The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. On Physical and Moral Education

[ 1 ] It may have become clear from the explanations I have offered so far what the ultimate goal of all education and instruction in the Waldorf school should be. It should strive to develop human children into physically healthy and strong individuals, into people who are emotionally free, and into people who are intellectually clear-minded. Physical health and strength, freedom of the soul, and clarity of mind constitute precisely what humanity will need most in its future development, including in social terms. However, in order to educate and teach in this way, it is necessary that the educator have fully attained what I have now attempted to clarify in these descriptions.

[ 2 ] The teacher must have a complete understanding of the child’s organism, and in particular, an understanding of the human organism that enables the teacher to assess physical health. For only when one is able to truly assess physical health and bring it into harmony with the soul can one say to oneself: with one child, it is one thing; with another child, it is something else.

[ 3 ] Today, there is a widespread belief that doctors should be brought into schools. There is a desire to expand the school-doctor system even further. But just as it is not good to assign the various branches and subjects of the educational system to different teachers who have no connection to one another, it is equally unhelpful to education to entrust physical health to someone who is not part of the entire teaching staff, the entire faculty. There is, however, a difficulty associated with this. I would like to illustrate this difficulty for you, for example.

[ 4 ] During a tour of the Waldorf School, a man who is normally a school inspector once visited our Waldorf School, and I spoke to him about what can be observed—including in relation to the children’s physical health and physical constitution—mentioning one child who has some kind of heart defect, another child with a defect in that area, and so on. Then the man said, quite astonished: “Well, the teachers would have to have medical knowledge if that’s to have any validity at school at all!”

[ 5 ] Yes, if it is necessary for a wholesome education that teachers have a certain level of medical knowledge, then they must have it; they must acquire it. One cannot shape life according to people’s whims; rather, one must shape human institutions according to the demands of life. Just as one must learn something in order to be able to do it, so too must an educator learn something in order to be able to do it.

[ 6 ] It is therefore essential for the educator—especially when working with very young children—to gain a precise understanding of the context of what the child is experiencing through play. Play encompasses a whole complex of emotional responses: joy, and at times even pain, sympathy, and antipathy; in particular, play also involves curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. The child wants to examine the play objects closely, to see what is inside them. And whatever emerges from the child’s psyche in a completely free activity—not yet constrained into the form of human labor—one must be able to observe how it arises from the child’s feelings and whether it brings satisfaction or not. For if one guides the child’s play in such a way that the child derives a certain satisfaction from it, one promotes—particularly from a health perspective—the activity connected to the human digestive system. And depending on how one guides play, even in old age a person will still be subject to greater or lesser inhibitions—or the absence thereof—regarding their blood circulation and digestive activity. There is a subtle, intimate connection between how a child plays and what becomes of the human physical organism.

[ 7 ] One must not say: “The physical organism is something insignificant; I am an idealist; I have nothing to do with this lowly physical organism.” This physical organism has been placed in the world by the divine-spiritual powers of the world; it is a divine creation, and one must be aware that, precisely as an educator, one has a role to play in this divine creation. I would like to speak less in general, abstract terms and more through a concrete example.

[ 8 ] Suppose that what one might call a melancholic disposition manifests itself in children in a—I would say—somewhat pathological way, or that what one might call a sanguine disposition manifests itself in a pathological way. The teacher must now be able to discern where the line lies between what is merely physical and what is pathological. If he notices—and this is much more common than one might think in such matters—that a melancholic child’s condition is crossing over into the pathological, he will seek to contact the parents and try to find out how the child is being fed at home. He will then find a connection between this diet and the pathological melancholy. For it is likely—there could be other causes as well, but I am only citing one example to speak concretely—that he will discover that such a child is given too little sugar-rich food at home. Because too little sugar is provided in the diet, liver function is not regulated properly. For in this melancholic child, there is a peculiarity: a certain substance that is otherwise produced in plants—we call it “starch” in German—is indeed produced in the liver, but it is not functioning properly. In every human being, starch is produced in the liver, but this is not plant starch like the other kind; rather, it is animal starch, which is immediately converted into sugar in the liver. This process—the conversion of animal starch into sugar—is a very important component of liver function. And this process is not functioning properly in the melancholic child, so one must advise the mother to include more sugar in the child’s diet; this has a regulating effect on what is known as the liver’s glycogen activity, and one will see that an extraordinary amount can be achieved through this purely hygienic measure. Education must simply be extended to encompass the whole person.

[ 9 ] Or, in the case of a sanguine child, one will find exactly the opposite. Such a child is very often turned into a sugar-lover. He is given lots of candy. Too much sugar is added to his food. When he is turned into a sugar-lover, the exact opposite effect occurs. The liver is, in general, an infinitely important organ, but one that is much more similar to the sense organs than one might think. For the liver is there to perceive the whole human being internally, to grasp the whole human being from within. The liver is sensitive to the whole human being. That is why it is also organized differently from other organs. In other organs, a certain amount of arterial blood flows in and venous blood flows out. The liver has a special arrangement. A special vein enters the liver, supplying it with a specific type of venous blood. This causes the liver to function, within the human being, as a kind of external world. Therefore, through the liver, the human being is enabled to perceive itself—but to perceive precisely what is affecting its organism. The liver is an extraordinarily sensitive barometer of the way a person relates to the outside world. If one advises a mother to slightly reduce the sugar intake of a pathologically sanguine child—one who is flighty, who flits nervously from one impression to the next—one can achieve extraordinarily beneficial results.

[ 10 ] And so, through what happens not during lessons or formal education, but in between—if one is a proper educator—one can guide the child in the right way, so that the child truly becomes healthy, strong, and vigorous in physical constitution. And one will notice how this is of extraordinary importance for the overall development of the human being.

[ 11 ] We have just had the most intense experience with the boys and girls at the Waldorf School at the age when they were 15 or 16 years old. At first, we had the Waldorf School with eight elementary classes, but then we added one class at a time, starting with a ninth and tenth grade, followed by an eleventh grade. These classes—the highest ones, which are no longer elementary classes but advanced classes—are now attended by the boys and girls precisely at this age of fifteen or sixteen. There are very particular difficulties here. These difficulties are sometimes both physical and moral. I will speak about them later. But even in physical terms, one notices how human nature constantly tends toward the pathological and must be protected from it.

[ 12 ] In girls, one may very subtly observe, under certain circumstances, that their overall development follows a course of chlorosis and then anemia. The girl becomes anemic, as they say, in her organism—prone to paleness, anemic. This really stems from the fact that during these 14th, 15th, and 16th years, the spiritual aspect is separated from the entire human organism; and this spiritual aspect, which previously worked within the whole person, regulated the blood. Now the blood is left to its own devices. It must be properly prepared so that it can take care of the rest through its own power. In girls, this manifests as anemia and a tendency toward pallor, and one must understand that this pallor arises when the stimulation provided to the girls beforehand has not aroused sufficient interest. If one keeps their attention and interest alive, then the entire physical organism is engaged in the activity demanded by the human being itself, and then the pallor will not occur in the same way.

[ 13 ] In boys, the opposite is true. In boys, a kind of neuritis develops—a condition characterized by an excess of venous blood in the brain. As a result, especially during these years, the brain functions as if it were overfilled with blood. In girls, the issue is anemia in the body; in boys, it is a kind of blood congestion—a mild form of blood congestion—specifically involving an imbalance of arterial and venous blood, particularly in the head. This stems from the fact that the boys have been overstimulated with sensory impressions—impressions presented to them in such a way that they had to rush from one impression to the next and could not find peace. And one will see how these behavioral problems manifest themselves precisely in this way among fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds and are connected to their overall physical development.

[ 14 ] If one looks at the essence of the human being in this way—without despising the physical—then one can achieve an extraordinary amount as a teacher and educator, particularly in the management of the healthcare system. The guiding principle must be this: Spirituality is wrong at every moment when it seeks to lead us away from the material world into an abstract fantasy realm. If one comes to despise the physical, if one comes to say: “Oh, come on, the body—that’s the lower nature; it must be suppressed, it must be disregarded”—then one certainly will not be able to educate people in a way that is beneficial to their well-being. For you see, if you disregard the physical nature in human beings, then you may perhaps elevate their spiritual nature to a high level of abstraction, but it is then like a balloon that floats away. Social development on Earth initially gains nothing from the spiritual that is not anchored in the physical in life. One must also be prepared for heaven if one wishes to soar powerfully into it. This preparation must take place on Earth.

[ 15 ] It is, however, hardly noticeable in today’s materialistic age that people, in order to enter heaven, must pass a test at the moment of death—namely, that here on earth they have regarded the human physical organism—which, as a divine-spiritual being placed upon the earth, is the highest reality—and that they have cared for it in a spirit-in-accordance manner. I will now speak about the more physical-moral aspects in the next series and then, in the third, about eurythmy.

[ 16 ] Just as an extraordinary amount must, so to speak, lie in the physical realm—in addition to the educational measures taken within the school itself—so too must it lie in the emotional realm, as well as in the physical and spiritual realms. The primary concern is to begin, already during the school years, to properly prepare the individual for life. I would like once again to explain concretely, using examples rather than abstract statements, what is sought within the Waldorf school principle.

[ 17 ] It is, after all, necessary to assess what a child has accomplished during a school year once that year has ended. Today, this is referred to as issuing a report card that indicates whether and to what extent the child has achieved the learning objectives. In some countries, the manner in which the child has achieved the learning objectives over the course of a year—or sometimes even during interim periods—is communicated to the parents and those responsible for the child by assigning numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4; each number indicates that the child has attained a certain level of proficiency in specific subjects. Sometimes, when it is unclear whether a 3 or a 4 accurately reflects the extent to which the child has attained this ability, a 3¼ is written; and some teachers have even mastered the art of calculation to the point of writing 31/4. I confess to you that I have never been able to master this art of expressing human abilities in such numbers.

[ 18 ] The system of report cards in Waldorf schools is handled differently. Precisely because the teaching staff forms such a cohesive unit that, in a certain sense, every child in the school is known by every teacher, it is also possible to form an assessment of the child based on the child as a whole. That is why the report card we issue to the child at the end of the school year reads like a short biography, like a collection of insights into the experiences we have had with the child both inside and outside the classroom throughout the year.

[ 19 ] The child—and the parents and guardians responsible for the child—then see before them a reflection of what the child is like at this stage of life. And we have even found in Waldorf schools that one can include harsh criticism in this reflective report card, and the children accept it with satisfaction. And then we include something else in the report card. We connect the past with the future. We know the child; we know whether they are lacking in willpower, emotional life, or thinking activity, and we know whether certain emotions predominate. Based on this, we formulate a guiding principle for each individual child at the Waldorf school. We write this into the report card. This is intended to serve as a guiding principle for the entire coming school year. The child takes this core message to heart in such a way that they must always keep it in mind. And this core message then has the quality of exerting a balancing and regulating influence on the will, the emotions, or the qualities of the soul in an appropriate manner.

[ 20 ] Thus, the report card is not merely an intellectual expression of what the child has accomplished; it possesses an inherent power that continues to have an effect until the child receives a new report card. But it is precisely from this that you can see how deeply one must penetrate the child’s individuality in order to, to a certain extent, send the child on their way with such an inspiring report card.

[ 21 ] You can see from this that, in the Waldorf School, our aim is not to establish a school that requires very special physical facilities. We place great emphasis on those aspects of pedagogy and didactics that, given today’s circumstances, can be incorporated into any school system. We are not revolutionaries who simply say: City schools are no good; all schools must be moved out to the countryside, and so on. Rather, we say: Life, based on its circumstances, provides this or that; we take circumstances as they are and bring into every type of school system those elements that, arising from these circumstances and applied in a proper pedagogical and didactic manner, can contribute to human well-being.

[ 22 ] This also enables us to minimize the need to resort to what is otherwise known as “repeating a grade”—that is, requiring a child to remain in the same grade for another year so that he or she can become even more proficient in that grade. We have even been criticized at the Waldorf School because we have children in the upper grades whom the external school authorities believed should have been held back. For us, it is extremely difficult—for certain human reasons alone—to implement this practice of holding a child back, because our teachers are so deeply attached to the children that some would shed tears if they had to leave a child behind. The fact is that a deep bond is formed between the children and the teacher, and this actually prevents this so-called “holding back” from happening. In any case, there’s no point in holding a child back. For suppose we hold back a 9-year-old boy or girl in a lower grade; but if that boy or girl is the type who, as they say, “clicks” at age 11, then we’re placing the child in the 11th-grade class a year too late. This causes far greater harm than if the teacher had to deal with this child once—because the child had a harder time getting the hang of the subjects—and still had to move the child up to the next grade.

[ 23 ] We have set up a remedial class only for the very weakest students. We have only one remedial class, in which we have to place the weak students from all the other classes, because we don’t have the money for a large number of remedial classes. We do have one remedial class, though, with an excellent teacher, Dr. Schubert. When it came time to set up a remedial class, it was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the one who had to lead it. It’s in his nature. He can draw something out of the children’s pathological conditions. He treats each child entirely individually, to the extent that he prefers—if he can’t get the children to sit at individual desks—to have them sit around a round table. The children who are struggling—whether they have intellectual difficulties or are otherwise developmentally delayed—are treated in such a way that, after some time, they can catch up with their grade level again. Of course, this can only be achieved gradually. But we are also extremely sparing in transferring children to the remedial class, and if I need to transfer a child from a class to the remedial class out of necessity, I usually have to first fight it out with the class teacher, because he doesn’t want to let the child go. Sometimes it is strikingly evident—in an extraordinarily wonderful way—how the individualities of the teachers and the students can grow together. In this way, we truly achieve the goal of making instruction and education something that becomes an inner part of the children.

[ 24 ] As you can see, everything we do is based on training in the methodology, because we are realists and not vague mystics. Even if we have to make compromises with the outside world, we still use our methodology to truly bring out what is inherent in each child; at least during the few years we were able to work, many positive results have become evident.

[ 25 ] However, because we have to make compromises, religious education, for example, is not available to many children. We can guide the child through morality. We instill morality in the child by, above all, allowing it to grow out of a sense of gratitude. Gratitude is the concrete experience of another human being in the realm of morality. Whatever does not spring from gratitude in the human heart can, at best, lead only to abstract principles in morality. But everything develops out of gratitude. And we then develop people’s capacity for love and their sense of duty out of gratitude. In this way, we lead morality into religious life. But external circumstances made it necessary that we not act as revolutionaries; thus, we placed Catholic instruction in the hands of the Catholic religious community. They send their representative to the school. And we have the Catholic children taught by the Catholic pastor and the Protestant children by the Protestant pastor. The Waldorf School is not an ideological school, but a school based on a specific method.

[ 26 ] It simply turned out that a number of the children were the children of dissidents who would not have received any religious instruction in this way at all. But the very spirit that took hold in the Waldorf school gave rise—especially among those parents who otherwise would not have sent their children to religious education classes—to a need for moral instruction to be integrated into religious education. Thus, we were compelled to offer special religious education classes from an anthroposophical perspective. This is not intended to introduce anthroposophy into the school. Even in anthroposophical religious education, we do not teach anthroposophy to young children; rather, we try to find in nature those symbols and parables that lead toward the religious. We try to teach the Gospel to the child in the way it must be understood from a spiritual understanding of religion, and so on. Anyone who thinks that the Waldorf School is an anthroposophical school understands neither Waldorf pedagogy nor anthroposophy.

[ 27 ] But anthroposophy—how is it so often understood? When people talk about anthroposophy, they imagine it to be something sectarian, because at most they look up the literal meaning of “anthroposophy” in a dictionary. It’s roughly the same as how the world perceives anthroposophy today—as I can illustrate with a comparison. Suppose someone hears: “Max Müller from Oxford”—what kind of person might that have been? A Müller—yes, he bought grain, then took the grain to the mill, then ground the grain into flour, and then delivered it to the baker. You see, I don’t believe that people who talk so much about Max Müller at Oxford based on the name “Müller” would be saying anything particularly accurate about him! It’s roughly the same when people talk about anthroposophy today—just as if they were talking about Max Müller that way—because they pick out of the context of the words whatever they think anthroposophy is. They see it as some kind of backwater sect; whereas every thing must have a name,

[ 28 ] Anthroposophy is that which truly grows out of all the sciences and out of life itself and did not need a name at all; but now, since people must have names in this earthly world, and since the thing itself must have a name, it is called anthroposophy. But just as the essence of the scholar does not follow from his name, Max Müller, so too does nothing follow from the name “anthroposophy” for the subject itself. Thus, when we introduce anthroposophical religious education into the school, we place it alongside the other religious education courses as something that fits in, just as is the case with the other religious education courses.

[ 29 ] Well, really, I don’t mean any harm, but others have interpreted it as something bad. The anthroposophical religious education program is growing; more and more children are joining it. And there are even children who have already left the other programs and come over to the anthroposophical religious education program. It’s quite understandable, then, that people say: What terrible people these anthroposophists are! They even entice the children to run away from Protestant or Catholic religious education classes and want to have religious education there instead. — We do everything we can to discourage the children from doing this, if possible, because it is extremely difficult to find religious education teachers, especially in our area. But even though we have never attempted to structure this matter according to anything other than the parents’ requests and the children’s own unconscious needs, the demand for this anthroposophical religious education is spreading more and more—and I must say, to my regret. And the fact is that, through this anthroposophical religious education, the Waldorf school has taken on a thoroughly Christian character.

[ 30 ] You will sense from the overall atmosphere of the Waldorf School that a Christian character pervades all instruction—that, in fact, religious life prevails in the Waldorf School—even though, from the very beginning, we have not sought to make the Waldorf School anything that has to do with any particular denomination. I must say it again and again: the Waldorf school principle is not one that seeks to create a school based on a worldview, but rather a school based on method. What is to be achieved through a method grounded in an understanding of the human being is to transform children into physically healthy and strong, emotionally free, and intellectually clear individuals.

[ 31 ] Allow me to say a few more words about the significance of eurythmy instruction and the education that can arise for the child specifically from eurythmy lessons. I would like to illustrate this using the figures created in the studio in Dornach, which are intended to represent, in a certain artistic way, what eurythmy is actually about. First of all, these figures are intended primarily to provide a foundation for the artistic understanding of eurythmy. However, I will also be able to use these figures specifically to clarify certain pedagogical and didactic points for you. The point is that eurythmy is truly a visible language—not a mimetic expression, not a pantomimic expression, and not an ordinary form of dance. Just as a person activates specific organs when singing or speaking, so too can one engage the whole person in the movements that the larynx and its neighboring organs actually seek to perform. But they do not get the chance; they suppress them immediately, and so the other movements take place in such a way that what actually wants to become, say, this movement in the larynx—so that the laryngeal wings open outward— A—this is undermined at the very moment of its emergence, in its status nascendi; it is transformed into a movement into which the thought content of speech can be incorporated, and into a movement that can then pass into the air and be heard. The underlying movement—the movement that is actually internal to the human being, let’s call it A—you have it here (the figure is shown). This is what the whole human being wants to do when it bursts forth in A. And in this way, one can make visible every expression of song and speech in the movement that the whole human being actually wants to perform but holds back in the status nascendi. In this way, one can arrive at every such form of movement.

[ 32 ] Just as there are specific configurations of the larynx and other speech organs for the sounds A, I, L, and M, so too are there corresponding movements—forms of movement. These forms of movement are therefore the very manifestation of the will that otherwise consists of the manifestations of thought and will in speaking and singing. The intellectual, the purely abstract intellectual element present in language, is set aside here, and everything that seeks to be expressed is transferred into the movement itself; thus, eurythmy is, in the broadest sense, an art of movement. Just as you can hear the “A,” you can see the “A”; just as you can hear the “I,” you can see the “I.”

[ 33 ] The aim in these figures is to capture movement above all else in the sculptural form of the wood. The figures are formed according to a three-color principle. There is the base color, which is actually intended to express the form of movement everywhere. But just as feeling flows into our spoken language, so too can feeling flow down into the movement. For we do not merely utter a sound; rather, we imbue the sound with an emotional tone. We can do the same in eurythmy. And here a strongly subconscious element comes into play in eurythmy. If the performer is able to artistically infuse this feeling into their movements, then the audience will also sense this feeling when they see the eurythmic movements. Another factor taken into account here is that the veil being worn is meant to follow these feelings. So the color that is used here (in the figures) as a second color—primarily on the veil—represents the emotional nuance of the movement. You have, then, a primary base color that expresses the movement itself, and a second color superimposed on it—which is expressed primarily through the veil—that conveys the emotional nuance. But the eurythmist must have the inner strength to infuse this feeling into the movement, just as it makes a difference whether I say to someone: “Come to me!”—in a commanding tone—or: “Come to me!”—in a friendly, inviting tone. That is the nuance of feeling. Thus, what is expressed here in the second color—and what is then continued into the veil—represents the emotional nuance of eurythmic language.

[ 34 ] And the third element introduces character—the strong element of will. This enters eurythmy only when the eurythmist is able to empathize with his or her movements and express them from within. The head of a eurythmist looks quite different depending on whether they tense the muscles on the left side of the head slightly and leave those on the right somewhat relaxed, as indicated here, for example, by the third color. You can observe this; the third color always indicates the volitional aspect. Here, for example, there is some tension on the left side, and here across the mouth; here (in another figure), the forehead is slightly tensed—the muscles of the forehead are slightly tensed. This then—radiating from this gentle tension, for what is gently tensed there radiates throughout the entire organism—gives the whole a inner character. And from this movement, which is expressed through the base color; from the emotional nuance, which is expressed through the second color; and from this element of will—the entire element is an element of will, but here the will is particularly emphasized—from these, the actual art of eurythmy is composed.

[ 35 ] If, therefore, one wishes to capture something eurythmically, one must isolate from the human being that which is purely eurythmic. If there were figures here with beautifully painted noses, eyes, and mouths, they might indeed be beautiful paintings; but that is not the point of eurythmy—here, only that which is eurythmically expressed in the person performing eurythmy is painted and formed.

[ 36 ] For a person practicing eurythmy, the specific facial expression is not what matters. It is not the point. Of course, a healthy eurythmist will not make a sullen face while performing a joyful movement, but that is also the case when speaking. But a facial expression that is not eurythmic is not what is sought. For example: one can perform an “A” movement by keeping the line of the eyes directed outward. That is eurythmic; that works. But it is not acceptable for someone, as is done in the art of mimicry, to make peculiar little gestures—as we say in German—with their eyes, which look like a grimace, something that is often demanded as a special mimetic expression of the face. Everything about the eurythmist must be eurythmistic.

[ 37 ] Therefore, in a kind of expressive art, what is uniquely eurythmy was drawn out of the human being, while everything else was omitted; and in this way, one actually achieves only an artistic expression. For it is true of all art that one can express—using only certain artistic means—precisely what art is capable of representing. You cannot make a statue speak; you must therefore express, through the shaping of the mouth and the entire face, what you wish to convey as a spiritual expression. Similarly, it is of no use here to paint naturalistic figures, but rather to paint what emerges directly as eurythmy.

[ 38 ] Now, of course, when I speak here of the veil, one cannot change the veil after every syllable; but one gradually discovers that once one has immersed oneself in this emotional nuance, in this mood for a poem, then the entire poem has either an “A” mood or a “B” mood. Then one can arrange things in a particular veil color for the entire poem.

[ 39 ] The same applies to the color scheme. Here, I have depicted the veil, shape, color combination, and so on for each individual sound. In a poem, one must, so to speak, have a keynote. This keynote then determines the veil’s color—indeed, the entire composition—which must be maintained throughout the poem; otherwise, the ladies would have to constantly change their veils, constantly cast them aside, and put on other veils, and the whole thing would become even more complicated than it already is, and people would say they understand it even less. But it is certainly true that once you have the tonal mood, you can maintain it throughout an entire poem, varying only the transitions—from one sound to another, one syllable to another, one mood to another, and so on—through the movements.

[ 40 ] Well, since I have educational and didactic goals today, I have arranged the eurythmy figures here so that you can see them in the order in which a child learns the sounds. From an early age, the child learns sounds in such a way that the first sound is essentially the one that sounds like “A.” Proceeding in this order—roughly, of course, as there are all kinds of variations among children—but roughly in this order: A, E, O, U, I—the vowels are typically acquired by the child. When, in this way, the child is allowed to practice this visible language of eurythmy, it is like a resurrection of what the child experienced while learning sounds as a very young child—like a resurrection, like a rising to a different level. The child experiences once again what it experienced earlier, through this eurythmic language. And it is a consolidation of what lies within the word, through the means of the whole human being.

[ 41 ] Then, when it comes to consonants, children learn M, B, P, D, T, L, N; there should also be an NG, as in *gingen*, for example, but that has not yet been formed; then F, H, G, S, R. R, this mysterious letter, which actually has three forms in human language, is only mastered perfectly by children at the very end. There is a lip-R, a tongue-R, and an R that is pronounced entirely at the back of the mouth.

[ 42 ] Thus, what the child learns through language in a partial organism—in the speech organism and the singing organism—can be applied to the whole person and developed into visible speech.

[ 43 ] If there is sufficient interest in this kind of expressionist art, we will then be able to develop further aspects, such as joy, sadness, antipathy, sympathy, and other emotions—all of which can be expressed through eurythmy. Not only grammar but also rhetoric finds its place in eurythmy. We will be able to develop all of this. Then one will see how this spiritual-psychic exercise—which not only has a physiological effect on the physical human being but also shapes the human being spiritually, psychically, and physically—can indeed have, on the one hand, its pedagogical and didactic value and, on the other hand, its artistic value.

[ 44 ] Well, allow me to just add, as an aside, that these figures can help those learning eurythmy to review the material after their lessons. For one must certainly not believe that eurythmy is something so easy that it can be mastered in just a few hours. Eurythmy really must be learned thoroughly; but such eurythmy figures can also serve as a means of review for those seeking to delve deeper into the art of eurythmy. One will see that there is a great deal contained within the forms themselves, which are carved and painted here in a relatively simple manner.

[ 45 ] That is what I wanted to say today about the art of eurythmy, particularly insofar as it can be integrated into the pedagogical and didactic principles that we strive to uphold in the Waldorf school.