The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] There can be no doubt that education and instruction are matters of the utmost concern to all souls and minds in the present age. We see it everywhere. When I now advocate here an art of education and instruction drawn directly from immediate spiritual life and insight, it differs from the general demand not so much externally in the intensity of its advocacy, but rather more internally.

[ 2 ] Today, there is a general sense that the conditions of civilization are undergoing a rapid transition, and that we need to consider many new and emerging ideas for the structures of social life. In fact, people are already sensing today—something they hardly felt until recently—that children have actually become different beings than they were not long ago. People feel that old age and youth are much more at odds with one another today than was the case in earlier times.

[ 3 ] The art of education and teaching that I am about to discuss here before you, however, takes into account the inner course of human civilization—that which has transformed human souls over the course of time, and that which human souls have undergone in terms of development over the course of centuries, indeed, I might say, millennia. And it seeks to fathom how, especially in the present age, one can reach the human being within the child. It is generally acknowledged that, in nature, successive periods exhibit distinctions. One need only recall how people take these distinctions into account in everyday life. Take the most obvious example: the day. We approach the processes of nature differently in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. And it would seem absurd to us if we did not take this progression of the day into account. We would also find it absurd if we did not do justice to another progression in human life—if, for example, we did not take into account that we must approach an elderly person differently than a child. We respect the facts in this natural progression. But humanity has not yet become accustomed to respecting the facts in the general development of humanity either.

[ 4 ] We do not expect that humanity thousands of years ago was any different from what it was in the Middle Ages or what it is today. One must learn to gain insight into the inner forces of human beings if one wishes to treat children today in a practical rather than a theoretical way. One must fathom from within which forces are at work in human beings today.

[ 5 ] And so the principles of Waldorf education are by no means revolutionary. One certainly recognizes in Waldorf education the greatness, the merits, and the appeal that educators in all countries achieved so brilliantly in the 19th century. The aim is not to overturn everything and succumb to the belief that one can only establish something radically new. The aim is simply to explore the inner forces currently at work in human nature, to take them into account in education, and through this consideration to properly integrate people today into social life in terms of body, soul, and spirit. For education—as we shall see in the course of these lectures—has in fact always been a social matter. It is so in the present; it must also be so in the future. And therefore it must have an understanding of the social demands of any given age.

[ 6 ] Now, I would like to begin by presenting to you, in three stages, the development of humanity’s educational system within Western civilization. We can do this best by considering what, in each historical era, those who sought to ascend to the highest level of humanity—that highest level where they could be of greatest service to their fellow human beings—sought to achieve. In such a consideration, we would do well to go back in time as far as we believe that this era, with its human forces, still lives on in the present.

[ 7 ] No one today can deny that Hellenism is still very much alive in everything that human souls desire and strive for. And for the educator, this must surely be a fundamental question: How did the Greeks seek to bring human beings to a certain state of perfection? Then one should observe how the times are progressing with regard to the perfection, education, and instruction of human beings.

[ 8 ] Let us first—since we will have to examine this question very closely—consider the Greek ideal that was held in mind for the educator; that is, for the one who not only sought to cultivate within himself the highest level of humanity, but who also sought to cultivate this highest level of humanity within himself so that he could guide others on their path to humanity. What was the Greek ideal of education?

[ 9 ] Well, the Greek ideal of education was the gymnast—that is, the person who had brought all his physical qualities, and, to the extent that it was deemed necessary at the time, his emotional and intellectual qualities, into harmony with one another. The one who was capable of revealing the divine beauty of the world through the beauty of his own body, and who understood how to bring this divine beauty of the world to outward physical expression in the young person, in the boy—that was the gymnast; that was the bearer of Greek civilization.

[ 10 ] From a certain modern perspective—one might say, looking down from above—it is easy to view the gymnast’s path of education, which is oriented toward the physical. However, this completely misunderstands what the word “gymnast” actually meant in ancient Greece.

[ 11 ] Even today, we still admire Greek culture and civilization, and we still regard it as our ideal to immerse ourselves in Greek culture and civilization in pursuit of a higher education.

[ 12 ] When we do this, we must certainly also remember that the Greeks did not set out to develop what we call the “spiritual” aspect of human beings, but rather sought only to develop the human body in such a way that, through the harmony of its parts and the harmony of its modes of activity, it would rise to become a physical manifestation of God’s beauty. And then the Greeks calmly awaited further development, just as one expects from a plant when the root has been treated properly—that it will develop into a flower on its own through sunlight and warmth. And when we look today with such devotion at Greek culture and civilization, we must not forget that the bearer of this Greek culture and civilization was the gymnast—the one who did not, I might say, take the third step first, but rather took the first step first—the physical harmonization of the human being— and that all the beauty, all the grandeur, all the perfection of Greek culture was not directly intended, but was meant to emerge naturally from the beautiful, agile, strong body through the inner essence and nature of the earthly human being.

[ 13 ] Thus, we have only a one-sided understanding of Greek culture—particularly with regard to its educational system—if, alongside our admiration for Greece’s intellectual greatness, we do not also acknowledge the fact that the Greeks saw the gymnast as the embodiment of their educational ideal.

[ 14 ] And then we see how humanity continues to develop, and we see how a significant turning point in humanity’s development is taking place as Greek culture and civilization give way to Roman civilization. And in Roman civilization, we first see the emergence of that culture of abstraction, which then proceeds to separate spirit, soul, and body, focusing particularly on this triad.

[ 15 ] In Roman civilization, we see how the principle of beauty in the Greeks’ physical education is indeed imitated; but at the same time, we see how physical and mental education begin to diverge. We see how, in Roman culture, physical education now—very gradually, for the Romans placed great importance on it—begins to take a back seat, and how attention turns more toward what is actually regarded as more noble in human nature: the spiritual. And we see how that training, which in Greece was oriented toward the ideal of the gymnast, gradually evolves in Roman times into a training of the soul.

[ 16 ] And this then carries on through the Middle Ages—that Middle Ages which sees something higher in the spiritual than in the physical. And we see, once again, an educational ideal springing from this Romanized human nature.

[ 17 ] We see, particularly in the early Middle Ages, the emergence of an educational ideal for the higher human being—one that blossomed from Roman civilization and is, in essence, a culture of the soul, insofar as this soul actually manifests itself outwardly in human beings.

[ 18 ] We see another kind of person taking the place of the gymnast. Today, we no longer have a strong historical awareness of this shift. But anyone who looks inwardly at the Middle Ages will realize that this shift did take place. It is the shift in the ideal of human education—from the gymnast to the rhetorician, to the one in whom speech, as a manifestation of the soul, is now the primary focus of training.

[ 19 ] The idea that a person can exert influence through speech as a rhetorician originated in Roman culture, carried over into the early Middle Ages, and signifies the shift from an education focused purely on the body to one now centered on the soul, alongside which physical education proceeds, as it were, as a supplement.

[ 20 ] And because the Middle Ages relied particularly on the rhetor for the dissemination of intellectual life—as was the case in monastic schools and, indeed, throughout the medieval educational system as a whole—the rhetor, even if the term was not always explicitly used, essentially came to occupy the same position in the educational system of human civilization as the Greek gymnast had.

[ 21 ] Thus, in a sense, we see humanity advancing in its educational ideal—from the gymnast to the orator—when we consider the ideals in which the highest embodiment of humanity has been seen.

[ 22 ] This, however, had an impact on views regarding education. Child-rearing was organized in such a way that it conformed to what was regarded as the human ideal of perfection. And even our modern educational practices—the way we approach language and language learning in children today—are, for those who can view the matter historically, a legacy of what, with reference to the rhetorician, served as an ideal for pre-medieval education.

[ 23 ] Then came the Middle Ages, with their great shift toward the intellectual nature, with their veneration and respect for the intellectual essence. A new ideal for the educational development of humanity emerged—an ideal that represented the very opposite of the Greek ideal: it was an ideal that regarded intellectual and spiritual education as the most noble aspect of a person. And the one who knew something now became the ideal. Whereas throughout the entire Middle Ages, the educational ideal had been the person who was capable—spiritually capable—of convincing others, the educated ideal was now the person of knowledge.

[ 24 ] One need only look at the earliest university institutions—one need only look at the University of Paris in the Middle Ages—to see that the ideal was not yet found in the scholar, but rather in the skilled orator: in the one who could be most persuasive through speech, who possessed the greatest dexterity in presenting arguments and in the use of dialectic—that is, of language already imbued with thought. There, the rhetorician still serves as the educational ideal, even if the rhetorician is already tinged with intellectual thought.

[ 25 ] And now, along with this entire new civilization, a new ideal is emerging for the evolving human being—one that in turn influences the upbringing of children, and under whose influence, in essence, our approach to child-rearing has largely remained to this day, even in this materialistic age. Now, for the first time, the ideal of the doctor is emerging. The doctor becomes what is regarded as the ideal of the perfect human being.

[ 26 ] And so we see three stages in human development: the gymnast, the rhetorician, and the doctor. The gymnast, who can master the entire human organism based on what is regarded as the divine working and activity in the world, in the cosmos; the rhetorician, who knows how to master only the soul, insofar as it manifests itself physically. The gymnast, who trains the body and thereby also develops the soul and spirit up to the height of Greek culture and civilization; the rhetorician, who is concerned with the soul, who reaches his height and splendor in the orator who speaks of the soul, in the church preacher. And we then see how skill descends entirely into underestimation, and how the one who merely knows—that is, who no longer masters the soul in its physical activity, but who masters only that which reigns entirely invisibly within, who merely knows—shines as the educational ideal of the highest order.

[ 27 ] But this, of course, has an impact on the very foundations of education. For in Greece, those who were gymnasts were also responsible for the education of children. In later times, it was the rhetoricians who were responsible for the education of children. And finally, it was the doctors who took on the task of educating children in modern times, precisely during the period when materialism was on the rise in general culture and civilization.

[ 28 ] And so, in a sense, we see education progressing from physical and gymnastic training, through mental and rhetorical training, to doctoral-level education.

[ 29 ] And what our education has become is actually due to the Doctor. Anyone who wishes to seek out, precisely within the deepest principles of modern pedagogy, what should be understood must carefully examine what the Doctor has brought to the field of education.

[ 30 ] Alongside this, however, another ideal has increasingly emerged in modern times: the universal ideal of humanity. After all, people had eyes and ears only for what was due to the doctor. And so a longing arose to once again educate the whole person—to supplement the “doctor’s education” that was already being instilled in young children—because, after all, the doctors also wrote the textbooks and devised the teaching methods—with a general education in humanity. And today, it is precisely those people who judge based on what is original and fundamental to human nature who wish to have a say in the education system.

[ 31 ] For this reason, the question of education has, for inner reasons, become a question of our times. And we must keep this inner course of human development before our minds if we are to understand the present moment. For a genuine advancement of the educational system must be directed toward nothing less than overcoming the “doctor” principle. And if I were to summarize in a few words what Waldorf education actually aims for in a particular respect, I would like to say—as a preliminary remark, of course, just for today—that it is a matter of transforming “doctor” education into an education for humanity.

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[ 32 ] In particular, one cannot gain an understanding of the educational system as it emerged in Greek civilization—a system whose influence, in fact, continues to this day—unless one views the course of human development from Greek civilization to our own time in the proper light. Greek civilization was, in fact, still a continuation—in a sense, an appendix—of Oriental civilization. What had taken shape over millennia in the development of humanity over in Asia, in the Orient, found its final expression—and, as I believe, quite particularly in the system of education and instruction—among the Greeks. Only then did a significant turning point in development occur, leading into Roman civilization. And it is from Roman civilization that what later flowed into the civilization and culture of the entire Western world—including American culture—originated.

[ 33 ] Therefore, fundamentally speaking, no one can truly understand the Greek educational system—in particular—unless they are able to take a proper look at the unique nature of the Eastern development of the human being. That one attains the highest level of human education by sitting down with books to take exams, and that in the process, one does not so much train as mistreat something vague called the human spirit—and after one has mistreated this so-called spirit, perhaps for years if one is diligent, or for months if one is lazy, and then allows oneself to be asked by someone how much one now knows—after having mistreated the mind for years—that one could become a perfect human being in this way—this would have seemed like the purest madness to one who stood at the cradle of that civilization from which the Vedas and the marvelous Vedanta emerged. One cannot understand the development of human civilization unless one occasionally takes a look at how what one age regards as the ideal appears in the eyes of another age. For what did the person in the ancient Orient do who sought to achieve the civilization and culture that his people regarded as the highest—at a time when that great inspiration which led to the Vedas had not yet come? Essentially, what he practiced was a form of physical culture. And he harbored the hope that through a special physical practice—even if it seems one-sided to us today—he would attain the full bloom of human life, the highest spirituality, if that were destined for him.

[ 34 ] Therefore, the method of higher education in the ancient Orient was not reading books and taxing the abstract mind, but rather—albeit an extraordinarily refined one—physical training. I would like to highlight just one example from this refined physical training: it was a very specific, strictly systematic method of human breathing.

[ 35 ] When a person breathes in the way that is necessary to supply themselves with the right amount of oxygen from minute to minute, they are breathing unconsciously. They carry out the entire process of breathing unconsciously. The ancient Orientals transformed this act of breathing—that is, essentially this physical function—into something performed with full awareness. They inhaled according to a specific law; they held their breath and exhaled again according to a specific law. In doing so, they were in a very specific physical state. The legs had to be in a specific position, and the arms had to be in a specific position. This means that the airway through the physical organism had to, for example, bend into a horizontal position when it reached the knee. That is why the ancient Eastern person, who sought human perfection, sat with his lower legs propped up. And it was a development oriented precisely toward the air-like element within the human being—yet nonetheless physically oriented—that had to be undergone by anyone who wished to experience, as the result and consequence of this physical training, the revelation of the spirit within themselves.

[ 36 ] And what, then, underlies such training, such an upbringing of human beings? Well, it is actually based on the following. Just as the flower and the fruit are already contained within the root of a plant, and if the root is cared for properly, the flower and fruit will then unfold properly under the sunlight and the sun’s warmth, so too, when one looks at the physical aspect of a human being, the soul and spirit are already present within the body, which was created by God. If one grasps the root within the body, but in such a way that one grasps the divine within this physical root, then—if one has brought this physical root to full development in the right way and simply surrenders to a free life—the soul and spirit lying within it will unfold, just as the inner forces of the plant, which spring from the root, develop freely under the sunlight and the sun’s warmth.

[ 37 ] To the Oriental, this particular abstract training of the mind would have seemed as if we were to deprive our plants of sunlight to a great extent—by placing them in a cellar—and then perhaps try to make them flourish under electric light, because we no longer consider free growth in the sun to be refined enough for plant growth.

[ 38 ] Thus, the tendency to focus solely on the physical was deeply rooted in the entire Eastern view of humanity. Even if this physical development subsequently became one-sided—indeed, was already one-sided in Judaism in the form I have described—it is precisely this one-sidedness that points to the fact that people everywhere held the view that body, soul, and spirit are one; that they knew full well: Here on earth, between birth and death, one must seek the soul and the spirit within the body.

[ 39 ] This may come as something of a surprise when one views the ancient spiritual culture of the Orient in this light. But if you study the true course of human development, you will find that the most spiritual achievements of human civilization were attained in those times when people still fully understood how to perceive the soul and spirit within the physical body. Here, a development of extraordinary significance for the very core of human civilization took place.

[ 40 ] Why was the Eastern thinker, for whom the search for the spirit was of the utmost importance, permitted to pursue this search for the spirit through methods that were, in fact, physical in nature? He was permitted to do so because his philosophy provided him with a perspective not only on what is earthly, but also on what is supersensory. And he knew: If one regards the soul and the spirit here on earth as something independent—yes, then—forgive me for the somewhat trivial comparison, though it is entirely in keeping with Eastern wisdom—then one regards the soul and the spirit like a plucked chicken, not like a chicken with feathers, that is, not like a whole chicken. Just as a chicken from which the feathers have been plucked—so would the mental image we have of the soul and spirit have appeared to the Eastern thinker; for of what the soul and spirit are, of what we seek in other worlds, he had a concrete, supersensible perception. He could allow himself to seek the earthly human being here in his earthly, sensory, physical manifestation because, with regard to other worlds, he was thoroughly convinced that the plucked chicken—the bare soul—would regain its spiritual feathers there once it arrived at the right place.

[ 41 ] It was precisely the spiritualism of this worldview that inspired the East to focus, in the development of humanity on Earth, first and foremost on the fact that what is hidden within the body when a human is born—where the human appears as a merely physical being—but which rests in a wondrous way within the child’s physical form, is the soul and the spirit. For it was clear to the Easterners that, when this physical form is properly treated in a spiritual manner, soul and spirit emerge from it.

[ 42 ] This is the distinctive character that—even for the highest education of the wise—prevailed in the East. And this, as an inner conviction that continued to exert its influence, was then transmitted to Greek civilization, which is an offshoot of Orientalism. And we understand why the Greeks—I would say, taking to the extreme what the East has retained as its conviction—came to develop their own particular form of human education as early as their youth through Oriental influence.

[ 43 ] This particular emphasis on physicality in Greek culture was nothing other than a reflection of what the Greeks had become: people who, through colonization from the Orient and Egypt, had in fact derived their entire spiritual life.

[ 44 ] And so, when one looks into the Greek palaestrae where the gymnast worked, one must see in the gymnast’s work a continuation of what the East—based on a profound spiritual worldview—sought to achieve as part of human evolution, specifically for the person who was to attain the highest ideal of human perfection on earth.

[ 45 ] The Oriental would never have regarded a one-sidedly developed soul or a one-sidedly developed mind as human perfection. He would have viewed such learning and such teaching—as it later became the ideal—as the destruction of that which the gods had given to humankind for life on earth. And, fundamentally speaking, this was also how the Greeks viewed it.

[ 46 ] And so we gain a unique insight into how Greek intellectual culture—which we today regard as something of immense significance—was viewed by non-Greeks of that time. After all, we have been handed down the anecdotal story that a barbarian prince visited Greece, inspected the educational institutions, and engaged in conversation with one of the most accomplished gymnasts. The barbarian says: “I cannot understand what kind of crazy stuff you’re actually doing there.” I see that your boys are first anointed with oil—the symbol of peace—then sprinkled with sand, as if they were about to engage in particularly peaceful activities. But then they start running around like mad, grabbing at one another; one throws himself on the other, tosses him, thrusts his chin upward, so that another must come and move his shoulder to keep him from choking—it is an activity I do not understand, one that can be of no benefit to man, at the very least.”—So said the barbarian to the Greek.

[ 47 ] And yet, from what the barbarian found so barbaric in the Greek, the great intellectual and cultural flowering of Greece emerged. And just as the Greek gymnast had only a smile for the barbarian who did not understand how to care for the body in order to bring the spirit to light, so too would the Greek, if he could rise today and see our education and upbringing as practiced in earlier times, smile inwardly, lost in thought, at the barbarism that has developed since the time of the Greeks, and which speaks of an abstract soul and an abstract spirit. Even the Greek would still say: “This is just like a plucked chicken; you have stripped the human being of his feathers.” — The Greek would have found barbaric precisely that which, as indicated, did not struggle and clash within the boyhood years. But the barbarian could see no purpose, find no benefit in Greek education.

[ 48 ] If we look at the course of human history in this way and see what has been valued in other eras, this can certainly provide a basis for arriving at a proper assessment of things in our own time as well.

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[ 49 ] Let us now take a brief look at the place where the Greek gymnastic instructor educated and taught the youths who had been entrusted to him as young boys in their seventh year.

[ 50 ] What we perceive here, however, differs very significantly from what was regarded as a kind of educational ideal in the 19th century—for example, with regard to the nation. In this regard, what needs to be said truly applies not to this or that nation, but to all civilized nations. And what we see when we look into such an institution of teaching and education—an institution for young people from the age of seven onward—can still today, if it is properly infused with modern ideas, provide a sound foundation for understanding what is necessary for education and instruction today.

[ 51 ] There, the boys were trained—if I may put it that way, and the word is always meant in its highest sense—in two areas. One was orchestral music, and the other was physical training.

[ 52 ] Viewed from the outside, the orchestral performance was entirely a physical exercise, a kind of group dance, but one organized in a very specific way—a round dance in the most varied and complicated form, in which the boys learned to move in a specific pattern according to measure, beat, rhythm, and, in general, according to a certain plastic-musical principle—so that what the boy moving in the choral dance perceived as an inner warmth of the soul, flowing in an organized manner through all his limbs, was at the same time revealed as a beautifully formed round dance to those observing it from the outside.

[ 53 ] The whole experience was truly a revelation of the beauty of the divine nature and, at the same time, an experience of that beauty in the very depths of the human being. What was experienced through this orchestral music was felt and sensed inwardly. And as it was felt and sensed inwardly, it was transformed—as a bodily, physical process—into that which expressed itself in the soul, inspiring the hand to play the kithara and inspiring speech and the word to become song.

[ 54 ] And if one wishes to understand what lyre playing and singing were in Greece, one must view them as the flowering of the choral dance. Through dance, people experienced what inspired them to pluck the strings, so that they could hear the sound emerging from the choral dance. Through human movement, people experienced what poured forth into their words, so that the words became song.

[ 55 ] Gymnastic, artistic, and musical education was what, like the sphere of upbringing and instruction, permeated and interwove everything in such a Greek palaestra. But what was gained in terms of the artistic and spiritual was born out of what, with marvelous regularity, unfolded as external physical movement in the dance movements of the Greek palaestrae.

[ 56 ] And if, through direct observation, one examines more closely what the meaning—unknown to the barbarians—of these structured movements in a Greek palaestra actually was, one finds: All forms of movement are wonderfully arranged there; the movements of the individual are wonderfully arranged! — So that the next thing that follows as a consequence is not, as one might expect, the musical aspect that I have characterized, but something else entirely.

[ 57 ] Anyone who attunes themselves to those rhythms and movements that have been woven into orchestral music and the Greek choral dance will find that there is no better way to have a healing and restorative effect on the human respiratory and circulatory systems than by performing precisely the kinds of physical exercises practiced in this Greek choral dance.

[ 58 ] If the question had been posed: When does a person breathe best on their own? How can a person best stimulate blood circulation through breathing? — one would have had to answer: He must move his body; from the age of seven onward, he must perform dance-like movements; then his respiratory and circulatory systems will not succumb to decay, but rather to healing, as they used to say.

[ 59 ] And all of this orchestration was intended to express the human respiratory and circulatory systems in the most perfect way. For people were convinced: In one whose blood circulation is proper, this circulation extends all the way to the fingertips, so that, acting on instinct, he plucks the strings of the kithara and the lyre in the correct manner.

[ 60 ] This results from the flourishing of blood circulation. The entire rhythmic system of the human being was properly stimulated by the choral dance. Consequently, one then expected the musical-spiritual aspect to emerge in relation to playing, and one knew: when a person, as an individual, performs movements with their limbs in the appropriate manner during the choral dance, this inspires the respiratory system, so that it is set in motion in a natural, elemental, and spiritual way.

[ 61 ] But at the same time, the ultimate consequence is that the breath flows into that which a person expresses outwardly through the larynx and the other associated organs.

[ 62 ] It was known that when the choral dance had a healing effect on the respiratory system, the proper healing of the respiratory system in turn inspired singing. And so, from the properly developed organism—which was first trained in the right way through choral dance—the playing of the kithara and singing emerged as the highest flowering, as the ultimate consequence.

[ 63 ] Thus, one saw an inner unity, an inner totality for the earthly human being in the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual realms. That was very much the spirit of Greek education.

[ 64 ] And again, if one looks at what was practiced specifically as palaestrica—which, after all, was, so to speak, common knowledge among those who received an education in Greece at all — the educational institutions are named after it—and if one then asks what was particularly cultivated there, right down to the specific forms in which wrestling was developed, it becomes apparent that this was suited to developing two things in a person: two ways in which the will is stimulated by physical movements, so that it becomes strong and vigorous in two respects. On the one hand, all movement, all palaestric training in wrestling, was intended to ensure that the person engaging in wrestling acquired a particular suppleness, agility, mobility, and purposeful mobility in his limbs. The entire human motor system was to be harmonized in such a way that the individual parts interacted correctly, so that wherever a person found himself in a particular state of inner life, he could skillfully execute the purposeful movements, thereby controlling his limbs from within. The fluidity of movements for the most purposeful life—that was one aspect cultivated in palaestric training; the other aspect was, I might say, the radial quality of movement, where strength had to be infused into the movement. Agility on the one hand—strength on the other; the ability to endure and overcome opposing forces on the one hand—and the ability to be powerful oneself in order to experience something in the world—that was the other side. Agility, dexterity, and the external harmonization of the parts in the unfolding of power—on the one hand; the ability to freely radiate one’s human being out into the world in all directions—on the other.

[ 65 ] And people were convinced that when a person harmonizes their motor system through palaestrika, they then come into the right alignment with the entire cosmos. And they then allowed the arms and legs, together with the breathing as trained through palaestrika, to be guided by the person’s actions in the world. It was believed that an arm properly trained through palaestrica blends into the flow of cosmic forces, which in turn flows to the human brain and, emanating from the cosmos, reveals great ideas to the individual.

[ 66 ] Just as one did not expect musicality to come from specialized musical training—which merely complemented, and mainly only for those in their twenties, what was drawn from blood circulation and breathing—so too did what one had to learn, for example, in mathematics and philosophy, complement physical training in the palaestra. It was understood that the correct rotation of the arms inspired geometry from within.

[ 67 ] This is precisely what people today no longer glean from history—something that has been completely forgotten, yet is a truth that justifies what the Greeks did: placing the gymnast at the forefront of the educational system. For the gymnast best fostered the spiritual development of the Greeks by allowing them their freedom, by not cramming people’s minds full of information and turning them into books, but rather by properly orienting the human being’s most capable faculties toward the cosmos. He was convinced that this makes a person receptive to the spiritual world—in a manner similar to that of the Orientals, though in a later form.

[ 68 ] By beginning with an introductory description of the old educational system, I have merely presented you with something akin to a question mark. And since one must dig very deep if one wants to find the right educational principles today, it is indeed necessary to first delve into these depths of human development in order to then formulate the right questions regarding what must be solved as the enigma of our educational and instructional systems.

[ 69 ] And so today I would like to begin by presenting to you a part of the overall question that we are to explore. The lectures will go on to provide a detailed answer—appropriate for our time—to this question that we are raising today, which we intend to expand upon in a certain sense tomorrow.

[ 70 ] Thus, the perspective we are adopting here must be the key to understanding the great question that the development of humanity poses for us regarding education and instruction—and then to moving toward the answers that we can derive for this great question, based on our understanding of the human being of the present, especially in this day and age.

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[ 71 ] Question: How did the Greek intend to lead people to a certain state of perfection?

[ 72 ] Dr. Steiner: In response to the question posed, I would like to say the following: It is very easy for misunderstandings to arise when describing circumstances that are so far removed from our present-day lives. I have, of course, made an effort this morning to describe things as fundamentally as possible. But it must certainly be admitted that misunderstandings can very easily arise when describing such distant conditions. People have such a strong tendency to judge past ages by the standards of the present. People always imagine that souls and human beings in general have actually always been the way they are now, as far back as one can go in history; only at a certain point—somewhere quite indefinitely far back—does one come to a halt, and there it suddenly transitions into the human-animal realm. So somewhere at the starting point of evolution, one has the animal-like human. This is described as similar to the animal world of today. Then one imagines history unfolding in such a way that human souls, and humanity as a whole, have always been as they are today. But that is not the case; rather, the development of the human soul has undergone immense differentiation, and the mental image one has today of human beings—what one experiences within oneself as a human being with ordinary consciousness—takes us back, at most, to the 4th century A.D. From that point on, the human soul begins to differ so greatly that one must look inward to perceive its distinctiveness from the human soul of today.

[ 73 ] The Greek soul, the Greek person, was indeed quite different from those of today. And that is why it must certainly be maintained that such an education—which, incidentally, was given not to children but to older youths by Plato and Aristotle—was aimed much more at the cultivation of the physical than what is expected of even the youngest children among us today in this regard. If one wishes to judge such a thing, one must be clear that the meaning of the words in Greece was simply different from what they mean today. When people today speak of ideas or ideals, they actually mean something entirely abstract, something purely intellectual and conceptual. When Plato spoke of ideas, that was not the case. When Plato spoke of ideas, he meant something vivid, something concrete. And today’s readers of Plato actually have a completely false mental image when they translate Plato into ordinary conceptual language. To truly understand Plato, one must develop a much more vivid—I would say, physically vivid—imagination than we are actually capable of today. So that one can say the Greeks were, with regard to the upbringing of their children, entirely focused on what I described this morning. However, they were fully aware that this physical education simultaneously fostered the cultivation of the soul. Nor did Plato—and especially Aristotle—make the distinction we make today: the physical on one hand, the spiritual on the other. For Aristotle, for example, the entire human body was that which is permeated by the spiritual. Every single limb of the human body was, at the same time, a spiritual entity. That is why Aristotle does not speak of the spiritual in such an abstract way as we do today, but rather speaks of the form of the material—of that which, in a sense, works as the inner artist, acting within the material, the physical, and the corporeal.

[ 74 ] So the point is certainly that, when assessing distant historical periods, we must not misunderstand them by imposing today’s concepts onto those eras. Today’s reading of Plato and Aristotle generally already involves abstracting the ancient masters. It was not until the middle of the Middle Ages, I would say—the period when Plato and Aristotle, especially Aristotle, were understood in the way they are today—that this began; whereas we should be very mindful that Plato, for example, presented what he had to offer in a directly and fully human manner. He did not want to develop theories, sentence by sentence, as we do today; he wanted to let people speak with one another; he wanted to let human forces clash. Through Plato’s dialogues, one can see whether the person representing a particular view is somewhat corpulent or slight, whether he is pale or has chubby cheeks. All of this must be conveyed in a mental image, even in Plato’s dialogues; otherwise, one cannot make sense of them. For the Greeks, the spiritual lives entirely through the manifestation of the physical, and one can only correctly form a mental image of what happened in Greece if one holds to the idea that everything spiritual expresses itself physically. So the notion that Plato and Aristotle are in contradiction with what I said this morning is absolutely unfounded.