72 or 74 elements. In contrast, as early as the 4th post-Atlantean epoch—and particularly among the Greeks—a view had developed that is looked down upon as childish, as I explained yesterday; yet when properly understood, this view—namely, that we are dealing with the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth—offers humanity something entirely different. And I have told you that the Greeks did not conceive of these four elements in terms of crude sensory impressions or coarse sensory matter; rather, they conceived of fire as that which contains both the qualities of warmth and dryness, and they conceived of water as cold and moist. But they were able to apply these living concepts, which they associated with these elements, in various ways. First, they could apply them by vividly reflecting on what warmth was to them, what air was to them, what fire, water, and earth were to them—in which they saw images, very specific images. They could apply them to the way in which, within the human being, the mixing and separation, the synthesis and analysis of substances take place from the side of the etheric body; how the etheric body acts upon the physical body, how it acts upon the physical body from birth to death—they could think this through; whereas we can really only think about what the physical corpse does in the grave according to our laws of physics and chemistry. The Greeks and their successors up through the 15th century were able to conceive of how the etheric body acts upon the physical body by qualitatively developing warmth and dryness in the manner of fire, by developing cold and moisture in the manner of water, cold and dryness in the manner of earth, and so on.

[ 7 ] But this is a much more vivid, inner process when one now views the human being through these four elements; for this enables one to create a mental image of the activity of the etheric body in relation to the physical substances. And one becomes much more alive inwardly when one creates a mental image of this as something living, especially when one adds the other aspect that the Greeks also conceived of as living.

[ 8 ] They had the following mental image (a drawing is provided): You see, today we have the Earth’s surface, with green plants growing on it. Yes, how does one create a mental image of what is happening in the plant world? Well, of course, one can only go as far as one considers explainable based on the chemical analyses and syntheses derived from the approximately 70 elements. As for the rest, one either denies it outright or tries to create a mental image of it by analogy with mineral interactions. What takes place in the interplay of chlorophyll—the green of the plant—with various external entities as the plant shoots upward, one would like to create a mental image of that in the same way as what happens in the retort. People don’t say it, but this way of looking at things permeates everything. It is regarded as a kind of mineral process. The Greeks, even if they did not express it explicitly, said to themselves: From the earth, from below to above, that which is earth—that which is cold and dry—acts upward; and as soon as the plants break through the earth’s surface, then the plant, with its greenness and the colors of its flowers, acts in free, springing activity; there, water and air act—but in the way the Greeks had a mental image of it— and there, encompassing everything, fire is at work. Out there, the warm and dry, the cold and moist, and the warm and moist are all at work in a jumble; and that which is at work in this jumble—moist and dry, warm and cold—this qualitative force that weaves and swirls together—is at work above the earth’s surface in the plant world. —One must observe this. If one observes this and then looks away toward the human being, at how his etheric body works within him, one finds something similar. But by observing the entire life of the plant, one feels, inspired by such observation, as if one were living this plant life—this objective life—within oneself. A Greek of that sort had the feeling: out there, everything blooms, flourishes, grows, and changes. That also has an effect within me. After all, the mental image he had of the workings of his own etheric body was not something distant. He told himself: That which is within me as the etheric body is not unknown to me. Certainly, I do not see it within myself, but when I direct my gaze toward everything that is green, everything that surrounds me, what is within myself is revealed to me.

[ 9 ] And if such a Greek—not in his current incarnation, but as an ancient Greek—were to rise again, and a modern chemist were to come to him and say: “What you’re saying is all nonsense. We’ve long since moved beyond the four elements—fire, water, air, and earth—that’s all a childish mental image, there’s hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and so on”—and listed these 76 elements for him—the Greek would say: “I have no objection to that; you’re welcome to do so. That’s just a specialized view of what I have down there in the cold, dry realm as an earthly effect. But you haven’t gotten any further than the specialization of the cold and the dry. You understand absolutely nothing about water, fire, and air. You have no idea what’s swirling out there in the plant world. You have no idea about the ethereal substance that you yourself carry within you. You can’t even talk about the plant world. For with what you list there in your 76 elements, you still have no concept of what is at work in the plant.

[ 10 ] You need only feel how our words come alive when we feel within ourselves the same thing that is present in all the greenery of the world—if that is not something we fail to grasp. And you can be absolutely certain that once it becomes so alive again that it is incorporated into education, it will not merely permeate our words as an inner, spiritual nuance, acting in abstract ways on the soul—it will bring color back to people’s faces. It will transform people entirely; it will have a profoundly harmonious effect. Teachers’ voices will sound much healthier. They will have a completely different effect, without you having to take anything else into account. For all these artificial pedagogical approaches—where people say, “We must do this and that; it must be this way or that way”—are, at the root of it, greenhouse plants. True pedagogy must be something that has grown naturally. It must be absorbed through our formation of ideas and our feelings, just as things are naturally absorbed by us—things that act upon our blood, upon our nerves, and that grow with us through our very constitution.

[ 11 ] Basically, it’s already the beginning of nonsense when you expect someone to tell you: “This has to be done this way or that way.” That is already the beginning of telling the stove: “You’re actually placed in the corner of the room, and it’s your duty as a stove to provide warmth”—that is already the beginning of such an approach to art education. You throw wood into the stove and light it. A pedagogy requires a true understanding of human nature—one that comes alive in the whole person, that enters into our feelings, but also into our will. It is necessary that we develop such an understanding of human nature.

[ 12 ] And now the Greek did not merely observe what lives out there in the vegetation, but he looked up into the vastness of the universe and first perceived the orbiting planets, as he says, from the Moon to Saturn. He then directed his gaze further out into the world of the stars, and there he had the feeling: As I stand here on Earth surrounded by the plant world, the forces of fire, air, and water permeate me. The plant world is permeated by the forces of fire, air, and water. That which I observe in action also creates a rhythm within myself. I actually carry the entire year within me, for just as out there, in the plant world, the dry and the moist harmonize in the processes of growth and decay, and just as the cold and the warm interact, so too does my etheric body interact with me—only that I carry a whole world within me, so that what unfolds outside over a long period of time unfolds within me according to shorter rhythms. It feels itself to be a living being in this world. It feels itself to belong to this earthly being. It says to itself: Where the plants are, there it begins—water, air, fire, earth—interpenetrating one another. There the ethereal realm rises with its activity; but now, from the vastness of the universe, there comes to meet it—radiating from without and flowing inward through fire, air, and water—that which is the influence of the stars, which is, first and foremost, the planetary influence. I would indeed have an etheric body within me if this planetary influence were not present—plants would be there—but, for example, the forebrain could not form within me if the forces of Saturn did not act from the outside; the larynx could not develop within me if Mars did not act from the outside; the heart could not develop if the forces did not radiate in from outside. And so the Greeks reasoned: Only the forces radiate in from the outside; outwardly, the etheric radiates, and from the vastness of the worlds, modified by the planets, the forces that constitute within me that which goes beyond the plant-like realm. And the Greek feels: I would have no forebrain, no larynx, no heart, no stomach, if Saturn, Mars, the Sun, and Mercury were not out there. Thus, in these organs of his, he feels as closely connected to the vastness of the worlds as he feels, in his etheric body, connected to fire, water, earth, and air. In a sense, he saw fire, water, earth, and air as what was closest to him. And he saw the forces swirling so chaotically within fire, water, air, and earth that the heart, lungs, and so on also became possible.

[ 13 ] Yes, this led to the point where the Greek, simply through his physicality, felt himself to be not only a product of the earth, but also a product of the outer cosmos, so that he said: I stand beside the plant, but the forces of the cosmos are at work within me. They also penetrate as far as the plant, but in the plant they act from the outside; they cannot enter it, cannot organize it all the way down to the organs. In me, they penetrate into everything that I have in common with the animal. And in the organization of what penetrates from outer space, I can go as far as the zodiac. There I have closed off the sphere in which I can observe everything that penetrates into my animal nature and into the animal nature of the surrounding animals. I observe the animals; I observe them in their various forms, for example, the lion. Yes, there, in the form of the lion, I see a certain interplay of the planets with the fixed-star beings, all working together in a complex interplay. There I come to understand why the lion is built the way it is, why it looks the way it does. I come to understand why another animal looks the way it does. I get to know the animal nature around me; I get to know the astral body. I feel it within me, just as I once felt the plant and etheric within me. Together with the animal nature of the Earth, I am an inhabitant not merely of the Earth, but of that which pulsates in the cosmos through the presence of the stars.

[ 14 ] Yes, in fact, there is something that, on a sensory level, permeates the human being, leading him to say: “I do indeed see beings around me that are formed according to mineral laws; but I do not belong to that realm, nor does anything that is a plant, and certainly not an animal.” I cannot exist on Earth through forces that come solely from the Earth. This sense of being present throughout the entire cosmos is essentially what characterized the Greek mindset; for them, it was still instinctive. The “I” was then sought as something acting outside the zodiac, outside the sphere from which only the zodiac is excluded—as something thoroughly spiritual for which one finds no sensory correlate at all except the image of this entire sphere: the sun. This brings us to the conception of the sun that people held—one that had actually already become somewhat decadent in Greece, but which was certainly still present in earlier times.

[ 15 ] Our physicists and our astronomers—yes, they have a mental image of a large gas-filled sphere that is 20 million miles away from us out there somewhere in outer space. It’s burning, and from this gigantic cosmic furnace—a gas furnace, at that, with no walls—light and heat radiate in all directions. That is the only mental image available today to anyone who is not an amateur but an expert, of course. But today you simply have to be an expert to hold such a mental image. You’ll come closer to the truth in this area if you imagine the following: Imagine for a moment that you were standing in nothing but light. There would be light everywhere. But there would be no object anywhere to reflect the light back to you. The light would then not be reflected back to you from anywhere: it would be completely dark in this light-filled space. You would see nothing inside, and it would be pitch black. If there were only light, it would be pitch black. Light only comes back if it is reflected somewhere; otherwise, you cannot see it anywhere. In a room filled with light, it is completely dark. In better times, people certainly had a mental image of it that way—they knew that up there wasn’t a giant gas furnace—it isn’t just empty space, but there is less than space, extending even into the negative beyond space. Our physicists would be utterly astonished if they could travel up there: wherever they place the gas ball, there is no gas ball at all; there is no space at all—it is hollowed-out space, a suction force of space. This hollowed-out space is there. Everywhere there is space, space, and so on. But there, there is negative space—less than space. One just has to be able to create a mental image of what “less than space” means. — For now, at least, people can imagine that less than no money is debt.

[ 16 ] But the spatial has a limit, and the negative-spatial captures the light; it cannot pass through the negative emptiness; it is reflected back, and only through this does the sun become visible. The light is everywhere. What the sun is, in fact, is merely a being of reflection, a reflective apparatus for the light that is spread everywhere. And according to the Greek view, this light has its origin even further away than they imagined the zodiac to be; it comes in from the vastness of the universe, not from the space here. But there it is captured and made visible by the sun, and in this way it is connected to that which is higher than the planetary influence—the “I” influence. Thus the sun has something to do with the “I” in that it is less than a space, that it is emptier than an empty space, that out there, where the sun is, all materiality ceases, so to speak, and spirituality breaks through there. That is why the Greeks felt such a kinship with the sun—because they understood the whole thing spiritually.

[ 17 ] As late as the 6th century—specifically, until the middle of the 4th century A.D.—there still lingered in the consciousness of the West a vivid sense of this “entering into the spiritual” when one looked up at the cosmos. And that is why what is described here is not described in terms of the outer planets, but in terms of the hierarchies that, as beings up there, set in motion what manifests outwardly as the planetary world. One must have this living mental image; then one will come to feel, as a human being, quite differently within the world.

[ 18 ] When you look at the animal world from this perspective, you say to yourself: That’s inside me. That’s what makes up my organs. But when I see the animals out there, they are confined to their forms. I have not become such a form. I don’t look like a lion, I don’t look like a bull, an ox, or a pig—but all of that is contained within me in a synthesis. I carry the potential for all of that within me. If I hadn’t achieved a balance of all this through the influence of the sun, I would actually be a person in whom the entire animal kingdom is swirling about, churning everything up. It is only balanced, brought into physical equilibrium, by the influence of the sun. And what is the result of the fact that I actually carry within me the potential for all animals—for the entire animal world—though it is suppressed? It is this that enables me to conceive of forms. It is this that enables me to conceive of imaginations. Animals are outwardly formed according to their imaginations; they are living imaginations; they walk about as imaginations. The imaginative world is, after all, entirely visible to me externally as I survey the animal world. But those same forms are within me. They are within me as mental images precisely because I have not become externalized, because I have not become spatial.

[ 19 ] If one goes back even further, say to the time before Thales, one would still find, in the mystery schools and among those who taught there, a clear understanding—one that still permeates Plato’s esoteric writings—a clear understanding that expresses itself as follows: Logic—what is that? Zoology—that is living logic; for when that which is one takes on a mentally abstract form—to which we are predisposed—that which finds expression in the animal world and harmonizes within us—then the living play of thought arises within us; this is the activity of the animal world in our play of thought, and logic is zoology. - Then, however, came Aristotle’s Socratism, in which there was no awareness of these things. And so abstract logic was developed; a living relationship of elective affinity was transformed into a relationship of judgment—the abstract relationships between concepts, as expressed in Aristotle’s logic—which can drive a person who deals with it to despair because it cannot be grasped anywhere.

[ 20 ] That is how one feels, thinks, and forms mental images—because one actually carries within oneself that which is spread out in the animal world. Yes, when one develops this, one becomes connected to the world in a completely different way. Then one’s will and feeling are enlivened in a wholly different manner. One feels one’s kinship with the realms of nature. And one gradually gains a sense of what it actually means that something astral is at work within us, not merely something ethereal. If one does not rely on the abstract concepts that are widely disseminated today, but rather on the living, inner inspiration derived from positive forms, and then has a fourteen- to fifteen-year-old standing before one, then one learns to observe this fourteen- to fifteen-year-old. Then, through what one receives inwardly, the eye and the ear are guided toward how one behaves in the next hour. The eye is guided and directed, and the ear is guided and directed, and it is only through this that we are inspired to observe what is unfolding in the fourteen- to fifteen-year-old standing before us. If we lack this, if we do not imbue ourselves with such a Spiritual Science that penetrates into our feelings, then we stand before the fourteen- to fifteen-year-old—much like, as people used to say in my youth, an ox on Sunday after having eaten nothing but grass all week.

[ 21 ] This is what we must bring into our education, into our civilization, into our science—that it is something at all, that it is a reality, that it is not merely a sum of mere names, not merely nominalism, that it kindles and fuels something real within us. It is through this that we will then observe human beings. But this does not mean that we approach people with a mischievous intent and take notes on what they are like. It arises quite naturally, as something that comes to us of its own accord. We form a judgment about each individual child; we do not need to voice it, because we hold it flexibly within ourselves. Then we can bring it up into consciousness, and we act in the classroom according to these numerous judgments that live and surge within us, just as the entire animal world lives within true thought-forms. Just imagine what it would be like if we had to know all of this, if we had to be clear about how the lion devours the lamb, if we had to bring all of that into our consciousness. — In the same way, we cannot transform everything that lives in our surroundings into judgments within ourselves. We cannot bring that into explicit consciousness. But it can be there. We can act upon it. We stand among the students and act accordingly, provided we have not started from a kind of knowledge or science that deals only with abstract concepts and abstract laws of nature, and is completely incapable of looking up to such things at all. This is, of course, quite self-evident: if people have a mental image of what it would be like out there in outer space, with the great gas furnace boiling without walls, then they will not arrive at a better understanding of humanity.

[ 22 ] Thus must begin the great examination of conscience, which consists in our telling ourselves: if we do not strive with all our might toward a spiritual-science understanding of our instinctive life and our life of feelings and sensations, we will no longer understand the child at the age of 14 or 15. We will only begin to understand them once we have attained such an education. This is what is meant when it is always said: Anthroposophy is itself a form of pedagogy; namely, it becomes pedagogy when one is enabled to educate. And all that is needed is to bring forth from the depths of the human soul what is placed there by anthroposophy, if pedagogy is to be realized. I would like to say that what is within every human being merely needs to be given a pedagogical direction; in this way, anthroposophical understanding of the human being becomes, in fact, pedagogy as well.

[ 23 ] Yesterday I told those in the 10th grade that we should begin with a certain understanding of human nature. Yes, that is precisely what such an understanding of human nature aims to convey: that we place the human being back within the entire universe—body, soul, and spirit. If we are true educators in this field of human understanding, we should actually approach every aspect of anatomy and physiology in such a way that we inform ourselves about what has come about through centuries of spiritless work. But these should merely be reference books, and we should never fail to infuse these reference books with what we can draw from anthroposophy. Only then is light shed on what emerges from this information—precisely from the common, everyday things. You must approach literature in a completely different way than others do. Certainly, you will then face accusations that you are snobbish and so on. But that is something that must be endured today. It must be endured that you see in what our science and our education offer today merely a foundation for information—just as a Greek, were he to rise from the dead, might turn to chemistry and say: “What I know about the earth—that it is dry and cold, that it affects plants—you’ve reduced that to a specialty for me. It’s interesting to learn about it in detail, but you know nothing of the overall effect; you know only a quarter of it.” - We must return to a kind of knowledge that penetrates into sensation, feeling, and will, that permeates our entire being, that is, in the soul and spirit, something akin to blood in the physical realm; then, by becoming different people, we will become true teachers. Teaching cannot tolerate that automatism in humanity that has arisen from the invention of all sorts of “greenhouse plants” of artificial pedagogies. Now people are even experimenting because they want to arrive at their own concepts; they experiment with how memory works, they experiment with how the will works, even with how thoughts work. These are, of course, very nice little games from which something will certainly emerge. One need not be opposed to play—neither with children nor in the laboratory—but the point is to combat the narrowing of one’s field of vision that results from it.