The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] The art of education and teaching, which will be discussed in these lectures, is based entirely on an understanding of human nature. However, a thorough understanding of human nature is only possible through a comprehensive understanding of the world, for human beings, with all their abilities and all the forces they possess, are rooted in the world at large; and, fundamentally speaking, a true understanding of human nature can only exist if it springs from an understanding of the world. One will therefore always say that an era holds certain views and ideas regarding education and instruction that arise from its understanding of the world. One will therefore only be able to properly assess what is currently being said about the art of education and instruction if one examines contemporary educational and instructional practices in light of the general understanding of the world that prevails today. And in this regard, it must be significant to turn our gaze specifically toward a representative of contemporary thought—a figure who is fully immersed in the world of ideas and the worldview that has taken shape over the course of the last few centuries and has become the very essence of humanity today. Now, there is no doubt whatsoever that, right up to the present, humanity has been particularly proud—and to a large extent still is today—of what has emerged in recent times under the influence of intellectualism, if we may call it that.

[ 2 ] Educated humanity has, in essence—even if it is not always willing to admit it—become entirely intellectualistic. Everything in the world is viewed through the lens of the intellect. And precisely when one turns one’s attention to the names that come to mind when speaking of the dawn of modern thought, one is drawn to figures who, through their faith in the intellect, laid the foundations for modern philosophy and the modern outlook on life. One is drawn to names such as Galileo, Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, and others, and is thereby led to mental images that, although often thought today to exist only in scientific circles, are in fact not limited to them.

[ 3 ] Anyone today who is truly able to observe, with an unbiased eye, the defining life impulses present in the broadest circles of humanity will find that everywhere there is a nuance of scientific thinking at work; and within this scientific thinking, intellectualism lives on. People believe that, when it comes to moral concepts and impulses, as well as religious ideas and feelings, they can be independent of what they think and feel in terms of the natural sciences. But one will very soon see that, by simply surrendering oneself in the present to what flows from the educational establishment into the broader public through all the newspapers and popular works, one is nevertheless submitting to mental images that are so imbued with the tone of a scientifically tuned string that it always resonates within them.

[ 4 ] Anyone who does not thoroughly understand that modern people sit down at the breakfast table in the morning with scientific mental images and go to bed at night with scientific mental images, that they conduct their business with scientific mental images, and that they raise their children with scientific mental images—such a person does not understand life, for they believe that they stand in life entirely independent of scientific thinking. But that is not the case. We even go to church with scientific mental images, and when the oldest, most conservative views are proclaimed to us from the pulpit, we listen to them with an ear attuned to science. Science, however, thrives on intellectualism.

[ 5 ] Although she emphasizes at every opportunity that she bases everything on observation, experimentation, and external experience, But the spiritual instrument that one uses when directing a telescope toward the stars—the instrument one uses when conducting experiments in chemistry or physics in the laboratory—is none other than the intellectual aspect of the human soul. And whatever a person derives from nature, he does so through his intellect.

[ 6 ] The fact is that, especially in recent times, the educated people of the Western world have become particularly enthralled by all the achievements that intellectualism has brought about for civilization as a whole. People have come to think as follows: Earlier epochs of humanity were more or less unintelligent; they succumbed to childish mental images of the world. Now we have advanced to an intelligent understanding of the world. — And people have come to regard this intelligent understanding of the world as the only thing that stands on solid ground. People have fallen into the fear that they will slip into the realm of fantasy if they leave the ground of intellectualism.

[ 7 ] Anyone who thinks in the spirit of the present age—which has also been the spirit of the last few centuries—tells himself: I can only truly grasp life if I stick to the intellectual realm; otherwise, I run the risk of succumbing to fanciful ideas about nature and life. — On the one hand, this has emerged as a firmly held idea in recent times.

[ 8 ] Now we are faced with something truly remarkable. That which, on the one hand, is regarded as the most valuable—as the most significant thing for the entire modern civilization—has, on the other hand, become a matter of debate precisely in the immediate present, and most of all for those who take the education and the art of teaching seriously. On the one hand, one must look at how humanity has flourished through intellectualism, and on the other hand, one sees today the results of intellectualism in education and teaching and concludes: If children are educated solely through intellectualism, their abilities atrophy, their human capacities atrophy. - And there is a longing, particularly in the art of education and teaching, to replace intellectualism with something else. People appeal to the child’s emotions, to instinct; they appeal to the child’s moral impulses and religious impulses. They want something that lies beyond the intellect. But what was needed to find what they were seeking? One needs, in fact, a profound understanding of human nature, which in turn can only be the consequence of a profound understanding of the world. As I noted at the outset, one can see particularly clearly how the current understanding of the world views education by looking at a representative figure. And such a representative figure, when one considers all the relevant factors, appears to be Herbert Spencer.

[ 9 ] I do not cite Herbert Spencer simply because I believe that his views on education are of primary relevance to educators today; I am aware of the many objections that can be raised against them, and of how much they need to be expanded upon, given that they appear, in a sense, somewhat amateurish. But on the other hand, Herbert Spencer is a figure whose entire intellectual life is rooted in everything that has emerged in the course of the last few centuries in the realm of general human education. When Emerson spoke of representative figures and cited a number of such figures—Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dante—as representative of human development, one must say that, for the present—for what the present feels, senses, and thinks—Herbert Spencer is, above all others, the representative figure. And even if, among those who think in the spirit of modern civilization, this way of thinking takes on a French, Italian, or Russian nuance depending on nationality, what one finds in Herbert Spencer’s mode of thinking—transcending these nuances—is decisive for the entire present age. It is not so much the conclusions that Herbert Spencer reached in his many books on most areas of life that are decisive, but rather the way he thinks—a way of thinking that, to an immeasurable degree, lives on in the minds of virtually all educated people of the present who are influenced by science and who wish to organize their lives according to scientific principles. Therefore, to anyone who wishes to assess the stance of today’s educated people toward pedagogy and didactics—not from the limited perspective of the school system, but from a worldly perspective—Herbert Spencer’s judgment must appear particularly authoritative.

[ 10 ] Everything in his work stems from intellectualist natural science. And what conclusions does he draw from this intellectualist natural science? Herbert Spencer, who naturally focuses above all on how human beings gradually evolved from lower forms of life, and on how human beings, now in their fully developed state, relate to those lower forms of life, asks himself: Are children, young men, and young women today being educated in accordance with these scientific modes of thought? — And he answers this question with a no.

[ 11 ] In his essay on education and teaching, he addressed the most important questions in contemporary pedagogy, such as: What is the most valuable form of knowledge?—He raises questions about intellectual education, moral education, and the physical development of human beings. But at the center of all these reflections lies one idea that, I would say, could really only be arrived at by someone who thinks entirely in terms of the present. He says: Today we educate our children so that they learn to use their bodies appropriately, so that they can use them in life in accordance with their natural faculties; we educate people so that they fit into their trades and professions. We educate them so that they can be good citizens. We may also educate them, according to our views, to be moral and religious people, but there is one thing we do not do: we do not educate them to become educators themselves.

[ 12 ] And that is what Herbert Spencer finds lacking in all pedagogy and didactics today: that, fundamentally, people are not educated in the art of education. He expresses this by saying: We educate people so that they can make physical use of their bodies, so that they can fulfill their professions, so that they can be an important part of the state; but we do not educate them to be parents and educators.

[ 13 ] Now, as a true scientific thinker, he says: just as the culmination of human natural development is that a person has offspring—that is, becomes capable of procreation—so too must the culmination of education be that a person acquires the ability to raise and guide growing children in the proper manner. — From the perspective of a modern person, this is quite a correct way of thinking.

[ 14 ] But what conclusions does Herbert Spencer reach when he turns his attention to contemporary educational practices? He expresses this through a striking image, which I believe is very apt. He says: We have magnificent educational demands, educational ideals—and Herbert Spencer fully lives up to these educational ideals, these educational demands, these rules; for example, he also fully lives up to Pestalozzi—but he does not ask: Are these educational principles, these educational maxims, theoretically beautiful and appealing? — Instead, he asks: What is educational practice like; what goes on in schools? — And for this he finds a striking image. He says: Let’s imagine a future archaeologist—say, one living five or six centuries from now—who unearths what is happening in our present from documents and archives, just as our archaeologists are accustomed to unearthing what happened in earlier eras; this archaeologist would come across a description of today’s school practices. There he would see: Yes, children are guided by grammar to immerse themselves in the language. But what they learn in grammar—as is evident—contributes nothing at all to using the language in real life. And then one finds that a large number of these children must learn Greek and Latin, must learn other languages that have long since died out. So this is the educational system of a people that has no literature of its own, that cannot learn or experience much by engaging with its own literature; it must therefore engage with ancient literatures. And even though there is much talk about education being meant to prepare students for life, one can see from everything that goes on in school just how little this school actually prepares students for life. “Ah,” thinks this archaeologist, “that cannot have been the general school practice of this generation! By chance—since, of course, documents happen to fall into the archaeologist’s hands from one source or another—I happened to come across the school curriculum for a monastic order in training!”

[ 15 ] This is how starkly a contemporary man of the world expresses his impression of what he observes when he considers school practices. And he says—from his own perspective, of course—that the reason people educated in this way do not behave like monks out of touch with life when they reach adulthood is solely because life imposes its own cruel demands. Yet they still behave awkwardly in the world because they were essentially raised as monks and are now expected to find their way in the world. One can already glimpse the impression that teaching and educational practices make on precisely such a worldly human being.

[ 16 ] The best way to understand what our modern worldview—of which we have become so proud—can offer human beings in terms of their own understanding is to answer the question from a practical, everyday perspective, by asking: What does this mean for a person in terms of their understanding of their own value in life when they are surrounded on all sides by mental images that stem from an intellectual, scientific understanding of life? One need only bring to mind the kind of understanding of the world that results from this, and one will feel and sense what kind of understanding of humanity can come from it.

[ 17 ] We can, in a magnificent way, summarize what exists in inanimate nature through our laws of nature. We certainly also indulge in the illusion that through this we also gain an understanding of the living, of the organism. Well, I do not wish to speak about these illusions today; but it is true that, in keeping with today’s civilization, we tend to indulge primarily in mental images that shed light on what lies outside of human beings. We form grand physical and chemical mental images, and we cannot help but extend these images—even if only hypothetically at first—to encompass the entire world. Certainly, there are already many people today who dispute the validity of applying what we learn in the laboratory, what is revealed to us through the telescope and the microscope, to a general mental image of the world. But human beings simply cannot help but arrive at such an application. Nor can they help but allow such an application to influence their feelings and sensations. And if one then extends—even if, as mentioned, only hypothetically—the mental images gained in the laboratory and at the observatory to the beginning and end of the Earth and the universe, what does one arrive at?

[ 18 ] Well, even though the so-called Kant-Laplace theory has been modified in many ways today, the general principle still holds: one arrives at an initial state of the Earth and the world that consists of the well-known primordial nebula. However, the primordial nebula can only be understood in terms of aeromechanical laws. And that is indeed how we proceed. We look to an initial state of the world or the Earth that can only be understood in terms of what we have learned through aeromechanics. There is nothing psychological there; there is nothing spiritual in it. When people, in accordance with the needs of their hearts and souls, must create a mental image of something else, they arrive at all manner of soul-divine and spirit-divine beings who were also present alongside what is assumed from an aeromechanical perspective, and who possess—I would say—a cosmic skill for plastically shaping, or otherwise forming, what exists there as a primordial nebula. Human beings—especially human beings with their soul-spiritual powers and abilities—are not contained within this primordial nebula; they are, so to speak, cast out of what is encompassed by this worldview and philosophy. Anyone who has fully accustomed themselves to the idea that only intellectualist natural science provides certainty will, of course, be overcome by bitter doubt when, in addition to what they believe they are entitled to according to the laws of aeromechanics, they must also posit soul or spiritual beings at the beginning of the Earth or the universe.

[ 19 ] So, if a person hypothetically looks toward the end of the Earth and the end of the world, he must proceed according to the laws of physics. And here the so-called second law of mechanical thermodynamics presents itself to the mind, which states that all forms of living energy are converted into one another, but that when they are converted into heat—or heat is converted into them— the overall process is always such that heat remains, so that ultimately, for the Earth’s processes as a whole, the result must be that everything that otherwise exists as vital forces has been transformed into thermal forces. Nothing will remain of these forces except: differences in thermal states. The so-called heat death will engulf everything. We will then look upon the end of the Earth as a vast cemetery in which everything that human beings have ever produced from their inner lives—intellectual and moral ideals, religious impulses—lies buried. All of this reveals itself as an illusion that appears like a mist—indeed, less than a mist—to the human being who is placed between an Earth’s beginning that contains nothing human and an Earth’s end that, in turn, contains nothing human. Everything that constitutes the human being is revealed as an illusion in the face of this intellectualistic, scientific perspective.

[ 20 ] Well, in theory, this initially seems as if one could get past it, as if one could say to oneself: That’s just theory. - However, even if people today do not yet go through all the stages that exist between this theory and their actual life experiences, the consequences of these assumptions are nevertheless present in the general life experiences of humanity today. We think of life as if the Earth had begun with a primordial nebula devoid of human life, as if it were heading toward a state of heat death, where once again everything human will be buried. People lack the courage to clarify where the origin of these contemporary sensibilities lies. Yet it is precisely these sensibilities that have become decisive even for the simplest of people today, as they flow—through our newspapers and books, sometimes in quite indefinable ways—into the broadest strata of humanity.

[ 21 ] And it is from this feeling that we raise our children. Of course, we sometimes raise them through religious mental images as well, but that brings us even closer to an abyss. For if, alongside the beginning—which we must have in our mental image of life and which also lives on in our feelings—we now introduce religious ideas, then we become untruthful; and untruth does not take its revenge merely in a way that can be understood externally in an intellectualistic sense—untruth takes its revenge through its own inner power. A falsehood—even if it does not come to light, even if it cannot reveal itself, even if it remains only in the unconscious—has a destructive effect on life.

[ 22 ] We fall into falsehood if we do not set out to gain complete clarity about the origin of our present-day feelings. This clarity reveals nothing other than that, through modern mental images, we can gain an understanding of the world in which there is no place for human beings.

[ 23 ] Let us consider that which rightly makes us proud as scientific knowledge: We trace the evolutionary sequence of living beings from the simplest and most imperfect, through more perfect forms, all the way up to human beings, whom we regard as the most perfect. But when we then ask ourselves: What is human nature? — we answer this question by saying: Human beings are simply the culmination of the animal kingdom; they are the most perfect animals. We do not delve into the essence of human nature. We merely ask: In what sense is man the most perfect animal? — And it is precisely in the acceptance of such insights that modern humanity has made the greatest progress. These insights have had the deepest influence on its sensibilities.

[ 24 ] Once again, I may cite Herbert Spencer in this regard, because his entire outlook is characteristic of what we see taking effect everywhere in the field of education—in pedagogy—precisely when people today begin to seek reforms in line with modern ideas. As a rule, they reform based on these mental images, which are alien to human nature. Herbert Spencer is, once again, representative of what everyday life demonstrates to us at every turn. Herbert Spencer says, for example: We must do away with the influence that adults—parents or educators—typically exert on children today. We have inherited from earlier times the bad habit that, when a child does something wrong, we become angry, we punish the child, and we make it clear that we are annoyed by this. In a word: we do something that bears no relation whatsoever to what the child has done. The child may have gone so far as to leave all sorts of objects lying around the room. We, as educators, see this, become angry, and perhaps beat the child—I’ll go straight to the drastic example. What causal connection—and the natural scientist must, of course, ask about the causal connection—what causal connection exists between the beating, which occurs here as an effect, and the act of making a mess? Not the slightest!

[ 25 ] Herbert Spencer therefore says: We must become missionaries of causal natural processes if we want to educate children properly. For example, when we see a boy who is curious about how small scraps of paper burn in a flame, we must tell ourselves: this boy is eager to learn. We must not get annoyed that he might hurt himself or perhaps set the whole room on fire; rather, we must first realize that he is eager to learn, and we must try, as gently as possible, to get him to burn himself once; then he will understand the correct causal relationship in what he experiences. In this way, we should ensure everywhere that the correct causal connection takes place and make ourselves missionaries of causal connection in nature.

[ 26 ] Today, wherever one seeks to implement reforms, one will hear that this maxim is the only one possible. And anyone who is impartial will say: Yes, it is the only one possible if our intellectualistic, scientific worldview is the only correct one. There is simply no other way to think about education and teaching if the scientific-intellectualist approach is the true one.

[ 27 ] But what, then, is the point of all the art of education and teaching if one takes this approach to the extreme, if one becomes completely true to this process of educating and teaching? One completely and utterly engages the human being—with all his feelings, with all his thinking—in what unfolds in the course of nature. And what he thinks and feels is, in a sense, nothing more than what happens in nature, what happens all by itself, what happens when the human being simply participates in nature as unconsciously as possible. Through this, a person becomes fully integrated into external nature; they are not set apart from external nature, but are, in a sense, made into a link in the chain of natural necessities.

[ 28 ] Here you see the opposite of what I mentioned earlier. I said earlier that modern natural philosophy excludes human beings from the world. We now know them only as the final link in the chain of natural evolution, but no longer as human beings. He is cast out because nothing is known about him; because nothing can be said about him in and of himself, he is in turn placed back into nature. And in practical terms, he is not to be lifted out of nature; rather, he is to be integrated into the natural order, into natural necessity. He is to become, entirely and completely, a being that realizes the causal connection.

[ 29 ] Perceptions and thoughts about nature cast humanity aside. The art of education and teaching places humanity within the non-human realm. We lose sight of humanity entirely. People simply do not realize this because they lack the courage to do so. But today we are at a turning point in world history where we must have the courage to look deep into these primal impulses of human development, for human beings must ultimately feel the mental images they create.

[ 30 ] Now, it is a fact today that we encounter people who, with a faithful mindset, look upon what is considered a scientific given and tell themselves: One simply must not have any other mental images of the world than these: the origin of the Earth = a nebula to be understood through aeromechanics; the end of the Earth = heat death, a graveyard. In the middle: humanity, which grows out of the non-human realm into its own illusion—a realm in which, to deceive it, the illusions of moral ideas, religious impulses, and all manner of other ideals arise—and which ultimately finds itself deceived by all of this, because all of it must ultimately end in the universal graveyard.

[ 31 ] A tragic mood then takes hold of such people. Yet they are merely those who must live out in a particularly drastic way what is actually buried in the subconscious of the vast majority of humanity today. And out of this mood arises what we see today in civilization as a whole.

[ 32 ] We cannot educate people with this mindset, for it lacks an understanding of the world that is so deeply rooted in itself that it can progress to an understanding of humanity—an understanding in which human beings find their value and essence, just as they must perceive it if they are to truly know themselves as human beings in the world. Today we can educate people in accordance with natural necessity. But then we cannot make them free—truly free human beings. When we see them growing into truly free human beings, this happens, fundamentally speaking, in spite of our educating them incorrectly, not because we educate them correctly.

[ 33 ] Today, one cannot merely think about the world. Today, one must think about the world in such a way that thinking gradually gives way to a general sense of the world. For it is from these feelings that the impulses for reform and for continuing work arise. Anthroposophy aims to be a form of world knowledge that does not remain abstract, but that lives itself into feeling and can thereby become a foundation for pedagogy and didactics.

[ 34 ] What we have established over long periods of time in our imaginative life is now already confronting us historically in our external life. Humanity has been cast out of the world by its ideas about the world, by its explanation of the world. What has taken shape as a mental image in the upper strata of human civilization is met today by an echo arising from the impulses of millions upon millions of the proletarian masses. And the civilized world refuses to recognize the connection between what it thinks and what is now responding to it from the hearts and minds of the proletariat. What may live as a feeling within the individual—a tragic mood in which one says to oneself: “Whatever emerges from human beings in the form of moral ideals and religious impulses is, at the root of it, an illusion, trapped between the nebulous beginning of the Earth and the heat death of the Earth”—this confronts us today in the philosophy of life held by millions upon millions of proletarians. In this philosophy of life, the only thing considered real is what a person works for and experiences in economic life.

[ 35 ] How the economy has been managed throughout the various epochs of human development, how people have worked in economic life, how they have produced, how they have bought and sold, and how the necessities of life have been satisfied through this production, buying, and selling—this, according to this proletarian worldview, this proletarian philosophy of the world, is supposed to be the only reality. In contrast, everything that arises in economic man as moral views, as religious ideals, as artistic impulses, as political ideals—that is ideology; that is, fundamentally, something illusory; that is an unreal superstructure built upon the sole reality of the processes of production. In this form, what has persisted among the upper classes more as a theoretical—or, at most, a religious—conviction has become, among the proletarian classes, not only practical wisdom but the very reality of life; it has become the guiding principle by which people act.

[ 36 ] Human beings are placed within this life. It is from within this life that they seek to educate—and must educate. But if they wish to educate, if they wish to teach, they must be able to view this life with an open mind.

[ 37 ] It is curious that intellectualism, with its accompanying naturalistic view of life, has not actually brought people deeper into reality, but rather has taken them out of it. Examine earlier philosophies of life from this perspective: You will find everywhere ideas about life that are capable of connecting to life in some way—ideas that people would never think to regard as mere ideology. People were simply rooted in life, and therefore could not conceive that their thoughts were merely like smoke rising from life. Today, this view has become a way of life across much of the educated world. And humanity groans under the consequences of what has come to pass. But humanity is still unwilling to recognize that what is happening in Russia—and will continue to happen throughout the world—is the result of what is taught at our universities and instilled in our schools. It is taught; it is instilled—in one place, people lack the courage to draw the necessary conclusions; in another, they take it to its extreme consequences. It will not be possible to stop the rolling wheel unless we press for clarity precisely in this area, unless we truly recognize cause and effect here, unless we realize that human beings are placed within a reality in which they will be unable to function if they grasp it merely intellectually. Intellectualism, as an instrument, has no power to intervene in reality.

[ 38 ] I once knew a poet who, decades ago, had already formed the most bitter mental images about what must become of a person if he is driven ever deeper into intellectualism. In the region where this poet lived, people have a rather drastic mental image of intelligent, intellectual types. There, they are called “großkopfet”—which means people think they have large heads, in the sense of being intellectually gifted. This poet translated that into a rather drastic image. He said: Human evolution is proceeding in an intellectualistic direction; this must lead to people eventually developing ever larger and larger heads, with the rest of their physical form attached to them only as rudimentary organs—rudimentary arms, tiny little hands, rudimentary legs, tiny little feet—and then people will roll along like that. We will be dealing with large spheres, on which the attachments for legs and arms will be nothing more than rudimentary organs. — This poet adopted a rather pessimistic outlook regarding what humanity is bound to become if it continues down the path of intellectualism to the point of rolling along like this.

[ 39 ] One could say that what appears to us as intellectualism distances people from themselves; it effectively removes people from reality. Consequently, the only reality left for them is what the proletarian recognizes as such—that which cannot be denied, because either one encounters it and, according to our educational system (even if it claims to be reformist), bears the consequences in the causal chain and ends up bruised, or one becomes hungry—again, one bears the consequences in the causal chain. That is when one sees, senses, and perceives reality precisely. But one no longer penetrates into this reality.

[ 40 ] And, strangely enough, the human being becomes ever more robust within himself as he distances himself further and further from reality. He becomes—even if only figuratively speaking, it is nonetheless true—that rolling sphere. We will have to recognize how universities and schools are fostering precisely what we recoil from when it confronts us as the reality of life, as the practice of life—as is already very much the case today. People criticize what confronts them, but they do not realize that they themselves have sown the seeds of it. Westerners look toward Russia and find it appalling. They do not realize that their teachers in the West were the ones who first planted the seeds of it.

[ 41 ] Intellectualism, I said, is not a tool with which one can grasp reality. In education, one must engage with the reality of the human being. If intellectualism is not a tool with which one can engage with reality, then the big question arises: Can we even achieve anything in education through an intellectualist approach?

[ 42 ] This major question lies before us at the outset of our lecture series. We must resort to means other than those provided by intellectualism. And the best way to do this is to once again view the individual field within the broader context of life.

[ 43 ] In what way, then, is humanity today particularly great, and what delights it most? Well, it is delighted by conferences in public life. Not by quietly familiarizing itself with the essence of a matter, but by attending conferences and discussing things there. For, ultimately, intellectualism is an integral part of discussion. People do not delve into the essence. They already have the essence and discuss it. They come together and discuss all sorts of things. The convention of the conference—which must discuss—is what follows from intellectualism, and what, on the other hand, leads to a lack of connection with the real world. And so one can already get the feeling that, fundamentally, all our conferences hover above reality as something illusory. Down there in real life, all sorts of things are happening, and at conferences people talk about them nicely—and wittily, too. I’m not criticizing conferences in a derogatory sense at all. I find that at these conferences, a great deal that is extraordinarily witty is said. It’s usually the case that one can agree with what Person A says and agree with what Person B says—even if they’re saying opposite things—because from a certain point of view, one can agree with both. The same goes for C. At conferences, you can actually always agree with everything from a certain point of view. Why? Because everything resonates with intellectualism, and intellectualism says nothing about reality. And so our reality today could actually unfold just as it does, even without conferences. One could certainly do without what is said at conferences, even while taking the most sincere, genuine joy in all the wit and ingenuity that is displayed there, for everything is, after all, good.

[ 44 ] Over the past fifty to sixty years, we have witnessed the most magnificent theoretical expositions in a wide variety of fields, and we have often been able to view life with an unbiased mind and see how that life has unfolded in the opposite direction. For example: when, some time ago, the question of the gold standard came to the fore in certain countries, truly wonderful things were said about the gold standard. One can only say that in chambers of commerce and in parliaments—and I am truly not being ironic; I mean this quite seriously—the most brilliant speeches were delivered on the beneficial consequences of the gold standard. In particular, extremely astute, intelligent people—as well as practitioners—argued that if the gold standard were to be adopted, free trade would inevitably follow; one is the logical consequence of the other. And lo and behold: in most countries where the gold standard was adopted, an intolerable system of tariff barriers—that is, the restriction of free trade—has emerged! That is what reality, what life itself, has shown. The wisdom that has grown out of intellectualism, however, has—in a sensible way, and without any irony—said the opposite. One must simply be clear that intellectualism grows out of life and makes people arrogant.

[ 45 ] This is precisely what leads us away from an understanding of the human being, what alienates us from the human being, and what therefore can never serve as the foundation for pedagogy and didactics. For the pedagogical and didactic relationship is, after all, a human relationship—the relationship of the teacher, the educator, to the child, to the student. Pedagogy and didactics must be derived from this human relationship. This can only happen through a genuine understanding of human nature, and anthroposophy aims to provide such a genuine understanding.