The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The task set for this conference on education was to discuss the following question: What role do education and instruction play in a person’s personal life and in contemporary cultural life? — Those individuals who are able to view contemporary cultural life in all its various forms with an open mind hardly find it contradictory when it is said that precisely such a topic today—that is, in the historical “today” that encompasses the present decades—is one that, in the deepest sense, touches upon the mysteries that weigh on the minds and hearts of a wide circle of people today. For we have indeed witnessed the emergence of a peculiar relationship between human beings and themselves within modern culture. Within this culture, for more than a century, we have witnessed the magnificent development of the natural sciences, along with all that this has entailed for human civilization; and, fundamentally speaking, modern life as a whole is permeated by the insights brought to light by the powerful, magnificent natural sciences of recent times. Yet no matter how far we look within the sphere of this knowledge of nature, no matter how closely we examine—as we do today—the mineral kingdom in particular, and from there form mental images about the other kingdoms of nature, we must admit one thing: Human beings do not face themselves today with the same closeness and intimacy with which they did in earlier cultural epochs through self-observation. For everything that this profound knowledge of nature has brought to humanity is, in fact, not directly applicable to the innermost being of the human being. We may ask: What are the laws, what is the course of the non-human world? — But all answers to this question actually fall short of the essence of what is enclosed within the boundaries of human skin. They fall so far short that today we do not even have the slightest inkling of what real changes external natural processes bring about in the living human being in terms of respiration, blood circulation, nutrition, and so on.

[ 2 ] Consequently, even with regard to the soul, one has come to the point of not looking at the soul itself, but rather, in a sense, viewing it through the way it manifests itself in the physical nature of the human being. People have come to experiment with external interventions on human beings. Now, this is not meant to be an objection to experimental psychology or experimental pedagogy. What can be achieved in this direction should certainly be acknowledged, but this experimentation on human beings should be mentioned, at least in passing, more as a symptom than for its intrinsic content. In times when one gained an intuitive impression of another person’s inner soul experiences through inner empathy with their spiritual and soul life, it was, so to speak, self-evident that one interpreted the outer physical manifestations based on what one knew about the inner spiritual and soul life. Today, the opposite approach is taken. We experiment with external characteristics and processes—a commendable endeavor, of course, just as all natural science is commendable today—but in doing so we merely demonstrate that, in the course of the modern view of life, we have gradually become accustomed to regarding as “positive” in our perception only what the senses can perceive, what the intellect can gain through the senses’ perception. As a result, however, we have actually reached a point where we can no longer properly observe the inner human being and, in many cases, are content to observe only the outer shell. We are distancing ourselves from the human being. Those methods that have shed such magnificent light on the life of external nature—on its essence and workings—but which are also applied to human beings, these methods actually deprive us of the immediate, elemental interaction from soul to soul.

[ 3 ] This is indeed how it came to be that modern culture—which otherwise seems so wonderful and has brought certain natural phenomena so close to us—has actually distanced us from humanity. It is easy to see that the branch of our cultural life that suffers most from this phenomenon is the one concerned with the education and development of the growing human being—the child in schooling and instruction. For a person can educate and teach only when they understand what they are to shape and form—just as a painter can paint only when they know nature and the essence of color, a sculptor can work only when they know the essence of their material, and so on. What applies to the other arts, which work with external materials—how could it not apply to the art that works with the noblest material that can be presented to human beings at all: the human being, its becoming, and its very development? This, however, essentially points to the fact that all education and all instruction must spring from a genuine understanding of the human being. We are now seeking to develop this art of education, which rests entirely on a genuine understanding of the human being, in the Waldorf School, and this education conference is, after all, connected to the educational and teaching methods of the Waldorf School.

[ 4 ] Knowledge of the human being—one might say: Oh, how far we have come in our understanding of the human being in modern times!—But the answer to that must be: Certainly, extraordinary achievements have been made with regard to our understanding of the physical human being; but the human being is internally structured into body, soul, and spirit. And the view of life that underlies the method and educational system of the Waldorf School—anthroposophical Spiritual Science—is entirely based on a balanced understanding of the human body, soul, and spirit, and it seeks to avoid any one-sidedness through such a balanced understanding of the three aspects of human nature.

[ 5 ] In the upcoming lectures—for which I would like to offer more of an introduction today—I will have much to say about this understanding of human nature. First, however, I would like to point out that true, genuine knowledge of humanity cannot merely concern itself with perceiving the individual human being—in body, soul, and spirit—as he or she appears before us, but must above all seek to grasp with the eye of the soul what takes place between human beings in earthly life. When one human being encounters another, a fully conscious understanding of humanity cannot develop—that would be absurd. We would never be able to encounter one another as human beings in social life if we were to look at one another in such a way that we asked: What lies within the other? — But in our unconscious sensations and feelings—and above all in those impulses that underlie the will—we carry an unconscious understanding of the other person we encounter in life. This understanding of others, as we shall see, has indeed suffered greatly in recent times, and our social ills stem from the fact that it has suffered. But it has, more or less, merely retreated into realms even more subconscious than those in which it used to reside. Yet it is present; otherwise, we would pass one another by, human to human, without any understanding at all. But isn’t it true that when one person encounters another—even if we don’t realize it clearly—sympathies and antipathies arise, and impressions emerge that tell us whether the other person is suited to draw close to us or is unsuited to do so, and that we should keep our distance from them. — Yes, we can also form other impressions. Based on our first impression, we might say to ourselves, for example: “This is an intelligent person,” or “This is a less gifted person.” — I could cite many such examples; they would all show that hundreds upon hundreds of impressions strive to rise from the depths of our soul into consciousness, but are suppressed for the sake of living with an open mind—yet we still face another person with these impressions as a state of mind and organize our own life in relation to them according to these impressions. Even what we call compassion—which is, in essence, one of the most significant impulses underlying all human morality—also belongs to the unconscious understanding of human nature of which I am speaking here.

[ 6 ] Just as we face other adults in our adult lives and actually practice understanding human nature in such an unconscious way that we do not notice it but act in accordance with it, so too must we, as the teacher’s human soul, face the child’s human soul in a much more conscious way in order to nurture the child, but also so that we can experience within our own teacher’s soul what must be experienced, so that we may possess the right disposition, the right pedagogical artistry, and the right empathy with the child’s soul—all of which are necessary to carry out education and instruction in an appropriate manner. We are immediately made aware that what is actually most important in education and instruction takes place between the teacher’s soul and the child’s soul. And let us begin, for now, with this understanding of humanity—an understanding that is not sharply defined, not because it relates to any one individual, but because it hovers, weaving back and forth in many ways, so to speak, between what takes place in the teacher’s soul during instruction and education and what takes place in the child’s soul. It may be difficult to grasp what unfolds there in a truly intangible way, flowing from the teacher’s soul to the child’s soul and vice versa. For what flows there is, in essence, changing at every moment while we teach and educate. One must develop an eye for this—a spiritual eye that perceives the fleeting, subtle interplay between souls. Perhaps only when one is able to grasp what takes place so intimately and spiritually between people can one truly understand each individual person.

[ 7 ] Let us therefore begin today by looking at a few examples to see how these trends manifest themselves in specific cases. In doing so, however, one thing must be taken into account: Our understanding of human beings—especially of the developing human being, the child—is all too often practiced in such a way that we focus on the child at a specific point in its life, engage with it, inquire about its developmental forces, ask how these forces are at work at a particular age, and so on, and consider what we should do to meet these developmental forces in the right way at that specific age. But an understanding of human nature, as meant here, does not focus solely on these individual moments of experience; such an understanding encompasses the entire earthly life of the human being. This is not as convenient as observing a narrowly defined period in a person’s life. But for educators and teachers, it is necessary to take the whole of a person’s earthly life into account; for what we instill in a child at the age of eight or nine has its effects in the forty-fifth or fiftieth year of the adult’s life, as we shall discuss further. And what I, as a teacher, do for a child of compulsory school age penetrates deeply into the physical, psychological, and spiritual nature of the human being. It weaves its way, as it were, beneath the surface—often for decades—and emerges in a remarkable way after decades, sometimes at the end of a person’s life, even though it was planted within them as a seed at the very beginning of their life. One can only influence childhood in the right way if one has before one’s eyes not only this childhood but the whole of human life, based on a true understanding of the human being.

[ 8 ] It is this understanding of human nature that I have in mind as I now seek to illustrate—today only briefly, as these matters will be discussed in greater detail—how a teacher’s soul can influence a child’s soul in an intimate way. We understand how to do what we are supposed to do in instruction—in intellectual instruction, in guiding impulses of the will—only when we first know: What is actually at work between teacher and child, simply by virtue of the fact that teacher and child are present, each with a specific nature, a specific temperament, a specific character, a specific level of development, and a very specific physical and psychological constitution? — Before we even begin to teach or educate in any way, we and the child are already there. An interaction between the two is already present. How the teacher relates to the child—that is the first significant question.

[ 9 ] So that we do not grope around in general abstractions but focus on something specific, let us begin with a particular characteristic of human nature: temperament. Let us not focus initially on the child’s temperament—over which we have no control, after all; we must educate every human being regardless of their ‘temperament,’ and we can discuss the child’s temperament later—but rather, to define the scope of our task, let us first focus on the teacher’s temperament. The teacher enters the school with a very specific “temperament”—a choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, or melancholic temperament—and faces the child. The question of what we, as educators, should do to rein in—or perhaps to cultivate self-discipline—in relation to our own temperament can only be answered once we are able to address the fundamental question: What effect does the teacher’s temperament have on the child, simply by virtue of its presence?

[ 10 ] Let us begin with the choleric temperament. A teacher’s choleric temperament can manifest itself in the teacher letting this temperament run wild, in the teacher giving in to this choleric temperament. We will see later how the teacher must control himself, but for now let us assume that this choleric temperament is simply there. It manifests itself in intense, vehement expressions of life. Perhaps it compels the teacher, while he is educating or teaching, to resort to actions or ways of treating the child that stem precisely from his choleric temperament and which he later regrets. Perhaps he does all sorts of things in the child’s presence that—as we shall see how sensitive the child’s soul is—frighten the child; the fright may be only brief and temporary, but it can nevertheless permeate the child’s physical constitution. A choleric teacher can also cause the child to approach the teacher while experiencing constant feelings of fear, or the child may feel oppressed entirely unconsciously or subconsciously. In short, we must take into account a very specific effect of the choleric temperament on the child in a subtle, intimate, and delicate way.

[ 11 ] Let us consider a child who is still at a tender age, an age that precedes compulsory elementary school. At this stage, the child is actually still a completely unified being. The three aspects of human nature—body, soul, and spirit—do not become distinct until later in life. Between birth and the change of teeth—which marks a very important stage in human development—there is a period in the child’s life in which, so to speak—though we usually do not pay enough attention to this—the child is almost entirely a sensory organ. Let us consider a sensory organ: the eye itself. External impressions—color impressions—reach the eye. This eye is intimately organized to integrate these color impressions. Without any conscious influence on the part of the human being, what acts as an external stimulus is immediately transformed into something akin to a volitional act, which, as we say, can only be experienced by the soul. But the child’s entire life before the change of teeth is so deeply rooted in soul life based on sensory perception. The child perceives all inner experience as akin to a soul perception. In particular, what comes from the impressions of the people in the child’s surroundings—whether we move slowly around the child, and thereby reveal the calmness of our spiritual-soul life, or whether we move energetically in the child’s presence and thereby reveal the intensity of our own spiritual-soul life—all of this is taken in by the child with almost the same intensity with which the impressions acting upon the sense organ are otherwise taken in by that sense organ. The child is, in the fullest sense, a sensory organ. One might even say: When we are adults, we experience taste in our mouth, on the palate, on the tongue. The child feels taste much deeper within its organism; the organ of taste extends, so to speak, throughout a large part of the body. The same is true of the other senses. In the child, the effects of light are intimately connected with the rhythms of breathing; they penetrate into the blood circulation. What the adult experiences separately in the eye, the child experiences throughout the entire body, and without the intervention of thought, the impulses of the will manifest themselves immediately in the child, like reflexes. I am discussing this only briefly at first, by way of introduction, to introduce the topic. Thus, the child’s entire body acts reflexively, like a sensory organ, in response to what is happening in the environment.

[ 12 ] As a result, however, the spirit, soul, and body in the child are not yet distinct, not yet differentiated; they are still a unity, interwoven with one another. The spiritual and the soul-related aspects act within the body by directly influencing its circulatory and nutritional processes. Oh, how closely the child’s soul, in its sensibility, is connected to the entire metabolic system—how they work together! Only later, during the change of teeth, does the soul become more distinct from the metabolism. Every emotional stir in the child is reflected in the circulation, in breathing, and in digestion. Body, soul, and spirit are still a unity. Consequently, every stimulus exerted by the environment extends all the way into the child’s physical being. And if a choleric teacher, who gives free rein to his choleric temperament, is present in the child’s environment—at first simply standing there beside the child and letting himself go— then the outbursts of that choleric temperament—that which is done under the influence of the teacher’s temperament when he does not practice the kind of self-discipline we will discuss later—spill over into the child’s soul and carry over into the physical body. Herein lies the peculiarity: it sinks into the depths of existence, and what is implanted in the body of the developing human being later comes to the surface. Just as the seed that is sown in the earth in the fall emerges as a plant in the spring, so too does what is instilled in the child in the eighth or ninth year emerge in the forty-fifth or fiftieth year of life, and we see the consequences of the teacher’s choleric temperament—when he lets himself go—manifesting in metabolic disorders not only in the adult but also in the elderly person. If we examine closely why this or that person, in their fortieth or fiftieth year, appears before us as a sufferer of rheumatism—as someone afflicted by all manner of metabolic disorders and poor digestion—and if we investigate why this person is the way they are, why they develop gout at an early age, then the answer we receive is: Much of this can be attributed to the unchecked, choleric temperament of a teacher who interacted with the child during early childhood.

[ 13 ] When one considers the whole of human life in this way—not merely, as is more convenient, the childhood years in order to derive pedagogical principles and impulses—only then does one truly realize the central significance that teaching and education actually hold in the entire course of human life, and how often happiness and unhappiness—in terms of the spiritual, the psychological, and the physical—are connected to teaching and education. When one sees how a doctor, in the case of an elderly person, must correct the mistakes of upbringing—without the patient even realizing it—and often can no longer do so because they have become so deeply ingrained in the person’s being; when one sees that what affects the child’s soul is transformed into physical effects; when one understands this interplay between the physical and the psychological, only then does one gain the proper respect and true appreciation for what the methodology of teaching and the conditions of upbringing should actually be—simply in accordance with the very nature of human beings themselves.

[ 14 ] Let us consider a phlegmatic teacher who once again lets himself go and does not take control of his phlegmatic temperament through self-knowledge and self-discipline. In the case of the phlegmatic teacher facing the child, one might say that the child’s inner liveliness is not being adequately met. The inner impulses want to come out; they do flow out; the child wants to be active. The teacher is a phlegmatic person; he lets himself go. He does not catch what is flowing out of the child. What wants to come out of the child does not encounter external impressions and influences. It is as if one were to breathe in thin air, to use a physical analogy. The child’s soul experiences a kind of spiritual shortness of breath when the teacher is phlegmatic. And when we examine life to see why certain people suffer from nervousness, neurasthenia, and the like, we find—if we trace back through the course of a person’s life to childhood—that the unchecked phlegmatic disposition of a teacher, who should have been doing important work with the child, lies at the root of such predispositions to illness. Entire cultural phenomena of a pathological nature can thus be explained. Why, then, are nervousness and neurasthenia so incredibly widespread in modern times? You might say: One would have to believe that the entire teaching staff during the time when the people who are nervous and neurasthenic today were educated consisted of phlegmatic individuals! — But I tell you, it did consist of phlegmatic people—not in the ordinary sense of the word, but in a much truer sense of the word. For in a certain period of the nineteenth century, the materialistic worldview emerged. The materialistic worldview has interests that distract from the human being, fostering an immense indifference in the educator toward the actual, more intimate stirrings of the soul in the person being educated. Anyone who was able to observe these cultural phenomena of a more recent time with an open mind might have found that even someone who was otherwise a phlegmatic person might say—because he held to the abstract principle that his students must not knock over inkwells in anger: “You must not do such a thing; you must not knock over the inkwell out of anger.” “Hey, I’m going to throw that inkwell right at your head!”—So one must not immediately assume that all such choleric tendencies would have been frowned upon in the era I am referring to, or that one would not have encountered sanguine or melancholic types as well: with regard to the actual task of education, they were nevertheless phlegmatic. One could not approach human beings—least of all the developing human being—with a materialistic worldview, and so one could be a phlegmatic, even while in life one was a choleric or a melancholic. A certain phlegmatic quality crept into all education during a particular era of materialistic development. And out of this phlegmatic state, much of what has appeared in our cultural life—as nervousness, as neurasthenia, as the complete disorganization of the nervous system—has developed in many people. We will discuss the details later. But this is how we see the phlegmatic temperament of the teacher manifesting itself in the child’s nervous disorganization, simply by the phlegmatic teacher’s presence beside the child.

[ 15 ] If the teacher succumbs to a melancholic temperament, if his melancholy causes him to be too preoccupied with himself, so that, one might say the thread of the child’s spiritual-soul life is in constant danger of snapping, and the thread of the child’s emotional life grows cold, then the melancholic teacher actually has the effect on the child of causing the child to hide its soul stirrings within itself and, instead of living them out outwardly, to sink them inward. Consequently, the melancholic teacher’s tendency to let things take their course has such an effect on the later years of a child’s life—the child whom the melancholic teacher faces—that the child’s breathing and blood circulation become irregular. Anyone who, as a teacher, does not merely focus on the childhood period for educational purposes, nor, as a doctor, when a person has a specific illness, but can view the entire human life in its context—will find the origin of many heart diseases that arise in the fortieth or forty-fifth year of life in the overall mood produced by the teacher’s melancholic temperament, which has been allowed to run its course, in the individual upbringing and in the classroom. We can see from this how the observation of the intangible forces in the spiritual-psychic realm—those at play between the teacher’s soul and the child’s soul—simply compels us to ask: How, for example, must the teacher or educator practice self-education in relation to these temperaments? — We already sense that it cannot be the case that the teacher or educator simply says: “Temperament is innate; I’ll stick to that.” — First, that is not true, and second, even if it were true, the human race would have died out long ago due to errors in education.

[ 16 ] Let us now consider the sanguine person who, as a teacher, gives free rein to his sanguine temperament. He is receptive to all kinds of impressions. If a student makes a mess, he turns toward it—he does not get angry—he simply turns his gaze toward it. If a student whispers something in his neighbor’s ear, he turns his gaze toward them. He is a sanguine person; impressions come to him quickly but do not leave a deep impression. He lets a female student come out, asks her a very brief question, isn’t interested in her for long, and sends her right back in. The teacher is, after all, a sanguine. If one again applies the same methods that take into account the whole of human life, one will find that in some people who suffer from a lack of vitality, from a lack of zest for life—which is, after all, a pathological predisposition in some people—this deficiency can be traced back to the effect of the teacher’s sanguine temperament, which the teacher allows to run wild. The teacher’s sanguine temperament, without self-discipline, results in a suppression of vitality, a suppression of the joy of life, and of the powerful will that wells up from the individual’s inner being.

[ 17 ] If one considers these connections—which are provided by a genuine Spiritual Science aimed at true knowledge of the human being—one will see how comprehensive the art of education and the true system of instruction must be in their view of human nature and human existence, and how petty, by comparison, is that which often looks only at the immediate surroundings, at what is conveniently observable at the moment. That is not the way to go, and a fundamental demand of our contemporary culture—which has, after all, brought enough damage to the surface of human existence—is this: How does one move beyond individual observations made through experimentation or statistics, or whatever other fine methods there may be, how do we move from these convenient individual observations—which today form almost the sole basis of pedagogy and didactics—to a pedagogy and didactics that take into account, in equal measure, the whole of human experience and the eternal within the human being, which reveals itself only as a radiance shining through human experience? And in connection with such questions, something much deeper opens up.

[ 18 ] I have tried, by way of introduction, to point out what takes place between teacher and student, educator and child, simply by virtue of both being present—even before we take into account anything we do consciously—merely by the fact that we are there. This is particularly evident in the different temperaments.

[ 19 ] Now one might say: One must also begin to educate. — And here one holds the view that only someone who has learned what is to be taught can teach it to others. If I have learned something myself, then I am, so to speak, entitled to teach it to someone else. And often one does not even see how that inner attitude—shaped by the teacher’s self-education or, as we shall see, by seminar training—with regard to temperament, character, and so on, lies in the background of what the teacher can acquire for teaching and education through his own learning, through what he is able to absorb. But here, too, knowledge of human nature leads us deeper into the human being. Let us therefore consider the following question: What about conveying something I have learned to another person—to a child who has not yet learned it? Is it sufficient to teach the child in the same way that one has oneself absorbed what is to be conveyed? — It is not sufficient. I am stating an empirical fact that can only be ascertained by truly observing human beings—in body, soul, and spirit—throughout their entire lives.

[ 20 ] Such an observation yields the following for the first stage of life—from birth until the teeth begin to fall out. If one is able to consider the mutual relationship between the teacher and the child, just as I have done with regard to the temperaments, one comes to the conclusion that: For this stage of life, what I have learned is of the very least importance when it comes to teaching and raising the child. What matters most is what kind of person I am, what impressions the child receives through me, and whether it can imitate me.

[ 21 ] Truly, especially for this stage of life, a culture that did not yet actually speak of pedagogy—but rather practiced it in a basic, primitive way—had a healthier outlook than we often do today; a culture such as we had in Eastern regions in earlier times, where the person we would call a “pedagogue” according to our understanding was not yet active, but where the person who was to influence the child’s formative years was the individual with all that he embodied in his character—physically, emotionally, and spiritually; who was simply to be present alongside the child, so that the child could model itself after him—so that the child would twitch a muscle when he twitched that muscle, and blink when he blinked. But he had trained himself to do such things in a way that the child could imitate them. This was not the Eastern educator, but the Eastern Dätä. There was still something instinctive underlying it. But we can see this even today: What I have learned has absolutely no significance for what I am to the child as an educator until the child’s teeth begin to fall out. After the teeth begin to fall out, it starts to have a certain significance. But it loses all significance if I teach it exactly as I carry it within myself. One must implement it artistically, bring everything into the picture, as we shall yet see. I must once again awaken imponderable forces between myself and the child. And for the second stage of life—the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—what matters far more than the wealth of material I have learned, far more than what I carry within me, in my mind, is whether I can translate into vivid imagery and lively form what I develop around the child and allow to flow into the child. And only for those who have already passed through puberty—and for them up to the early twenties—does what one has learned oneself take on significance. For the young child up to the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the human being. For the child from the change of teeth to puberty, the most important thing in education is the human being who is transforming into a living master of life. And it is only around the ages of fourteen or fifteen that the child begins to demand, for educational instruction and instructive upbringing, what one has learned oneself, and this continues well into the early twenties—when the child is fully grown—though they are, of course, already a young lady and a young man by then— and where the twenty-year-old then stands as an equal before other people, even if they are older.

[ 22 ] Once again—we will see how such insights deepen in comparison to true human wisdom—this allows us to look deeply into the human being. We come to realize that what has often been believed—that one does not recognize a teacher by examining him, after he has completed his teacher training, to see if he knows anything— for there one only learns to recognize whether he can present material in the way one does when one has mastered the subject oneself, whether he can present it to students ranging in age from fourteen or fifteen to twenty. For younger age groups, what the teacher can demonstrate is not even a consideration. There, quality must be assessed on entirely different grounds. And so the question of the teacher emerges as a fundamental principle of pedagogy and didactics. And what must actually live within a group of children—vibrating on and on, rippling on and on into the heart, into the stirrings of the will, and finally into the intellect—is that which first lives within the teacher, lives within him simply by virtue of the fact that he stands before the child with a certain human nature, a certain temperament, a certain character, and a certain state of mind; only then does it matter that he has educated himself in a certain way, and that he can convey what he has cultivated within himself back to the children.

[ 23 ] Thus we see how a comprehensive study of human nature can be the sole foundation for understanding a true didactics of teaching and the living conditions of education. And it is these two topics—the didactics of teaching and the living conditions of education—that I would like to discuss further in these lectures.