The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I attempted to explain how thinking and feeling in human beings become independent around the ages of seven and fourteen, breaking away, as it were, from the physical organization. Today I would like to show how the will in the human being gradually strives toward this independence as it grows.

[ 2 ] Essentially, the human will is bound to the organism for the longest period of time. Up until around the age of twenty or twenty-one, everything that constitutes the human will is intensely dependent on organic activity; it is dependent on organic activity, which is carried out specifically through the way in which respiration continues into the blood circulation, and how the blood circulation, in turn, through the inner fire—the inner warmth developed within the organism as a result—engages the motor system, that which finds expression in the legs, feet, arms, and hands when a person moves and brings about a manifestation of the will.

[ 3 ] One could say: Even in children between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, everything related to the will is still dependent on the way the organism influences movement. Educators, in particular, must maintain an unbiased perspective when observing such things. One must be able to see how energetic a young person is in their will—or, more accurately, how they have the potential to become energetic—when they push off the ground strongly with the back of their foot, the heel, as they walk; and how they are less energetically inclined in their will when their gait is such that they move more lightly, almost dancing, on the front part of their foot.

[ 4 ] But all of this—the way a person positions their legs, the way a person is able to extend the movement of their arms into the dexterity of their fingers—is, even for a young person past the age of fifteen, an outward physical manifestation of their will. And the will does not emancipate itself from the organism until around the age of twenty, in the same way that feeling emancipates itself around the age of fourteen and thinking around the age of seven, during the change of teeth. However, the external processes that manifest themselves in the revelation of emancipated thinking are very conspicuous; anyone can easily see them; the change of teeth is a very conspicuous phenomenon in human life. The emancipation of feeling, however, is less conspicuous. It manifests itself in the development of the so-called secondary sexual characteristics, the enlargement of the sexual organs in boys, the corresponding changes in girls, the change in the boy’s voice, the change in the girl’s inner disposition, and so on. Here, the external symptoms of human metamorphosis are already less conspicuous. Emotion, then, emancipates itself more internally from the physical organization toward psychological independence.

[ 5 ] The outward signs of the emancipation of the will around the ages of twenty or twenty-one are even less apparent on the surface and are therefore almost entirely overlooked by a time that lives on the surface, as ours does. In our time, people consider themselves adults by the age of fourteen or fifteen; and our young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one do not recognize that after the age of fourteen or fifteen, one should acquire not only external knowledge but also inner character development—specifically, the development of the will. Rather, they begin to present themselves as reformers and teachers, and instead of engaging with what they can learn from their elders, they write feature articles or the like before the age of twenty-one. This is entirely understandable in an age focused on outward appearances.

[ 6 ] Behind these lies the profound change that continues to take place within a person even in their twentieth and twenty-first years, because it is entirely internal. But it is there, and it can be described something like this.

[ 7 ] Until the age of twenty-one—approximately, of course, as I have already mentioned in recent days—until approximately the age of twenty-one, a human being is not yet a fully formed individual, but is strongly subject to gravity, to the Earth’s gravitational pull. They struggle with the Earth’s gravitational pull until approximately the age of twenty-one. And in this regard, external science will yet make many discoveries that are already clear today to that exact clairvoyance I spoke of yesterday.

[ 8 ] We carry iron in the blood cells of our blood. Essentially, up until the age of twenty-one, these blood cells are such that they predominate in terms of their density. From the age of twenty-one onward, a person experiences, as it were, a counterforce rising from below—a kind of buoyancy affecting all of their blood. At the age of twenty-one, a person places the sole of their foot on the ground differently than they did before. People are simply unaware of this today, but it is of fundamental importance for the entire understanding of humanity, insofar as this understanding is to be revealed through education. In a sense, with every step taken from the age of twenty-one onward, a force acts from the bottom up within the human organism—a force that did not act before. The human being becomes a unified being in whom the forces flowing from top to bottom have been counterbalanced by the forces flowing from bottom to top, whereas previously essentially all the forces of his growth and development flowed from the head downward.

[ 9 ] This flow of the forces of growth from the head downward is actually strongest in very young children up to the age of seven. The entire human physical organization originates from the organization of the head. The head does everything until the age of seven; only when thinking becomes independent with the change of teeth does the head also detach itself from this powerful force that acts from top to bottom.

[ 10 ] People today know a great deal about positive and negative magnetism. They know a great deal about positive and negative electricity. But people know remarkably little about what goes on within the human being itself. The fact that the forces flow from the head to the feet and from the feet to the head only during the first two decades of life is a significant anthroposophical truth that is of fundamental importance for the entire field of education—and one of which people today are actually completely unaware. And yet, all pedagogy, the entire field of education, rests upon this very question. For why do we educate? That is the great question.

[ 11 ] We must ask ourselves—as members of humanity, not of the animal kingdom—why do we educate? Why do animals grow into their life tasks without education? Why do we humans need to educate other humans at all? Why is it not the case that human beings simply acquire what they need for life through observation and imitation? Why must an educator, a teacher, interfere with a child’s freedom? — A question that is usually not even raised, because the matter is taken for granted.

[ 12 ] But one is only a true educator when one does not take this question for granted, when one realizes that it is actually an imposition on the child to stand there and try to educate it. Why should the child have to put up with that? We regard it as our natural duty to educate children—but children, in their unconsciousness, do not see it that way at all! And that is why we talk so much about children’s bad behavior and do not even consider that we—though not to their conscious mind, but to their subconscious—must seem utterly strange to them when we impose anything on them from the outside. They are fully justified in finding this quite unappealing at first. And the big question of education is this: How do we transform what must initially be unappealing to children into something appealing?

[ 13 ] However, the opportunity for this arises precisely between the ages of seven and fourteen. For at the age of seven, the head—the seat of thought—becomes independent. It no longer develops such strong downward-directed forces as is the case with a child up to the age of seven. It becomes, so to speak, self-sufficient and attends to its own affairs.

[ 14 ] When we now make the leap to the fourteenth and fifteenth years, the organs of movement only then become personal and subject to the will. The will becomes independent within the organs of movement. Only then do those forces—which a human being must possess as forces of the will—begin to act from the bottom up. For all will acts from the bottom up, and all thinking acts from the top down. The direction of thought goes from heaven to earth; the direction of the will goes from earth to heaven. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, the two are not connected to one another, nor are they intertwined. That which moves from top to bottom, in turn, loses itself in an indeterminate way. And in the middle human being—where respiration and circulation live and have their origin—there also lives that which, during this period, emancipates itself as the emotional human being. And by properly developing the emotional human being between the ages of seven and fourteen, we bring what moves from top to bottom and from bottom to top into the proper balance.

[ 15 ] Thus, it is nothing less than ensuring that, between the ages of seven and fourteen, we establish the proper connection between the child’s thinking and their volition, their will. And this can go wrong. That is why we must educate children, because in animals this integration of thinking—insofar as the animal has a dreamlike form of thinking—and of the will—insofar as the animal has a will—happens of its own accord; in humans, the integration of thinking and will does not happen of its own accord. In animals, it is a natural act; in humans, it must become a moral act. And this is why humans can become moral beings: because here on earth they have the opportunity to first integrate their thinking with their will, to bring them into connection. The entire human character, insofar as it arises from within, is based on the fact that the proper harmony between thinking and will is brought about through human activity. And the Greeks achieved this coordination, this harmonization of thought and will, by, so to speak, re-evoking in their gymnastics the flow from the head to the limbs—which occurs naturally in early childhood—by having the arms and legs move in such a way during their dancing and wrestling that mental activity was engaged in the proper manner.

[ 16 ] We can no longer have this civilization. We must proceed from the spirit. Therefore, we must understand how the human will, through the inner processes described, becomes emancipated in the motor organs at the age of twenty-one, just as feeling becomes emancipated at the age of fourteen and thinking at the age of seven within the human organism.

[ 17 ] This is precisely what modern civilization has, in essence, overlooked. It has overlooked the insight that education must consist in the integration of the will—which only appears as a fully emancipated psychological trait by the age of twenty—with thinking, which already emerges at the age of seven. Only then does one gain a proper sense of awe for human development—when, just as we did yesterday with regard to thinking and feeling, and as we have just attempted to do with the will, we bring the spirit to bear upon the physical human being; when we learn to relate the will to the human limbs, learn to observe it in the entirely different movements of the fingers and arms, and in the now-personal way of placing the feet that emerges around the ages of twenty and twenty-one—a process that has been gradually preparing itself since the age of fifteen.

[ 18 ] If, in this way, we once again view the spirit not as an association of ideas—as a “spiritual skeleton”—but as a living spirit that can now also observe how a person places their feet and moves their fingers, then we have once again drawn closer to the human being, and we can once again educate.

[ 19 ] This insight was still instinctively present among the Greeks. It was gradually lost, but only slowly; it traditionally persisted well into the 16th century. And what we observe primarily in the 16th century is that civilized humanity as a whole is losing its understanding of the relationship between thinking and will. And it is only since that time, since the 16th century, that people have begun to reflect on education without even keeping the most important questions of human understanding in mind. They do not understand human beings, yet they want to educate them! That is the tragedy that has prevailed since the 16th century. And this tragedy has persisted right up to the present day.

[ 20 ] In our time, people feel and see that a metamorphosis must take place in the field of education. Associations dedicated to education and to educational reform are springing up everywhere. People sense that education needs something, but they do not address the fundamental question: How does one harmonize thinking and will within the human being?—At most, they say: There is too much intellectualism; education must be less intellectual; the will must be cultivated.

[ 21 ] One does not need to cultivate the will for its own sake. All this talk about which is better—the cultivation of thought or the cultivation of the will?—all this talk is amateurish. The only question that is appropriate—that is, in keeping with human nature—is: How do we bring the thinking that is emancipating itself in the mind into proper harmony with the will that is emancipating itself in the limbs? — We must look not one-sidedly at thinking, nor one-sidedly at the will, but comprehensively at the whole person if we want to become educators.

[ 22 ] We cannot do this with the associated ideas we are accustomed to when we speak of the spirit today; we can only do so if, as I indicated in my first lecture and again yesterday, we are so gripped by the thinking that prevails in our time as if it were the corpse of living thought, and as if we had to work our way through our own development toward living thought.

[ 23 ] In this regard, I would now like to unhesitatingly state a fundamental point that applies to any reform of the educational system at this very moment. But I must, of course, ask for your forgiveness for stating this truth so bluntly, because, when spoken aloud, it almost seems like an insult to humanity today—and, after all, no one likes to be insulted.

[ 24 ] It is a peculiarity of our present civilization that people know: education must be done differently. That is why there are educational reform associations everywhere. They know full well: education is not being done properly, so it must change. But now people are just as convinced that they know exceptionally well how to educate, so much so that every single member of their association can say how education should be carried out.

[ 25 ] One might actually think: if one has been so poorly brought up that one must be so thoroughly reformed—and one was even present during that poor upbringing—then surely that poor upbringing should not, right from the start, make one capable of knowing, all of a sudden, quite well—radically well—how to bring up others. Today, everyone knows that they have been poorly raised—along with everyone else. But they just as readily assume that they know perfectly, radically well, how to raise children differently, how to raise them well. And because everyone knows this, educational associations have sprung up like mushrooms.

[ 26 ] The Waldorf school method did not start from this principle, but rather from the premise that we do not yet know how to educate, and that, above all, we must acquire a thorough, fundamental understanding of human nature. The first seminar course for the Waldorf School was therefore devoted to a thorough understanding of human nature, so that Waldorf teachers could gradually learn what they could not yet know: how to educate. For one can only know how to educate once one knows what human beings are actually like.

[ 27 ] A thorough, fundamental understanding of human nature was what was initially imparted to the Waldorf school teachers in the seminar course. It was hoped that, through this, they would gain an inner enthusiasm and love for education by contemplating true human nature. For if one knows the human being, then the best thing for educational practice must be the love for humanity that springs up independently within the individual. Pedagogy is, at its core, love for humanity resulting from an understanding of human nature. At the very least, it can only be built upon this.

[ 28 ] Now, for those who view human life—as it manifests itself in contemporary civilization—superficially, the numerous educational associations will serve as outward evidence that we currently know as much as possible about how to educate; for those who look more deeply into human life, this is not the case. Among the Greeks, it was instinct that shaped education. People did not talk much about education. Plato was the first—out of a certain philosophical naivety—to speak not much, but still somewhat, about education.

[ 29 ] In fact, it wasn’t until the 16th century that people really began to talk a great deal about education. For the most part, humanity tends to speak very little about what it can do, and a great deal about what it cannot do. And for the deeper observer of human nature, when a great deal is said about a subject, this is not a sign that one understands it; rather, human life is such for the deeper observer that when, in any given age, the desire arises to talk as much as possible about a subject, this is a sign that one knows as little as possible about it! And so, for those who truly look into today’s civilization, the emergence of the question of education is an indication that people no longer know how human development actually works.

[ 30 ] This, however, is a matter for which one must apologize when mentioning it. I do so with all due respect. But the truth cannot be concealed; it must be spoken. And if the Waldorf school method is to achieve anything, it will do so precisely by setting knowledge of the human being in place of ignorance about the human being, and by replacing mere superficial anthropological talk about human beings with a genuine anthroposophical insight into the inner nature of the human being, that is, to carry the spirit—as something living—into the physical human being, right down into the physical functions.

[ 31 ] One day it will be just as natural to speak of human beings with knowledge as it is almost natural today to speak of human beings without knowledge. One day, even in general civilization, people will understand how thinking is connected to the force that causes teeth to grow. One day, people will be able to observe how the inner force of feeling is connected to what is expressed through the chest organs in the movement of the lips.

[ 32 ] The changes in lip movements—and the way human emotions control those movements—that develop between the ages of seven and fourteen will be seen as an important outward sign of a person’s inner development. And one will see how everything that a person acquires between the ages of fourteen, fifteen, and twenty-one—in terms of the consolidation of forces moving from the lower to the upper regions—one will notice that all these forces accumulate precisely in the person’s own head.

[ 33 ] And just as what is intellectual is revealed in the teeth, and what is rooted in feeling is revealed in the lips, so, in the extraordinarily important organ—the palate, which forms the rear wall of the oral cavity—the manner in which the forces act from below to above and accumulate precisely in the palate, so that they transition into the reality of speech, becomes visible to a true study of humanity.

[ 34 ] If one were to look not only through a microscope or a telescope to see the smallest and the largest, but were to look at what meets one externally in the world—which one does not see today, despite the microscope and the telescope— then one will perceive how the human faculty of thought lives in the dental sounds, the human faculty of feeling lives in the labial sounds, and how the human faculty of will lives in the palatal sounds—which are impelled in particular by the tongue; and one will see in speech, through dental, labial, and palatal sounds, an imprint of the whole human being, just as in every human expression.

[ 35 ] Today, people strive to read the lines on the hand and similar external signs. They seek to discern human nature from these symptoms. All these things will only be truly understood when one must seek the whole human being in his or her outward expressions, when one sees how language—which transforms the human being from an individual being into a social being outwardly—is, in its inner movement and configuration, a reflection of the whole of human nature, and how we do not have dental sounds, labial sounds, palatal sounds in language—but rather have them because, in the dental sounds, the head is first incorporated into language; in the labial sounds, the chest; and in the palatal sounds, the rest of the human being.

[ 36 ] Our civilization must learn to speak in this way about human revelation; then it will bring the spirit to the whole person. Then it will also find the path from the human spirit into the person’s most intimate expressions—into expressions of morality. From all of this, the inner impulse for the kind of education we need will emerge.

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[ 37 ] The most significant document that can reveal just how differently we must perceive the world and its civilization today than was possible in ancient times is the Gospel of John, which is in fact the most beautiful and profound document to emerge from Greek culture itself. And the Gospel of John shows—and this is what is so magnificent even in its very first line—how we must rise to entirely different, living ideas if we wish to learn something from ancient times for our own era. What the Greeks thought, what the Greeks felt, forms the garment for the emerging Christianity in the Gospel of John.

[ 38 ] The first line of the Gospel of John is: “In the beginning was the Word”—in Greek, “the Logos.” Whatever people today associate with the word “Word” is not at all what the writer of the Gospel of John had in mind when he wrote the line: “In the beginning was the Word.” The meager, insignificant things we think of when we say the word “Word”—that is certainly not what the author of the Gospel of John had in mind when he wrote the line: “In the beginning was the Word.”

[ 39 ] There is something entirely different in this word “word.” For us, the word is a meager articulation of abstract thoughts. Indeed, our words speak only to abstract thoughts; for the Greeks, however, the word was still a call to the human will. And in the Greek psyche, it still stirred—when a syllable was uttered—to express that syllable through the whole person. The Greeks still knew that one does not merely express oneself by saying, “This is like me”—rather, the Greeks knew how it stirred within them when the word flowed: “This is like me”—and to make the corresponding movements as well. The word did not live only in the speech organ; it lived in the entire human organism of movement. Humanity has forgotten this.

[ 40 ] If we want to truly bring to mind today how the word—which in ancient Greece was still the call to action—can live through the whole human being, then we must look to eurythmy. In eurythmy, everything is only a beginning—I would say, a tentative beginning—to bring the word back into the will, to present the human being, even if we cannot yet do so in everyday life, at least on stage in such a way that the word lives directly in the movements of the legs and arms. This is a tentative beginning—and must still be regarded as such today, even as we introduce eurythmy into schools—to make the word once again a driving force, at least for the whole of life.

[ 41 ] In Greece, a completely different sentiment had come over from the East. There, it tingled; there, with every syllable, every word, every sentence—with the rhythm of the sentence, with the beat of the sentence—it urged people to let the human will manifest itself through their limbs. There, one could see how the word could become creative in every movement.

[ 42 ] But back then, people knew more. Back then, they saw in words the very same thing that lay in the formation of clouds, in the growth of flowers, and in all natural phenomena. Back then, the word rolled as the wave rolled. The word blew when the wind blew. Just as the word lives in my breath, causing me to make the corresponding movement, so the Greeks found what lived in the word in the roaring wind, in the crashing wave, even in the rumbling earthquake; it was the word that rumbled up from the earth.

[ 43 ] Our meager ideas about the word “Word” would be quite out of place if one were to apply them to the very beginning. I would like to know what we are actually supposed to do with words and mental images in a world that does not yet exist—if, at the very beginning, these meager ideas about the word “word” were present and were now supposed to be creative! Truly, our word, which has become so intellectualized, no longer possesses much that is creative.

[ 44 ] And so, above all else, one must rise up to what the Greeks perceived as the revelation of the whole human being, as the appeal to the will, when they spoke of the Word, of the Logos, and sensed that the Logos quakes, weaves, and lives throughout the entire cosmos. And then one sensed what the line actually says: “In the beginning was the Word.”

[ 45 ] Indeed, everything that constitutes creative forces—not only within human beings, but also in the wind and the waves, in the clouds, the sunshine, and the radiance of the stars—lived within the mental image presented in the words: “In the beginning was the Word.” Everywhere, the world and the cosmos were a revelation of the Word. Greek gymnastics was a revelation of the Word. And in its more subtle aspect—musical and artistic education—this was in turn a reflection of what was perceived in the Word; in Greek wrestling, the Word was at work; in Greek dance, the musical reflection of the Word was at work. Thus the spirit worked its way into human nature, even when physical, gymnastic education was being practiced.

[ 46 ] We must realize just how impoverished our mental images have become in our civilization, and we must bring ourselves to truly appreciate how that powerful impulse—which coursed through a line such as: “In the beginning was the Word,” was weakened as it passed into Roman culture, and became weaker and weaker, and how we now feel only an inner indifference when we say, “In the beginning was the Word.”

[ 47 ] And a paraphrase of this sentence—“In the beginning was the Word”—embodied all the wisdom and all the knowledge of ancient times. And the Word lived less and less; the Logos lived less and less in the mental image people created when they said, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Middle Ages arrived, and the Logos died—and people could no longer tolerate anything but the dead Logos. Those who were to be trained, who were to be educated, were not only taught by being given the dead Logos, but also by being given the dead Word: the Latin language in its dying state. The dying spoken word became a means of education well into the 16th century, when a kind of inner revolt against it arose.

[ 48 ] What does the entire civilization up to the 16th century signify? The withering away of the human sense of the vitality of the Logos, as contained in the Gospel of John. Even the clinging to a dead language is an outward manifestation of this withering away of the Logos.

[ 49 ] And if one were to briefly describe the course of civilization—insofar as this course is of fundamental significance precisely for what one ought to perceive as educational impulses—one would actually have to say: What humanity has lost is expressed most clearly in the fact that it has understood less and less of what still lives on in the Gospel of John.

[ 50 ] The journey through the Middle Ages and into the 16th century—marked by a loss of inner strength, of something like the Gospel of John—represents precisely what humanity lacks today and what causes it to cry out for educational reforms. And the educational question of the present will only find its true counterpart when we are able to look at the barrenness and emptiness that the human heart brings with it today as it seeks to comprehend the Gospel of John, and compares it with the immense inner devotion that people developed back then, when they believed they were being transported from their own human nature into all the creative forces of the world, when they allowed within themselves that which was actually meant in the very first sentence of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” And one comes to understand how, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, the call arose to educate people in a different way, because the most devout people—precisely those who at that time felt most deeply the necessity of a renewal of education—simultaneously sensed how that which, like an elemental, inner life force, enables people to grasp the spirit in a living way had vanished. For the Gospel of John speaks of the Spirit when it speaks of the Logos.

[ 51 ] We have come so far that, although we continue to develop a longing for the Spirit, we speak only words, and in those words have lost the Spirit that the Greeks still possessed. For them, the word still revealed the whole human being in his activity in the world, just as the workings of the world were once revealed to human beings in general when they created mental images, in the world-creating, cosmos-creating words, that which underlies the world as the divine—that which must therefore also come alive within the human being if he is to become a whole human being. And the educator must become a whole human being; otherwise, we will raise half-people and quarter-people. Therefore, the educator must once again come to an understanding of the word.

[ 52 ] If we wish to fully bring to mind the mystery of the Word just alluded to—how the Word was received and worked in time, back when the Gospel of John could still be fully received—we must say to ourselves: Spirit was present in the Word—even in the feeble word that humans use for their language—in the original, ancient human way. The Spirit flowed into the Word; it was the power of the Word.

[ 53 ] I am not criticizing any particular era; I do not wish to say that one era is less valuable than another, but merely wish to describe how the various eras follow one another and how each has its own particular value. It is simply that some eras must be characterized more by their negative aspects, while others more by their positive ones.

[ 54 ] Let us imagine the general fading and dimming of that which lives as an impulse within the word when the sentence “In the beginning was the Word” is spoken. Let us now imagine the civilized humanity of the 16th and 17th centuries, which had to prepare itself for an elevation of the inner power of freedom. — You see, one must also praise what was not present in a given age—and from a certain point of view, all the more so—if we picture before us a humanity that must win its freedom out of full consciousness, a humanity that could not have done so if the spirit had already been instilled and inspired within the word, as was the case in earlier times: then we understand how the impossibility of educating in the old way was already a given when Bacon of Verulam emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries with a weighty assertion that, if honestly perceived, appeared to extinguish what is given in the Word: “In the beginning was the Word.” For there was still, before that, a shadow of spirit in the Word, in the Logos.

[ 55 ] Baco urges humanity to see in the word only an “idol,” no longer the spirit; to no longer adhere to the word, no longer take the word with its power, but to guard against the intellectualism of the word. For if one becomes enslaved to the word—from which knowledge, civilization, and power were once drawn, according to Bacon of Verulam—then one clings to an idol through the word.

[ 56 ] The doctrine of idols, as found in Bacon of Verulam, embodies the entire shift of the 16th and 17th centuries: away from the word. Where is one heading? Toward the thing given to the senses. The thing that the senses can perceive is to serve as the foundation for that to which human beings hold fast.

[ 57 ] There was once, long ago, an age in which human beings received not only the word itself, but also the Spirit—indeed, the world-creating Spirit—that dwelt within the Word, within the Logos. Now came the time when the Word had become an idol, a source of temptation—an idol that lures one into intellectualism. One must hold fast to the external, sensory reality if one does not wish to fall prey to the idol of the Word.

[ 58 ] And so, according to Bacon of Verulam, the call is to adhere not to that which comes into human beings from the gods, but to that which exists out there in the world in inanimate things—or, at most, in things that are animate only outwardly. Through the word, human beings are directed toward the external, sensory object.

[ 59 ] Now all that remains within him is the feeling: he must educate after all; he must approach the human being itself, which does indeed possess the spirit! But the word is an idol. He can only direct the human being to see with its own eyes what is external, outside of the human being. Education no longer draws on what is human, but only on what is outside of humanity.

[ 60 ] And now we see—I would say—with a terrible zeal, but also with a terrible tragedy, the question of education arise, just as it still is today. We see it emerge in the 16th and 17th centuries—particularly characteristic in Michel de Montaigne—we then see it expressed by John Locke, and on the continent, in harmony with what is happening here in England, we see it in Comenius.

[ 61 ] In the trio of Montaigne, Locke, and Comenius, one can roughly see how the turning away from the Logos and the turning toward sensory things became the greatest driving force in human civilization. People feared the idol in words.

[ 62 ] The Logos disappears. That which is called “intuition”—a term that is entirely justified, as we shall see in the coming days, but which is now understood solely as sensory intuition—becomes the determining factor. And so we see with what anxiety Montaigne, John Locke, and Comenius, seek to turn humanity away from anything supernatural that dwells in the Logos; how Montaigne and John Locke constantly point to the non-human, how they formally seek to avoid everything that cannot be given through the senses; how they strive, through pedagogy, to bring as much of the sensory world as possible to young people. We see how Comenius designs books to exert their influence not through the word, but through artificially created sensory perception. We see how the transition takes place, how humanity is turning away from the sense of connection with the spirit through the word. We see how civilization as a whole can no longer inwardly accept something like “In the beginning was the Word,” but rather how humanity attaches what constitutes civilization to external sensory facts, and how the Word, the Logos, is accepted only because it has become tradition.

[ 63 ] What emerges, on the one hand, with immense zeal, but on the other hand with immense tragedy—the longing to educate solely through sensory perception, because, in the Bacchic sense, the word is perceived as an idol—is particularly evident in Montaigne, John Locke, and Comenius. Yet they, once again at the forefront, show us what lived within all of humanity; they show us how the sentiment—which we still feel today as an immense longing: to bring the spirit back to humanity—arises precisely where one can no longer believe in the spirit, but only in the idol of words, as in the case of Bacon of Verulam. And from what has been fully and justifiably lived out in all educational associations from Montaigne to Amos Comenius right up to the present day—in keeping with the spirit of their respective times— there must emerge—especially for the present—that which is once again capable of bringing the Spirit—the creative Spirit, the felt Spirit, the Spirit that bears the will—back to human beings, so that we may once again recognize, within the human body and also in human action on earth, a revelation of the Spirit that reveals itself in the supersensible.

[ 64 ] The modern era of education begins with this supernatural element within the sensible world, with this rediscovery of the spirit—which had been lost in the word, in the Logos, and had become an idol as the Word—and with this rediscovery of the spirit. Michel de Montaigne, John Locke, and Amos Comenius knew very well how one should educate. Their programs are just as magnificent as those of today’s educational associations, and everything that people demand of education can already be found in abstract statements in the works of Montaigne, Locke, and Comenius. But what we must find today are precisely the means by which we discover reality. For education cannot be developed through abstract principles or programs; it can be developed solely through reality. And because human beings themselves are soul and spirit—themselves physical and spiritual—reality must once again enter our lives. For with all of reality, the spirit also enters our lives. And such a spirit alone can sustain the art of education in the future.