The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Following yesterday’s lecture, a question was raised that I would like to address here in this context. The question is: “With regard to the law of imitation in a child’s movements, I would appreciate an explanation of the following situation. My grandfather died when my father was 1½ to 2 years old. When my father was about forty-five years old, he visited an acquaintance of my grandfather’s, who was surprised by the resemblance of all my father’s movements and gestures. What was at work here, since—given that my grandfather died so early—there could be no question of imitation?”

[ 2 ] So a man died when his son was 1?/a to 2 years old, and later, from an acquaintance who might have been well informed about the matter, one learned that this son, even in his 45th year, was still imitating his grandfather’s gestures—that is, he made the same gestures as his father.

[ 3 ] The point is that in discussions such as those currently taking place here, one can only ever outline the general principles, and thus can hardly take into account the specifics of individual cases. Unfortunately, our courses are short, and the topic that should actually be discussed here could easily fill a half-year or even a full year’s worth of lectures. Consequently, these discussions naturally give rise to a great many questions which, if asked, could certainly be answered; but I would like to point out that, at times, ambiguities may naturally arise due to the brevity of our discussion, and these can only be clarified if we are able to go into the details in full. With regard to the question posed, I would now like to comment on it today, incorporating the following points.

[ 4 ] If we consider the first stage of a child’s life—that is, the period from birth until the teeth are replaced—the child’s developing organization functions in such a way that the child’s earliest predispositions become integrated into the organization. This is what I discussed yesterday as something that can be summarized as walking—which, however, represents a person’s overall orientation—then as speaking, and thirdly as thinking. Now, the situation is as follows. Essentially, the child organizes itself between the ages of 1 and 7 with regard to gestures; between the ages of 7 and 14, approximately, with regard to language, as I explained yesterday; and with regard to thinking, it organizes itself between the ages of 14 and 21, again in approximate terms. But what emerges over a period of 21 years is already taking shape in its rudiments during the first stage of life, between birth and the loss of baby teeth. As for the actual acquisition of gestures—which is expressed in orientation, in walking, but also in free orientation without support, as well as in the movement of the arms and facial muscles—in other words, a comprehensive orientation, a settling into gestures and signs—this develops primarily during the first third of these 7 years, that is, during the first 21/3 years. During this period, the child’s primary development lies in the formation of gestures. The development of gestures then continues; but added to this is the development of the predisposition for the inner assimilation of language at a deeper level. Even if the child produces sounds earlier, the internalization of language occurs—after 2Y3 years—at the predispositional level. The inner experience of language develops between the ages of 7 and 14, but the predisposition for it is already present between 2 1/3 and 4 1/2 years. All of this, of course, is an average. And after that, the child develops the ability to experience thoughts internally within the initial predisposition. What only emerges and blossoms later, between the ages of 14 and 21, develops in the embryonic predisposition between 42/3 and 7 years of age. — The development of gestures naturally continues, but the other aspect intrudes; so that we must shift the period that is primarily characterized by the development of gestures to the first 2!/s years. What is acquired during this time is, of course, rooted most deeply; for we need only create a mental image of how thoroughly the principle of imitation operates, especially in the very earliest years of life.

[ 5 ] If you keep all this in mind, you will no longer find anything remarkable in what is being asked here. The grandfather died when the father was 1½ to 2 years old. But that is precisely the time when the formation of gestures is most deeply ingrained. If the grandfather dies at this stage, what is imitated from him has become deeply ingrained. This is no longer altered by gestures later adopted through imitation from others. Therefore, when examined in detail, this case is exceptionally significant. That, in brief, is what can be said about it.

[ 6 ] Yesterday we attempted to examine how the child, in the second stage of life—between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity—experiences everything that becomes part of its development through language, in which the natural authority of the educator and teacher must be at work. Whatever can take effect between the educator and the child must do so in a pictorial way. And I explained how, at this stage of life, one cannot approach the child with moral precepts, but can influence the child’s morality only by awakening in the child feelings of the kind that are aroused by images; so that the child receives mental images presented to them by their role model—the educator or teacher—which have the effect of making them find pleasure in what is good and displeasure in what is evil. Thus, education regarding morality at this age—when children are required to attend elementary school—must also take place in a pictorial and emotional manner.

[ 7 ] Then I explained how writing must be introduced to the child in a pictorial way, how the shapes of letters must be derived from drawing-like painting and painting-like drawing. This “painting-like drawing” and “drawing-like painting” must be cultivated first and foremost among all the arts that introduce the child to civilization. Anything that from the very beginning points to letter forms—which are, after all, completely foreign to the child—is actually pedagogical nonsense; for the finished letter forms of today’s civilization have the effect of little demons on the child.

[ 8 ] Now, in accordance with a pedagogy based on an understanding of human nature, learning to write must precede learning to read. Why? Well, learning to write engages a significant part of the whole person, not just the mind in a one-sided way, as is the case with learning to read. If you truly want to reach the child, you must, at this age—immediately after the child has lost their baby teeth—engage the whole child as much as possible. A child who writes in such a way that at least the entire upper body is involved exhibits a very different kind of inner liveliness than when one begins with the perception of forms that engage only the head. The emancipated, independent use of mental faculties is only possible at later stages of life. Therefore, the only way to make the transition is for the child, after writing, to also commit what has been written to memory by reading it.

[ 9 ] By cultivating this approach to teaching in the Waldorf school, it has become apparent that our children learn to read a little later than usual, and even begin writing letters somewhat later than children at other schools. However, one really must look deeply into human nature with insight if one is to judge this. Given today’s lack of insight into human nature, people simply do not realize how detrimental it is to a person’s overall development when they learn such abstract skills as reading and writing too early. And no one who masters reading and writing a little later than usual will suffer from a deficiency in these skills later in life; on the other hand, anyone who learns to read and write too early will suffer a significant deficiency in this regard. A pedagogy based on an understanding of human nature must absolutely proceed from the premise of discerning the development and living conditions of human nature and, in accordance with this understanding of living conditions, help the child in such a way that the child’s own nature comes to the fore. Only then is the art of education truly sound.

[ 10 ] To understand everything that follows, we need to delve a little into the nature of the human being. In the human being, we first have the physical body, which is primarily active in the first stage of life. In the second stage of life, the higher, more subtle body of the human being—namely, the etheric body—comes to the fore. The point here is that when studying human beings, one can proceed in a truly scientific manner and have the same courage that is otherwise required in science today. If one has any substance that exhibits a certain degree of heat, it may be possible to place the substance under conditions whereby heat—which is said to be bound to the substance—is released. It is released and then becomes free heat. When it comes to substances in the mineral world, we have the courage to speak scientifically about them, saying that there is bound heat and free heat. We must develop this courage for our overall view of the world. Once we have it, the following becomes clear to us regarding human beings.

[ 11 ] We might ask: Where, then, are the forces of the human etheric body during the first epoch of life? — During this time, they are bound to the physical body and are engaged in its nourishment and growth. The child is different in this first epoch than it is later on. All the forces of the etheric body are bound to the physical body at this stage; as the first epoch comes to an end, they become partially free, just as heat that was previously bound is released from substances. But what happens as a result? Only a part of the etheric body continues to act in growth and nourishing forces after the change of teeth; the other part is set free and now becomes the bearer of the developing, more intense memory—the soul aspect. We must learn to speak of the bound soul for the first seven years of life, and of the liberated soul for the period after the seventh year. For that is how it is. What we apply as soul forces during the second seven years of life is bound to the physical body during the first seven years, imperceptible; therefore, it does not manifest psychically. How the soul works during the first seven years of life must be discerned from the body. And only from the time of the change of teeth onward can one enter into the soul realm.

[ 12 ] This is a perspective that leads directly from physics into psychology. Consider what we have today in the way of theories of the soul; there are theories of the soul that are based purely on speculation. One reflects and concludes that the soul exists and the body exists. Now one asks: Does the body have a causal effect on the soul, or does the soul have a causal effect on the body? — If one cannot make sense of both, one invents something as extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical parallelism, in which one forms a mental image of the two manifestations—the physical and the psychological—proceeding in parallel, side by side. But this does not explain the interaction between the two; it merely speaks of a parallelism. It is simply a sign that one knows nothing about these things from experience. If one had experience, one would say: In the first seven years of a child’s life, one can indeed see the spiritual at work within the physical. — How it works there must be learned through direct observation, not through philosophical speculation or the like. Anthroposophy, as a method of knowledge, rejects all speculation and relies entirely on experience—both physical and spiritual.

[ 13 ] Thus, for the second stage of life—the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—the human etheric body will be the primary focus of education. In this body, the forces at work for both the teacher and the child are primarily those intended to evoke feelings in the child, rather than judgments and thoughts. For deep within the child’s nature, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, lies the third member of the human being—the astral body—which is the bearer of the entire life of feeling and sensation. Even during this second stage of life, it remains deeply embedded within the etheric body. Therefore, our task is to develop the etheric body—since it is becoming somewhat free—in such a way that it can follow its own inclinations during the child’s upbringing. When can it do this? It can do so when we teach and educate the child in its entirety through imagery, when we present everything to the child in a pictorial way. For the etheric body is, after all, the body of formative forces; it forms the marvelous shapes of the organs—the heart, lungs, liver, and so on. The physical body we inherit is merely like a model; it is shed during the first seven years of life. After the teeth have been replaced, the second physical body is then formed from this etheric body. In our educational approach, we must now accommodate this plastic, image-forming nature of the etheric body.

[ 14 ] Just as we introduce images to the child—through drawing and painting while learning to write, and so on—but we cannot introduce the artistic aspect to the child soon enough, for the entire educational process must be permeated by art—we must also note: just as the etheric body is attuned to imagery, so the astral body—which underlies the life of feeling and sensation—is organized in accordance with the musical nature of the human being. What, then, must we look for when we observe the child? A psychologically healthy child is, because the astral body is still embedded within the physical and etheric bodies between the change of teeth and puberty, deeply musical at the core. Every healthy child is deeply musical at the core. We need only draw out the musical quality from the child’s movement and liveliness. Therefore, artistic instruction—in both the visual and musical arts—must be cultivated in school from the very beginning. The abstract must not prevail here; rather, the artistic must prevail, and it is through the artistic that the child must be guided toward an understanding of the world.

[ 15 ] But we really must proceed in such a way that the child gradually learns to find its place in the world. As I have already said, it always strikes me as repugnant when today’s science-oriented textbooks are brought into schools and lessons are structured around them. For in our scientific endeavors today—which I fully acknowledge—we have in many ways strayed from a natural view of the world. We will now ask ourselves—and we will return to this in the course of our discussion—when, approximately, can we begin introducing children to, for example, knowledge of the plant kingdom?

[ 16 ] It must be introduced neither too late nor too early. One must be aware that the period between the ages of 9 and 10 marks a very important developmental stage for the child. Anyone with a pedagogical eye observes this in every child. There comes a point when the child—usually not through speech, but through their entire behavior—shows that they have a question or a series of questions that reveal an inner crisis in their life. It is an extraordinarily delicate experience for the child, and one must be exceptionally sensitive to notice it in the child. But it is there, and it must be observed. At this age, the child learns quite instinctively to distinguish itself from the outside world. Before that, the “I” and the outside world merge into one another. Before this, one can tell the child about animals, plants, and stones as if they behaved like human beings; and one gets along best by appealing to the child’s visual imagination and speaking in this way about the whole of nature. But between the ages of 9 and 10, the child learns to say “I” to itself with full consciousness. They learn this earlier, but now with full awareness. During these years, when the child’s consciousness no longer merges with the external world but learns to distinguish itself from it, that is the time when we can also begin—without immediately rejecting imagery—to instill in the child an understanding of the plant world—but an emotional understanding of the plant world.

[ 17 ] Today we are accustomed to looking at one plant next to another, because we know their names and so on, and we act as if each plant were a separate entity. But if you look at a plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pluck out a strand of hair and, forgetting that it was on your head, examine it on its own and believe that you could learn something about its living conditions and nature from that strand of hair if you did not consider it an outgrowth of the head. The hair has meaning only when it grows on the head; it cannot be considered in isolation. The same is true of the plant. One cannot “pull it out” in one’s consideration, but must view the entire Earth as an organism to which plants belong. And indeed, they do. Plants belong to the Earth’s overall growth just as hair belongs to our head. One can never view plants in isolation, but only in connection with the Earth’s entire natural world. The Earth and the plant world belong together.

[ 18 ] Suppose you have a herbaceous, annual plant that grows from the root, produces stems, leaves, and flowers, develops fruit, and is resown the following year. So you have soil at the bottom in which the plant grows. But now suppose you have a tree. A tree is long-lived; it is not an annual. It develops around itself a bark that mineralizes and thus peels away. What is that, really? What is happening there is this: If, in the case of a plant, you were to use the forces of the surrounding soil to push it up a little onto the plant—to cover it somewhat with soil—you would be bringing this about externally and mechanically through human activity. Nature, however, does the same thing by enveloping the tree in its bark; only, in this case, it does not become entirely soil. There is, so to speak, a mound of earth within the bark; the earth folds over itself. We can see the earth thriving and growing along with the plant as we watch the tree grow. Therefore, what is in the vicinity of the root is certainly to be counted as part of the plant. We must regard the soil as belonging to the plant.

[ 19 ] Anyone who has developed an eye for this and is driving through an area where they see plants with yellow flowers at the top will immediately look to see what kind of soil is there: if you find very specific flowers, you’ll find, for example, red-tinged soil beneath them. You will never be able to imagine the plant without the soil. The two belong together. And one should get used to this as early as possible; otherwise, one will lose one’s sense of reality.

[ 20 ] How deeply this touched me when, at the request of farmers, I recently had to give an agricultural course, and immediately afterward a farmer said: “Today everyone knows that our crops are dying off, falling into decline—and at a terrifying rate.” - Why is that? Because people no longer understand how to view the soil in relation to the plants, as people originally did—as farmers once did. But if we want to help the plants thrive again, we must also know how to treat them properly; that is, we must be able to fertilize correctly. One must give the soil the opportunity to truly thrive in the vicinity of the plant roots. — Today, following the misdevelopment that agriculture has recently undergone, we need an agriculture inspired by the Spiritual Science, one that allows us to use fertilizers in such a way that plant growth does not fall into decay. Anyone who has lived as long as I have can say: I know what potatoes looked like in Europe 50 years ago—and what they look like now! Today we are witnessing not only the decline of the West in terms of the cultivation of the soul, but also a profound decline extending deep into the other realms of nature, for example, in agriculture.

[ 21 ] The point, then, is that we must not lose sight of the interconnectedness of a plant and its environment; we must not, during school field trips and the like, pull up plants, put them in a specimen jar, bring them back to the classroom, and then believe that we have accomplished something. For the uprooted plant cannot exist on its own. — People today indulge in completely unrealistic ways of thinking. They regard, for example, a piece of chalk and a flower as real in the same sense. Philosophers today regard both things in the same sense as something that exists. But what nonsense that is! The mineral can exist on its own, and indeed it does. The plant is supposed to be something self-contained; but it cannot be—it ceases to exist when one tears it out of the ground. It has an existence on earth only insofar as it is connected to something else; and that other thing has an existence only insofar as it is connected to the whole earth. One must view things as they are within the totality; one must not tear them out of the totality.

[ 22 ] Almost our entire epistemological outlook is teeming today with such unreal conceptions. That is why we have come to view nature in ways that are entirely abstract—and which, in their abstractness, are in part justified, such as the theory of relativity. But anyone capable of thinking realistically cannot simply let concepts run their course in abstraction; rather, they notice when concepts begin to no longer relate to reality. This then pains them. — Of course, you can quite easily investigate the laws of acoustics and say: When I produce a sound, the propagation of that sound occurs at a certain speed. If I hear the sound at a specific location, I can calculate how far it travels in a given time. If I now move at any speed in the direction the sound is traveling, I will hear it later; if my speed exceeds that of the sound, I will not hear it at all; but if I move toward the sound, I will hear it sooner. The theory of relativity has its specific validity. But according to it, the following could also be true: if I move in such a way that I walk toward the sound faster than the sound travels, then I ultimately end up hearing the sound before the bang has even happened! Someone with a truly realistic way of thinking can sense something like this. Such a person also knows that it is entirely correct—and wonderfully logical—to imagine a clock being hurled out into outer space at the speed of light and returning from there, according to the famous analogy given by Einstein. One can easily imagine that nothing about the clock has changed. But for a realistic thinker, the question arises: What will the clock look like when it returns? — for he does not separate his thinking from reality; he is always immersed in reality.

[ 23 ] This is what is unique about Spiritual Science: it never demands that it be merely logical, but rather that it be true to reality. That is why those who take abstractions to extremes today accuse us anthroposophists of being abstract, precisely because our way of thinking seeks absolute reality everywhere and never wants to break away from its connection to reality—even as it encompasses spiritual reality as well. This allows us to see so clearly the unnaturalness of botany as practiced by those who follow the “botanical drum.”

[ 24 ] The point, then, is to teach botany to the child in such a way that the face of the earth is taken into account as such, and soil and plant growth are treated as a single entity, so that the child never forms a mental image of the plant as something separate. This can be challenging for the teacher. For now the teacher cannot simply bring standard botany textbooks into the classroom, quickly flip through them during class, and pretend to know everything exactly. As I have already said, there are still no proper textbooks for botany instruction today. But this approach to teaching takes on a different character when one understands how imponderables work, and when one considers that the subconscious mind is even more powerful in a child than in an adult. This subconscious is incredibly clever, and anyone who can look into a child’s inner life knows that when a class is sitting there and the teacher is walking around with his notes, trying to teach the children what the notes contain, the children are always thinking: “Well, why should I know that? He doesn’t even know it himself!” — This disrupts the lesson tremendously, for it wells up from the subconscious. And nothing will come of such a class that is taught with notes in hand.

[ 25 ] One must look into the spiritual realm in everything. This is particularly necessary for the development of the art of education. In this way, however, one creates a firm foundation for the child’s place in the world. For now the child gradually forms a mental image of the Earth as an organism. And indeed, it is. And when it begins to lose its vitality, then we must start to help our agricultural plants through proper fertilization. — For example, it is not true that the water contained in the air is the same as the water down in the earth. The water down below has a trace of vitality; the water up above loses that, and it only regains its vitality as it descends. These are all things that exist, that are real. Anyone who does not take these things in does not truly connect with the world. This applies to the plant world in the classroom.

[ 26 ] Now we come to the animal kingdom. We cannot view it as belonging to the Earth. This is already evident from the fact that animals can move about on their own; they are already independent in and of themselves. But when we compare animals to human beings again, we find something very peculiar in the structure of animals. This has always been pointed out in the older, instinct-based science, echoes of which were still present in the first third of the 19th century. But it seems quite absurd to people today when, with their current views, they read the statements of such natural philosophers who, following old traditions, still regarded the animal world in relation to the human world. I know how people could barely contain their laughter in a circle where, during a lecture by the natural philosopher Oken, the statement emerged: “... the human tongue is a squid.” What was meant by that? Of course, the specific detail in Oken’s statement was no longer accurate, but it was based on the underlying principle that one must keep in mind: When one looks at the individual animal forms—from the smallest protists to the most highly developed primates—each animal form represents some aspect of the human being, a human organ or organ system, developed in a one-sided manner. You need only consider the matter in broad terms. Just imagine if, in a human being, the forehead were to recede significantly, the jaws were to protrude greatly, and the eyes, instead of looking forward, were to look upward; in other words, the dentition and the structures adjacent to it would be developed in a one-sided manner. In this way, developed in a one-sided manner, you can create a mental image of the most diverse forms of mammals; by omitting this or that feature from the human form, you can transform the human form into that of an ox, a sheep, and so on. And if you consider the internal organs—for example, those related to the reproductive tract—you descend into the realm of the lower animals. —- Human beings are the synthetic synthesis of individual animal forms, which are softened when brought together into a unity. Human beings are the sum of all animal forms, but harmoniously structured. When I trace back what is dissolved within human beings to its primordial forms, I arrive at the entire animal kingdom. Human beings are the condensed animal kingdom.

[ 27 ] This perspective, which once again properly places us—with our entire inner life—within the animal kingdom, has been completely forgotten. But since it is true and actually underlies the principles of development, it must be revived. And we must, as far as is possible today, actually introduce the child—around the age of 11—after we have regarded the plant world as belonging to the earth, to the animal world in such a way that the child recognizes it, in terms of its forms, as belonging to the human being in the narrower sense. Consider how the young person then relates to animals and plants: plants return to the earth, becoming one with it; animals become one with the young person! This is truly the foundation of a relationship with the world; it places the human being in a real connection with the world. - This can always be introduced to the child through the school curriculum. And if everything proceeds in an artistic sense—if it proceeds in harmony with what grasps the human being in terms of their inner essence through living education and teaching—then one enlivens the child for life; otherwise, however, one easily destroys the connection to life. But one must look deeply into the whole human being.

[ 28 ] What exactly is this etheric body? Indeed, if someone could extract the etheric body from the human physical body and imbue it with form so that it became visibly manifest—there would be no greater work of art than this! For the human etheric body, through its own essence and through what the human being shapes within it, is both a work of art and an artist. And by introducing the child to the creative aspect of art, we bring to the child that which is deeply connected to the etheric body, by engaging with the child in a free manner—as I indicated yesterday—through modeling. This enables the child, by grasping its own inner being, to position itself correctly in the world as a human being.

[ 29 ] And as we introduce the child to music, the child develops its astral body. If one combines the two—making the plastic form transition into movement and making the movement plastic—then one has eurythmy, which arises entirely from the relationship between the etheric body and the astral body in the child. That is why the child now learns eurythmy—this language expressed in articulated gestures—just as it learned to speak on its own in earlier years. One will never encounter obstacles in learning eurythmy if the child is healthy; for in eurythmy, the child simply expresses its own being—it seeks to realize its own being. That is why, in Waldorf schools, we have introduced eurythmy as a required subject alongside physical education, from the first year of elementary school through the upper grades.

[ 30 ] As you can see, eurythmy has emerged from the whole human being—from the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body; it can only be studied through an anthroposophical understanding of the human being. Today’s physical education focuses one-sidedly on the physical body from a physiological perspective; and because physiology cannot do otherwise, certain laws of vitality are incorporated into it. But physical education does not develop whole human beings—only partial ones. This is not meant as a criticism of physical education, but today it is overrated. That is why eurythmy must now stand alongside physical education in the educational process. — I do not wish to go too far, as happened once—not on my part, but on the part of a very famous contemporary physiologist who was in the auditorium one time when I was speaking about eurythmy. I stated there that physical education is overrated today, particularly as an educational tool, and that the spiritual-psychic exercise cultivated in eurythmy—alongside the artistic aspect of eurythmy—must stand alongside physiological physical education. After I had finished speaking, the famous physiologist came up to me and said: “You say that gymnastics has a place as an educational tool because physiologists say so? As a physiologist myself, I must say that gymnastics as an educational tool is nothing short of barbarism!” — Well, you would be very surprised if I were to tell you the name of this physiologist. Such things are already evident in the present day among people who have a say in the matter, and one must therefore be cautious when fanatically advocating certain things without fully understanding the context. One can least of all advocate things fanatically when it comes to the art of education, because there one is dealing with the multifaceted nature of human life.

[ 31 ] If you consider the other areas of knowledge that must be introduced to the child from the perspectives that emerge from this analysis, you will find that, at this age—when the child can only absorb imagery through feeling—you must also teach history and geography, for example, in a pictorial way; so that when you teach history, you must present images—three-dimensional images, pictorial images! This is how the child’s sense of meaning develops. For what is still largely absent in the child during the first two epochs of the second major phase of life—from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—is what is called the concept of cause. Children should not attend school at all before the age of 7. If you take the period from age 7 to 9 and 1/3, you have the first subdivision of the second major life phase; from 9 1/3 to 11 2/3 years, you have the second epoch; and from 11 2/3 to approximately age 14, the third epoch. In the first epoch of the second major life phase, the child is entirely predisposed toward imagery. Here one must speak in fairy-tale terms; here, everything in the external world must still be undifferentiated from the child’s nature. Here, one plant must speak to another, one mineral must speak to another; here, plants must kiss one another, plants must have a father and a mother, and so on. When the stage I have just described arrives—from the age of 9 1/3 onward—the “I” will begin to distinguish itself from the external world. Then one can also approach plants and animals with a kind of realistic understanding. But in the early years of life, historical events will still be treated in a fairy-tale-like, mythical manner; in the second phase of this larger period—from 9 1/3 to 11 2/3 years—one will speak in imagery. And only when the child is nearing the age of 12 can one introduce what is understood under the concept of cause, which begins to lean toward abstract concepts, where cause and effect can come into play. Before that, the child is as inaccessible to cause and effect as a color-blind person is to colors, and as an educator, one sometimes has no idea how unnecessary it is to talk to the child about cause and effect. What we are so accustomed to today in scientific thinking can only be discussed with the child after the age of 12.

[ 32 ] This also requires, however, that one wait until around the age of 12 before introducing any instruction on inanimate objects—where the concept of cause comes into play—and that one also wait until around the age of 12 before introducing historical considerations of cause and effect, where the discussion goes beyond the pictorial and involves searching for causes. Before that, one should concern oneself only with what one brings to the child in terms of the soul and the living. — Human beings are very curious. For example, there is a cultural-historical view called animism. It says: When a child bumps into a table, the child animates the table, beats it; it projects a soul into the table; this is how primitive peoples are said to have done it as well. — One imagines that something more complex is taking place in the child’s soul: the child is supposed to think of the table as animated and imbued with a soul, and therefore beat it when it bumps into it. This is a fanciful mental image. But whoever animates something is precisely the one who shapes cultural history; they animate the child’s imagination. Yet the child’s soul is embedded in the physical to a much greater extent than it is later, when it emancipates itself and acts freely as a spiritual entity. When the child bumps into the table, a reflex movement begins without the child animating the table; it is a pure movement of the will; it is not yet distinguished from the external world. This distinction only arises around the age of 12 in a healthy child, when the concept of cause emerges. And if one introduces the concept of cause—or, indeed, such crude external visualizations—too early in a child, one actually brings about terrible consequences in the child’s development. It is, of course, very nice to say that one should strive to make everything concrete for the child. So many wonderful things have been done, in a certain sense, in the effort to make everything concrete. Calculating machines have been invented where balls are slid back and forth to make arithmetic operations concrete. Now we are just waiting for the same mindset to make moral concepts concrete through some kind of machine, where one then also shifts something around, where one sees good and evil just as one sees on the calculating machine that 5 + 7 = 12. But there are indeed areas of life that are not concrete and that are perceived by the child as entirely abstract; and if one makes them concrete, one is misleading the child. Therefore, it is wrong to see recommendations in educational books to make something concrete that is not based on concreteness. Sometimes the advice given to people in these books is terribly trivial.

[ 33 ] But the period of life between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity is not just a matter of vividness; rather, when one looks at the whole of human life, this is when the following begins. In the eighth year, I take in a concept; I do not yet fully grasp it—in fact, I do not grasp the matter at all in terms of abstract relationships, since I am not yet predisposed to do so. Why, then, do I take in this concept? Because it affects me through language and through the teacher’s self-evident authority. But today, one is not supposed to do any of that; the child is supposed to receive everything in a concrete, vivid way. But let’s take a child who is taught everything in a concrete way: the experiences do not grow along with the child, and then one must expect to be dealing with a being that does not grow. But we should not awaken mental images in the child that do not grow with it; for then we would be doing the same thing as if we had shoes made for a three-year-old child that it is supposed to still be wearing at age 12. But everything grows in a person, even what we once grasp; therefore, the mental images must continue to grow with us. We must therefore ensure that we instill living concepts in the child. But we can only teach these to the child if there is a living connection to the educator’s authority; we cannot teach them if the teacher stands before the child as an abstract figure and presents concepts for which the child has no receptivity whatsoever.

[ 34 ] Imagine two children. One is taught in such a way that he absorbs concepts and, at the age of 45, still gives the same explanation for something that he once learned at the age of 8. The concept has not grown with the child; the child has memorized everything well and can still give the same explanation at age 45. Now let’s take a second child who has been raised in a lively, dynamic way. We will find that, just as the child no longer wears the same shoe size it had at age 8, so too, in later life, it no longer carries around the same concepts it learned at age 8; rather, these concepts have expanded—they have become something entirely different. All of this, however, has a reciprocal effect on physicality. And if we now look at these two people in terms of their physical condition, the first one, at age 45, has sclerosis, while the second has remained agile and does not have sclerosis. — What do you think are the differences that become apparent in these people? Once upon a time, in a certain place in Europe, there were two philosophy teachers. One was famous for his expertise in Greek philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, from Hegel’s school, where people had been accustomed to absorbing living concepts even after the age of 20. Both were at a university. One of them turned 70 and claimed the right to retire; he could go on no longer. The other, from the Hegelian school, was 91 years old and said, “I cannot understand why the young man is already retiring.” — But this second man also had flexible concepts. For this, however, people criticized him, saying he was inconsistent. The other was consistent, but he had sclerosis!

[ 35 ] Thus, there is a complete unity of the spiritual and the physical, and one can only treat a child properly if one takes this unity into account. Today, among those who do not subscribe to materialism, it is said to be a bad thing. Why? Some will say it is because materialism understands nothing of the spiritual. But that is not the worst of it, for people will gradually become aware of this deficiency, and out of the urge to overcome it, they will turn to the spiritual; rather, the worst thing about materialism is that it understands nothing about matter! Consider what has become of the understanding of the living forces within the human being—in the lungs, liver, and so on—under the influence of materialism. We know nothing about how things work there. We dissect a piece from the lungs, the liver, and so on, but through modern science we do not come to know the active spirit within the human organs. We come to know it only through Spiritual Science. The material realm reveals itself only to spiritual scientific observation. Thus, the greatest flaw of materialism is that it understands nothing of matter; it would like to limit itself to matter, but it cannot arrive at a true understanding of the material—that is, the real material, not the imagined material, where one has so many atoms dancing around a central nucleus; for such things can easily be constructed. In this regard, there have also been theosophists in the past who constructed an entire system of atoms and molecules; but all of that was, of course, merely imagined. The point, once again, is to approach reality. And when one approaches reality oneself, one finds it uncomfortable to be asked to grasp a concept that has never been experienced in reality. It feels like a pain when, for example, someone presents you with a theory such as this: that, fundamentally, it makes no difference whether I drive a car to a city or whether the car stands still and the city comes to me. Certainly, such ideas are valid from a certain perspective. But when taken to the extremes to which they are taken today in the pursuit of abstractions, they desolate the entire life of the human soul. And for those who have a sense of this, a terribly painful feeling arises toward much of what is thought today—and which has such an extraordinarily destructive effect, especially in education. When I see how certain methods, even with young children in kindergarten, are designed so that they carve out the ordinary letters and then learn to assemble the letters into words within these carvings, the child is thus exposed at an early age to something to which he or she has absolutely no connection at this age. It is as if, in real thinking, one were to say: “Just a moment ago I was still a human being with muscles and skin and so on; now I am nothing but a skeleton.” — This is how it is today under the influence of the mindset that favors abstractions in humanity’s spiritual life: one suddenly sees oneself as a skeleton. But with such views, which are in fact a skeletonized reality, one cannot reach the child in education.

[ 36 ] That is why I wanted to show today how important it is for teachers to approach life in a genuine and lively way.