The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] For education and instruction to be successful, it is necessary for the educator and teacher to cultivate the right perspective—one that enables them to truly understand the child’s impulses and the developing structure of the child’s organism. To clarify what this actually entails, I would like to begin with a comparison.

[ 2 ] Take reading as we practice it as adults—ordinary reading. What is conveyed to us through reading, when we read a book in the most ordinary sense, is certainly not what we would express by saying, for example: “A B has this shape, a C has that shape.” After all, when someone reads Goethe’s *Wilhelm Meister*, they do not end up describing the letters as a result of their reading; rather, what they take in is not at all on the page, nor is it contained within the book’s cover. Nevertheless, anyone who wishes to grasp the content of *Wilhelm Meister* must have learned to read the letters and their sequence. They must therefore know the forms of the letters. Similarly, the relationship of the teacher and educator to the child must become a reading of the human being. Therefore, for the teacher and educator, knowledge of what physiology—as it relates to the material aspects of both organs and functions, and so on—can tell them will yield no more than what is gained from learning the letters themselves. As a teacher and educator, one must not merely learn that the lungs look a certain way and have this or that function in the physical world, or that the heart and so on look a certain way; for then one would understand as little of the human being as one understands the meaning of a book if one can do nothing but describe the letters, if one cannot read.

[ 3 ] In recent cultural developments, things have unfolded in such a way that people have, in fact, gradually strayed from reading nature—and especially human nature. Our natural science is not reading; our natural science is merely spelling. And as long as one has not fully internalized this with the utmost clarity, one will not be able to develop a true art of education, a true didactics, based on genuine knowledge of human nature. It must be a reading—not a spelling—of human nature. Of course, one remains unsatisfied when hearing only this at first, because one must raise the objection: “Yes, but how is it that—since the human race is supposed to be in a state of continuous progress—a regression has actually taken place in terms of understanding the world, precisely during the era of the greatest upsurge in the natural sciences, which we, as philosophical anthroposophists, fully acknowledge?”

[ 4 ] The following must be said. Up until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, people were not at all able to “decipher” nature. They observed natural phenomena and formed an instinctive, intuitive impression—particularly of human beings. They did not go so far as to describe individual organs, but rather possessed a kind of spiritual-sensory formation, an instinctive impression of the human being as a whole. One can only have such an impression if one does not become entirely free within oneself. For it is an involuntary impression; it is not an impression that one controls internally. Therefore, an epoch had to arise in the historical development of humanity—one that began in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and must now come to an end—in which, in terms of world history, everything that had existed in earlier times as instinctive knowledge of human nature was effectively forgotten, and in which people occupied themselves with dissecting human nature, so that, in the last third of the nineteenth century and as an aftereffect throughout the twentieth century to date, general cultural development was characterized by a spiritually empty worldview—just as one would face a spiritual void if one could not read but merely looked at the shapes of letters. During this period, human nature in general grew stronger, precisely because the spontaneous life and essence of the spirit within human nature was absent, particularly among the educated.

[ 5 ] One must be able to look into world history; otherwise, one will not be able to properly assess one’s position as a human being within the course of history. What this implies is, of course, in many respects disheartening, especially for modern people. For, as I have already indicated, modern people are afflicted with a certain intellectual arrogance—especially when they believe they have learned something—and they value their own interpretation of nature far more highly than what existed in earlier epochs of humanity’s development on Earth. Today’s anatomist certainly believes he knows more about the heart and liver than previous anatomists did. The earlier anatomists had a conception of the heart and liver that embodied a spiritual element in their perception. One must be able to put oneself in the shoes of today’s anatomist and see the heart as he does: to him, it is something like a more advanced machine, a more efficient pump that drives blood through the body. If one were to say that he is looking at a dead thing, he would deny it. From his standpoint, he rightly denies it, of course, for he cannot possibly grasp what is at stake, whereas the older anatomist saw in the heart something like a spiritual being that acts in a spiritual-soulful way. The content of sensory perception was permeated by something spiritual that he simultaneously perceived. This perception of the spiritual could not take place with clear, full deliberation, but was something that arose involuntarily. Had humanity been required to continue experiencing the spiritual simultaneously with this sensory perception, it would have been impossible for humanity, in the course of its development, to attain the full moral freedom that was ultimately destined to emerge in this historical evolution.

[ 6 ] If you trace the entire course of history since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—particularly in the civilized regions—you will see what has been brewing in the broader context of subsequent developments, from the Bohemian-Moravian Brethren in Central Europe, whose aspirations had a distinctly pedagogical character, to Wycliffe, Hus, and all the way up to what is commonly called the Reformation—you will find everywhere the striving for freedom, which then found its expression in the revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century. And even today, it remains a struggle for humanity to experience freedom inwardly. This could not have come about if the old way of thinking had persisted. One had to, so to speak, free oneself for a time from the spirit that acts involuntarily within the human being, so that the human being could freely take in the spiritual activity within. And anyone who looks at the workings of spiritual culture with such an open mind will have to admit to themselves: Actually, the educator must first develop a full awareness of what is taking place in the process of human development on Earth. First, they must develop a conscious relationship out of that instinctive bond between teacher and student, as was the case in ancient times. This cannot be developed if one bases one’s education solely on mere spelling—a practice that has permeated all of science and all of human cognition. This can only be achieved if one learns, in turn, to consciously ascend from mere letter-reading to reading. That is to say: Just as, in one’s relationship to a book, one is completely immersed in what the letters say, but draws out something entirely different from what the letters say—the letters are, in a certain sense, quite innocent of the content of *Wilhelm Meister*—so one must be able to draw out of human nature that which modern natural science cannot in and of itself express, but which arises when one regards the findings of modern natural science as letters and then learns to read them in the human being.

[ 7 ] That is why it is so unjustified to say that anthroposophical knowledge disregards the natural sciences. That is not the case at all; it holds it in the highest regard—but in the same way that someone who wants to read a book regards it, not in the way that someone who merely wants to photograph the shapes of the letters regards it. One has to say some remarkable things in this regard if one wants to characterize contemporary culture correctly. I hand a volume of *Wilhelm Meister* to someone. There is, after all, a difference between the person who says to me: “I’m going to grab my camera right away to photograph every page of this volume of *Wilhelm Meister*”—and doesn’t care at all about the content of the book—and someone who immediately picks it up because they’re curious about what’s inside. The former is the person who wants to remain confined to today’s purely natural sciences in the study of human nature. He really wants nothing more than to photograph the external forms, for even in his conception of external forms, he has nothing but this act of photographing. It is already the case today that one must resort to radical statements if one wishes to characterize the relationship between human beings and the world that exists today, for this relationship is completely misunderstood. People think they already possess something higher today than they did before the fourteenth or fifteenth century. They do not. But they must learn once again to handle what they do have in the same conscious, deliberate, and thoughtful manner as they once unconsciously arrived at insights into human nature through instinctive intuitions. This education within the culture of our time—that is what, so to speak, should permeate all teacher-training programs like a magical breath; it is what should become the formation of the teacher’s mindset; and it is what would actually place the teacher at the center of that horizon of worldview that he must survey and comprehend. Therefore, it is not so necessary today to sit down and conduct experimental studies of memory, will, and intellect; rather, it is important that didactic, methodological, and pedagogical training in teacher-training colleges be oriented in such a way that a mindset takes root in the souls of teachers that moves in the direction I have just characterized. It is precisely in teacher training that we should actually begin to address the core of the human being.

[ 8 ] And if that is the case, then what the teacher can experience through his or her own education will not be a mechanical application of educational rules, nor will it be a matter of wondering, when a particular child is present: “How do I apply this or that rule?” — That is something that, fundamentally speaking, must not be the case at all; rather, an intense impression of the child as a whole must arise within the teacher’s entire being, and what is perceived in the child must awaken joy and life. And that quality, which works within the teacher to awaken joy and life, must be able to grow and directly inspire the answer to the question: What do you do with the child?

[ 9 ] One must move from reading human nature in general to reading the individual human being. Everywhere, pedagogy must be able to be transformed—let me use this somewhat materialistic expression—into the application of what is needed. In reading, what one has learned about the relationship between letters also becomes a matter of application. The relationship between teacher and student must truly become one similar to that of reading. Then he will neither underestimate nor overestimate the physical development of the body, but will relate to it in the proper way. Only then will he learn to apply what physiology and experimental psychology can teach him about the child. Then, above all, he will be able to rise from an understanding of details to a comprehensive grasp of the developing human being.

[ 10 ] When we enroll a child of compulsory elementary school age in school, from the perspective of inner observation, the child is essentially a different being than it was before the age of tooth replacement. Let us look inwardly at human nature as it was before the age of tooth replacement. Something emerges in the teeth that forms throughout the entire human organism in the way I described yesterday. It is a shaping into form; the human soul-being works on the human’s second physical body just as a sculptor works on shaping the material. It is, in fact, an inner, unconscious sculptural process. This cannot be influenced from the outside in any other way than by letting the child imitate what one does oneself. What I demonstrate—the movement of my own hand that the child observes—passes into the child’s soul-forming element, and my hand movement becomes the impetus for the unconscious sculptural activity that shoots into form. This “shooting into form” depends entirely on the element of movement within the child. Whatever movements the child accomplishes—how these impulses of will transition from the chaotic and disoriented to the internally ordered, how the child works on itself outwardly through sculpting—this sculpting takes place to a high degree inwardly as well. When we enroll the child in elementary school, we must be clear that, as the child progresses in physical, soul, and spiritual development, the process—which initially existed only in the movements—transitions into an entirely different realm. Until the child’s teeth begin to fall out, the child’s blood formation depends on the organization of the head. Consider a human being during its embryonic stage: how the formation of the head predominates; how even the development of other organs depends externally on what is taking place within the mother’s womb; and how everything that emanates from the child itself originates from the child’s head formation. This remains present, albeit in a weakened form, throughout the first stage of human life, up until the change of teeth. In all that takes place within the human organism, head formation is essentially involved. Forces are at work that emanate from head formation—from the nervous-sensory system—and influence the motor system and plastic formation. Once the child has gone through the process of losing its baby teeth, the head formation recedes. What is at work in the limbs is now less dependent on the head formation; it is more dependent on what passes into the human organism from externally ingested food—namely, substances and forces.

[ 11 ] Pay very close attention to this! Let’s suppose that as a child, before our teeth have fallen out and been replaced, we eat something—cabbage, for example. You can eat it, as long as you don’t talk about it. Cabbage possesses certain powers simply by virtue of being cabbage. These powers inherent in the cabbage—which play a major role in the way the cabbage grows as a plant in the fields—are driven out of the cabbage as quickly as possible in the child, and the processing of the cabbage is undertaken by the forces radiating from the child’s head. Immediately, what radiates from the child’s own head structure sinks into the cabbage’s powers. As the child goes through the process of teething, because human nature becomes more internalized, the cabbage retains its own forces much longer on its journey through the human organism; it is not transformed in the digestive system, but only upon its transition from the digestive system into the circulatory system. It is transformed later. This gives rise to an entirely different inner life within the organism. While in the early years up to the change of teeth everything actually depends on the development of the head and its forces, during the second stage of life—from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—it becomes particularly important how the respiratory process, with its rhythm, interacts with the blood circulation; and this transformation of forces, which takes place at the boundary between the respiratory process and the circulatory system, becomes especially significant. Thus, for a child of elementary school age, the essential point is that a certain harmony must always be present and fostered through education—a harmony between the rhythm that develops in the respiratory system, and the rhythm with which it interacts within the organism—the rhythm inherent in the circulatory system and arising from the food taken in from the outside. The balance, the harmonization between the circulatory system and the respiratory system—this is what takes place between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

[ 12 ] As we know, when we take a person’s pulse, we feel, on average, four times as many beats in adulthood as we perceive breaths. But this normal ratio between the respiratory rhythm and the circulatory rhythm in the human organism must first be established during the period between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity. And education must be structured in every aspect so that a ratio between the respiratory rhythm and the circulatory rhythm appropriate to the size and development of the human organism can be established. This relationship between pulse rate and respiratory rate is always slightly different from person to person. In each individual, this relationship depends on how tall they are, whether they are slim or plump; it is influenced by their entire range of internal growth forces, by the formative forces that, in the early years of childhood, still stem from hereditary factors. It all depends on the individual having a ratio between the respiratory rhythm and the blood rhythm that is appropriate to their height, weight, or build. When I look at a child who is shooting up and tending toward slimness, I know that there must be a respiratory rhythm that, in a certain sense, has a weaker effect on blood circulation than when I have a chubby little child in front of me. With the chubby child, I must, through the entire process of education—through everything I bring forth in him spiritually and emotionally—increase the intensity of the breathing rhythm and accelerate its pace, so that the right balance is established for him. All of this, however, must operate in the teacher as naturally and, in turn, unconsciously as observing the shapes of letters while reading. One must be able to develop a sense of what needs to be done with the chubby child, what needs to be done with the skinny child, and with all similar cases. Whether a child has a large head in relation to the rest of the body, or whether a child has a small head—this matters immensely. But all of this becomes clear when one stands within the classroom with an inner joy in education and the right educational individuality, and is able to read the individualities of the children entrusted to one’s care.

[ 13 ] What matters here is that one, so to speak, perceives and grasps the ongoing formative process—which is like a continuation of what happens up until the change of teeth—and meets it head-on, countering it with something that arises from the rhythm of breathing. But all of this is what can be derived from the art of music and recitation in education. The way we teach the child to speak, the way we introduce the child to music—both to listening to music and to singing, as well as to active participation in music—all of this becomes, in the educational process, a shaping of the breathing rhythm, so that it can adapt more and more from the bottom up to the pulsating rhythm coming toward it. And it is truly a beautiful thing when the teacher, the educator, comes to see—in all that emerges for the child in the process of learning to speak and sing—that through this learning, the child’s facial features begin to change, albeit subtly and delicately, though not in a way visible to casual observation. When we, as teachers and educators for the age range between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity, learn to look closely at what develops in the gaze, in the physiognomy, in the movement of the fingers, and in the way the legs are positioned on the floor as a result of learning to speak and sing—when we can observe this with inner reverence, just as we observe in the very young child how, from the center of the human being, the indistinct facial features give way to beautifully formed ones and so on—if we observe, so to speak, the transition of what we do around the child into the physical physiognomy and gesticulation of the human organism, then, as teachers and educators, we arrive at the sensory response—constantly emerging, as it were, from the indeterminate—to a sensory question. This sensory question, which one need not even bring to intellectual consciousness, is this: What happens to what I do for the child in teaching them to speak and sing? — Then the child answers: I accept it, or I reject it! — and one can see it in the child’s body language, in their facial expressions: Does what you are doing sink into the child, take root within them, or does it vanish into thin air, simply pass right through the child, as if the child were not absorbing any of it at all? — Far more important than the essence of all educational rules—“You must do this this way and that that way!”—is to acquire this sense, to be able to feel and observe the child’s response as one develops one’s own activity, to see how it is reflected back to one. It is, therefore, essentially an intuitive element that must develop in the relationship between the teacher and educator and the child. One must, so to speak, also learn to read the results of one’s own pedagogical actions. Then, once one has fully grasped this, one will see the immense significance of intervening in the right way—precisely with the musical element—in education and instruction in elementary school, and of having an understanding of what it actually means to be musical as a human being.

[ 14 ] You see, in anthroposophy we describe the human being in terms of his physical body—which is the gross material aspect of him—and in terms of his finer body, the etheric body, which is still a form of matter, but a form of matter that contains no heaviness; in fact, it has a tendency to escape the pull of gravity and dissipate into the vastness of space. The human being has a heavy physical body that can fall to the earth if it is not held upright; but he also has a finer etheric body that likewise always seeks to dissipate into the vastness of the universe, away from gravity. And just as the physical body falls downward if it is not supported—just as the physical body must be supported by the ground beneath it—so too must the etheric body be held in place by the inner forces of the human organism so that it does not dissipate. So we speak of the physical body, of the etheric body; we then speak of the astral body, which is no longer substantial but is already spiritual; and we speak of the “I”-organization, which is even more so spiritual. We speak of these four members of the human being. If one approaches the human being in this way and seeks to gain knowledge—knowledge of the human being—then one comes to the following conclusion: The physical organism can be understood, and insights into it can be gained, by proceeding as modern anatomy and physiology do; the etheric human being, however, can no longer be understood in this way, and the astral human being certainly not at all.

[ 15 ] How is one to understand the etheric human being? Well, understanding the etheric human being requires a much better preparation than what is sought today in order to understand the human being. One comprehends it by immersing oneself in sculptural form-making, by knowing that a curve takes this shape, a corner takes that shape—that it arises from inner forces. One cannot comprehend the etheric body through what is understood as the general laws of nature. It is through what one receives into the hand—into the hand imbued with spirit—that one comprehends the etheric body. Therefore, no seminar training should actually take place without an artistic activity in plastic arts and sculpture that springs from within the human being. If this is missing, it is far more detrimental to education than not knowing the capital of Romania or Turkey, or this or that mountain—for such things can be looked up in an encyclopedia. It is not at all necessary to know certain things that are tested on exams today; it does no harm to look them up in an encyclopedia. But there is still no encyclopedia through which one can learn that flexibility, that “knowing how” and “how-to-know,” which one must possess within oneself in order to comprehend the etheric body—which does not operate according to the laws of nature, but rather permeates human beings through plastic activity.

[ 16 ] And as for the astral body—one cannot begin to grasp it simply by knowing that Gay-Lussac’s law is such-and-such, or by knowing all the laws one learns in acoustics and optics. One cannot grasp the astral body through these abstract, empirical laws. What weaves and flows within the astral body cannot be observed in that way. But once one has inwardly grasped what a third is, what a fifth is, one can inwardly experience this relationship—but by contemplating it musically within oneself, not as acoustics does—one can inwardly experience the scale musically, and then one experiences what is within the astral human being. For the human astral body is music, not natural history, not natural science, not physics. This goes so far that one can also trace, in the formative activity within the human organism, how the music of the astral body shapes the human being. It begins here in the middle of the shoulder blades and radiates outward, first into the prime of the scale. As it progresses to the second, it forms the upper arm; as it proceeds to the third, it forms the forearm. When we reach the third, we have the distinction between minor and major, and we have two bones in the forearm, not one. One bone, the radius, represents one aspect; the ulna represents the other—minor and major. Anyone who observes the outer human organization and the extent to which it depends on the astral body must study physiology not as a physicist, but as a musician. And they must understand the music that shapes the inner workings of the human organism.

[ 17 ] No matter how closely you trace the course of the nerves in the human organism from an anatomical perspective, you will never grasp the meaning of this course of the nerves. But if you trace this course musically—with an understanding of musical relationships, yet hearing everything deeply within, not through physical acoustics—if you trace the nervous system in this way, if you observe with a musical perspective, with a spiritual-musical perspective, how these nerves run from the limbs to the spinal cord, where they are concentrated, and from there extend to the brain, if you view this spiritually and musically, then through this musical perception you will come to understand the most wondrous musical instrument of the human being—one formed from the astral body and on which the “I” organization plays.

[ 18 ] And if, starting from there, one learns how language takes shape within the human being—if one learns the inner structure of language, which one no longer has the opportunity to discover in our age of advanced civilization that has shed all that is concrete—if one learns to recognize what goes on within a person when they pronounce an “A” or an “I,” how within the “A” lies a sense of wonder at something, and in the “I” the self-affirmation of the inner human being—then one learns to recognize how, so to speak, the linguistic element shoots into the organization of the human being; one learns not merely to say abstractly, when a ball rolls: “it rolls”—but rather, through the act of speaking, one comes to know the rolling, which flows inwardly just as the rolling of the ball flows outwardly—“roll”—and in this way, through inner contemplation—but contemplation imbued with the spirit of language—one comes to know that which actually works within language; then, through the structure of language, one comes to know the “I” organization.

[ 19 ] Today, if we want to learn about the human organism, we turn to physiologists and anatomists; if we want to understand what gives language its life, we turn to philologists. But what is said by one has no connection to what is said by the other. The point, however, is that an inner, spiritual relationship should arise—that we should know that a living linguistic genius is at work and alive in speech, and that this linguistic genius can be studied; and if we study it, then we come to know the “I” organization of the human being.

[ 20 ] We incorporate eurythmy into the curriculum of our Waldorf schools. What do we do with it? In our approach, eurythmy is divided into tone eurythmy and speech eurythmy. In tone eurythmy, we evoke in the child those movements that correspond to the structure of the astral body; in speech eurythmy, we evoke those forms that correspond to the organization of the “I.” Through tone eurythmy, we consciously work on the development of the soul aspect of the human being by engaging in physical activity; through speech eurythmy, we consciously work on the development of the spiritual aspect of the human being by engaging in physical activity for that purpose. Such work, however, can only arise from a truly holistic understanding of the human organism. Anyone who believes they can approach the human being through external physiology or experimental psychology—which is, after all, merely external physiology—fails to see that, just as one does not have to tap on a wooden board in front of someone to put them in a certain mood in life, but rather must create music. In the same way, understanding must not stop at abstract logical rules; rather, it must rise to such a level of comprehension of human life that it grasps not only dead nature or the living when it has become dead—or when one has a mental image of it being dead. When one rises from these abstract rules to what takes on a three-dimensional form—just as every law of nature takes on a sculptural form—then one comes to know the human being through his etheric body. But when one begins to hear inwardly and spiritually how the rhythm of the worlds resounds from the most wondrous musical instrument—which is made of the human being through the astral body—then one comes to know the astral nature of the human being. And there must be an awareness of this: First period of learning: One comes to know the physical body of the human being through abstract logic. One then applies plastic formation in intuitive cognition: one comes to know the etheric body. And the third period: as a physiologist, one becomes a musician and looks at the human being as one looks at a musical instrument—such as an organ or a violin—by seeing the music realized within it; in this way, one comes to know the astral human being. And if one learns not only to live externally, through memory, in connection with words, but also to recognize the genius at work within the words, then one comes to know the human “I” organization.

[ 21 ] Well, today people would give you a piece of their mind if, in the context of a university reform—say, of medical studies—you were to say: Knowledge must progress from learning to sculpting, to music, to language. People would say: Yes, but how long would the program take then? It’s already long enough as it is! And then one is supposed to move on to the plastic arts, then to music, and then to language as well! — But in reality, it would be shorter. For the current length stems from something quite specific. It stems, namely, from the fact that one remains entirely stuck at the level of abstract logic and empirical, sensory observation. One does indeed begin with the physical body, but it cannot be explained through these means—and now there is no end in sight. One can study all sorts of things there and continue doing so until the end of one’s earthly life: it need not have an end at all, whereas it becomes internally complete when it is organically structured for the physical-soul-spiritual organism. So it is not a matter of adding new chapters to what we already have through anthroposophy. Oh, we can already be satisfied with what external science provides. We do not oppose it; we are simply grateful for it—just as we are grateful to the violin maker for providing us with the violin. But what is necessary, arising from our contemporary education and culture, is to take this entire modern education into our own hands and to imbue it with soul and spirit, just as the human being himself is imbued with soul and spirit. It is necessary not to allow the artistic element in culture to exist in such a way that it runs alongside serious life as a form of luxury entertainment—a luxury entertainment to which we turn even when we otherwise know how to take life seriously—but rather to regard it as a divine-spiritual law that permeates the world and humanity everywhere.

[ 22 ] We must learn to say: You stand facing the world. First, you approach it with logical concepts and ideas. But the essence of the world gives human nature something that stems from the world’s plasticity, which works its way in from the spheres just as earthly gravity works its way up from below, from the center of the Earth. And woven into all of this is the music of the worlds, which acts in the celestial sphere. Just as the plastic force acts from above and the physical force acts from below through gravity, so does the music of the worlds act in the movement of the celestial bodies in the celestial sphere. And that which actually makes a human being a human being—that which was sensed in ancient times when phrases such as this were coined: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—the World-Word, the language of the worlds—is that which also permeates the human being and becomes the organization of the “I” within the human being. If one wishes to educate, one must gain an understanding of humanity based on an understanding of the universe and, in this way, learn to artistically shape what one has gained in understanding of humanity from the understanding of the universe.

[ 23 ] More on that tonight.