The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Dear guests, first and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for your warm and kind welcome. For many years now, I have had the privilege of speaking from this place here in Bern, drawing upon the perspective of the anthroposophical worldview. And here, too, there is a group of anthroposophical friends who make sacrifices and dedicate themselves to fostering the anthroposophical worldview. All of this seems to me to be an integral part of my feelings as I express my heartfelt thanks for the kind words that have been spoken here. For it gives me a very special sense of fulfillment—after having spoken so often here in Bern about anthroposophy in general—to now be able to speak about the field of education from the spirit of anthroposophy, a field that must, above all else, be close to people’s hearts. For so much depends on whether we can indeed develop such an art of education and teaching that people can, first of all, rise above many of the conditions that so clearly demonstrate how deeply we have fallen into a kind of social chaos in recent years and decades. And hardly anything else will be able to lead us out of this social chaos—indeed, one might say, certainly nothing else will be able to lead us out of it—except if we succeed in instilling spirituality into people’s souls, so that people may find the path to progress and the further development of civilization from within the spirit; which must speak to us with such confidence from the depths of our being, because, after all, the world is created in the spirit and from the spirit, and thus human creativity, too, can only bear fruit when it springs from the primal source of the spirit. But if human beings are to attain such fruitful creativity from the spirit, they must be educated and instructed in the spirit. Since I believe that anthroposophy does indeed have much to say about education and teaching, it is a source of deep satisfaction for me to be able to hold this course here, and it is out of this satisfaction that I express my gratitude for the kind and warm words of welcome.

[ 2 ] Well, many people all over the world today feel that the system of education and instruction must, in a certain sense, take a new direction. Not that an extraordinary amount hasn’t already been accomplished in the course of the 19th century—a century so fruitful in progress—especially in the fields of education and instruction, but rather because modern civilization has taken a direction that actually keeps people at a distance from one another. For centuries, we have witnessed the most magnificent advances in the field of the natural sciences and in the fields of technology that have blossomed from the natural sciences. We have also seen how a certain worldview, arising from these advances in the natural sciences, has gradually taken root in civilization. We have seen how the structure of the world—including human beings—is conceived in terms of what the senses teach us about natural phenomena and beings, and what the intellect, bound to the brain, is able to say about the sensory world. Yet, although it is not yet a clear and distinct realization today, countless people sense it—though they often do not want to admit to themselves—that with all the insights modern times have gained regarding the vast realm of nature, one cannot actually come to understand human beings.

[ 3 ] And this inability to reach the child—it must be felt all the more keenly when one seeks to reach the developing human being, the child. One senses that something foreign is interposing itself between the teachers and the child. Anthroposophy seeks, on the basis of a true and comprehensive understanding of the human being, to respond to this heartfelt call that comes from so many quarters; to respond not by merely formulating theories about pedagogy and didactics, but by directly enabling people to engage in school practice. Anthroposophical pedagogy is school practice itself. Therefore, if one wishes to speak about anthroposophical pedagogy, one would, in essence, have to discuss the individual practical approaches in the classroom—perhaps by way of example—but in doing so, the spirit from which all of this springs would not be able to reveal itself at first. Therefore, please allow me today to speak, at least by way of introduction, about this spirit of anthroposophical pedagogy—arising from a comprehensive understanding of the human being, but also from a profound understanding of the human being gained through anthroposophical-pedagogical practice.

[ 4 ] A profound insight into human nature! What is the mental image? When one encounters human beings—specifically the developing human being, the child, as I have already said—one cannot get by merely having certain rules about how to educate and teach well, and then trying to follow these rules as if they were technical instructions. That will never lead to genuine school practice. For school practice, one needs inner fire and inner enthusiasm in the conduct of instruction and in the conduct of education; one needs impulses that are not intellectually transmitted from the teacher and educator to the child according to rules, but that have an intimate effect, flowing from the educator or teacher to the child. The whole person must act as an educator, not merely the thinking person; the feeling person must do so, and the willing person must do so.

[ 5 ] The scientific mindset and worldview have become much more ingrained in modern humanity than one might think. Even those who have no special training in the natural sciences actually think, feel, and will—one might say—in a scientific manner. This simply cannot be achieved in school; for with this scientific approach, with this scientific mindset, one reaches only one aspect of the human being: the physical-sensory body. But that is just one aspect of the human being. And it is precisely anthroposophy that shows that the whole human being can be viewed through a true understanding of humanity as consisting of three clearly distinct aspects: the physical body, the soul, and the spirit. And we can only view the whole human being when we possess just as much insight and cognitive capacity to recognize the soul in its original nature as we do the physical body; and when we further possess just as much insight and cognitive capacity to recognize the spirit in the human being as an independent entity. But in a child, the body, soul, and spirit are connected in a different way than they are later in an adult. And it is precisely this emergence from the connection with the physical body that allows us to recognize the observation of the soul and spirit in a child—I would say—as the greatest miracle of knowledge and practical life in human existence.

[ 6 ] Let us take a look at the small child as it is born into the world. It is enchanting to see how spirit is carried into the undefined facial features, into the chaotic movements, into everything that emanates from the child and does not yet seem to belong together—how spirit wells up from the deepest inner being; how order enters the gaze, the movement of the facial features, and the other limbs of the human body; how the facial features become ever more and more expressive; how, more and more, the spirit working its way from within to the surface reveals itself in the eyes and facial features, and the soul permeating the entire physical being reveals itself. Anyone who is able to observe all this with an open mind and a serious disposition cannot help but see it as looking—precisely through what the developing child tells them—with timid reverence into the wonders and mysteries of worldly and human existence.

[ 7 ] And when we observe how this child develops, we see once again how the child’s life is structured into distinct life stages that are clearly differentiated from one another—stages that are usually not distinguished simply because they must be discerned through intimate insight, and because people today, relying on broad scientific concepts, are reluctant to engage in such intimate insight.

[ 8 ] A first significant process of transformation takes place in a child around the age of 7, when the child gets their second set of teeth. Even the outward physical process of getting these second teeth is interesting enough in itself: how the first teeth are there, how the others push in behind them, and how the first ones are shed. As long as one looks at this process only superficially, one can stop at the tooth-changing stage. But if one looks deeper using the methods that are to be discussed in this very course, one becomes aware of how—albeit in a more subtle way than during the tooth-changing process itself—something is taking place throughout the child’s entire body during this phase of transformation. What manifests itself only in the crudest, most radical way during tooth-changing is actually taking place throughout the entire body. For what is actually happening there? You can all see how the human organism actually develops: you cut your nails, you cut your hair, you notice that your skin flakes off. All of this shows that physical substance is being shed from the surface and that it is being replenished from within. This replenishment, which we see during tooth replacement, is present throughout the entire human body. A closer look reveals that the child has, in fact, gradually shed and expelled the body it inherited. Just as the first teeth are shed, so too is the entire first body shed. And during the period of tooth replacement, the child stands before us with a body that is completely newly formed in comparison to the body it was born with. The body it was born with has been shed, like the first teeth; a new body has been formed.

[ 9 ] What happened at the most intimate level? The first body the child received was inherited. It is, so to speak, the product of what took place through the interaction of the father and mother. It is formed out of the physical conditions of the earth. But what is this physical body? It is the model that the Earth provides to the human being for his or her actual human development. For the soul-spiritual aspect of the human being descends from a soul-spiritual world in which it existed before conception and birth took place. Before we became earthly human beings in a physical body, we were all spiritual-soul beings in a spiritual-soul world. And what our father and mother give us in the form of physical hereditary substance unites in embryonic life with that which descends purely as a spiritual-soul entity from a higher world. The spiritual-soul human being takes hold of the physical body, which originates from the stream of heredity. This body becomes its model, and based on this model, a completely new human organism is now formed, while the inherited organism is cast off. So that when we look at the child between birth and the change of teeth, we must say: Working its way into the physical body—which owes its existence solely to physical heredity—is the result of the interaction between what the human being brings with them to Earth and what they take in from the Earth in the form of materials and substances. By the time of the change of teeth, the human being has formed a second body based on the model of the inherited body; and this second body is the product of the human being’s soul-spiritual nature.

[ 10 ] Of course, anyone who arrives at conclusions such as the ones I have just stated—based on a more intimate observation of human behavior—is aware of the objections that can be raised against them. These objections are obvious. One will naturally say: Doesn’t the resemblance to the parents—which often appears after the teeth have been replaced—show that the human being continues to be subject to the laws of heredity even later, after the teeth have been replaced? — One could raise many such objections. But consider the following: We have a model that derives from the current of heredity. According to this model, the spirit and soul now shape the second human being. Since there is generally no tendency to shape what is developed according to a model in a way that is completely dissimilar to the model, it is also clear that the spiritual-soul aspect uses the presence of the model to shape the second human organism in a similar way. But in any case, if one has the understanding and capacity for insight into what is actually taking place here, one will arrive at the following conclusion: There are children who, in their 9th, 10th, and 11th years of life, show how their second organism—for a second organism is indeed present—is almost entirely similar to the first, inherited one. Other children show how dissimilar this second organism becomes to the first, how something entirely different works out from the center of the human being than what was initially inherited. All variations between these two extremes occur in human life. For as the spiritual-soul aspect shapes the second organism, it seeks above all to obey the essence it brings with it from the spiritual-soul world when it descends. A struggle arises between what is meant to shape the second organism and what the first organism has received through heredity. Depending on whether a person is stronger or weaker—we will see in the following lectures why this is so—in their spiritual-soul existence, the more they can give their second organism a particularly soul-imbued, individual form; or, if they descend in a weaker state, they will adhere as closely as possible to the model.

[ 11 ] But consider what we are dealing with when we are to raise a child during the earliest years of life, from birth until the child’s teeth begin to fall out! We must admit that we look on in awe as the divine-spiritual powers work their way down from the supersensible worlds. We see them, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, shaping the child’s early stages of life—shaping them to such an extent that they form a special second body. And as we educate the child, we participate in this work of the spiritual and soul; we continue, for the physical human existence, what the divine-spiritual powers have initiated. We participate in divine work.

[ 12 ] Such things cannot be grasped merely with the intellect. Such things must be grasped with the whole person. Then, above all, one gains a sense of the full magnitude of the task—in relation to the creative forces of the world—that education entails, especially during a child’s earliest years. But I would like to say that this initial effort undertaken by the spiritual-soul to create a second human organism truly shows us how, in the child, physical formation, soul activity, and spiritual creation form a unity. Everything that takes place in the formation of the new organism and the shedding of the old is, in the child, a unity of spirit, soul, and body.

[ 13 ] Therefore, a child behaves in a completely different way than an adult does later in life. This can certainly be observed in individual instances. As adults, when we put something sweet in our mouths, our tongue and palate perceive the sweetness. But this perception of taste ceases once the sweet substance has reached a certain part of the organism in a certain way. As adults, we no longer follow the process through taste. With a child, it is different. In a child, the taste travels through the entire organism; the child does not taste only with the tongue and palate, but with the entire organism; the sweetness is drawn through the entire organism. The child is, in fact, a sensory organ in its entirety.

[ 14 ] What is the essence of a sense organ? Let us take the human eye as an example. Impressions of color are made upon the human eye. Anyone who correctly observes what a human being accomplishes when seeing will say: Will and perception are one in the eye; this remains on the surface, at the periphery of the human being. In early childhood, from birth until the teeth are replaced, this process—albeit in a subtle way—permeates the entire organism. The child’s entire organism appears like a comprehensive sensory organ. And therefore, all impressions that act upon the child from the environment have entirely different effects on the child than on the adult. What takes place in the environment—what can be seen with the eye—is, in the human being, the expression of the human soul, of human morality. The child possesses, quite subconsciously or unconsciously—though not in conscious awareness—a subtle, intimate faculty of perception for what is expressed in every movement and every emotion of the people in their environment. If a hot-tempered person in the child’s surroundings acts out their impulses in a fit of rage, and the child, through external sensory perception, observes what this person is doing in such an unconscious way—oh, one would be very much mistaken to believe that the child sees only these movements. The child has a clear impression of what lies within those moral impulses, even if not consciously. The eye, too, does not have a conscious sensory impression, but rather an unconscious one. Everything that reveals itself in a non-sensory way—morally and psychologically—flows into the child like colors into the eye, because the child’s entire organism is a sensory organ.

[ 15 ] But this organism is finely organized. Therefore, every impression resonates throughout the child’s entire organism. At first, the impression the child experiences from what is revealed morally is a psychological impression. But in a child, everything psychological permeates the physical. When a child experiences fear from the impressions of the environment—but also everything that brings joy and elation—it is transmitted, though not in such a coarse manner but in a subtle way, into the processes of growth, circulation, and digestion. A child who must fear at every moment the impressions emanating from a hot-tempered person who flies into a rage at any moment experiences something psychological that immediately penetrates their breathing and blood circulation, as well as their digestive activity. This is the crucial point: we cannot speak of mere physical education when it comes to childhood, because spiritual education is physical—because everything spiritual is transformed into the physical and becomes physical.

[ 16 ] And the significance of this only becomes clear when, based on a genuine understanding of human nature, one does not merely observe the child and formulate principles of education and instruction, but rather looks at the whole of human life on earth. This is not as convenient as merely observing the child. Observing a child: well, one notes the child’s memory, thinking ability, and sensory perceptions through the eyes, ears, and so on; one makes these observations for the moment, or at least for a short time. But that accomplishes nothing toward understanding the human being. For just as in a plant, the seed that becomes a root already contains within it what will emerge after a long time in the form of blossoms and fruit, so too does the child—up until the change of teeth, because it is physically receptive to everything of the soul—contain the seed of happiness and unhappiness, of health and illness, for the entire earthly life right up to death. And what we, as teachers or educators, allow to flow into the child during the first stage of life—which has a downward effect on the blood, breathing, and digestion—is like a seed that sometimes only sprouts in the form of a person’s health or illness in their 40s or 50s. Yes, that is how it is: The way the educator behaves toward the small child determines whether the child is predisposed to inner happiness or unhappiness, to health or illness.

[ 17 ] This becomes particularly evident when we observe in detail the effects of the educator on the child based on the facts of life. These facts can be observed just as readily as physical phenomena in a laboratory or botanical specimens in a botanical collection; yet people generally do not do so. Let us examine individual cases. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we first want to consider purely how the teacher stands beside the child in school. Let’s first consider the teacher, and let’s consider him or her in terms of temperament. We know that, depending on their temperament, a person can be energetic but also quick-tempered and irascible—a choleric; or an introverted melancholic who withdraws into themselves, is more self-absorbed, feels only within themselves, and shuns the world; or someone who is quick to respond to external impressions, rushing from one impression to the next—a sanguine person; or someone who lets everything go, who is indifferent to everything, who is not weighed down by external impressions, who lets everything pass by—a phlegmatic person.

[ 18 ] Let us first assume that the teacher training institute had not taken steps to temper such temperaments and integrate them properly into the school environment, but rather that such temperaments ran rampant, breaking free with a certain radicalism. Let’s take the choleric temperament: a child up until the age when their baby teeth fall out is exposed to the choleric temperament. If the teacher or educator gives full free rein to this choleric temperament of theirs, then a psychological impression is constantly exerted on the child, one that causes this child to receive strong impressions regarding their circulatory system and everything that constitutes inner rhythm. These impressions do not initially run very deep, but they are merely a seed; and this seed grows and grows, just as all seeds do. At times, in the 40th or 50th year of life, the effects of an unbridled choleric temperament on the educator’s part can manifest as circulatory disturbances in the rhythmic system. We do not, after all, educate the child merely for childhood; we educate it for its entire earthly existence and, as we shall see later, even for the time beyond.

[ 19 ] Or let us suppose that the melancholic person gives free rein to his temperament; he did not, through his seminary training, acquire the impulse to harmonize it, to allow it to approach the child in the proper way; he surrenders to his melancholy in his interactions with the child. By living, feeling, and thinking with such melancholy within himself, he continually deprives the child of what should actually flow from the teacher to the child: warmth. Education often lacks that warmth which initially acts as warmth of the soul, but which in the child descends primarily into the digestive system and gives rise to latent predispositions there that manifest in later life as all manner of disorders—pathological disorders of the blood, or at least pathological predispositions of the blood, and so on.

[ 20 ] Let’s take the phlegmatic person, who is indifferent to everything he does with the child. A very special relationship develops between him and the child. There is something—not cold, but terribly insipid in a psychological sense—between such an educator and the child. Nothing is developed strongly enough to allow for a genuine back-and-forth flow of the soul between the educator and the child; the child is not sufficiently stimulated internally. If one follows a human child who had to develop under the influence of phlegm—a phlegmatic temperament—into later life, one often notices how a predisposition to mental weakness, a lack of blood flow to the brain, and dullness of mental activity manifests in later life.

[ 21 ] Let us see how a sanguine person, who gives free rein to his sanguine nature, affects a child. He is open to every impression, but the impressions pass quickly. He also lives within himself in a special way, but in a way that is connected to the external world. The child cannot keep up; the stimuli exerted on the child—precisely because the teacher rushes from one impression to the next—do not take hold, for the child needs to be lovingly held within an impression if it is to be made truly active enough inwardly. If we observe a child who grows up with an excessively unrestrained sanguine temperament, it becomes apparent in later life that the adult who has developed from that child lacks vitality, shows too little life force, lacks substance, and so on. So that, in fact, if one has an eye for it—and education is based on the intimacy of the spiritual gaze—one can still say, even when a person is in their 40s or 50s, looking at the type of person they have become: this person has been influenced by a melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, or sanguine teacher’s temperament.

[ 22 ] I am not saying this in the introduction to offer guidance on how these things can be made fruitful for teacher training; I would first like to point out that what we do with the child—even when it is a spiritual matter—does not remain merely spiritual, but rather extends fully into the physical realm. To educate a child spiritually means to educate them physically as well, for their entire earthly life.

[ 23 ] Anthroposophy is very often accused of seeking the spirit in addition to the soul. Many people today become very critical and dismissive the moment the word “spirit” is even mentioned; and so it is easy to believe that, well, anthroposophy is just a kind of fantasy. It abstracts a haze and mist from the reality that appears to the senses; those who are rational in spirit need not get involved with this haze and mist. - But anthroposophy, precisely in its educational implications, wants the principles of physical education to be applied in the proper sense, because it knows that, especially in the child during the first stage of life, the physical is influenced everywhere by soul impulses. I would like to say: Let us consciously seek the foundation that a soul-spiritual element underlies all physical activity; then, for the child’s development from birth through the change of teeth, one can quite well be a materialist and act solely upon the physical, for just as the physical acts in the child, it is a unity of soul and spirit. No one understands the physical in the child who does not appreciate soul and spirit in this way. But soul and spirit reveal themselves fully in what appears outwardly as physical.

[ 24 ] Education involves a sense of responsibility. This sense of responsibility really comes into sharp focus in one’s mind’s eye when viewed in this way, and it touches the human heart. For when one approaches education knowing that what one instills in a child lives on as happiness, unhappiness, health, or illness throughout their entire earthly life: it weighs heavily on the soul at first, but it also spurs one on to develop within oneself—as an educator—those strengths, abilities, and, above all, that state of mind that will be strong enough to plant those seeds of the soul in childhood that will only blossom later in life, sometimes very late in life.

[ 25 ] This is the understanding of the human being that anthroposophy takes as the foundation of the art of education. It is not merely an understanding of what we see before us at a particular stage of life—for example, in childhood—but rather it arises from a view of the entire human life on Earth. For what, after all, is the human being in terms of his earthly life? You see, when we look at the human being as he stands before us in every moment, we say that he is an organism. Why is he that? Because everything—every single aspect of him—is in harmony with the organism as a whole. Anyone who develops an eye for the inner relationships in the shape, size, and so on of the individual parts of the human organism—how they fit together, harmonize with one another, form a unity, and create diversity within that unity—anyone who develops this insight looks at the little finger of a human being. Even if they cannot see the earlobe, they have a general idea of its shape; for if the little finger has a certain shape, the earlobe will be shaped in a certain way, and so on. The fact is that the smallest and the largest parts of the human organism are formed in accordance with the whole, but they are also formed in accordance with every other part, so that we cannot understand an organ in the head unless we are able to view it in harmony and in relation to an organ in the leg or foot. This is the case for the spatial organism, the organism that is spread out in space. But human beings do not only have the spatial organism; they also have the temporal organism. And just as the earlobe is formed according to the structure of the whole and also according to the structure, say, of the little finger or the knee, and so on, so too does what a person experiences at age 50 in terms of physical health, illness, emotional serenity or despondency, mental clarity or dullness—this emotional configuration of the person at age 50 stands in the most intimate relationship with what the person carried within themselves in this regard at ages 10, 7, or 4. Just as the members of the spatial organism are related to one another, so too are the members of the temporal organism—separated from one another in time—related to one another. In a certain sense, we can say: When we turn 5 years old—of course, the trivial objection that we might die sooner does not apply, since different circumstances are at play—when we turn 5 years old, what is within us is already in harmony with what we will be when we are 40 years old. In addition to being a spatial organism, the human being is a temporal organism. And if someone finds a finger, that finger would first have to be severed in order to resemble a finger at all: it will very soon cease to be a finger; if it is separated from the organism for a long time, it withers and becomes something other than a human limb. A finger separated from the human organism is not a finger; it could never live, severed from its body, and it is nothing, is not something enduring in itself, is not reality at all; it is only a reality in conjunction with the entire earthly body between birth and death.

[ 26 ] When we consider this, we will also realize that in everything we present to the child, we must take the organism of the times into account. Just imagine for a moment: if human beings could influence the spatial organism in the same way that they often influence the temporal organism, what would become of this spatial organism! Let’s suppose we introduced a substance into the human stomach that destroys the head. We would be looking only at the stomach; we would not be looking at what becomes of this substance as it spreads throughout the organism and reaches the head. Anyone who wants to understand the human organism must be able to deduce, from what happens to a substance in the human stomach, what significance this process has for the head. The substance must undergo continuous changes—metamorphoses—from the stomach to the head; it must be flexible. When it comes to the temporal organism, we often fail the child. We expect the child to already present us with such clear, sharp concepts—concepts with sharp contours—and we become impatient when the child has flexible concepts that aren’t quite sharp. We strive to teach the child something that it will then retain in its soul in such a way that it can parrot it back to us. We are often particularly pleased when we teach a very young child something that the child can repeat back to us years later in exactly the same form. But this is just like making boots for a 3-year-old and expecting the child to put them on at age 10 and for them to still fit. In truth, the point is that we teach the child living, flexible, and adaptable concepts that, just as the external physical limbs grow, develop spiritually along with the person. This is more difficult than giving the child definitions of this and that which it must memorize and which are meant to remain fixed—just as if one were to demand that a 3-year-old’s boots fit the feet of a 10-year-old. One must live in tune with the child’s impulses; one must take joy in giving the child something that is inwardly flexible and elastic, so that as the child grows physically, it also matures with these concepts, sensations, and emotional impulses, enabling it to transform what we have given it into something new in a short time. This requires a deep joy in becoming and growing; one cannot rely on pedantry, nor can one view life through overly rigid concepts. One can only make use of that which is active, taking shape, growing, and flourishing life. And whoever has a sense of such growing, flourishing life is already, as an educator, kindred with the child, because there is life within them and that life passes from them to the child who longs for life. And what we need above all else is for much of what is dead in our didactics and pedagogy to be transformed into life. Therefore, we need an understanding of humanity that does not say: “Human beings are merely this, that, and the other; this and that is what a human being is”; we need an understanding of humanity that acts upon the whole human being, just as physical nourishment acts upon the blood. The blood circulates within the human being. We need an understanding of the human being that gives us spiritual blood—one that can not only make us wise, sensible, and reasonable, but that can also make us enthusiastic, make us inwardly flexible, and kindle love. For that aspect of pedagogy which springs from a true understanding of the human being must be carried by love.

[ 27 ] My intention here was simply to offer some introductory remarks on the principles that should underpin pedagogy based on anthroposophy. In what follows, we will discuss how this spirit of anthroposophical pedagogy can be realized in detail in school practice. I will continue to speak about this tomorrow and in the days that follow.