The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Education and Morality

[ 1 ] Every person who is in any way engaged with life probably feels that moral education is the most important aspect of the entire field of education and teaching. But at the same time, one can also sense—and indeed must sense, precisely from the practice of education itself—that this moral education is the most difficult and, I would say, also the most intimate aspect of the entire field of education and instruction. We have, after all, had to emphasize how educational practice must be based on a genuine, authentic, and true understanding of human nature.

[ 2 ] Well, an understanding of human nature that leads one to attune oneself to the child’s cognitive abilities can indeed be gained if one truly approaches the human being in that way—comprehending, perceiving, observing—as I tried to characterize yesterday. And one will find that with an educational practice based on such an understanding of human nature grounded in the Spiritual Science, one will generally be able to connect with the child—with regard to the child’s cognitive powers—more or less easily. One will find a way to connect with the child. However, if—and this is equally essential—one wishes to address the child’s artistic receptivity in an artistic manner, in accordance with yesterday’s remarks, then one must already possess a certain sensitivity for responding individually to each child. One must then have a sense of how one child or another expresses themselves, particularly with regard to their artistic perception of the world. With regard to the development of moral character, however, it is necessary to possess a keen capacity for psychological observation and a deep psychological interest, so that one is able to place what one has generally acquired about human beings and human nature entirely at the service of what each individual child brings to one personally. Moral education can only be provided to the individual child. There is also another difficulty, specifically with regard to moral education. It consists in the fact that a person’s moral character exists only when the person brings forth morality from their innermost being as a free human being.

[ 3 ] This requires the educator, above all else, to know how to structure moral education in such a way that, once a person has outgrown that education, they can experience and feel themselves as a completely free being in every respect. We must not pass on to the developing human being, as he sets out on his life’s journey, any remnants of what we ourselves might wish to impose on the world as commandments, nor any remnants of what we ourselves find particularly likable or unlikable, in such a way that we subject him to the constraints of our own moral views, our own moral impulses, or our own moral character. We must, precisely in moral terms, place them entirely within their own freedom. This requires, especially for moral education, an immensely far-reaching selflessness and self-denial on the part of the educator and teacher. And one does not have the opportunity, as one does in any other field—a field of knowledge, a field of art—to treat the moral realm as a separate subject area; nor would that be particularly fruitful. One must integrate moral values into the entire educational process, into all aspects of teaching and upbringing.

[ 4 ] These are three difficulties, but they can be overcome if one knows how to approach the children being educated in accordance with what one develops within oneself through an understanding of human nature grounded in Spiritual Science. Yes, an understanding of human nature is urgently needed in this very field, extending to an insight into the individuality of each person. In fact, if one were to fully explore the field of moral education, one would have to begin with the child’s very first breath in this physical world. Yes, in a certain sense, one must do so. For, although focusing more on the realm of knowledge and on certain aesthetic realms, as well as on certain realms of broader life practice, Jean Paul—who was a truly great educator, a fact that, unfortunately, is still far too little appreciated today—said the following regarding this field of education: “A person learns more in the first three years of life that will serve them for their entire life than in three years of academic study.” Therefore, with regard to moral education, it must at least be said: the way in which an educator behaves toward the child is of paramount importance, especially during the first years of a child’s development—up until about the time of the first set of permanent teeth, that is, precisely up to the stage of life when we enroll the child in elementary school.

[ 5 ] One really must take a closer look at this first stage of life of the developing human being. Once one has advanced along the path of genuine human understanding, one must then focus on three phenomena that, at first, do not yet stand out in the child for external observation with a moral character—but which also cast their moral light on the rest of the person’s life, right up to death. The child’s earliest developmental forces are, after all, those in which the moral is closely linked to the merely natural. And in a more superficial understanding of psychology, one usually fails to notice how, in the first years of a child’s life, later moral development is bound to the most important stages of the child’s natural development. There are three things in childhood that are generally not given enough importance. And yet, to a greater or lesser extent, the entire nature of the kind of human beings we will become depends on these three things. The first thing through which the child, so to speak, rises from an existence still akin to that of an animal to a human existence is what is commonly referred to, in popular terms, as learning to walk. But in this process of learning to walk lies the possibility of using one’s musculoskeletal system as a human being—the entire sum of one’s limbs—and learning to position them in the world in such a way that they stand within it in a certain state of equilibrium. The second thing that a person acquires in the early years of childhood for their entire earthly life is learning to speak. It is the very power through which a human being organizes themselves into their human environment, while through learning to walk they learn to organize themselves into the entire world in relation to their musculoskeletal system. All of this arises from the unconscious depths of the human soul. And the third thing that a human being then acquires is learning to think. As vague and childlike as it may appear in the first stage of life, the child’s ability to form mental images gradually develops from the process of learning to speak, initially in a primitive way.

[ 6 ] And when we then ask: In what way does the child develop these three abilities—learning to walk, learning to speak, and learning to think—and in what way does it continue to develop them until the end of the first stage of life, until the change of teeth?—then, based on genuine observation of human beings, we arrive at a conclusion that sounds quite simple at first glance but which, when grasped in all its depth, sheds immense light on the entire human being, then we arrive at the conclusion that, during this first stage of life up to the change of teeth, the human being is essentially an imitative being, that through imitation and through trial and error—in a completely unconscious manner—it learns to organize itself within the world. Until about the age of seven, the child lives in a state of complete surrender to its surroundings. One might say: just as when I inhale what is in my surroundings as air, as oxygen, which I then, in the very next moment, connect with my own physical being—making a piece of the outer world part of my inner world, part of that which then works, lives, and weaves within me— so, as a seven-year-old, with every breath—every soulful breath—I make what I observe in every gesture, every expression, every action, every word, indeed, in a certain sense, every thought in my surroundings a part of my own being. Just as the oxygen in my surroundings later pulses through my lungs and my respiratory and circulatory systems, so too does everything that exists in my surroundings and everything that takes place there pulse within me as a small child.

[ 7 ] Above all, this truth must present itself to the eye of our soul not merely in a superficial way, but with all its psychological depth. For it is quite remarkable what insights emerge when one pays sufficiently close attention to the way in which the child attunes itself to its surroundings. One will find it quite astonishing how a thought that remains unspoken—one that lives on only in a subtle play of facial expressions, or perhaps survives only because, under the influence of a thought, I once moved faster or slower around the child— one will be amazed at how the subtleties of life’s expression—which in adults otherwise remain within the soul—find their continuation in the child’s soul; how the child fully immerses itself, not only in the physical but also in the soul-spiritual manifestations of its surroundings. Anyone who develops a keen sensitivity to this fact of life will come to realize that, in the presence of a small child, they must not allow even a single impure, unchaste, or immoral thought to enter their mind, because they know that there are intangible factors in the way an adult acts that, through the power of imitation, live on in the very young child. It is this awareness of this fact—and the attitude that this awareness fosters—that truly defines the educator.

[ 8 ] But the most important images—those that make a deep, unconscious impression on the child from the adult environment, yet remain imprinted and sealed within the human essence—are the images that relate to morality. In an extraordinarily characteristic, albeit subtle and intimate way, that which is expressed in the father through his use of energy, his zest for life—as he reveals himself in all his life expressions—will be passed on to and carried forward within the child. What constitutes energy in the father will energize the child’s entire being. What constitutes goodwill and love in the mother—what surrounds and envelops the child with warmth—will initially permeate the child’s inner being with moral receptivity and moral interest in a completely unconscious manner.

[ 9 ] And one must know where all the forces of the child’s organism actually originate. All the forces of the child’s organism—as strange and paradoxical as this may sound to people today—originate, particularly in the case of the child, from the nervous-sensory system. Because a child’s powers of observation and perception are unconscious, one does not realize how intensely—not so much through individual senses as through the child’s overall sensibility—what is in the environment permeates the entire organism. It is well known that, at least in essence, the development of the human brain and nervous system is not truly complete until the teeth have been replaced. During the first seven years of life, the sensory-nervous system can be compared, in terms of its plasticity, to wax. Not only does the child receive the finest and most intimate impressions from its surroundings, but through the vigorous activity of its sensory-nervous system, what it observes and perceives unconsciously into the entire circulation of the blood, into the stability and regularity of the respiratory process, into the growth of tissues, into the development of muscles, and into the development of the skeletal system. Through the mediation of the sensory-nervous system, the child’s body becomes an imprint of its environment, especially its moral environment. And when we welcome the child into school as they are losing their baby teeth, we find that within their body—I would say, like seal impressions—in the formation of muscles, in the formation of tissues, even in the rhythm of the respiratory and circulatory systems, in the rhythm of the digestive system, in the reliability and sluggishness of the digestive system, in short, in the child’s physical organization—we find embedded within it what has acted upon the child as moral impressions during the first seven years.

[ 10 ] Today we have anthropology, and we have psychology. Anthropology observes the physicality of the human being in the abstract; psychology observes the soul and the spirit in the abstract, separated from physicality; but there is no anthroposophy, which consists in viewing body, soul, and spirit in their unity, in seeing everywhere where the spiritual permeates, flows into, and exerts its power upon the physical and the material. It is, after all, the peculiarity of the age of materialism that materialism does not actually know matter. It believes it can observe matter with its external means. Only the one who can perceive how soul-spiritual activity flows into and exerts its power throughout material processes truly knows matter. It is precisely through spiritual knowledge that one comes to understand the mode of action and the essence of the material. And one might say: What is materialism? — Materialism is the worldview that understands nothing of matter.

[ 11 ] Well, this can be understood down to the finest details. The person who has learned to perceive the essence of the human being by viewing the spirit, soul, and body together sees in the development of the muscles, in the formation of tissues, and in the process of breathing the moral courage to which the child has clung during the first seven years of life. In the child, one sees the moral love in which the child has been nurtured, reflected in the child’s entire harmonious development—or, in the case of disharmonious development, the moral indifference of the child’s surroundings. As an educator, one then has the feeling, in a certain sense, that the child arrives at school with a moral destiny already predetermined, and one might even think of something extraordinarily tragic simply by considering this fact alone. One might say to oneself, yes, then it would actually be necessary above all else—precisely because of the morally difficult, disordered, and chaotic social conditions of the present—to prepare the child for education from a very young age through moral education. For anyone who truly understands human nature through subtle psychology, it is a serious matter that the child is, in a certain sense, morally predetermined at the moment of, specifically, their tooth change. But on the other hand, it is precisely this subtle psychology that in turn provides the possibility of recognizing this moral predetermination in its particular nature.

[ 12 ] The child absorbs the impressions of its surroundings—especially the moral ones—as if in a dream, for this is a kind of dreamlike activity. These impressions continue to take shape within the child’s body. Because the child has unconsciously sensed and perceived a zest for life, moral goodness, chastity, and truthfulness in its surroundings, these qualities live within it. But they live within it in such a way that they can still be further shaped in a certain direction during the second stage of life—the stage in which the child is currently attending school. I would like to illustrate this with a specific example. Let us suppose that a child has developed in such a way in early life, in relation to its surroundings, that a certain predisposition exists within it to direct its entire organizing powers not so much outward as inward. This can happen especially when the child has witnessed many instances of disheartened, perhaps even cowardly, actions in its surroundings. If the child has witnessed many instances in their environment of people shying away from life, if they have sensed a great deal of weariness with life, dissatisfaction with life, and discontent with their surroundings, then the child carries within them something that, I would say, manifests as a constant, subdued pallor.

[ 13 ] If, as an educator, one is unable to pay attention to such things, then it turns out that the child absorbs more and more intensely the influence poured into it by the despondent, listless, cowardly, and doubting people in its environment, and the child becomes, in a certain sense, just like them. But if one looks more deeply into these matters, one will find that what has become established in the child as a certain character trait during the first seven years of life can now be used to guide the child in an entirely different direction. One can channel what is otherwise anxiety, despondency, shyness, or excessive timidity in the face of life in such a way that the same force develops into prudence and sound judgment—provided one presents the child, particularly during school age, with opportunities in which prudence and sound judgment—albeit in a manner appropriate to this age—can be cultivated.

[ 14 ] Or let us suppose that the child has seen many things in his surroundings that he found unpleasant, things from which he recoiled. He now carries this, in a certain way, into school as part of his entire character, right down to his physical constitution. If such a character trait is left unnoticed, it will continue to develop in line with what the child has absorbed from its surroundings. If, based on a genuine understanding of human nature, one knows how to guide such a character in the appropriate way, then one will be able to direct this very trait in such a way that it leads the child to the noblest chastity and the noblest sense of modesty.

[ 15 ] Through these examples, which are quite specific, I wanted to suggest that although a child—or rather, the child’s constitution—when it enters school bears a genuine imprint of the moral events of its environment right down to its very being, the forces that the child has absorbed from its environment in this way must be directed in a wide variety of directions.

[ 16 ] This is an immensely significant activity, arising from a genuine, deeply intimate, yet also deeply practical psychology—one that an educator can immerse themselves in when they have the child before them and sensitively grasp these various tendencies of character, will, and temperament, lovingly devoted one’s attention to the manifestations of the child’s nature, and can now be engaged in steering toward the good whatever may have developed—perhaps as something bad or harmful—as a certain direction of human energy. For, to put it plainly: there is nothing bad in a child’s moral predisposition that, at this age—provided the educator has the necessary insight and energy—could not, at least in most cases, be turned toward the good.

[ 17 ] In today’s world, there is far too little trust in the ethical, moral, and spiritual-psychic powers of the human being when it comes to such matters. People do not realize how profoundly moral and spiritual, ethical and psychological forces can influence a child’s physical health, or how much physical deficiencies can be remedied precisely through genuine, authentic educational practices. But once one realizes that—let us say, for example, a certain trait which, if poorly guided, makes a person quick-tempered in life, but if well guided, can make a person bold and quick to take on life’s tasks—once one understands such things from an inner, intimate, and at the same time practical psychology that translates into action in life, only then does the question arise: How, then, should the moral education of the child be guided, particularly at the elementary school age? What means are available for this? — Well, to understand this, one must once again look back at the three most significant facts in a child’s development.

[ 18 ] What the child has acquired in terms of imagination and thinking ability continues to develop, in a sense, continuously; one does not notice such an extraordinarily sharp transition; at most, one notices that with the change of teeth, that aspect of the imaginative faculty which is related to memory takes on a slightly different form than it had before. In contrast, one will notice that precisely those psychophysical forces that are so closely bound to the respiratory system—to the entire rhythmic system of the human being—and that express themselves in speech, reemerge in a metamorphosed, transformed form between the year when the teeth begin to change and the years of sexual maturity. A person’s first relationship to everything that lies within language—and language encompasses not only language itself, but the whole human being in body, soul, and spirit; language is merely a symptom of the whole human being—is established precisely when the person learns to speak in the early years of childhood.

[ 19 ] But this entire relationship to language approaches the human being from a completely different angle—from the opposite side—between the ages of seven and fourteen. At that time, all aspects of the soul that find their outward expression in language enter a different stage of development and take on a different character. Indeed, it is true—for the most part, these processes still take place in the subconscious, yet they determine the child’s entire development—that between the ages of seven and fourteen, a person wrestles precisely with what lies within language, or, if they speak multiple languages, with what lies within those languages. They are largely unaware of this struggle because it is unconscious. Yet they struggle with the fact that what emerges as sound from their rhythmic system becomes increasingly and more intensely interwoven with their thoughts, their feelings, and their will. And what takes shape in this phase of life, particularly through language, is a grasping of the human being in relation to their own self.

[ 20 ] That is why it is of such immense importance that we understand the subtle nuances of character expressed in the way the child brings his or her language into the school. What I have described as general trends in the findings of moral observation of the child’s environment is, indeed, conveyed to us—if we possess the sensitivity for it—through the timbre and the sounds of language. The child conveys to us, I might say, its innate moral character through the way it uses language. And it is precisely through our handling of the child’s language and speech during every lesson, every minute of instruction, that we have the opportunity to guide what is revealed in the language in the direction we deem appropriate. There is an immense amount of work to be done, once we understand how what emerges in the child as language—up until the change of teeth—must be nurtured during the elementary school years.

[ 21 ] This brings us to what is, during this elementary-school-like stage of life, the actual principle of human development. In the first years of life, up until the change of teeth, everything is governed by the principle of imitation. At this stage, the human being is an imitative being. In the second stage of life, between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity, human beings are thoroughly predisposed to submit—if I may put it that way—to the authority of those closest to them, those who raise and educate them. —You will not expect me, the author of *The Philosophy of Freedom*, to advocate for the principle of authority in an unjustified manner. But for the period between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, one must advocate for the principle of authority for the reason that the childlike nature in these years of life demands the ability to look up to what comes as a revelation from authority.

[ 22 ] The very young child unconsciously observes its surroundings and, so to speak, breathes in the entire character of its surroundings into its “own being” over the course of seven years. The next seven years of life are spent not observing the surroundings, but listening to them. The word, with its meaning, now becomes the guiding force. Simply by virtue of the human being’s nature, the word, with its meaning, becomes the guiding force. During this stage of life, the human being comes to know the entire world, the cosmos, through the mediation of his or her educators. He does not look out directly into the cosmos. What resonates with him is what comes to him through the words of his authorities. What he finds beautiful is what comes to him through the gestures, the entire demeanor, and, in turn, the words of those around him. He comes to regard as good that which he can perceive is nuanced—either sympathetically or antipathetically—as it is expressed by an authority.

[ 23 ] This, however, sets the entire direction of the child’s moral education between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity. If we try to impart abstract moral rules to the child, we will encounter resistance—not because the child is incapable, but because of human nature itself. If we are able to create moral images for the child—moral images drawn, for my part, from the animal kingdom—if we have the animals interact with one another in symbolic moral relationships, and if we perhaps extend this to the whole of nature, we will be able to do the child an extraordinary amount of good, especially during the seventh, eighth, and ninth years of life. If we present vividly rendered images of human beings drawn from our own imagination, if we convey what we ourselves find likable or unlikable in these vividly rendered images and bridge the gap between what is likable and what is unlikable in such a way that it becomes, for the child’s immediate feeling and sensibility, a moral judgment about good and evil, then we develop, for this age group, a moral judgment rooted in feeling and sensibility through the depiction of the world. But this depiction of the world must be authentic. In the early years of life, it is direct perception. Now, whatever approaches the child to strengthen its morally sensitive, feeling judgment must have passed through the medium of authoritative human feeling and sensibility. Now the educator, the teacher, must stand as a representative of the world order. The child must, from within its instinctive life, simply through the feeling it directs toward the teacher and educator, receive the world into its sympathies and antipathies, which develop into the recognition that “this is good, that is evil.” It must receive the world through the human being. And blessed is the child who, through the mediation of the human being in the educator and teacher themselves, can first form its own relationship to the world.

[ 24 ] Anyone who, at this early age, has truly enjoyed this kind of relationship with their educator or teacher will benefit from it throughout their entire life. Those who say that a child should not learn through authority, but rather by excluding all authority—that is, by learning, so to speak, purely intellectually through their own observations—are actually speaking from an amateurish perspective when it comes to educational and teaching practice. For we do not teach solely for the years during which the child is before us. What we are to instill in the child is for the entirety of their life. And the stages of life, right up to death, stand in a remarkable relationship to one another.

[ 25 ] Once one has, purely under the impression: “This is what the revered authority believes”—and has absorbed something that one cannot yet grasp with the intellect, because the intellect, if pushed that far in a child, is ruined, since intellectual comprehension belongs to a later stage of life—if one has absorbed something simply out of genuine love for authority, then what has been absorbed in this way takes deep root in the soul. And perhaps it happens then, at thirty-five, at forty, or perhaps even later in life, that one has this strange experience: Yes, now, after you have had so many experiences, after you have experienced so many sorrows and joys, so many disappointments in life, now a light dawns on you regarding what you accepted in your eighth year out of love for your authority. —What one accepted back then purely out of deference to authority rises to the surface again. It rises now, immersing itself as it ascends in the entire life experience and expansion of life that one has undergone in the meantime. What, then, does something like this mean in later life? What is once received within oneself and only later—when life experience has matured—gains its full significance for life—as we know from a more subtle, intimate psychology—these are life forces that remain refreshing even in old age.

[ 26 ] Anyone who knows that such an influence from childhood into later life provides a new impetus for life—an infusion of new life forces—understands what it means to educate in such a way that what is nurtured is not merely drawn from the years when the child stands before us, but from the entirety of the human life. Whatever is planted as a seed in the child’s soul must be able to grow along with the child. Therefore, we must also be absolutely certain that what we teach the child must be something that fosters growth. Nothing is worse than when, in a pedantic and philistine manner, we insist that the child form concepts that are sharply defined and rigidly circumscribed. This is like forcing their still-tender hands into some kind of machine, so that the hands cannot grow. We must not impart ready-made concepts to the child; we must develop concepts capable of growth within the child. The soul must be equipped with seeds that can grow throughout a person’s entire life. To achieve this, it is necessary not only to teach the child according to principles; it is also necessary to know how to live with the child.

[ 27 ] And this is particularly necessary for moral education. In moral education at the elementary school level, one can only cultivate a sensitive, intuitive moral judgment through descriptions of the essential qualities that bring moral principles to life. And what matters is that, at this age, the child develops within itself a sympathy for what is moral and an antipathy for what is immoral through directly conveyed perceptions. What does not matter is giving the child a set of commandments. Such directives do not penetrate the soul. What takes root in the child’s soul as a moral judgment formed through sympathies and antipathies determines the child’s entire moral development. And just how crucial it is to maintain a proper moral relationship with the child is particularly evident from a single fact. Anyone who teaches and educates based on a genuine, inwardly practical psychology—one realizes that up to a certain point, which lies around the ninth or tenth year of life—though this varies from child to child—the child, even with the moral judgments, moral sympathies, and antipathies that one can help develop in them, lives in the world in such a way that, even though they still, I would say, a “physical” egoism, forgets itself, is connected to the world, and is still absorbed in the world. And just as one needs, say, for illustrative instruction, a precise understanding of the child’s developmental stage between the ages of nine and ten, so too is this particularly true for moral education. Between the ages of nine and ten, a remarkable phenomenon emerges in the developing human being—one need only be able to pay very close attention to the individual qualities that emerge in different children—and this remarkable phenomenon is that the child needs you particularly at this very moment. Sometimes it is just a few words that make one realize that, at this very point in the child’s life, one must find the right words to help the child move forward. In these moments, the child is passing through a critical phase in life where everything may depend on whether one finds the right words and the right way to respond to the child.

[ 28 ] What is this moment in life? This moment in life is when the child, through its struggle with language—through this struggle to bring the entirety of its soul life into harmony with language—becomes aware for the first time, not as unconsciously as in the early years of life, when it learns entirely unconsciously to say “I” to itself, but in a fully conscious way: there is a difference between me and the world. The child intensely seeks orientation for body, soul, and spirit in the world. This occurs precisely between the ages of nine and ten. The child now has, once again quite unconsciously, a remarkable experience. But this unconscious experience is present in the child in all sorts of sensations and feelings, in all sorts of impulses of the will, and in all sorts of thoughts that may outwardly have nothing to do with it at all. For the child has this experience: there is the authority that gives me the world. I look into the cosmos through this authority. Is this authority the right one? Does it also give me a true picture of the world? Please note, I am not saying that this is a conscious reflection. All of this takes place in an intimate, subtle way within the world of sensation. However, it is at this point in life that it is decided whether the child can continue to place the right kind of trust in that authority—the trust it must have until puberty if it is to thrive—or whether it cannot have this trust. This is what accounts for the child’s inner restlessness and nervousness. As a teacher or educator, one must find the right words at this point in the child’s life to further strengthen that trust. For as this trust is strengthened, so too is the child’s moral character, which is initially still entirely latent in its potential. But it does become stronger. The child becomes inwardly steadfast. It internalizes, right down into its very being, what it has hitherto absorbed in the manner described through its own self.

[ 29 ] Modern physiology, which relies on anthropology on the one hand and abstract psychology on the other, is, in fact, unaware of the most important facts. It can be said that, up until the change of teeth, all organic development and all organic functioning originate from the nervous-sensory system. Between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the child becomes strong and vigorous—or weak and sickly—depending on what is taking place in its rhythmic system, in its breathing and blood circulation. Between the ages of nine and ten lies the turning point in life where what was previously rooted in respiration—what was still anchored in the upper human being—essentially shifts to the blood circulation, where, internally and organically, that magnificent balance is established within the child between one and four—between approximately eighteen breaths per minute and seventy-two heartbeats. This relationship between respiration and blood circulation becomes established at this stage of life. But this is merely the expression of deep psychological processes. And it is within these deep psychological processes that the bond of trust between the child and the educator must take root. For through this, the child’s own inner being is also strengthened.

[ 30 ] This is what must be described in detail when one wishes to speak of moral education and the relationship between pedagogy and morality. For in this aspect of life lies one of the factors through which one is able to exert a beneficial or detrimental influence on a person’s entire earthly life.

[ 31 ] I would also like to point out, by way of comparison, how what one is brought up with during this stage of life continues to have an effect throughout one’s entire later life. You may have already noticed that there are people who, when they grow old, have a peculiar effect on those around them. It is probably a well-known fact that such people exist. They do not need to speak much in company; they need only be present; the very way they are present has, one might say, a blessing-like effect on those around them. It has a calming, balancing effect. There is something gracefully blessed that emanates from such people at that age. If one has the patience and energy to examine the source of this gift of blessing in later life, one comes to realize that a person possesses it as the development of a seed sown earlier—that this seed consisted in having looked up to an authority with the deepest reverence in a justified manner, or that, I might also say, moral judgment has crossed over into the realm of reverence, where it gradually rises to the level of the religious. If, as a child between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, one has learned to revere—and has even learned, now rising fully into the religious realm and elevating morality entirely into the light of the religious—to express that reverence in true prayer, then this childlike prayer results, in adulthood, in the gift of blessing and of bestowing grace in later life. Figuratively speaking, one may certainly say: the hands that learned to pray as a child have, in later life, the gift of reaching out to bless. This is spoken symbolically and figuratively, but it corresponds to the fact that the seeds sown in childhood continue to influence one’s entire later life.

[ 32 ] Now, here is an example of how the stages of human life are interconnected. We have already seen such an example in relation to morality, in that we can say—as I have already stated—that mental images and thought develop continuously. Only memory will take on a different character with the loss of baby teeth. Language, however, undergoes a sort of reversal. Between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity, the child develops a completely different relationship to language. One can properly address this relationship to language in children by teaching grammar and linguistic logic in a reasonable manner. One can do all of this provided that one does not unreasonably bring the unconscious aspects of language from the child’s earliest years into consciousness, but rather in a way that takes the child into account.

[ 33 ] What about the third relationship—the process of establishing balance with the world through the use of one’s entire musculoskeletal system? For most people, this musculoskeletal system is merely something they interpret in an external, mechanical way. People do not realize, for example, that our entire mental image of space, our entire mathematical imagination, is the projection of our movements in the limbs—of our possibilities for movement—into the intellect; that the head experiences there what we experience as movements in our humanity. It is precisely within the mechanism of movement that a profound aspect of the human soul resides. There, a profound aspect of the soul is bound to external material forces. And what a human being accomplishes in childhood—by rising upright from moving on all fours, by setting the body’s axis, which in animals lies parallel to the Earth’s surface, perpendicular to the Earth’s surface, and by lifting themselves up out of animality—this act of lifting up is the physical manifestation of their moral dispositions and their moral powers of will.

[ 34 ] This is something that a whole field of physiology—which is at the same time anthroposophy—will one day come to understand: that the way in which a human being physically carries out his movements in the world is an expression of his moral powers of will. The human being, who distinguishes himself from the forces that cause the animal spine to run parallel to the Earth’s surface—we are speaking here of the organization, one might say that when a human being sleeps, he, too, lies parallel to the Earth’s surface; the point is how the directions are organized within the organism—what the human being accomplishes by standing upright, by orienting his entire motor system toward the world in a balanced manner, is the physical expression of his moral willpower, of his moral quality. This is what makes him, as a human being, a moral being. In the upright human being, who looks out into the world with his face turned toward it, the person who can judge such things with great precision sees the physical expression of human morality.

[ 35 ] Now, I would like to compare what actually happens here to a certain natural phenomenon. For example, in the southern regions of former Austria—which are now part of Italy—there is a river that originates in the mountains; it is called the Poik. Then it disappears, out of sight, and then reappears. It is not a new source; it is the same river, which is then called the Unz. Then it disappears again and reappears once more. It is then called the Laibach. The river flows part of its course invisibly in the depths of the earth. In the same way, what a person places in a child’s dream or sleep—spiritually and soulfully, drawing from the sight of their surroundings and the way they hold themselves upright—flows on as forces within the human being between the change of teeth and sexual maturity; I would call it “subhuman” or “subterranean,” and it goes unnoticed there. This is not visible during the period I have just described. It lies within the child and comes to the surface again precisely with the onset of puberty.

[ 36 ] What the child has instilled in the first years of life—during which it was unconsciously subject to the morality of its surroundings—into the way it has become skilled at walking upright, and the agility of its limbs—which it has developed by freeing itself as a human being from its animal nature—is not present between the change of teeth and sexual maturity; it reappears as the freedom of moral judgment, as the freedom of the moral human will.

[ 37 ] And if, without—I might say—interfering with the child, one has cultivated the proper moral sympathies and antipathies during the time when what is most important for the will was taking place beneath the surface, then the will—one’s own will, built upon freedom, which enters into full responsibility within the human being—may emerge in such a way that one may regard the human being —since one has not given them commandments but has planted moral sympathies and antipathies within their soul, so that one, I might say, does not encroach upon their moral will, which now emerges—that one receives the person, once they have reached sexual maturity, as a free companion at one’s side. Then the human being is capable of transforming, of metamorphosing, that which has been given to him as the gift of moral sympathies and antipathies, for which he was organized; he is capable of reorienting what was given to him into his own moral impulses, which now arise from his own being.

[ 38 ] In this way, based on a genuine understanding of human nature—a true understanding of the human being—one develops an understanding of what needs to be done at each stage of life. If one proceeds correctly between the ages of seven and fourteen by allowing the intuitive, feeling moral judgment to mature, then what was entrusted to the child at that time—when the child demanded authority—will sink into the free human will in the right way. A human being becomes free in the right way only if they have been introduced to moral sympathies and antipathies in the right way. If one educates in this way in moral matters, then one stands alongside the person in such a way that, in a sense, one is merely the catalyst that enables the person to educate themselves. One always gives a person what they unconsciously desire, and one gives them just enough so that they can become free and responsible for themselves without danger at the appropriate age.

[ 39 ] This resolves the difficulty I pointed out at the beginning of today’s reflection—namely, that, for the sake of morality, one must actually educate people in such a way that one stands by them in a selfless and self-sacrificing manner; that is to say, one must keep this as one’s goal and ideal: to leave no traces in the person of one’s own views, but rather to stand by their side so that they may develop their own sympathies and antipathies toward moral matters, so that they may then grow into moral impulses in the proper way and thus attain this liberation at the right stage of life.

[ 40 ] The point, then, is to stand alongside the child, drawing on an intimate understanding of the soul and the art of the soul—which is, at the same time, the art of living and the art of the spirit. Then, in addition to artistic education, one will also be able to manage moral education. But one must have the proper respect for the human being—for that which is growing within the child as a human being—and hold it in the proper esteem. Then the pedagogy of morality will become a moral pedagogy. That is to say, the highest aspiration, the highest demand regarding the question of pedagogy and morality is this, which provides the answer: the relationship—the proper relationship—between pedagogy and morality is established through a moral pedagogy when the entire process of education, the entire art of education itself, is a pedagogical-moral act. The morality of pedagogy is the foundation of the pedagogy of morality.

[ 41 ] Well, while what I have discussed actually applies to all of education, it is particularly close to our hearts these days, as a youth movement—one that is understandable and justified in so many respects—is on the rise. Of course, I cannot fully describe the nature of this youth movement here in just a few words. For many of those sitting here, I have already done so on various occasions. But I would like to express my conviction that if the older generation—the generation responsible for educating and instructing—knows how to respond to the moral impulses of youth in a manner consistent with the art of education and instruction as outlined here, then, as far as possible, this youth issue will find its humane resolution. For, ultimately, young people do not want to be left to their own devices; they want to be placed alongside the older generation. But they should be placed alongside the older generation in such a way that what comes from the older generation is, for them, first, something that seems foreign—something they cannot find within themselves—and second, something that gives them the impression: this corresponds to something I need, something I must bring into my own soul.

[ 42 ] In this regard, our social life has given rise to circumstances that I would like to characterize today in the following way. People so often talk about how old age should remain as fresh as youth so that it can get along with the young. Today—though of course those present here are always an exception—today old age is too youthful; that is to say, people do not understand how to grow old properly. They do not understand how to grow into their physical body—which has changed over the course of life—with their soul and spirit. One carries into the old body what one already did as a child or at least as a young person. It doesn’t fit there; the bodily garments don’t fit. And when youth comes along, it is not because one does not get along with them—because one has grown too old—but on the contrary, one does not get along with the young because one has not grown into old age and thereby become valuable through it. The young want an old age that has grown into itself, not a childish old age. And when young people today encounter old age, they think: “Well, these old people aren’t any different from us—they’re just like us; they’ve learned more, but they don’t know any more; they haven’t used aging to bring things to maturity; they’re just like us.”—Young people want old age to be truly old.

[ 43 ] However, if this is truly to become part of the social order, it is necessary that we have an art of education—a practice of education—that is specifically designed to ensure that what is planted as a seed in education continues to have an effect well into old age, as I have illustrated with examples. One must be able to develop the appropriate life forces in the right way for every stage of life; one must understand how to grow old. For old age, when one has truly understood how to grow old, is actually quite fresh in its own right. Whereas, if I have grown gray, become wrinkled, and am still such a child at heart, then I have nothing to say to the young except what they already possess themselves.

[ 44 ] This also sheds some light on the situation as it exists today. One simply has to view things objectively; after all, all those who are involved in these matters are, in essence, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. But the point is that we must regard this important—indeed, the greatest—question facing humanity in today’s educational system, and in particular the issue discussed today—the question of moral education—as especially important and essential, not only for education itself but for human life as a whole.

[ 45 ] And yet the crown of all education, the crown of all instruction, is the moral upbringing of the human child. In his *Faust*, Goethe even had God the Creator himself utter a remarkable phrase: “A good person, in his dark striving, is well aware of the right path.” Strange, though Goethe truly placed these words in a worthy mouth, the pedants nevertheless found much to quibble about in precisely these words. They said: This is a contradiction—“A good person, in his dark impulse…” The dark impulse is, after all, instinctive; it is not a conscious impulse. “A good person, even in his dark impulse, is well aware of the right path”—how could Goethe have written that! So said the philistines and pedants. —Well, I think, however, that Goethe knew full well what he was writing in that sentence. He wanted to express that, for those who look impartially and directly at moral conditions, morality is connected to the darkest inner depths of the human being—that this is where one encounters the most difficult aspects. Today we have seen for ourselves how difficult it is to approach this moral essence in educational practice. There, one approaches the darkest realms of the human being. Goethe recognized this, but he also recognized that what one can attain only through the brightest realms of spiritual light must be attained—as a moral being—in the darkest depths of the soul. And I would like to say that this statement by Goethe could become nothing less than a guiding principle for the art of moral education. For what does it really say? It expresses a profound, profound truth of life. A truth of life in which I would like to summarize, in accordance with my feelings and perceptions, everything concerning the significance of moral education, of being good, of not being evil as a human being in life, and concerning the art of education toward goodness and away from evil; I would therefore like to summarize, precisely in the spirit of Goethe’s words, what I have sought to express today in a sketchy manner by saying: If you wish to penetrate the realm of knowledge, you must follow the spiritual light of the day; you must work your way out of darkness and into the light. If you wish to penetrate the realm of art, you must work your way—if not all the way to the blinding sunlight, then at least to the radiance that the light of the spirit casts upon things; for it is in this radiance alone that things become artistic. It would be sad, however, if we first had to work toward these two goals simply to become good people. To become a good person, it is precisely the innermost core of a person’s being that must be grasped in its depths; it is there that the right direction must be received. And it must be said: Just as it is true that knowledge must strive toward the light, and that art must strive toward the radiance of the day, so too must it be true for morality that, once a person has received the right direction, they can be a good person without light and without radiance—that they can be a good person through all the darkness and all the gloom of life. Then, if one can be “conscious of being a good person on the right path” through darkness and gloom, then one will find the right path of life through all worlds, toward all lights and all splendors.