The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] A significant change takes place within a person when they begin to lose their baby teeth. Not only is this process of tooth replacement a physical event in human life, but the whole person undergoes a metamorphosis. Anyone who wishes to be a master of education and instruction must be able to address this metamorphosis with expertise. What I have referred to in the preceding remarks as the etheric body—the body of finer formative forces—becomes, with regard to certain of its functions, free in the period between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. Previously, it functioned in an organic-physical manner, but from this point on, it begins to function in a soul-related way. As a result, however, the physical aspect of the human being is also affected from within in a completely different way than before. Previously, the situation for human beings was such that, in a sense, the materialistic view was correct. This materialistic view sees the human being as a sum of material processes and regards the spiritual-soul aspect as something that arises from this physical-bodily aspect and is connected to it, like the flame from a candle. This is also roughly correct for the very young child up until the change of teeth. At that stage, everything spiritual and soul-related functions in such a way that it actually consists of physical-bodily processes, and all physical-bodily processes are at the same time spiritual and soul-related; in the child, the entire process of the plastic formation of the body is directed from the head. This process comes to an end when the eruption of the second set of teeth begins in the head. At that point, the forces in the head that were previously active must cease to be active to a marked degree; the soul-spiritual activity then shifts more toward the lower regions of the physical body and merges into the respiratory and cardiac rhythms. Prior to this, the forces—having been most active in the formative shaping of the brain—flow, as it were, down into the rest of the organism, where they exert a formative influence, intervening directly in the human being’s substantial, material nature. There they bring about metabolic processes.

[ 2 ] This changes with the loss of baby teeth. Certain forces become more spiritual and emotional, and they now intervene only in the movements that manifest in the heart and respiratory rhythms. They no longer act to the same extent on material processes as before, but rather, separated from the physical, they act upon the respiratory and circulatory systems. This can also be noticed physically, as the respiratory rhythm and the circulatory pulse become stronger at this age. At this age, the child has an inner urge, an inner drive, to experience what it gradually possesses as an independent spiritual-soul aspect—albeit unconsciously, instinctively, as rhythm and tempo—but as rhythm and tempo that initially play out within its own body. And the child has a longing for this unfolding of rhythm and tempo within its own organism. It is essential to bear in mind that everything introduced to the child after the change of teeth must be structured in such a rhythmic, tempo-based way that it integrates into what the child actually desires. As a teacher and educator, one must, so to speak, be able to live within a metered, rhythmic element so that this resonates with the child and the child feels at home in this element.

[ 3 ] But this also marks the beginning of something else. If the respiratory and circulatory rhythms are not properly addressed at this stage of life, they are, in a sense, disrupted for the rest of one’s life, and certain weak or pathological conditions found specifically in the organs governing respiration and circulation stem from improper upbringing during the school-age years. During this period, the child develops—through the distinctive influence of its etheric or formative body—in such a way that the limbs lengthen significantly; the life of the muscles and bones, the skeletal life, plays a special role during this time and seeks to adapt to the life of respiration and circulation. During this time, the child grows in such a way that the muscles resonate—in some cases to a particularly remarkable degree—with the rhythms of respiration and circulation, so that the child’s entire being seeks to take on a musical character. Whereas the child was previously engaged in plastic activity with its own body, it now begins to become a musician—an unconscious one who works inward. And this is precisely what is essential regarding the child entering school: that we recognize we are dealing with an unconscious musician within the child. And one must accommodate the impulse within the child that leads it to treat its own organism in the same way that a new violin behaves under the influence of a violinist—finding its way, through its own structure, into the peaks and troughs of the sound waves. Of course, in the case of human beings, this is all a matter of growth; a violin, at most, can be ruined once and for all; but in a human being, one can instill false principles of growth, which then continually expand and intensify and can have a ruinous effect throughout their entire life.

[ 4 ] Once one has embarked on this path of understanding human nature—one that is effective for pedagogy and didactics—one will find that this general character, which I have just described, extends throughout the school-age period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity; however, this stage of life is in turn divided into three distinct, individual periods. The first lasts from the change of teeth until around the age of nine, the second until around the age of twelve, and the third from around the age of thirteen until puberty.

[ 5 ] It is precisely through what the child experiences musically within that we can gain insight into how these three stages of a child’s life differ from one another. In the first stage of life, up to about the age of nine, the child wants to experience everything that comes its way through inner rhythms and inner meter that blend with its breathing and heartbeat—and thereby, indirectly, with the way its muscles and bones develop. And if this does not align—if, so to speak, one does not flow into the other—then the human being develops, not immediately visible on the outside, but nonetheless as a kind of inner cripple. Up until the age of nine, the child has a definite striving to live out everything rhythmically and in a metered way within. If the child—and this can certainly be recognized through an observant gaze that is attuned to the child’s inner psychological organization—if the child listens to music at this age, then it actually translates the entire musical experience into an inner sense of meter and rhythm. It resonates with it. It internally recreates what it perceives externally.

[ 6 ] At this age, the child is still, in a sense, something of what it was before. Before that, up until the change of teeth, the child was, in the fullest sense, essentially a sensory organ; not a sensory organ that acts consciously, but one that—like the other sensory organs, after all—unconsciously replicates the external world; as I have explained, the child is, up until the change of teeth, entirely an imitator. — If you consider the human eye and set aside what is taken into the life of the imagination through the human eye, the organization of the eye manifests itself, in the true sense, in the internal reproduction of the external environment. It is only then that the life of the imagination takes hold of these mental images. This is where the life of the imagination connects to the life of the senses. The very young child is, quite unconsciously, a sensory organ. It internally replicates what it perceives, particularly in the people around it. But these inner images are not mere images; they are also forces that organize the child internally in a material, plastic way.

[ 7 ] Now, when the teeth begin to fall out, these afterimages simply enter the motor system, the rhythmic system—they want to go only there. However, something does remain as a plastic formation, but it is joined by something else that was not present to the same degree before. There is a difference between the way the child relates to rhythm and meter before and after the change of teeth. Before, rhythm and meter also became something that the child imitates, but which is translated into plastic form. Afterward, it is transformed into an inner musical element.

[ 8 ] And once the child has reached about the age of nine, it begins—and continues until the age of twelve—to develop an understanding of rhythm and meter in and of themselves, and of melody in and of itself. It no longer feels such a strong need to internally replicate the rhythmic and metered elements; but perceives them as such—as structures that exist outside of itself. Before this, the child experiences rhythm and meter; afterward, it begins to develop an understanding and grasp of them. This process—not only with regard to music, but toward everything it encounters in the world—lasts until around the age of twelve.

[ 9 ] Around the age of twelve—or even a little earlier—the child begins to develop the ability to transform what was previously experienced only imaginatively—in terms of music, rhythm, and meter—into something purely intellectual.

[ 10 ] For everything that is perceived by the soul, one can also see, through the contemplative gaze, the corresponding external, physical manifestations. I mentioned earlier that the child seeks to model its muscles and bones after what is within it. Now, around the age of twelve, the child no longer merely wants to live in rhythm and tempo, but begins to channel this sense of rhythm and tempo into abstract thought—just as, during this period, the part of the muscle that extends into the tendon itself gradually becomes stronger and stronger. Before this, all movement is directed more toward the muscle as such; afterward, toward that which extends into the mere tendon. Everything that takes place in the soul-spiritual realm is reflected in the physical body. And this incorporation of tendon life—the connection between bone and muscle—is the outer, physical expression of the transition from the purely emotional, rhythmic, and metered elements into that which is now logical, which no longer has rhythm or meter. However, what one acquires through knowledge of the human being must be fully accommodated in the art of education and teaching.

[ 11 ] It is indeed true that at present, most adults—when they think of something in context, not in isolation but in context—just as you, as teachers, must present it to children in context—when they think of things like plants or animals, they recall what they themselves learned later in life as botany or zoology. Now, what is written in our botany or zoology textbooks is the very worst teaching material one could bring into a school. It may have great scientific value—though in most cases it does not—but it is not suitable for schools at this age level.

[ 12 ] We must certainly teach children everything about plants and animals in such a way that we actually act as artists in the process—that is, by placing far greater value on the harmonious structure of the plant kingdom and on the harmonious relationship between individual plant species, on that which is rhythmic, harmonious, and emotional, than on what is written in botany textbooks. Especially when it comes to plants, it is true that the systematics of plants—this classification of the plant world as it appears—is, in essence, the most repulsive thing to us; one can still feel the most sympathy for Zinne, who considers the plant world to be plants only up to the point where they cease to be plants and extend their forces into the general life of the world—who considers only the flower in the structure of the plant; but no form of plant taxonomy whatsoever can be used in school. We will see in later discussions what can be used there.

[ 13 ] In general, a teacher who, with a book in hand—which today usually contains nothing but a diluted version of academic knowledge—actually enters the classroom and, based on what he himself has learned in botany and zoology, teaches those subjects in elementary school is, under any circumstances, a terrible teacher. A terrible teacher is, after all, one who carries this very book with him, paces back and forth in front of the front desks, and only as he presents it to the child does he recall—by refreshing the mental images he absorbed at a much later age—the mental images he had absorbed at a much later age—and what he has there is, moreover, completely useless.

[ 14 ] It is absolutely necessary that we learn to speak about plants and animals in a way that corresponds to an artistic perspective. Only in this way can we instill a musical flow into the child’s entire being. This is precisely something we must take into account: that instruction must proceed from the artistic element, not from the intellectual element, nor from an abstract way of seeing, but from an element permeated by art and an artistic sense of life. This is what the child needs.

[ 15 ] If we get the child into school and are now tasked with ensuring that the child learns to write, for example, as quickly as possible, we might be tempted to teach the child the shapes of the letters—which, in today’s civilization, simply spring from people’s wrists when they want to record something for others—exactly as they are.

[ 16 ] Yes, but these letter forms are something to which the child, once it has begun losing its baby teeth and enters elementary school, has not the slightest human connection. When writing still had human connections, what was it like then? Just look back at earlier cultural periods: when writing still had human connections, the ancients would inscribe little pictures on tablets or parchment that still bore some resemblance to what they were looking at. There was a human connection between what one had to shape from the image and what existed in the surroundings. The development of human civilization has seen these forms—which still sprang from human nature—gradually evolve, through all manner of transitional forms, into what today is an A, a B, or an E, to which there is no longer any human connection at all.

[ 17 ] The child, whose inclinations in many respects reflect what earlier stages of culture have offered, requires a human connection to what is demanded of his will. We must not teach the child the abstract forms that letters, for example, have taken on. We must present the human aspect to the child in an artistic way precisely when the child is entrusted to us at school as the first teeth begin to fall out.

[ 18 ] If one wishes to introduce writing to the child in a human way, one must certainly start from what the child can experience as the connection between what is seen and what is seen as a result of the will—we call this writing. This is precisely what the child instinctively brings forth as a need to experience through the will. The child brings these artistic tendencies into school, and these artistic tendencies must be accommodated, for example, by letting a child—let’s say, to begin with—run around in this curve (see drawing). Then one evokes a sense of what is experienced inwardly while running around in this manner. One then proceeds to draw the child’s attention to the fact that it has traced this line on the floor. One can then guide the child to trace this line with their hand. Next, one has the child walk in such a way that they follow this path, and has them imitate this movement with their hand as well. What the whole body has formed in artistic education from the entire organism is now reproduced unilaterally with the hand. And then one guides the child to say words that begin with L. One guides the child so that what such a word beginning with “L” has as its initial sound is contained within what has been derived from drawing—not from the abstract imitation of our “L” shape—so that it is present there.

[ 19 ] In this way, one can move from what is experienced inwardly as movement to drawing letters. One can also do it differently. After all, the child is not only an inner musician during the period of tooth replacement; the child has also been a sculptor from an early age. Now one can do the following: One tries to give the child an image of a fish; then gradually, in an artistic manner, transition to a development of this form: and guide the child from the word “fish” to the letter “F,” by ear, bringing to life before their eyes this connection between the “F” and the image that has been formed from the fish. In a certain sense, one has even recreated the process by which, in the course of human development, the letter “F” emerged from the word “fish.”

[ 20 ] It is not always the case that we happen to capture, in this way, exactly what human development itself has gone through. We can certainly give free rein to our imagination; for what matters is not that the child repeat actual cultural history, but that—in the manner in which it once unfolded—the child now also moves from the artistic, the drawing-like and pictorial, into abstract written form. One draws the child’s attention to how water forms waves. One introduces the child to this image, leads them to the words “wave” and “surge,” to the letter “W,” and connects “wave,” “surge,” “it surges,” and “it ripples” with drawing. In this way, one draws from immediate life that which can initially exist as a drawing and leads it on to the forms of letters.

[ 21 ] Of course, this means the child won’t start writing as early as they otherwise would. — We’ve organized parent-teacher conferences at the Waldorf school where the children’s parents gather without the children, and there they discuss some of the things parents notice as a result of the Waldorf education. Then some parents come with their concerns and feel that their eight-year-old child still cannot write properly. We must then explain to the parents that this is a blessing for the child, because in this way the child weaves the entire art of writing more deeply into their very being—by entering into writing at the right age and in a more human way—rather than when something entirely foreign is introduced to the child, something that is the product of human civilization and certainly has no inner connection to the child unless that inner connection is first established. Of course, we must continue to educate children; but we must do so in a humane way.

[ 22 ] That is precisely what is generally neglected today: placing any one area of life within the totality of life. In our advanced civilization, everything has become specialized; we see how individual things are branching off into specializations. Certainly, for a time this had to lead people into various one-sided perspectives. But we have now reached a point in this drift toward specialization where we must, for the sake of humanity, reconnect these individual specializations with life as a whole.

[ 23 ] To this end, an understanding of human nature is necessary that does not exclude the findings of spiritual research. What is expressed within the anthroposophical movement in this regard is greatly misunderstood if one believes that it is a reactionary attack on some of the more recent achievements of our civilization. That is not the case. But on the other hand, the context of life as a whole must be taken into account. I certainly have no objection whatsoever to the fact that typewriters exist today. Typing is, of course, even more inhuman than writing by hand, but, as I said, I am not an agitator against typing; however, one must become acquainted with the activity that unfolds there, because everything that takes place in life unfolds in a polarized manner. And perhaps you will forgive me if I present something from the higher realm of anthroposophical insight specifically in relation to the typewriter, just to illustrate a point. Anyone who does not wish to accept this as something that is simply part of the reality of life may regard it as a kind of folly and reject it. But I am speaking entirely of a reality.

[ 24 ] You see, when one is familiar with observing mental processes—which, like physical ones, are always all around us—then typing on a typewriter makes a very special impression. I’m telling you from personal experience when I say: when I’ve spent a day typing—you see, I’m not arguing against typing; on the contrary, I’m happy when I get to type myself—when I’ve spent a day typing, it stays with me for a long time. Not that it’s anything that bothers me personally, but it stays with me for a long time. And when I finally find peace, such an activity transforms, through imaginative vision, into self-contemplation, and this self-contemplation presents itself inwardly before the person. One sees what is taking place inwardly quite clearly in the outer world. All of this must take place with full consciousness, and one must see how what appears in outer imagination is precisely the projection of what may have taken place much earlier inwardly as an organic activity. One can visualize what happens within a person particularly vividly when one finds it set before oneself in clairvoyant imagination: every press of a key becomes a flash of lightning in this objective viewing of the subjective. And what is presented as the human heart is continually pierced by these flashes of lightning. Now, on a typewriter, the keys are not arranged one next to the other according to a spiritual principle, but rather according to the pure principle of utility—the letters one needs most frequently are placed so that one can type quickly. All of this means that there isn’t exactly much that is spiritual going on inside. So that the movement of the finger from one key to the next not only makes the flashes appear as flashes, but also throws them into disarray. In short, it is a terrible thunderstorm in which typewriting becomes objectified.

[ 25 ] What does that mean? It means nothing other than that there is an explanation for why so many people in life—who lack the polar antidote to typewriting—go about with weak hearts, especially if they are introduced to the typewriter too early, when the heart is still highly vulnerable to damage. And we shall see, as typewriting becomes more widespread, how heart weakness and heart disease will increase more and more.

[ 26 ] These connections exist in life. One should not react in a reactionary manner against any cultural medium, but one should acquire an understanding of the needs and demands of life as a whole. One must recognize what one must do, on the other hand, when one turns to any cultural medium. Such matters are of particular importance to the practical educator, because he must situate education within life itself; after all, it is not merely a matter of what we do with the children within the school or in its immediate vicinity, but rather that the school—and indeed everything related to education—be properly situated within life; therefore, one must be a connoisseur of life if one wishes to be a master of education or teaching. — In Germany, for example, the first railroad was built between Fürth and Nuremberg in 1835. At that time, the question was put before the enlightened Bavarian Medical Board as to whether, from a medical standpoint, it was advisable or not to build railroads. At the outset of such civilizational endeavors, expert opinions are, of course, always sought. The Bavarian Medical Council—and this is documented—issued the following opinion: One should not, in fact, build railroads, because people’s nervous systems would suffer greatly when traveling by train. However, if railroads were to be built nonetheless, they should at least be surrounded on both sides by high wooden walls, because otherwise the farmers living along the tracks would easily suffer concussions.

[ 27 ] This is an expert opinion issued by a scholarly body. Naturally, people laugh at it, because so many such expert opinions from scholarly bodies have already been issued, and one could easily multiply this example many, many times over with examples of the same style. But every matter has two sides, and one could just as easily—in a more nuanced sense—not only refrain from simply dismissing this Bavarian Medical Board, whose report is not so far behind us—not even a century—but one could even agree with it from a certain perspective: namely, people have indeed become more nervous since they began traveling by railroad. And if we observe people and find a way to compare those who travel by railroad with those who still rode in the old, venerable, philistine stagecoach—they are of a different nature. Their nervous systems appear different! The Bavarian Medical Board may have made a fool of itself, but in a certain respect it was actually right.

[ 28 ] The point is certainly that, for certain phenomena that arise in civilization, antidotes must be found at the same time—so that, as human beings are weakened from the outside, they are made stronger from within. And this can only happen if we counter our increasingly specialized civilization with a self-contained art of education grounded in a true understanding of human nature.

[ 29 ] It can only be beneficial if the child first learns to write in the way I have described. For all of a child’s development stems from the will, and this drive toward the rhythmic and the metrical arises from the will; one must accommodate this impulse of the child’s will. One accommodates it first through activity, not through observation, not through a mental image. Therefore, it is wrong to teach a child to read first and then to write. Reading is already a transition from volitional activity to abstract observation. First teach writing in an artistic manner, and then move on—first to reading what has been written, and then gradually, as it must be, to reading printed text.

[ 30 ] As you can see, if one strives to gain a true understanding of human nature and can apply this understanding to a child’s development, one can also discern from that development the sequence of areas that one wishes to—or must—incorporate into the child’s education.

[ 31 ] Children are, in fact, naturally suited to arithmetic by the time they reach school age. The point, however, is that even when teaching arithmetic, one must respond to the inner needs of the child’s development. In this regard, the child is predisposed toward rhythm, tempo, and the intuitive grasp of harmony. This is not compatible with what I would call the “additive method,” in which the child is taught to perform arithmetic by counting.

[ 32 ] Of course, the child must learn to count, but the initial additive method of counting is not something that can be integrated with the child’s inner organizational forces. In the course of civilization, we have gradually come to approach working with numbers in a certain synthetic way. We have a unit, a second unit, a third unit, and as we count—using the additive element—we strive to add one to the other so that, as we count, one lies next to the other. However, as one will see, the child does not demonstrate an inner understanding of this approach. Nor, in this way, has the elementary human capacity for counting developed. Counting did indeed originate from the unit; but the number two was not an external repetition of the unit—rather, it lay within the unit. The one gives rise to the two, and the two are contained within the one. The one, when divided, gives rise to the three, and the three are contained within the one. If one were to begin writing in modern terms—one—one would not move beyond the unit by arriving at the two. Reaching the number two was an internally organic process, and the number two was contained within the unit; the same was true of the number three, and so on. The unit encompassed everything, and the numbers were organic divisions of the unit.

[ 33 ] The musical and rhythmic aspects of a child’s innate disposition also drive this perception, and so, rather than starting in a pedantic way with a sort of addition, one should begin by calling a child over. You don’t give the child three apples, four apples, and two apples and make the child learn to add them up; instead, you give the child a pile of apples—it can, of course, be something else if you don’t have apples—you give the child a pile of apples. That is what the child has to begin with. Now you call two other children over to the first one and tell the child: “Here you have a pile of apples; you are to give some to the first child, some to the second child, and then keep some for yourself, and each one should have as much as the others.” You help the child grasp this procedure, and through this you gradually lead them to understand the concept of a third of this pile of apples. You start with a whole and move toward the principle of division; you do not begin with addition. In this way, you truly reach the child’s level of understanding. In the Waldorf school, based on our understanding of human nature, we do not begin with addition, but rather with division or subtraction, and only then move on to addition or multiplication by retracing the natural process we went through with division or subtraction; just as the earlier divisional, numerical aspect was not a synthetic but an analytical process—a progression from the whole to the one.

[ 34 ] These are examples of how one can discern from a child’s development what one should actually be doing at a certain age. The respiratory and circulatory systems—that is, the entire rhythmic system of the human being—the middle human being is just as much the physical representative of feeling as the head is the representative of mental images and thought. This feeling, the emotional element, is particularly liberated in the child during the change of teeth. Consequently, the soul also takes on a quality that can be accessed only through the emotional realm. It is entirely possible to reach the child at this age indirectly through feeling shaped in an artistic manner. One can even express this quite radically by saying: The other people whom the child imitates in an intangible way—in their movements, in their speech, even in their feelings—before the change of teeth, are not yet perceived by the child in such a way that it can look upon their own being, upon their inner being. Up until the age of seven, the child does not actually perceive other people properly as other people at all, but rather as something to which it is connected, just as it is to its own arms or legs. It has not yet separated itself from the world.

[ 35 ] With the change of teeth and the development of the emotional system—which functions independently through respiration and circulation—the child separates itself from others, and thus perceives other people as beings with an inner life. And this requires the child to look up in shy reverence to the adult, who is tall, and to learn to orient its emotions toward that adult. The mere principle of imitation, which related to outward expressions, transforms into something else after the change of teeth; the principle of authority must develop purely out of the needs of human nature.

[ 36 ] You will not expect me—who wrote my *Philosophy of Freedom* as a young man in the early 1890s—to advocate, out of any particular sympathy, for general obedience to this authoritative figure during the period between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity. But it must be advocated because human nature at this stage of life demands that authority play a role.

[ 37 ] We can only learn to use our freedom properly later in life if we have come to know a sense of reverence and respect for authority between the time our baby teeth fall out and we reach sexual maturity. Here again is an area where one can clearly see how the educational system must be viewed and considered as something deeply embedded in social life in general. When we look back today at how proud humanity has been of its modern educational system, and how much it has been praised, we are sometimes struck by peculiar feelings. Over in Austria, where I have spent half my life, we often heard after 1866 that the Prussian schoolmaster had emerged victorious at that time. According to the views of the day, Austria was still lagging behind in its school system and did not enact its school legislation until later. The Prussian schoolmaster was praised as the one who had won the day back then. Since 1918, I have not heard the Prussian schoolmaster referred to from this perspective very often! But this is just one example of how the modern school system has been proudly extolled in a wide variety of fields.

[ 38 ] Well, today we are seeing some of the fruits of this: The chaotic social life, which threatens to become ever more chaotic, is chaotic above all because people have substituted the instinct for freedom for the will to freedom and the spirit of freedom, and have in fact forgotten how to make proper use of the value of “inner freedom.” Anyone who can observe life can certainly see a connection between the social chaos of the present and those educational principles which, while they may have satisfied intellectual and naturalistic needs to a high degree, will not set the fully developed human being on the right path. One must simply realize that life develops through polar opposites, and that a person can become truly free later in life by having learned—during the appropriate stage of childhood—to say to themselves: “This is true, because the respected teacher or educator has told me it is true.” —Or: “This is false, simply because he says so!” “This is beautiful!” That is ugly!”—whatever the teacher or educator designates as beautiful or ugly. “That is good, and that is evil!”—With the change of teeth, a person gains a new relationship to the world, but the world must first present itself to him in the form of the life of the soul—which he can now perceive as separate from himself—as the educational authority. The educator is the world for this stage of life. One must first come to know the world as the content of the educator’s life in order to arrive at the real, true exercise of freedom later in life. Therefore, we must say:

[ 39 ] From birth to the loss of baby teeth = the drive to imitate; from the loss of baby teeth to sexual maturity = the principle of authority; the natural authority, not the enforced kind—that authority brought about by the intangible factors that create the right rapport between the child and the educator.

[ 40 ] There are truly imponderables at work here. I would like to use an example to illustrate how imponderables operate. Let’s suppose we want to teach a child—which is much more difficult than one might think—a concept, a mental image of the immortality of the soul. At an age when the child is particularly receptive to the artistic aspects of education, we cannot present such things to the child using abstract concepts or mental images in a purely conceptual form. We must present it to the child in a pictorial way. And how, then, will an educator—one who has a certain penchant for intellectualism and naturalism—teach the child about immortality in a pictorial form? He will say to himself—if not entirely explicitly, then at least in his subconscious: “I am very clever, the child is very stupid; therefore, I will devise an image to teach the child the idea of immortality.” The chrysalis from which the butterfly emerges is a good image. The butterfly is hidden within the chrysalis. The soul is within the human body. The butterfly flies out. On the visible plane, this is what happens at death: the supersensible soul leaves the body and flutters out into the spiritual world. I can teach this by conceiving it as a very clever, intellectual person and then conveying it to the child. If I have this attitude, it will not make much of an impression on the child. The child will take in the image but then forget it again. It does not penetrate deeply enough into the child’s mind. But I can also use this image in a different way.

[ 41 ] I certainly cannot say: “I am particularly smart, and the child is particularly stupid.” — As we have seen in the course of our discussion, the child is smart in a different area, and the teacher is stupid. I can visualize this in some way and believe in this image myself. And a spiritual worldview teaches me to believe in this image myself, to tell myself: what, on a higher level, is the process of the soul’s departure from the organism is, on a lower level, the same thing—only simpler and perceptible to the senses. What actually happens with the doll and the butterfly is not something I have invented; it is embedded in creation by primordial wisdom, and I can also see in nature—in the butterfly’s flight—an image of what happens on a higher level: the soul’s departure from the body. This is when I come to believe fervently in my own image, to regard it as true. Then something—which I must certainly count among the imponderables of the soul—begins to influence the child. If I impart to the child the warmth and depth of this personal belief in my own image, then it remains; then it takes shape within the whole person. One can view the workings of natural authority in this way. Then this authority—this guidance toward obedience, toward the most inner obedience—will be understood precisely in its healing and beneficial effect and will not be challenged on the basis of a false principle of freedom.

[ 42 ] And so everything points to the fact that the teacher—the artist who educates—must approach the child precisely as a true master of life, for after the child loses its baby teeth, it comes to the teacher as an artist of the inner world, both in the visual and musical senses.

[ 43 ] These abilities develop in a special way in certain individuals who go on to become geniuses or virtuosos. They remain. But deep down, unconsciously, the child is a great sculptor. The child brings this with them from the stage of life before the teeth change, and then the inner musical activity interweaves with the inner sculptural activity, and we ourselves, as teachers and educators, must respond in a lively way to this inner artistic-sculptural and artistic-musical creativity.

[ 44 ] Only by proceeding in this way will we be able to prevent people from becoming inwardly stunted, but rather to develop them in every respect toward a certain perfection that lies within their innate potential.