The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A Meditative Approach to the Study of Man II

[ 1 ] Of course, one cannot educate or teach unless, in the process of educating and teaching, one can, in a sense, intuitively grasp the whole human being; for this whole human being is even more important during childhood development than later on. We know, of course, that this whole human being encompasses the “I,” the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. These four aspects of human nature do not develop at a uniform pace, but rather in very different ways, and we must make a clear distinction between the development of the physical body and the etheric body, on the one hand, and the development of the astral body and the “I,” on the other. The outward manifestations of this differentiated development are evident—as you know from the various hints I have given here and there—in the changing of teeth and in the transformation that occurs in males with the change of voice at puberty, which is also clearly evident in females, though in a different way. The fundamental nature of this phenomenon is the same as in the voice change experienced by men; however, in the female organism it occurs in a more widespread manner, so that it is not limited to a single organ, as in the male organism, but extends more broadly throughout the entire organism.

[ 2 ] You know that the period of instruction—which we are primarily concerned with in elementary school—falls between the change of teeth and the change of voice or the onset of puberty; but the years following the change of voice or its equivalent in the female organism must also be subject to careful attention in instruction and upbringing and must certainly be taken into account.

[ 3 ] Let us consider what the change of teeth signifies. The change of teeth is the outward expression of the fact that previously—that is, between birth and the change of teeth—the physical body and the etheric body in the child’s organism are strongly influenced by the nervous-sensory system, that is, from top to bottom. Until about the age of 7, the physical body and the etheric body are most strongly influenced from the head. The forces that are particularly effective during these years—when imitation plays such a major role—are, so to speak, concentrated in the head. And what takes place in terms of formation in the rest of the organism—in the trunk and limbs—occurs through rays emanating from the head to the rest of the organism, to the trunk and limb systems, the physical body, and the etheric body. What radiates from the head into the physical body and etheric body of the entire child, all the way to the tips of the fingers and toes—what radiates from the head into the whole child—is soul activity, even though it emanates from the physical body; it is the same soul activity that later functions in the soul as intellect and memory. It is simply that later, after the teeth have been replaced, the child begins to think in such a way that its memories become more conscious. The entire transformation taking place in the child’s soul life shows that certain soul forces are active in the child from the age of seven onward as soul forces that were previously active within the organism. These forces act within the organism. The entire period up to the change of teeth, during which the child grows, is the result of the same forces that emerge after the age of seven as powers of understanding, as intellectual powers.

[ 4 ] Here you have a very real interaction between soul and body, in which the soul emancipates itself from the body at the age of 7 and no longer acts within the body but acts independently. At the age of seven, the forces that are now emerging anew within the body itself as soul forces begin to take effect—and they continue to act right into the next incarnation. And then that which radiates upward from the body is repelled, while on the other hand, the forces shooting downward from the head are held back. Thus, during this period when the teeth are changing, the most intense struggle takes place between the forces striving downward from above and those shooting upward from below. The change of teeth is the physical expression of this struggle between these two types of forces; those forces that later emerge in the child as the powers of understanding and the intellectual faculties, and those forces that must be specifically applied in drawing, painting, and writing. We make use of all these forces that surge upward when we develop writing out of drawing; for these forces actually seek to transition into plastic form-giving, into drawing, and so on. These are the forces that reach their culmination during the change of teeth—the sculptural forces that previously shaped the child’s body—and which we later use, once the change of teeth has taken place, to guide the child toward drawing, painting, and so on. These are primarily the forces implanted in the child from the spiritual world—the world in which the child’s soul lived before conception. They first act as physical forces shaping the head and then, from the age of seven onward, as soul forces. Thus, from the age of seven onward, our authoritative influences simply draw out of the child what the child previously practiced unconsciously through imitation, as these forces unconsciously imprinted themselves on the body. If the child later becomes a sculptor, a draftsman, or an architect—but a true architect who works from forms—this happens because such a person has the predisposition to retain a little more within their organism of the forces that radiate down into it, to retain a little more in the head, so that even later these childhood forces continue to radiate down. But if they are not held back—if, with the change of teeth, everything passes into the soul—then we end up with children who have no aptitude for drawing, sculpture, or architecture, and who can never become sculptors.

[ 5 ] This is the secret: these powers are connected to what we have gone through between death and our new birth. One gains what one needs within the educational process—namely, a sense of reverence that can take on a religious character—when one becomes aware that: The forces you draw out of the child around the age of seven—the ones you use to teach drawing or writing—are, in essence, sent to you by Heaven; that is, the spiritual world sends these forces down, the child is the mediator, and you are actually working with the forces sent down from the spiritual world. This sense of awe toward the spiritual-divine, when it permeates the lesson, is indeed something that works wonders in the classroom. And when you have the feeling that you are connected to the forces developing from the spiritual world—forces that originated in the time before birth—when you have this feeling, which evokes a deep reverence, then you will see that you can achieve more through the presence of this feeling than through any intellectual speculation about what should be done. The feelings the teacher has are the most important educational tools. And this sense of awe has an immensely formative effect on the child.

[ 6 ] Thus, in what happens to a child during the change of teeth, we have something that is a direct manifestation of spiritual forces by the child from the spiritual world into the physical world.

[ 7 ] A different process takes place during the years of puberty; but it develops gradually throughout the entire cycle from the age of 7 to the age of 14 or 15. During this time, something begins to awaken in those regions of the soul that are not yet illuminated by consciousness—for consciousness is only just forming, and the external world continually radiates something unconsciously into us—there, something that is slowly becoming conscious begins to awaken, something that, originating from the external world, but has been radiating into the child from the outside world since birth, which has contributed to the building up of the child’s body and has entered into the child, into the plastic forces.

[ 8 ] These are yet other forces. While the formative forces enter the head from within, these forces now come from the outside and then descend into the organism. I can describe these forces—which act from the outside world through the head into the body, pushing their way through the formative forces and contributing to the development of the child’s body beginning at age 7—in no other way than to say: they are the same forces that are at work in language and music. These forces are absorbed from the world.

[ 9 ] Those forces that are of a musical nature are drawn more from the external world, from the world beyond humanity, from the observation of nature, from the observation of processes in nature, and above all from the observation of its regularities and irregularities. For a mysterious music runs through everything that takes place in nature: the earthly projection of the music of the spheres. In every plant, in every animal, a tone of the music of the spheres is actually incorporated. This is also the case with regard to the human body; however, it no longer lives in what constitutes human language—that is, not in the expressions of the soul—but rather in the body, in its forms and so on. The child unconsciously absorbs all of this, and that is why children are so highly musical. They take all of this into their organism. What they experience in terms of forms of movement, linear elements, and plasticity comes from within, from the head. In contrast, everything the child absorbs in terms of tonal structure and linguistic content comes from the outside. And this element that comes from the outside is counteracted—but somewhat later, namely around the age of 14—by the spiritual element of musical-linguistic expression that gradually develops from within. This now converges again—in women throughout the entire organism, in men more in the larynx region—and this causes the voice change there. The whole process is thus brought about by a more will-like element from within asserting itself in the struggle against a will-like element coming from without; and in this struggle, the change of voice and the characteristics that emerge at sexual maturity are expressed. This is a struggle between inner musical-linguistic forces and outer musical-linguistic forces. — Essentially, up to the age of 7, the human being is permeated more by plastic forces and less by musical forces—that is, by musical and linguistic forces that do not so intensely permeate the organism. From the age of seven onward, however, musical and linguistic forces become particularly active in the etheric body. Then the ego and the astral body turn against this: a will-like element from the outside struggles with a will-like element from the inside, and this becomes apparent at puberty. It is also evident outwardly that a difference exists between the male and the female, in that they have different pitch ranges. The high registers of men’s and women’s voices overlap only partially; a woman’s voice reaches higher, while a man’s goes lower, down to the bass. This corresponds exactly to the rest of the organism’s structure, which develops there out of the struggle between these forces.

[ 10 ] These things testify that, in the life of the soul, we are dealing with what also plays a role in the structure of the organism—but for very specific purposes. All the abstract rhetoric you find today in psychology books and in those psychological debates stemming from modern science—all the talk of psychophysical parallelism—is nothing more than a testament to the ignorance of our philosophers, who know nothing of the true connection between the psychological and the physical. For the soul is not connected to the body according to the nonsensical theories devised by the psychophysical parallelists; rather, we are dealing with the very concrete effect of the soul on the body, and then again with the reaction—we will speak of such a reaction in a moment. The plastic-architectural aspect interacts with the musical-linguistic aspect until the age of seven; this changes only in the seventh year, so that from then on, only the relationship between the musical-linguistic aspect on the one hand and the plastic-architectural aspect on the other is different. But throughout the entire period up to human sexual maturity, such an interaction takes place between the plastic-architectural aspect—which originates in the head and is centered there—and the linguistic-musical aspect—which originates in the external world, comes from outside, uses the head as a point of passage, and spreads into the organism.

[ 11 ] From this we see that human language, too—especially its musical element—plays a role in shaping the human being: First it shapes the human being, and afterward it becomes blocked, coming to a halt at the larynx; there it no longer passes through the gate as it once did. In the past, it was precisely language that transformed our organs, right down to the skeletal system. Anyone who looks at a human skeleton with a genuine psychophysical gaze—not the shallow psychophysical gaze of today’s philosophers—and observes the differences between a male and a female skeleton will see in the skeleton a materialized musical achievement that unfolds in the interaction between the human organism and the external world. The human skeleton is to be understood, as it were, as if one were to play a sonata and capture it through some kind of spiritual crystallization process; in this way, one would bring out the main forms, the structural patterns of the human skeleton! This will also demonstrate to you the difference between humans and animals. With animals, it is as follows: whatever is absorbed from the linguistic-musical element—very little from the linguistic aspect, but a great deal from the musical aspect—passes right through the animal, because, in a sense, the animal lacks the isolation characteristic of humans, which ultimately leads to mutation. We also find a musical imprint in the skeletal form of the animal; however, it is such that only the various assembled skeletons—for example, in a museum—would have to reveal a musical connection in the animal. The animal always reveals a one-sidedness in its structure.

[ 12 ] These are things we should therefore take into special consideration, and they show us what feelings we should cultivate. If we cultivate a greater sense of reverence by nurturing our connection—our correspondence—with the pre-birth realm, as we have already described it, then we will gain greater enthusiasm and passion for teaching through our deepening engagement with the other human faculties. A Dionysian element, so to speak, radiates through musical and linguistic instruction, while we draw more on an Apollonian element for sculptural instruction, for painting and drawing. We teach the subjects related to music and language with enthusiasm; the others we teach with reverence.

[ 13 ] The formative forces exert a stronger counterforce, which is why they are already held back by the age of 7; the other forces exert a weaker counterforce, which is why they are not held back until the age of 14. You must not interpret this in terms of physical strength or weakness; rather, it refers to the counterpressure that is exerted. Because the plastic forces would overwhelm the human organism—since they are stronger—the counterpressure is stronger. That is why they must be halted earlier, while the other forces are allowed to remain in the organism longer by the guidance of the worlds. The human being is permeated by the musical forces for a longer period than by the plastic ones.

[ 14 ] If you let this sink in and have the necessary enthusiasm for it, then you will be able to say to yourself: With what you awaken in the child—in terms of language and music—especially during elementary school, while that inner struggle is still present, and where you are still working on the physical aspect, not just the soul alone, you are laying the groundwork for what continues to have an effect even beyond death, for what the human being carries with them even beyond death. — This is essentially what we are working toward in everything we teach the child in terms of music and language during elementary school. And that gives us a certain enthusiasm, because we know we are working toward the future. When, on the other hand, we work with the formative forces, we correspond with what was already present in the human being before birth, before conception; that fills us with awe. With the other, we work toward the future; we invest our own forces in it and know that we are nourishing the musical-linguistic seed with something that, after the physical has been shed, continues to work through language and music into the future. Music is physical in that it is a reflection of the spherical in the air. The air is, so to speak, the medium that makes the sounds physical, and in turn, it is the air in the larynx that also makes speech physical; whereas that which is not physical in the air of speech, that which is not physical in the air of music, is that which only unfolds its true effect after death. This gives us a certain enthusiasm for our teaching, because we know that through it we are influencing the future.

[ 15 ] I believe that the future of pedagogy will lie not in addressing teachers, as is done today, but in communicating through ideas and concepts that can be transformed into feelings. For nothing matters more than that we, as teachers, be able to cultivate within ourselves the necessary reverence and enthusiasm to conduct our lessons with reverence and enthusiasm. Reverence and enthusiasm—these are the secret fundamental forces that must spiritualize the teacher’s soul.

[ 16 ] I would just like to mention, so that you may understand the matter even better, that the musical element resides specifically in the human astral body. After death, a person retains their astral body for a time. As long as they retain it—until they shed it, as you know from my book Theosophy—a kind of lingering memory, merely a recollection of earthly music, remains within the person after death. This is why what a person takes in as music during life continues to have an effect after death as a musical memory, roughly until the person has shed their astral body. Then, in the afterlife, earthly music transforms into celestial music and remains as such until some time before the new birth. This will help you understand the matter better if you realize that what a person absorbs of music here on Earth plays a very significant role in the development of their soul organism after death. This development takes place during the period of Kamaloka. That is the benefit of the Kamaloka period, and essentially, knowing this allows us to make what Catholics call Purgatory easier for people—though not by sparing them the experience of seeing it; they must have that experience, for otherwise they would remain imperfect if they could not gain insight into the imperfect things they have done. But we introduce the possibility that a person will be better developed in their next life if, during that time after death when they still have their astral body, they can have many musical memories. This can already be studied at a relatively low level of occultism. You need only wake up once at night after attending a concert, and you will realize that you have relived the entire concert before waking up. You experience it even more vividly when you wake up like this at night after the concert. You experience it very faithfully. There, the musical experience is imprinted into the astral body; it remains there and continues to resonate; it persists for about 30 years after death. The musical experience resonates much longer than the spoken word; we lose the spoken word as such relatively quickly after death, and only its spiritual essence remains. The musical element persists as long as the astral body persists. — The spoken word can be of great benefit to us after death, especially if we have absorbed it often in the way I now frequently describe the art of recitation. Of course, I have every reason to point out, when I describe the art of recitation in this way, that these things cannot be properly understood unless we also take into account the unique course of the astral body after death. One must then describe these things in much the same way as I describe them in my eurythmy lectures. One must, as it were, speak to people in the language of the Botokuden. Yes, it is truly the case: viewed from the standpoint beyond the threshold, human beings are actually like Botokuden, and only beyond the threshold are they real human beings. And we work our way into the spiritual realm solely from this Botokuden-like standpoint; this is precisely why the Botokuden are so furious at our endeavors, a fury that is now becoming increasingly evident.

[ 17 ] Now I would like to draw your attention to the fact—because it is particularly relevant to the art of education and we can address it pedagogically—that in this struggle, which I first described so that you can see that its outward expression is the change of teeth, and in that later struggle, whose equivalent is the change of voice, this struggle has a distinctive feature: it possesses a special character: Everything that flows downward from the head during the period up to the age of seven appears, in relation to what comes toward it from within and what builds it up, as an attack. And everything that acts from within toward the head—that which rises there and counteracts the current emanating from the head—is, in relation to what descends, like a defense. The former appears as an attack; the latter, arising from within, appears as a defense.

[ 18 ] And it is similar with music. There, what comes from within appears to be an attack, and what passes downward from above through the head organism appears to be a defense. — If we did not have music, truly terrible forces would rise up within human beings. I am fully convinced that up until the 16th, 17th centuries, traditions stemming from the ancient mysteries continued to exert their influence, and that in those times people still wrote and spoke under the influence of these lingering effects of the mysteries—people who no longer fully understood the meaning of this influence—but that in some cases, what appears even in relatively later times is simply a reminiscence of ancient mystical knowledge; so that I have actually always been deeply moved by Shakespeare’s words: “The man who has no music within himself is fit for treachery, murder, and malice! Trust no such man.” — In the ancient mystery schools, students were taught: That which acts aggressively from within a human being, and which must be continually repelled—that which is held back for the sake of human nature—is “treachery, murder, and malice”; and the music that takes place within a human being is what counteracts this. Music is the antidote to the Luciferic forces rising up from within the human being: treachery, murder, and malice. We all have treachery, murder, and malice within us, and it is not for nothing that the world possesses the musical-linguistic element, in addition to the fact that it brings joy to human beings. It possesses it in order to make human beings truly human. Of course, one must bear in mind that the ancient mystery teachers spoke somewhat differently; they expressed things more concretely. They would not have said—as is already hinted at in Shakespeare—“betrayal, murder, and treachery,” but rather they would have said: “snake, wolf, fox.”—The snake, the wolf, the fox—they are warded off from the inner human nature by the musical element. The ancient mystery teachers would always have used animal forms to describe what arises from within the human being and what must first be transformed into the human form. And so it is that we develop the right kind of enthusiasm when we see the treacherous serpent rising up from within the child and combat it through musical and linguistic instruction, and likewise the murderous wolf and the treacherous fox or cat. This is what can then enable us to prevail with rational, proper enthusiasm—not with the burning, Luciferic enthusiasm that is the only kind recognized today. So, we must recognize: attack and defense.

[ 19 ] Human beings have within themselves two levels at which defense occurs; first, a defense within themselves: this defense manifests itself during the change of teeth at age 7. And then there is what they have absorbed in terms of music and language: through this, they defend against what seeks to rise up within them. But both battlefields are actually within the human being: the musical-linguistic aspect is directed more toward the periphery, toward the outer world; the architectural-plastic aspect is directed more toward the inner human being, toward the inner world. But there is still a third battlefield; it lies at the boundary between the etheric body and the outer world. The etheric body is always larger than the physical body, extending beyond it in every direction. There, too, is such a battlefield. There, the struggle takes place more under the influence of consciousness, whereas the other two struggles unfold more in the subconscious. The third struggle takes place more in consciousness. It finds expression when everything emerges that is the embodiment of what takes place between the human being and the plastic-architectural realm on the one hand, and what takes place between the human being and the musical-linguistic realm on the other—when the latter lives itself into the etheric body, thereby seizing the astral body, and is thus shifted more toward the periphery, toward the outer boundary. This gives rise to everything that slips through one’s fingers in drawing, painting, and so on. This is what makes the art of painting an art that acts more within the human environment. The draftsman and the sculptor must work more from their inner disposition, while the musician must work more from devotion to the world. That which finds expression in painting and drawing—the very thing we nurture in the child by letting it create forms and lines—is a struggle that takes place entirely on the surface, a struggle that essentially unfolds between two forces: one force acts from the outside in, the other from the inside out. The force that acts from the inside out actually seeks to constantly fragment the human being; it seeks to continue the process of human formation—not in a forceful way, but in a subtle one. This force wants to make us—I must put it a bit more radically; it isn’t that strong, but by exaggerating it so radically, you’ll see what I mean—this force acting from the inside out wants to make our eyes bulge, wants to give us a goiter, wants to make our noses grow large and our ears bigger: all of this wants to swell outward. There is another force that we absorb from the outside world and through which this swelling is counteracted. And when we make even a single stroke, when we draw something, it is an effort to turn away from the outside world that which seeks to deform us from within. It is a complex reflexive movement that we, as human beings, carry out in painting, in drawing, and in graphic art. In fact, when we draw, or have the canvas in front of us, we have the feeling—in that faintly glimmering awareness—that we are not letting something from the outside in; we are creating thick walls or barbed wire out of the forms and lines. — In our drawings, we actually have such barbed wire with which we intercept something that seeks to destroy us from within and prevent it from taking effect quickly enough. That is why drawing instruction works best when we approach it from the human perspective; when you study the movements the hand wants to make, when in eurythmy lessons you let the child capture the forms—these movements the child wants to make—then you have captured the line that seeks to have a destructive effect, and it no longer acts destructively. So when you begin to have children draw eurythmic forms and allow drawing—and then also writing—to emerge from these forms, you have something that human nature actually desires, something connected to the becoming and essence of human nature. And we should also be aware of this in eurythmy: in the etheric body, we constantly have the tendency to engage in eurythmy; this is something the etheric body simply does of its own accord. Eurythmy is, after all, nothing other than reading all the movements from what the etheric body wants to do; it actually makes these movements and is only held back when we have them performed by the physical body. When we have them performed by the physical body, they are held back in the etheric body and then act back upon us, thereby having a healing effect on the human being.

[ 20 ] This is what, in a certain sense, is already manifesting itself outwardly in human beings—both in a hygienic-therapeutic sense and in a didactic-pedagogical sense. These are things that can only be understood once we realize: something that seeks to emerge in the human being’s etheric constitution must be held back at the periphery by the movements of the physical body. In one instance, it is more of a volitional element that is held back in eurythmy; in another, a more intellectual element in drawing and painting. But fundamentally, the process is such that these are merely two poles of one and the same thing.

[ 21 ] If we, in turn, feel our way through this process and incorporate it into our capacity for teaching through feeling, then we have the third feeling we need—the feeling that should actually permeate us at all times, especially during elementary school instruction: that when a human being enters the world, they are actually exposed to things from which we must protect them through instruction; otherwise, they would flow out into the world too strongly. Human beings actually always have a tendency to become spiritually stunted, to make their limbs stunted, to become gnomes. And by teaching and educating them, we shape them. We best grasp this shaping when we observe how a child makes a drawing, but then smooth it out slightly, so that the result is neither what the child wants nor what I want, but rather a synthesis of both. If I manage to smooth out what the child wants to draw with their finger, while infusing it with my own feeling—my empathy—so that my feelings resonate with the child’s, then the best result emerges. When I transform this into a feeling and let it permeate me, the outcome is a protection of the child from becoming too closely entwined with the outside world. We must allow the child to grow into the outside world gradually; we must not let them grow into it too quickly. We constantly keep a protective hand over the child, and that is the third feeling.

[ 22 ] Awe, enthusiasm, and a protective instinct—these are the three things that are, in fact, I would say, the panacea, the cure-all in the soul of the educator and teacher. And if one were to create something outwardly, artistically—such as a group that embodies art and pedagogy—one would have to create this:

[ 23 ] Awe for what precedes the child's existence.

[ 24 ] An enthusiastic reference to what follows the child.

[ 25 ] A protective movement for what the child experiences.

[ 26 ] It is in this manifestation of the teacher's nature that the teacher's outward expression would be best revealed.

[ 27 ] These are instances where one sees how something expressed from the depths of the world’s mysteries is actually always perceived as unsatisfying when conveyed through conventional language. But when one must express such things through external language, one has the feeling that something is missing. There is always something where the more abstract linguistic aspect seeks to transition into the artistic. That is why I wanted to draw this conclusion.

[ 28 ] We must learn this. We must learn to carry within us something of the spirit of the future, which will consist in the fact that the possession of mere science turns a person into something that makes him regard himself as a kind of dwarf in spiritual and mental terms. Those who are merely scientists will not have the impulse—even if only through the shaping of thoughts—to transform the scientific into the artistic. It is only through art that one comprehends the world. But one can always say: whoever to whom nature reveals her secrets feels a longing for art.

[ 29 ] One should feel this way: Insofar as you are merely a scientist, you are a moon-calf! Only when you transform your soul, mind, and body—when your knowledge takes on an artistic form—will you become a human being. Essentially, future development will lead—and the educator must contribute to this—from science to an artistic understanding of the world, from a monstrosity to a fully realized human being.