The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] To supplement what I said yesterday about teachers’ conferences—the very heart and soul of the school—I would like to add today, before proceeding to the purely methodological discussion, that we must place the utmost importance on being in complete harmony with the parents of our Waldorf school children, by organizing parent evenings at relatively short intervals, which are then attended by the parents of the children who are present in the community, and at which we discuss the school’s intentions, methods, and facilities—naturally, generally prior to the parents’ assembly, at which their wishes, insofar as they can be expressed in an assembly, are also taken into account. This provides an opportunity to truly work out, from the entire social milieu—from which it actually originates—what is to be achieved pedagogically. As teachers, we hear what parents have in their mental image regarding their children’s education; and the parents hear—since we always speak with great honesty and candor—what is happening at the school, how we think about education and the children’s future, and why we believe it is necessary to have such free educational institutions. In short, this not only puts us in harmony with the parents on an abstract level, but also allows us to maintain ongoing contact with them. We must therefore place great value on this, precisely because we have no other source of support. In a public school, everything is strictly regulated. There, one knows with great certainty what the educational goals must be; one knows that a child, for example, must have reached a certain level by the age of 9, and so on. All of this is precisely defined.

[ 2 ] Here, everything is subject to the free individuality of each teacher. As far as I am concerned, what comes from the administration are not directives or guidelines. We have no administration at all in the school; rather, each teacher is, in a certain sense, autonomous. What we do, instead of following directives, is engage in study and strive for progress through the teachers’ conferences themselves. This is a spirit that lives as a concrete reality among the teaching staff—a spirit that acts freely, is not tyrannical, does not issue rules, regulations, or programs, but constantly seeks to move forward, constantly striving to improve the school’s structure and curriculum. Our teachers today cannot possibly know what will be good for the Waldorf school in five years; for they will have learned a great deal in those five years, and then, after five years, they are to judge what is good and what is not. That is why, when it comes to what is being done in the Waldorf school, it is so utterly irrelevant what educational reform associations prescribe as being good for education. Such things cannot be concocted for education purely from the intellect; they can only be worked out through experience. And this process of working it out is what matters most for the teaching staff. But because we are in this situation—living in a living flow with everything we do—we need a different kind of support than an ordinary school has in the authorities that stand above it and tell it what to do. We need to draw on the very social environment from which the children have grown. We need close collaboration with the parents regarding all the questions that continually arise when a child is in school; and the child is, after all, in school precisely because he or she has left the parental home.

[ 3 ] But once that individual harmony has been achieved—and the teacher, insofar as he relies on the parents, cares perhaps even more than the parents themselves for the child’s overall well-being—not merely by having the parents come in and providing information that isn’t very useful, but by continuing to show interest in the child’s home life even after the parent-teacher conference— then, when a child enters school—around the age of 7—one initially has much more to contend with than one might think: in the child are the father, the mother, and other people from the child’s environment; they stand behind the child like shadows. One has to deal with them almost as much as with the child itself, especially in physiological and pathological terms. And the teacher must work to understand all of this, must piece it all together, in order to truly understand the child and, above all, to gain a clear understanding of what he must do in the child’s environment. And by building this bridge to the family home, a kind of social support is also established—but in a free, lively way.

[ 4 ] The home environment is also essential for this: parents must ensure that the natural authority the child must have toward the teacher is not compromised in any way. A great deal of work must be done to foster mutual psychological understanding between teachers and parents. And parents, in turn, by getting to know the teacher—and getting to know him or her quite well—must completely break the habit of feeling jealous of the teacher. For most parents are, after all, jealous of their children’s teachers. They feel as though the teacher wants to take their child away from them. But as soon as this feeling arises, there is little that can be done educationally with the child. However, this can be brought into the right context if the teacher also knows how to establish the proper connection with the family home. — So that is what I must add regarding what teachers’ conferences should be.

[ 5 ] But then it really is a matter of understanding those moments in a child’s life that are significant transitional moments. I have already cited one such moment, when instruction must transition from the fairy-tale imagery of earlier years to the study of plants, for example. This stage in a child’s development occurs between the ages of 9 and 10. At this stage, the child displays something like an inner restlessness. All sorts of feelings come to the surface that make one wonder: What is going on with this child? The child does not know where it stands; but it has an inner restlessness and asks all sorts of questions. What the child asks, in terms of content, is usually of little significance; but the fact that it asks—that it behaves this way at all—is certainly significant.

[ 6 ] What we do with the child at this stage—in terms of our relationship with the child—has great significance for the child’s entire life. For what is it that resides within the child? And it resides in every child who is not pathologically affected. Up to that point, a child who has not been corrupted from the outside accepts the teacher’s authority quite naturally; for a healthy child—one who has not been fed all sorts of nonsense intended to corrupt them—also has a perfectly healthy respect for every adult. The child looks up to the adult in a naive way, as to a self-evident authority. Just think back to your own childhood—what it means, especially for a very young child, to be able to say to itself: “You may do it just like him or her; that is a person of value.”—After all, one has no other need than to place oneself under an authority.

[ 7 ] In a certain sense, this is somewhat shaken between the ages of 9 and 10; it is simply shaken by the development of human nature itself. One must simply be able to grasp this thoroughly. During this period, human nature begins to experience something quite special. This does not rise to the child’s consciousness; the child lives in vague sensations and feelings. The child cannot put it into words, but it is there. What does the child tell itself, unconsciously? Before, based on its sensations, it told itself: What the teacher says is good is good; what the teacher says is bad is bad; what the educator says is right is right; what he says is wrong is wrong; what pleases the educator and what he says pleases him is beautiful, and what does not please him and what he says is ugly is ugly. - For the child, the educator is the completely self-evident standard. At this point in time, however—between the ages of 9 and 10—this is shaken somewhat from within. The child begins, intuitively, to ask itself: Where did the educator get this from? Who is the authority for the educator? Where is this authority? — At this moment, an inner urge begins to arise in the child, pushing beyond the visible human being—who until then has been a god to the child—toward what lies behind as a supersensible or invisible God or divinity. This must now simply be demonstrated to the child. One must now approach the child in such a way that it gets the feeling: This person has a connection reaching back toward the supersensible; he or she does not speak arbitrarily from within themselves; he or she is a missionary of the divine.

[ 8 ] You have to make the child aware of this. But how? Certainly not by lecturing. You can only say it out loud, but lecturing is the least effective way to get the message across. But if you connect with the child—perhaps even saying something that has no particular significance in terms of content—if you speak to the child about something that may have no significance in terms of content, but speak in such a tone of voice that the child sees: This person has a heart, and this heart truly believes in what lies behind it—then you can achieve something. You have to make the child truly aware of this sense of being at home in the world—truly aware. The child is already perceptive enough—even if they don’t grasp things in an abstract, rational way—to come and ask, “Oh, I’d really like to know…” Children of this age ask questions like that. If you say to them now: “Look, I receive from the sun what I can give you; if the sun weren’t there, I wouldn’t be able to give you anything at all; if it weren’t for the moon, which divinely preserves what we receive from the sun while we sleep, I wouldn’t be able to give you anything either”—in terms of its content, this doesn’t mean much yet; but if you say it with such warmth that the child senses you love the sun and the moon, then you guide the child beyond these questions and, in most cases, beyond them for life. One must realize that these critical moments exist in a child’s life. Then one will naturally feel that, up to that point, drawing on Fichte and the oak, the buttercup and the dandelion, the sunflower and the violet, one has spoken of all manner of fairy-tale creatures in nature and thereby guided the child toward a spiritual world; but now the time has come when one can begin to tell stories from the Gospels. If one begins with these, or with catechism-like instructions, too early, one destroys something in the child; but if one begins now, when the child’s breakthrough into the spiritual world is just beginning, then one is doing something that the child’s whole being longs for.

[ 9 ] Yes, my esteemed audience, where is the book in which the educator can read what pedagogy is? It is the children themselves! One should learn pedagogy from no other book than the one lying open before one—which is the children themselves; but this requires the most profound interest in each individual child, and one must not allow oneself to be distracted from it. In this, the educator faces difficulties that he must consciously overcome.

[ 10 ] Let us now assume that the educator has children of his own. In that case, he has a more urgent and demanding task than if he had no children. He must then become more conscious in this very area, and above all, he must not hold the view—not even subconsciously—that all children must turn out like his own. He must examine this within himself: that in the unconscious of everyone who has children, there is the belief that all children must become like his own.

[ 11 ] So what one must take on as an educator reaches right into the most intimate fibers of the soul. And if these most intimate fibers of the soul are not grasped, then one simply does not have the kind of presence in the classroom that allows one to truly gain full access to the children and, with that, their full trust. It is a great, an immense harm if children come to believe that others are the teacher’s favorites. This must be absolutely avoided under all circumstances. However, it is not as easy to avoid as one usually thinks; yet it can be avoided if one adheres to all those principles in school that arise directly from an anthroposophical understanding of human nature. Then the matter takes shape all by itself.

[ 12 ] And then there is something that is particularly relevant to the theme I have chosen for this lecture series—something connected to the global and human significance of education. After all, it is very much part of human nature that the teacher—who has so much to do with children and can usually do so little outside the realm of school life—needs a connection to the world, that he or she must look out into the world. Why, then, do teachers so easily become such withered souls? They do so because they must constantly lower themselves to the child’s level. One really shouldn’t make light of the teacher who withers away under the usual concepts of teaching. Now, the anthroposophical teacher in particular can become aware of the danger that lies here. For if the ordinary teacher’s view of history gradually becomes that of the textbook—and it certainly does after a few years of teaching—where is he to find a view of history, where is he to find ideas about humanity? So how can it be any different? And the time he has left over from teaching, he spends simply relaxing. But the great questions of the world then sometimes play a role only within a highly parochial political context. Yet the spiritual life does not extend into the perspective one must have as a person in their 30s or 40s. And one cannot remain fresh and alive if one believes that the best way to spend one’s leisure time is to play cards or do something that has nothing at all to do with intellectual life.

[ 13 ] In the case of the anthroposophical teacher, he is now fully immersed in anthroposophy because, from that vantage point, a worldview is revealed to him ever more broadly, so that, by being immersed in anthroposophy, his horizon is constantly expanding. It is very easy to see how these things interact. This is evident in the fact that even the most enthusiastic anthroposophist, if he becomes a history teacher, for example, immediately falls into the tendency to infuse his view of history with anthroposophy and actually wants to teach anthroposophy instead of history. This, too, is something one must try to avoid. This can certainly be avoided if the person who has his children on one side and anthroposophy on the other is not also compelled to build bridges from the school to the family home. Even when anthroposophy becomes applied knowledge of human nature and applied understanding of human beings, one must recognize the necessities of life.

[ 14 ] How do people today—often under the influence of reformist, even revolutionary, ideas—view the education system? I do not wish to address here what is said in socialist circles, but rather what is thought about it in middle-class circles. The idea has emerged that one must leave the city and go to the countryside to educate a group of children there, isolated from the city; only there, it is claimed, can they develop naturally, and so on. But how does such an idea fit into an overall worldview? Actually, it reveals one’s own powerlessness. For the issue is not about devising a way to raise a number of children according to one’s own ideas far away from the rest of the world, but rather about how, right in the midst of the social milieu in which one finds oneself, one can allow children to be human beings. One must therefore muster the strength not to deprive children of this life once they are, after all, situated within their social milieu. One absolutely must have this courage. This is something connected to the global significance of pedagogy.

[ 15 ] But then one must be deeply convinced that the real world must extend into the school. It must be the real world that lives on in the school in a childlike way. Therefore, if we are grounded in sound pedagogy, we will not try to devise all sorts of activities intended solely for the children. For example, children should not be made to weave or do all sorts of things that have no place in real life—things that are merely contrived for children just to keep them occupied. Such activities can never contribute positively to a child’s development. Rather, the activities carried out in school as “games” must be a direct reflection of life. Everything must come from life; nothing should be contrived. Therefore—no matter how much good will one may find in them—those things that have been introduced into the education of young children by Fröbel or others are not rooted in the children’s actual development, but are contrived out of our rationalistic age. And nothing contrived should have an effect in school.

[ 16 ] Above all, there must be an intuitive sense that life permeates education in every way. In this regard, one can have quite remarkable experiences. I have told you that for a child who has just gone through the process of losing baby teeth, one should pave the way to writing through painting or drawing. Writing—which is drawing that has become abstract—should develop out of painting-like drawing or drawing-like painting. But one must truly take into account that the child is an aesthetically sensitive being, that there is a real little artist within them. Now, one can have an experience that is quite interesting. You can bring a very good teacher into the classroom who is fully committed to the ideas I have just outlined, who is enthusiastic about them, and who says: “We simply have to do away with all previous educational methods and educate in this way!” — Now the process of painting-like drawing or drawing-like painting begins. The paint pots and brushes are there, and the children pick up the brushes. Now you can observe this: the teacher takes a long time to grasp the difference between a luminous color and a non-luminous one! He has simply grown too old for it. The child, however, figures it out with remarkable ease; he possesses a wonderful agility in understanding this difference between a luminous and a non-luminous color. One can have the most remarkable experiences with this. I once had the opportunity to tell an outstanding chemist that we were striving to create paintings with luminous colors at the Goetheanum, specifically using plant-based pigments. The person in question then said: “But we can already do that much better today; we already have the means to produce colors that begin to shimmer when it gets dark.” — He didn’t understand at all what was being said; he immediately thought of it in chemical terms. Adults today often have no sense for a luminous color. Children do. Everything works wonderfully, with just a few words, if one simply reads from the child’s nature what the child already possesses. But the guidance must be understanding; it must itself possess artistic sensibility; then the child easily enters into everything one wishes to lead them toward.

[ 17 ] But all of this can only come about if one has a deep sense that school is young life; one must then be familiar with adult life. Therefore, one must have a sense of what one can and cannot do. — I hope no one will take offense at what I am about to say. For example, in the field of anthroposophical pedagogy last year, there was an occasion when we were to demonstrate to the public what is so deeply embedded in our pedagogy: eurythmy. It was demonstrated, but the following happened: In one place, children were first shown performing what they had learned in school regarding eurythmy; and only afterward was an artistic eurythmy performance staged. So it was not presented in such a way that people first gained an understanding of what eurythmy is—that this is eurythmy, and this is how it is introduced into the school. — Instead, by presenting children’s eurythmy first, it was presented in such a way that people didn’t know at all: “Why is that?” —- Imagine if there had been no painting, and one were suddenly to begin showing what children do when they start smearing paint around. Similarly, those who are not part of the anthroposophical movement could not see in the children’s mental image what the aim of anthroposophy and eurythmy is. Something like this only has meaning if eurythmy is first presented as an art form, because then one can see how it fits into life and the significance it holds in the artistic realm. Only then will people recognize the significance of eurythmy for the school. Otherwise, people will say: There are many fads in life today—and they will regard eurythmy as just another one.

[ 18 ] These are the things that must lead us not merely to carry on with narrow-minded pedagogy in the old sense, but to work with a broader perspective—to connect school to life, not to isolate it from life. This is just as important as devising any highly sophisticated method of education. For I must emphasize again and again: what matters is attitude and insight. Of course, it must also be understood that not everything can be perfect right away; so I ask you not to take offense at what I have just said—not even from the anthroposophical side. I acknowledge everything that is done, as here, with such a spirit of self-sacrifice. But if we were not to discuss it in this way, the following might happen: Just as where there is strong light there are also strong shadows, so too, where one strives to spiritualize things, the worst shadows might arise. For the danger there is not smaller than in ordinary philistine circles, but greater. And this is precisely what we need—if we are to be able to cope with what is coming at us in life, which is becoming ever more and more complicated—so that we may become vigilant and attentive to what life demands of us. Today we no longer have those clear traditions that earlier generations carried forward. We can no longer be content with what our forefathers deemed to be right; we must be able to raise our children to exercise their own judgment. To do this, we must free our concepts from the narrowness they have assumed and stand at the very heart of the world’s living, pulsating reality. We must not, therefore, as was done in the past, resort to finding simple concepts with which to explain broad areas of life. Most things in this area are, after all, done in such a way that—even if one does not wish to be pedantic—one tries to characterize things with neat concepts, just as was once done in a Greek philosophical school where one was asked to explain what a human being is. There, the explanation came to this: A human being is a living creature that stands on two legs and has no feathers. — Some definitions given today follow this pattern exactly. And the very next day, after someone had thought deeply about what this fateful word meant, he brought a plucked goose; for that was a creature that stands on two legs and has no feathers, and he had thought that was a human being. This is merely the most extreme example of what you’ll find, for instance, in Goethe’s work, where the little boy in *Götz von Berlichingen* begins to talk about geography and, when he comes to his hometown, describes it as he’s learned from the textbook; he then describes a person who grew up in that town, yet has no idea that this is his own father; so, for all his erudition, he doesn’t recognize his own father, because he learned about him from a book. — Things haven’t gone quite as far as what I once experienced in Weimar, where newspapers are also published; but they’re produced exactly as is customary in small towns: they take newspapers from larger towns, then grab a pair of scissors and cut out the news items they want to include in their own paper. So, for example, on January 22 in Weimar, we read a brief note: “Yesterday, a violent thunderstorm swept through our city.” — But it was a note that had been taken from the *Leipziger Nachrichten*.

[ 19 ] Things like this happen in life, and we are, after all, constantly surrounded by such things. People theorize in abstract terms. For example, they explore the theory of relativity and come to the conclusion that it makes no difference whether one drives to Osterbeek in a car or whether Osterbeek comes toward one. But if someone were to draw a conclusion about reality, they would have to say: When the car is at rest, it does not wear out and the driver does not get tired; in the other case, the opposite occurs. If someone thinks this way, then—without comparing any lines or movements—they will recognize from within what changes their own nature simply by being in motion rather than at rest. Given today’s prevailing way of thinking, it is no wonder that one arrives at a theory of relativity when one turns one’s gaze to what is “in itself.” But if one returns to reality, one will see that what one imagines based on mere relations is not true. Today, whether we are educated or intelligent, we actually live constantly above reality; we live in mental images we have created for ourselves, much like the little boy in *Goetz von Berlichingen*, who does not know his father even though he has described him in a textbook. We do not live in immediate reality.

[ 20 ] But we must bring this into the school: facing immediate reality. We can do this if, above all, we truly recognize the human being and the whole context of the human being. That is why I must say again and again: it is easy to make the claim that children should only be presented with so-called “concrete instruction”—that is, material they can already understand. But this leads to terrible trivialities. I have already mentioned the calculator. But consider the following: At age 8, I accept something without understanding it at all; I know nothing other than what the teacher is saying. But I love the teacher. The teacher is a natural authority figure to me. Because the teacher said it, I accept it and engrave it deep in my heart. I still don’t understand it at age 15. But at age 35, life presents me with something that, as if from wondrous depths of the spirit, brings to the surface precisely what I hadn’t grasped back then at age 8—what I had accepted solely on the authority of my beloved teacher, and because he was that authority for me, it had to be true. Now life brings something to me, and suddenly it dawns on me—and now I understand that earlier experience. All along it has been within me, and now life offers the opportunity to understand it. This is something immensely binding for a person. And actually, one should say: Woe to the person who cannot have those moments when what he once accepted on authority rises up from within him and which he can only now understand! — One simply should not deprive a person of what can later surge enthusiastically from within him and intervene in life.

[ 21 ] But there is something else. I said that one should not impose moral precepts on children between the time they lose their baby teeth and reach puberty; rather, one should ensure that they find the good appealing because it appeals to the teacher, and that they find the bad repulsive because it repels the teacher. Everything in the second period of life should be built upon a fondness for what is good and a distaste for what is evil. Then moral feelings are deeply rooted in the soul; then there is moral delight in what is good and moral distaste for what is evil. — Now puberty is approaching. Just as walking develops in the first seven years of life and speech in the second seven years, so now, with sexual maturity in the third seven years of life, thinking grows to its full significance. It becomes independent. This actually only happens with sexual maturity; it is only then that we truly become capable of judgment. If, at the point when we begin to form thoughts out of an inner urge, we have feelings within us in the manner described, then we have a good foundation for our life of thought, and then we form our own judgments: “I liked this, so I am bound by duty to do it; I disliked that, and it is my duty to refrain from it.” — And what is significant is that this occurs—that duty itself grows out of approval and disapproval, that duty is not instilled, but rather grows out of approval and disapproval. For this is the dawn of true freedom in the human soul. In this, one experiences the freedom that the moral is the deepest, innermost impulse of the individual human soul. If a child has been introduced to morality through natural authority, so that morality lives within their emotional world, then duty emerges from within the person themselves upon reaching sexual maturity. That is what is healthy: in this way, we guide children in the right manner toward what is the experience of individual freedom. — Why do people lack this today? They do not have it because they cannot have it; because before they reach sexual maturity, they are indoctrinated with what is good and evil, and what they should or should not do. But moral instruction that does not take the proper sequence of stages into account desolates the human being, making them as if they were a skeleton of moral commandments, with the various activities of life hanging from it like clothes on a coat rack.

[ 22 ] If all of this is to be consistent throughout life, then a completely different approach to education must be taken. One must understand that a child is one thing from birth until the teeth begin to fall out, another between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, and yet another between puberty and the age of 21. Why does a child do certain things in the period up to age 7? Because the child wants to imitate. It wants to do what those around it are doing. But this must also have life; it must be able to flow into lively activity. A great deal can be done to foster this by accustoming the child to feeling gratitude for what it receives from its surroundings. Gratitude is the child’s fundamental virtue from birth through the change of teeth. If the child can relate to everyone in the outside world with whom it has any connection in such a way that it sees how that person responds with gratitude to what they receive from the outside world; if the child sees such gestures—gestures that point toward gratitude—in everything it perceives in the outside world and everything it wants to imitate, then one is doing a great deal to foster the person’s proper moral foundation. Gratitude is what belongs in the first seven years of life.

[ 23 ] If gratitude has been cultivated in the child during the first stage of life, then it is easy to develop what must govern all actions between the ages of 7 and 14: love. This is the virtue for the second stage of life. And after puberty, duty—as the innermost of human impulses—develops from what one has experienced as love between the loss of baby teeth and puberty. And then the guiding principle for life becomes what Goethe once so beautifully expressed when he asked: What is duty? “Where one loves what one commands of oneself.” We must be led to this. But we will only be led to this if the sequence of stages is present: gratitude—love—duty.

[ 24 ] A few days ago, we saw how things from an earlier phase of life carry over into later ones. In response to a question, I spoke about these things. Now I would like to point out that this also has its benefits, that it must exist. This does not mean, for example, that gratitude should cease at age 7 or love at age 14. But that is precisely the mystery of life: what develops in one epoch can be transformed, intensified, and carry over into later epochs. And we would not be able to carry the good of one epoch over into later epochs if there were not also the possibility of carrying the bad over as well. Education must, however, ensure that the power within a person to carry something from an earlier epoch into a later one is used for the good. To achieve this, we must apply what I said yesterday. In the case of a child, for example, pathological underlying factors may create the possibility that the child will become morally weak later in life. We see that the child does not really take pleasure in what is good, nor does the child really take offense at what is bad; the child does not really want to make progress. Then we try to make use of what lies within every human nature; since love cannot develop properly between the ages of 7 and 14, we try all the more to cultivate gratitude—to instill a great deal of gratitude toward the authority that is taken for granted—and then the situation with love will also improve. If one understands the workings of human nature, one does not proceed by saying: “The child lacks love for what is good and antipathy toward what is evil; I must drill this into him!”—That is not possible. But it comes naturally once gratitude is cultivated. Therefore, one must understand the role that gratitude plays in the moral development of the human being alongside love—that gratitude is a natural consequence of human nature in the early years of life, and that love is what is spiritually active throughout the entire human organism before it manifests outwardly and physically in sexual maturity. For what then asserts itself outwardly is, between the ages of 7 and 14, the deepest principle of human growth and being; it exists and lives within. It is indeed the case—and I may well say so here, where these matters are to be discussed from their very foundations— Once the teacher has come to understand what a pedagogy based on genuine knowledge of the human being is—when, on the one hand, he is fully engaged in such pedagogical work, and, on the other hand, he is fully engaged in fostering the anthroposophical worldview—then one influences the other. For the teacher must work in the school in such a way that he must assume: love works inwardly in the child, and this then becomes outward love in sexuality.

[ 25 ] The anthroposophical educator then comes to the place where his worldview—anthroposophy—is cultivated. Here he hears from those who, through the wisdom of initiation, already know such things: the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I”; between the ages of 7 and 14, the etheric body is primarily active in the physical body; the astral body submerges into the physical and etheric bodies when sexual maturity sets in. But whoever perceives these things clearly—who, in everything he perceives, always perceives something more, the spiritual aspect beyond the physical, and who, when it acts separately, can also perceive it separately—will already sense, beginning in the 11th or 12th year of life in a boy, how the deeper tone resonates in the astral body, a tone that only emerges fully at puberty. This tone is already resonating in the astral body at that early stage. And in the same way, the characteristic that brings about sexual maturity in human beings also appears in the astral body of girls as early as the ages of 11 or 12.

[ 26 ] These things exist, and if one takes them seriously, they shed light on life. One can truly have very special experiences there. I do not wish to withhold such experiences. In 1906, I gave a series of lectures on anthroposophy in Paris to a relatively small group. However, I had tailored my lectures to this group and delivered them with the understanding that it included literary figures, writers, artists, and others who were grappling with very specific questions of our time. Since then, things have changed again; but back then, such matters were part of the questions that interested people—people who get up early in the morning and believe they belong to a circle interested in literary history, the history of the arts, and so on; if you belong to this circle, you wear a tie of this style, and since such-and-such a year, you no longer go to tea parties in a tailcoat or tuxedo. You know this when such topics and similar ones come up during dinner. In the evening, people go to the theater to see plays that deal with contemporary issues; the so-called poets also write such plays. First, there is a person of profound inner depth, from whose heart the great problems spring forth in a sincere, honest way: first, there is a Strindberg. Afterward come those who popularize a Strindberg for the wider audience. And so, when I gave these lectures in Paris, there was much discussion of the very problem that had, shortly before, driven the tragic Weininger to suicide. The problem that emerges in such a childlike yet magnificent way in Weininger’s *Sex and Character* was the issue of the day. After I had discussed the points necessary for understanding this, I explained that every human being possesses one sex in their outer physical body, but carries the other sex within their etheric body; so that one must say: the woman is a man in relation to the etheric body, and conversely, the man is a woman in his etheric body. Therefore, when considered in their entirety, human beings are bisexual; they carry the other sex within themselves. - Now that I am truly in a position to observe how, when something like this is said, people begin to look out from their astral bodies, how they suddenly feel that a problem they have been mulling over for a long time has been resolved—one can see a kind of sudden restlessness—but a pleasant kind of restlessness—in their seats. Where the major problems lie—not merely the trivial feelings of everyday life, but where there is truly a sense of enthusiasm, even if it is often merely “surface-level”—there one sees once again how resolutions emerge from within the person.

[ 27 ] Thus, the anthroposophical teacher always views the great problems as that which, in turn, enables him to remain human at every stage of life—so that when he enters the school, what keeps him fresh and alive does not wither away. It is quite a different matter whether one focuses solely on what is written in the textbooks and teaches that to the children, or whether one steps beyond that and, as a human being, confronts the great perspectives of the world. In that way, one carries what one has absorbed within oneself into the atmosphere with which one enters the classroom to teach.