The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] You will have seen that the foundation of the art of education lies in an understanding of human nature that can penetrate more deeply into the human being than the understanding of human nature recognized today, which seeks to ground all knowledge in the natural sciences. But since, as we have seen, natural science cannot in reality penetrate to the core of the human being and his essence, no true understanding of the human being can arise from a natural-scientific mindset. Anthroposophy aims to provide a genuine understanding of the human being alongside an understanding of the world that is imbued with spirit, because the world itself is imbued with spirit. Through this, anthroposophy also seeks to establish a genuine pedagogy. One should not, however, believe—and this misconception can easily arise—that there is any urge among those who profess anthroposophy to establish anthroposophical schools, schools in which anthroposophy, as a worldview—as it happens to be today—is to be substituted for other, intellectual or emotional worldviews. That is by no means the intention, and it is important to bear in mind that this is not the intention at all. The pedagogy being discussed here seeks to incorporate from anthroposophy only the methodological and didactic elements relevant to education and teaching. And just because those who truly delve into anthroposophy may hold the justified view that it is capable, based on its understanding of the human being, of deriving the corresponding, truly practical rules for dealing with people, it may also be assumed that what is absolutely necessary finds its way into the practice, the method, and the “how” of teaching and education through anthroposophy.

[ 2 ] I would now like to mention, by way of a note, that in Stuttgart—where we have been able to work for years at the Waldorf School in the spirit of anthroposophical pedagogy—we have also made it very clear to the outside world that the point is not to introduce anthroposophy as such into the school. We have simply entrusted religious instruction as such to the Catholic priest for Catholic children and to the Protestant pastor for Protestant children; and only for those children whose parents wish for them to receive independent religious instruction are such lessons taught based on anthroposophy—so that the question of worldview is not actually addressed in the Waldorf school.

[ 3 ] Furthermore, it should be noted that one should not initially assume that the establishment of schools on a large scale must be a goal or ideal of what is to be achieved through anthroposophical pedagogy. Certainly, if one wishes to teach using purely anthroposophical methods, model schools are needed. Such model schools are indeed urgently needed. But since the art of anthroposophical pedagogy is intended, first and foremost, to be methodological and didactic—that is, to emphasize the “how” of teaching—the point is that it can be brought to bear everywhere, in every type of school and in every type of instruction, by the individual teacher. The aim is not to bring about revolutions or anything of the sort in educational institutions through anthroposophical pedagogy—not even in the slightest sense—but rather to derive, from anthroposophical pedagogy and an understanding of human nature, guidelines for how teaching and education should be conducted.

[ 4 ] Now you have seen that this involves a more intimate examination and observation of human beings than is customary today. Today, in certain fields, people have learned to observe with great precision, and what is achieved in this direction in so-called “close observation”—for example, when observing the stars through a telescope, or in the field of metrology—and many other examples could be cited—is something that arises from the feeling of observing intimately in the mathematical sense. But to observe intimately in the sense that this reveals subtle transitions in the human soul or even subtle transitions in the human organism—this is something we do not possess today in general civilized life, precisely because of that scientific mindset that has developed over the last three to four centuries. And that is why even the transitions so important for education—such as those that occur during the change of teeth, at puberty, and even after the age of 20—are not observed.

[ 5 ] Certainly, people speak of these transitions, but they speak only of what takes place, in a general sense, in the physical body, and of what is expressed in the soul through a general dependence of the soul on the physical body. But little is said about how the child, before losing its baby teeth, differs in its entire physical and bodily organization from how it lives during the second phase, between losing its baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity. These matters require a more subtle method of observation. And since anthroposophy is based on the observation of the spiritual in the world—as it manifests itself everywhere in the world, and as most people are unwilling to acknowledge—it possesses the power that even those individuals whose circumstances do not yet allow them to gain a direct insight into the spiritual world to nevertheless, when they begin to practice those inner soul exercises that gradually lead to a genuine insight into the spiritual world, develop a more refined ability to observe human beings simply by embarking on these soul exercises. For consider this: all exploration of the spiritual world is based on the fact that within the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being—in the supersensible, in that which I described yesterday as descending from a pre-earthly existence and uniting with the inherited physical body—one develops, within this supersensible realm, supersensible organ forms, eyes and ears of the soul—just as the body has eyes and ears—so that one can perceive independently of the body.

[ 6 ] Every night, while sleeping, a person is unconsciously in the state one must be in to engage in spiritual research. The moment one falls asleep, one’s spiritual-soul aspect leaves the physical body. The moment we wake up, we re-enter the physical body with our spiritual-soul nature. We observe in a waking person how they use their eyes and ears, and how they set their limbs in motion. Both the use of the sense organs and the setting of the limbs in motion originate from the spiritual-soul nature. Even a true understanding of nature—which we do not yet possess today—teaches us that physical manifestations during wakefulness are governed by the spiritual-soul aspect, and that there is merely an interruption of this activity of the spiritual-soul aspect from the moment of falling asleep until waking. This distinction between sleeping and waking is still too subtle for today’s way of thinking, which has been shaped by scientific methods—a way of thinking we begin to absorb as early as childhood education. For in sleep, the human being is entirely surrendered to those activities of his organism to which minerals and plants are also surrendered.

[ 7 ] However, one must not say—especially in the Spiritual Science, where anthroposophy requires precise and accurate language—that a sleeping human being is a plant; of course, he is not. He is not a plant in terms of his organization. In terms of their organization, human beings are such that the mineral and plant substances are organized upward to the animal-human level. Plants have no muscles and no nerves. Nerves and muscles are, of course, present in human beings even during sleep. And what is significant for human beings—and in a certain sense also for animals, though that is not the issue at hand here—is that the purely vegetative activity, which in plants otherwise has nothing to do with muscles and nerves, now transcends the substantial level through muscles and nerves, so that even the human activity of sleep is not merely a plant-like activity. But the impulse is the same as that found in plants.

[ 8 ] Therefore, something different happens in humans during sleep than in plants. But to get a mental image of what is actually going on, one must say the following: While awake, the spiritual-soul aspect is integrated into the human organism. When observed, this spiritual-soul aspect does indeed show a certain resemblance to the entire universe, the entire cosmos—but it is only a resemblance—so that when we observe plant growth, the following becomes apparent: In the spring, when the snow has melted, we see plants sprouting and shooting up from the earth, and we see their essence unfolding. We see, so to speak, plant growth that until then had depended on the forces that had accumulated in the earth as sunlight since the previous year’s solar cycle. From these solar forces accumulated in the earth—one might put it that way—the plant beings are released in the spring and received by the outer sunlight, carried through the summer until the seed has ripened. Then, essentially, growth shifts back to the earth. During the summer, what is otherwise the power of the sun enters the earth and accumulates there. The accumulated solar power is constantly present in the earth. One need only recall that we are actually using the power of the sun—which millions of years ago shone upon the plants that became coal—to heat our stoves today. For a shorter period each year, the sun’s energy is stored in the earth. Thus, during the time leading up to spring, the plant still draws sun energy from the earth, where it has been stored. During the summer, it receives the sun’s energy directly from the cosmos. This creates a rhythm. One could say that the rhythm of plant life proceeds as follows: earthly solar energy, cosmic solar energy; earthly solar energy, cosmic solar energy, and so on. Like the swing of a clock’s pendulum, the plant alternates between cosmic and earthly solar energies.

[ 9 ] And now, when we look at human beings: they fall asleep; they first set aside that which is purely mineral and that which is purely plant-like within their bodies—which, unlike plants, are organized for spiritual and soul life. When a person falls asleep, the vegetative life, left to its own devices, sprouts and flourishes; and indeed, at the beginning of sleep, spring arrives within the person. But this vegetative force is in turn driven back upon awakening. Upon awakening, autumn arrives within the person’s vegetative activity. It is precisely as the spiritual-soul aspect rises upon awakening that autumn arrives. In these matters, one often sees a resemblance—naturally, when thinking in terms of external analogies—such that one might suppose that spring arrives with awakening and autumn with falling asleep. This is not the case. For true spiritual insight into the human being, one sees precisely this sprouting, budding spring life emerging in the very first stage of sleep. What comes over a person while they are awake appears entirely like autumn, like life in decline, like the setting sun. While a person is awake, while every activity of their soul is at work within them, it is winter for the vegetative activity within them. Here we see a rhythm emerging once again, just as in plant growth. In plant growth, we distinguish between earthly activity and solar activity. In human beings, the same activity essentially mirrors that of plants: falling asleep = summer activity; waking up = winter activity; then summer activity again, winter activity, and so on, but in a 24-hour cycle. What takes place outside in the cosmos over the course of a year, human beings have condensed into a 24-hour cycle. This is a similarity, but it is not an exact equivalence. And this is brought about in human beings by the fact that their spiritual-soul aspect is still active within them, whereas in the natural world outside, it has a completely different lifespan. There, a year is equivalent to a day in the lifespan of those spiritual beings that permeate the cosmos and the annual cycle, just as the spirit-soul in human beings brings about the daily cycle.

[ 10 ] If we consider this, we will also come to understand what I would now like to assume as purely hypothetical. I am saying this up front because I want to prevent you from being alarmed—since it may seem fantastical—but it can nevertheless help clarify what is actually meant. Let us assume that a person falls asleep; then what has been characterized as “summer activity” occurs. They continue sleeping; they fall asleep and do not wake up; they sleep on and on. Then that which is vegetative in the human being—that which is not the spiritual-soul aspect—if it were to continue as it is now during sleep, would follow the actual cycle that plant life follows: the annual cycle. Of course, this is not present; it is not inherent in human beings. Therefore, if a person were to leave the physical body in this way upon falling asleep, and if this physical body were to continue sleeping in this manner, the person would not be able to sustain it: death would set in; the body would be reclaimed by nature in a different way if only vegetative activity were present within it. If only vegetative activity were present in it, the human body would have to separate from the spirit and soul; it would simply take on the annual cycle and become vegetative. One looks at physical death, which leads to the destruction of the organism, and one says: What happened to the human being when it was born out of the universe is a transition from the great cycle to the small cycle. If left to its own devices, if it cannot activate the spiritual-soul aspect within itself, it must—since it cannot integrate directly into the cosmic cycle—fall prey to destruction.

[ 11 ] And so we see how, by engaging in more intimate observation, a person can gain insight into the very essence of existence—namely, human existence.

[ 12 ] I therefore told those individuals who are not yet ready to perceive the spiritual directly: Once they have set out on the path to attain spiritual vision, a more subtle inner stirring of the forces may already become apparent, which will then lead them to perceive the spiritual nature of those forces that serve as our guides and mediators among all the spirits active in the universe. There is spirit present there; there are the beings who govern the cycle of the year and therefore have a different lifespan than human beings. There we must enter a completely different world. But we enter a world that is quite familiar to us when we observe human beings and observe in human life how spiritual-soul elements are indeed present there. Therefore, we come to exercise that intimate activity—which is necessary for observing human beings in terms of their spiritual-soul qualities—sooner than we do for observing the spiritual workings in the world itself.

[ 13 ] When we think in everyday life—one might say that this thinking, this mental image, constantly eludes us. We sense it when we bump into something, we sense it when we run our finger over velvet or silk—the shape of the object on its surface. You know that you have come into human contact with your surroundings. But when a person thinks, they do not feel how, through thinking, they come into contact with the surrounding objects. Yet they say—in German—that when they have thought about something and it has become their mental property, they have “grasped” it. What is that? If I remain as detached from things as one usually is when thinking, one does not say: I have grasped it. — If the chalk is lying here and I stand here and move my hand as one normally does when speaking, one does not say: I have grasped the chalk. - But if one actually touches the chalk with one’s hand like this, one can say: “I have grasped the chalk.” - Because in earlier times people still knew what thinking was all about, the language came to reflect what expresses the matter more fully than the abstract thinkers in our intellectual life today are aware of. We say that when we have taken in a mental image, we have “grasped” a thing. This means that we have come into contact with the thing, that we have grasped it. We even say “grasped.” Today, people no longer realize that one can come into intimate contact—even if one lives solely through intellectual expression—with the things that surround them. For example, we have a word today that sounds quite strangely hypocritical in our language. It is as if we were being hypocritical; we say “concept”; I have a “concept.” The word “grasp” is right there in it! I have something that I have grasped. We have only the word, but no longer the life in what the word signifies to us.

[ 14 ] These are the kinds of things in everyday life that can already point to what such exercises lead to—as you will find them described as anthroposophical research methods in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* or in the second part of *An Outline of Esoteric Science* and other books. There we are directed toward such exercises as one performs—for example, visualization exercises. One allows mental images to enter the soul in a very specific way so that the soul life is strengthened through the concentration of these images. Through the soul’s engagement in such exercises, the human being—entirely without superstition or fantasy, but with the precise level-headedness otherwise found only in mathematics—comes to develop their thinking ability in such a way that it becomes far more active than is the case among today’s abstract thinkers. When today’s abstract thinkers have worked hard with their hands and feet during the day, they want to sleep it off, because they feel this is necessary; in such cases, one knows that one is moving, that it is one’s own human being who is moving the arms and legs in this way. When one thinks, one does not know that it is one’s own human being who is moving. One does not see what stretches out, what grasps at things. Why not? Because one does not even see the first supersensible member of human nature: the etheric body, which is within our physical body just as the physical body is within the outer world. The moment one begins, through such exercises, to develop a soul’s eye and a spiritual ear, at that very moment one begins to truly see this first aspect of the human being—the etheric body. At that moment, one knows that thinking—which is primarily carried out by this etheric body—is a form of comprehension, a form of sensing, but a spiritual comprehension, a spiritual sensing of things. But one perceives the spiritual in such a way—once one has, so to speak, condensed one’s thoughts through such exercises—that one no longer has that abstract sense of detachment from things, as is the case in ordinary life, but rather a genuine sense that emerges through practiced, condensed thinking. Then, however, one also grows weary of thinking. Then one wants all the more to sleep soundly to recover from thinking.

[ 15 ] Today’s materialistic age does not merely foster a materialistic mindset as a consequence of materialism: that, after all, would not be the very worst thing. Education should focus on something else. The educator cannot be entirely—but to a certain extent—indifferent to whether a person becomes tired or not during their work. This will balance itself out again once people become a little more sensible. The worst thing is when we see this in a person who, from childhood through elementary school, has absorbed only that intellectual and spiritual nourishment that has been shaped by the natural sciences—that is, by material things. And of course this does not concern only those people who study natural science in any capacity; rather, the natural-scientific perspective is embedded in the entire educational system today, starting from the very first year of elementary school. It is present everywhere, and it is absorbed by the child, grows along with the child, and affects the child’s physical constitution in such a way that we later encounter those medical conditions where people cannot sleep. This particular form of insomnia in our materialistic age—where does it come from? It stems from the fact that mental activity—these mental graspings, this mental sensing of our surroundings—does not allow the corresponding organs of the etheric body to grow weary when we think purely in materialistic terms. Only our physical body grows tired; thus we fall asleep after having thought solely in materialistic terms while awake: the physical body can fall asleep, but the etheric body cannot; it begins to fidget, to become inwardly restless, to lose sleep. It draws in the spiritual-soul aspect, and a state sets in that must gradually become an epidemic. It is already nearly so today in the materialistic age. Only when we look at this do we grasp the significance of the materialistic age. That people think materialistically in theory is bad, but not all that bad; that people arrive at the consequences of materialism in their moral and economic actions is already worse; but that people ruin their entire childhood through materialism and then can no longer access moral and spiritual impulses at all—that is the worst.

[ 16 ] And this is what must be understood by anyone who today wishes to gain insight into the necessity of transforming education and teaching. For such transitions, as occur during the change of teeth and sexual maturity, can only be understood if we observe human beings closely: how a person becomes inwardly active, so that they feel—as they otherwise do in the physical body—in the etheric body; and knows that when he thinks about an object, he is actually carrying out in the etheric body, continuously, what is otherwise carried out in the physical body when he touches something. If I want to know what something is like, I touch it, I connect with it, and thereby gain knowledge of its surface. When I then think about it, I do the same thing in the etheric body. What I wish to comprehend, what I wish to form a concept of, I perceive in an etheric-supersensible way. The etheric body is just as actively engaged as the physical body. And it is from this knowledge, this awareness of the etheric body’s activity, that true insights into the human being—and especially into human evolution—first arise.

[ 17 ] When one observes a very young child with a mind thus inwardly stirred, one sees how truly every impulse in the environment flows into the child, how every glance that expresses something moral —for it is in the moral aspect, in the moralized nature of the gaze, that lies what passes over to the child as an imponderable force—continues to work within the child, extending even into its breathing and blood circulation. One observes something entirely conscious, something immensely concrete, when one can arrive at the statement: The child is, through and through, an imitative being in relation to its surroundings. — The way the child breathes in its subtlest aspects, the way the child digests in its subtlest aspects, is a reflection of how the people in its surroundings behave. The child is completely devoted to its surroundings. While the child is completely devoted to its surroundings, we can say that in later, adult life, we experience this human devotion to the surroundings only in its spiritual-soul manifestation within religious life. There, we are spiritually devoted to our surroundings. Religious life develops properly when we can step outside ourselves with our spiritual being and surrender to a spiritual world order—in a sense, overflow into a divine world order. For the adult human being, this religious feeling exists because their spiritual-soul aspect is emancipated from the physical; that is, the spiritual-soul aspect surrenders to the spiritual-divine aspect of the world. In the child, the whole human being is surrendered. Blood circulation, digestion, and respiration—which in the adult live internally, cut off from the external world—are surrendered to the environment. And so a natural religiosity lives within the child’s natural expressions. This is the essential point that must be understood in all education up to the time of the change of teeth: that a natural religiosity actually lives within the child, that the body itself is in a religious mood.

[ 18 ] But because the child’s environment contains not only good to which a person can devote themselves when they are an adult and now surrender their own soul to the Divine—because the environment contains not only good but also evil spiritual powers, evil spiritual powers that emanate from human beings and from other spiritual Powers in the world— this innate religiousness in the child’s body can also be devoted to evil. Evil can well up. When I have said that there is already, physically speaking, a mood of innate religiousness in the child, we need not regard it as a contradiction that some children are terribly demonic. They are so because they are given over to the evil spiritual forces, which we must drive out, which we must overcome by applying the appropriate methods as long as they can be applied. As long as the child is an imitative, religious being, it does not help at all if I admonish the child. Paying attention to words already implies that the soul is, in a certain sense, emancipated. In that case, the soul itself must take care of the child. Words do not help a child. What does help, however, is everything we demonstrate to the child in such a way that the child sees it, so that it flows into the child as a perception. But the moral element must also be present in what we demonstrate to the child. One will surely notice: just as, say, a color-blind person looks at a colored surface somewhere and sees everything as shades of gray—not the colors—so the adult observes people’s gestures, their glances, their facial expressions, the speed or slowness of their movements, the angularity of their movements. They observe the physical, but no longer perceive the moral aspect within it. The child perceives the moral aspect, even if only subconsciously. That is why we must be clear that, in the child’s environment, we must not only keep out of sight everything the child should not imitate, but we must also keep out of the child’s hearing all thoughts in the child’s vicinity that should not enter the child’s soul. And this education of the mind is, in fact, the very most important thing for children up until the time they lose their baby teeth: even if we do not allow ourselves to have impure, ugly, or angry thoughts in the child’s presence. For you will say: “I can think whatever I want here; I don’t change outwardly; the child sees nothing, so it cannot be influenced.” - You see, in this regard, I must say, this is actually what could be observed in an interesting way in the truly amateurish, dilettantish experiments with thinking horses, calculating horses, or other animals exhibiting intelligence. Such things were indeed interesting, just not in the direction the world has taken them.

[ 19 ] You see, I myself, for example, have not seen the Elberfeld horses. I always want to talk only about what I have observed myself, such as Mr. von Osten’s horse; I could see how it gave its master answers. He gave it math problems; they weren’t particularly complicated, but they were for a horse. I could see how it added and subtracted and, by kicking out with its hoof, indicated the correct answer. A person of today with a background in the natural sciences could reflect on these processes—such as that private lecturer who wrote a thick book about the horse—or one could reflect on them from an anthroposophical perspective. What was the purpose of the book that the private lecturer wrote? He ruled out everything that laypeople believed. You must not think that I wish to speak out against the natural sciences in the slightest. I hold it in high regard. The private lecturer concludes by saying: The underlying premise is that the horse perceived subtle movements—a subtle twinkle in the eyes or some other subtle vibration of the muscles—in Mr. von Osten and gradually learned what the vibrating movement in the eye muscle is like when the result of the calculation is one way or another; then the kick with the hoof followed.” He has put forward a very clever, ingenious hypothesis here. He then comes to the question that must be asked: “Have you actually seen these things yourself—is this the result of observation?” — Certainly, he asks himself this question; one learns to conduct research very responsibly. He answers it by saying: Our senses are not organized to perceive these subtle external movements; the horse, however, can do so. — This merely establishes that a horse can see more in a person than a private lecturer.

[ 20 ] But something else was important to me: the horse achieved its calculation results only when Mr. von Osten stood beside it and spoke to the horse. While he was speaking, he took a small piece of sugar and put it in the horse’s mouth. The horse constantly had a sweet taste that permeated its entire being. That is the essential point. It felt inwardly stimulated by the sweetness; through this internalization, even a horse becomes capable of experiencing what it would not otherwise experience. Actually, I would like to say: In the “sweet horse”—which, as an ethereal horse, permeated the physical horse—Mr. von Osten lived continuously; within it, his thoughts lived just as they normally do in his own body and spread out. They continued to live within the horse—not because the horse is capable of more subtle observation than a private lecturer, but because it is not yet so highly organized and therefore absorbs the foreign influence, while the body continuously absorbs the candy.

[ 21 ] There are certain effects from person to person that are brought about by things to which one is otherwise only difficultly or not at all receptive. They occur particularly in interactions between humans and animals; but they can be present to a high degree when the spiritual-soul aspect has not yet been emancipated from the physical, as is the case with a child, so that the child truly perceives the moral aspects of its surroundings in gestures and glances, even if the adult can no longer observe them. Therefore, we must not allow ourselves to harbor ugly thoughts in the child’s presence; these do not merely linger in the child’s soul, but they also linger in the child’s physical constitution.

[ 22 ] Certainly, what is achieved today, for example, in many medical or other dissertations—as they are submitted in accordance with the current state of scientific knowledge—is very interesting. But the time will come when something quite different will emerge—when, for example—let me describe this vividly, as it may become clearer precisely because of this—let’s say, in doctoral dissertations written to earn a doctoral degree, the topic addressed will be: A case of illness in the 48th year of life, with these or those symptoms, can be traced back to ugly thoughts of a certain kind that first arose in the child during the 4th or 5th year of life. With such insights, we will truly be able to understand human beings, and through this we will then be able to gain an overview of the entire human life.

[ 23 ] The point, then, is that we must gradually learn not merely to present the child with things that we, based on our abstract reasoning, devise—such as arranging sticks and all sorts of similar activities—thinking that the child can do them: the child does not do these things on its own. Their own inner drive must be stirred; then they imitate the things they see adults doing. They play with a doll because they see their mother caring for the baby. What exists in adults—the tendency to imitate—lives fully within the child. This tendency must be taken into account in the child’s upbringing until they lose their baby teeth. However, everything that is to be cultivated in the child is subject to a transformation within the child’s organism that makes everything more alive and more animated than is the case in adults, because the child is still a unity of body, soul, and spirit. In adults, the body is emancipated from the soul-spiritual; the soul-spiritual is emancipated from the physical. Body, soul, and spirit stand apart from one another. Only in the child is there a strict unity of the physical, soul, and spirit. This unity extends even into thinking. One can easily observe this, for example, by giving a child—before it has gone through the process of losing its baby teeth—a very beautiful doll that is wonderfully painted, human-like, and even has glass eyes. Such dolls exist: when you lay them down, they roll their eyes and “sleep”; when you pick them up, the thing stares at you. There are many other mechanisms involved in creating such little monstrosities, which are handed to the child as “beautiful dolls.” Yes, these things are indeed hideous from an artistic standpoint, but I don’t want to go into that. But consider the difference it makes to the child itself when you give it a beautiful doll that can even roll its eyes. At first, of course, the child will be delighted, because the thing is a sensation; but little by little, that delight fades. Compare that to what happens to the child when you simply take a dishcloth, shape a head at the top by gathering it together, make two dots for eyes, and perhaps even add a big nose. Then the child has the opportunity, in its imagination—in its soul-spiritual life, which is connected to the physical—to imagine the rest. Every time the child is asked to create a mental image of the doll, they come alive inwardly; that is what keeps them vibrant. If you try these experiments, you will see what a difference it makes to leave as much as possible to the imagination and the soul’s activity during children’s play, as opposed to shaping the toy in such a way that it leaves nothing for inner activity. Therefore, it is of the greatest benefit to the child if we organize children’s handicrafts in such a way that they are, as far as possible, merely suggestive, leaving plenty of room for imaginative activity. A fully formed activity that can remain as it is is not stimulating, because the imagination cannot go beyond what is sensually present.

[ 24 ] This sheds light on the way we, as teachers and educators, must be if we want to approach the child in the right way. We need a pedagogy based on an understanding of human nature, on an understanding of the child. And, in turn, a true pedagogy based on an understanding of human nature will exist in an age when, for example, we will see doctoral dissertations of the following kind: A case of diabetes in a forty-year-old traced back to the harmful effects of childhood play during the third and fourth years of life. Then people will see what it means that the whole human being consists of body, soul, and spirit, and that in the child, body, soul, and spirit are still a unity. Spirit and soul later become free from the body, and then they form a triad. Then, so to speak, in the adult human being, spirit, soul, and body are pushed apart, and only the body retains what was absorbed into it during the period of childhood development as a seed for later life. Now here is the peculiar thing: In the soul, we experience the consequences—which have just been drawn into the subconscious—almost immediately; physically in the body, we experience them seven to eight times later. If you raise the child in a soul-oriented way—emphasizing the soul aspect in the 4th and 5th years of life so that the child has absorbed it and their soul life is influenced by it—then this will manifest, for example, in the 8th year of life. People still fail to realize that if you do not teach certain things in the 4th and 5th years of life, it will not lead to health in the 8th and 9th years. The effect on the soul becomes apparent in the 8th and 7th years of life. The physical effect—because the body is becoming independent—manifests more slowly, appearing seven to eight times later. As for psychological development, the fruits of an influence from the age of 5 become apparent at age 8; in the body, they become apparent after 35 years—a period seven times longer. 5 times 7 is 35. Thus, symptoms of illness that arise as a result of an inappropriate psychological influence caused by play in the 3rd and 4th years of life appear in the early forties or late thirties.

[ 25 ] Anyone who wishes to understand the whole human being must also realize that this emancipation of the soul and spirit—which occurs in adults in contrast to the unity found in children—is not something abstract, but rather very concrete, in that it can even cause a shift in the passage of time. The time the body needs to develop something is increasingly longer than that required by the soul. The body lags behind, and physical ailments arise much later than those of the soul. The same is true of certain missteps during childhood, where one can see that during the rebellious years there are indeed many serious issues in the soul; but things even out. For there are relatively simple ways to set even those straight who, as they say, are quite boisterous during their rebellious years; they sometimes even turn out to be quite respectable philistines. That is not such a bad thing. But the body gradually develops more and more slowly; and even long after one has overcome what occurred in the soul and spirit during the rebellious years, one still has to contend at the end of life with gout as a physical consequence that develops gradually.

[ 26 ] A concrete understanding of human nature is indeed something of great significance in human life. This concrete understanding of human nature, which allows us to truly look into the inner being of a person, is the only thing capable of providing the prerequisites for a true art of education that places the individual in life in such a way that—in accordance with their destiny, naturally to a greater extent in one person and to a lesser extent in another—everything that is inherent in the human being can come to fruition. It is not a matter of using the art of education to act against destiny; rather, we must achieve what is inherent in destiny. Today, education often falls short of what is inherent in destiny. We must fulfill these predispositions of destiny to the extent that the individual attains, in thinking, the highest possible clarity for life; in feeling, the highest possible loving depth conceivable according to his or her destiny; and in willing, the highest possible energy and competence according to his or her destiny.

[ 27 ] This can only be achieved through pedagogy and didactics based on a true understanding of human nature. We will discuss this further in the next lectures.