The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] It is precisely when one must approach a very young child in the role of an educational guide—whether through parenthood or some other relationship—that one feels, to an extraordinarily strong degree, an obligation to be able to respond with understanding to the entire course of human life. It has therefore always been a source of particular sorrow to me that, for the Stuttgart Waldorf School, we can only accept children who have already reached the age considered compulsory for schooling in Central Europe.

[ 2 ] It would give me deep satisfaction if even the younger child could be admitted to the Free Waldorf School. But aside from other difficulties, the main obstacle to establishing a kind of preschool is that we suffer from an extraordinarily severe shortage of funds in all areas of our anthroposophical movement, and this severe shortage of funds allows us, at best, to hope that, if the Waldorf School is not viewed too hostilely in the future, we might also be able to admit younger children to this Waldorf School.

[ 3 ] The young child is, after all, the person who is initially the least receptive to the outside world—including what we, as outsiders, attempt to offer the child. And especially in the very earliest stages of life, the child, so to speak, still completely closes the gates of its inner life to the outside world—namely, because of what it develops in those very first years of life in opposition to everything that outside individuals intend to do to the child. In the very earliest period of life, a human being—and this can be said without any reservation—simply does whatever it wants. If adults are honest with themselves, they must recognize that they are, to a high degree, powerless in the face of what the child wants, particularly with regard to everything the child will become later in life, and sometimes even in the very final stages of human existence.

[ 4 ] You may know that, long before I began publishing anthroposophical literature in the strict sense, I published my *Philosophy of Freedom* in the early 1890s. This *Philosophy of Freedom* is intended to be a genuine exploration of precisely that aspect of human life—including in social relationships—which develops within the human being into the impulse of freedom, into the impulse of the whole, the full human personality.

[ 5 ] It is precisely when one starts from such premises that one’s attention is truly drawn to how one actually relates to the very young child—in such a way that one must raise the question of freedom on the one hand, and the question of destiny on the other. One can certainly say that when one looks deeply into the human heart, it becomes clear that the greatest part of a person’s earthly happiness, their sense of human worth, and their sense of human dignity depend on the consciousness of freedom that a person can hold within their own heart. And anthroposophical insight shows us, after all, that the purpose of earthly life consists precisely in the fact that the various qualities a human being develops—even while building themselves up in the spiritual-soul world before birth or before conception, and which he in turn relives after death—that it is precisely during his earthly life, and only during this time, that a human being lives out the impulse toward freedom through the use of his physicality, through immersion in his physicality. A human being can become a free being only on Earth, and into other worlds a human being can carry with him only as much freedom as he acquires on Earth. If one approaches the very young child with this feeling—and feelings are, after all, the most important forces for the educator and teacher—if one approaches the very young child with this feeling, then one naturally asks: How should one behave so that the very young child may one day come to fully possess a consciousness of freedom? - And on the other hand, simply through our external lives—if we are open-minded enough—we will easily come to recognize what anthroposophical insight then elevates to full certainty: that despite their freedom, human beings have a destiny—that which is known by the Eastern term “karma.”

[ 6 ] Let us suppose, with regard to later life, that a person encounters a personality whom they had never known before, who then profoundly influences their destiny, and with whom they may even form a special life partnership. At first, it seems as though the coincidences of life had led them to this personality. But if one then looks back on one’s life—even without any knowledge of anthroposophical Spiritual Science—one will, strangely enough, find that one had previously taken all sorts of steps that harmonize with what now seems to have come about entirely by chance. In retrospect, it actually appears as though one had deliberately sought out the path to this person. And Goethe’s old friend Knebel, looking back on his life in his later years, remarked from the depths of his soul: “When one looks back on one’s life in later years, everything actually seems to be guided by a plan. It all fits together.” — And since our will is woven into our individual actions, one can actually see everywhere how life approaches us as a matter of destiny. One could cite many other figures besides Knebel who have arrived at such a conviction through purely external observations of life. One will then see that these external perspectives on life also appear to fully confirm even such distant truths as the truth of karma. But precisely when one starts from this point of view, as the educator and guide of a very young child, one must ask oneself the question: Are you the one—and especially if you run a children’s home, this question will arise in your soul, for you would then have to be that person for all the different children brought to you—are you the one whom fate has chosen for such an important role, for such a vital relationship as that of the educational guide? — And one is faced with the dilemma: What can one do to efface oneself as much as possible, so that our personal influence has as little impact on the child as possible, so that we do not spoil the child’s destiny, but rather raise them to become a free person in life?

[ 7 ] Just how deeply a person can intervene in the human being—especially in the case of a very young child—becomes clear when we first consider the unique nature of the first major phase of human life, which extends from birth—if we set aside embryonic life for now, which we will discuss later—until the change of teeth, around the age of seven. The change of teeth marks a profound turning point in the entire course of human life. And anyone capable of observing this fully will see that, after the age of seven, a certain configuration of thinking, feeling, and willing emerges in the child that was simply not present before. We have become accustomed, in our external observation of the material world, to applying certain mental images—which we have developed in a spiritual manner—to human life in our practical living as well. When we observe certain material processes that, at a specific point, generate externally perceptible heat—heat that was not previously perceptible and that is not supplied from outside—we say: this heat was previously latent in the material and has now become free heat. We have, after all, become quite accustomed to speaking of such things when observing external material processes. — Just as a material process can release heat that was previously latent, so too, around the age of seven, forces are released in the child’s thinking, feeling, and willing that were previously contained within the child’s organism and were not previously active as separate soul forces. After the age of seven, they are now active as separate soul forces. Previously, they were active organically; they were connected to the processes of growth and nutrition. They have become free from these processes; they have become psychological forces.

[ 8 ] Today, an abstract science always examines the relationship between body and soul, forms an abstract concept of the soul and the body, and then speaks of the body’s influence on the soul, the soul’s influence on the body, psychophysical parallelism, and all those lovely terms; then it speculates about how the soul affects the body. In this field, one does not observe; one speculates; one philosophizes. But one can philosophize in this direction for a long time without achieving anything at all; for if one wishes to penetrate the realm of the human being, one must observe in precisely the same way as one would observe in the external natural world. And for life from birth up to about the seventh year, when it comes to the interplay of the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily, the situation is such that the forces are imperceptibly present within the organism; these forces later emerge as soul forces, from the seventh year onward, in relation to and in interaction with the outside world.

[ 9 ] If, then, one wishes to answer the question: What does the soul look like during childhood up to the age of seven? — one should examine the soul’s development from the age of seven onward. There, one can observe as a soul phenomenon what was previously embedded within the organism and was organically active. But when one considers this, one will realize that this particular inner, organic activity of the child plays a very special role in the plastic formation of the brain and in the development of the rest of the organism. The child carries into its physical organism that which it has brought down from spiritual-soul worlds through birth or conception. It is engaged in this organization. It does as it pleases within this process of organization, still keeping the gates closed to the outside world. And we must not intrude imprudently into what the child is accomplishing there—namely, that it does as it pleases and is, in particular, not accessible to the will of the outside world.

[ 10 ] And if we consider, once again, that everything we do in the child’s presence makes an impression on the child—and does indeed make an impression; we will describe this in greater detail—and reflect on the fact that what later becomes a matter of the soul still has an organic effect on the child—that is, when the child takes in any kind of mental image, this mental image, in its own specific way, affects the lungs, stomach, liver, and on all manner of things—then we will see that, based on the impressions the child receives from us—because its soul has not yet become free from the organism but rather cooperates in its organization—we therefore determine a child’s entire predisposition to health or illness through our own behavior at this stage of life.

[ 11 ] You might say that this is generally a discussion of educational principles. But these educational principles, precisely when applied correctly in practice, are what is truly practical. For what matters most in education are the feelings we have about the nature of the human being as we stand alongside that person. And when, through an understanding of human nature, we stand alongside the developing human being in the right way, then we are skilled educators. Indeed, one might even assert this paradox: the individual may do as he pleases in specific situations—each person will arrange things according to what he himself has learned in life as an educator—and the individual may organize matters as he sees fit; yet if he brings with him what has settled in his heart through a true understanding of human nature, he will be able to do the right thing in one way or another. — When I, as the spiritual director of the Waldorf School, enter our parallel classes—we already have parallel classes due to the large number of students at the Waldorf School—when I then enter the individual classes and see how one teacher handles the exact same material in one way, and another teacher handles the same material in a completely different way, it would never occur to me to say: certain tasks simply must be carried out in a specific way. Rather, what appears to be completely opposite can certainly be absolutely correct in its own way. Indeed, if one teacher were to imitate the other, that could actually be the wrong approach. That is precisely why the Waldorf School bears the name “Free School” not merely as a superficial label, but because of the innermost, freest constitution of its entire being.

[ 12 ] In the preceding days, I have pointed out that a supersensible view of the human being leads us to recognize, in addition to the physical body, a finer body, which we have called the etheric body, or the body of formative forces. This body of formative forces—which, on the one hand, contains the forces for growth and nutrition, but also for memory, recollection, and the formation of images—is actually born from the entire human being in a manner similar to how the human physical body is born from the mother when the human being first enters physical existence, only this occurs at the time of the change of teeth. This means that the specific, outwardly active forces of this body of formative forces—this etheric body—will, up until the change of teeth, be found primarily in their organic effects; afterward, they will remain active there only to a large extent; but one sphere will be taken from them and will act in mental images, in memories, and in the other nuances of the soul that the child develops with the change of teeth.

[ 13 ] A child only gets its second set of teeth once; it never gets a third set. The forces within the organism that drive the second set of teeth through may be present before those teeth appear; afterward, they are no longer needed by the organism. Once the permanent teeth have erupted, the activity of the etheric body that brings about precisely this process—the eruption of the permanent teeth—is no longer necessary in the organism. Then it emerges freely. But this culmination of the process of getting permanent teeth merely expresses very clearly what is otherwise at work as forces within the organism. A whole host of such forces becomes spiritually and mentally free at the end of this first stage of life. One can divide the entire course of human life into such stages, and the first, approximately, extends up to the age of seven. But each such stage of life is in turn divided into three clearly distinguishable parts. And when we observe this gradual liberation of certain forces of the etheric body from birth until about the age of seven, we can see how, approximately two and a half years after birth, this etheric body becomes free for the head; how it then becomes free for the chest from about the age of two and a half until around the age of five; and finally, how it becomes free for the metabolic-limb human being until the change of teeth. Thus, we must distinguish three stages in this liberation of certain forces of the formative body. It is therefore true that one can clearly observe: the formative body, which still appears to be entirely within the human head, resists the external will of the educators.

[ 14 ] Now, this is precisely the stage of life when we learn what is most important—that is, what we learn entirely through inner work, drawing on what we have brought with us from our pre-existing life. Consider that in the first two and a half years, we learn to speak and to walk—that is, the very things most intimately connected with a person’s self-assertion, both individually and in social life. We acquire these most important skills while the forces of the etheric body are still working on the brain and radiating into the rest of the organism. If these forces radiate too strongly into the rest of the organism—so that they disrupt the still-delicate metabolic processes, or the still-delicate respiratory and circulatory functions—if, in other words, they surge too strongly down into the child’s organism, then scarlet fever and similar childhood illnesses often occur even at a young age. What is at work here is, in essence, inaccessible to conscious, voluntary influences from the outside; it closes the gates. The child wants to work on itself from within.

[ 15 ] And this is of particular importance for a child during these first two and a half years of life: that the child is not susceptible to the will of others, but that they possess a subtle, instinctive faculty of perception for everything that is happening in their surroundings—especially for what is going on within the people—including, to a very special degree, their educators—with whom they share a certain emotional rapport. It is not that their outward vision is already particularly keen—that is not the case; it is not the act of seeing per se that matters, but rather an overall perception of the most intimate kind that is attuned to what is happening in the external world around the child—and which does not occur with the intention of specifically influencing the child. The child instinctively resists anything that consciously seeks to influence it, especially during the first two and a half years of life.

[ 16 ] It follows, however, that we must take into account this receptivity, which has still completely submerged perception within feeling. One can perhaps gain a clear understanding of what this receptivity means by looking at the next lower form of life—the animal. For the animal possesses this receptivity in a very special way. This does not contradict what I said about senility. One must simply rely on observation here. The animal possesses this receptivity to its surroundings to a very special degree. I do not know whether you in England and in the other European countries have heard anything about the sensation that once arose, a few years before the war, concerning the so-called calculating horses: in Berlin, the well-known horse of Mr. von Osten, and in Elberfeld, the calculating horses. Well, I can’t say anything about the calculating horses in Elberfeld, but I got to know Mr. von Osten’s horse in Berlin quite well, which is why I’m familiar with the relationship that existed between Mr. von Osten—the trainer—and this horse. The horse stamped its hooves quite obediently: three times three is nine—a rather respectable feat of calculation for a horse, after all.

[ 17 ] All sorts of theories have been put forward as to why this horse actually reacts to Mr. von Osten’s questions in this way. Among others, there was a private lecturer. These are intelligent people. He even wrote a book about Mr. von Osten’s horse, and he said: Of course, the horse can’t do math, but when Mr. von Osten says, “three times three,” the horse always makes very subtle movements in response. It has a certain facial expression. And when he then says, “nine,” the facial expression is such that the horse simply stamps its foot. The horse can observe this facial expression. — It was a very scholarly treatise that this private lecturer wrote. He then said: “Yes, I myself—that is, the private lecturer—was unable to observe this facial expression; so I cannot confirm that it is actually there, but it must be there, and the horse was able to observe it.” - As for me—and I can’t help it—this book only showed that proof was to be provided that this private lecturer considers the horse to be more capable of observation than himself, that is, that a horse can do what, after all, a private lecturer—by his own admission—cannot. But now, for me, the most important aspect of the entire procedure lay in the relationship between Mr. von Osten and the horse—that Mr. von Osten, who had large pockets, continually gave the horse sweets while he was in rapport with it, so that there was a constant exchange of feelings: the horse’s gratitude for the sweets. There was an intimate relationship between this horse and Mr. von Osten; everything that took place there was steeped in love. Thus, the entire relationship with this guide was transformed into an emotional experience. For in the nature of animals, this creates a receptivity—not so much to mysterious expressions, but to thoughts, to the inner life of the soul—to a very high degree. And all the mental processes taking place within Mr. von Osten were transmitted, indirectly through the sweets, as a very distinct suggestion to the horse. — The phenomenon is no less interesting for being what it is. It teaches us a great deal about the relationships between beings. But it cannot be explained in a rationalistic way through the observation of facial expressions—expressions that a horse, though, can observe, whereas a private lecturer cannot, and which he can only assume hypothetically.

[ 18 ] And so, in a similar way, during the first two and a half years of life, if the caregiver behaves correctly, the child enters into a kind of emotional rapport with that caregiver, and the child becomes, to the very highest degree, a mimic, an imitator. Our task, then, is not to try to teach the child all sorts of things through our own will, but rather—in a somewhat less comfortable way—to be present in its vicinity so that the child can imitate what is being done; for the child is receptive to everything we do and how we move. The child either imitates all of this—perhaps only later—but develops within itself the tendency to imitate and, through its organic-psychic forces, imprints this tendency onto its physical being. And the child is also receptive to our feelings and our thoughts. So that education during these first two and a half years of life can consist solely of our educating ourselves to such an extent that, in the child’s presence, we think, feel, and will what the child can observe. This sometimes persists into later years, because imitation essentially continues until the child’s teeth begin to fall out. When one is truly immersed in practical life, one experiences quite a few things of this nature.

[ 19 ] For example, a couple of parents once came to me looking completely distraught and said, “Our child was always such a good kid, but now he’s stolen something!” — Well, did he really steal it? Well, it did steal, after all, because it simply took money out of the cabinet where its mother always keeps her money, bought candy, and didn’t even always keep it for itself—it even shared it with other children. I said, “The child didn’t steal at all. There’s absolutely no question that the child stole! The child saw every day how the mother went to that cabinet and took money out of it; there is no mental image of stealing in the child at all. But the child is an imitator, and does exactly what the mother does. So the child also goes to the cabinet and buys something. This has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of stealing or not stealing. And if one wants to prevent the child from doing this, one simply has to behave differently in the child’s presence.

[ 20 ] It all boils down to the fact that, especially during the first two and a half years of life, the child becomes just like we are in its environment. And this means that, for example, as the child learns to speak, we must not impose anything on it linguistically—and above all, we must not try to force it through our own will to say this or that; rather, we must speak in its presence just as naturally as we can, so that it has the opportunity to hear us, and we must only ensure that it is morally ready for it. The child absorbs this and guides itself along this path.

[ 21 ] And if you look more closely, a child never learns to walk by us making all kinds of attempts to get them to stand and so on. That has its place in later gymnastics lessons. When it comes to learning to walk, if we start something like standing and walking exercises much too early—with that kind of stumbling—we can very easily ruin the child’s nervous development for the rest of their life. We let the child observe that the adult is standing upright. As an imitator, the child will move itself into this position at the right time. We must simply regard human beings, at the very beginning of their lives, as imitative beings and structure their upbringing accordingly.

[ 22 ] Certainly, this gives rise to some inconveniences, and you will object: after all, there are children who are simply impossible to deal with—who scream in your ears all day long so loudly that your eardrums seem about to burst, or who exhibit various so-called misbehaviors of a different nature. Now, certainly, the external realities of life mean that one must also take external measures to prevent the child from causing harm precisely through his or her misbehavior. But strictly speaking, this is not really part of education. It is certainly unpleasant when a child shouts in our ears all day long, but if, despite this, we nevertheless behave in their presence as I have just described, then our behavior is absorbed into their deeper spiritual and soul forces—which are still related to their organic forces—and this will later find expression. What is contained in their screaming or in something else reveals itself to the impartial observer as a consequence of their constitution. This stems from something that passes with childhood—not the intense forces of screaming themselves, but the tendency to express precisely these forces through screaming. For it is true that what, for example, manifests as roaring forces in childhood possesses a certain intensity. If we raise the child to be a moral being through what we ourselves are, then these roaring forces of early childhood later manifest as intense moral forces. The person they become later in life possesses a strong moral intensity that found its outlet in childhood as intense roaring. If, however, we behave immorally in their presence—even if only in thought—then these very forces of roaring will later manifest as immoral intensity.

[ 23 ] But what really matters will become clear enough after this discussion. And that is the essential point: that we, for example, do not allow ourselves to be led astray by a false instinct—it is not even really an instinct, but rather something instilled by certain prejudices—as uneducated, if I may put it that way, nannies and nannies do—pretending to the child what it actually shouldn’t imitate at all—that we try to be quite childish ourselves and, in its presence, speak in a way that is as childlike as possible. The child already does this interpretation on its own, to the best of its ability. We do the child a disservice when, for example, we deliberately adapt our language; for the child wants to imitate the person who is near them and with whom they have a certain rapport in terms of what that person does by nature. But deep down, the child inwardly rejects everything that is imposed by the educator’s will, such as the childish, naive language we adopt in their presence. The child is forced to put up with this language but harbors a deep inner aversion to it, which, in essence, leads to, for example, poor digestion that affects the child’s entire later life. Thus, many cases of what may be diagnosed in later life as poor digestion can be correctly traced to their root causes by learning that this person had, as a very young child, a nanny who acted too childishly.

[ 24 ] These are the kinds of principles that are necessary for the first third of the first major stage of life—the first two and a half years of a child’s life.

[ 25 ] When the child has reached about two and a half years of age, the organization of the head has developed to such an extent that the part of the body of formative forces—the etheric body—which is responsible for the shaping of the head during the first years of childhood, becomes free. And this liberation is then accompanied by a further process of liberation that gradually takes place in relation to the etheric body of the chest, continuing until around the age of five. Breathing and blood circulation are then, to a certain extent, liberated from the etheric forces still present within them. And so, in the child who has by then learned to speak and to walk, what has been liberated from the head organism as soul-spiritual forces comes together and resonates with what is gradually being liberated in the chest organism. And this manifests as the specific development of this lively childlike memory, which one can indeed observe developing between the age of two and a half and around the fifth year, and which is particularly active in what I have just described to you as the development of the unique childlike imagination.

[ 26 ] This mutual interaction—on the one hand, the memory that is taking shape in the soul, and the imagination that is taking shape in the soul—must be given special consideration by the educator during this stage of life. After all, the child always remains an imitative being. And especially with regard to the developing memory—the ability to recall—one must be clear that the child must, in turn, be left to its own devices as much as possible; it is not advisable to teach the child anything during this stage of life with the expectation that it will remember it. The child should take things in through a completely free engagement with what it wishes to retain, with what it wishes to remember. Under no circumstances should one engage in any activities with a child of this age that resemble memory exercises! Anyone who imposes anything on a child between the ages of two and five in the name of memory training fails to take into account what can be observed when one considers the entire course of human life.

[ 27 ] You may meet some people who, once they’ve reached the age of forty or even later, tell you they suffer from joint pain and rheumatism. Now, of course, this can stem from all sorts of causes; but there are certainly cases in which, if one investigates deeply enough, one comes to the conclusion that the rheumatism and joint pain stem from an overloading of the children’s minds with memorization material during their early childhood. Yes, the interrelationships of life are indeed quite complex, and only those who are willing to engage with and understand these interrelationships can develop within themselves the true love necessary for the education and, indeed, the entire upbringing of the developing human being—a love that is, after all, the only true means of education.

[ 28 ] But one must certainly accommodate a child’s imagination, for it seeks to express itself through external means—namely, through toys and other forms of play with other children. Everything the child seeks to accomplish through play represents the expression of this particular form of imagination between the ages of two and a half and five. Anyone with a keen eye for such things can already foresee much about a child’s future mental disposition, character, and so on, based on the particular inclinations the child develops through play; the extent to which a person may excel in one direction or another can be discerned from the way the child plays. The point, however, is to truly gain an understanding of what one should actually offer to a child’s imagination. Different eras already do this according to their own particular understanding.

[ 29 ] I don’t know if it’s the same in the West, but at one point in Central Europe there was a veritable epidemic of giving all children construction sets as gifts, especially around Christmas. They had to assemble some kind of architectural monstrosity out of individual cube-shaped or parallelepiped-shaped pieces. This is something that has a profound effect on children, particularly on the development of their imagination during these years, because it fosters an atomistic-materialistic mindset, it develops the ability to assemble a whole from individual pieces, whereas one actually accommodates real life by not promoting the intellectual capacity—the ability to assemble, the ability to build from atoms—during this period, but rather the inwardly alive, active childhood imagination that has just detached itself from what is such an active, inwardly alive process: the plastic development of the brain. One must therefore try as little as possible to force this imagination into rigid, predefined contours.

[ 30 ] Let’s assume there are two teachers who are in charge of children aged two and a half to five. One of them, who is very fond of the child, gives the child—if it happens to be a girl—a doll, a “beautiful doll,” possibly not only with painted cheeks or hair, but also with movable eyes and a movable head; I believe some dolls can even talk. So she gives this to the child. The child, whose imagination craves movement, has nothing left to create. All of that imagination is harnessed into a pair of Spanish boots—and on top of that, a grotesque, lifelike monstrosity. The other teacher, who is perhaps a bit more sensible, takes an old cloth that can no longer be used for anything else, ties a string around the top to form something like a head, and perhaps lets the child draw two black dots—or even more—on it to represent the eyes, nose, and mouth, and the child experiences—because this stimulates their imagination, because they can still do something with it, because it does not confine their imagination to specific forms or contours—a much livelier experience, one far more intimate even than with the so-called “beautiful” doll. Toys should, if possible, allow the imagination free rein. And since reason and intellect are not imagination, putting all sorts of things together is not exactly what suits the particular nature of a child’s imagination at this age.

[ 31 ] Whatever evokes a sense of inner vitality is always better. A picture book, for example, that has cut-out figures—not exactly hideous, but tastefully painted—which can be pulled by strings at the bottom so that these figures perform entire scenes, cuddling and fighting, and through which the child can create entire dramas for itself based on what it sees—that is an exceptionally good toy for a child. And in a similar vein, free play in the natural interaction with other children should not be overly regimented, but should accommodate the child’s free imagination as much as possible. This, as you can see, stems from a genuine understanding of human nature, and one acquires what is necessary for practical life when one is deeply engaged in genuine education and instruction.

[ 32 ] As the child approaches the age of five, the part of the etheric body responsible for supplying the respiratory system and blood circulation has become free. And gradually, up until the change of teeth, that part of the formative-force body which can be released from the metabolic-limb organism begins to break free. At that point, the spiritual-soul forces that actually do not fully emerge until after the seventh year—and which we will therefore discuss in detail later—gradually begin to become active. But they are already beginning to shine into this final, third phase of the first great epoch of life. Through the very spiritual and soul forces that are now being released from within, the child becomes receptive to admonitions, to what comes from authority, to what one must believe. Before this, the child does not believe; it has no sense of what ought to be done, but only of imitation.

[ 33 ] It is not until around the age of five that one can begin to introduce the concept of “duty” to the child. If we therefore bear in mind that, throughout this entire major stage of life up to the time of tooth replacement, the child is an imitative being who gradually develops a subtle use of imagination and memory, a moral faith, and a sense of authority toward adults—particularly the educator with whom the child has a rapport— then, based on this understanding—which we can gain through such insight—we will educate them in the right way, and certainly not yet teach them at this age. It is always a great source of pain to me that the age of six is already established as the age of compulsory schooling. They should actually not be sent to school until the age of seven. I have always been particularly pleased—you may, if you wish, interpret this as barbaric—when, in anthroposophical families, children at the age of eight have truly not yet learned to write or read; for whatever can be mastered later, in accordance with their existing capacities, without damaging their physical constitution, should not be forced upon them at an earlier age.

[ 34 ] In the coming days—starting tomorrow—I would like to talk about how we try to treat the children when they come to our Waldorf school in a way that does not harm them. As a sort of introduction, I will begin by creating a mental image of the setting of the Waldorf school—in words, of course.