The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to conclude the discussions on pedagogy and didactics based on anthroposophy—or, more precisely, on the anthroposophical understanding of human nature—by presenting a few aphorisms on moral and religious education, which, after all, belong together, particularly within the school and the field of education in general. Nowhere, however, is one more compelled—especially when speaking about this field—to emphasize, precisely out of a genuine understanding of the human being, the unified spirit that must permeate the entire educational system. Yesterday I spoke about physical education; today I speak about a field of education that, in the most eminent sense and arising from the spirit of our civilization, must be called the spiritual realm. I would like to emphasize at the outset, however, that these two fields—which are still treated as quite separate in our present-day civilization—will flow intimately into one another within the pedagogy and didactics referred to here.

[ 2 ] It will, however, take some time for this intimate interflow to come about; but we are already striving for a small measure of this interflow by introducing eurythmy as a required subject in Waldorf schools, as a kind of spiritual and soul-based exercise. Eurythmy expresses everything it performs through the physical body; yet, down to the smallest detail in all that it performs, it is at the same time meaningfully permeated by the spiritual and soul, so that what takes place in eurythmy is truly analogous to what occurs in human spoken language: in spoken language, we make use of a physical organ, and everything that can be expressed in the physical world through this spoken language depends on this physical organ; yet at the same time, everything is permeated by the spirit and the soul.

[ 3 ] And just as one can view the spiritual aspect of language in such a way that—even when employing finer nuances—one immediately arrives at the moral and even the religious—for it is not without reason that the Gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word”—so one may say: Even if in a less conspicuous realm, even if to a much more instinctive degree, the interplay of spirit, soul, and body is incorporated into the educational system through the practice of eurythmy across all school grades. Thus, eurythmy is one of the elements—albeit one oriented toward the physical—that perhaps already demonstrates most clearly today how, even in a practical sense, work is being done toward this unification of the educational system that is meant here. Many other elements will have to support eurythmy in the future. There will have to be elements that, within eurythmy, work more deeply toward the spiritual-soul aspects in certain directions—elements of which humanity today cannot even begin to dream, but which lie along the path just indicated. This path exists. Even if the path is traversed as imperfectly as possible through what we can offer in eurythmy, all those one-sided tendencies to which materialistic currents in the field of gymnastics are currently exposed will one day be overcome by the eurythmic principle—even if not by today’s eurythmy, which is still in its infancy and in the process of development.

[ 4 ] One feels compelled—even if today it can only be done in aphoristic terms—to speak of the art of ethical and moral-religious education, one feels compelled, on the one hand, to appeal to what is universally human—that which, as such, is spread across the entire earth and knows no distinction between peoples and races. On the other hand, however, one also knows that it is virtually impossible, particularly in these areas that have so much to do with the inner life of human beings, to speak today from a universally human perspective in such a way that one could be fully understood by members of all nations. For one need only consider a single example to see how diverse people are across the globe in terms of their moral sensibilities and their religious worldviews, and one will immediately see how constrained one feels when attempting to speak about ethical and religious matters anywhere on earth, because this very realm—which is so closely connected to the innermost being of the human person—can only be properly understood when viewed through the lens of national culture and religious belief.

[ 5 ] With regard to everything I have already discussed, I was able to say something much more universal and human than I will be able to say to you today. The anthroposophical worldview exists, first and foremost, to build a wide variety of bridges across what divides people into nations, races, and so on. By its very nature, it feels compelled to speak in thoroughly international terms. And it therefore feels all the more keenly how difficult it is to speak about the most intimate realms of human life across the globe—precisely in the spirit of today’s global civilization—and that, after all, is the reality we are dealing with in the present. Therefore, I must ask you to understand what I am presenting today entirely from the perspective I have just outlined. For, as I said, one need only consider a single example to realize how diverse people are with regard to the characteristics described.

[ 6 ] I have already referred to Herbert Spencer once before in the course of these lectures; he is certainly—regardless of how one may view him today—a representative figure of the West, and I have also pointed out that Herbert Spencer advocates very specific educational goals. One of these is what he expresses, for example, in these words: The physical purpose of human existence on earth is to produce offspring. Therefore, his moral goal in the field of education is to be able to raise these offspring in the proper way and to train proper parents and educators. In this sense—which proceeds from a physical view of humanity and is directed toward a physical view of humanity—lies what Herbert Spencer advocates. He traces the development of humanity, of the human being, all the way to the production of offspring, and seeks precisely in this fact of producing offspring that which can also shed light on the actual goals of education.

[ 7 ] Let us now turn our attention to a figure from the East who lived somewhat later, but who is no less characteristic for that reason: Vladimir Soloviev. Vladimir Soloviev certainly expresses his views using Western terminology; yet his outlook on life is thoroughly imbued with what constitutes the expression of the Russian national soul. And so we see that it sounds quite different when the ethical-religious goal of humanity is shaped by Vladimir Soloviev from within the Eastern spirit. Vladimir Soloviev says: On the one hand, human beings must strive for perfection in truth, and on the other hand, they must become partakers of immortality. — He does not mean, for example, an earthly immortality through fame, but rather the true immortality of the soul, as every human being claims for themselves. And he says: Without the striving for perfection in truth—that is, without truly attaining knowledge—human life would be worthless. Only when one can continue to perfect oneself further and further does human life acquire value. But if human beings were not immortal, then all perfection—all capacity to strive for perfection—would be a great deception of the world; for then perfection would vanish, and human beings would be deceived out of that very thing which, by the very nature of the world, they ought to strive for as their most precious possession. — But that, Soloviev argues, would be the case if, within the earthly development of humanity, one were to regard merely the production of offspring as the ultimate goal. For then one would conceive of this development in such a way that people would proceed to the production of the next generation, that generation in turn to the production of the next, and so on. And one would end up with a monotonous cycle in terms of how the world is valued. In short, Soloviev rejects—as clearly and radically as possible, drawing on the Eastern spirit—the Western ideal of Herbert Spencer.

[ 8 ] Everything that initially divides humanity into two camps in the ethical-religious sphere is colored by this nuance of feeling. And if one wishes to gain any understanding at all of humanity on Earth with regard to its ethical and religious goals, one must, on the one hand, cultivate an open-minded attitude—not regarding any one ideal as inherently more valuable than another, but simply seeking to understand each one. On the other hand, however, one must also strive to understand each one. What can be illustrated here through two representative personalities may serve as an indication of the extent to which humanity is indeed differentiated across the Earth, particularly in the intimate realm we are discussing today. But this is precisely what the anthroposophical worldview aims for: that people gain the ability to communicate across the globe. It therefore seeks to speak a language—not in the physical sense, but one that can be understood everywhere, even in the context of today’s immediate, present-day civilization. Of course, this can only be the case to a limited extent today. But it is precisely when we seek to observe this limited extent that we will be led to what will then allow us to perceive the matter from a somewhat broader perspective. For as soon as one makes what has been said clear to oneself, it immediately becomes apparent how little we can actually achieve in an ethical-religious sense if we introduce certain religious or even ethical content to children at such an early age. At most, we could raise children to be Christians, Jews, Catholics, or Protestants—in the same sense that we ourselves are. But the very essence of education must exclude any aspiration to raise people in such a way that they become just like us.

[ 9 ] This can be clearly illustrated by considering a certain educational fact that, however, strongly, very strongly, guides us to respect a person’s true freedom—even in a child—in the fullest sense of the word. And we will come to realize on our own that we must do this when we say to ourselves: In school, we must treat the mentally disabled and the intellectually disabled in the same way as we treat the genius. — What kind of educational principle would emerge if we were to structure our educational maxims so that every child absorbs into their soul what we ourselves have in our own souls? The mentally disabled and the intellectually disabled are born burdened, with a burden imposed by their physical nature; the genius is born with wings—wings of the soul. We must admit to ourselves that we must share in bearing the burden of the mentally deficient. But we must also admit that, as teachers, we may well be unable to keep up with the movements of the genius’s wings under certain circumstances; for otherwise, all schools would have to be staffed by the greatest geniuses. That cannot be the case. There must be the possibility of educating so effectively that we do not place the slightest obstacle in the path of genius, that we do not clip its wings in the slightest way. We will only be able to do this if we shape the art of education in such a way that it does not interfere at all with those forces that must develop freely within the human being.

[ 10 ] All the discussions that have taken place here in recent days have centered on this. And if you examine these discussions more closely, you will find that they are all such that they can be applied to practical life in such a way that the educator is actually concerned only with that aspect of the child which he can develop in that child—even if he is dealing with a child who possesses the greatest genius for later life. Just as when I am a dwarf working as a teacher in school, the fact that I am a dwarf does not prevent any of my students from growing into giants in a physical sense, just as my physical dwarfism does not interfere with the free principles of physical growth, so too must I not, through my own spiritual and soul aspects, interfere with the principles of the child’s spiritual and soul growth. Even if I am a dwarf myself, I do not raise dwarfs in school; even if I am, in a certain sense, a limited person myself, I do not raise only limited people in school; but if the correct educational principles are in place, then the future lives of my students will be independent of my own state of mind precisely because my understanding of human nature is grounded in such a way that this understanding arises from the whole, complete human being, just as the physical principles of growth themselves do.

[ 11 ] I therefore find it particularly gratifying that something has developed at the Stuttgart Waldorf School—something that those who attend it today might not immediately notice, but which is clearly present and has grown into something very concrete: the Waldorf school spirit, which is something truly real, independent of the individual teachers’ immediate, personal conceptions of the soul. This individual conception of the soul may in fact feel most at home precisely because it continues to be nurtured within this general Waldorf school spirit. This Waldorf school spirit, then, is what will strive more and more to educate and instruct people in such a way that, in a certain sense, they continue to be educated even when, as a child with intellectual disabilities, they have to bear heavy burdens; that, based on a general understanding of human nature, one will learn to bear these heavy burdens, yet at the same time never wish to commit a sin against the free unfolding of the soul’s wings—even for the most gifted individual. This is the ideal; but it is not an ideal said to lie in a misty, gray distance, rather, it is an ideal that is actually sought to be realized every single day.

[ 12 ] If we truly wish to cultivate an ethical-religious life, we will not be able to rely on the content of worldviews, religious creeds, or ethical impulses. Rather, we will have to address the inner being of the individual in such a way that, in accordance with the circumstances of his life—one might say, as dictated by fate—he freely finds his way to that which he must share with his fellow human beings in this realm, so that he can interact socially with them. Thus, if we wish to provide an ethical-religious education, we must not, at first, appeal to intellect; for intellect is precisely that which, while providing us with content, offers us no possibility of living our way into something deeply spiritual. Nevertheless, since we must cultivate knowledge—that is, thinking—as one of the three soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing in school, we must also be clear to ourselves with regard to thinking that this thinking must lead to a religious, ethical, and moral goal. What we must hold fast to in moral and religious education is human feeling. Nor can it be will directly; for in regard to his will, the human being is placed within society, and what he must accomplish in his will is often determined by this society and its demands.

[ 13 ] We cannot turn to thinking, which seeks to provide a clear direction, nor to volition, which must draw its impulses from society; rather, we must turn especially to feeling, which, in a certain sense, every human being possesses for themselves. And when we appeal to these in teaching and education, we will touch upon those forces in the human soul that can be understood in moral and religious terms. But we must expand our instruction to encompass thinking, feeling, and willing. We must develop all the powers of the soul equally. Of course, we cannot develop thinking in such a way that it is a thing in and of itself, nor can we develop volition in such a way that it is a thing in and of itself; rather, we must integrate the life of feeling into thinking and volition precisely as the goal of education and instruction.

[ 14 ] And in this regard, only an understanding of the world and humanity based on anthroposophy can be of help to us; for this understanding, founded on such a basis, may certainly be built upon a physical foundation. It may engage in physics, chemistry, and so on in an unbiased manner, without the individual approaching these subjects in such a way that he cannot rise above them—by immersing himself in the content of thought provided by the world—to a spiritual, to a supersensible world. And as one moves from knowledge to the spiritual-super-sensible world, it is not merely one’s thinking that is engaged, but also one’s feeling; for at the very moment we push knowledge of this kind far enough into the super-sensible, we begin to develop a moral relationship with the foundations of the worlds, with the super-sensible beings.

[ 15 ] And this feeling—it is the first of the three elements of the soul—that we must appeal to in moral and religious education. It is this feeling—the feeling of gratitude. This feeling of gratitude, which in a certain sense plays a rather unconscious role in our educational system today, is what we must systematically cultivate in all its forms from the very beginning of schooling, in the specific aspects of everyday life, where we should strive to develop in the child a sense of gratitude toward everything that is given to them.

[ 16 ] And when this feeling of gratitude is developed in the right way, it takes such a place in the life of the soul that it can rise all the way to the highest realms of universal law, which we come to know through insight. Then the human being senses nature around them, comes to know its laws, sees themselves as a human being placed within this nature, and comes to realize that what they perceive of this nature through their senses would never make them human; rather, they come to recognize a science of the human being that points them toward that which transcends nature and yet can be attained through knowledge. As a human being, they feel within themselves not only a universal lawfulness of the world that transcends all things, but also an essential nature of the world in the spirit; and their knowledge begins of its own accord to transform into a feeling of gratitude toward those beings who have placed them in the world—toward the supersensible beings; this knowledge expands into gratitude toward the divine being. And no knowledge is truly imparted to the young person unless it ultimately wells up into feelings of gratitude toward the supersensible world.

[ 17 ] The first thing, then, among the three elements of human spiritual life that leads us into the ethical-religious realm—which we must cultivate—is the feeling of gratitude; which, moreover, already encompasses knowledge in other areas of life; for we must have a cognitive understanding of that for which we are to be grateful. In feelings of gratitude, the emotional life already embraces the life of knowledge even in outward, practical life. And so we do not appeal to the mere transmission of a traditional religious creed—we leave that to specialized religious instruction, which can then properly integrate itself into life if the groundwork is laid in this way—but we appeal first and foremost, with regard to thinking, to the feeling of gratitude.

[ 18 ] And when we then approach the actual emotional life, it is only there that we discover in the right way that which leads the human inner life out of itself and into the outer world. It is through a sense of gratitude that we relate to other beings. But when we immerse ourselves in another being through our own life in such a way that we, in a certain sense, experience it alongside them, then what we actually call love develops within our emotional life. Love is the second element that must be cultivated with regard to moral and religious life. The love we can cultivate in school—practically by doing everything we can to ensure that the individual schoolchildren love one another—is the love to which we give a firm foundation when we allow what has developed from the principle of imitation into the principle of authority between the ages of nine and ten transition through our entire conduct at school, so that the sense of authority is gradually transformed into a sense of love—a true sense of love, linked to deep respect—toward the teacher and educator.

[ 19 ] Then we establish a twofold foundation for life. We establish what is contained in an ancient maxim: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But since we simultaneously develop gratitude, and this gratitude leads us to an understanding of the world, the following is added to “Love your neighbor as yourself”: “Love the divine essence above all else.”

[ 20 ] Such sayings are, of course, familiar to everyone today, for they echo to us from centuries long past; but what matters is not that we repeat them in theoretical thought, but that we find the means—out of our immediate present—to put them back into practice in life; after all, in every age, human life takes on a new form. Life today constantly emphasizes: “Love your neighbor as yourself and God above all.” One doesn’t see much of that! — School life, in particular, will have to contribute to ensuring that these things are not merely discussed, but that they are brought to life once again.

[ 21 ] Only that which naturally develops into love—arising from a sense of authority rather than imitation—leads to a secure foundation for mature love in the world. And if we work in this way toward the development of the human being toward that love—which, in this context, is self-evident in its very nature—then we ensure in the right way that we no longer need to to invent such dreadfully elaborate theories—as are devised today out of our materialistic mindset—in order to teach children to love in the right way when they reach sexual maturity. A whole body of literature is being written on this subject today. All of this literature suffers from the fact that people do not know what to do with children when they reach sexual maturity, because they have not been properly prepared for it; because they do not know what needs to be done at each individual stage of life. One does not face these difficulties with a child who has reached puberty if the child has been guided properly up to this stage of life.

[ 22 ] With regard to volition as well, we must guide the child’s spiritual development onto the right path by channeling feelings into volition in the proper way. After all, the child will have to express a wide variety of things as impulses of the will. But what is it that asserts itself when the child wills? We would not be physical human beings if, at the very moment when the will arises—and especially when that will arises which is to be placed in the light of morality, in the light of religion—we did not have to draw upon our own physicality. In love, we pour ourselves out into the world, so to speak. In volition, we return once more to ourselves. And because volition is a necessity in life, we then find within ourselves our instincts, our drives, and our emotions. And at the very moment when we wish to move toward the ethical and then toward the religious, we must become aware that into the instincts, into the drives, into the emotions, must flow that which makes us human in the true sense of the word—that which we ultimately find when we contemplate the universe with insight and find humanity within it—that which an ancient tradition expresses by coining the phrase: “Man is the image of the Divine.” Only when we can carry such an attitude into our will—so that even in our instinctive impulses it remains evident that the human being is the image of God—does a will arise that bears an ethical and even religiously tinged character. Then the human being can be conscious of this: in his or her will, he or she remains truly human.

[ 23 ] And when a person projects his impulses of will into the world in such a way that—down even to the level of instinctual life—he creates a mental image of himself that allows humanity to recognize him as a human being, what does he do then? What does he accomplish? Yes, he carries out what is now the third element. He develops a feeling toward his own humanity, which he pours into his actions and his will. And I have no German word for this. So, in order to make myself understood, I must use the word “duty” here. There is no German translation for “duty.” This is something that must be felt by those who perceive the words—in the sense I have been explaining these past few days—as emerging from the national spirit. For if I were to approach this element from within the German national spirit, then I would indeed have to say: what a lexicographer—skimming so superficially over things—would write down upon encountering the English word “duty” is that he would translate it as “Pflicht”; but “Pflicht,” in its nuance of feeling, has absolutely nothing to do with what I have just explained to arrive at “duty.” For “Pflicht” is the noun derived from the verb “to fulfill” and comes from an entirely different sphere of life, so that one would have to structure the entire discussion differently than I have just done if one wanted to analyze what lies within the word “Pflicht.”

[ 24 ] Here, once again, you have an example of just how diverse humanity is across the globe. Anyone who speaks conscientiously and precisely cannot, in the context I have outlined here, write “Pflicht” for “duty,” because they would be lying—albeit only theoretically—if they were to write “Pflicht” as the third entry here.

[ 25 ] 1. Gratitude
2. Love
3. Duty

[ 26 ] And it is, again, characteristic that I am able to write “gratitude” and “love” in German, but that I have no German word with the same meaning when I want to write the third one. I do not have one. And it is characteristic because at the very moment we step out of what unites us in recognition across all of humanity—for everyone experiences this recognition as something universally human in a certain sense—at the very moment we step out of this recognition and love, which is still something universally human, into individual action, and we are placed in a specific spot in the world, we must develop our lives from this point onward and become aware of the individuality that is formed within us as we are placed in a certain spot in the world.

[ 27 ] But by approaching the child’s emotional life in this way, and in this manner—drawing on all the foundations we have considered— imitation and a sense of authority—transitioning to what then becomes of that sense of authority between the ages of nine and ten—by building upon these foundations, which have arisen quite naturally on the basis of an anthroposophical understanding of the human being, we guide general instruction toward a moral and religious experience. For when a person feels that they must be fully human—that they must position themselves in the world in such a way that, even down to their instinctual life, their fellow human beings recognize them as human and they themselves can recognize themselves as human—at that very moment, the person becomes a messenger, an angelos of the divine being in the world. And morality will be permeated by religious feelings. By approaching the child in the right way at that point in life—which lies between the eleventh and twelfth years, toward the twelfth year—when the human being, in general schooling and general education, steps out into the non-human realm, at that very moment, if the child is properly educated, this fact stands out sharply before them: Yes, you are entering the non-human realm by observing the external nature presented to your senses, with the laws of the inanimate, the inorganic. — We have characterized this stage of life, describing the form it must take in properly guided instruction and upbringing. But at this stage of life, when the child has been raised in the right way, the following also emerges more deeply: the child wants to be human right into nature itself. It wants to be human right down into that aspect of nature which, within the human being itself, becomes the life of instinct and impulse. Then what arises is the third element: duty. And then, drawing from the very essence of the human being, we have directed education across the three elements—which, of course, we must have already predisposed in such a way that we have set the human being on a moral-religious path.

[ 28 ] When, in a child’s development, the stage of life approaches—which occurs around the age of twelve—then a point arises in that child’s life where, in a certain sense, religious life becomes immediately relevant. By this I mean that this is the stage of life that must be regarded as the most important, particularly with regard to religious life. Of course, everything must be guided toward this in advance so that, especially in a religious context, this stage of life can be navigated in the right way. But in any case, we must not approach this stage of life by telling ourselves: “Today’s civilization simply presents people with conflicts.” In today’s civilization, we find ourselves in a situation where, on the one hand, we have moral and ethical life; it is so deeply rooted in the human soul that people tell themselves they do not possess their full human dignity and value unless they have their moral and ethical ideals. But on the other hand, we have the laws of nature, which are completely neutral with regard to the moral worldview, which operate without causal connections to this world, and which also claim that nothing moral should be introduced into them.

[ 29 ] Today, however, there is a widespread trend that seeks to raise children in such a way that they can overcome this conflict as comfortably as possible. In our modern civilization, this conflict is deeply tragic and far-reaching. If this conflict is not resolved in some practical way for later adult life—so that one can, in a certain sense, find a path from the morally neutral laws of nature to the world of morality, to moral ideals—if one cannot form a unity between the moral world order and the naturalistic world order, then one ends up in conflicts that tear life apart. These conflicts are present in almost all thinking people today; they simply remain in the subconscious. People do not admit them to themselves, but instead adopt traditional religious creeds and internally bridge what is, at first glance, unbridgeable—unless one ascends from the naturalistic to the spiritual in precisely the way that anthroposophy attempts to do. Thus, for later adulthood, the conflict is profoundly tragic. If it is carried over even into childhood before the age of eleven, it proves to be directly destructive to the soul life. Nothing must be introduced into a child’s life that would lead the child to say to himself: “Yes, I study zoology, but I find nothing of God there; I study religion, but I find a God from whom I cannot explain zoology.” — Introducing this into childhood is a terrible thing, for it throws the child off the path of life.

[ 30 ] But the kind of upbringing I have described in recent days does not, in fact, aim to introduce such a conflict into childhood. Such an upbringing takes into account the important stage of life between the eleventh and twelfth years, and everything that begins and continues during that time. That is the right stage of life when a person may begin to sense the disharmony between a purely naturalistic outlook and an ethical, moral outlook. And we should not raise people in such a complacent way that they do not, at least in their emotional life alongside gratitude, love, and duty, sense something of this conflict in the world. But if we raise them as described here, then precisely during this stage of life—by sensing this disharmony—they will come to gradually resolve it into harmony. This is part of religious life; it is what deepens religious feeling—not simply passing on to people, in the traditional way, something they are supposed to believe in, but giving them a genuine gift of life that works within their soul so that they know: this gift of life bridges a conflict they have been able to experience precisely because it exists.

[ 31 ] Our civilization today demands that we incorporate this into life, particularly from an ethical-religious perspective. For in ethical-religious instruction, we can only focus on the emotional stages of development. Just how little we are otherwise able to build this bridge I have just spoken of is vividly illustrated by a book published in the late 1980s, *Lux mundi*, on which a number of people—including some from the High Church tradition—collaborated, and which attempts to present what has crystallized within the Church in such a way that it fits into contemporary social life. And indeed, even the members of the High Church who contributed to this book, *Lux mundi*, which was published in London in the late 1980s—even they are striving, from their own standpoint, to build a bridge across to modern civilization. One sees it everywhere: people today are discussing what can actually become the true religious content of life.

[ 32 ] But are we capable of instilling anything of lasting value in a growing child, particularly in an area where we debate so much? Are we capable of simply turning people into Christians when we see the discussions among theologians growing ever broader regarding the very nature of Christ? Must we not, especially today, seek a path that appeals directly to people themselves, so that they may then freely embrace Christianity? Today, we must not teach ethics and religion in such a way that we instill any formulas or dogmas in general education; rather, we must learn to develop that which lives as the divine-spiritual in the human soul. Then we will guide the child toward their religious beliefs in a free and proper way. Then the child will not find itself torn between conflicting views when it sees that one person belongs to the High Church, another to Puritanism, and so on. And we must guide the child to this understanding of the truly religious element. And likewise, we must guide the child so that, through the three elements of the soul’s emotional life—gratitude, love, and duty—the ethical aspect grows out of the soul itself, rather than being grafted onto it through moral precepts.

[ 33 ] This is also the most important social task of our time, and all other discourse and action in the realm of social issues depend on our ability to establish a sound foundation in the field of education. Therefore, a large part of today’s social issues is, quite simply, a matter of education and instruction.

[ 34 ] These can, of course, only be hints that I was able to offer—at least regarding the principles that, in relation to ethical and religious life, summarize what I have said in recent days about general instruction and general education. We will be in a position to to have as the foundation for moral and religious life everything that we otherwise impart to the child in the manner described, if, on the one hand, we truly teach and educate based on a pure understanding of human nature, and, on the other hand, we recognize that we must not impose dogma, theory, or commands upon a person in their ethical and religious life.

[ 35 ] We must therefore find ways to develop a true art of education and teaching, as demanded by our present civilization. Perhaps I may hope that the remarks I was allowed to make were imbued with this spirit, which shows that this is truly not some kind of radical opposition to everything that the education and teaching system has produced so far. Indeed, in the field of education and teaching, we are certainly not in a position where we, as part of general human civilization, do not generally know what the proper goals of education and teaching are. In abstract terms, these goals have been articulated as correctly as possible by the great educators of the 19th century from all regions of the world, all countries, and all states. Anthroposophically oriented pedagogy does not seek to oppose what is intended there. But it believes that what is intended requires the right means, and that these means can come only from a genuine, profound experience of humanity and the world. Fundamentally, it seeks to help achieve in the right way what all people today desire in a vague, abstract sense. And if one can evoke the feeling—when listening to and observing what is intended through anthroposophical pedagogy and didactics at the Waldorf School—if one can get the sense that they are seeking the means to achieve what we all want, then one will have approached the matter with roughly the right attitude.

[ 36 ] The fact that I was able to speak to you, ladies and gentlemen, in this spirit is of particular value to me. For it is even more important to me that you understand that I wish to speak in this spirit than that you listen to the details I have to present. The details may, under certain circumstances, need to be modified in one direction or another. What is essential is not these details. What is essential is the spirit from which these words have been spoken. And if I have succeeded in evoking even a little of the sense of what this tolerant and humane spirit is—not in a passive sense, but in an active one—from which anthroposophically oriented pedagogy is meant to speak, then perhaps not much overall, but still something of what I have sought to present to you through these lectures has been achieved.

[ 37 ] And as I conclude by once again emphasizing my conviction that we must speak to our present civilization from this spirit, I thank you for the interest you have shown in these lectures; I thank you for choosing to spend your time here listening to them—even during your festival season— and I hope that you will leave here with the feeling that perhaps there was at least something that justified your making this trip.

[ 38 ] If that is the case, then I would like to take this opportunity at the end of the lectures to bid you a most heartfelt farewell, in the hope that we will meet again, just as I greeted you at the beginning of the lectures.