The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] I already pointed out yesterday how there is actually more to these three most significant activities of a child’s life—learning to walk, speak, and think—than meets the eye. And one cannot observe a human being if one cannot distinguish their outer appearance from their inner being. One must develop a keen sense of discernment with regard to what lies within the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—if one wishes to approach the human being from a pedagogical and didactic perspective.

[ 2 ] Let us first consider what is commonly referred to as “learning to walk.” As I have already said, this process actually encompasses the entire way in which a human being establishes balance with the physical external world that surrounds them on Earth. It encompasses the entire statics and dynamics of life. And we have also seen how this search for balance—this emancipation of the hands and arms from the legs and feet—in turn forms the foundation for human speech; and how the capacity for thought is actually born out of the capacity for speech. But there is something else, something fundamentally different, in this dynamic-static system that human beings acquire through walking. I already alluded to this at least a little yesterday, but we must examine it in greater detail. Just consider that human beings—especially in early childhood, but also up until the change of teeth—are, in fact, entirely sensory beings. As a result, first of all, as a whole human being, they are receptive to everything that acts upon them from their surroundings; but on the other hand, they are also impelled to recreate within themselves that which acts in their surroundings. They are, so to speak—if we single out one sense organ—entirely an eye. Just as the eye receives impressions from the external world, and just as the eye—precisely through its own organization—reproduces what occurs in its surroundings, so too does the whole human being, in the first period of life, internally reproduce what happens in his surroundings. But he takes in what happens in his surroundings in a unique form of inner experience. Indeed, when a child sees its father or mother move their hand or arm, an inner impulse immediately arises in the child to make such a movement as well. And from general, fidgety, irregular movements, the child progresses to specific movements by imitating the movements of its surroundings. This is how the child also learns to walk. Nor need we see walking as involving an element of heredity to the same degree as is currently fashionable in scientific circles—this constant appeal to heredity is merely a fad—but rather, the fact that one child walks on their heels while another walks on their tiptoes also stems from imitating the father, the mother, or someone else. And decisive for this choice—one might say—that the child makes, whether to follow the father or the mother more closely, is the—if I may put it this way—affection that emerges between the lines of life toward the particular person whom the child imitates. Here lies a truly subtle psychological-physiological process that simply cannot be grasped by the crude methods of today’s scientific theory of heredity. I would say: Just as the finer particles fall through the sieve and only the coarser ones remain, so too does what is actually taking place immediately fall through the sieve of today’s worldviews, leaving us with only the coarse aspects of the resemblance between the child and the father or mother, and so on. But these are the coarse aspects of life that remain; not the subtleties. And the teacher, the educator, needs precisely a keen power of observation for what is specifically human.

[ 3 ] Now one might say: Certainly, love must prevail precisely toward that one special being whom the child looks up to. But when one considers the manifestations of love in a person’s later life—even when that person has become very loving—one comes to realize that simply saying, “The child chooses out of love,” does not even do justice to the particular qualities at work in the child. For the child chooses according to something even higher than love. It chooses according to what, when we look for it in a person’s later life, is religious devotion. This seems very paradoxical, but it is true. The child’s entire sensory-physical behavior—in which it imitates everything—is an outflow of the fact that, until the child’s teeth are replaced—naturally diminishing gradually, particularly strong in early childhood, but nevertheless continuing until the teeth are replaced—the human body strives to be lived through with feelings such as those that are later expressed only in religious devotion or in participation in religious rituals. For when the human body enters physical life, it is, in fact, completely immersed in religious needs, and love is later a softening of what is actually a feeling of religious devotion. We can say: Until the change of teeth, the child is essentially an imitative being, but that form of experience which flows through this imitation like the lifeblood—you will not misunderstand the expression; one must sometimes use unusual terms to describe something so foreign to contemporary culture—is physical religion. Until the child’s teeth change, the child lives in physical religion. One should not underestimate those very subtle—one might say imponderable—influences that emanate from the child’s surroundings through mere observation and the child’s need to imitate. One should not underestimate this, for it is the most important thing for childhood. We shall yet see what immensely significant pedagogical and didactic results arise precisely from this.

[ 4 ] Well, isn’t it true that when modern science approaches such things, they seem incredibly crude? I would like to cite once again that fact which can be understood very well in this context: namely, the “mathematizing horses” that caused such a stir for a while. I haven’t seen the Elberfeld horses, but I was able to study Mr. von Osten’s horse quite closely—he, after all, played a major role in Berlin for a certain period of time. It was truly astonishing just how well this horse could calculate. Well, the whole affair caused quite a stir, and a very detailed treatise was even published by a private lecturer who had come to the conclusion: This horse has the peculiar ability to perceive the very subtle facial expressions—those that humans cannot detect—the very subtle facial expressions that Mr. von Osten makes while standing next to the horse. And when Mr. von Osten then gives it a math problem, he himself already has the answer in his head and makes a particularly subtle facial expression; the horse perceives this, and when it notices this expression, it stamps its foot. Of course, if one were to think even more precisely than today’s exact natural sciences do, one might now ask this private lecturer how he intends to prove this. He could not prove it. — But you see, my observations led me to conclude that something entirely different was significant for the entire course of events. For Mr. von Osten had large pouches in his brown-gray coat, and constantly, while he was demonstrating, he slipped candies—little sweets—into the horse’s mouth. This established a particularly intimate, physical bond between the horse and Mr. von Osten, and it was on this intimate physical bond—on this constantly nurtured, heartfelt affection—that the spiritual connection between the man and his horse was based. And it is a far more intimate process than the external, intellectual observation of facial expressions: it is, in fact, a spiritual communication.

[ 5 ] If this can already be observed in the animal kingdom in such a case, then you must realize what kind of soul communication—if it can still be imbued with this religious devotion—exists in childhood—how everything the child assimilates arises from this religious orientation of the soul, which is still entirely rooted in the body. And anyone who can observe how the child allows itself to be influenced from the outside by this religious devotion to its surroundings—and who can distinguish, from what happens in this way, that which the child still individually pours into this very statics and dynamics—will then already find, precisely in this physical expression of the child, the impulses of its later destiny. You see, it is very strange, but absolutely true, what a person such as Goethe’s friend Knebel said to Goethe in his old age: “Anyone who looks back on life will very easily find that when we experience a decisive event in life and trace what preceded it, it is as if we had been steered toward this decisive event—as if not only the preceding step, but many preceding steps had been such that, driven by an inner impulse of the soul, we had striven precisely toward it.”

[ 6 ] If the event in question is such that it is connected to a particular person, then—if a person can truly detach themselves from the clamor of life and focus on their more subtle feelings—they will also say to themselves: It is not merely an illusion, a figment of the imagination; rather, if you have found a person at a certain stage of life with whom you wish to be more intimately connected than with others, then you have actually sought them out. You already knew them, after all, before you first saw them. — The most intimate aspects of life lie precisely in this finding one’s way into the static and dynamic aspects of existence. And anyone who develops the ability to observe in this direction will find that the destinies of life express themselves in a remarkably vivid form in the way a child begins to move, the way a child begins to bend its knees, the way it begins to use its fingers. All of this is not merely something materially external; all of this is, in fact, the very image of what is most spiritual in human beings.

[ 7 ] And when the child begins to speak, it is a larger circle to which it adapts. At first, when it is learning only its native language, this circle is that of the culture as a whole, no longer the narrower circle of individuals who make up a more intimate social milieu. The circle has expanded. As the child immerses itself in the language, it is already adapting to something that is no longer as narrow as that to which it adapts in terms of both statics and dynamics. Therefore, we can say: Through speech, the child immerses itself in the national genius, the linguistic genius. And since language is thoroughly spiritual, the child immerses itself in something spiritual—but no longer in the individual spiritual realm, which then becomes, as a matter of destiny, immediately and personally fated for the child—but rather in something that draws the child into a broader circle of life.

[ 8 ] And when the child learns to think—yes, in thinking we are no longer individuals at all. In New Zealand, people think exactly as we do here today. There, it is the entire world to which one adapts by developing one’s thinking out of language. So with language, we are still within a smaller sphere of life; in thinking, we are within all of humanity. In this way, we expand our sphere of life through walking, speaking, and thinking. And if one has the power of discernment, one can already discern the profound, specific differences between those human expressions of life that lie in the assimilation of the static and dynamic aspects of destiny. And within this we see at work what we in anthroposophy have come to call the human “I.” We do not wish to cultivate an abstract distinction, but rather to pinpoint precisely that which is specific and active within the human being. Likewise, we see that something entirely different from this very individual human nature emerges in language. That is why we say: The human astral body is at work in language. This astral body can indeed also be observed in animals; but in animals it does not act outwardly, but rather inwardly, and shapes the animal’s form. We, too, form our own shape, but we, so to speak, take a little away from this form-shaping element and use it to develop language. Thus, the astral body is at work here. And in thinking—which is then quite general and, in turn, something specifically distinct from the other—in thinking we develop that which we define by saying: Here the human etheric body is at work. And it is only in sensory perceptions that the entire physical body of the human being is at work.

[ 9 ] For now, take these points as a way of defining terminology; that is not what matters here—this is truly not some sort of philosophical musing, but rather a powerful allusion to life itself. This must form the foundation of that understanding of human nature which, in turn, can lead to true pedagogy and didactics.

[ 10 ] In a sense, we see this in the following order: first comes the highest aspect, the “I”; then the astral body; and finally the etheric body. And the entire spiritual-soul aspect, which is active in the “I,” the astral body, and the etheric body—we then see it continuing to act upon the physical body right up to the time of the change of teeth. All of this is at work within the physical body.

[ 11 ] With the change of teeth, a major change takes place in the child’s entire life. We can initially observe this change in a specific aspect. You see, what is it, actually, that is the decisive factor in a child? It is truly what I have just described: this physical-religious devotion to the environment. That is truly the decisive factor. Now the child goes through the process of losing baby teeth and then develops a certain psychological and spiritual constitution, particularly during the elementary school years—between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity. Now you see: what acts physically within a person during the first period of life only comes to light as thoughts at a later age, once the person has already passed through sexual maturity. It is by no means the case that the child already possesses a form of thinking that could be combined with the experience of religious devotion. These two things stand in such a relationship to one another during childhood—initially until the change of teeth, but continuing until puberty—that they, I would say, keep each other at a distance. Even between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the child’s thinking does not yet grasp the religious element. It is like those Alpine rivers that spring from high above and then seem to disappear into the caves of the mountains, only to continue flowing down below, reemerge, and flow onward again from above. That which appears as this religious devotion in childhood up to the time of the change of teeth recedes into the innermost being of the person and becomes entirely spiritual, so that one sees it as if it were disappearing; and only later, when the person truly becomes a religiously sensitive being, does it emerge again—and now it engages the mental image and thought.

[ 12 ] If one can observe something like this, then it is only through this external observation—which I by no means criticize, which I indeed, as I said in my first lecture, find justified, but which cannot directly form the basis for the art of education—that this observation becomes meaningful. You see, experimental educational psychology has again found that it is indeed very strange how children of parents who constantly project a religious attitude into their surroundings, who constantly express that religious attitude in words and who, so to speak, want to drill religion into their children—how children of such parents perform poorly in their own religious studies at school; how there is only the slightest correlation coefficient between the religious performance of children of compulsory school age and their parents’ religious attitudes. These correlation coefficients are very low.

[ 13 ] Yes, you see, when one looks into the human being, one sees the reasons for this phenomenon. For no matter how much parents may talk about their religious beliefs, no matter how many beautiful things they may say to the child, it has absolutely no meaning for the child; the child simply passes right by it. The child ignores everything intended to influence the intellect—and even what is meant to influence the emotions—until the child’s teeth begin to fall out. The child does not miss it only when the people in the child’s environment, through their actions—even through their gestures and the way they behave—give the child the opportunity to imitate them in religious devotion and to absorb the religious into the finest structures of the circulatory system. This is then processed within the human being between approximately the ages of seven and fourteen; it continues down there, just as a river flows onward, and only resurfaces in the child’s imagination once the child reaches sexual maturity. We should therefore not be surprised that, even when so many outward expressions of piety and so much religious sentiment are presented to the child, none of it has any effect. We see as effective only that which lies in the actions surrounding the child—everything else passes the child by. Paradoxically speaking, the child passes by the words and admonitions—even the parents’ attitudes—just as indifferently as the eye passes by everything that is not color. The child is, through and through, an imitative being until the time of tooth replacement.

[ 14 ] It is precisely with the change of teeth that the great transformation in the child takes place. This physical-religious devotion comes to an end. We need not be surprised now if the child—who, after all, was completely unaware of all that religious sentiment—now behaves quite differently between the change of teeth and puberty. But precisely what I have said proves to us that the child does not actually arrive at intellectual understanding until puberty. The child’s thinking does not yet grasp the intellectual at all; rather, from the change of teeth until puberty, the child’s thinking is connected solely to everything that affects the child in a pictorial way. Images act upon the senses. In the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, only the images of events and actions in the child’s surroundings have an effect. Then, with the change of teeth, the child begins to take in what is pictorial as well. And this pictorial quality—we must, above all, infuse it into everything through which we now bring to the child, in an excellent way, precisely what must be brought to them—that is: through language.

[ 15 ] I have now described to you everything that reaches the child through the static-dynamic element. But with language comes even more—an immense amount reaches the child. Language is, after all, only one link in an extensive chain of soul experiences. And all those soul experiences that belong to the realm of language are artistic soul experiences. Language itself is an artistic element. And the artistic element—that is precisely what we must give special consideration to, especially for the elementary school years, for the period of a child’s life from the loss of baby teeth to puberty.

[ 16 ] Please do not think that I am now, at this very moment, advocating an “aestheticized” education—that is, replacing the fundamental elements of instruction with all sorts of contrived and artistic elements, even if they are, perhaps, legitimately artistic. That is certainly not my intention. I certainly do not wish to replace the philistine element—which is, after all, decisive in our present-day civilization—with the bohemian element. —For our Czech friends, I would like to note that by “bohemian element” I do not, of course, mean an ethnic element or anything related to the countryside, but rather that which drifts through life in a sloppy manner, without a sense of duty, without order, and without seriousness. - So it is not a matter of the unregulated, the unserious, taking the place of the philistine element that has crept into our civilization, but rather it concerns something entirely different for the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. One must simply observe how a child’s entire way of thinking is not yet logical, but rather entirely pictorial. And by its very nature, the child initially rejects the logical; it wants the pictorial. Intelligent adults do not yet make a very strong impression on a seven-year-old, nine-year-old, eleven-year-old, or even a thirteen-year-old child. These children are still quite indifferent to people’s intelligence. But the lively people, the kind people, make a strong impression—those who speak in such a way that even their words—well, to put it somewhat extremely—dispense tenderness, so to speak; those who can caress with words, who can praise through the way they emphasize them. These people, who go through life with a sense of freshness yet without recklessness—these are the ones who have a particularly strong effect on children at this age. And it is this personal impact that matters. For with the change of teeth, the child’s devotion is now no longer directed solely toward the actions of those around them, but toward what people say. In what people say, in what is absorbed through a natural authority—therein lies the most essential element of a child’s life from the time of tooth replacement until sexual maturity.

[ 17 ] You will not believe—given that I wrote *The Philosophy of Freedom* more than 30 years ago—that I would advocate for authority in an inappropriate manner; but for a child, from the time of losing their baby teeth until sexual maturity, life under natural authority is simply a natural law of the soul. And anyone who, at this stage of life, has never learned to look up to the environment that educates and instructs them as a self-evident authority can never become free, can never become a free person. Freedom is acquired precisely through submission to authority at this stage of life.

[ 18 ] Just as a child in the first stage of life imitates what is done in its environment, so in the second stage of life it follows what is said in its environment—in the broadest sense, of course. And something immense flows into the child through language, which, however, demands imagery from the child itself. You see: when one observes how what is instilled during the initial learning of speech is—one might say—pursued by the child in a dreamlike state until the teeth begin to fall out, and only then does the child awaken—it is precisely then that one gains a mental image of everything that comes to the child through our use of language in the child’s environment during the second stage of life. Therefore, especially for this age group, particular attention must be paid to how the child can be influenced by whatever language sets the tone. Everything must, so to speak, be presented to the child through speech—and whatever is not presented to the child through speech, the child does not understand. When one describes a plant to a child, it is just as if one were to demand that the eye understand the word “red”; it understands only the color red. The child understands nothing of the description of a plant; but it immediately begins to understand when one tells it how the plant speaks and acts. One must, in fact, treat the child in accordance with the understanding of human nature. We will see more of this in the pedagogical-didactic section; what I am saying now is intended more as a foundation.

[ 19 ] We thus see what is inherent in the child—the triad of walking, speaking, and thinking—as if united in the pictorial element. Strangely enough, even what the child first absorbed in a dreamlike, sensory way from the actions of its surroundings is transformed into images during this second stage of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. One might say that the child begins to dream about what its surroundings are doing, whereas in the first period of life it had perceived this quite soberly—sober in its own way—by imitating it inwardly. Now it begins to dream about what its surroundings are doing. And the thoughts of the child’s mind are not yet abstract, not yet logical thoughts; they, too, are still images. In that realm where language sets the tone—in this artistic element, this aesthetic element, this pictorial element—the child lives from the time of tooth replacement until puberty, and the only things that reach the child from us as adults are those that are steeped in this pictorial quality. This is why the child’s memory develops particularly during this stage of life.

[ 20 ] Now I’m going to say something that, of course, gives even learned psychologists today a slight shiver, a kind of goosebumps, when I say: A child doesn’t develop memory until their baby teeth fall out. But the reason one gets that slight shudder, those goosebumps, is simply because one cannot observe these things. You see, when someone says: “What appears as memory in a child starting with the change of teeth was actually even stronger in the past, because the child has a natural memory, they remember all sorts of things much more easily than we do later on—yes, that’s true, but it’s true in the same way that when someone says: “A dog is, after all, a wolf; it’s no different from a wolf.” And if you then tell him: “A dog has simply gone through different life circumstances; it may have evolved from the wolf, but it is no longer one,” he’ll say: “Yes, what is present in a dog in a tame form is simply more present in the wolf; the wolf bites more than the dog.” - It is the same when one says that memory is stronger in a child than in later life, after the teeth have been replaced. One must truly be able to engage in observing what is factual, what is real.

[ 21 ] What is this particular kind of memory in children from which later memory derives? In children, this is still a habit. In children, who assimilate everything through imitation, an inner, subtle habit arises when they perceive a word, and from this habit—that which later manifests as habit, a particularly developed habit that is still more of a physical characteristic—arises what later, beginning with the change of teeth, becomes the habit that has taken on a spiritual quality: memory. One must distinguish the habit that has become a psychological faculty from the merely physical habit, just as one distinguishes a dog from a wolf; otherwise, one cannot make sense of it.

[ 22 ] And now one will also perceive the connection between the pictorial nature of a child’s entire inner life and the emergence of the habit imbued with feeling—that is, memory itself, which operates primarily through images.

[ 23 ] In all things, everywhere, it is essential to develop a keen ability to observe people. Then one will also notice the significant turning point between the stage of life that precedes a child’s tooth replacement and the stage that follows. This transition is particularly evident in the pathological conditions that arise. Anyone with a keen eye for this knows that childhood illnesses look quite different from adult illnesses. As a rule, even the same set of external symptoms has a completely different origin in a child than it does in an adult, where it is not quite the same but similar. In children, in fact, the characteristic forms of illness all arise from the head down into the rest of the organism, through a kind of overexcitement of the nervous-sensory system. This is true even of childhood measles and scarlet fever. And if one observes closely, one finds that in this childhood life—in which walking, speaking, and thinking operate separately from one another—all these activities originate in the child’s head. The head, after all, undergoes its most significant internal plastic development during the change of teeth. It then radiates what are inner forces to the rest of the organism. That is why childhood diseases also radiate from the head. One can see from the way childhood diseases manifest that they are primarily a reaction to states of excitation in the nervous-sensory system. Only when one knows this can one understand the true pathology of childhood illnesses. If you observe adults, you will see that their illnesses radiate primarily from the abdominal and musculoskeletal systems—that is, from the exact opposite pole of the human being.

[ 24 ] Right in between childhood—a time when children can actually suffer from overstimulation of the nervous and sensory systems—and adulthood after puberty lies the school-age period—from the time teeth begin to fall out until puberty. Right in the middle of this lies everything I have described to you: this vivid inner life of the soul. On the outer side of this lies the human rhythmic system—the interplay of breathing and blood circulation. How breathing and blood circulation harmonize internally, how the child breathes at school, how breathing gradually adapts to blood circulation—this generally occurs between the ages of 9 and 10. While breathing predominates until the age of 9, an inner struggle within the organism then gives rise to a kind of harmony between the pulse and the breaths, and blood circulation subsequently becomes predominant—this is present physically on the one hand and psychologically on the other.

[ 25 ] Once a child has gone through the process of losing baby teeth, all of its faculties strive toward an inner, plastic imagery. And we support this vivid imagery when we ourselves approach the child in a vivid, imagery-rich way with everything we pass on to them. Then, between the ages of 9 and 10, something remarkable occurs. At this point, the child wants to be engaged musically—and through rhythms—much more than before. If we observe the child in terms of musical reception up to this point in life between the ages of 9 and 10—observing how the musical element actually lives plastically within the child, how it naturally becomes part of the body’s inner plasticity, and how the musical element in the child transitions extraordinarily easily into dance-like movement: then we must recognize how the actual inner grasp of the musical only begins to emerge between the ages of 9 and 10. This will be quite clearly noticeable. Of course, these things are not so strictly distinguished from one another, and anyone who understands these matters will nurture the musical aspect before the age of 9, but in the right way—leaning more toward the aspect I have just described; otherwise the child would suffer a shock between the ages of 9 and 10 if the musical element were to suddenly approach them and take hold of them inwardly, while they were completely unaccustomed to being moved so strongly on the inside.

[ 26 ] And so we see how the child, drawing from its inner being, responds to very specific manifestations—revelations of the external world—with inner demands and inner needs. When one comes to know these inner demands and inner needs as I have just described, one does not merely come to know them theoretically, but learns to recognize them in the child itself: now this springs forth from the child, now something else. Then such an understanding of life truly becomes not theory, but instinct. An instinctive observation of the child thus comes to the fore, whereas otherwise all observation leads only to theories—and one must apply these theories externally, remaining, in essence, completely alien to the child. After all, one does not need to give the child candy to establish intimacy; one must bring it about through spiritual conditions. But the most important element is precisely the spiritual connection between the teacher and the child of elementary school age. That is what matters most.

[ 27 ] Now, one must say: What is striving to emerge from the child actually comes forth from the child with a great inner necessity. And the educator and teacher who can see through the child—drawing on all the sources I have described—actually becomes quite modest over time, because he gradually comes to realize how little one can, in essence, reach the child through superficial means. We shall see, however, that education and instruction nevertheless have their sound basis and, if we practice them in the right way, enable us to reach the child—precisely because most education is, after all, self-education. But we must also recognize that the child brings something quite specific—even in every aspect of life—to the outside world, that is, to us as educators and teachers. And we should not be surprised, then, when we present something to the child and the child—not consciously, since conscious life is not yet very developed at that stage—unconsciously offers us a certain resistance.

[ 28 ] Once a child has gone through the process of losing its baby teeth, its inner nature demands that we provide it, through external forms and colors, with what springs forth from its very own constitution. I will speak more about this later. But what the child does not demand—what the child certainly does not demand at first during the tooth-changing stage of life, what it inwardly rejects with strong opposition—is that, once it has learned to say “A” as a human expression of wonder, it should then write such a strange symbol for this “A” on the blackboard or on paper! That has absolutely nothing to do with what the child is actually experiencing. When a child sees a combination of colors, it comes alive inwardly. But if you present the child with something like this: “FATHER,” and then expect it to somehow connect what its father is with that—then, naturally, the inner human being puts up resistance.

[ 29 ] How did these things come into being? Just think about it: the ancient Egyptians still used pictographic writing. In what they depicted, there was a resemblance to what it signified. This pictographic writing still had a specific meaning—cuneiform writing, too, still had a specific meaning, though it expressed the arbitrary element more, while the emotional element was expressed more in the pictographic writing—yes, with these older forms of writing, especially when one was supposed to read them, one became aware of this: they still had something to do with what is given to human beings in the external world. But those squiggles on the blackboard have nothing to do with “Father,” and that is precisely what the child is now supposed to begin studying. It is no wonder at all that the child rejects it.

[ 30 ] Namely, during the age of tooth replacement, human nature is least attuned to writing and reading—specifically, to the kind of writing and reading we now have in civilization—because this has developed as a result of adults refining the original forms. Now the child, who has only just entered the world, is expected to take this on. None of these cultural advances have yet reached the child, and now it is suddenly expected to find its way into a later stage that has nothing to do with its own experience—a stage that omits everything that lies between the present day and ancient Egypt. Is it any wonder that the child cannot find its way into this? If, on the other hand, you introduce arithmetic to the child in a form that is humanly possible, you will see that the child finds its way into it; it also finds its way into simple geometric forms. Already in the first lecture, I pointed out that forms become spiritually free, and numbers, too, become spiritually free as we strengthen our inner system through the process of losing our baby teeth—and through this, a spiritual crystallization takes place that is then expressed in arithmetic, drawing, and so on. But reading and writing are, at first—around the age of seven—something entirely foreign to human nature. Please do not now conclude that I have claimed one should not teach children to read and write. I will draw the real consequences of what I have said in the coming days, so that the questions of how to teach children to read and write may then be answered. For we do not educate children for their own sake, but for life; they must learn to read and write. The question is simply how to teach them in a way that does not contradict human nature. But in general, it is quite beneficial for teachers and educators to realize just how foreign it is—what we must impart to the child from general social culture. One should know how foreign this is to a child’s nature and hold this clearly before one’s mind. This is very necessary.

[ 31 ] Of course, we must not fall into the trap of creating an “aestheticizing” education by saying: “The child should learn through play.” That is one of the worst clichés, because it would turn such a person into nothing more than a player in life. Only dilettantes in pedagogy say such things. It is not a matter of taking from play what is pleasant to us as adults, but rather what emerges from play specifically during childhood. And so I ask you: Is play fun or serious for the child? For a healthy child, play is by no means a frivolous pastime, but rather a very serious matter. Play flows from the human organism with genuine seriousness during childhood. If you can only grasp this seriousness of play for school-age children, then you will not be teaching the child through play in the sense that people usually mean, but with the same seriousness that the child himself brings to his play. It all comes down to the proper observation of life. That is why it is, in part, somewhat regrettable that today, from all sides, people are intruding with their amateurish demands into the very realm—education and teaching—that requires the most refined observation of life. This is very regrettable. For, through our intellectualistic culture, we have finally entered an age in which adults no longer understand children at all, because children have a soul entirely different from that of today’s adults, who are thoroughly intellectualized. We must first reconnect with the nature of childhood. And this involves truly coming to terms with the fact that, in the early years of a child’s life—up until the change of teeth—the child’s entire behavior has a physical-religious character; that then, from the time of tooth replacement until sexual maturity, the child’s entire behavior reflects a soul life that is pictorial in nature and that, in terms of its pictorial quality and a certain artistic-aesthetic aspect, undergoes manifold changes even within the course of this life period.

[ 32 ] Once a person has reached sexual maturity, what has been at work in language—the astral body within them—becomes free and able to act freely. Before that, they need what is at work in language internally for the organization of the body. That which is at work in language—and also in many other things, in all forms, including plastic and musical forms—now becomes free. From the time of sexual maturity onward, the human being learns to apply this to thinking; only then does he become an intellectual, logical being.

[ 33 ] And you can see how that which flashes through, flows through, and ripples through speech gives the body one last jolt and then is released. Look at the boy; listen to him—how speech is transformed at that age by sexual maturity. It is just like the transformation that occurs during the change of teeth around the age of 7. There is still that final jolt that the astral body sends into the physical body—that is, what twitches and works within speech—when the larynx begins to speak with a different vocal timbre. In females, it is similarly the case, only in a different way—not through the larynx, but through other organs. The person has then reached sexual maturity.

[ 34 ] Then he enters that stage of life where what is now decisive and crucial for him is not what radiates from the nervous-sensory system throughout the entire body, but rather the motor system and the volitional system, which are intimately connected with the metabolic system. Metabolism expresses itself through movement. And now we can also see in pathology how, in adults, illness radiates primarily from the metabolic system—even migraines are metabolic disorders—and how illnesses do not radiate from the head, whereas in children everything radiates from the head. It doesn’t matter where one contracts the illness; one must know from where the illness radiates.

[ 35 ] But at the elementary school age, the rhythmic system is particularly active; this is when everything that takes place internally between the nervous-sensory system and the metabolic-motor system comes into balance: that which acts through movement, where combustion processes are constantly taking place, which in turn are balanced by metabolism; then, what is gradually prepared in the metabolism to pass into the blood and take on the form of blood circulation—and how this interplays with the respiratory process, which is rhythmic, so that it in turn influences the nervous-sensory process. We have these two poles of human nature: the nervous-sensory system on the one hand, the metabolic-movement system on the other, and in between, the rhythmic system.

[ 36 ] And you see, we must pay particular attention to this rhythmic system when we consider the period in the course of human life between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity. That is when the rhythmic system comes to the fore—and this rhythmic system is the healthiest aspect of the human being. You’d have to make it sick from the outside for it to become ill!

[ 37 ] In this regard, today’s approach to observation once again succumbs to entirely false mental images. Just consider, for a moment, that today it is once again scientifically established—and this is not meant as a criticism of science; in a certain sense, it is entirely correct, as I always emphasize, otherwise you could very easily say that science is being mocked. Science is by no means to be mocked; it is to be fully recognized—so science determines the fatigue coefficients. It is determined how much a child tires during physical education, how much a child tires while doing arithmetic, and so on. It is quite good, quite commendable, to determine this, but one cannot organize instruction based on it. You cannot structure the schedule based on how much a child tires, because you have an entirely different task: namely, to influence the very system that never tires throughout a person’s entire life. In fact, only the metabolic-motor system can tire. It tires, and it transfers its fatigue to the other systems. But can the rhythmic system become fatigued? No, it cannot become fatigued, for if the heart did not beat throughout one’s entire life—tirelessly, without any fatigue—and if the breath did not continue throughout one’s entire life—tirelessly, without any fatigue—then we could not live. The rhythmic system does not become fatigued.

[ 38 ] If we tire our students too much through any means, this only proves that, during the critical years of life—between the ages of 7 and 14—we do not pay enough attention to the rhythmic system, which in turn lives entirely within the visual realm and is an expression of the visual. If you do not make arithmetic and writing lessons visual, you will tire the children out. If you are able, through inner freshness, to bring the pictorial to life in the child in the moment, then you will not tire the child at all. The child will then only become tired from factors related to the motor system—such as the way the chair they are sitting on presses against them, whether the pen they are writing with is awkwardly held, and so on. It is not a matter of how we apply psychological pedagogy to determine how long a child may do arithmetic so that it does not become too tired, but rather a matter of how we properly align the various school subjects with the rhythmic system; how, based on an understanding of the human being, we truly impart to the child what we are meant to impart.

[ 39 ] And to that end, we must understand how human beings actually awaken to intellectual life—to true understanding—only upon reaching sexual maturity; how the influence of personal role models is essential; what must take place between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity; and what the teacher and educator must cultivate in young people. That is why a pedagogy that arises from a genuine understanding of human nature is so strongly a pedagogy of disposition—a pedagogy that is intended, above all else, to influence the teacher’s disposition. To put it rather bluntly, one might say: The children are actually quite all right, but the adults are so far from being all right! We truly need what I already said at the end of the first lecture: We don’t need to go on and on about how we should treat children; rather, we need above all an understanding of how we ourselves should conduct ourselves as teachers and educators. We need heart. But not merely in the sense that we say: we should address not the child’s intellect but their heart, pedagogically and didactically; rather, we need—and I would like to emphasize this once again—we need heart for pedagogy itself.