The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] No era can organize education differently than the general civilization of that era dictates. Whatever general civilization has to offer, that is what the teacher can pass on to the child through education.

[ 2 ] In speaking to you about the Greeks, I felt compelled to draw your attention to how the Greeks thought, how they possessed an intimate understanding of the whole human being, and how, based on this intimate understanding of the whole human being—in a way that we can no longer achieve today—they raised their children. For the Greeks, this understanding of the whole human being was one that arose entirely from the human body. In a certain sense, the human body was transparent to the Greeks. The body revealed to them, at the same time, both soul and spirit—insofar as the Greeks had an understanding of soul and spirit.

[ 3 ] And we have seen, after all, how the Greeks educated the whole person starting with the body. Whatever could not be drawn out of the body—just as I have shown that music was drawn out of the body—was imparted to the person relatively late, only after they had been fully educated physically, around the age of twenty or later.

[ 4 ] We are all in a completely different situation today. And the greatest illusions in human development actually arise from the belief that bygone eras—which dealt with a very different kind of humanity—could be revived today. But it is precisely in the present that we are called upon to devote ourselves fully and with practical sense to reality. And when we understand this historical reality of ours, then we simply cannot help but say: Just as the Greeks had to base their entire educational system on the body, so must we base education on the spirit. And we must find ways to approach physical education as well from the perspective of the spirit. For humanity has now—whether one finds this appealing or not—reached the point where it must grasp the spirit as such, where it must attain the spirit as its own human content through human labor.

[ 5 ] But precisely when one seeks to educate entirely in keeping with the spirit of our age, one realizes how little progress general civilization has actually made in permeating the spirit. And then a longing arises—precisely for the sake of human education—to make the spirit more and more a part of human nature. We may ask ourselves: At what level—provisionally the highest—does that which has gripped contemporary humanity in terms of the spirit manifest itself to us? — Do not be alarmed that I am taking this characterization, so to speak, from the pinnacle of today’s spiritual life. That which manifests itself at the pinnacle—I would say, symbolically, in its purest form—is, in essence, what also governs the entire civilization in its breadth and depth.

[ 6 ] Today, in our attempt to grasp the spirit, we have only just begun to grasp this spirit in ideas, in thought. And human thought in our present age, in its entirety, can perhaps best be grasped by looking at the way in which this contemporary thought has developed—for example, in the works of John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer.

[ 7 ] I said, do not be put off by the fact that I am now, at this very moment, pointing to the pinnacles of civilization. For what has been expressed—albeit only in a certain way—as the highest manifestation in John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer dominates all spheres; it is, in essence, the thinking that underlies the development of our civilization. So when we ask today: How does humanity recognize the spirit from which it should educate, just as the Greeks educated the body? — we must answer: Humanity recognizes the spirit as John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer recognized it.

[ 8 ] But how did they recognize it? Let’s consider for a moment what people mean by “spirit” today when they speak of it. I do not mean that highly vague, nebulous entity that hovers somewhere above the clouds. When people speak of the spirit today, it is something that has traditionally been communicated to humanity, yet nothing is actually experienced of it. We can only speak of the spirit that humanity possesses when we look at how humanity deals with this spirit, how it handles it, and what it does with it. And the spirit that humanity possesses in the current development of civilization—John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer had already incorporated it into their worldviews and philosophies. It is there within them; that is where it must be sought. We must look not at how people speak of the spirit in the abstract, but at how they apply it.

[ 9 ] And now let’s take a look at this “conceived spirit.” At first, it is, after all, merely a “conceived spirit,” as understood by contemporary civilization—a “conceived spirit,” a spirit capable, at best, of thinking about philosophical matters. But compared to the full, all-encompassing reality that the Greeks contemplated when they spoke of the human being, of their *anthropos*, what we are flitting about in our minds when we think is, let us say, something highly distilled, something extremely thin.

[ 10 ] When the Greeks spoke of human beings, they always had in mind the image of the physical human being, who was at once a manifestation of the soul and the spirit. This human being existed somewhere, at some point in time; this human being had boundaries. His skin defined his limits. And those who educated this human being in the gymnasiums anointed the skin with oil to strongly mark this boundary. The human being was presented in a powerful way. This was, therefore, something very concrete—something that existed somewhere, at some time, and was shaped in some way.

[ 11 ] Well then, think about the act of thinking through which we grasp the mind today. Where is it? What form does it take? It’s all so indefinite. Nowhere is there a “how” or a “when,” nowhere a specific form, nowhere anything concrete. One does, of course, strive to arrive at something concrete. Well then, let’s take a look, for example, at John Stuart Mill to see how one might create a mental image of something concrete.

[ 12 ] It was said: When a person thinks, one idea passes by, then a second idea, then a third idea. He simply thinks in ideas. These are words imagined internally. He thinks in ideas, and these ideas associate with one another. That is actually the essential point one arrives at: one idea attaches itself to a second idea, then a third idea, a fourth idea; the ideas associate with one another. And contemporary psychology has come to speak of associations of ideas in various ways as the actual inner essence of spiritual life.

[ 13 ] Consider this: If you were to ask yourself, “How would you feel and perceive yourself as a human being if, as a spirit, you were to experience this association of ideas?” — You are standing right in the midst of the world, and that is when the ideas begin to move—now they are associating with one another. And now you look back at yourself and ask, “What am I, actually, as a spirit, within these associated ideas?” In doing so, you gain a kind of self-awareness that is very much like the self-awareness you would have if you suddenly looked in the mirror and saw yourself as a skeleton—a completely dead skeleton, at that. Imagine the shock you’d feel if you looked in the mirror and suddenly saw yourself as a skeleton! With a skeleton, it’s like this: the bones are associated; they’re held together externally; they rest on one another mechanically. So what we perceive of our mind is merely a replica of this mechanical structure! In fact, when one possesses a fully human nature, when one feels healthy and is healthy as a human being, one feels as if one were looking at oneself in a mirror as a skeleton. For in the books that describe association psychology, one does indeed see oneself as if in a mirror; there one sees oneself as a bony spirit!

[ 14 ] This pleasure, my esteemed audience, is something we can indeed experience continuously—though not in an outward, physical sense, since it constantly arises when one compares the current state of affairs with that of ancient Greece. Intellectually, however, we experience it continuously. We ask our philosophers to grant us self-knowledge: they hold up their books to us as a mirror, and there we see ourselves as a spirit of bones in associations of ideas.

[ 15 ] This is what happens to people today when they try to reflect practically on education, when they try to approach the educational system from the perspective of general civilization! For they do not receive instructions on what education should be like, but rather a vision of how to find a pile of human bones and assemble them into a skeleton.

[ 16 ] This is what humanity at large—the lay public—feels today. It yearns for a new kind of education! Everywhere the question arises: How should education be conducted? — But where should humanity turn? It can only turn to what constitutes general civilization. There, it is shown that, in reality, one can only build a skeleton.

[ 17 ] And this is where people must be overcome by—I would say—a deep sense of civilization. When they feel healthy, they must be able to feel imbued with this intellectualistic way of forming mental images and thinking that characterizes our time. And this is what numbs humanity today. It wants to view what is shown to it in the mirror as something truly lofty and perfect, and then wants to do something with it—above all, it wants to use it for education. But that doesn’t work. You cannot educate with it.

[ 18 ] And so, in order to have the necessary enthusiasm as an educator today, one must first learn to look at everything in our thinking—in our intellectualistic culture—that is not alive but dead. For the skeleton is dead. And once you have fully internalized this realization—that our thinking is dead thinking—you will very soon come to see that everything that is dead originates from something living. If you find a corpse, you will not regard it as anything original; only if you had no concept of a human being would you regard the corpse as something in and of itself. But if you have a concept of a human being, you will know: the corpse is what remains of the human being. From the nature of the corpse, you not only infer the existence of a human being, but you know that there was a human being there.

[ 19 ] If you recognize thinking as something dead—as it is cultivated today—if you recognize thinking as a corpse, then relate it to something living. If you now also have the inner impulse to transform this thinking into something living and thereby revitalize our entire civilization, only then can something similarly practical emerge from our present-day civilization—something that can reach the living human being, not the skeletal human being—just as Greek education reached the living human being.

[ 20 ] Let us not underestimate the feelings from which the teacher and instructor can and must proceed. Waldorf School teachers have first completed a seminar course. This was not merely a matter of mastering specific curriculum points; but rather, this course was intended to instill a very specific state of mind: to bring back into the innermost being of the human being that which is the proudest legacy of our age—to transform dead thinking into living thinking, neutral thinking into thinking imbued with character, and natural, inorganic thinking into thinking imbued with character, permeated by the whole human being—in short, “human” thinking. Thus, the thought must first begin to live within the teacher.

[ 21 ] But if something is alive, then that life has consequences. A human being—who exists somewhere and at some time, with mind, soul, and body, who has a specific form and specific limits—never stops at mere thought: he feels and wills. And when you convey a thought to him, that thought is the seed of feeling and willing; it becomes something whole.

[ 22 ] Our thinking has as its ideal to be as “objective”—as they say—as possible, to become as still and calm as possible, to be a completely tranquil reflection of the external world, and to serve only experience. There is no power within it; nothing that feels or wills comes of it.

[ 23 ] The Greek started from the physical human being; that was what he had before him. We must start from a human ideal—everyone feels this—but this ideal must not be merely a concept; this ideal must be alive; this ideal must possess the power of feeling and willing. That is the first thing we need when we think about educational reform today: that we move away from abstract, conceptual ideals—which, when we inscribe them in our souls, cannot help but be felt and willed within us, and from which humanity emerges, extending all the way down to physical education.

[ 24 ] Our thoughts do not become gestures. But they must, in turn, become gestures. They must not only be absorbed by the child sitting there, but they must move the child’s arms and hands; they must guide the child as it goes out into the world. Then we will have well-rounded individuals, and we must, in turn, educate such well-rounded individuals; then we will have people in whom what we teach them in the classroom finds its continuation in physical education.

[ 25 ] That’s not how people think today. Today, people think: in the classroom, there’s something inherently intellectual about it—it has to be taught; it tires people out, it wears them down, maybe even makes them nervous. Now something else has to be added to that! And that’s where physical education comes in as a separate element.

[ 26 ] And so today there are two things: intellectual education on its own—physical education on its own. One does not require the other! We essentially have two kinds of human beings: one that is nebulous and imagined, and one that is real, yet we no longer understand it as the Greeks did. And whenever we look at a human being, we always see two before us.

[ 27 ] We must learn to see again. We must learn to see the whole person again as a unity, as a totality. That is, first and foremost, the most important thing for our entire educational system.

---

[ 28 ] The task, then, will be to move from a theoretical educational maxim—which, to a greater or lesser extent, does exist today—toward a genuine, practical form of education. And it will become clear from the reflections I have just offered that much depends on how we bring the spirit—which we can actually grasp only intellectually—back to the human being, how we carry the spirit to the human being, so that our nebulous, blurred spirit, with which we look upon the human being, becomes human. Just as the Greeks viewed human beings in their physical bodies, we must learn to view human beings in their spiritual essence.

[ 29 ] To illustrate how one might begin to understand the human being from the spirit down to the body, let me consider an explanatory example for now. As an illustrative example, I will choose the way in which the spirit can be brought into contact with a specific organ of the human body. I would like to choose an example today that is as striking as possible—only for now; things will become clearer in the days to come. Today I would like to show how the spirit can be brought into contact with what the Greeks, too, regarded as something extraordinarily important and symbolic in a child’s development: the teething process.

[ 30 ] The Greeks regarded the change of teeth as the stage of life when the child is entrusted to public education. Now let us try to visualize the way the spirit is brought into the human being, and the relationship between the spirit and human teeth.

[ 31 ] It may seem somewhat paradoxical that, in order to consider the spiritual human being, I am speaking first of all about teeth; yet this seems paradoxical only because, in today’s civilization, people know very well what a tiny animal microbe looks like when viewed through a microscope, but know very little about what is actually plain to see. We know that teeth are necessary for eating. That is, first and foremost, the most striking piece of knowledge. We also know that teeth are necessary for speaking; for we know that there are dental sounds, and that in a certain way the air flowing from the lungs through the larynx must be shaped by the lips, the palate, and also the teeth to produce certain consonants. We therefore know that teeth are good for eating and speaking.

[ 32 ] Well, a truly spiritual understanding of human beings reveals something else to us. If one is able to study human beings in the sense that I discussed in my first lecture—which did not yet deal with education—then one comes to the conclusion that children develop their teeth for a reason entirely different from eating or speaking.

[ 33 ] As paradoxical as it may sound today, a child’s teeth develop because of thinking! And modern science knows very little about the fact that teeth are the most important organs of thought. In a child who has not yet gone through the process of losing and regrowing teeth, the physical teeth themselves are the most important organs of thought.

[ 34 ] As the child naturally finds its way into thinking through interaction with its surroundings, as the life of thought emerges from the child’s dark life of sleep and dreams, this entire process is linked to the teeth pushing their way through the child’s head, linked to the forces that are pushing their way out of the child’s head. And just as the teeth, so to speak, push their way through the jaw, there are forces at work that bring thinking to the surface from the indeterminate realm of sleep and dreams. And to the same extent that the child teething, it learns to think.

[ 35 ] And how does the child learn to think? The child learns to think by being entirely oriented toward its environment as an imitative being. It imitates, right down to its innermost being, what is happening in its environment and what unfolds there under the impulse of thoughts. But to the same extent that thinking sprouts within the child, to that same extent do the teeth emerge. It is precisely in these teeth that the power lies which appears psychologically as thinking.

[ 36 ] Let us continue to follow the child’s development. These first teeth are shed. Around the age of seven, the child goes through the process of tooth replacement. The child gets its second set of teeth. As I have already said, the entire force that brought forth the first and second teeth was present throughout the child’s entire organism; it is simply most strongly evident in the head. One gets a second set of teeth only once. The forces that drive the second set of teeth out of the child’s organism no longer act as physical impulse forces in the person’s earthly life thereafter, right up until death: they become soul forces, they become spiritual forces; they enliven the inner soul life of the human being.

[ 37 ] So when we look at a child between the ages of approximately seven and fourteen and consider the child’s psychological characteristics, we must say to ourselves: What appears to us as psychological characteristics—namely, as the child’s thinking between the ages of seven and fourteen—was, up until the age of seven, organ power. This force was at work in the organism, in the physical organism; it drove the teeth to erupt and, with the change of teeth, reached its conclusion in its physical activity, transforming itself into psychological activity.

[ 38 ] These conditions, however, can only be studied if one advances to that type of knowledge which I described in the first lecture mentioned above as the first stage of exact clairvoyance—that is, imaginative knowledge. With what is widespread today as abstract, intellectualistic thinking, one does not penetrate to such an understanding of the human being. Thinking must be inwardly enlivened so that it becomes pictorial, so that one can truly grasp something through thinking itself. Through intellectualistic thinking, one grasps nothing at all. There, all things remain outside. One looks at them and creates mental images of what one sees. But thinking can be inwardly strengthened and activated. Then one no longer has abstract or intellectualistic thoughts; instead, one has imaginative images. These fill the soul just as intellectual thoughts otherwise do. When one reaches this first stage of precise observation, one then sees through to the fact that in the human being, it is not only a physical body that is at work, but also a supersensible body—if I may use this paradoxical expression. One becomes aware of the first aspect of the supersensible in the human being!

[ 39 ] And one then looks at human beings in the following way. One says to oneself: Here is the human physical body; it can be weighed; it is drawn toward the Earth by gravity; it is subject to the force of gravity. That is its most important characteristic: the physical body can be weighed.

[ 40 ] When one becomes aware, through imaginative insight, of the human being’s supersensible body—which I have called the etheric body or the body of formative forces in my books—one realizes: it cannot be weighed; it weighs nothing; on the contrary, it strives to move away from the Earth and out into all directions of the universe. It possesses a force opposite to gravity; it constantly strives against gravity.

[ 41 ] Just as one gains insight into the human physical body through ordinary physical perception, so too does one attain, through imaginative perception, the first stage of exact clairvoyance—an insight into the etheric body, which is constantly striving to break free. And just as one gradually learns to relate the physical body to its surroundings, so too does one learn to relate the etheric body to its surroundings.

[ 42 ] When you think of the human physical body, you look for the substances of which it is composed out there in nature—in the physical, sensory realm of nature. You are well aware that whatever in a human being is subject to gravity—heaviness, weight—also has a corresponding weight out there in the natural world, and that this enters the human being through the intake of food. In this way, one gains a kind of natural perspective on the human organism, insofar as the organism is a physical entity.

[ 43 ] Through imaginative insight, one also gains a perception of the relationship between the human being’s self-contained etheric or formative body and the surrounding world. That which in spring drives the plants out of the ground, against gravity, driving them in all directions toward the cosmos—that which organizes the plants, that which ultimately connects the plants to the upward-acting stream of light, and that which actually acts within the plant to strive upward chemically—must be related to the human etheric body just as salts, herbs, beets, and veal breasts are related to the physical human body.

[ 44 ] And so, in the first stage of exact clairvoyance, this thinking—saturated within itself and filled with serenity—approaches the second entity of the human being, the etheric body or body of formative forces. This body of formative forces is intimately connected with the physical body until the teeth are replaced, that is, until the age of seven. Within the physical body, it organizes; within it, it is the force that drives the teeth out.

[ 45 ] Once a person has their permanent teeth, the part of the etheric body that pushes the teeth through no longer has any connection to the physical body. It is now, so to speak, emancipated from the physical body in its activity. With the change of teeth, we liberate the etheric forces that pushed our teeth out; and with these etheric forces, we now engage in free thinking, as it begins to manifest in children from the age of seven onward. The power of the teeth is no longer, as it is in the child—where the teeth themselves are the organs of thought—a physical power, but rather an etherized power. Yet it is the very same power, now active in the etheric body, that brought forth the teeth, which now thinks.

[ 46 ] So if you consider yourself a thinking person and feel—as many do—that thinking originates in the head—some people only sense this when thinking gives them a headache—then true insight will show you that the same force that was at work during teething is the force with which you think from the head.

[ 47 ] In this way, you draw closer to yourself through your understanding of the unity of the human being. In this way, one learns once again how the physical is connected to the more spiritual aspects. One knows that the child has still been thinking with its physical teeth; hence, dental diseases are so intimately connected to the child’s entire life. Just think of everything that happens when a child is teething! Because teething is so intimately connected to the innermost life, because it is intellectually linked to the child’s innermost spirituality—that is why these dental ailments occur! Then the growth force of the teeth emancipates itself and becomes the power of thought in the human being—an independent, free power of thought. If you have the gift of observation for this, you will see this process of becoming independent. One can see very clearly how, with the change of teeth, thinking emancipates itself from its bondage to the body.

[ 48 ] And what happens now? The teeth first become instruments for that which permeates thought—for speech. The teeth, which initially had the independent task of growing in accordance with the power of thought, are, so to speak, pushed down a level: thinking, which is now no longer in the physical body but in the etheric body, moves down a level—this already happens during the first years of life, for the entire process takes place gradually and is only completed with the second set of teeth—but the teeth become aids to thinking when thinking seeks to express itself through speech.

[ 49 ] And so we turn our gaze toward the human being. We see the head; in the head, the dental-wax force emancipates itself as a thinking force; then, in a sense, that which the teeth no longer have to perform directly—because the etheric body must now perform it—is shifted downward into speech, so that the teeth become helpers in speech; therein their kinship with thinking is still evident. If we understand how the dental sounds are integrated into the whole of human thinking, how the teeth are called upon precisely when the human being, through the sounds D and T, brings the specific, definitive aspect of thought into language—then we can see in the dental sounds this particular function of the teeth.

[ 50 ] I have shown you, using an example—admittedly perhaps the most grotesque one, that of teeth—how we perceive human beings through the spirit. Now, as we proceed in this way, thinking gradually ceases to be that abstract drifting among associated ideas; instead, thinking connects with the human being, reaches out to the human being, and we no longer have merely a physical aspect in the human being—the biting of the teeth, or at most the movement of the mouth when speaking sounds produced by the teeth—but rather we have in the teeth an external image, a natural imagination of thought. Thought, as it were, shoots forth and reveals itself to us through the teeth: “Look, there you have my external physiognomy!”

[ 51 ] As a person develops toward the teeth, what is otherwise abstract, nebulous thinking takes on a pictorial form. One can see, once again, where the teeth are, how thinking works in the head: one can then see, once again, how thinking develops there from the first set of teeth to the second. The whole process regains its formative boundaries. The spirit begins to manifest itself visually in nature itself. The spirit becomes creative once more.

[ 52 ] We do not merely need the kind of anthropology that today views human beings entirely from the outside and associates their inner nature in the same way that we today associate ideas based on their particular characteristics. We need a way of thinking that does not shy away from penetrating to the innermost core, that is not embarrassed to say how the spirit becomes teeth, how the spirit works within the teeth.

[ 53 ] That is what we need; then we will penetrate people through the spirit. That is where something artistic begins. There, one must transform the abstract, theoretical, impractical way of looking at things—which is characteristic only of those who think in skeletal terms—into the pictorial. There, the theoretical way of looking drifts over into artistic contemplation, into artistic creation. At the same time, one must shape the teeth if one wants to see the spirit at work within. There, the artistic begins to serve as a ladder to the first precise, clairvoyant level—the level of imaginative knowledge. There we then grasp the human being in his reality. After all, today, when we think of the human being, we have only the human being in abstraction.

[ 54 ] But what is set before us in education is the real human being. There he stands. Here we stand with the abstract spirit. Between them lies an abyss. Now we must cross that abyss. In every instance, we must first show how we cross over. Today, at best, we know how to put a hat on a person, but we do not know how to instill the spirit into his whole being. We must learn that. Just as we have learned to clothe a person externally, we must also learn to clothe him internally, so that the spirit behaves just as the clothes around him do.

[ 55 ] When we approach people in this way, we are engaging in vibrant pedagogy and vibrant didactics.

---

[ 56 ] Just as the period around the age of seven is significant for human life on Earth—as I have explained—there is also a second point in human life on Earth that proves to be no less significant due to the emergence of the symptoms of life. Of course, the time frames mentioned here are more or less approximate. For some people, this occurs a little earlier; for others, a little later; and the references to the number seven are not precise figures, but merely approximate ones. But there is also an extraordinarily important phase of human life on Earth around the fourteenth or fifteenth year. This is the phase in which a person, as they say, reaches sexual maturity.

[ 57 ] But sexual maturity—the onset of sexual life—is merely the most outward symptom of a complete transformation of the human being from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life, Just as we must seek the physical origin of thinking—which then emancipates itself around the age of seven and becomes a soul quality—in the growth forces of the teeth, that is, in the human head, so too must we seek the activity of the second soul force in human beings—the activity of feeling—in other parts of the human organism.

[ 58 ] Feeling becomes emancipated from human physicality—from the physical organization—much later than thinking. And while we must care for the child between the ages of seven and fourteen, feeling is actually still intimately connected to the physical organization. Thinking has already become free, but feeling remains intimately bound to the body between the ages of seven and fourteen. Everything that arises in the child as feelings of joy, sorrow, or pain still has an intense physical counterpart in the secretion of the glands, in the acceleration or retardation of the respiratory system. And it is precisely in such things that one can observe—if one is truly capable of observing people to this degree—how a magnificent transformation takes place in feeling at the very moment when the external symptoms that indicate this change reappear.

[ 59 ] Just as the teeth, when they appear as permanent teeth, mark a certain stage of completion in growth, so something similar occurs in speech when a stage of life comes to an end, during which feeling gradually develops into a spiritual emancipation from the physical. We see this most clearly in boys. Their voices change; their larynxes reveal this change. Just as the head reveals the change that draws thinking out of the physical organism, so the human chest—the seat of rhythmic organic activity—reveals the emancipation of feeling. Now feeling becomes detached from the physical and takes on an independent, spiritual existence. We know, of course, that in boys this becomes evident through the change in the larynx and the deepening of the voice. In girls, different physical changes occur as they grow. But this is, in essence, only an outward manifestation at first.

[ 60 ] Anyone who has attained the first stage of exact clairvoyance mentioned earlier—imaginative clairvoyance—knows, because they can see it, that the human physical body undergoes a change in the physical larynx around the age of fourteen. The same process occurs with the etheric body—or body of formative forces—in females. There, the change shifts into the etheric body, and by the age of fourteen, the etheric body of a female takes on a form exactly like that of a man’s physical body. Conversely, by the age of fourteen, a man’s etheric body takes on a form exactly like that of a woman’s physical body. Thus, at this important juncture in life—as strange as it may seem to today’s understanding, which clings solely to the physical—the man, from the age of fourteen onward, carries the woman in an etheric form within himself, while the woman carries the man in an etheric form within herself. This is expressed in various ways through corresponding symptoms in women and men.

[ 61 ] When one attains the second stage of exact clairvoyance—which you will find described in greater detail in my books—when, in addition to imagination, one acquires inspiration, the true perception of an independent spiritual being that is no longer bound to the human physical body during earthly existence, but rather when, through inspiration, one has acquired the gift, the ability, and the capacity to perceive the independent spiritual entities—then one becomes aware of how, in fact, during this important phase of life around the age of fourteen or fifteen, a third human being separates itself to attain independence—I have called it the astral body in my books, in accordance with older terminology—a being that is already more soul-like than the etheric body is, already a soul-spiritual entity. It is the third member of the human being and the second supersensible member of the human being.

[ 62 ] Until the age of fourteen or fifteen, the spiritual being acts through the physical organism and becomes independent at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Consequently, educators and teachers are faced with the very significant task of assisting in this process of becoming independent—a process involving what is essentially spiritual-soul elements that, up to the seventh or eighth year, still lie deep within the organism and then gradually—for this process occurs step by step—detach themselves.

[ 63 ] We must facilitate this gradual process of detachment when teaching children between the ages of seven and fourteen. At that stage, if one has acquired an understanding of human nature in the manner described here—as it is meant here—one becomes aware of how speech takes on a completely different character.

[ 64 ] Today’s science—if I may use that term—focuses only on the coarse psychological aspects of human beings, and it refers to the rest as secondary sexual characteristics. From a spiritual perspective, however, it is precisely these secondary aspects that are primary, and vice versa.

[ 65 ] There is an immense significance in these transformations, in the way that feeling, in particular, detaches itself from the speech organs. And then, as a teacher, as an educator, one has the wonderful task—one that truly inspires the inner self—of gradually detaching speech from the physical. How wonderful it is when, in a natural way, all on its own, when the child is only seven years old, the lips move through organic activity! When a child produces lip sounds at the age of seven, it is something entirely different from when a child produces them at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

[ 66 ] When a child begins to produce lip sounds at the age of seven, this is an organic activity—it is the circulation of blood and bodily fluids that surges involuntarily into the lips. When the child is twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years old, this organic activity becomes established within the organism. The psychological activity of feeling must step forward and, through volition, move the lips, which express the emotional aspect of speech.

[ 67 ] Just as the intellectual aspect of speech—its hard, intellectual quality—manifests itself in the teeth, so does the soft, emotional aspect of speech, steeped in love, manifest itself in the lips. And the sounds produced by the lips are what impart to speech its loving quality—that which sympathizes with the other and conveys sympathy to them.

[ 67 ] Just as the intellectual aspect of speech—its hard, intellectual quality—manifests itself in the teeth, so does the soft, emotional aspect of speech, steeped in love, manifest itself in the lips. And the sounds produced by the lips are what impart to speech its loving quality—that which sympathizes with the other and conveys sympathy to them.

[ 67 ] Just as the intellectual aspect of speech—its hard, intellectual quality—manifests itself in the teeth, so does the soft, emotional aspect of speech, steeped in love, manifest itself in the lips. And the sounds produced by the lips are what impart to speech its loving quality—that which sympathizes with the other and conveys sympathy to them.

[ 68 ] And this wonderful transition from the organic activity of the lips to a spiritual activation of lip activity—this shaping of the lips within the organic-spiritual nature of the human being—is something the educator can support between the ages of seven and fourteen, something that can bring such a wonderful atmosphere into the school.

[ 71 ] One can therefore say: One must steer toward the artistic if one wishes to reach people in a living way through thought, if one wishes to bring the spirit—in all its vitality—to people. - If one wishes to bring feeling—the spiritual aspect of feeling—to people, then one must do so not only with an artistic mood, as mentioned earlier, but now with a religious mood. For only the religious mood penetrates to the true spirit, to the spirit in its reality. Therefore, all education between the ages of seven and fourteen can only be carried out in a truly human way if it takes place in a religious atmosphere, if it becomes almost a ritual—not a sentimental one, but a purely human ritual.

[ 72 ] Thus we see how what a person does—by bringing his otherwise abstract thinking, which is based solely on associations of ideas, to life and soul—flows into the spiritual essence. We see how he finds his way to an artistic understanding of the human being, to an understanding of the human being within religious life. And thus the artistic and the religious are woven into pedagogy.

[ 73 ] Thus, light is shed on the transition from the student’s question to the teacher’s question by realizing that pedagogy and didactics should become such clear, practical, and vibrant knowledge, and that the teacher can only be a true educator and instructor of youth if he is capable of becoming a person who is, at heart, entirely artistic and entirely religious.

---

[ 74 ] On the exhibition of artistic and decorative arts works by Waldorf students

[ 75 ] Allow me to say just a few words in advance about the tour you are about to take today to view the artistic and craftwork projects our students at the Waldorf School are required to complete. First of all, it is important to note that—as I will explain in more detail later in these lectures—the instruction of our children in writing and reading should also be derived from the arts. The point is that in a pedagogy truly suited to the human being, a stumbling block—a chasm—must be overcome, one that exists precisely in relation to what are, so to speak, the most vital subjects: writing and reading. If we look at what letters—the characters that must be learned for writing and reading—represent in any civilization, we must admit that in these letters, in everything a person must put down on paper, there is nothing that stands in an original, elementary relationship to the human being. Over time, writing, for example, has become something entirely conventional. It was not that way originally. We need only think of how pictographic writing among ancient peoples emerged from pictorial perception and the imagination. We need only think of how cuneiform script emerged from the volitional impulses of the human limbs, and so on, and we will see that in those ancient times, when civilization had not yet advanced so far toward the conventional, there was no gulf—such as exists today—between what a person must record when writing and what they experience. We must bridge this chasm once again for our children. For the child finds absolutely no connection between what it has experienced in its soul and what it is then supposed to put down on paper as A, B, and so on. The child does not know why, and because it does not know why it is supposed to make such mysterious symbols, the lesson will naturally seem boring and unappealing to it.

[ 76 ] All of this is overcome when writing is separated from painting—from drawing-like painting and painting-like drawing—when the child is not initially introduced to conventional, literal writing at all, but rather to the pictorial, specifically to a form of the pictorial that corresponds as closely as possible to what the child can experience in its soul.

[ 77 ] Now, as experience shows, it is certainly possible to help a child experience shapes; but it is more inspiring and awakening for the soul when the child experiences colors. And so we do not shy away from letting even the youngest children begin to create shapes in some way out of color.

[ 78 ] The child develops a sense of how to work with colors remarkably quickly, and also develops a sense of how to harmonize and juxtapose colors remarkably quickly. And here, in these various examples of children’s paintings, you can see how attempts have been made—simply through the child’s experience of colors—to draw out the painterly sense and artistic sensibility from the child’s soul. It is very easy to guide the child so that they apply a patch of color in some way, and then simply place other colors nearby that harmonize with it. So that at first there is only the experience of color on the paper; at first, let’s say, the child is simply allowed to experience yellow next to red, next to violet. When the child experiences color in this way, forms emerge of their own accord; figurative elements arise of their own accord. Color calls for figurative expression. And if you then want to further develop the experience of color, you can already try the following with children who are not yet very old: You have the child create, say, a yellow area (painted on the board), along with another color that harmonizes with it, and then I say to the child: “Now, instead of painting yellow here (inside), I’m going to paint blue...” ...and the child must now apply all the other colors to the paper in the corresponding manner. So that when there is now blue here (inside) instead of yellow, the child must change all the other colors—but in such a way that all the other colors are in exactly the same harmony with the blue as they are here with the yellow. This is something that engulfs the child’s entire inner experience in an immensely powerful way. The child comes alive inwardly. Through this, the child develops a relationship with the world. And some teachers then connect the whole human being within the child to what they have the child put on paper.

[ 79 ] Here at our Waldorf school, we certainly have a specific educational approach on the one hand, but on the other hand, we enjoy as much freedom as possible. We have parallel classes for most grades: 1st Grade A, 1st Grade B, 2nd Grade A, 2nd Grade B, and so on, because we’ve had a lot of students join us over time. If you were to visit Grade 1B, for example, it is by no means a carbon copy of Grade 1A; rather, you would see that the teacher in Grade 1B takes a completely different approach than the teacher in Grade 1A. Our entire curriculum is defined only in spirit; when it comes to specific activities, however, there is the greatest possible freedom. So in our school, the curriculum is not dictated or even restricted by any kind of fixed program or the like. Let’s say, for example, that you might observe the following: A teacher leads a children’s circle dance, arranging the children in a circle. They move in a certain way; in doing so, the children enter a spatial formation with their whole being. They create this spatial form themselves, but they also see their neighbors and the other children in relation to themselves within that spatial form. Now that they have moved within this spatial form, they are asked to sit down, and they then transfer this spatial form onto paper as a mere shape or painting.

[ 80 ] Consider what happened there: the whole person—including their legs and feet—experienced the shape of space; then they rendered it on paper through drawing: the whole process flows from the whole person into their fingers. One truly engages the whole person—mentally, spiritually, and physically. It is not taught abstractly—as in, “You should use your fingers to make the letter A”—but rather, one allows what the person first performs as a whole being to flow into the fingers. All of this enlivens and stirs the child from within, and one can then let the letters emerge from the pure forms of drawing and painting.

[ 81 ] For example, suppose I try to get the child to draw a fish; I make a shape like this (it is drawn), then a fin like this, a fin here—the child stylizes the fish artistically. Now I move on to the word “fish,” and the child sees the connection between what’s in the beginning of the word “fish” and what they’ve drawn. Now I can form the letter that begins the word “fish” from the drawn shape. That’s roughly how pictographic writing evolved into the written form of letters. But I didn’t go into historical detail just to arrive at a single form; I simply let the child’s imagination run free. What matters is not that one does this historically correctly, but that one does what is right for the child’s developing organism. And this is how one works—we do this systematically: what children are supposed to assimilate as letter forms—which they currently perceive as occult symbols to which they have no connection—is developed from painting and drawing, and in this way one achieves a humane education.

[ 82 ] So you see that the children progress—from grasping colors to extracting form from color—toward creating quite complex things. And it’s interesting when you let the children move from painting to sculpture. You have all kinds of photographs of sculptures here, but there are also sculptures themselves—you have three-dimensional forms here. The children create these entirely from their imagination, and it is interesting when, after having covered, for example, human anatomy pictorially with the children—after explaining to them the shapes of bones and muscles, and discussing all of this with them in such a way that it becomes truly vivid and concrete—the children then work with sculptural forms; these forms naturally come to resemble what has been covered. One can follow very precisely how the children’s inner psychological processes are expressed in the forms, how they create entirely from within themselves. As a teacher, one need only stand behind them and, so to speak, imperceptibly guide the whole process. In this way, the painterly forms become sculptural, and the children are very eager to transition—I would say—from purely unintentional creation, which has a playful-artistic character, to what is practical and useful. In this way, one moves very easily from the playful-artistic realm into the realm of arts and crafts, into the creation of all sorts of useful things. But such instruction must be conducted, I would say, with a serious sense of humor. In particular, one must encourage the children to make things that spring entirely from their own imagination—for example, toys (Dr. Steiner shows a wooden doll). I believe these are things that must actually appeal to every artist, more so than many works of art in exhibitions. Next: a cloth doll. Such things are truly delightful; very young children make them; in doing so, they learn the basics of practical skills, as you can see; they sew them themselves.

[ 83 ] But what gives the children particular joy is what they can, so to speak, bring into the realm of storytelling and movement, and they are very inventive in this regard. These things that move in a meaningful way (a rabbit)—they create them with great dedication. It is particularly interesting to see how inventive the children become with these moving toys. The more fun the creatures are that are brought to life (a stork), the more the children enjoy it. The children really enjoy the contrast between a proudly joyful animal and a melancholic-looking one, like this raven. The fact that the children move from rigid, fixed forms into something that moves is something that stimulates them immensely from within, drawing the awakening soul out of the slumbering organism, calling it forth.

[ 84 ] You see, this is something that, once the child has finished making it, brings the child immense joy (a duck); it’s designed so that the beak moves; that’s absolutely delightful for the child. In this way, the child truly develops an inner sense of what is alive.

[ 85 ] Then we’ll also move toward ensuring that children truly learn what is meaningful to them in life. The point here is to develop a genuine sense of form and a genuine artistic sensibility in children (sofa cushions). It is, after all, very common for such cushions not to be made in a way that makes it clear what they are used for or how they fit into daily life. We place great importance on things clearly showing their purpose in life (a blanket). The blanket simply lies there; it needs no decoration. We have made sure that items are crafted according to the purpose for which they are intended. Thus, the decoration must be applied appropriately to the sofa cushion. In this regard, the children create various designs based on real-life experiences. You can lie down on this part (in the middle); you don’t lie down on this part—the child must understand that.

[ 86 ] A tea warmer. It is placed over the teapot, and both sides must be identical. All of this must be shaped intuitively from real-life experience. In this way, the child is introduced to the world of arts and crafts—that is, to objects that have significance as beautiful things (such as a bag)—transitioning from the early stages of form-making and drawing to the practical application of arts and crafts. In some cases, the motifs are also painted and drawn first, and the child then notices how everything must be treated differently when applying paint to paper or working with thread on fabric. The different ways of respecting the material can be brought out wonderfully in these activities. And transitions are so lovely to create, aren’t they? That which exists purely for joy and delight (movable wooden toys) then transitions into the most useful of objects—such as a wooden spoon, for example. This is precisely what children always carry out with the same devotion.

[ 87 ] We have even gotten to the point where our children do bookbinding work—where they learn to bind books and make small cardboard boxes. This is something that tremendously stimulates dexterity and also a sense of purpose in life. Items such as my notebook (Dr. Steiner shows it)—such items, for example, are crafted in the bookbinding and handicrafts class. The older children also do gardening. The entire course is taught by the teacher herself.

[ 88 ] And so, everywhere, efforts are being made not only to cultivate artistic sensibility, but also to truly translate that into practical life. It is precisely in this way that one can ensure the children are truly and deeply engaged in these activities. One sees how the children become inventive, how happy they are when they come up with this or that idea in the field of handicrafts, and this truly brings an immense vitality to the lessons. It is interesting how disciplining this artistically oriented approach to teaching can be. It is very interesting to observe at times how, when boys—and even girls—are not fully engaged in more intellectual lessons, they become unproductive, get up to all sorts of foolish things, and the teacher who is required to teach these more intellectual subjects then complains. Those teachers who then teach plastic arts or whose approach is generally oriented toward the artistic, on the other hand, are often exceptionally satisfied with precisely these children—the very ones who are usually the subject of complaints—and are even amazed at how gifted the children prove to be in this context. But this should not be dismissed as a mere coincidence; rather, it has a very profound pedagogical significance. In this way, one can also awaken the aptitude for what, for example, a person wants or needs in terms of intellectual development for life. One must simply harmonize all the individual school subjects with one another. And if one has a knack for bringing out what is innate in a person, then one achieves those things that truly educate the child in such a way that the child will have something for the rest of their life when they look back on their schooling. And that is, after all, the most beautiful thing one can have in life—to look back on school as a lost paradise. And that is also what one must strive to achieve. There is no other way to achieve it than by introducing children to the arts. Anyone who looks at things with an open mind must say: People usually have no idea how intensely children between the ages of seven and fourteen, after being oriented toward play, yearn for the artistic—how this is inherent in human nature—and how it is the greatest blessing for a person’s entire life if one does not neglect the artistic sensibility at this stage of life. It is not necessary to adopt an overly “aestheticizing” approach, turning children into all sorts of artistic dilettantes; rather, it is entirely possible to ensure that what is cultivated artistically with the children is always directed toward what must then serve as the foundation of life. And so, in our school, the artistic is cultivated specifically by making it the driving force of the entire curriculum, especially for the very young children. In this way, the imagination is brought to the fore. The child becomes inventive by having to paint and engage in sculptural activities. What is drawn out of the child in this way, in turn, stimulates the child’s understanding of poetry and so on. Through this harmonization and—I would say—totalization, by truly extending instruction to the artistic realm, one truly opens up and unifies the educational process as something genuinely organic.

[ 89 ] That is what I wanted to say briefly today, now that the exhibition is here. It will, of course, be discussed again in more detail during the lectures.