The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Held before physicians

In respect to particulars you will find it necessary to elucidate what I have to tell you today about eurythmy through your knowledge of physiology and so on. How that can he done will reveal itself to you as if of its own accord, if I may say so. When we look into a spiritual-corporeal process such as that which takes place in eurythmy, we may do no less than to indicate the deeper spiritual-physical connections as well. Thus I would like to draw your attention to the following.

First we must contemplate that extra-human world process which one usually traces only in its details and not in regard to what is actually inwardly active. Just consider what earth formation is, in reality: a formative tendency works from the planetary sphere inward. And furthermore, from what lies without the planetary sphere a formative working into the earth takes place: continuous, radiant cosmic forces revealing themselves in the individual potentialities (“Kraftentitäten”, entities of force) radiating towards the earth.

In this connection we may conceive of these cosmic powers as working centripetally and building up that which is on and in the Earth from without—although they encompass all that I have said about such rays previously as well. The fact is that the metals of the Earth as a whole, for example, are not in essence formed out of some force or another within the Earth, but are actually set into the Earth from the Cosmos. Now these forces that work through the ether can be called formative forces, formative forces working in from outside and not from the planets, for in that case they would work towards the centre; the planets are there for the specific purpose of modifying them, that is, the planetary sphere. Please take note of them in precisely this context: the formative forces. In opposition to them stand those forces in the human being and in the earth which take up those formative forces and make them fast, which assemble them around a point so that the earth can come into being. Those forces which make secure we may thus call the consolidating forces (“Kräfte des Befestigens”) (please see the following diagram, and the one shown on page 81.)

In the human being they are present as the forces that build up the organs plastically, whereas the other forces, the formative forces, have more to do with propelling the organs out of the spiritual-etheric world into the physical world. That is a process which becomes so tangible in the contrast between the propulsive powers of magnesium and the rounding-off forces of fluorine. It is a process active every-where: in the teeth from below upwards and rounding-off at the top, but from front to back as well and from the back forwards, from above to below, rounding-off at the bottom. This process will become directly tangible if you picture to yourself that, in association with the tendency to push something spherical forwards, from without inwards, some-thing is formed which is opposed by a process of spherical formation from below upwards (red, in the following illustration).

Between these two processes is that which mediates: processes of secretion and on the other hand, the absorption of what the other has secreted and so on, that which can be called processes of secretion in the widest sense; then in the final analysis absorption is dependent upon a secretion inwards which is in turn re-absorbed. In between lies thus what can be best called secretory processes.

Such a secretory process becomes tangible when you picture to yourself that on the one side lies what continually wants to secrete carbon (orange, in the illustration) and that which takes it up through respiration from the fore in the formation of carbon dioxide (white).

Behind this such a process of secretion is taking place. When you descend further into the metabolic-limb system, you have a proper process of consolidation. However, this process is present in the other direction as well. You will be able to follow it most tangibly by studying the eye, which is built inwards from without, as embryology demonstrates, but is consolidated from within. The formation is internalized. That is the manner in which the eye develops. It is internalized (see the following drawing: orange).

Thus, as we progress to that which is of soul-spiritual nature in man, to the organs of the soul-spiritual, to the sense-organs, we find that the process of consolidation has become spiritualized, truly ensouled and spiritualized in perception; that is, more or less, the descending process which leads to the formation of. the organs (please refer to the first illustration and to the chart which follows).

Thus we find at the lowermost end the process of sensory perception, objective perception. If this development continues, if it goes further in this direction, then the process of perception encounters the consolidating forces; should it become conscious in this encounter, it will become imagination. If imagination develops further and becomes conscious in encountering the process of secretion, it becomes inspiration. And when inspiration develops further in the direction of the formative forces, collides with them consciously and thus sees through these forces, it becomes intuition. Thus Dne can develop this progression in the life of the soul stage by stage from objective sensory perception to imagination, to inspiration and to intuition.

 Formative forces Intuition Secretory processes Inspiration Consolidation Imagination Perception 

This process which unfolds in the soul is based, however, on the process of coming-into-being. It is in fact, as you can see here, only the inverse of this genesis. One steps out to encounter what has already come into existence, rising into this becoming in the opposite direction. Formation takes place in the descending direction. The human being ascends in the opposite direction; he advances to meet what is coming into being. Thus, what one develops as powers of perception and cognition in imagination, inspiration and intuition always has its counter-activity in the creative powers which express themselves in the formative forces, in the processes of secretion and consolidation.

From all of this you will gather that what is active in the human organism in the opposite direction, in its coming into being, is that into which one ascends when rising in knowledge. You will perceive that in reality what we attain in imagination are the same powers which, without our being conscious of them, reveal themselves in the phenomena of growth, in the plastic phenomena of growth. If we ascend to inspiration, we come upon the forces which inspire man from without inwards in his breathing, which shape him through and through as he breathes, which shape themselves into the plastic forces as they work these forces through, to a degree. And if we ascend to intuition, we rise in reality to the primal mover (“Agens”) who enters into our plastic forms from the world without as substantial being.

You see, in this way we grasp the human being as he takes shape out of the Cosmos. If we now apply the knowledge which we have gained in one way or another through anatomy or physiology and illuminate it with what is given us here, then we begin to understand the organs and their functions. This is an indication of how to understand the organs and their functions. Thus what is always at work plastically in the human being, what permeates and shapes him, lives on the other hand in the movements for the consonants, the unconscious imaginative forces which call forth a permeation of the organism, as I said yesterday. Yesterday's lecture should be of help. Here you can perceive how consonantal eurythmy takes hold of deficient formative powers, deficient plastic forces in the human being and transforms them into something truly sculptural.¹

Let us assume we have a child before us and we see that he is insufficiently formed, that his growth is rampant. What does it mean, when we say that something of a plastic nature is growing uncontrolledly? It means that the plastic is working centrifugally, thus making the head large, and, in doing so, is no longer permitting the head to be permeated in the proper manner with imaginative forces. These must be supplied. Therefore one will let the child do consonantal eurythmy.

Here we have a question about “a two-year-old boy with a large head, who is nevertheless not hydrocephalic and is otherwise apparently healthy.”

Here you have the effective antidote, in properly applied consonantal eurythmy. Here we have arrived at the point at which a thorough observation of the morphology, of the more profound morphological facts, can provide a direct indication for the eurythmic treatment.

Another: “a twelve and three-quarter-year-old boy whose growth in height is distinctly retarded, with no organic findings other than worms; intelligent but intellectually quickly tired.” A most interesting complex of symptoms, all of which indicate that the imaginative forces are insufficent, that the plastic forces in the organs are running rampant because of a lack of inner fictile forces, of plastic soul forces. These plastic forces of the soul are those which destroy parasites. It is no wonder that when these forces are insufficient the child has worms. Thus one should have him do consonantal eurythmy; therein lies the antidote. These associations will provide you with concrete indications of where you can employ eurythmy. Although the phenomena are somewhat camouflaged here, eurythmy will have an extraordinarily positive effect even in such cases, particularly if one complements it medicinally.

Here I have an interesting question that has been presented to me. Naturally I must answer the questions in principle. If complications of any sort should appear, they can later be taken into special consideration as the case demands. However, although it may be necessary to combine something else along with it, the matter has nevertheless been thoroughly dealt with from the side characterized.

“I have as a patient a five-year-old child who lost a great deal of blood as the result of a bullet wound suffered in the outbreaks of violence; two years ago a deformation of the joints set in. These are things which could lead to anaemia and similar conditions in adults. How could one help this child therapeutically?”

Here you have a deformation of the joints. That is an outwardly-working tendency of plastic forces that are unable to remain within. Thus these forces ray outwards, leaving the human being instead of working within him as they should. They will be reflected in the most effective manner precisely through the practice of consonantal eurythmy. In doing consonantal eurythmy you will call forth the objectively effective imaginations which offset the deformations. As the manner in which the question is placed quite correctly indicates, people in the future will in general tend to deform in the most manifold ways, because they will no longer be able to build up the normalizing human form out of the involuntarily active forces. Man will become free; he will gradually become free even in respect to the building up of his own form. However, he must then be able to do something with this freedom. Ile must go on to engender imaginations which continuously counter the deformation.

Now as to the other; you see that we are here concerned with a dearth of objective imagination. We could have to do with a deficiency of objective inspiration as well, which would express itself in a deformation of the rhythmic system, if I may call it that. In the case of a deformation of the rhythmic system, the objective inspiration which goes inwards does not encounter the circulatory rhythm in the proper manner. One can work towards a normalization of the situation by practising vowels in eurythmy. In eurythmy the vowels affect internal irregularities which are precisely not accompanied by morphological changes, even as consonantal eurythmy affects deformations and the tendency to deformation.

As I said earlier, it may nevertheless be necessary to render aid when something appears in particularly radical form, as in the case of the deformations of the joints that we just discussed. There it would he necessary to come to the assistance of the consonantal eurythmic process therapeutically. This consonantal process works by stimulating through its imagination the inner breathing of the organs orientated from without inwards and lying on the far side, of the intestinal wall: the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, and so on. When a person does consonantal eurythmy, it is a fact that particularly the back of the head, the lungs, the liver and the kidneys begin to sparkle and flash; something is really there that indicates the reaction of the spirit and soul to what is _lone outside in the consonants. Man becomes a shining being in these organs, and the movements that are carried out are in continuous opposition to the luminous movements within. In particular, there appears an entire luminous reproduction of the excretory process of the kidneys, through certain consonantal movements. One has a picture of the excretory process of the kidneys in this luminous process which comes about as the result of consonantal eurythmy. And that works over into the unconscious imagination. The whole process in which this part begins to shine is the same process that I described as being especially under the influence of copper. It is the same process. Here one must draw the attention of the physicians to the fact that there are people with particular forms of illness. These forms of illness were brought to my attention again yesterday when I was shown some painted pictures that were very much admired in some quarters at least, and was asked whether they were particularly occult. In a certain sense, of course, they are occult, but it is extraordinarily difficult to speak to people about these things, for they are an objectively-fixed kidney-efflorescence; they are the objectively-fixed process of the excretion of urine. When in the case of persons predisposed to this illness the process of urinary excretion becomes an abnormal, luminous process, that is, when the process of excretion falters—a purely metabolic illness—the kidneys then begin to shine. When this inwardly directed clairvoyance then sets in, people begin to draw wildly. What they produce will be aesthetic, in an outer formal manner beautiful in every case. The colours applied will be beautiful. But, of course, people are not content when one says to them, “Yes, there you have painted something very beautiful; it is in fact your obstructed excretion of urine.” I can assure you that the obstructed urinary process and suppressed sexual desires—which lead as well in a certain manner to metabolic irregularities—are often presented by people of particularly mystical nature as mystically profound drawings and paintings. In much of what makes its appearance in the world in this manner one should recognize the symptoms of pathological abnormalities in the human being that are just bearable still.

As you see, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is not mysticism as mysticism is commonly understood, since it fosters no illusions about matters such as we have just characterized. Quite the contrary: it investigates just such matters. People take exception to one for doing so, however. They resent my having gone so far in a public lecture as to indicate that the lovely poetry of Mechthild von Magdeburg, for example, or of Saint Theresa, are the inspirational reflexes of processes arising from repressed sexuality. Here, of course, the things are not drawn or painted, but poetically expressed. Naturally it is not pleasant for people to hear Mechthild von Magdeburg or Saint Theresa described as personalities with a strong sexuality which they restrained precisely because it was too strong for them, that certain metabolic-circulatory processes resulted from this retension, and that the reactions to this in turn appeared in such a form that they were fixed in very beautiful poetry. Indeed, this phenomenon leads extraordinarily deep into the mysteries of existence, when considered in a higher light. However, one must be able to rise to such an interpretation. And, therefore, one must have at least a notion of these peculiar processes which light up as inward processes when eurythmy is done outwardly. And in the moment when what is concealed within the poetry becomes eurythmy, as I showed you yesterday—when a beautiful poem is read and the eurythmy corresponding to it is done as we saw yesterday in vowels or consonants—then the one thing crosses the other; then an inward silent speaking joins what is carried out outwardly in movements in the person doing eurythmy as well. And when this process does not exude in sultry poetry but takes instead the course of accompanying beautiful poetry as eurythmy, then that which takes place in the human being does not become a recording of mysticism, but a definite process of healing for the human being. Thus one can say that when one lets the patients do eurythmy in such a manner that one continually brings to his attention: listen carefully, bring intensely into consciousness the sound that you hear, the relationships of the sentence you hear, to which you are doing eurythmy; then one will initiate his ascent to the outward formative forces, to the objectively intuiting powers. When one wants to affect all that has remained in the human being from what no longer took place between birth and death, but what materialism calls inheritance—the greater part of which, however, is carried over from the pre-existent spiritual soul-life—if one wants to affect what can be called congenital defects and so on, then one will do well to work—particularly during the course of youth—again and again through eurythmy by challenging the person doing it: make very clear to yourself what you hear outwardly! By this method one can drive out all the tendencies to fix inwardly what would like to arise and take form in something like mystical poetry or mystical drawing. Precisely that will be connected to the beautiful outer poem. It is the reverse process. A true mystic knows that that of an abnormal nature which is reflected by the human being as beauty always has a questionable side. By contrast, one cannot claim that, when what is beautiful in the outer world is experienced inwardly, it appears as a particularly magnificent and beautiful picture: on the contrary, it becomes schematic and thereby abstract; abstract as if it were sketched; abstract, as a drawing is abstract. That is precisely what is healthy, however, and what is desired. The beautiful historic process would not have taken place, but if for example Mechthild von Magdeburg had been instigated to do eurythmy to good poetry, her entire mystic fate would have been spared her. Naturally one can say here that a point has been reached where in a certain sense good and evil cease to exist; one enters into the amoral sphere of Nietzche, beyond good and evil. Of course, one cannot be so philistine as to claim that all the Mechthilds von Magdeburg should be eradicated. On the other hand you may be certain that from the super-sensible worlds care will be taken that the corresponding connections with these super-sensible worlds nevertheless remain, when man attempts to prevent this tendency from undue proliferation.

Although it is quite late, I would still like to go into a few matters in order to perhaps bring some clarification. I would like to start with the following question:

“Couldn't the therapeutic eurythmy exercises be reinforced by rational breathing exercises? It needn't necessarily be Hatha-Yoga.”

To this I would like to make the following remark. In our times, and within the direction that the continually progressing human nature has taken, rational breathing exercises, as a reinforcement of the eurythmic exercises, can in fact only be treated in the following manner. It will be observed that a tendency towards a modification in the rhythm of respiration arises of its own accord under the influence of the vowels in eurythmy. One will notice this quite clearly. Here one finds oneself in the uncomfortable situation that one should avoid stereotyping, avoid saying the one thing or another in general, but should first observe what is to be done. One should concern oneself in each individual case with the breathing of the person in whose healing one is attempting to be of assistance by means of eurythmic vowel exercises (in accordance with the diagnosis given, whatever it may be); one should observe the modification of the breathing and subsequently make the patient aware that he can consciously pursue this tendency himself. We are no longer human beings like the ancient orientals, who would go the reverse route and influence the entire human being by way of a prescribed method of breathing. This is something which today leads of necessity, in every case, to inner shocks, no matter how it is prescribed; it should really be avoided. We just have to learn to notice what kind of effect eurythmy itself, especially vocalic eurythmy, has on the breathing process. And then we can consciously continue the tendency which arises eurythmically, in the individual case. You will certainly observe that this respiratory process will be carried on individually, continued in varying manners in different people.

My esteemed friends, those are more or less the things that it is possible to answer at the moment. We have no real possibility of dealing with a number of matters that have got bogged down due to the shortness of time. In closing, my dear friends. I want to warn you that you must be prepared that your medical colleagues in the world will wage their wars no less intensely when they become aware of your bringing something of our sort to bear, and that you will have need of the penetrating power of conviction to weaken what will confront you. In no case, of course, may what you are confronted with lead you to neglect these matters; we may permit ourselves no illusions about those antagonistic forces we arouse.

At the end of this course I would as well like to state that, in order to make the movement possible, as it should now be inaugurated in the medical field, I will adhere everywhere to the policy of not involving myself directly with the patients in the therapeutic process, but will discuss and consult only with the physicians themselves. Thus you will always be in the position to refute any allegations that I myself interfere in any way in an unjustified manner in the therapy. I have already mentioned this at the end of the last course. This has been made extraordinarily difficult for me even from the anthroposophical side—this cannot he passed over in silence—as people naturally make all possible demands in this direction. It is also definitely the case that among anthroposophists the tendency exists, not only not to rise above egoism, but sometimes to become even more egoistic than normal people are. Then, when the occasion arises it is often a matter of complete indifference to the person, what the welfare of the movement may entail; that the welfare of the movement is dependent in each individual instance upon a rejection of the practice of what the world outside terms quackery; that a healing process should take place in the whole of medicine and should not be disturbed by the demands arising from an individual's personal aspirations. People will make it difficult, but it must be carried through in this direction, since we will only be able to succeed in this area when we can stand up to the outer world—as we are otherwise able to, in the anthroposophical movement, insofar as matters are conducted with understanding and not bowdlerized by people without understanding. Simply by virtue of knowing what is going on in the anthroposophical movement we must be in the position to say: what is being said there is certainly a lie, it is beyond doubt an invention. We must simply always be in the position to say that, in certain cases. And we come to be able to say that, when we are all inwardly initiated in the contents of matters such as those to which I have drawn attention here: that I myself do not intervene in the therapeutic process, but that within the anthroposophical movement the doctors are responsible for the therapy of the patients.

Having said what was necessary, I want to add nothing more than the wish that the stimuli—which, in this course in particular, have often remained mere indications—may work on in you and become active in the appropriate manner for the welfare of humanity. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to carry on in some manner what we have already twice begun; in any case we will make an effort to carry on with it. With this wish, my dear friends, I will close these contemplations, in the hope that our deeds in these directions may be in accord with our wishes. It was very satisfying to see you here. It will be a satisfying feeling to think back on these days here, which it was your desire to spend together towards the enrichment of medical science. The thoughts that hold us together will accompany you, my dear friends, on the paths that you will wander, to transform into deeds what we attempted to activate, to begin with here, as thoughts.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner uses in every case here the word “plastic”.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

My dear Friends,

We have, as you know, quite a number of children whose development has been arrested and whom we have now to educate—or again, to heal, in so far as this is possible. There are several of these children here in the Clinic at Arlesheim, and you have a number also at Lauenstein.¹ We shall in these lectures try to deal with our subject in such a way that wherever possible our study leads straight on to the practical application. Then, when Frau Dr. Wegman puts some of the children at our disposal for demonstration—for this is permissible among ourselves—we shall be able also to discuss certain cases with the child immediately in front of us. To begin with, however, I want to speak more in general about the nature of such children.

It is obvious, in the first place, that a thorough knowledge of education for healthy children should already be possessed by one who wants to educate incompletely developed children. For the very things we notice in incompletely developed children, in children who are suffering from some illness or abnormality, can also be discerned in the so-called normal life of soul; only, they show themselves there less plainly, and in order to recognize them we must be able to practise a more intimate and close observation. In some corner of the life of soul of every human being lurks a quality, or tendency, that would commonly be called abnormal. It may be no more than a slight tendency to flights of thought, or an incapacity to place the words at the right intervals in speaking, so that either the words fall over each other or else the listener could go for a walk between them.

Irregularities of this kind—and they are to be found also in the life of will and of feeling—can be noticed, at all events to some slight degree, in the majority of human beings. We shall have something to say about them later on, because for anyone who sets out to deal, educationally or medically, with serious irregularities, these slighter ones will be of importance as symptoms. And one must, you know, be able to make one's own careful study of symptoms, in the sense in which the doctor speaks of symptoms by which he recognises illnesses. He speaks indeed also of the complex of symptoms which enables him to take a survey of the disease-process; but he never confuses the complex of symptoms with what is really the essential nature and content of the disease itself. Similarly, in the case of an incompletely developed child, we must regard what can be observed in his life of soul simply as symptoms.

Psychography, as it is called—descriptive psychology—is really nothing but symptomatology, the study and knowledge of symptoms. When psychiatry today limits itself to describing abnormal phenomena of thinking, feeling and willing, this means no more than that it has made progress in accurate description of complexes of symptoms; and as long as it cannot get beyond this point, it is quite incapable of penetrating to the essential nature of the illness. It is, however, most important that we should be able to do this, to perceive what the “being ill” really means. And in this connection I want to ask your attention to the following. You will find it helpful. Try to grasp it and hold it clearly before your minds.

Suppose we have here² the physical body of the human being, as it confronts us while the little child is growing. Then we have the life of soul, rising up, as it were coming forth from this physical body. This life of soul, which can show itself in varied expressions and manifestations, may be normal or it may be abnormal. But now the only possible grounds we can have for speaking of the normality or abnormality of the child's life of soul, or indeed of the life of soul of any human being, is that we have in mind something that is normal in the sense of being average. There is no other criterion than the one that is customary among people who abide by ordinary conventions; such people have their ideas of what is to be considered reasonable or clever, and then everything that is not an expression of a “normal” life of soul (as they understand it) is for them an abnormality. At present there is really no other criterion. That is why the conclusions people come to are so very confused. When they have in this way ascertained the existence of “abnormality”, they begin to do—heaven knows what!—believing they are thereby helping to get rid of the abnormality, while all the time they are driving out a fragment of genius! We shall get nowhere at all by applying this kind of criterion, and the first thing the doctor and teacher have to do is to reject it and get beyond the stage of making pronouncements as to what is clever or reasonable, in accordance with the habits of thought that prevail today. Particularly in this domain we must refrain from jumping to conclusions, and simply look at things as they are. What have we actually before us in the human being?

Let us look right away from this life of soul, which emerges only by degrees and in which a part is often played by teachers—concerning whom perhaps the less said the better!—let us look away from this life of soul, and then we find, behind the bodily nature, another life of soul, a spirit soul, which makes its descent, between the time of conception and birth, from the spiritual worlds. For the first-mentioned life of soul is not that in man which descends from spiritual worlds. The life of soul which descends from the spiritual worlds is something quite different, and is not, in the ordinary way, perceptible to earthly consciousness. This whole life of soul that comes down from the spiritual worlds takes possession of the body which is being built up from the sequence of generations in accordance with heredity. And if this soul-life is of such a kind that it tends, when it lays hold of the liver-substance, to form a diseased liver, or if it finds in the physical and the etheric body some inherited tendency to disease, which gives rise to a feeling of illness, then disease will make its appearance. Similarly, any other organ or nexus of organs may be faultily inserted into what comes down from the world of soul-and-spirit. When the connection has been made, when the union has come about between what comes down and what is inherited, when this entity of soul-and-body has been formed, then there arises—but even then no more than as a reflection in a mirror—that which we know ordinarily as our life of soul, as it manifests in thinking, feeling and willing. This soul life that manifests in thinking, feeling and willing is, however, as we said, no more than a reflection, it is really just like a reflection in a mirror. It is all obliterated when we fall asleep. The really permanent soul-life is behind; it makes its descent and passes through repeated earth-lives. And if we ask where it is in man, the answer is: It has its seat in the organisation of the body. How is this to be understood?

Let us think first of the human being in his three systems: nervous system, rhythmical system and metabolism-limb system. You will understand me when I say that the nerves-and-senses system is localised principally in the head; we can therefore speak—although, of course, diagrammatically only—of the head system when we are referring to the nerves-and-senses system. This is more literally correct in the case of the very young child, where the upbuilding function of the nerves-and-senses system proceeds from the head and works thence into the whole organism. The nerves-and-senses system, then, is localised in the head. It is a synthetic system. What do I mean by that? It brings together all the activities of the organism. In the head is contained, in a sense, the whole human being. When we speak of hepatic activity—and we ought really to speak always of the activity of the liver, for what we see as liver is nothing but a liver process that has become fixed—this liver activity is, naturally, entirely in the lower body; but for each such nexus of functions there is a corresponding activity in the head. Here, shall we say, is the liver activity. And there is a correspondence to this liver activity in a particular activity in the human head or brain. Here in the lower body, the liver is relatively separated from the other organs, from kidneys, stomach and so on. But in the brain everything flows together, the hepatic activity flows together with the other activities; so that the head is the great synthesizer of everything that is going on in the organism. And the effect of all this synthesized activity is to set up a destructive process, a process of breaking down. Substance falls away.

Whilst we have thus in the head a synthesizing process, in the whole of the rest of the organism, and especially in the metabolism-and-limbs system, we have an analysing process; here, in contrast to the head, everything is kept separate. Whereas in the head, the renal activity takes place together with the intestinal activity, in the rest of the organism the several activities are held apart. In the head, however, everything flows together, it is all synthesized.

Now this flowing together—accompanied as it is by a continual falling away of substance, like rain—this synthetical activity of the head lies at the basis of all our thought activity. For what has to happen in order that man may be able to think? That which enters into man from out of the realm of soul and spirit, enabling him to come forth and be active in the world—this soul-and-spirit nature of his has to be endowed, in the region of the head, with the synthesizing function and so be capable of synthesizing in the right way the inherited substance; then this harmoniously synthesized hereditary substance can become a mirror. When, with the descent of soul and spirit, the synthesizing activity begins to take place in the head, the head becomes a mirror; the outer world is reflected in it, and this produces the thinking that we ordinarily observe. We must therefore distinguish between two functions or activities of thinking: there is first the one which takes its course behind the realm of the perceptible, and builds the brain—this one is the permanent element in human thinking; and then there is the thinking function that is not real in itself but only a reflection. This latter function is obliterated every time we fall asleep; it subsides as soon as we stop thinking.

Another part of what comes down from the realm of spirit and soul builds up the system of metabolism and limbs—analytically, building there organs which are separate one from another and have each their own clearly distinguishable outlines. If you set out to study the whole human body with its several clearly distinguishable outlines, then in this body you find liver, lungs, heart and so on. With all of these the metabolism-and-limbs system is connected. The rhythmic system we do not see; everything which is filled with physical substance belongs to the system of limbs and metabolism; even what we can see of the brain is metabolism. Now it is these single, analytically built-up organs that lie at the basis of the whole life of will in the human being, just as the synthesizing activity lies at the basis of thinking. Whatever we have in us in the way of organs is the foundation for our life of will.

And now let us think of a human being who has arrived at the stage of being “grown-up”. What has happened to him while he has been living his earthly life? He reached the age of seven and got his second teeth, he grew to be fourteen years old and attained puberty, finally he reached the age of twenty-one, when the consolidation of his soul-life took place. If we want to have any understanding at all of the development of the child, we must clearly distinguish between the body a human being has who has passed through the change of teeth, and the body of a very young child who has not yet experienced the change of teeth. As a matter of fact, what can be observed by comparing these two outstanding examples, is happening continuously. The body changes with each year that passes. We are perpetually thrusting something out from our body; a streaming outwards, a centrifugal impulse is at work all the time, pushing the body out. The consequence is that the body of man is completely renewed every seven or eight years. This renewal is, however, particularly significant about the time of the change of teeth, about the seventh year. For what reason?

The body which we have from birth till the change of teeth is, in a sense, nothing else than a model that we take over from our parents; it contains the forces of heredity, our forefathers have helped to build it. In the course of the first seven years we thrust off this body. And what have we then? A completely new body comes into being; the body that man has after the change of teeth is not built up by the forces of heredity, but entirely by the spirit-and-soul which has descended. The human being has his body of inherited substance until the change of teeth, and no longer; but while he is thrusting off this body, he builds up a new body, working from out of his own individuality. Thus only since the change of teeth have we had what we may call our own body. But the inherited body is used as a model; and according as the life of spirit-and-soul is strong or weak, will it either be in a position to proceed in a more individual direction when confronted with the inherited form, or be subject to the inherited form—in which case the soul will be compelled to shape the second body like the first, which was shaped by the parents. What is usually adduced in the theory of heredity is really nonsense. For it is assumed that the laws that underlie man's growth up to the change of teeth simply continue into later life; whereas the truth is, that the influence of heredity has to be reckoned with only until the change of teeth, and no further; the individuality then comes in and builds the second body.

We must therefore distinguish, when speaking of a child, between the body of heredity and the individual body which is its successor. The individual body—and this body alone can truthfully be called the personal body of the human being—develops by degrees. Between the seventh and fourteenth years the very strongest activity of which the individuality is capable goes forward. Either, the individuality conquers during this period the forces of heredity, and then it can be observed in the child that, after the change of teeth, he begins to work his way out of the forces of heredity—the fact will be clearly perceptible, and we teachers must take note of it—or, the individuality is completely subject to the forces of heredity, to what is contained in the model, with the result that the hereditary likeness to the parents simply continues beyond the seventh year. But it all depends, you see, upon the individuality, not upon the forces of heredity. Suppose I am an artist and you give me something to copy and I change it very considerably. Just as little as I can say that you are responsible for my picture, just so little can it be said that a person has acquired through heredity the body he bears from the seventh year onward. This truth we must master thoroughly, and then be able to know for ourselves in any particular case how strongly the individuality is working.

Between the seventh and fourteenth years every human being passes through a process of growth and development which expresses, as strongly as in his case is possible, the individuality he has brought down with him. In this period of his life the child is thus comparatively shut off from the external world; and we teachers have opportunity to watch during these years the wonderful unfolding of the forces of the individuality. But now, if this development were to continue after the fourteenth year, if the human being were to go on into later life with nothing further than this unfolding of individuality, he would become a person who was perpetually refusing and rejecting everything that approached him, a person utterly without interest in the world around him. That this does not happen is due to the fact that, during the aforesaid period, he is all the time building his third body, which manifests at puberty, and this third body is built up to accord with—to bear right relation to—the forces in the earthly environment. The relation of the sexes is not the whole thing; the exaggerated importance given to it is just a consequence of our materialistic turn of mind. In reality, all connections with the outer world which begin to make their appearance at puberty are fundamentally of the same nature. We should really speak, therefore, not of sexual, but of earthly maturity. And under earthly maturity we have to include the maturity of the senses, the maturity of the breathing—and another such sub-division will also be sexual maturity. This gives the true picture of the situation. The human being, then, reaches earthly maturity. He begins to take again into himself what is outside and foreign to him; he acquires the faculty of being sensitive and not indifferent to his environment. Before this time, he is not susceptible to the other sex, neither is he susceptible to his whole environment. Thus does the human being form and develop his third body, which is active in him until the beginning of the twenties.

What descended from the spiritual world reached a kind of end at the time of the change of teeth; but it has continued to work, right until the twentieth year. It has already taken form in the organs which are now there, and has given the human being individual maturity, and earthly maturity. Suppose that now some abnormality shows itself in the life of soul, which reflects—and is in conformity with—the structure of the organs, and is conditioned by the whole development of the human being. We shall then manifestly have an abnormality of soul, that has come about in this way. But if, after the human being has passed his twenty-first year, an abnormality appears in the liver or in some other organ, this organ is by then so much “on its own” and so detached, that the will—in its inner “soul” aspect—can keep itself independent of it. This is less and less possible the further one goes back into the years of childhood. But in a grown person the soul-life has become relatively independent; the organs already have a definite direction, and the oncoming of illness in an organ will not work so strongly upon the soul-life, and can therefore be treated simply as a disease in that organ. In the very young child, however, everything is still working together; a diseased organ still works into the life of soul—and very actively.

The diseases usually diagnosed by our modern pathology are the cruder illnesses; the subtler illnesses are not really accessible to histology. These lie in the fluids that permeate an organ, such as the liver, for instance; in the movement of the fluids—or even of the air—through that organ. The warmth permeating the organ is also of quite special significance for the life of soul. If therefore we are dealing with a child who shows evidence of a defect in the will, the first thing we must do is to ask ourselves: with what organ is the defect in the will connected? Is there some organ showing signs of degeneration or of illness, with which we can connect the defect in the will? That is the really important question.

A defect in the thinking is not of such tremendous importance. Most defects are really defects in the will; for even when you find a defect in the thinking, you must look carefully to see to what extent this defect in thinking is really a defect in will: When someone thinks too rapidly or too slowly, the thoughts themselves may be quite correct; the trouble is that the will which works in the dove-tailing of the thoughts into each other is faulty. We must be able to discover in all such cases how far the will is a factor. One can really only be sure that there is a defect in thinking when, independently of the will, deformations of thought, sense-delusions, make their appearance. These then arise quite unconsciously in the human being in the process of relating himself to the outer world. The mental picture itself becomes irregular, or we have something like “fixed ideas”, where the very fact that they are fixed ideas lifts them out of the sphere of the will. It is therefore most important we should take pains to discern whether in a particular case we have to do with a defect in the will or a defect in the thinking. Defects in thinking fall for the most part into the strictly medical domain. In the education of incompletely developed children, we have mainly to do with defects of the will.

And now look how the entire being of man plays into his development! You can appreciate this from the description we have been giving. Take the first seven years. There may be defects due to heredity. It is during this period that such defects come particularly into consideration. But now, a hereditary defect should not be regarded in the terribly mistaken way in which it is regarded by modern science; it does not fall to our lot by chance, but as a karmic necessity. Out of our own lack of knowledge—in the spiritual world, of course—we have chosen a defective body, one that is defective as the result of the generations. The existence of defective forces of heredity means that before conception there was a lack of knowledge of the human organisation. Before a human being comes down to Earth, he must have an exact knowledge of the human organism; otherwise he cannot enter into this organism in the right way during the first seven years, neither can he transform it rightly. The knowledge about the inner organisation of man which we acquire between death and a new birth is infinite in comparison with the scraps of knowledge that have been acquired by external observation and are to be found in the physiology or histology of today. (As for the latter, it really amounts to nothing at all!) The knowledge which we have between death and a new birth and which then sinks down into the body, and is forgotten because it sinks down, a knowledge that does not direct itself, with the help of the senses, to the outer world—this knowledge is immeasurably great; it is however impaired if, in an earlier life, we neglected to develop interest in our surroundings or were prevented from doing so.

Suppose one day a civilisation were to arise that confined human beings in rooms, keeping them there from morning till evening, so that they were debarred from taking any interest at all in the outer world. What would be the result? These human beings would of course by such a process be precluded from acquiring any knowledge of the outer world; and this would mean that when they passed afterwards through death and came into the spiritual world, they would be insufficiently equipped for getting to know the human organism in this spiritual world (where all is contained); with the result that when they descended again to Earth, they would come down with far less knowledge than one who had in his previous life acquired the faculty for looking out upon his surroundings with free, open perception.

There is another secret connected with this. You go through the world. You think perhaps, as you go through the world, that a single day is of little importance. And so it is for ordinary consciousness, but not for that which is building the unconscious within this ordinary consciousness. If for one single day, as you go through the world, you observe the world intently and carefully, then this gives you already the preliminary condition for knowledge of all that is contained in the body of man. For what is outer world in Earthly life is spiritual inner world in life beyond the Earth. And we shall have to speak further of the results that cannot but ensue from our present civilisation, and of how it comes about that children are born defective. Those human beings who live shut off from the world today will all of them at some time or other come down with a lack of knowledge of the human organism, and they will choose ancestors who would otherwise have remained barren. It will be precisely those parents who tend to beget sick or feeble bodies who will be chosen, while those who would be capable of producing good bodies will remain sterile. Yes, it is actually so: it depends upon the whole development of a particular epoch, how a generation, when it descends again to birth, will be formed and built.

When we look at a young child, we must see what it is in this child that has come from the previous earthly life. We must understand why he chooses organs that are diseased in consequence of the forces of heredity; and again, why he works himself into this body with an incompletely developed individuality. Think of the many possibilities that exist for a child, in this first period up to the change of teeth, owing to the fact that what has come down is not always quite able to cope with what it finds before it. There is the possibility, let us say, of the child having a good model that has been well developed in the liver; but because the individuality is incapable of understanding what is contained in the liver, the development of the same (upon the model provided) during the second life-period is incomplete, and we have, in consequence, a very significant defect of will. Precisely in a case where the development of the liver has not been complete in this second period, has not been in accordance with the good development of the model, we find a defect in the will. The child has will, but does not get to the point of carrying it out; the will remains in the thinking. As soon as ever the child has begun to do something, he immediately begins to will something else. The will gets “stuck”, it is transfixed. For you must know that the liver is not merely the organ modern physiology describes; it is pre-eminently the organ that gives the human being the courage to transform a deed which has been thought of into an accomplished deed.

Imagine a man who sees a tram about to start, and knows that he has to go to Basle, but at the last minute cannot get into the tram. There are people like this! Something holds him back, he does not reach the point of getting in. This kind of stoppage of the will may sometimes reveal itself in most curious ways. But wherever it occurs, there is invariably a subtle defect of the liver. The liver is the mediator which enables an idea that has been resolved upon, to be transformed into an action carried out by the limbs. In point of fact, every organ is there in the body for the purpose of acting as mediator for something to come about.

I was once told about a certain young man who had an illness of this kind. He would be waiting for a tram; but when the tram came, he would suddenly stop short and not get in. Nobody knew why, he did not know himself. He simply stood there, rooted to the spot. What was the cause of this condition? It was a very complicated affair. The young man's father was a philosopher. He had divided the faculties of the soul, in a rather singular manner, into ideas, judgments (or conclusions) and the forces of “sympathy” and “antipathy”. He did not reckon the will among the powers of the soul. The will was omitted in his enumeration—from sheer desire on his part, to be honest and not to put forward more than revealed itself clearly to his consciousness. He carried this to such a point that it became perfectly natural to him to have no mental concept of the will at all. Then, at a comparatively advanced age in life, he had a son. By perpetually ignoring the will he, the father, had implanted into the liver an inclination not to transform subjective intentions into deed. This came out in the son as an illness! And now you can see why the individuality of the son chose this man for his father. The individuality of the son had no understanding of how to cope with the inner organisation of the liver; so he chose a constitution in which he need not trouble himself about the liver, a constitution in which the liver was lacking in the very function he had himself failed to bring down. You have here a very striking instance of the need to look also into karma, if we want to understand the child.

This is what I wanted to say to begin with, and tomorrow at the same hour we will continue.

• 1. The first two anthroposophical homes for handicapped children.
• 2. A drawing was made.

My dear Friends,

It is, as you know, my dear friends, our intention to work things out here from their foundations, in order then to pass on afterwards to the practical side. I called your attention yesterday to the fact that the ordinary, superficial life of soul has to be regarded as a complex of symptoms, and no more. It follows from this that, if we want to get at the real state of affairs that lies behind a so-called mental illness or mental weakness in some child, modern methods of approach are quite inadequate, for they can only describe how things are in this superficial soul-life, without being able to lead on to what lies deeper—that is to say, to the region where, as we saw yesterday, the real life of soul is working. We cannot here enter into the question of how mental illnesses in grown-up people should be dealt with (there are indeed always, as you know, problems of many kinds connected with that), but we do want, in this course, to make a thorough study of what it is possible to do with children.

Before going further into the subject, I would like to read you an article from this newspaper that gives a crude example of how misleading an observation of the superficial life of soul can be. (I use the word “superficial” in the sense of locality, not in a derogatory sense.) It is an example that will have special significance for you, in view of the tasks that you are undertaking.

A man of the name of Wulffen,¹ who was once Public Prosecutor, has made a study, from the standpoint of criminal psychology, of all kinds of mental abnormalities, and has written big books on the subject. How does he reach his conclusions? For he obviously does not take his start from professional medicine. In his capacity as Public Prosecutor he naturally became familiar with a wide field of abnormalities in the life of soul, and afterwards at a more mature age, he set out to acquire a somewhat miscellaneous knowledge of medicine. He then combined his experience in his profession with his subsequent reading, and evolved a theory which is nothing else than the inevitable outcome of the so-called “scientific” hypotheses of today. For either we take this modern scientific point of view seriously, in which case we are bound eventually to come to the conclusions arrived at by Wulffen, or we do not take it seriously, and then nothing remains but to take our start from Anthroposophy. An intermediate way can never be anything but a questionable compromise.

Wulffen recently gave a lecture in Zürich dealing with the subject of criminal psychology, in which he spoke about abnormality in the life of the soul. It is important that we should pay attention to what is said in such a lecture, for we are in fact in these days continually coming up against the very same kind of thing. If you set out to think about any knowledge you have gained from looking into some modern scientific book, or into any book that is based on the scientific way of thinking, you will find it full of the forms and modes of thought which this man Wulffen voices in a particularly radical way. And you really ought to know whither modern science must inevitably lead when it begins to investigate the field of abnormal soul-life. Before I read the press notice let me tell you that Wulffen himself is a much more able man, and much more correct in his statements, than the journalist who is reporting his lecture. The journalist can only make fun of it, which he is free to do, since he has still the public behind him—thanks be!—in his prejudice against psychiatry and criminal psychology. The tone in which the report is written need not therefore concern you; the journalist, as I said, is not a man of much ability and can do no more than ridicule the whole thing. He has, however, no idea that his jests are a hit at modern science rather than at Wulffen! For if the science upon which Wulffen takes his stand were honestly adhered to, its representatives in other fields of knowledge would have to speak in the very same way as he does. And now let us read this press notice—for it really does concern us. It is entitled: “Schiller according to the Psycho-Analysis of the Public Prosecutor”. It should rather be called: “Friedrich Schiller, according to the Psycho-Analysis of present-day Psychology or Psycho-pedagogy”.

Last Friday, 29th February, I924, the Public Prosecutor Dr. E. W. Wulffen, a man known and respected far outside his immediate profession, took severely to task the penniless Swabian, Fritz Schiller (at one time Professor of History in Jena and the author of several revolutionary writings) in a brilliantly constructed lecture on “Criminal Psychology and Friedrich Schiller”. He achieved among the large number of listeners belonging to the Zürich Lawyers' Union a success all the more lasting because, on account of death, the accused was unable to be present at the meeting; the utmost he could do was perhaps to point with an invisible hand to what he had written during his lifetime.

Wullfen's arguments were most effective. The proofs adduced were irrefutable. The lecturer had even confiscated—I mean, had read—Schiller's private correspondence. And, lo and behold, thanks to Dr. Wulffen's help, scales fell from the eyes of the audience. Our people's love for Schiller, youth's adoration for him, were laid bare in all their ugly roots. Schiller is popular, it seems, on account of his innate cruelty which makes wallowing in the gloomy splendor of the horrible come natural to him, and causes him to write ballads like “Die Kindesmörderin”, etc., which are evidence enough of a cruelty that is continually intensified by Schiller's struggle with his own sick body. And then his tragedies, which stimulate fear and compassion in the spectators why are they so effective on the stage? Because they appeal to latent criminal qualities in the public and enable the audience to enjoy a safe outlet for dangerous propensities ...

It is true that in spite of this overwhelming load of proof Wulffen concedes to Schiller certain redeeming features. There is his feeling for freedom, which, nursed by the suppression he laboured under in earlier years (associated, as it was in him, with an inferiority complex) suddenly flares up in “The Robbers”, and is then gradually purified and ennobled, until finally in “Wilhelm Tell” we have the glorification of a revolution that is founded on order. For the rest, Schiller's attitude to good and evil is seen to be the outcome of aesthetic points of view.

Thus are the arteries which feed Schiller's poetry quickly detected by Dr. Wulffen and defined; they are—cruelty and the urge for freedom. The struggle with these impulses, which Schiller lived out in his poetry—this it was, so we are assured, that led him along the path to perfection.²

So there was, then, in Schiller an “inferiority complex”—in his childhood. It is quite important to realise what the outcome would be if modern science were to enter the realm of pedagogy, and teachers were then to give lessons in the manner of this science—let us say, in a school where some young Schiller was among the pupils. You must envisage quite exactly what this would mean.

If you think of what was said yesterday, you will see that, just as we have to take, in other illnesses, the symptoms, that help us to find the right orientation, and then lead back from these to the real facts of the illness, so we must start in our present investigation from the manifestations of the life of soul, from thinking, feeling and willing, and trace our way back until we can “behold” the real condition of the patient. We saw that the origin, for example, of an abnormality of soul, which showed itself in the patient's being unable to pass from intention to deed, had to be sought in some subtle abnormality of the liver, and that the knowledge of this connection must form the starting point for our treatment, both educational and therapeutic.

And now, before we can pass on to consider the practical side in detail, we must look back once again at the life of soul of the child. We have seen how during the first seven years the body presents a model, and the individuality works out in accordance with this model the second body, which functions between the change of teeth and puberty. If the individuality is stronger than the inherited qualities, the child will overcome these—more or less—in the course of changing his teeth; his individuality will then be apparent in his whole life of soul, and will manifest also externally in his bodily nature. If, however, the individuality of the child is weak, it will be overcome by the inherited characteristics; it will give, as it were, such close attention to the model that a slavish copy of the same will be visible in the body. And then one can rightly speak of inherited characteristics. For between the change of teeth and puberty everything is as it results from the individuality; the reason why it can happen that inherited characteristics show themselves at all during this period, is because the individuality has been to that extent too weak to overcome them and follow its own line of direction in accordance with karma. What works in the individuality as the real impulse of karma shows itself overpowered in such a case by the inherited characteristics.

Now at this point we must observe—and it will also provide us with what I may describe as a symptomatology of more general application—we must observe how thinking is related in its development to the development of will, in the child. We saw yesterday that there is a certain sense in which we have to look upon thinking, feeling and willing as no more than symptoms. We saw that thinking, as it expresses itself in the superficial soul-life, has behind it a synthesizing activity which operates in the construction and organisation of the brain; and then we saw how behind expressions of will is an analytical activity which underlies the organs—underlies indeed our whole metabolism-and-limbs man, keeping the organs separate and distinct one from another.

To begin with, let us consider thinking, with the synthesizing activity of the brain, that underlies it. We must understand clearly what thoughts really are. Thoughts, as we know, enter the organism of the child, as it were, in snatches, bit by bit. Even the grown person has around him only in scattered fragments, so to speak, all that man is capable of thinking. One person will have a great wealth of thoughts, another will have less. But now, what are thoughts?

The modern view, which tends to degenerate into the conclusions you find in people like Wulffen, imagines that thoughts come into existence gradually in the human being, as he progresses in his development, and that when he succeeds in having thoughts that “answer” in the world, that fit in all right with the world, then these thoughts he has evolved, of course, out of himself. But if we investigate, with anthroposophical understanding, the being of man, we shall never succeed in discovering in him anything from which thoughts can arise. All investigations which set out to discover where thoughts could originate in man are, in the eyes of Spiritual Science, no more sensible than if someone who had a jug of milk given him every morning were to begin one day to ponder, in his cleverness, how the china of which the jug is made produces the milk. It might conceivably happen that he had never observed how the milk does get into the jug; but if he could start wondering how the milk manages to ooze out of the china, we should take him for a simpleton indeed. To assume such a possibility in regard to a milk jug is obviously to adopt a hypothesis which leads to an absurdity. And yet, in regard to thinking, science makes this very hypothesis; science is just as stupid, every bit as stupid as the fellow we have imagined. For when we set out to investigate with all the means afforded by Spiritual Science (and we have been speaking of these now for more than twenty years), we find nothing at all in the human organisation that could possibly produce thoughts. There is simply nothing there capable of doing it. Just as the milk must be poured into the jug in order to be in the jug, so for thought to be in man, they must come into him. And whence do they come—for the life we are considering, between birth and death? Where are thoughts? We can investigate the question of where milk comes from; we ought also to be able to discover where thoughts are. Where then shall we look for these thoughts.

We are surrounded by the physical world. But we have around us also the etheric world, from which, as you know, our own etheric body is taken, immediately before we descend to physical incarnation. The etheric body of man comes from the cosmic ether, which is all around us in every direction. Now it is this cosmic ether, my dear friends, that is the bearer of the thoughts. The cosmic ether, which is common to all, carries within it the thoughts; there they are within it, those living thoughts of which I have repeatedly spoken in our anthroposophical lectures, telling you how the human being participates in them in pre-earthly life before he comes down to Earth. There, in the cosmic ether, are contained all the living thoughts there are; and never are they received from the cosmic ether during the life between birth and death. No; the whole store of living thought that man holds within him, he receives at the moment when he comes down from the spiritual world—when, that is, he leaves his own living element, his own element of living thought, and descends and forms his ether body. Within this ether body, within that which is the building and organising force in man, are the living thoughts; there they are, there they still are.

If we have here the symptomatic life of soul—thinking, feeling and willing—and here behind, the real life of soul, then the thoughts constitute a part of this real life of soul: and these thoughts which we take from the universal cosmic ether build up in us, first of all, our brain, and then in the wider sense, our whole nerves-and-senses system. For it is the living thinking that forms our brain—forming it into an organ of demolition, an organ that deals with matter in a way we might describe somewhat as follows.

When we look out upon our environment, we have around us the world of earthly substance, in all its various processes and ways of working. These processes, which in Nature are living processes, are gradually broken down by the activity of the living thinking, so that here—in the brain—a continual demolition is going on; the processes—which are, as I said, Nature processes—are arrested. Thus, in the brain, a beginning is actually made in the direction of a stoppage of Nature processes; matter is continually being secreted and then falling away. The matter that has fallen away, the matter that has been excreted and become useless, is the nerves. And the nerves, arising in this way as a product of living thinking but with the life in them being perpetually killed all the time, become in consequence endowed with a faculty that resembles the faculty possessed by a mirror. They acquire the faculty of enabling the thoughts of the surrounding ether to be reflected in them; and this is the origin of subjective thinking, the superficial thinking which consists in reflected pictures, the thinking we carry within us between birth and death. Through the fact, therefore, that living thinking is active within us, we are enabled to hold up our nerves-and-senses system to the world like a mirror, and can then produce there pictures of the impressions that are living in the surrounding ether, and throw them back into our consciousness. This means that the thinking, and the forming of mental pictures, which belongs to the superficial life of soul is nothing else than the reflection of the thoughts that live in the cosmic ether.

When you compare yourself with your reflection in a mirror, you realise at once that you are something altogether different from that reflected picture. Similarly, you can compare thoughts with their reflections, and you will find that the latter are “dead” thinking, just as the picture of you in the mirror is dead, whilst you yourself, standing in front of it, are alive. There cannot ever be in the cosmic ether a distorted, an illogical or a deranged thought. Yet the thoughts that are contained in the ordinary, superficial life of soul are, as we have seen, reflections of the thoughts in the cosmic ether; how, then, does a deranged or senseless thought come about? How can it ever arise? The answer is, through the mirror not being in order. The whole process that originated in the structure of the brain has not succeeded in producing a perfect mirror. In order, therefore, to explain the presence of distorted thoughts, we have to go back to what takes place in the brain and the nerves-and-senses system, which the human being constructed for himself from the real living life of thought. It is most important to be clear from the outset that it is not the thoughts themselves that we can in any way assail; for the thought-content as such, the thoughts themselves, are in the cosmic ether in their full validity and truth.

We must make every endeavour to enable the pupil with whom we are dealing, who has been given into our charge, to find his right relation to this cosmic ether. We shall never do so unless we, as teachers, are permeated through and through with the feeling that the thoughts in all their rightness and in all the power of their livingness are contained in the cosmic ether, are present all the time in the cosmic ether. Without having ourselves this religious feeling towards the cosmos, we cannot possibly develop a right attitude towards the child. And the attitude, the whole relation that we bear to him, is what matters most of all. Let me explain why this is so.

What is it that is influencing the child, and what is it that is living in the child, when he gets distorted thoughts? And what is able then to work from the teacher upon the child? What can the teacher do? From all that I have said, you will be able to see that in such a child the etheric body has not been formed in the right way. When the human being is descending from pre-earthly existence, there are of course, at that moment, as always, only right and true thoughts in the cosmic ether; but these right thoughts have to be received by the being who is providing himself, clothing himself, with an ether body. And now let us go back to our milk jug. We cannot accuse the milk of having a wrong form or shape: it is obliged to take on the form that the jug can give it. If we have a sensible vessel, then our milk will be properly and sensibly “housed” in it. But suppose it occurred to an eccentric person to make a milk jug like an hour glass with the waist stopped up. [A drawing was made.] He pours in the milk and it cannot get down to the bottom. And yet, in reckoning up the cubic content of the jug, he reckons in all this part down below! I have given you an extreme case. All sorts of mistakes are, in fact, possible. One could, for example, make a jug that very easily tips over, and more often than not, the milk is spilt. The point is, of course, that the way in which the milk will be in the jug, will depend upon what the jug is like. And the way in which the ether body with all its livingness will be in the human being, will depend upon how the human being—as he arrives from pre-earthly existence, bringing with him his karma—is able to receive into himself the ether body. It is important to recognise this and have it in our consciousness.

It can actually happen that a human being, owing to his karma, arrives from pre-earthly existence with something that is not at all unlike this very inadequate milk jug. For his karma may not enable him, for instance, to permeate the metabolism-and-limbs system properly. This system will then be poorly provided with etheric body. The child will have in the region of the head a properly developed etheric body, and in the region of the abdomen and limbs, a poorly developed etheric body. In these parts he will lack the formative thoughts. It is actually most important for you to know that in very many cases of backward children we have to do with an imperfectly developed etheric body. And we teachers must ask ourselves the question: What is it that can influence the etheric body of a growing child?

Here we encounter a law, of the working of which we have abundant evidence throughout all education. It is as follows. Any one member of the being of man is influenced by the next higher member (from whatever quarter it approaches) and only under such influence can that member develop satisfactorily. Thus, whatever is to be effective for the development of the physical body must be living in the etheric body—in an etheric body. Whatever is to be effective for the development of an etheric body must be living in an astral body. Whatever is to be effective for the development of an astral body must be living in an ego; and an ego can be influenced only by what is living in a spirit-self. I could continue, and go beyond the spirit-self, but there we should be entering the field of esoteric instruction.

What does this mean in practice? If you find that the etheric body of a child is in some way weakened or deficient, you must form, you must modify, your own astral body in such a way that it can work upon the etheric body of the child, correcting and amending it. We could, in fact, make a diagram to demonstrate how this principle works in education:

The teacher's etheric body (and this should follow quite naturally as a result of his training) must be able to influence the physical body of the child, and the teacher's astral body the etheric body of the child. The ego of the teacher must be able to influence the astral body of the child. And now you will be rather taken aback, for we come next to the spirit-self of the teacher, and you will be thinking that surely the spirit-self is not yet developed. Nevertheless, such is the law. The spirit-self of the teacher must work upon the ego of the child. And I will show you how, not only in the ideal teacher, but often in the very worst possible teacher, the teacher's spirit-self—of which he is himself not yet in the least conscious—influences the child's ego. Education is indeed veiled in many mysteries.

What concerns us at the moment is that the weakened etheric body of the child must receive the influence of the teacher's health-giving astral body. How is the astral body of the educator to be “educated” for this purpose? Self-educated too, as it needs must be today! For Anthroposophy can at present do no more than give suggestion and stimulus; we cannot right away establish colleges and arrange courses for all the necessary branches of training. The astral body of the teacher must be of such a character and quality that he is able to have an instinctive understanding for whatever debilities there may be in the child's etheric body. Say, the child's etheric body is weak and deficient in the region of the liver. As a result, we shall notice that the child stops short at intention, he cannot get beyond it; it constantly happens that he has an impulse of will, but the impulse comes to a standstill before the actual deed. If the teacher can feel his way right into this situation (where the child's will ought to push through to deed), if he is able himself to feel the stoppage that the child feels, and able at the same time out of his own energy to evoke in his soul a deep compassion with the child's experience, then he will develop in his own astral body an understanding for the situation the child is in, and will gradually succeed in eliminating in himself all subjective reaction of feeling when faced with this phenomenon in the child. By ridding himself of every trace of subjective reaction, the teacher educates his own astral body.

Let us say, the child wants to walk, has the will to walk, but cannot. This can become a pathological condition, can become quite conspicuous; it may even happen that at last the child comes to be described as “incapable of learning to walk”. But we will suppose that the condition shows itself in only a slight degree. So long as the teacher meets the situation with any kind of bias, so long as it can arouse in him irritation or excitement—so long will he remain incapable of making any real progress with the child. Not until the point has been reached where such a phenomenon becomes an objective picture and can be taken with a certain calm and composure as an objective picture for which nothing but compassion is felt—not until then is the necessary mood of soul present in the astral body of the teacher. Once this has come about, the teacher is there by the side of the child in a true relation and will do all else that is needful more or less rightly. For you have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is, as teacher.

How may one set about acquiring this kind of understanding? By developing greater and greater interest in the mystery of the human organisation. All sense of its mystery—in fact, any real interest in the organisation of man—is completely lacking in present-day civilisation; consequently, one thing present-day civilisation does not know ...³

Suppose someone is suffering from severe mental disease. How is that regarded in our time? For obviously whatever is done in such a case has to be done within the civilisation of the present day; there is no alternative. This will mean that while we must do our best to come to an understanding of such illnesses, we cannot expect to be able at once in each single case to use methods and treatment that accord with the picture we have in our understanding. It is, on this account, very important that there shall be no fanatics among you. It will not do for you to set out on this work of Curative Education in a fanatical spirit, not knowing how to judge the scope and bearing of some truth, when it is a question of applying esoteric knowledge in practical life. For this reason the circles within which these truths are communicated cannot be too carefully restricted; for people of the present day have not the insight to see why, in very many cases, it is quite impossible to follow at once some particular guidance that has been given. We must know the truth, and then try to act wisely and sensibly, applying the guidance where it can be applied, as in the education of backward children, within the given limits. In dealing with adult mental patients you will not be able to apply the guidance in the same way; for something extraneous comes in there—namely, the law. And the moment you have to reckon with factors other than those that arise out of the nature of the case, the moment you have to do with hard and fast laws, the thing becomes unworkable. For what the law lays down is general; it cannot be individual in its application, it has to be general. So far as treatment of abnormal human beings is concerned, the law is a veritable poison. It is there in the world, however, and you have to reckon with it. The things of which we are speaking here cannot be applied fanatically; you have to let them percolate into life, in ways that are possible and practicable.

Let us suppose then that you have this person who is said to be suffering from grave mental illness. You can, as is generally done nowadays, describe the case psychographically—that is, describe the symptoms. According to the view of the case that is certain to be adopted in our present-day civilisation, the person does the maddest possible things. But people do not stop to consider what they may have before them in this mad person! As a matter of fact, it may quite well be that the person who is now passing his life in complete insanity has had in earlier ages a very significant incarnation, he may at one time have been a genius. But suppose this manifestation of genius came two incarnations ago and then, in the intermediate incarnation, the man was imprisoned when comparatively young, and had from that moment on no contact with the world. He passed then through the gate of death, and lived on further in the spiritual world. Then he appeared again on Earth—insane. Because what he took in during that incarnation remained completely outside the field of experience of the physical and the etheric body, he had not the opportunity of elaborating it, and therefore returns to incarnation in entire ignorance of the interior of the human body. He cannot get into the physical body and ether body, he remains outside them all the time; and so, being unable to make use of the physical body, he is, you see, insane. His manner of life is such that we shall not be able to see him as he really is, until we look right away from his physical and his etheric body and give our attention to his astral body and ego.

Let us now imagine, we have such a person before us in childhood. There will be a constant effort on the part of the child to come into the physical and into the etheric body, and then again, he will experience a resistance, he will be pushed back. It may very well be that owing to the predetermined conditions some of the organs are not in order. Imagine you have here physical body and etheric body.⁴ The astral body and ego want to come in. And they do come in, everywhere, but here they do not enter in a proper and orderly manner. They have to make a special effort. Every time, they want, let us say, to penetrate liver and stomach, the astral body and ego have to make an effort. And now this effort works itself out—regulates itself, as it were, in a curious way. A kind of rhythm is set up, an abnormal rhythm. At one moment the ego strengthens itself, then it become feeble again. So that we find in the child this alternation—first, a strong liver-stomach feeling, and then, before this has come to consciousness, a weakened liver-stomach feeling. The child oscillates continually between the two. And the consequence is, he has not, as it were, time to make use of his body in the so-called normal way. For he could make use of the body only if this rhythm were not present and astral body and ego were able to take possession of the several organs quietly.

How can we learn to recognise and understand such a condition? It will help us to do so, if we look at the whole process in somewhat the following way.

Imagine you have before you a clever man, an exceedingly clever man—but a man who is definitely not a watchmaker. It happens one day that he is in the predicament of having to mend his watch, which has stopped. Instead of mending it, he completely ruins it. That does not gainsay the fact that he is an exceedingly clever man. He fails, not from lack of cleverness, but because he has not sufficient mastery of the situation. Similarly genius may, under certain circumstances, fail and come to grief, when descending from pre-earthly to earthly existence. Only, in this case the failure is not so quickly finished with, but lasts for the whole of that earthly life.

There is a real call to us here to look with love upon the soul-and-spirit nature that descends from the spiritual world, to look with love upon it, even where it comes to expression in so-called insanity—yes, to look with love upon the very details of the insanity. And then we shall feel impelled to go beyond the symptomatology that can furnish a psychography of the case, and look rather at the karmic connections into which this insane human being comes. We shall have to observe his relation with the outer world, and note carefully the situations of life into which he comes, for these are incredibly interesting. And then, watching all this objectively, we shall find that insanity is really something that can arouse our deepest interest. We shall see in it a distorted image of the highest wisdom; it will be for us like the opening of a door from the direction of the spiritual world—though the spiritual world has then to come in through a rather twisted and contorted passage of entry! And as our interest in the whole process grows—without of course becoming sensational—the particular abnormalities will become deeply and inwardly interesting to us. Suppose an abnormality gets hold of the physical and the ether body and a rhythm such as I have described is set up: first, a powerful development of astral and ego activity, so that physical body and etheric body are taken hold of strongly; then, that is all reversed, and the activity of astral and ego becomes weak again. Suppose there is this rhythm, and we come to the point of being able to observe what happens, first in the moment when firm hold is taken of the physical and etheric bodies, and then again in the moment when this hold is weakened. If we are able also to enter into the experience the child goes through inwardly, entering into it with a great capacity of love, it can come about that, as time goes on, the rhythm is overcome, and that then as a result of it all, liver and stomach are gripped with quite unusual intensity—and behold, the child begins to do things that are a manifestation of genius! Otherwise the condition has to remain as it is until these things can be adjusted in the further life between death and a new birth. For it is indeed true, and we must be conscious of the fact: in educating backward children we are intervening in a process which in the normal course of development—were there no intervention, or were there misguided intervention—would find its fulfilment only when the child had passed through the gate of death and come to birth again in the next life. We are making, that is to say, a deep intervention in karma. Whenever we give treatment to a backward child, we are intervening in karma. And it goes without saying, we must intervene in karma in this way. For there is such a thing as right intervention. Certain prejudices in these matters need to be overcome. How necessary that is, let me demonstrate to you from another example.

In the Agricultural Course at Koberwitz,⁵ at which one or two of those here were also present, I indicated guiding lines for agriculture. An elderly farmer attended the course, who is also an old member of the Society. Throughout the whole of the course he could not rid himself of a feeling of misgiving; it kept coming out in the discussions. Again and again he would say: “But if we do that, we shall be using occult means for practical ends; won't that be steering too close to the sphere of ethics? Could not these truths be applied also in a wrong way?” He was never able to get rid of this scruple; he was always suspicious of black magic in the application. Needless to say, these things do become black magic when they are not handled as they ought to be handled. And it was for this reason that I said once on that occasion quite explicitly: “A high standard of morality is absolutely essential in dealing with these matters; therefore I assume at the outset that those who attend this course attend it on purely ethical grounds, desirous only to serve humanity and help agriculture. The Agricultural Experimental Circle has accordingly to be regarded also as an ethical circle, which definitely sets itself the task of seeing that the truths are applied in the right and proper way.” The Gods use magic, and the difference between white and black magic consists only in this: in white magic one intervenes in a moral, selfless way, and in black magic in an immoral, selfish way. There is no other difference. And so, in the nature of the case, since all talk about education of backward children is mere talk and leads to nothing, obviously this education can only be effective when it uses measures which are capable also of immoral application. And that brings us once again to the imperative need for a deep sense of responsibility.

If only one could count upon a more serious sense of responsibility, one could at this time do a great deal. I must, however, frankly admit that silence has to be maintained today about many things, just because conscientiousness is not sufficiently developed. When people hear that this can be done, and that can be done—they want to do it! An eagerness to be doing something—that they have. But that is not enough. As soon as it comes to the doing of a real deed, and no mere continuation of some old impulse, as soon as it is a question of bringing in new impulses from the spiritual world—and that is what is needed, new impulses from the spiritual world!—then it becomes imperative to demand a high standard of conscientiousness and responsibility. And there is only one way in which these can be awakened in us, namely, that we have knowledge of what is really involved. Thus, we must know that in the education of backward children it is a matter of deep intervention in karmic activities which would otherwise come to fulfilment between death and the next birth. It is actually so: what is done by us now, intervenes in the work of God which would otherwise be brought to fulfilment at a later time. If we are not satisfied for this to remain merely a piece of theoretical knowledge, if we are ready to let it work powerfully upon our minds and hearts, then we shall find ourselves continually faced with the alternative of doing what has to be done or of leaving it undone. Let us never forget that every step taken at the prompting of the spiritual world leads us into a situation where we have to look right and left, and make a new decision—and these decisions that are continually facing us have to be made with courage, with inner courage of life.

In ordinary life, man is protected from the necessity of this inner courage, for in ordinary life he can simply continue doing what he has been accustomed to do. He can jog on in conformity with the motives and standards that are so deeply rooted in him, taking for granted that these are correct, and feeling no necessity to adopt new ones. This answers quite well for the life that proceeds merely in the physical world. But when we come to working out of spiritual sources, we are inevitably confronted, daily and hourly, with decisions; in regard to each single action, we stand face to face with the possibility of either doing it or leaving it undone—or else maintaining an entirely neutral attitude. And the decisions require courage. This inner courage is the very first thing needed, if we want to accomplish anything in the domain of Curative Education. And it can be aroused in us if we hold continually before our minds the greatness of that which we have undertaken. We must be constantly thinking: “I am doing something which generally God does in the life between death and new birth.” The fact that you know this is of untold significance. Receive it as a meditation. To be able to think it, is most important. If we bring it before us every day in meditation—as one says a prayer every day—if we place it there before our soul day by day, it will endow our astral body with the character and tone that we need to give it if we are to deal in the right way with backward children.

It is really only possible for us to go on in these lectures and speak together of further things, if we are ready to acknowledge that we must in this way prepare ourselves for the task before us. Therefore, let us resolve to take what has been said as a necessary introduction, providing the groundwork for what follows; and let us ponder it with all earnestness. For in approaching tasks like those of which we are speaking here, it is indeed a matter of undergoing preparation of mind and heart.

• 1. Erich Wulffen, b. 1862, author and criminologist.
• 2. From Neue Züricher Zeitung, No. 342, 7th March, 1924.
• 3. A gap occurs here in the text.
• 4. A drawing was made.
• 5. A course held at the Estate of Count Carl Keyserlink near Breslau, 7th – 16th June, 1924.

We have been speaking of the connection between etheric body, physical body, astral body and ego organisation, and of different ways in which this connection may manifest in the so-called abnormal child. We explained yesterday how the etheric body can be abnormally formed as a result of its not being in right correspondence with the thought-system of the World Ether, and we went on to show how this can lead to irregularities in many different directions. If you can grasp this, then the conviction may also be brought home to you in the course of these lectures that while the mood of soul with which you approach your task as educators is the same for all, you will yet have to find the method of treatment for almost every single child individually. But you must first have some knowledge—and it is important to realise that the whole of modern psychiatry can have no true knowledge of so-called illnesses of the soul. When once we learn to recognise these illnesses for what they really are, then we can go on to consider methods of treatment in detail. It is, therefore, a matter of less importance for you to receive advice of particular measures to be adopted. What is of far greater importance is that you should come to see how in this domain too, sound pathological knowledge, sound diagnosis, lead of themselves into therapy.

Now, as you know, many cases of so-called mental disease are of such a nature that, for reasons which you will understand as you follow these lectures, they cannot be healed—or at any rate could be healed only under conditions extremely difficult to provide. And this would still be true if one were able to call in the help of Spiritual Science. For, in order to treat these illnesses, we would need, in the first place, to have our own sanatoria; and even then the healing of adult patients would still be attended with extraordinary difficulty. I am thinking here of illnesses of a particular kind, and especially of those cases that have important bearing on our work with children. On the other hand, you will come to see that help can most decidedly be given in such forms of illness in childhood, by a right educational treatment; and we shall find that in an illness which is one of the most difficult of all to treat in adults, namely epilepsy—if a patient is brought to us in early childhood and we are able to acquire a correct perception of how it stands with the illness, then there is good ground for anticipating very considerable improvement; indeed the illness may in some cases be got rid of altogether. When once we understand how to make the transition from what underlies the illness to what ought to be done, we shall find our way, in any particular case, to the right measures. But it is essential first of all to know what underlies the illness, to know how it has come about.

Modern psychiatry cannot help us here, for the reason that the men of our time have no notion that there is such a thing as a real ego organisation or a real astral body. The existence even of the etheric body is still widely denied—although science is in fact pressing forward today from the physical to recognition and knowledge of the organic and etheric. I will not stress names but when some people advance theories like those of Driesch¹ they show that they have no knowledge of the ether body because they are afraid of it. But the very thing that is of first importance for us to know, when we set out to understand these illnesses, simply cannot be known, if we know nothing of the astral body and of the ego organisation. For we have to proceed with our investigation in the following way.

Take, first, the connection between physical body and etheric body. This connection is maintained throughout life, from conception, from the embryonic state, right until death; for it continues also through all the periods of sleep. On the other hand, the connection of these two with astral body and ego organisation is broken every time we fall asleep. Now it is essential for us to have a correct picture of how it is with ego organisation and astral body in the waking state, when they are within the physical and etheric bodies. An accurate perception of the particular way in which astral body and ego are membered into the physical and etheric bodies is indispensable if we are to be able to think intelligently about those who are suffering from so-called mental disease. It is commonly believed even among Anthroposophists—not that Anthroposophy, which is very precise in its statements, gives occasion for such a belief, but because it is so easy to cling to old and accustomed habits of thought—it is, I say, commonly believed that when the human being wakes up, his astral body and ego organisation go straight over into his physical body and etheric body, combining with them in very much the same way as hydrogen and oxygen combine in water. It is not like that. Seen clairvoyantly, it is like this² If we have here the physical body, and here the etheric body, then, at the time of awaking, the astral body does certainly come in, the ego organisation also comes in; yes, they come in, and one can perceive how astral body and ego organisation, entering in, proceed to lay hold of the physical and the ether body. But this is not all. For here we meet with a fact of human life that is of great importance.

Take first the ego organisation. When, at the moment of awaking, the ego organisation returns, it does not lay hold merely of the etheric body and physical body; within these, it lays hold of the external world, of the forces of the external world. What does this mean? Imagine we have here the force of gravity. It works in this direction. When we are awake, we stand up in the direction of the force of gravity.³ Picture to yourself gravity simply as a force working in this direction—the direction of the forces of weight. Now there are two ways of looking at the matter. Let us be quite clear about these two ways. The first is as follows. The ego, we could say, lays hold of the physical body (for the moment, we will leave the etheric body out of the picture), and the physical body adapts itself to gravity. We place ourselves, do we not, into the forces of gravity when we walk; we have to find our equilibrium, and so on. This is one possible way of looking at what happens: on awaking we lay hold of the physical body with our ego, and the physical body being heavy, being subject to the gravity of the earth, we are now subject with our physical body to the gravity of the earth, we are connected—indirectly, through the physical body—with the physical force of gravity. Seen from this point of view, it is something like what happens when I take up a book: the weight of the book connects me indirectly with the force of gravity. That, then, is one possible picture of the situation. It is however false, it is incorrect. Let us now consider the other. Here we have to see what takes place, in the following way. The ego slips into the physical body, lays hold of the physical body—slips in so far that it makes the physical body light. Through the ego's gliding into it, the physical body loses its weight. And so when I, as an awake human being, stand upright, then for my consciousness—for my ego, for my ego organisation which has also its physical expression in the warmth organism—gravity is overcome. There is no question here of the ego entering into indirect connection with gravity. The ego, the I, enters into direct connection, places itself as ego right into gravity, shutting the physical body completely out of the process. And that is how the matter really stands. When you walk, you place yourself, with your ego organisation, right into the actual gravity of the earth; and you do not do this via the physical body, you yourself enter into direct connection with the earthly.

It is the same with the etheric body. The etheric body too is inserted into forces. Take one of these forces. I have often drawn attention to the fact that we human beings, as we go about on the earth, are subject to a strong force of buoyancy. We have a brain which weighs, on the average, 1,500 grammes. If the whole weight of the brain were to press on its base, the delicate blood vessels of the latter would be crushed at once. The brain does not do this, but swims in the cerebral fluid and becomes thereby subject to a force of buoyancy. It loses as much of its weight as the weight of the fluid displaced. The fluid displaced weighs about 20 grammes less than the brain itself; therefore, the brain presses on its base with a weight only of 20 grammes. So we have a heavy brain that is however not borne down with its weight, but has buoyancy. In this buoyancy we live. Our ether body lives in the buoyancy. But when we with our ego organisation slip into our ether body, then our ego is within the buoyancy, not merely indirectly, but directly. We are in the buoyancy with our ego. Our human organisation stands, in fact, in connection with all the forces of the earth, with the whole physical world, and not indirectly, but directly.

Let us follow this out in more detail. Our ego organisation is connected, firstly, with gravity—that is, with the element of “earth”. For there is no such thing as what the physicists call matter. In reality there are only forces and the forces—as, for example, gravity (there are other forces too, of course; magnetic and electric forces are all alike in this, that the ego organisation is in direct connection with each one of them and, in the normal human being, is so during the whole of waking life. All that we include under the term “earth” is, really, these forces. Then the ego organisation stands in direct connection also with all that is comprised under the term “water” and is in a state of equilibrium; and it is moreover directly connected also with all that is of the nature of “air”, with all that is gaseous. You know how in physics one has to learn, in addition to ordinary mechanics, a hydro-mechanics and also an aero-mechanics, the reason being that the processes of equilibrium (in water) and the meteorological processes in the air have each their own peculiar character. Finally, the ego organisation is directly connected with a part of the all-pervading “warmth” through which we are continually moving as long as we live in the physical world.

I draw a line through the word “warmth”, because it is with a part of it only that the ego is connected. We wake up, and place ourselves with our ego organisation—place ourselves as spirit—into the world of earthly forces. Our connection with these forces is in reality not a physically mediated, but a magical connection, a magical connection however which can take effect only within a particular space—namely, within the boundaries of our organism. When you have begun to understand that this connection is not a physical, but a magical connection, then you have taken a good step forward.

Now let us pass on to the astral body. The astral body is also connected with certain forces that work upon us when we are awake, and here too the connection is direct—not indirect, not merely through the ether body. Among these forces we have again a part of the force of “warmth”. (You must remember, throughout, that the warmth element works in two directions; part of it reacts on the physical body, and part on the etheric body.) Then, the astral body is directly connected also with the forces of “light”. You must know however that what Spiritual Science speaks of as forces of light is not identical with what modern physics understands by the term. We do not want here to enter into a discussion of theories, but let me suggest the following. You look out upon the world around you, and perceive it all lit up. What enables you to do this? Something gives you the capacity to perceive the world illumined in this way, and it is something in the ether. Light is, in fact, an ether force. Modern science speaks of light as of something that is present where we see things illumined. Spiritual Science speaks of light in another way. It calls “light” that which underlies other sense-perceptions too; it speaks, for example, of the light of perceptions of sound. Present-day physics, when it speaks of perceptions of sound, is in reality speaking merely of their external correlate—namely, the vibration of the air. The movements in the air are but the medium of the real sound or tone, which is something etheric; the vibrating that goes on in the etheric brings about the vibration of the air. Light lives also in the perceptions of smell. In short, all perceptions have as their basis a light of a kind that is much more all-pervading than the light that is spoken of in the physics of the present day. I admit, people are liable to grow confused when we speak of light in this way. For, although it was so spoken of in ancient spiritual knowledge and even as late as the 12th and 13th centuries, all understanding of it was then lost and people began to use other names for it, which are still less intelligible! This is what makes all the alchemical books written after the 12th century so very difficult to follow. What is important for you, however, at the moment is to know that this is what we mean by “light”. Now the astral body is connected with this light; that is to say, it has direct relation—not indirect through the etheric body—with all that underlies sense-perception on the earth. This is a most interesting fact. Outside lives the light in the ether, but we have also the etheric within us. The light works upon our ether body. When we wake up, we not only come into connection with the light that is within us; but, turning aside as it were from the light that is within us, we member ourselves into the light that streams through the external world. It is the same with the external “chemical forces” that are at work in the world around us. Into these too we member ourselves, directly. And this is very important, for it means that, while he is awake, man is membered into a kind of cosmic chemistry. Modern science knows the chemistry of the lifeless, but has very little understanding of organic chemical processes; it has no knowledge at all of the chemistry that is a universal world-chemistry. And this cosmic chemistry it is, of which we become part and member when we awake from sleep. Similarly, we become part and member of the all-pervading cosmic life, the “life ether”—again, directly.

All that we have been describing—necessarily only in outline—has to be achieved, has to be brought to fulfilment, while the human being is gradually building up, first his second body, and then his third. He has to dive down into himself, and through very penetration of his own being, immerse himself at the same time in the earthly-cosmic forces, the earthly-cosmic active forces. Entering into himself, he must in so doing be able to lay hold of the world.

In one domain, and in one only, modern science has still a clear perception of how things really are. In its study of the organisation of the eye, physics proceeds in a way that one could only wish might be followed in many domains. The eye is regarded, as you know, in physics as a contrivance, a mechanism, an instrument that works in accordance with the laws of physics. In order to come to a clear comprehension of the eye, the physicist makes drawings of it, in which he demonstrates the refraction of light through a lens, the formation of the objective picture, and so forth—the very same kind of drawings as he would make for a mechanical instrument. What the physicist is unable to do is to pass on then to the way in which the element of soul enters into this mechanical instrument. The whole thing is exceedingly interesting. The physicists have before them this complete picture of the eye. But there they come to a standstill. What they would like to do is to find their way to the element of soul through the brain. Just look at all their queer somersaults in thought, all those interesting, but in fact nonsensical theories of psycho-physical parallelism or interaction! The truth is that the ego organisation and the astral body come straight into the physical eye itself, the eye that we can draw and describe; there, within the eye, the ego and astral body take immediate hold of the physical. Nevertheless, just in the case of the eye, the scientists do, as you see, come very near understanding the true state of affairs. They can, in fact, hardly help doing so, owing to the peculiar seclusion of the eye; for the eye lies almost outside the body, it is built in from without during embryonic development. And so, in the case of the eye, a certain measure of understanding is attained. But the fact is, what is thus seen to be true of the eye holds good for the whole human organism. The whole human organism has to be understood in the light of an inner physics, a spiritual physics, a physics that allows for the subtle, more fleeting light-forces to be added to the earthly forces. We must learn to recognise the presence within the human organisation of something which comes in reality from the environment, something of which the soul-and-spirit of man lays hold, directly, notwithstanding that it is purely physical, having been constructed in accordance with the laws of physics.

But now, how will it be when abnormal conditions are present? It can quite well happen that in the case of some organ (it cannot be the whole organism) the human being has no possibility of making direct connection, by means of this organ, with the external world. The organ stands in the way, as it were, making it impossible for the human being to find contact with the external world via that organ. What will be the result? Let us take, for example, the lung. The lung may be so placed in the human organism that when the human being wakes up, he is not able to make contact with the external world. Imagine he is asleep. While he is asleep something happens in his lung which has the effect that if he were now to wake up, he would come down into the lung but would not be able to get out again, to get through to the external world. His ego and astral body would be under necessity to press into the lung, to squeeze themselves into it; but they would not be able to come forth again. What the human being should be able to do, as you know, is to come down with his astral body and then come forth again into the world in all directions. The lung should be merely the way through. But in this case, the lung does not provide any free passage; it holds fast the ego and astral body—that is to say, it will do so if the human being wakes up. The unfortunate thing is that when such a condition is present, he always does wake up. For, owing to the special way that the chemical processes are at work in such a case, and infiltration of some substance in fine distribution enters into the lung; the lung organisation which is already in some way misplaced, gets filled with a fine substance that has special affinity for it. The lung is then irregular; consequently the human being wakes up. But how? He wakes up, without gaining consciousness. In order to gain consciousness he would have to come forth from the lung; for he can acquire consciousness only when he has succeeded in penetrating right through. If he has merely come in, he wakes up; if he succeeds in pressing his way through, he gains consciousness. In the case we are considering, he stops short, he remains in the organ; and sleep which is healthy unconsciousness, passes over into pathological unconsciousness. The human being wakes up, but remains unconscious.

You see, we have come in this way to an exact description, drawn from within, of the condition of the epileptic. Epilepsy is just the condition I have been describing—and especially so in the years of childhood. The epileptic is able to dive down with his ego organisation and astral body into the physical body and ether body—that, he can do; but he does not come forth into the physical world, he is held fast within. Let us consider then how it will be if the astral body enters into the lung, and is held fast there, cannot get out again. The astral body will remain pressed against the surface of the lung; astral body and ego organisation will be, so to speak, damned up, congested beneath the surface of the organ. This condition then manifests outwardly as a fit. That is what fits really are. Every time a fit occurs, an inner congestion is taking place at the surface of one or other organ. These congestions are to be found, above all, in the brain. But we know how the parts of the brain are related to the other parts of the body; a congestion in the brain may be due entirely to the fact that congestion is present in the liver, or in the lung, in which case the cerebral congestion is only a projection, a feebler copy of the congestion in the bodily organ. Whenever a fit occurs, this congestion of ego organisation and astral body within an organ can be observed. And so we have at last found our way to the true cause of epileptic fits. Everything else that can be said about them amounts to no more than a description of the external phenomena. You see now how impossible it is to come to a true knowledge of epilepsy unless we are able to go beyond physical body and etheric body and take into account also ego and astral body. Nothing of any real value can be said about fits if we do not know that at the surface of some organ, astral body and ego organisation are being terribly squeezed and crushed. They cannot get out, they try to make their way out, they push and are held back.

And now you will naturally ask: What am I to do when symptoms of epilepsy show themselves in a child—lapses of consciousness, associated with fits, or other phenomena of which we have still to speak? What can one do in an individual case? You must investigate the case out of your own instinctive insight, you must put it to the test. Find out, to begin with, whether the disturbances in consciousness are nearly related to the phenomena of ordinary giddiness. In many epileptics this is decidedly the case. Phenomena of giddiness show themselves; one notices in the child a disposition or tendency to giddiness. If we should find that the gaps in consciousness are only brief, but that there are on the other hand very marked symptoms of giddiness, we would be able to know with certainty where the trouble lies. For in such a case, the ego organisation and the astral body would be failing to enter into direct relation with the forces of balance. You must, therefore, proceed first of all to investigate whether this is so in the child with whom you are dealing—namely, that the ego organisation and astral body do not make right connection with the forces of balance.

If you find this to be the case, let the child do gymnastics or Eurythmy, but giving him always at the same time objects to hold, such as dumb-bells or the like. Especially during the period between change of teeth and puberty are such exercises for balance important. If you give the child two dumb-bells of exactly the same weight—you must have them weighed on a chemical balance—and let him do exercises with them, making Eurythmy movements, or other gymnastic movements, this will be one thing achieved. Then you can go on to something else. Let the child hold in his left hand a dumb-bell that is lighter than the one in his right hand, and again let him do exercises; then let him take in his right hand a dumb-bell that is lighter than the one in his left, and once more do exercises. Then tie some object—it need not be particularly heavy—to one of his legs, and let him walk about with it, so that he becomes conscious of the force that is pulling at his leg. When he walks in the ordinary way, he is not conscious of the force of gravity. It is, however, important for him to place himself, with his ego organisation, right into the force of gravity. When you attach something to his leg, he at once becomes conscious of gravity. You can then hang the weight on to the other leg. And now, to produce an activity that comes nearer to the mental or spiritual, let him feel movements that he makes with his arms; let him think himself into a stretching movement made with the left arm, and then again into a stretching movement with the right arm; finally, with both arms at once. Another way of helping him to become conscious of gravity is to get him to lift one leg while keeping the other still. To sum up, in cases where you perceive, from the attacks of giddiness, that the child does not enter properly into the earthly forces, you get him to make movements in which he is obliged to learn control of his external balance. Similarly, you will find methods of treatment that will help epileptic and epileptoid children to adapt themselves to the other forces.

So you see, there is certainly something you can do. Good results can often be achieved also in the case of epileptics in whom you perceive that their circulatory system is disturbed, and that the whole way in which the fluids are circulating is really the cause of the phenomena. If you notice that in connection with the attacks of epilepsy (which take the form of fits and perhaps also of giddiness), feelings of sickness or nausea are present, then you will know that you have to do with an incapacity to combine properly with the element of water. In such a case it will be good to bring the watery element as much as possible to the notice of the child, before he receives it into his organism. Try to prepare the child's food in such a way that he tastes it quite specially. Something could also be achieved by letting the child learn to swim. Learning to swim is very good for epileptics; only, we must understand what is involved and be intelligent and sensible in the use of such a treatment.

When cloudings of consciousness occur unaccompanied by any marked feeling of nausea, carefully regulated breathing exercises are not bad, in order to restore connection with the air. And to establish a right connection with warmth, we should accustom epileptic children—really all children, but particularly epileptics—to feel the warmth. It is, as a matter of fact, quite wrong to allow any child to go about half naked, with nothing on his legs, and is often the cause in later life—only, people do not know it—of irritation of the appendix and even appendicitis; for epileptic children it is a downright poison. Epileptic children should be clothed in such a way as to induce a tendency to sweating; sweating should be always mildly present in them in nascent state. They should, in fact, be a little too warmly clad. This is real therapy. All the talk we hear nowadays about “hardening”—to what does it lead in the end? People who have been thoroughly hardened as children, when they grow old, cannot even walk across a sunbeaten market square without tottering. A person has not been made hardy if he cannot walk safely over a sunbeaten pavement. Watch some old man taking off his hat while he is walking across an open square on a hot summer afternoon! You are afraid his knees will give way any minute. Such, as a rule, are the consequences of this modern hardening.

So far we have been considering mainly the things that in early childhood lead the ego organisation into the elements into which it needs to be led. Here however begins the sphere where the doctor must come in, and co-operate with the teacher. For we shall not get to the heart of the trouble, when epileptic phenomena are present, without employing remedies, nor should we shrink from doing so. As soon as the epileptic phenomena show signs that the astral body is involved—that is to say, that the higher elements, the ether elements, are holding up the astral body from penetrating to the external world—then naturally it is upon these higher elements in the human being that we must work. And it will be a question of finding the way to do this. But first of all we have of course to be able to recognise whether the astral body is involved or not. How can we know whether the astral body is involved?

Anyone who has observed many epileptic children, or many children with a tendency to epilepsy, will have noticed two conditions which differ very considerably from one another. There is, first, the condition where the child does not defy moral judgements; he adapts himself to the moral and ethical standards that one would desire to impart to every child. When we have to do with epileptic or epileptoid children who readily adapt themselves in this way to the moral order, then the indications that have already been given will perhaps suffice. But if we have to do with children who are not accessible to moral influence, who, for example, readily become violent during their attacks—for epileptic attacks may disguise themselves as outbursts of violence of which the child has afterwards no memory—if, in short, there seem to be moral defects, then it is important to intervene in early childhood with actual remedies. In these cases, we shall quite definitely try to fight the epilepsy with the remedies that are in general use for the purpose, or with remedies prescribed by us under certain conditions, remedies like sulphur or belladonna—thus entering here upon a systematic therapy. As to this more medical part of the treatment, we shall be speaking of it later. Today I want only to show you how the things we can perceive externally in the child may be a sign to us that we need to pass from the more educational treatment to the more medical. There will, in fact, be some epileptic children who are thoroughly well adapted to fit into the external world, and with whom we shall have on this account actually to avoid the use of external methods and exercises, and work primarily by means of internal therapy.

This brings us at the same time to the point where epileptic phenomena pass over quite naturally into other phenomena. You remember what I said yesterday, that thoughts cannot themselves really ever be false; and today I have been speaking more fully of the way in which the human being members the thoughts into his organism. For, a phenomenon like that of the astral body becoming congested in the lung is due to the fact that the thought of the lung has not been properly membered into the organism. All such phenomena are accordingly due to defects of thought! They are the result of our being unable, as we descend into our organism, to gain the control of it that we require to gain in order that we may be able to build it up a second time. But now, we bring with us also our will nature, that is distributed over the several organs; we bring it with us from our former earthly life. And whereas the thoughts cannot of themselves be false, but are always true and correct—that they appear distorted in us is due entirely to our own organism; and this, as we have seen, can go so far that organs framed by such thoughts are liable to be distorted in their structure—whereas the thoughts cannot be false, of the will we have on the contrary to say that when it comes from pre-earthly into earthly existence, it hardly can be right and true. It arrives in complete uncertainty and has to build itself up within the thought system. Of the thought system we can say with truth that never in all the world is it wrong; on the other hand, it is scarcely possible for the will system to be in any way right unless we ourselves take it in hand. We invariably bring into the world a faulty will system, consequently we never under any circumstances descend to earth to become physical human beings, bringing with us morality.

We have to acquire morality, little by little. The morality we had in our last incarnation we used up between death and new birth, when we were engaged in that wisdom filled building activity; we spent it all before we came to birth. Ethics and morality have to be acquired anew in each single earthly life. This has a very significant result, namely, that inasmuch as we come from pre-earthly existence without morality, we have to develop intelligence in our will. We enter with our will into our organs, and in our will we must develop intelligence for what is brought to us in the way of ethics and morality. We must develop a “sense” for it.

It is quite wonderful, how moral and ethical impulses pour into the child when he is learning to speak! For imitation reaches into the most intimate things of life, and it is exceedingly important that we be conscious of this; we must never forget it. If teachers and parents in the environment of the child are immoral, if their talk is immoral, then not what they do outwardly, but the immoral quality and import of what they say and are, will be imitated in the deep inner organisation of the child. Here too, you see, it is once more a question of the human being's entering into connection with the external world, but this time via the whole organism, not by way of the single organs. And if there is again congestion, it will arise from the fact that, whereas in the previous case we failed to come forth in every direction with our thoughts, this time we fail to come forth with our will. And the failure to press through with the will finds expression in moral defects. You see now what are the inner causes of moral defects. These occur, namely, when what enters in from pre-earthly existence and should find its way through to an ethical and moral relation to the world around us, gets stopped up or congested in the whole human organism. For we should be able to receive into us the ethical and moral principles of the world around us; but this we cannot do if there is this congestion, if we come to a standstill with our spirit and soul, remaining within the physical organisation, unable to push our way through.

We are here right in the sphere of the moral and ethical in human life; and we must be clear what that means. When you meet with the characteristic phenomena of epilepsy, then you will have to make your diagnosis from the symptoms I have indicated—attacks of giddiness, obliteration of consciousness, etc.—that is, you will make your diagnosis from transitory phenomena of this kind. If, however, you want to be able to recognise moral defects, you will have to think, not of passing temporary symptoms, but of permanent symptoms. The really serious disturbances—what can cause these to arise? Everything is conditioned, of course, by karma. We have accordingly to speak of two aspects of a human being. There is his physical and mental constitution that shows itself to us when we meet him; and then we have to discern within this the working of his karma.

Suppose the embryo lies in such a way in the organism of the mother that there is pressure at a certain point, and the brain, when it is formed, is narrow in comparison with the rest of the organisation. What can we observe as a result of this? If those influences from the brain which are of particular importance between the ages of seven and fourteen proceed from a brain that is too narrow, they become disturbed and congested, and a reflection of the pressure and congestion makes its appearance in the functioning of the spleen. And then in consequence of this kind of congestion the child will develop no feeling of any kind of moral principle or standard. Just as colours are simply not there for the man who is colour-blind, so the moral and ethical impulses contained in our words, when we speak in admonishment or reproof, are simply not there for such a child. He has been rendered morally blind. And we have then the task of dispelling this moral blindness.

We shall find, if we proceed carefully in our investigation, that external deformations can never fail to be for us most significant symptoms. Although there will always be a great deal to be said against the charlatan phrenology that is commonly practiced, a genuine phrenology really should be studied by anyone who wants to form his conclusions correctly about moral defects. For it is indeed most interesting to see how moral defects which are connected with karma are forces of such strength that they manifest themselves quite unmistakably in deformations of the physical organism. And whenever we find in a child this evidence of what may be described as karmically conditioned immorality, there is a special call for us to come in with our curative education. If we bring with us to our work the qualities of which we were speaking yesterday—inner courage, readiness to face decisions—then we shall be able to imbue the warnings and admonitions that we have to give with the requisite inner strength. For we need inner strength and power, in order to give our admonitions in the right way. That healing is possible is clear from the following example which I have often quoted. A German poet, who had already made his name, went once to a professional phrenologist. The latter was expecting to make all kinds of interesting discoveries, but all of a sudden, when he touched a certain place on the poet's head, he turned deathly pale and could not trust himself to speak. And as; a rule he would become quite talkative if he found anything of interest. The poet began to laugh and said: “I know what it is, you have found the tendency to thieving; and I did have it quite strongly.” The phrenologist had in fact discovered that the man could have become a kleptomaniac. He had however transformed his kleptomania into the art of writing poetry.

Matters of this kind have to be approached in the manner I explained yesterday. We must not be so ready as we usually are, to jump to conclusions. For it is, you see, like this. Man develops his human qualities mainly in two directions—towards the pole of thought and ideation and the forming of mental pictures, and towards the pole of will. Now as for the mental process, the thought process—that is ill if it is not a thief, and a persistent thief too! The brain-mental-organisation, the whole life of ideas, has to be a downright thief and apply no moral considerations whatever in connection with what it must and should receive. It must have the intention and habit of acquiring everything for itself. And it will even be found that there is a tendency to epilepsy or to some other illness, if the mental organisation does not snatch and grab at things in all directions. But this aptitude for thieving must not, for heaven's sake, slip down into the will organisation! The will has to be modest and restrained. It has to be sensitive, and have a feeling for “mine and thine”—a feeling which develops only gradually in contact with life in the outside world. The animals, who live more in the life of mental pictures than man does, would starve if they did not possess the habit of acquisitiveness, the impulse to get everything for themselves. These things need to be understood. But in man the propensity must not be allowed to find its way down into the will-organisation, it must remain in the finer, mental-picture-forming activity. If the astral infiltration of our brain (if I may so express it), which is, as we said, entirely justified in seeking to acquire everything for itself—if this astral infiltration makes its way down into the metabolism-and-limbs organisation or into the rhythmic system, then the urge to seize hold of everything for itself begins to manifest in the will. The urge may at first show itself in a comparatively harmless manner. You may notice a child beginning to take whatever he can lay hands on, gradually piling up for himself a little store or collection. Naturally one tries to check such a habit whenever it begins to show itself, and so it does not assume large proportions. We must accustom ourselves however to detect the tendency. As a rule of course the child does not achieve his end, because someone starts thrashing him. But we must be on the watch for this predisposition, we must take careful note of any inclination on the part of a child to collect things, to save up things for himself. And we must be sensitive for the point at which the tendency begins to be pathological; for if it goes beyond a certain limit, it becomes pathological.

People who follow the ordinary, conventional standards, have no judgement as to how far collecting may legitimately go—unless some particular occasion brings it home to them. One can be an exceptionally proper and correct person in every way, and collect postage-stamps; the collecting mania is here relatively harmless. If however a child begins, in imitation, to do the same kind of thing, you may take it as a sign that he has pushed down this quality of acquisitiveness into the sphere of the will. And then it is important that you should take particular care to see whether you have here to do with moral defects that are due to the working of karma. You should be able to discover for yourselves whether this is so, in the light of the connections I indicated yesterday. You will then have to approach the child with this understanding in your soul, and to proceed to educate him morally and ethically, doing it as effectively as you can, and with the utmost inner vitality—never in a dull or heavy manner! Working thus with inner vitality, you will make up stories in which the kind of thing the child does is carried to an absurdity. You will tell him a story about stealing, and you will go on doing this again and again. In this way you will actually intervene in the child's karma, you will be working right into his karma.

If we are really awake and “on the spot”, following with intense interest, in each individual case, to see just how the child does the things, then we shall be doing curative educational work of a kind that can remain in the sphere of the moral and ethical. Every kleptomaniac is exceedingly interesting. Qualities which are in their right place in the sphere of ideas have, you see, sunk down, in such a child, they have gone right into his toes, into his finger-tips. Naturally we must know this if we want to educate him. Under some circumstances it will even be good to introduce into the stories gestures that come natural to the kleptomaniac himself. We must transplant ourselves wholly into the particular case we are dealing with, and then invent legends or tales in which the things that are done by the child are shown to end in absurdity.

Think over all that I have been saying. Later on, we shall show you some kleptomaniacs. Think it over well, and you will see how, when such an understanding is present, the diagnosis itself can lead us straight on to the therapy.

• 1. Hans Driesch, 1869 – 1941, Zoologist and Philosopher—Neovitalist.
• 2. A drawing was made.
• 3. An arrow pointing upward was drawn.

I would like today to try as it were to round off our introductory studies, so that we may be able, from tomorrow onwards, to pass on to the practical consideration of particular cases; for it is indeed so, that a faithful study of the nature of so-called illnesses of the soul will of itself afford clues for the discovery of their right treatment.

The treatment of adult patients by our methods still presents difficulties. As I explained yesterday, the treatment would require certain conditions for the patients which, so long as things are in the world as they are today, cannot be realised within the work of our Society. For children, on the other hand, a very great deal can be achieved—by education.

It will already be clear to you, dear friends, that in illnesses of the soul we have to do with karmic connections which come to manifestation in the illness. This is, of course, true of other illnesses too, but it is true in a much deeper sense, and more specifically, of illnesses of the soul. We are therefore perfectly justified in asking the question—we do not formulate it in so many words, but it is bound to arise in the unconscious, and we must have a feeling for what lies behind it—the question, namely: how far can we expect to bring about an improvement? Any degree of improvement that we are able to bring about is so much gain for the patient. We must never take refuge in the thought that, owing to the patient's karma, things are bound to take their course in such and such a way. We can say this about the external events; that a person encounters on the path of destiny; but it is never possible to speak so in regard to the free flow within him of his thoughts and feelings and deeds. For here karma can take different roads; karma can even be turned aside, so that the fulfilment comes in some quite other way. Not that it ever fails to come, but karma can be fulfilled in many ways. I have frequently said, when people have raised the question of pre-natal education—meaning education in the embryonic time—that so long as the child does not yet breathe, it is the education and whole manner of life of the mother that is of importance. For the rest, we should not intervene in the work of God. In the embryonic period, it is entirely a matter of how things are with the mother.

We can now usefully carry further the study we began yesterday when we were considering the epileptic disorder—the study, that is, in regard to physical body, ether body, astral body and ego organisation. What conclusion did we come to as regards all those forms of illness in children, that are of an epileptic nature? We found that in these illnesses we have to do with a congestion of astral body and ego organisation in some organ. The surface of the organ does not allow the astral body and ego organisation to make their way out, and they become congested. They are, as it were, jammed in the organ. An astral and ego atmosphere of high pressure arises there. This causes fits. For what is really taking place, when a fit occurs?

Suppose you have an organ with its ether body within it. For each single organ there is a definite relationship that should obtain between physical body and ether body on the one hand and astral body and ego on the other hand. Now I assume of course that all of you are familiar with the fact that in inorganic external Nature, substances combine with one another in certain definite relationships. The descriptions of this that you find in the chemistry books are not correct; nevertheless there are these well-defined relationships. I purposely do not say relationships of weight, nor do I say atomic relationships for there we would come into the realm of theory; nevertheless it is a fact that hydrogen and oxygen, for example, combine in a certain definite relationship. If we have sulphuric acid (H₂S0₄), we have in it hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen in a particular relation to one another. If this relation were to change, then the combination might under certain circumstances give rise to an altogether different substance. We can, for example, if we have a certain relation of hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen that is different from the relation in sulphuric acid, obtain sulphurous acid (H₂S0₃)—obtain, that is to say, a different substance, although composed of the same three original substances.

In a similar way, physical body and ether body stand in a certain definite relation to astral body and ego in the so-called normal human being. (I say “so-called”, because the expression “normal human being” is a purely conventional one, founded on the belief that there is a fixed boundary dividing human beings into normal and abnormal.) This relationship is, within limits, a variable one. But if it exceeds a certain limit of variability—and this again can be individual for the particular human being—we have abnormality, a state of illness; in some organ astral body and ego organisation will be present, but in such a way that they cannot fill it in a right relationship. This will mean, that they are unable to come forth from it, they cannot get out. You will remember, we recognised yesterday the necessity for astral body and ego organisation to come forth again out of an organ, out of the physical body. When the astral body and ego are jammed and squeezed in this way in some organ, then there is too much astral body, too much ego in that organ; there is not the proper amount, there is a surplus—with the result that the organ cannot help feeling the astrality. If the organ has in it the right and proper amount, it does not perceive or feel the astrality, it does not sense the presence of astrality within it. But if there is in an organ an activity of astral body and ego organisation that does not belong there, then the organ is bound to feel it. If something is there in the organ that does not pass over into consciousness, if there is congestion, so that a great amount of astrality and ego organisation is present which does not go over into consciousness, then a fit takes place. The very description I have given you contains an indication of the accompanying phenomenon—namely, disturbance of consciousness. Disturbance of consciousness is bound to occur whenever this congestion happens in an organ that is in any way connected with consciousness.

When such congestion of astral body and ego organisation takes place in an organ that has not direct positive connection with consciousness—for there are organs that are not directly but inversely connected with consciousness, organs that in fact hinder or arrest consciousness—then we have, not loss of consciousness, but pain. Pain is heightened—not lessened—consciousness. A fit as such is not painful, as you know; that is simply a fact. Pain occurs when the congestion takes place, not in an organ that promotes consciousness, but in an organ that retards or arrests consciousness. Here the congestion will lead to enhanced consciousness—to pain. That is the real nature of pain.

We have now arrived at some understanding of all those forms of disorder which, occurring in childhood, lead to epileptic and related illnesses; we shall afterwards have to speak more specifically of these illnesses, but that we can do better when we have individual cases before us.

But now you will easily see that we may also have a quite different state of affairs. Instead of an organ whose surface holds back within the organ the ego organisation and the astral body, we could have an organ whose surface lets too much through, an organ that does not, as it were, keep back sufficient for its own use. Here the astrality, with which is associated also the ego organisation, is not dammed up, but tends, on the contrary, to overflow the organ. The surface becomes, as it were, porous for the astrality and the ego organisation; they “leak” out of the organ. With imaginative consciousness we do actually see rays streaming forth from the organ. In an organ that “leaks” in this way you will always find also the physical correlate of secretion; even where the secretion is not strikingly present, you will find that it can occur and can be detected. We shall have more to say about this later. When a human being is affected with this condition in childhood, the condition can be healed only if we are able to hold fast the astral body and ego organisation—bring them back, as it were, into the organ.

To what forms of illness, to what outwardly perceptible complexes of symptoms does such an inner condition lead? Here we come to a chapter in our study, where the phenomena that show themselves differ according as we are dealing with children or adults. For we come to illnesses that are bound to assume quite special forms for the period in human development between birth and puberty. We come, in effect, to the various kinds of hysteria. Now it is just in the realm where we are concerned with the forms of hysterical disorder, that the deplorable lack of clarity in modern science proclaims itself. Words are coined to name the various forms without any regard for reality. This shows itself at once in the first picture people begin to make of the matter; for in conformity with the modern way of looking at such things they are, of course, bound to bring this hysterical condition into connection somehow or other with the sexual life, and more so in the case of the woman than of the man; and then the forms of illness are named accordingly. The words by which the various forms are designated are of no importance. What is important for us is to make sure whether all the cases that are today reckoned under these names really deserve to be called hysteria, in the way the word is understood, or whether we do not rather need to have recourse to a much wider classification.

Now, as a matter of fact, the child who has not yet attained puberty cannot possibly have the form of disorder from which he is frequently said to suffer. He cannot have hysteria—if it is assumed that hysteria is associated with sex. The child can, however, certainly have in his earliest childhood what I have described as a protrusion of astral body and ego organisation beyond an organ. That he can have, but only that. We must turn a deaf ear to the various descriptions that have been given for the better comprehension of hysterical disorder. All these descriptions are made with reference to one ruling idea; and when an idea is set up in this way and all descriptions are made with reference to it, then these descriptions cannot but be false. Countless descriptions in psychiatry today are false just on this account. You cannot do things that way.

Let us see what it is we really have before us in a young child who is said to be suffering from hysteria. He has difficulty in making contact with the external world. I explained yesterday what this means. He has difficulty in taking hold rightly of the equilibrium that belongs to the fluid element, of the equilibrium that is associated with air, of the differentiations in warmth, in light, in chemical action, and in the universal cosmic life. But instead of grasping all these too weakly, as is the case with the epileptic, the child takes hold too strongly, he puts his astral body and Ego into his whole environment—into weight, into warmth; he seizes hold of all the elements more intensely than is really possible for a so-called normal person. And what is the result?

You have only to remind yourself how it is with you when you have grazed your skin at some spot. Suppose you then grasp hold of some object with the sore surface, where the skin has been rubbed away. You know how it hurts! The reason for your being so sensitive is that at that spot (where the surface is raw) you come up against the external world too vigorously with your inner astral body. Only in moderation are we able to contact the external world with our astral body (and ego organisation). The child who from the first brings his astral body right out—such a child will touch and take hold of things delicately, just as though he had been wounded. Nor shall we be surprised to find in him this hyper-sensitiveness, this hyper-sensitive response to the world around him. A human being in this condition is bound to feel his environment much more keenly, much more intensely; and he will moreover have within him a much more powerful reflection of his environment.

And now ideas will begin also to arise in the child which are painful in themselves. It comes about in the following way. The moment he begins to develop will in any direction, the child has to reach out into something in regard to which he is hyper-sensitive. And then as soon as the will begins to develop, a strange condition arises in the conscious part of him. He becomes super-conscious of the unfolding of the will; in other words, the unfolding of the will causes him pain. Pain is present in nascent state as soon as the will begins to appear, and the child tries to hold back the pain. This happens with great intensity. He makes restless, struggling movements, because he is trying to hold back the pain. Here, you see, I have given you descriptions of inner conditions which find their outlet in life in a clearly recognisable manner. A child wants to do something but feels a pain and cannot do it; instead of the soul-life flowing out into action, he has a terribly powerful inward experience before which he shudders—he shudders at himself. But now it may equally well be a question, not of an outward action, but of a concealed or disguised action in the sphere of thought—for the will lives also in the sphere of thought. When it is a question of an action in the life of thought, when it is ideas that should unfold, it may be that in certain forms of illness these ideas, at the moment they should develop, evoke fear, evoke anxiety and fear and are unable to arise in the mind. Every such idea which, at the moment when it should come to consciousness, evokes fear—every such idea simultaneously causes the life of feeling to develop below it; feelings surge up, and depression invariably sets in. Feelings which are not comprehended, not taken hold of by ideas, give rise to depression; only those feelings are not of a depressing nature, which, as soon as they arise, are immediately apprehended by the life of thought and ideation.

The condition that has been described as arising out of the nature of the case can be seen in the patient; it is there before us as a complex of symptoms. If we have learned to know an abnormality for what it really is, then we shall find that this true and essential nature of the abnormality shows itself to us quite plainly in the patient. And that is how it should be, when we take with us into the practical spheres of life perceptions that have been arrived at in Spiritual Science. When speaking to those who will have to intervene in illnesses of this kind with practical help, descriptions must leave the realm of the abstract entirely and enter right into the realm of living reality, so that the person who listens to the description can see it taking place in the patient before him. And in such a case as we are considering, you do actually see what is happening; in some organ, or nexus of organs, you perceive an outflowing of the astrality or ego organisation.

A phenomenon in a child, which brings the complex of symptoms to expression with somewhat rude plainness, is nocturnal enuresis. It happens quite naturally; but only in the light of what has been explained will you see the phenomenon of bed-wetting in a child in its right perspective. For it has its origin in the condition we have been describing. Whenever you have a case of bed-wetting, you can assume that the astral body is running out, is overflowing. As a matter of fact, secretions and excretions of every kind are always connected with the activity of the astral body and ego organisation. These must therefore be in order, if we want the secretions and excretions to be in order.

Now it is through the physical body that the ego organisation and astral body are connected with the four elements (as they are called), whilst in the etheric body, the ego organisation and astral body are connected more with the higher elements, with a part of the warmth, with the light, with the chemical ether and with the universal life-ether. If now we may borrow from the physical realm a word which can be most expressive when we extend its application to the spiritual (as was continually done in earlier times, when men had instinctive clairvoyance and made no such sharp distinction as we do between physical and spiritual), let us take the word “soreness” and speak of a child having soreness of soul. The child is sore in his soul, and this soreness of soul becomes a dominant idea in him, overriding everything else. If it cannot be made better by means of curative education, then, when the child attains puberty, either the feminine or the masculine form of this soreness will appear. The feminine form will have the character of hysteria, as it was called when there was still a true perception of it. The masculine form will have a different character. We shall be able to speak about that also; we shall find that it assumes quite other forms.

Whenever therefore you have a case where the conditions are the opposite of what are found in epileptic or epileptoid trouble, you will always have to give your attention to the excretions. And you will find you need to observe particularly how the child sweats. Whenever you want to bring something home to the child, to call up ideas in him, then watch carefully to see whether the inner soreness of soul, that is experienced at the origination of an idea, does not express itself in conditions of sweating. There is a certain difficulty here. In the ordinary way, one might imagine that when something like sweating had been stimulated by an inner condition of soul, the sweating would be noticeable immediately afterwards. It may be so in some circumstances but it is not necessarily so. For, the peculiar thing is that the inner anxiety or shrinking, the feeling of tenderness and soreness, does not work as does an outer feeling of soreness; but what arises as the result of it is first of all “digested” in the human being, and will sometimes take then the strangest paths in the interior of the human being, making its appearance not at all quickly but, curiously enough, only after some time, in the course of the next three to three and a half days.

Now, everything that is caused by expansion of astral body and ego organisation, is connected with what meets us in the normal expansion of astral body and ego organisation at death. When it is a question of congestion, the opposite condition from dying sets in. In epileptic phenomena there is the attempt to damn up life within the organism, to imitate, under abnormal circumstances, the process of creeping into the physical organism when the descent to earth takes place. But in the condition of which we are speaking now, we have to do with an imitation of what happens at death. After death the astral body and ego expand at the same time as life flows away; and it is with an imitation of this condition that we are here concerned. When once we are able to feel this, we come to acquire, little by little, something that is important in the observation of such cases. We acquire, namely, an organ of smell for what is present in the child; we smell this outflow. For it can really be smelled, and it belongs to the esoteric side of our work to acquire this perception and to experience how the aura of these children smells differently from the aura of normal children. There is actually something faintly corpse-like in the auric sweatings of these children. Such a fact can help to bring it home to you that we do indeed have here a kind of imitation of death; the accompanying phenomena of “dying” appear, in the sweatings that occur in consequence of this or that symptom. Such phenomena can make their appearance in the course of the next three days, approximating to the period during which the backward review after death takes place, when the astral body and ego organisation are expanding.

Working with this knowledge, you will have to accustom yourselves to imprint in your memory something you have noticed in the connections of mind or will of such a child, and then go on observing him for the next three or four days. This will enable you to discover whether you have before you the form of abnormal soul-life of which I have been speaking. And now we are at last rightly equipped for tackling the question: How am I to treat such a child?

The soul of the child lies open to my view in his every action. His soul flows into everything I see him doing around me. In such a case, where the soul of the child comes streaming towards you, you will realise that the education must more than ever depend upon what the teacher, on his part, is able to bring to the child in his own attitude of soul—in his whole mood, when he is dealing with something in his own surroundings, when he is himself doing something. Suppose you are a very nervy teacher, a person who is continually doing things in such a way as to give a shock to other people. This quality of character or temperament is much more widespread than one imagines; it is exceedingly frequent among teachers. If I may use a frivolous expression—are not most teachers today inclined to be “jumpy”? This state of nerves, where people are so easily put out or upset, simply cannot be avoided, so long as the training of teachers continues to be as it is today, where the student is overloaded with an enormous amount of undigested knowledge. Those who take teachers' training courses (we are concerned here with the training of teachers, so I say nothing about other courses of training!) ought never on any account to have to go in for an examination. The examination in front of them puts them into the frame of mind which leads to this nervy condition.

You will see at once in what a difficult position we are placed when we have to develop our work on the background of present-day conditions! We are at this moment faced with the question of organising the Lauenstein Home for backward children. In view of the government regulations, those who are to take charge would be well advised to take the examination. One of them, at any rate, will have to do so. And yet there is no sense in it; because it is, of course, only another opportunity of becoming nervy. This is a situation which we must face quite dispassionately—unless we want to go through the world blindfold! There is nothing to be done but to take the examination, and after it gradually get rid of the nervous tendencies. That is, however, what most people do not succeed in doing.

Anything in the environment that may cause even a slight shock to the child—if it originates in the unconscious, in the temperament, of the teacher—must be avoided. And do you know why? Because the teacher must also be capable of inducing shock, consciously and deliberately; shocks are often the very best remedy for these conditions! They take effect, however, only if they do not proceed from unconscious habit, but are given consciously and deliberately, the teacher watching intently all the time to observe the effect on the child.

Suppose you have observed this complex of symptoms in a child. You must take the child and get him to write, or read, or paint. Well, and what then? Having first tried to bring him to do as much as he with his particular constitution is capable of doing, then, at a certain point, try to bring the work into a quicker tempo. This will mean that the child is then obliged to let, not the feeling of soreness, but the anxiety connected with the soreness, retire, because you are there in front of him and he cannot help getting into a fresh state of anxiety on that account. The fact that the child is at this moment compelled to come into a new state of anxiety, compelled to enter into an experience that has been artificially promoted and is different from the previous one, brings it about that he strengthens within him, consolidates within him, the ego and astral that are trying to flow out. If you repeat such things systematically with a child, over and over again, a consolidation of ego and astral body will take place. But you must not grow tired! You must do the thing over and over again, preparing your whole teaching in such a way that, as it proceeds, at certain moments it suddenly takes a new turn.

For this, it is, of course, essential that you have the arranging of the teaching in your own hands. If, let us say, every three-quarters of an hour you are obliged to take a different subject, then all your plans will be frustrated. A form of teaching for abnormal children can be built up on the basis of what we have introduced in the Waldorf School—period lessons where, during the main teaching hours, one subject is continued for weeks at a time. For we have, as you know, no set curriculum for the early morning hours between 8 and l0 a.m.; the teacher can take what he chooses, what he sees to be right, in accordance with the principles on which he works. On this basis you can also work out what you must do for abnormal children. You will be able, for instance, to introduce such a method as I was describing, where you are continually changing the teaching, altering the tempo. By such means you will find you can work very strongly indeed upon glandular secretion, and therewith on the consolidation of the astral body in the child. But you will have to practise a certain resignation, for where this kind of treatment has been given and healing has begun, people will not notice that the children have begun to grow healthy. They will notice only that in a particular case there has been in their view no healing, since “becoming normal” is regarded by them as the right and natural thing to expect. What the world calls “becoming normal” is however not at all a thing to be so taken for granted.

So you see, whereas in cases of epileptic or epileptoid trouble it was a question (as I explained yesterday) of adopting rather methods that call for bodily activity, or else methods that work purely in the moral sphere, it is mainly didactic methods that will be needed for combating this other trouble of which I have been speaking today. To give these “shocks”—that is one thing you must do. And the other is as follows.

Observe carefully how the condition alternates between depression on the one hand, and on the other hand a kind of excitement or mania, outbursts of mirth and cheerfulness. What is the cause, when they occur in these forms of illness, of such alternation between states of depression and mania? Owing to the inward soreness, there is a perpetual longing not to let the will come to expression. If the will fails to unfold in the life of ideas, then conditions of depression arise. But when this has been happening for a long time and the child can no longer restrain himself but must give vent, there arises—because the inner soreness is repressed and the child can now flow right out, together with the astral outflow—an enhanced feeling of well-being. So we have in this way alternating conditions of sadness and hilarity, which, when they occur in a child who has also the other symptoms of sweating and bed-wetting, should be carefully watched. For this is where we must intervene as teachers.

Suppose we are faced with depression in the child. The first step will have been taken, the moment the child feels that we are strongly united with him inwardly, that we understand him. But because we are dealing here with a kind of hypertrophy of the life of thought and will, what the child needs is more than that we simply share his sorrow. If we are merely dejected and sorrowful with the child—that is no good to him! We can help him only if we are ourselves competent to cope with the depression we are experiencing with him, and able therefore to give him effective consolation, so that he feels comfort and relief.

A teacher who can understand these things will learn to find for himself the methods he can use. He will know, for example, that a constant idea in such children is that they think they ought to do something, and yet they cannot do it. It is a complicated idea, but one must be able to study it and understand it. They ought to do something and cannot do it; but they have to do it notwithstanding, and then it turns out differently from how they would have liked. Examine the soul-life of such children and try to get hold of the idea in their soul. One could express it in the following words: “I want to do it. I cannot do it. And yet I must do it ... And then it turns out differently from what it ought to be.”

In this complex of ideas the whole of the child's illness is really contained. The child detects in himself the peculiar constitution which consists in the out-flowing of astral body and ego organisation. It manifests as a kind of working outwards-into-the-world of the astral body—“I will do it.” But the child knows that then he comes immediately up against the external world and its reagents. Here is the soreness, here it hurts. The child is forced to perceive: “I cannot do it!” Then he knows that it has to be done, nevertheless. He feels: “I have to reach out with my astral body into the agents of the world. But I have no control over what I take in hand, I am so unskilful with my out-flowing astral body. The thing turns out different, because I am not in full control; the astral body flows out too strongly.”

It is precisely in such children that we can observe, in the most wonderful way, what the sub-consciousness, which reaches up into the life of feeling, is really doing. The sub-conscious is so terribly clever! It stamps into the clearest concepts what is going on in the inner constitution of the child, and in his relationship with others as well as with his environment. All this is, so to speak, disentangled in the child's sub-consciousness. But it does not rise up into consciousness. We have to go in search of it. We have to put forth all our efforts to discover these inner, unconscious complexes of ideas in the child. And now suppose the moment comes when such a complex shows itself to you. You notice it. As a matter of fact, it is there almost every time the child is about to begin something in the way of outer action or even also in the way of thought; it is nearly always there. If you intervene at this moment by gently helping in what the child has to do—doing it with him, feeling, as it were, every movement of his hand in your hand, then the child will have the feeling that the second stage is being corrected for him by what you are doing. Naturally the child is not helped at all if you simply do for him the things he has to do. You must intervene only fictitiously. Say, you get the child to paint. You do not paint yourself; but you sit down by him and move your paint brush, accompanying with your brush each movement he makes with his. The child will have the idea that you are gently guiding him, while thus, with love in your heart, you do with him what he has to do; the fact that you are there beside him in this way—he will feel it like a gentle caress in his soul. Even down to intimate details of this nature, we shall be able to find, if we practise a really careful observation, the right thing to do.

In everything Spiritual Science can give, you will always find that there is at last this summons to the individual human being; he must do his part. People are for ever wanting prescriptions: Do this in this way, do that in that way! But the fact is, anyone who sets out to educate abnormal children will never have finished learning. Each single child will be for him a new problem, a new riddle. And the only way he can succeed in finding what he must do in the individual case, is to let himself be guided by the being in the child. It is not easy, but it is the only real way to work. And this is the reason why it is of such paramount importance that, as teachers, we should take in hand our own self-education.

The best kind of self-education will be found to consist in following the symptoms of illness with interest, so that ever and anon we have the feeling: there is something quite wonderful about that symptom! Not that we should go about the world, proclaiming with a flourish of trumpets that it is the insane who are the really divine human beings. One must not do that—not in our time! We should however be fully awake to the fact that when an abnormal symptom makes its appearance, something is there which, seen spiritually, stands nearer to the Spiritual than the things that are done by man in his healthy organism. Only, this standing-nearer-to-the-Spiritual cannot become active in the healthy organism in the corresponding way. If we have once grasped this, then many intimate truths will reveal themselves to us.

It is, as you see, indeed the case that in every domain diagnosis and pathology lead—of themselves—to a real therapy, provided the diagnosis can succeed in penetrating to the essence of the trouble.

You will have been able to see how certain abnormalities in the life of the soul which we can recognise as symptoms of the oncoming of illness, show themselves in children in a rather undefined form, developing only later in a more definite manner. I was able to show you, for instance, how what later on becomes hysteria manifests in early childhood in a manner that is peculiar to that period, the abnormality remaining as yet quite undefined. In order however to be able to come to correct conclusions in regard to abnormalities that belong to childhood, we must also bear in mind the whole connection that exists between the pre-natal life (which may be said to carry into the physical life on earth the impulse of karma) and the gradual development of the child through the first two epochs—even perhaps also through the third.

Today we shall still continue to speak, by way of preparation, of general principles; then we shall be able afterwards to add what further needs to be said, with practical examples in front of us. For tomorrow morning Frau Dr. Wegman will put at our disposal a boy whom we have had here under treatment for some considerable time, and in whom we shall be able to demonstrate a condition that is strikingly typical.

And now in order to make clear to you something that you will need to know before seeing this boy, I should like to draw for you here a sketch of the human organism, in its totality.

That there be no confusion, I will always draw the ego organisation red, then the astral organisation purple, the etheric organisation yellow, and lastly, the physical organisation white. And now let us be quite clear and exact in our thinking, and do our best to grasp the matter as accurately as possible. For the human organisation is not of such a nature that we can say: There is the ego organisation, there the astral organisation, there the etheric organisation, and so on. We must rather think of it in the following way. Picture to yourselves a being (see circles above, in the middle) organised in such a way that there is first of all, on the outside, the ego organisation (red); then, further inwards, the astral organisation (purple), then the etheric (yellow), and then the physical (white). You will have thus a being who shows his ego organisation outside, while he drives the astral organisation farther in, the etheric still farther in and the physical organisation farthest in of all.

And now, beside it, we will draw a different arrangement, where we have the ego organisation right inside (red), the astral organisation, as it were, raying outwards (purple); then, farther out, the etheric organisation (yellow), and still farther out, the physical organisation (white). We have now before us two beings that are the direct polar opposite of one another. Look at them carefully. As you see, the second being (on the left) will present, on the outside, a strong physical organisation, into which plays also the etheric organisation, whilst the astral and ego organisations tend to disappear within. But now, these conditions being given, a change can come about. The configuration of the being I have sketched here (on the left) may be modified in the following way (see Figure 1, left below). Here the physical organisation (white) may be fully developed above, while below it is unfinished, left open. Then we can have the etheric organisation (yellow), somewhat stronger here below than the physical, yet still unfinished. And we can have here the astral organisation (purple) coming down more in a sweeping curve; and, finally, the ego organisation (red) descending like a kind of thread. What we sketched before diagrammatically in the form of a sphere can quite well manifest also in this way.

To make the matter still clearer, I will draw this last figure here once again (see upper part of Figure 1, right)—the ego organisation (red), the astral organisation (purple), and ether organisation (yellow) and the physical organisation (white). And now we will add on to it below, the other being (figure in the middle, above) and we will do it in the following way. To begin with, for the ego organisation, which is outside, instead of describing a circle, as I did before, I will let the circle break and bend, so that we have this kind of form (red, on the lower part of Figure 1, on the right). As a matter of fact, this is what is continually happening with the sphere and the circle, wherever they occur in Nature—indeed, in the whole universe. Owing to the plasticity that is everywhere present, the sphere and the circle are perpetually undergoing modification in their form, being moulded and turned in various ways. Going inwards, I shall have to show next the astral organisation (purple); farther in, the ether organisation (yellow); and finally—pushed right inside, as it were—the physical organisation (white).

So now you have our second being changed into the head of man, and our first changed into the metabolism-and-limbs system. And in fact, this is how things really are in man. In the head organisation the ego hides itself right inside, the astral body is also comparatively hidden, while outside, showing form and shape, are the physical body and the ether body, giving form also to man's countenance. In the metabolism-and-limbs system, on the other hand, the ego is on the outside, vibrating all over the organism in its sensibility to warmth and to touch. Proceeding inwards from the ego, we have then the astral body vibrating in an inward direction; farther in, it all becomes etheric; and finally, inside the bones, it becomes physical.

We go therefore outwards from ego to physical body in the head organisation; the arrangement there is centrifugal. In the metabolism-and-limbs system, it is centripetal; we go here inwards from ego to physical. And the arrangement in the rhythmic system, in between the two, is in perpetual flow and interchange, so that one simply cannot say whether it is going from without inwards or from within outwards. For the rhythmic system is, in fact, half head system and half metabolism-and-limbs system. When we breathe in, it is more metabolism-and-limbs system; when we breathe out, it is more head system. The relationship between systole and diastole is expressed in the fact that the head system is to the limb system as outbreathing is to inbreathing. We carry therefore in us, you see, two directly opposite beings—mediated by the middle part of our organism, the rhythmic organism. What follows from this? A result, that is of no little importance.

Suppose we receive something through the medium of our head—as we do, for instance, when we listen to what another person is saying. Having been received by our head, it goes first into the ego, and into the astral body. But an interplay is always taking place in man's organism, and the moment something is caught and held fast, by means of an impression received in the one ego organisation (here in the head), it immediately vibrates right through into the other ego organisation (below). And then the same thing happens the moment something strikes home into the astral organisation; that too vibrates right through into the other astral organisation. If it were not so, we would have no memory. We owe our memory to the fact that all the impressions we receive from the external world have their reflections, their mirror-pictures, in the metabolism-and-limbs organisation. If I receive an impression from without, it disappears from the head organisation—which, as we have seen, is centripetally arranged, from physical on the outside to ego within. For the ego must maintain itself, it must hold its own. It cannot carry one single impression for hours on end; if it did, it would have to identify itself with the impression. No, it is down below that the impressions are preserved; and they have to make their way up again, for us to “remember” them.

But now, it may quite well happen that the whole of the lower system, which is, as we have seen, in direct polar contrast to the upper system, is constitutionally weak. In that case, when impressions occur, the impressions do not stamp themselves deeply enough into the lower system. The ego, let us say, receives an impression. If everything were normal, the stamp of the impression would be passed on to the lower system and only in the event of memory be fetched up again. If however the system down below, and in particular, the ego organisation—which covers there the whole periphery—is too weak, so that the impressions do not stamp themselves strongly enough, then the impressions that fail to sink down into the ego organisation of the lower system, keep streaming back again into the head.

We have with us a child who is constituted just in this way. One day we showed him, for the first time, a watch. It interested him. But his limb organisation is weak; consequently, the impression does not sink down, but rays back again. I sit down by this child, and begin to talk to him. All the time he is perpetually saying: “Lovely watch!” Hardly have I said a few more words than he says again: “A lovely watch!” The impression keeps coming back. In the education of children we must pay attention to such tendencies, of which there may sometimes be only very faint indications, but which are nevertheless quite important. For if we do not succeed in strengthening the too weak metabolism-and-limbs organisation, then this “streaming back” of impressions will go on happening with greater and greater intensity, and in later life the patient will suffer from the type of paranoia that is associated with fixed ideas. He will suffer from firmly fixed ideas. He will know that these ideas have no business to take up their abode, as it were, in his soul in this persistent way, but he will not be able to dismiss them. Why can he not dismiss them? Because while, up there above, there is the conscious soul-life, the unconscious, down below, is out of control; it keeps pushing certain ideas back into consciousness, which then become fixed ideas.

We said that the boy has a metabolism-and-limbs system that is too weakly developed. What does this mean? When metabolism and limbs are too weakly developed, the albumen substance in the human organism is prevented from containing the right amount of sulphur. We then have a metabolism-and-limbs system which produces albumen that is poor in sulphur. This can quite well happen; the proportion in which the constituents are combined in the albumen is, in such a case, different from what is usual. And, in consequence, we have in the patient what I have just been describing—fixed ideas, beginning to announce themselves in the organism in the years of childhood.

But now the opposite condition may also arise. The system of metabolism and limbs may be so constituted that it is too strongly attracted to sulphur. The albumen will then be too rich in sulphur. It will have in it carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and—in proportion—too much sulphur. In a metabolism-and-limbs system of this kind—for the system is influenced in its manifestations by the particular combination of the substances within it—there will not be, as before, the urge to push everything back; but, on the contrary, in consequence of the albumen being too rich in sulphur, the impressions will be absorbed too powerfully, they will nest themselves in too strongly.

Note that this is a different condition from the one I described in an earlier lecture, where there is a congestion at the surface of an organ. That condition gives rise, as we saw, to fits. It is not congestion that we have now, but a kind of absorption of the impressions: the impressions are, as it were, sucked in—and consequently disappear. We bring it about that the child has impressions, but to no purpose; impressions of a particular nature simply disappear into the oversulphurous albumen. And only if we can succeed in getting these impressions back, in drawing them out again from the sulphurous albumen—only then shall we be able to establish a certain balance in the whole organism of spirit, soul and body. For the disappearance of the impressions in the sulphurousness of the metabolism-and-limbs system induces a highly unsatisfactory condition of soul; it has a disturbing, exciting effect. The whole organism is a little agitated, a slight tremor runs through it.

As you know, I have often said that Psycho-Analysis is dilettantism “squared”, because the Psycho-Analyst has no real knowledge of soul or spirit or body—nor of ether body; he does not know what it is that is taking place, all he can do is to describe. And since this is all he can do, he is quite content simply to say: “The things have disappeared down below; we must fetch them up again.” The strange thing is, you see, that materialism is quite unable to probe thoroughly into the qualities even of matter! Otherwise it would be known that the disappearance of the impressions is due to the fact that the albumen-substance in the will organism contains too much sulphur. Only by following the path of Spiritual Science can the nature and character of physical substance be discovered.

It would be good if those who have to educate abnormal children would learn to have an eye for whether a child is rich or poor in sulphur. We shall, I hope, be able to speak together of many different forms of soul abnormalities, but you ought really to come to the point where certain symptoms indicate of themselves the main direction in which you have to look for the cause of the trouble. Suppose I have a child to educate, in whom I observe that impressions make difficulties for him. This may, of course, be due to conditions described in the previous lectures. But if I am right in attributing it to the condition we have been describing today, then how am I to proceed?

To begin with, I look at the child. (The first thing is, of course, to know the child, to make oneself thoroughly acquainted with him; that is the first essential.) I look at him, and notice one of the most superficial of symptoms, namely, the colour of his hair. If the child has black hair, I shall not take the trouble to investigate whether he be rich in sulphur, for a child who has black hair certainly cannot be rich in sulphur, though it is possible he may be poor in sulphur. If, therefore, abnormal symptoms are present, I shall have to look for their cause in some other sphere. Even if recurring ideas show themselves, I shall nevertheless, in the case of a child with black hair, have to look for the cause elsewhere than in richness of sulphur. If however I have to do with a fair-haired or red-haired child, I shall look for signs of overmuch sulphur in the albumen. Fair hair is the result of overmuch sulphur, black hair comes from the iron in the human organism. It is indeed the case that so-called abnormalities of soul and spirit can be followed right into the physical substance of the organism.

Now, let us take a little volcano of this kind, a sulphurous child, who sucks down impressions into the region of the will, where they stiffen and cannot get out. We shall very quickly be able to detect this in the child. He will be subject to states of depression and melancholy. The hidden impressions that he carries inside him are a torment to him. We must raise them to the surface, and we must go about it, not with psycho-analysis as it is understood today, but with a true and right psycho-analysis. We must observe the child and find out what kind of thing it is that is inclined to disappear in him. In the case of a child who confronts us on the one hand with inner excitement and on the other hand outwardly with a certain apathy, we shall have to watch carefully until we can ascertain quite exactly what things he remembers easily and what things he lets disappear within him. Things that do not come back to him, we should bring before him repeatedly, again and again, and as far as possible in rhythmic sequence. A great deal can be done in this direction, and often in a far simpler way than people imagine. Healing and education—and the two are, as you know, nearly related—do not depend so much on concocting all kinds of mixtures—be they physical or psychical!—but on knowing exactly what can really help.

What is important, then, is to be able to know in any particular case what particular substance is required; we must really succeed in following the path that brings us to that knowledge.

In my experience in the Waldorf School I have often come across children who seem, in a way, quite apathetic, but at the same time show signs also of being inwardly in a state of excitement. We had, for instance, in Herr K's Class, a particularly odd little person. He was at once excited and apathetic. He has by now improved considerably. When he was in the third class—he is now in the fifth—his apathy showed itself in the fact that it was not easy to teach him anything; he never took anything in, he learned only very slowly and with difficulty. But scarcely had Herr K. turned away from him and begun to bend over another child in front, than up would jump this little spark and hit him smack on the back! The boy was, you see, at one and the same time—inwardly, in his will, like quicksilver and intellectually an apathetic child.

There are, in fact, quite a number of children who have this kind of disposition, in greater or less degree; and it is important to note that in such children the capacity for absorption of external impressions is as a rule limited to impressions of a particular kind or type. If we have the right inspiration—and it will come, once we have the right disposition of mind and soul—we shall find for the child a certain sentence, for example, and bring it before him, suggest it to him. This can work wonders. It is only a question of guiding the whole activity and exertions of the child, of turning them in a certain direction. But this the teacher must achieve; and he can easily do so, provided he does not try to be too clever, but rather to live in such a way that the world, as it were, lies open to his view; he should not ponder overmuch about the world, but “behold” it, as it shows itself to him.

Think how boring it is—and what I am about to say is something you need to take seriously if you want to educate abnormal children—only think how tedious it is to have to go through life with no more than a handful of concepts! The soul-life of many people today is terribly barren and tedious, just because they are forced to get along with a very few concepts. With so small a range of concepts mankind slides all too easily into decadence. How hard it is for a poet today to find rhymes; all the rhymes have been used before! It is the same in the other arts; on every hand we have echoes and reminders of the past, or there is nothing new left to be done. Look at Richard Strauss, who is now so famous—and at the same time so severely criticised. He has made all kinds of innovations in orchestral music, merely in order to avoid repeating eternally the same old things.

But now think, on the other hand, what an interesting time you could have if you set out to study, let us say, every possible form of nose! Each person has a different nose; and if you were to learn to be observant and to have a quick perception for all the various forms of nose, you would soon begin to have variety in your mental content, and it would then be possible also for your concepts to become inwardly alive, you would be continually moving from one to another. I have taken the nose merely as an example, of course. Through developing an intelligent feeling for form as such, for all the variety of form that lies open to our perception, we shall actually be cultivating a disposition of soul that will enable us to receive inspiration when the occasion requires.

As you live your way into this beholding of the world—not a thinking about, but a real beholding of the world—you will find that, if you have a child who is inwardly sulphurous, alert and active, but outwardly apathetic, then, through your being able to behold him, something will suggest itself to you in connection with him and his special constitution, that provides you with the right idea. You will perhaps feel: I must say to him every morning: “The sun is shining on the hill”—or it can be some other sentence; it can be quite a simple, everyday sentence. What matters is that it comes to him rhythmically. When something of this kind is brought to the child rhythmically, approaching him as it were from outside, then all the sulphurous element in him is unburdened, it becomes freer. So, with these children—who should indeed be protected in the tender years of childhood, lest later on they become the pet victims of Psycho-Analysts—with these children we shall achieve a great deal if we reckon especially with their rhythmic nature, and let some such sentence be imparted to them so that it comes to them from outside again and again, rhythmically.

It is, in fact, very good to make a regular practice of this with all children. It works beneficially. In the Waldorf School we have arranged that school begins with a verse which, as it were, saturates the life of thought, day after day, in rhythmic sequence. And where you have a case of overabsorption in the organism, this practice will definitely help to bring relief.

We shall be doing the right thing for abnormal children, if we bring them together in groups every morning. If we have only a small number of children, we can of course, at any rate to begin with, take them all together. Something quite wonderful can come out of this. Let the children repeat a verse that is in the nature of a prayer, even though there may be some among them who cannot say a word; you will find this repeating in chorus has a wonderful balancing influence. And particularly in the case of a child in whom impressions tend to disappear, will it be important to induce certain impressions by means of such rhythmical repetition. You can change the impressions, say every three or four weeks, but you must continue bringing them to the child again and again. This will have the result of relieving the internal condition; it can indeed happen that the albumen gradually ceases to have an excess of sulphur-content. How is one to explain this? The trouble is, as we have seen, that the internal parts of the child are not giving back the impressions; that is to say, the movement from below upwards is too weak, it is even negative. If now we bring in a strong impulse from above, we rouse the movement from below (that is weak) to a stronger activity.

Suppose, however, we have the opposite state of affairs. Suppose we have children who already begin to show a tendency to fixed ideas. The raying back of impressions is in these children too strong; there is too little sulphur in the plasma. Here we shall have to do the contrary of what we did before. When we observe that the same sentence, the same impression is perpetually coming again and again to the child, it will be helpful if we ourselves fabricate for him a new impression (one which our instinct tells us may be right for this child) and then bring it to him in a gentle whisper, murmuring it softly in his ear.

The treatment could, for example, take the following form. The teacher says: “Look, there's red!” The child: “It's a lovely watch!” Teacher: “But you must look at the red.” Child: “A lovely watch!” And now we try repeating, each time a little more softly, a new impression which has the effect of paralysing the first. We say very softly: “Forget the watch!—Forget the watch!—Forget the watch!” Whispering to the child in this way, you will find that you gradually whisper away the fixed idea; as you whisper more and more softly, the fixed idea begins to yield, it too grows fainter and fainter. The remarkable thing is that when the idea is spoken—when the child hears it spoken—it is more weakly thought; it gradually quietens down, and at length the child gets the better of it. So we have this method too that we can use; and, as a matter of fact, very good results can be achieved with a treatment of this simple nature.

If only such things were known! Think how it is in an ordinary school. You have a class, and in this class are children who already have a tendency, though perhaps only slight, to fixed ideas. They are not transferred to special classes for backward children, they continue in their own class. And now perhaps there is a teacher who has a voice like thunder, who shouts loud enough to make the walls fall down. Later on, these children will turn into crazy men and women, suffering from fixed ideas. It would never have happened, had the teacher only known that he should at times speak more quietly, that he ought really to whisper certain things softly to the children. So very much depends on the manner in which we meet the children and deal with them!

Then, of course, in cases of this kind, the psychical treatment can be combined quite simply with ordinary therapy. If we have a child in whom impressions tend to disappear, it will be good to set out with the definite resolve to combat in this child the strong tendency he has to develop sulphur in the albumen. We can make good headway in this direction by seeing to it that the child has the right kind of nourishment. If, for instance, we were to give him a great deal of fruit, or food that is prepared from fruit, we should be nurturing and fostering his sulphurous nature. If, on the other hand, we give him a diet that is derived from roots, and contains substances that are rich, not in sugar, but in salt, then we shall be able to heal such a child. Naturally, this does not mean we are to sprinkle his food copiously with salt, but we should give him foods in which salt is contained—as it were, in already digested form. You will find that you can discover methods of this kind by learning to pay attention to things that are actually going on all the time in the world around you. (Here Dr. Steiner related a fact that he had himself observed, namely, that the population of a certain district instinctively preferred a particular diet, which worked counter to an illness that was prevalent in that district.) And so, in the case of these children, instead of leaving them to become subjects later on for the Psycho-Analyst, it would be far better if we were to give them in early childhood a diet that suits their need—a diet, that is, consisting of rather salty food.

Take now the opposite case—children who fail to absorb impressions, children in whom the impressions stream back. These children are poor in sulphur, and the best treatment for them is to give them as much fruit as possible; they will soon acquire a taste for it and enjoy eating it. If their condition has become decidedly pathological, we should try also to bring fragrance and aroma into their food; they should have fruits that smell sweetly. For aroma contains a strong sulphurous element. And for a very serious case, we shall have to administer sulphur direct. This can show you once again how from a spiritual study of the conditions, we are led straight on to the therapy that is required. But it must be spiritual study; it will never do to rest content with the mere description of phenomena; that will get us no further than symptomatology. What we have to do is to try to penetrate, in the way I have shown you, right into the inner structure and texture of the organism.

We have been considering irregularities which can occur in the human being when the lower part of him is not in right accordance with the upper part, so that the impressions which the head organisation receives above, fail to find the right resonance in the metabolism-and-limbs organisation. But now the condition is also possible where throughout the human being as a whole, ego organisation, astral organisation and etheric-physical organisation do not fit well together, do not harmonize. The physical organisation, let us say for example, is too dense. The child will then be absolutely incapable of sinking his astral body into this densified physical organisation. He will receive an impression in the astral body, and the astral body can stimulate the corresponding astrality of the metabolic system, but the stimulation is not passed on to the ether body, least of all to the physical. We can recognise this condition in a child by noticing how he reacts if we say to him: “Take a few steps forward.” He will not be able to do it. He does not rightly understand what he has to do. That is, he understands quite well the words we say, but he does not convey their meaning to his legs; it is as though the legs did not want to receive it. If we find this—that the child is in difficulties when we tell him to do something which involves the use of his legs, that he hesitates to bring his legs into movement at all—then that is for us a first sign that his physical body has become too hardened and is unwilling to receive thoughts; the child, in fact, shows indications of being feeble-minded. Since in such conditions the body bears too heavily on the soul, we shall find that moods of depression and melancholy also occur.

On the other hand, if a child's legs never wait for a command, but are perpetually wanting to run about, then we have in that child a tendency to a condition of mania. The tendency need only show itself very slightly, to begin with, but it is in the legs that we shall notice it first of all. It is accordingly most important that we should always include in our field of observation what a child does with his legs—and also with his fingers. A child who likes best to let his hands and legs—for you can notice the same thing in the hands—hang about anyhow, flop on to things, has the predisposition to be feeble-minded. A child who is perpetually moving his fingers, catching hold of everything, kicking out in all directions with his feet, is predisposed to become maniacal, and possibly violent.

But now these symptoms that are so marked in the limbs can be observed in all activities. In activities that are more connected with the spiritual and mental, they show themselves in a slighter form, and yet here too they are quite characteristic. In many children, for instance, you may be able to notice something like the following. A child acquires a knack of doing something with his hands. Let us say, he learns to draw a face in profile. And now, he simply cannot stop himself; whenever he sees anyone, he immediately wants to draw his profile. It becomes quite mechanical. This is a very bad sign in a child. Nothing will persuade him out of it. If he is just about to draw a profile, I can talk to him as much as ever I like, I can even offer him a sweet—he goes on just the same, the profile must be drawn! This is connected with the maniacal quality that develops when intellect runs to excess. The reverse of this—namely, the urge to do nothing, even when all the conditions are there ready, the urge not to let the thought go over into work and action—is connected with the feeble-mindedness that may be imminent.

All this goes to show that by learning to bring the limbs into proper control, we can do much to counteract on the one hand feeble-mindedness, and on the other hand the tendency to mania. And here the way is marked out for us at once to Curative Eurythmy.¹ In the case of a feebleminded child, what you have to do is to bring mobility into his metabolism-and-limbs system; this will stimulate also his whole spiritual nature. Let such a child do the movements for R, L, S, I (ee), and you will see what a good effect it will have. If, on the other hand, you have a child with a tendency to mania, then, knowing how it is with his metabolism-and limbs system, you will let him do the movements for M, N, B, P, A (as in Father), U (as in Ruth), and again you will see what an influence this will have on his maniacal tendency. We must always remember how intimate the connection still is in the young child between physical-etheric on the one hand, and soul-and-spirit on the other. If we bear this continually in mind, we shall find our way to the right methods of treatment.

• 1. For the relation of Curative Eurythmy to Eurythmy as Art see end of Lecture 12.

I would like, dear friends, to consider today’s lecture as affording a kind of typical example of how we intend to proceed with the rest of the course. We may naturally have occasion to extend or modify our method from time to time. To begin with, we will take as a basis for our discussion together, the case of a boy who will presently be brought in. The history of the case is as follows.

The boy has been with us since 11th September, 1923, and was nine years old when he came. During the time of pregnancy the mother felt quite well; in the fifth month she made a tour through Spain. The birth was very difficult, the child had to be turned and helped out with forceps. In the first year, he was well and healthy, and there was no thought at all of abnormality. When six months old, he lay once for a very long time in the sun, with the result that he was overcome afterwards with a kind of faintness, followed later by fever. He was breast-fed for three months only, and from nine months to three years old was a very poor eater. During all this time he had really no desire for food at all. In the second summer of his life, the parents noticed that the boy's eyes were changing and becoming less clear. In this second year he was also not yet able to speak or to walk; and he would frequently start screaming and crying at about four o'clock in the morning, without apparent cause. He developed a habit at this time that should never be disregarded in children—the habit, namely, of sucking his thumb. Cardboard splints were on this account strapped to his elbows, and at night he was made to wear aluminum shields on his hands. The wearing of the shields was continued for three years. The boy was all this time backward in his development and at the age of five was still unable to speak connectedly. Then we come to the time of the change of teeth, beginning from the seventh year. The middle teeth have been changed, but the other upper teeth are not all changed yet. Or has he by now changed some more? Yes, he has got one new tooth. One of the front teeth is also not yet there. Yes, I see it has come through. The other was already strongly developed when he came to us. The mother informs us that the father too as a child was very late in his development, and the second dentition was with him also very considerably delayed.

At the time when he came to us, the boy was in a weak state of health. He weighed scarcely 53 lb. He has delicate bones, and his hands and feet are disproportionately large. He is very clumsy with his hands. External tests all give a negative result. After he came, he showed signs of increasing restlessness, and grew more and more difficult to manage. His manners are rather bad. The bodily functions are in good order.

Since January of this year, the boy has become decidedly quieter and more human. The things in the world outside have begun to interest him and arouse his wonder. A quality is developing in him which we must do our utmost to encourage—attentiveness to the world around. I do not mean an attentiveness merely of the intellect, but a turning with heart and feeling to the things of the world. Things he sees around him call forth wonder and astonishment in him. Let me take this opportunity to emphasize that mere intellectual attention to the world can never work therapeutically; the feeling and the will must also be engaged. The boy is moreover becoming friendly; whereas at first he would pass people by with indifference, he now recognises them again. It is not easy to rouse him to be active in any way. What he does, he does unwillingly. By January, however, he did manage to acquire some proficiency in the useful art of knitting. What is important is that one introduces the child to an occupation of this kind which on the one hand brings him into mechanical movement, but yet on the other hand makes him pay attention, for in knitting one can easily drop a stitch! He likes best of all to play with a little cart or sledge. He will talk for hours at a time of nothing but his little cart. That will remind you of the symptom of which I was speaking yesterday. He is also learning quite quickly to speak and understand German. There, then, you have the description of the immediate facts and findings.

And now, if you will begin to observe the child for yourselves—(to the boy) Come here a minute!—you will find many things to notice. Let me draw your attention, first of all, to the strongly developed lower half of the face. Look at the shape of the nose and the mouth. The mouth is always a little open. With this symptom is connected also the peculiar formation of the teeth. It is important to note these things, for they are unquestionably bound up with the whole soul-and spirit constitution of the child. We must not make the mistake of attributing the open mouth to the formation of the teeth; both are to be traced to a common cause, namely, that in this child the lower man is not fully under the control and mastery of the upper man. If you can see that, then much will become clear to you. Imagine that here you have the upper man, the nerves-and-senses man. This works upon the whole of the rest of the human being. For, as you know, this is the part of man that is the most developed in the first period of life; it brings the most forces with it from the embryonic time, and during that time had in it the most highly developed forces. The rest of the body is more or less dependent on what forms itself here in the upper man. Whereas the lower man forms itself directly from the constitution of the mother body, the rest of man is only indirectly dependent on what forms itself here. The formation you see here in the jaws—the jaws belong, of course, to the limb system—should be completely taken into the head system. But in this case the head system is not strong enough to bring the limb system fully into itself; consequently, external forces work too powerfully upon this limb-system. Look at a well-formed human being, where the lower part of the head is in harmony with the rest of the head. You will be quite right in concluding that you will find in such a person a nervous system that is in the highest possible degree master of the metabolism-and-limbs system. No external forces will in this case exercise undue influence. If however the head is incapable of controlling the rest of the body, then the forces that come from without will work too strongly into the rest of the body. In the child before us, we have clear evidence of this in the fact that the arms, and also the legs, have not the proportions they would have if they were brought into right relation with the upper part of the body, but have grown too big, because external forces have worked upon them in excess. (Look, he's amused! I think Fraulein B. was asking him why he keeps his mouth open, and his reply was: “To let the flies come in.” This is a firmly fixed opinion of his.)

All that we have been describing is, you see, due in the first place to a weakness in the upper part of the organisation. Observe now how the head is narrow here (in front) on both sides, and pressed back; so we have in this boy the symptom of narrow-headedness, a sign that the intellectual system is but little permeated with will. This part (at the back) expresses strong permeation by the will. The front part of the head is accessible only to external influences that come via sense-perception, whereas the back part of the head is accessible to all manner of influences from without. You have therefore here a beginning of what manifests so strikingly in the arms and legs; the brain enlarges and spreads out at the back of the head.

The study of such a child can be very interesting; indeed a child like this is more interesting than many normal children, although many a normal child is easier and pleasanter to deal with.

Here (in the front) you have that part of the whole head organisation which has its substance supplied to it from the rest of the organism. What is deposited here in the way of substance—not forces, but substance—is derived entirely from external nourishment. Here, on the other hand (at the back) substance begins to be supplied, not from food, but from that which is received through the breathing, through the senses, etc., and is cosmic in origin. The back of the head is, as regards substance, of cosmic origin. Here (in the front) as we remarked, the head is pressed together. In all probability this points back to a purely mechanical injury, either at birth or during pregnancy, a mechanical injury in which we can see nothing else than a working of karma, for it can have no connection with the forces of heredity. As a result of this compression, the head tends not to let enough substance get carried up into it from the food that is eaten as nourishment. For it has anyway no inclination to start working upon the nourishment that does reach it, the demand for nourishment being so slight in this front part of the head. You can see therefore, simply by observing the external form of the head, that the boy is bound to be at some time quite without appetite. Here, in this front part of the head, the accumulation of what is received by way of nourishment begins to be deficient.

The insufficiency in the control exercised upon the whole limb system has its influence upon the breathing system. The entire system of the breath is very little under control, and breathing tends to become disturbed and uneasy. This is connected with the whole way in which the lower jaw is formed. The lower jaw receives into itself a great quantity of air—too much, indeed; with the result that substance is accumulated in too great measure, both here in the lower jaw and in the limbs. Hence the symptom that is so conspicuous in a child of this kind: the inbreathing is not in right relation to the outbreathing, it is too vigorous as compared with the outbreathing. Consequently, the boy is unable to develop within him the right and necessary quantity of carbonic acid; he is deficient in carbonic acid. So here you have also a clear demonstration of the fact that in a human being who is deficient in carbonic acid the limb system will be found to be over-developed; and with the limb system is of course connected everything in the human being that has fundamentally to do with movement. What ought to happen is that gradually, in the course of life, the whole system of movement in man should become a servant of the intellectual system. (To the boy) Stand still a minute! And now come here to me and do this! (Dr. Steiner makes a movement with his arm as if to take hold of something; the boy does not make the movement.) Never mind! We mustn't force him. Do you see? It is difficult for him to do anything; he has not the power to exercise the right control over his metabolism-and-limbs system. If he had, he would have lifted his arm in the way I showed him. With this is also connected the lateness of the second dentition. In order for the change of teeth to go forward in the right way, there must be a co-operation between senses-and-nerves system and metabolism-and-limbs system. The working together of the two systems provides the foundation for the change of teeth. These phenomena are all closely connected with one another.

And now what is the result of all this? As we have seen, when the child was born, and for as long as the metabolism and-limbs system had not yet developed—as is the case, of course, with a very young child—he was able to be in control of his body. No one noticed that there was anything abnormal. Only in course of time, when he had grown quite a bit, could the abnormality, which was present all along, show itself. And it is just as we might expect, that he should attain comparatively late those faculties which depend on the upper system's having the lower system under control. He was late, namely, in learning to speak and to walk. What would have been the right educational treatment for this child in very early years? Obviously a special effort should have been made to begin with Curative Eurythmy even before he was able to walk, simply moving his limbs oneself in eurythmic movements. If this had been done, then the movements carried out in this way in the limbs would have been reflected in the nerves-and-senses organism, and since at that early age everything, is still supple in the child, the form of the head could actually have grown wider. By beginning in good time to produce in a child movements that have the right forms, a great deal can be accomplished for the forming of the head, and one cannot but rejoice at the results that can be achieved in this direction. In the case of the boy before us, where the very bones of the skull have been narrowed by external pressure, it is certainly difficult for the head to grow any bigger.

During the time when I was engaged in teaching, an abnormal boy of eleven and a half years old was given into my care. I have written about him in The Story of My Life. The parents and the family doctor were at their wit's end what to do with this child. He would have to be put to learn some trade—and that was terrible to contemplate! With the exception of his mother, who took the matter quietly, everyone was frantic about it; what a disgrace for a highly respectable city family to have to put their boy to a trade! To pass comment or criticism on the matter was not my business. The boy was, among other things, hydrocephalic. I stipulated that he should be left entirely to me. His attainments up to that time may be judged from the fact that he had completely failed a short while before in the entrance examination for one of the lowest classes in the “Volksschule¹ All he had done in the allotted time was to rub a large hole into a copy-book with a piece of india-rubber. The boy had also the strange and singular habit of not wanting to eat at all at table, but of eating with great relish potato skins that had been thrown away as refuse.

After a year and a half had passed, the boy had progressed so far as to be able to attend the First Class in the “Gymnasium”.² The secret of the matter lay in the care and attention given to the movements of the limbs; through this, it came about that the hydrocephalic condition disappeared. The head became smaller—a clear sign that results can be achieved in this direction. Where, as in the boy before us, the bones of the skull have been pressed together by a blow from outside, there will, as I said, be great difficulty in achieving any enlargement of the head, but some improvement might nevertheless have been attained.

And now the question is: What guidance can we gain from our observation of the child, as to how we are to proceed with his education? Of primary significance for us as educators is the fact that the boy has had to bring his soul-and-spirit nature into a body whose forces are not harmoniously developed. Karmic complications lie behind this. Believe it or not, the boy is a genius. What do I mean by that? (He doesn't understand what we are saying.) I mean that, in accordance with his karmic antecedents, he could have been a genius. In the conditions, however, under which the boy finds himself at the present day (and he was of course obliged to be born into these conditions) he has been unable to develop the possibilities that were present in him by virtue of his antecedents; hence, and to that extent, there is abnormality. The choice of his parents has clearly had its bearing on the situation. It has made things difficult for him; he looks out upon the world under difficult bodily conditions. For he has a body that has grown hard and rigid, owing to the fact that the forces of the upper and of the lower man do not interlink properly, do not fit well together. We have thus to do here with a hardening of the organism. When the boy wakes up, the astral body and the I organisation cannot dive down into the organism as they should. They come up against a kind of brick wall.

But now man's whole faculty of attention, the ability we possess to be attentive to the world around us, depends on our being able to establish the right adjustment between soul-and-spirit on the one hand and the bodily-physical nature on the other hand. Suppose we are unable to do this. Then, in so far as we are concerned merely with the more superficial side of life, the inability to establish the right adjustment will show itself in clumsiness, in unskilfulness. Traces of this sort of inability can be observed in the majority of people today. In my experience—I apologise for the hard verdict!—most persons are highly unskilful. They find it difficult to develop skill and deftness. If I go over in my mind all the eight hundred children we have in the Waldorf School, I cannot say that any large percentage of them are distinguished for skill and ingenuity. And wherever you go, you will find evidence that this inpouring of the astral body and I organisation into the physical organization does not come off as it should. The reason is to be sought in the fact that we are now living in the full flower of the age of intellectualism. The thinking, the mental and spiritual activity, that belongs to our time, reaches only into the bones—not into the muscles. And a person who sets out to make use of his bones does not thereby become skilful! The intellectual system in man is adapted for making its way into the bony system, but in order to get the bony system moving, it requires the help of the muscles; and the ability of the astral body and I organisation to insinuate themselves into the muscular system is in our time astonishingly small. How is this? The root of the trouble lies in the fact that this intellectual age of ours is not devout, is not genuinely religious in character; the churches of the various denominations do not really make for deep and sincere religion. But now, the development of the muscles attached to the bones depends on the presence in the world of great men who are revered as examples, as heroes. As soon as a human being can look up, even if only in thought, to great souls and see in them his pattern and example, then a right contact begins to be established between his muscular and his bony systems. And in the boy we are considering, lack of interest has been from the first a marked characteristic.

And now you can also see in this boy a striking confirmation of what I told you earlier—that thoughts do not themselves undergo change. The thoughts a person produces cannot ever be false. It is only a question of whether he produces the thoughts at the right occasion, or again of whether he produces too many thoughts, or too few. The thoughts themselves are reflections of the external ether.

When the boy is asked why he keeps his mouth open, and replies: So that the flies can fly in—that is an exceedingly clever answer; the thought is, however, wrongly applied. The same thought, applied later in life to some machine that people were trying to invent, could turn out to be the grand idea of a clever inventor. Thoughts are, in themselves, always right and correct; for they are part of the world ether, they are contained in the thought constitution of the world ether.

It is of the greatest importance that the possibility should be there, for the soul-and-spirit to make proper connection with the world outside via its own bodily sheaths. In dealing with such a child, we have to go to work on a twofold principle. We must put before him as few impressions as possible; and we must try to bring these few impressions into association with one another. The instruction we set out to give must be so simplified, must contain so few elements, that it can quickly be perceived as a connected whole. And it will be, if we take the trouble to make it so. Whenever we want to get children to do something—for what I am saying now is true not for this boy alone; you will be able to prove its truth with the other children too—whenever we want to get them to do something, we must take special pains to accompany what the children have to do with things to stimulate the children's interest and attention. Where we have children of this kind, who are unable to come forth out of their body, who fail to bring the soul into the body and so become master of their own bodily nature, the important thing will be to provide every possible opportunity for their interest to develop. Suppose we are beginning to give them painting. We must, in the first place, be careful to avoid getting at all anxious or worried if the children make a dreadful mess of their work! (This warning has been equally necessary in the Waldorf School.) If we teachers are bent on having everything left perfectly clean and tidy when the lesson is finished, we shall be following a false principle. Tidiness is a matter of quite secondary importance. On the other hand, it is of very great importance that the teacher should be constantly watching to see that the children are attentive to each single movement they are making with their hands, to see that the children follow with close attention all that they are doing. This requires that the teacher shall be himself fully “there”. Even more than with other children is it necessary with these, that the teacher is wide-awake and on the spot the whole time, not allowing himself ever to lapse into vacancy or vagueness of thought.

“Look! Take up your brush! And now draw it over the paper!” If we accompany the whole process with a constant rousing of interest and attention, we shall achieve something; we shall find that even right up to the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth years, a great deal can be done in this way in the direction of rendering the organism more supple and pliant. As we go on, we must find it possible to talk to the child somewhat as follows: “Look! Do you see the tree out there? I want you to draw that tree. Look at its branches! Can you show me now on your paper what the tree is like?”

One has, you see, to be right there the whole time. “Look, there comes the pony! He's running!” At the same time you point out the colour of the tree, the pony, etc. “And now there's Mussolini, the little dog, going to meet him! The little dog is barking at the pony, and the pony is going like this with his legs!” You must try to live the whole story with intense vivacity. And this lively participation in everything that happens, which is really a manifestation of spirit, is infectious; the children catch it! You will find that if you want to help children in this way you need plenty of verve and enthusiasm. If you are dull or apathetic, if you are the sort of person who prefers to remain seated and dislikes having to stand up, the sort of person who has not the smallest inclination to be constantly rousing himself into activity and movement—then you will never succeed in anything you undertake in the way of education. For it is not a matter of being ready with all sorts of cleverly thought-out devices; it is a matter of doing, on each single occasion, just what that particular occasion demands.

Another thing you must do with children of this kind is to engage them in conversation—as much as ever you can. This boy did not at first take part in conversation. Now he does. Listen, and you will see how far he has advanced in this respect. (To the boy) Do you remember, you told me one day that a pony had arrived? Tell me now, how big is the pony? Have you ever taken him out?—“Yes, the pony runs about in the Sonnenhof³ all the time; and it lies down on the grass.”—Is it in the stable when it rains? And is there a big pony too?—“Yes, the big pony is called Markis.”—You see, if you make conversation with him in this way, he joins in and talks with you; whereas before, he used to roar and bellow at you. Another extraordinarily interesting thing to observe is the following. When he came to us the boy spoke English only. He has learned comparatively quickly to speak German. You can indeed see in him a beautiful example of how language pours itself right down into the ether body and physical body. But the construction of his own language had become more firmly fixed in him than it is in other children; we have, in fact, in this boy a wonderful opportunity to study how the construction of a language sticks fast. He does not say “Ich bin gewesen” (I have been), but “Ich have gebeen”. He is finding his way into the German language quite well, but takes with him into the German the form and configuration of the English. He has many other similar expressions. Instead of “Geh weg!” (Go away!), he says “Geh aweg!” From this very firmness with which the English language has established itself in him, you can see how stiff and rigid his body is. If you take pains to get him to talk, doing all you can to draw him out, you will discover that he has a great deal more to overcome than most children. For what he has already learned sits terribly tight in him. By bringing life into him however, constantly new life, we shall gradually enable the stiffened body to grow inwardly supple and mobile. If you can, for instance, get him to say “Ich bin gewesen”, that will be a real achievement on his part; for it will mean he has roused himself to inner mobility. Beware however of trying to reach the result by force, by driving it home, as it were; no, it must be arrived at by conversation, by engaging the boy again and again, untiringly, in conversation. A child of this kind should be able to notice that we take an interest in him, and share in what he is doing. We must ask him questions, for instance, about things he has had to do with, things with which he must obviously be familiar, making plain to him in this way that we ourselves are concerned in what he has experienced. That is for him very important.

It will not, I think, be difficult for you to realise how helpful Curative Eurythmy can be for a boy like this. Suppose he does the movements for R and L. R is a “turning”; something is turning round, is revolving. There at once you have mobility. Most of you are attending the lecture course on Eurythmy, and will know also what L signifies. Think what formative forces the tongue is developing when L is spoken! L is the sound that signifies yielding or compliance, adapting oneself to fall in with something. And that is what the boy's organism needs: to be made pliant and supple, so that it shall be ready to adapt itself. And then you will remember how I said that in him the inbreathing process outweighs the outbreathing process. We have therefore to see that the outbreathing is stimulated as much as ever possible, and that the boy himself participates in it. This happens in M. M is the sound that belongs particularly to the outbreathing. When it is done in Eurythmy, the whole limb system comes in to help. And N provides the tendency to lead back into what belongs to the intellect. We shall accordingly have for this boy R, M, L, N. As you see, once we have a comprehensive picture of the child's condition, we know what we have to do. For this we must, of course, know, first of all, the true nature of each particular sound, and be absolutely at home in Eurythmy; then, we must on the other hand have also the ability to look with clarity and discernment into the bodily organisation of the child. Both of these are things that can quite well be learned, but both are completely lacking in the pedagogy of the present day.

In the case of such a child as we have now before us, I need hardly say it is even more urgent than with other children that he should be led to writing by way of painting. We shall therefore begin our teaching with lessons in painting, working in the way I indicated a little while ago.

All that I have described to you will have helped to make it clear that in this boy the astral body and the I organisation do not penetrate the physical body and ether body. We must come to their help. And for this purpose we shall have to intervene also therapeutically. What is it that needs our support, our backing, as it were? The nervous system, in so far as it is the foundation for the astral body and I organisation. How can we strengthen the nervous system? What can we do?

There are, as you know, three main ways in which we can work upon the human being therapeutically: by medicines taken internally, by injections, and by means of baths or lotions. When you give a person medicine to take internally, upon what does the medicine work? Fundamentally upon the metabolic system. You reckon, do you not, on the medicine taking effect in a simple, straightforward manner on the metabolic system. If you want to help the rhythmic system, you must give injections. But if you want to work upon the nervous system, you will have to give baths or lotions. Now, arsenic has a powerful effect on the mobility of the astral body, the mobility it requires for diving down into the physical and ether bodies—and, in fact, also on the form of the astral body. It can be observed in people who have undergone arsenic cures that their astral body just slips into the physical body, glides smoothly into it. When therefore you have a child in whom you want to produce a right harmony between astral and ether and physical bodies, arsenic baths will be your obvious remedy. Prepare a certain quantity of Levico⁴ of a particular percentage and let the child have a bath in it. This will work upon the nervous system and strengthen the astral body.

And now there is somewhere else where our help is needed. The forces of the head system are too feeble in their influence upon the rest of the body. We must come to the help of the stream of forces which goes from the head to the lower organism. This stream of forces is particularly powerful in the earliest years of life, but it is still maintained between change of teeth and puberty, and even increases in strength during that period, being at the end of it more powerful than in the seventh, ninth or eleventh year. We can strengthen this stream of forces and so help to induce a right correspondence between metabolic system and nervous system, by making use of a secretion of hypophysis.⁵ For this gives, as it were, a helping hand to the stream of forces, and exercises from the direction of the head a harmonising influence upon the metabolic system. We shall therefore have, side by side, treatment with hypophysis cerebri, arsenic baths and Curative Eurythmy. With these three working together, we shall make progress with a boy of this kind.

And now finally I want to ask your special attention again to what I said of the need to be always alive and alert, the need to be right there in whatever we are doing. Particularly in the education and teaching of backward children, the importance of the need cannot be over-emphasised. If once we have the inclination and goodwill to try to attain this, then we shall find that our study and work in the Anthroposophical Movement will make us more ready to be wide-awake and alert in all that we undertake. There are, it is true, tendencies at work among us in an exactly opposite direction. One suffers at times a kind of pain when one comes into an assemblage of Anthroposophists. Such a heaviness in the air! No inducing the members to get a move on! If one begins a discussion, no one else so much as opens his mouth; why, their very tongues are heavy—heavy as lead! And they pull such long faces! Out of the question to expect them to look happy or to laugh! And yet, do you know what is the first and most essential qualification for a teacher of these children? Humour! Yes, real humour, the humour of life. You may have mastered every possible clever method and device, but you will not be able to educate these children unless you have the necessary humour.

There will have to be a feeling and understanding in the anthroposophical movement for what “movement”, mobility, really is! I do not want to enlarge on this subject, but I can assure you that I never meet with less understanding than when, in answer to a question as to what is to be done in a certain situation, I reply: “Have enthusiasm!” Enthusiasm—that is what counts; and particularly in dealing with children who are abnormal.

This is what I wanted to say to you today.

• 1. Primary School up to age of fourteen.
• 2. Grammar School from age of eleven or twelve.
• 3. The home for backward children in Arlesheim, Switzerland.
• 4. water [A Spa water containing iron arsenic.
• 5. A Weleda preparation is certainly meant.

Before we pass on to another case, I would like to say a little more about the boy we were considering yesterday. For in this boy we can really see a whole series of psychic facts demonstrated. Right at the beginning of his stay with us—indeed, he brought it with him—he would speak of a little sprite that he had on the forefinger of his right hand. He has always, quite consistently, called this little sprite “Bebe Assey”. He carries on conversations with it just as one does with one's fellow beings, speaking to it, talking with it and altogether treating it as a real being. And then I must tell you of another idiosyncrasy. The boy will every now and then suddenly undergo a change, something like the changes we read of in the Werewolf stories. For a considerable time, for instance, he thought he was a lion and went about roaring like a lion. Has he changed into any other kind of animal? His favourite animal, anyway, has been a lion. We have here a sign that the boy's astral body is not in good working order. The astral body should by rights dive right down into the physical body. Instead of this, remnants of it have got left behind. For obviously, this “Bebe Assey” is (to begin with) nothing else than a remnant of the boy's own astral body. Then of course it can happen that this piece of astral body, which is left hanging out loose, becomes ensouled by an objective elemental being from the world outside. Subject and object then merge completely in one another.

What is of main importance for us as educators is the fact that, owing to the organism having become hardened, the astral body does not entirely enter it. Supposing you were to draw your astral body out of your physical body, so that you no longer had it pulsating there in its entirety within your physical body, then that astral body of yours would begin to show itself in all possible metamorphoses, it would begin to assume animal-like shapes. For when the astral body loosens itself from the physical and etheric—it may be still quite near to them, it may perhaps be still half or even three-quarters united with them—but so soon as the astral body becomes to any extent independent of the physical and ether bodies, it begins to manifest in animal form.

All these symptoms are particularly characteristic of the boy's condition, and they go to show how very difficult it will be to establish in him the right and proper harmony between the astral and etheric and physical bodies.

Now we will go on to consider another child. Let me give you the history of the case. The mother says that the child was born four weeks late. In the first four months of pregnancy the mother was on the stage and sometimes had to jump a great deal. Later on, she had a fall. At the age of two and a quarter, the child suffered from a digestive disturbance. Not until two years old was he able to stand. Throughout the first four years he was apathetic, but greedy for food. The first sound he uttered was R, which is most unusual. He even cried in R. Up to the fourth year he could only stammer out isolated words. Then he was given speech exercises; he had to speak sentences forwards and backwards. This was done by my advice. At the same time that he was learning to speak, he began to be restless, to make restless movements. He sleeps little, and does not fall asleep at all easily. In the evening he is very excited and tired, and cannot go to sleep. He takes his food greedily.

You would not be able to tell, from looking at the boy, how old he is. He is now six and three-quarters—not far off seven years old. As you see, he is backward in the development of his whole physical organisation. The head is rather too big, though scarcely enough to be noticeable. Taken altogether, the boy is backward. In the first period of life, from birth to change of teeth, the period during which the physical organisation ought to be particularly active—just in this period the physical organisation has in his case been inactive. Let me remind you of what I said about the physical organisation in the first period of life—that it is the inherited organism. So you see, it is an inherited organism that the child has had in the epoch through which he has already lived. The I (ego) organisation is now beginning to come forward, but it lacks the ability to bring about much deviation from the first physical organism. For it is the ether body that is active now, and the boy's ether body has adapted itself extraordinarily closely to the model body of the first seven years. The boy is behind-hand also with the change of teeth; that has not yet begun. So that there too we have to note a retardation of development.

Before going any further let us see that we are quite clear about the objective facts of the case. We find in this boy a relatively very weak astral body and a weak ego organization, which cannot make headway against the inherited organism. And we have also to note that this inherited organism has itself remained small. Now there is room for doubt whether the information given us is correct—for we are not at all obliged to assume that it was correct!—the information namely, that the child was born four weeks late. If this was so, then it was owing to the child's being too small; the child will have remained an embryo longer than usual because it was too small, because at the end of the ten lunar months it was not fully developed.

And now we have to ask ourselves the question: how has it come about that the child is in this condition? The explanation is given to us in the fact that the mother was acting on the stage during the first four months of pregnancy. She was a member of an independent troupe, who worked enthusiastically, and there can be no doubt that she was following her calling with enthusiasm and devotion. This meant that a considerable strain was put upon the astral body of the mother, which actually affected the form of the astral body of the child and turned its activity in a direction where it cannot do much in the way of growth—in the direction, namely, of intellectual capability. And so the process of intellectualisation begins in this boy even before birth, with the configuration that was given to the astral body during the embryonic period. We have then to do with a case of retardation, the causes of which lie right back in the embryonic period.

And now we have to consider how we are to treat a child of this kind who is altogether behind-hand in his development. As you will see for yourselves, the body has remained quite powerless. Throughout his earliest years, the boy was apathetic and developed nothing but the purely animal instincts of the physical organism. He was greedy, and late in learning to speak. And then, as I told you, the very first sound he learned to say was R. (Turning to the boy) Say “Robert runs!” (The boy says it in a deep, growling voice.) He is, you see, completely at home in the sound R. Do not forget that in a symptom like this a whole life can be expressed! Think of the mother during pregnancy. Think how she was continually in movement on the stage. And then try to enter into the being and character of R, which we have described in the Eurythmy lectures as the sound that has to do with turning and you will discern in the boy's speech a continuation of the play-acting of his mother. This one fact is of such overwhelming significance as to throw all others into the background. In this one fact opportunity is given us to acquire an extraordinarily deep insight into connections that need to be grasped and understood if we want to be clear in our minds about the condition of this child.

Let me remind you that what ought to happen during the first years of life is that the metabolism-and-limbs system of man is ordered and regulated by a strong astral body and ego. In this child the astral body is weak, and fails in its task; hence we find in him two symptoms to which we must give careful attention.

I do not know whether all of you were present at the lectures where I explained the true significance of the human brain.¹ I spoke of how the entire human organisation—all that we carry within us—is divided into upbuilding processes and breaking-down processes. With the latter are always connected products of excretion, for these are simply relics or traces that have been left behind by the process of disintegration. Let us look, first, at the boy's head. In the head a process of disintegration, a process of breaking down, is taking place. As you know, the intellectual activity of the soul, the whole thought-and-feeling activity of the soul, in so far as it makes use of the head as its organ of support, originates in a disintegration process. In this boy, the process of disintegration, having to be carried out by a weak astral body, is itself irregular. Waste products are not carried away with regularity, they remain; moreover, they do not harden as much as they should. We have not here to do with an actual case of hydrocephalus, but you see before you a head that holds within it too soft a brain. And now turn your attention to the reflected image of the brain—the content, that is, of the intestines. This too cannot be in order, and will not be. The activity of the intestines cannot ever have been in good order. Irregular brain activity and irregular intestinal activity go parallel with one another, especially in a child. This does not mean that you can set out with the resolve: I will see to it that the intestinal activity becomes regular—and imagine that thereby you will bring order into the activity of the brain. If you want to adjust the latter and bring it also into good harmony, you will have to work with medical knowledge.

Then there is a certain impurity in the relation and behaviour of the soul to the outside world. Try asking the boy to do something which he quite well understands; he will just grin a little, he won't meet what you say with openness and candour.

I shall have more to say afterwards about this case. I would like now only to add, in regard to the speech exercises that were begun with him at four years of age, that whenever speech exercises are done in this way, first forwards and then backwards, they help to regulate the connection of ether body with astral body. The exercises that were given to the boy at that time had this end definitely in view: to induce a harmonious co-operation of astral and ether bodies.

What the child needs is to be brought to feel and perceive his own physical organism. For as he does so, forces of growth will begin at the same time to insinuate themselves, as it were, into this physical organism. We must therefore choose for him exercises in Curative Eurythmy, which bring it about that he “discovers” his own physical organism. E (Eh, as in gate) is particularly helpful here, for in Eh man touches himself in his own organism; also U (as in rune) and O. O is chosen for its regulating influence. U and Eh are chosen for the purpose of helping the child to become aware of himself in himself. In his case, everything that makes for the realisation and apprehension of one's own organism can be of help. What else have we been doing with him besides Curative Eurythmy and Speech exercises? He has painting with the group. He must of course have painting; he is just about reaching school age. Progress with this child may be slow but it will be sure.

(The next child is brought in.)

I got to know this boy on a Journey. A rather difficult child! He is eleven years old. And now let me tell you where the trouble lies. The boy is an only child. Birth is reported to have been normal, although the mother is said to have lived unwisely during pregnancy; it seems she even drank a good deal. Development is said to have taken its course in the first three years without any marked individual feature. We will say more about that later. As a matter of fact, it cannot have been quite as represented, for at three years old the child fell suddenly ill, with high fever, and had convulsions during the night, the attack lasting only a short time. Such attacks became then for a while very frequent, coming on as a rule at night; later they grew much less frequent, occurring on an average once in three months. The attacks have, as you see, the characteristic symptoms of convulsions, that we spoke of earlier. Characteristically also, they began in the fourth year. Before that, the organism had not developed so far as to push back the astral organisation; the point had not been reached when the outside coverings—the walls—of certain organs began to repel the astral organisation. During the convulsions there is complete unconsciousness. This too, we saw, is quite usual. The child has violent spasms of twitching, particularly over the left half of the body; the eyes are also turned to the left. Afterwards he is very exhausted, and vomiting often occurs.

This means, you see, that by the time the child reached the third year, the walls of the organs were beginning to hold back the astral organisation, not allowing it to get through. Hence the convulsions. And with the convulsions—for the reason I explained to you—is associated loss of consciousness. But now in his case the astral organisation does succeed after a time in breaking through the walls of the organs to some extent. The child, unconsciously or semi-consciously, strains every effort to bring this about, and this struggle on his part lasts exactly as long as the attack. Then he has won through; but there is in consequence a certain emptiness in the organism in comparison with the previous condition, and this anomaly finds expression in the violent twitchings and spasms.

Now, as you know, the left half of the body of man is rather weaker than the right. When, the attack being over, the astral body is wanting to get free, it will naturally try to escape in the direction of the weaker part of the organism—that is, it will seek escape to the left. This finds expression also in the fact that the child turns his eyes to the left.

According to the diagnosis of doctors in Jena, the boy had encephalitis—a year ago, in January, was it? At that time, he had severe convulsions following on digestive disturbance and fever. So that here we have, preceded by stomach trouble, a major fit. Two weeks after the child was better again, paralysis of the left arm and leg showed itself—a most characteristic symptom, and easily explained. For, you see, what happens is this. The child goes on wanting to push the astral body through; but each time he puts forth these efforts and succeeds, he becomes aware afterwards of an emptiness behind the place where he succeeded in pushing the astral body through. Then he gets twitchings, and lets his astral body escape—to the left.

A process is taking place here which it is important to observe. Anything that enters into the organisation from without—that is to say, that has not been duly prepared by the organisation itself, but has forced its way in—is poison for the human organism. Suppose the astral organisation has suffered a displacement from right to left, and this displacement is continued—as it may well be, when it is a serious one—into the etheric organism, with the result that the physical organism also becomes involved. Then a slight infiltration of poison is set up towards the left side of the body, and this manifests outwardly in the symptom of paralysis. The child was given massage, and after three months the paralysis showed signs of improvement. The affected part was left a little weak, as one can still observe. (Turning to the boy and holding out an object) Take hold of it like this! As you see, he is clumsy with the left arm.

Since January 1923, the fits have essentially changed in character. They last now only a very short time, coming on as a rule nine hours after falling asleep. Suddenly the child will cry out, wake up, and stand up on his feet. At such moments you can observe also that extreme flatulence is present—a characteristic symptom. At the present time the boy has a fit nearly every week, but there is no longer the disturbance of consciousness. Neither do the twitchings occur. The fits pass and he jumps up all right. In 1924 a puncture was made in the corpus callosum, but with no result. The latest thing we have tried is treatment with calcium lactate.

The child is late in going to sleep and often talks in his sleep, especially if he has had a late meal. Appetite is good.

He has no liking for fruit or vegetables or anything acid, but shows a marked preference for meat. Digestion is at present fairly good; earlier on, he was inclined to be constipated and was also very quickly tired. The boy has a lively fantasy. He is friendly with everyone, but has no special affection for anyone in particular, not even for his parents. He is quick-tempered, and loves animals and plants. And we must not omit to note a trait that is strikingly characteristic of his condition, namely that he is a great chatterbox! That is part of the illness. It is for him a real need; he simply must chatter.

I think the very behaviour of the boy will have revealed to you the facts of his condition; you cannot help seeing them all simply by looking at him. There is however another feature of the case to which I must call your attention.

The child is now at the stage where the second body has already been developed for a long time, for he is eleven years old; but the condition in which we find him suggests that the model organism had itself become decadent, owing to the fact that the mother did not live wisely and carefully during the time of pregnancy, but drank a good deal. The whole manner and condition of the child now, makes it highly probable that the first body, the model body, was exceedingly irregular. And we are strongly inclined to the view that, although no such information has been given us, the birth may have occurred too soon, perhaps early by as much as two weeks—the mother failing to maintain her own organism in a condition that would render it a right and fit home for the embryo, which requires of course plenty of room to develop on all sides. This is frequently the case when alcohol is taken during pregnancy.

It is stated in the report given us that development in the first three years was without any peculiar features or symptoms. What seems to me more probable is that there has not been the readiness or ability to watch for more delicate deviations and irregularities. The astral (and the ego) organisation have been hanging out about the neck or mouth, and it is clear from this that the child must at any rate have felt, comparatively early, a need to speak. He must always have found difficulty in diving down into the ether and physical bodies. A certain nervous excitement, that manifests externally and that tends to hold back the principle of imitation and to allow more play to the inner organic impulses in evolution, must have already been present in the first three years.

And then we have, manifesting especially as the age of three-and-a-half approaches—the age that is halfway through the first seven-year epoch—the reactions that naturally arise when during the first seven years the ego and astral body are unable to work as they should from the direction of the head organisation. These organs here, which were at that time slowly and gradually coming into being—for they are finished and complete at seven years of age—turn out to be stunted in their growth. Why should they be so? The organs are stunted because the child did not finish the embryo period. They would have been more complete and more perfectly shaped if the child had gone through the whole embryo period. As it was, he had no fully developed model. When therefore, at the important age of three-and-a-half, the organs are beginning to take shape, the model comes short, and a condition develops where the astral body wants to penetrate the whole organisation and make its way through the walls of the organs, but is unable to get through; and there follow all the symptoms of which we have spoken. That in such a case the stomach and intestines must also inevitably become disordered ought not to be difficult to understand. For if the astral body does not succeed in bringing about the right streamings from the head to the limbs, then the intestines and the whole digestive organisation must necessarily remain weak. The ego organisation is not properly in them.

Consider now for a moment this weak digestive organisation—that is to say, a digestion that is weak in its forces, not having the ego organisation properly in it. Such a digestive system simply cannot tolerate just the particular kind of food that should find its specific field of activity in the digestive organisation. Imagine you have before you the plant.

Where in man does the root of the plant have its field of activity? In the head organisation; and the foliage in the rhythmic system; and all that develops above in the way of fruit or flower works in the intestines, in the whole digestive organisation. There is however no affinity between such a weakly developed digestive organisation and these upper parts of the plant. On the other hand, the boy's astral body, which is lying freely, as it were, in the whole belly without making its way right into the digestive organisation, has a hankering for meat. (The astral body of man is, you know, by its very nature strongly attracted to meat). We saw also that the boy shows a dislike of anything acid or sour. That again is understandable. Acid substances work with particular force upon the astral body. If the latter has dived down properly into the organism, then it unloads, as it were, upon the physical organism the acid influences it has received. But if it has not entered rightly into the physical organism, then this astral body is left painfully sensitive to the acid influences that reach it.

It is from observations such as these that you can obtain a true picture of how the organism works. When there is an irregularity of the kind I have described, one need not be at all surprised when stomach disorders occur. Stomach disorder is only a symptom of the presence in the metabolism of this irregularity. The illness consists entirely in the irregularity; the symptoms are occasioned by it, and there is naturally always the possibility that the onset of a fit should be preceded by stomach disturbance.

Since January 1923, there has, as I said, been an important change in the character of the fits. These last now only a short time, coming on about nine hours after the boy has fallen asleep. He suddenly starts screaming and crying, and wakes up. There is also extreme flatulence in the bowels. At present a fit occurs about once a week. With such a state of affairs, the outlook seems at first distinctly serious; it has nevertheless hopeful features. For there are signs of recovery, there are signs that a natural betterment is taking place. We have in fact reached a kind of crisis, that is expressing itself inwardly in an explosive manner; it takes its course slowly, but we could not expect anything else.

Why do the fits occur nine hours after falling asleep? Because that is the time when the astral body is beginning to set out on its return journey into the physical body. It still has difficulty in returning, it cannot make its way in; it keeps diving down, and then being driven back again. You can well imagine how all the symptoms follow from this—the starting up and the screaming. When however the astral body is once inside the whole physical organism, it is an easier matter for it to remain there throughout the day. The extreme flatulence arises from the fact that the astral body is not completely membered into the bowels organisation. To the relative independence and detachment of the astral body are due also the characteristic features of the boy's soul life—his continuous chattering, his excitability, his lively fantasy. And now the question is: what are we to do in such a case?

Important before all else is to remove from the astral body—which works powerfully and independently—all possibility of its developing forces that hinder it in the process of adaptation to ether body and physical body. When you have the child standing before you as you did today, you can see at once the first thing that needs to be done—his toy must be taken from him. That toy is a veritable poison for his soul. What he needs above all, is to have his imagination stimulated—as it can be only when he has to handle something that is not already complete and perfect. He must be got to paint as much as possible, but especially also to fashion forms, to carve. He should simply be given a piece of wood, and encouraged to “form” it in the shape of a human being. Here then will be our point of attack, as it were, in the educational sense. We must avoid bringing him in contact with things that are finished and perfect, and have it as our aim that he shall be constantly making things himself. This will bring his limbs into movement. We have not yet hit upon quite the right ways to achieve this; that still needs to be done.

A peculiar feature of this boy's condition is that one cannot say it is some particular organ which does not let the astral body through; the totality of the organs is formed and developed in such a way that they all equally hold back the astral body. Hence the slight tendency to deformity. And since, when the astral body does succeed in diving down, it is by the left side that it manages to escape, the danger is always present that symptoms of paralysis will show themselves on the left side. At his age they do not matter very much—as long as they are slight. They could, however, lead on to a more severe paralysis.

It would be good if along with foods for which he has a liking, the boy could be given sour fruit in exceedingly small quantities. (You will remember, we explained how his very constitution obliges him to have a strong dislike of all acid foods.) If this is done, then, while grabbing at the food he likes, he will take also with it your little dose of acid. All you have to do, before you give him some meat, is to pour on to the plate a small quantity of some dish that contains acid fruit juice. In this way you will find you can accustom him to eating very small helpings of stewed fruit with his meat.

And then it will be important that he should begin—or continue—to receive regular teaching on a right and sensible method, such as the method followed in the Waldorf School—irrespective of whether he makes rapid progress or not. We shall give him Eurythmy exercises, not limiting ourselves to particular sounds, but doing with him whatever brings the limbs especially into movement. In this way we can strengthen the limbs in their efforts to give form to the astral body.

In his present condition the boy himself helps in his own progress.

On the other hand, a child like the one we were considering earlier is extraordinarily difficult to deal with, the reason being that you have there before you a kind of little demon. What you must realise is that while the child remains small in his physical body, his astral body is all the time growing in inverse proportion. It does not adapt itself to the physical organism, but is as big as the latter is small. Now as a matter of fact, the child is, without knowing it, well on the way to become an actor in his astral body. Supposing you decide to appoint, instead of one teacher, a whole staff of teachers to train actors for speaking on the stage, assigning a particular task to each member of the college—then, if you were to develop him in a one-sided way, this squat little fellow could quite well be trained to teach the actors the sound R and related sounds. In spite of his apparent quietness and calm, the child is in reality very excited and agitated. You have before you, as I said, a kind of demonic being. An absolutely real super-sensible being is present in this boy. What you had sitting there in front of you was just a dwarfish little fellow, a mere Tom Thumb. But the actor is present there too all the time in full force, turning all kinds of somersaults etc., while the boy is perhaps sauntering along in an indolent manner.

You have here, you see, to do with a child who is most difficult of access. Whatever you attempt with the physical body meets with no response there, but only from the mercurial astral body—with the exception of Curative Eurythmy and speech exercises. These do contact the physical body and bring the intellect into activity; but it is no good trying to approach the child via the physical body by any other means. Indeed, it is quite possible you may fare like the “sorcerer's apprentice” who split the broomstick which would not behave and then found he had two broomsticks to deal with instead of one. For if you should ever succeed in making some sort of approach via the physical body—apart from Curative Eurythmy and Speech exercises—it may easily happen that through your intervention the constant restlessness is actually aggravated. That, then, will be your main problem in connection with this boy—that you are dealing all the time with an extraordinarily mobile and restless astral body.

How must we proceed, if we want to educate the boy? We must arrange our lessons so as to achieve a reversal of what we very frequently set out to achieve. Very often, as you know, we attach particular importance to making the course of the lesson lead up gradually to a dramatic climax. But for the boy we are considering, this gradual enhancement of interest must then at once be followed by a decline of interest. The dramatic quality must ebb away and subside. And this principle must be observed throughout all the teaching we undertake with him. We must have the patience and perseverance to carry it through. First, we must bring it about that the boy's attention is thoroughly roused. He, of course, has no knowledge at all of what is going on in his astral body; but anything that has the quality of true fantasy and imagination will help you to make your approach to this astral organism. You must invent the most delightful stories, full of vivacity and movement. When you are with this child, you must really become a poet, rich in imagination. And then, having gradually worked your story up to a high pitch of dramatic movement, and having succeeded at last in gaining entrance into the sub-conscious astral organisation—then you must, as it were, reverse and try to tone it all down, try to push back the stream of interest. Perhaps you hold up to ridicule some incident in the story, so that the charm of the thing is a little spoiled. Let us say, you begin to poke fun at the one who is the hero of the story and with whom the child has been enraptured. You could say: This great hero, you know, whenever he sets out to do his valiant deeds, he cannot begin until he has first blown his nose! With some such remark or other, you raise a smile at the person or thing that has aroused such enthusiasm and interest. And you go on in this way, until at last the whole thing evaporates like a soap-bubble. But beware that you do not at the same time spoil the child's enjoyment; you must see to it that the anticlimax, the discovery of how it all vanishes like a soap bubble, is also followed with pleasure and delight. And now while this is taking place, while you are undoing, as it were, the inner process which you yourself first stimulated the child's astral body is all the time gradually adapting itself to the physical body.

If you have the patience to undertake this kind of education with the child—first becoming a poet, and then again turning round on yourself and pulling your poetry to pieces with your irony until no shred of it remains—if you can have the patience to do this, you will manage to bring it about that by his ninth or tenth year the child will begin to grow in quite a natural manner. And that would be a great achievement. The super-fantastic organism that was created long ago during embryonic development would then be changed back again. The symptoms now present would gradually disappear in the course of your treatment. On the other hand, the very least result of all will be obtained by making direct attack on the symptoms themselves. To set about trying to break the child of his R would be as hopeless as it was once with a certain actor in Weimar—although he was no child!—who had a habit of emphasising each single syllable in every word. This actor would never say “Fréunderl” as we say it, but adhered strictly to the principle of giving equal emphasis to both syllables. Thus he used to say “Fréundérl”, “Kópfchén”, “Kíndléin”.² It is impossible to combat symptoms of this kind by direct attack. Any attempt to break our boy of saying and living in R would be utterly futile. It would only leave him empty and lazy and indolent. If, on the other hand, you carry out the measures I have described, the predilection for R will disappear of itself.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

• 1. On 2nd March, 1924.
• 2. Comparable English words would be friendship kitten, darling.

To begin with, dear friends, I want to show you the drawings done by this boy here, of whom we shall be speaking later on. He makes very good pictures. He has a feeling for detail; the drawings give evidence of a clear grasp of detail. Notice in this one, for instance, how accurately he has perceived everything. Here is another, where you can see how he plans and arranges his picture. Evidently he likes to do things in the way he learns to do them at school. And this is how it is done in our school here; and then each child is left free to fill in the picture in his own way. As you will see, we are economical and always use both sides of the paper. (Turning to the boy) Allow me now to draw you on the blackboard. There, that is what I wanted you for!

(Another child is brought in.) Bring the little one over here; that will be best—so.

Just look how tremendously large the head can become in a hydrocephalic child! We will discuss presently how that happens. The head actually measures 64 cm. When we first admitted the child, the measurement was 44 cm.¹ On the 25th February it was nearly 54 cm, by the 7th April it had increased to 56 cm, and between the 7th and 11th it grew still bigger. On the 19th April the measurement was more than 58 cm, on the 28th May it had risen to nearly 61 cm and on the 1st July to 64 cm. Otherwise, the child's bodily development has not been at all abnormal; he is just like any other child. He takes hold of things, he has a very good appetite, and with the exception of one crisis he has been cheerful and happy.

You can get an idea of the size of the head by looking at the little ears which are of course of ordinary size; you will at the same time notice just where the enlargement begins. It begins, you see, here, and then continues in this direction. The face is not affected; it is a little swollen and puffy, but not enlarged. As you look at the child, you will very likely think that he is perceiving things with his eyes. As a matter of fact, he has no more than a general impression of light—no precise impressions at all.

And now we have to take note of the tragic fact that just before I came here to give these lectures I received a telegram to say that the father of the child has died of a heart attack.

If you look at the child as a whole, and compare it with the form and proportions of an embryo, you will find that you have in this child nothing else than a giant embryo! You can see quite plainly that he has remained at the embryo stage, his growth in the post-embryo stage continuing to accord with the laws of growth of the embryo stage. That we have not up to now succeeded in achieving any reduction in the size of the head must be attributed to the extraordinary strength with which the internal tendencies that make for enlargement are working. I am however quite hopeful that after a certain point has been reached, we shall be able definitely to bring the head more nearly into harmony with the rest of the body. The child is in all other respects quite a jolly little fellow.

A striking fact that comes home to us when studying the riddles of human nature is that abnormalities of this kind throw great light upon the life of man as a whole—not only upon the life of man, but upon the life of the entire universe.

(Some extracts from the history of the case are read out.) The child was six months old when he came to us. He was born in August last year, and received from me his name; it was just in the time when I was away in England. The birth was normal. The mother was strong and healthy throughout the time of pregnancy. Please note these facts carefully; later on we shall have to find their interpretation. And let me ask for your special attention to what I said last—that the mother felt particularly well during the pregnancy. In this time she did a great deal of typing. There was nothing strange or unusual to be seen in the child at birth. Mark that well: at birth—that is to say, immediately on his being let go, as it were, from the embryo condition—the child showed nothing unusual. The embryo condition had, you see, been normal throughout; not until after the child started breathing with the lungs did abnormality begin. The umbilical cord was wound round the neck; the amniotic fluid contained meconium. The baby weighed 5 ¾ lb. Two weeks after birth he had convulsions—a solitary attack; an important fact to note, for it provides the first clear evidence that the ego organisation and the astral body are finding it impossible to make their way into the physical and the ether body. The child hit out around him with his arms and got blue in the face. Blueness is always a sign of inability to dive down into the physical body. If it is very marked, it has a more individual significance. It may mean nothing else than that the astral body had at birth a strong and pronounced configuration. For this, you know, can happen; as it did with Goethe, who was born quite blue and could only after some time be induced to receive into him the astral body and ego organisation. In the child now before us, the convulsions (and blueness) occurred of course later. Development is said to have been entirely normal during the first half year. It was not entirely normal; but the lack of right relationship between head and limbs escaped observation in the earliest months, and was noticed only later on. The child was breast-fed. The head was at birth noticeably small, which goes to show that the causes of the trouble are not to be sought in any weakness of the nerves-and-senses organisation. From September onwards, we are told, the size of the head began very gradually to increase. It began of course earlier than this. The mother did not yet consider the head abnormal at a time when it must already have grown to a considerable size. The enlargement of the head was noticed only when the discovery was made that in one week the child had put on weight to the extent of nearly 1 lb. In the middle of December the head measured 19 inches. The child was quiet, and did not cry much; he was apathetic. The fontanels were taut. Appetite was good. Blisters filled with pus began to form on the skin of the head. Appetite and evacuation of the bowels were good. And then the child was brought to us.

What we have to do, when such a case is brought to us, is to take the facts as they lie there before us—and among them the most important of all are of course whatever we can observe for ourselves by simply looking at the child—and then, working from these, win our way through to where we can “behold” also the spiritual in the child. Following this line of investigation we were able to see that the child carries in him an astral body which bears clearly and unmistakably the characteristic features of the astral body of the mother. The mother was of course present at the time. Seldom indeed does one come upon such a striking resemblance as here stood revealed! The same cannot be said of the ego organisation. The ego is still no more than rudimentary; it reminds one of an ego organisation such as children have in the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy. The child has in fact remained at that stage. Owing to the astral body being so extraordinarily strongly developed, the ego organisation seems to have missed sharing in the life and development of the last months of pregnancy. And now, after birth, the child retains within him, thanks to this powerful astral body, all the forces he had in the embryo time.

Let me at this point remind you that in the first few months after birth, the orientation of the embryo time virtually continues, with the result that in these first months the development of a child outside the body of the mother still bears a strong resemblance to its development in the embryo time. How are we to account for this? The radical change which the bodily nature of the child undergoes at birth is concerned, first or all, with the breathing system. The child comes into connection with the outside air. But now this connection with the air does not establish itself all at once, but only slowly; a considerable time has to go by before it is extended over the whole organism. The connection with the air has its influence upon the organism from the beginning, as we very well know. Nevertheless, the complete establishment of the connection throughout the organism is a gradual process. Consequently, in the earliest months, since the embryonic forces continue to work as before, there may frequently be no sign of any such devastation as can show itself in the organism later on, if infantilism goes so far as it does in the child before us; for we have in him an extreme instance of infantilism, where the embryo organisation is simply retained and continued.

Now, the characteristic feature of the embryo organisation is, as you know, that we have there to do with an immense head organisation and a small body. The head organisation owes its origin entirely to the co-operation of cosmic forces. Almost everything that takes place with the head organisation in the embryo condition is to be regarded as a work of cosmic forces. The mother's womb provides the place where the work that is going on can be protected from the intrusion of earthly forces. You must think of the mother's womb as a bodily organ that encloses a space, shutting away this space from earthly influences, so that it can be reserved for cosmic influences alone. Thus we have in the womb of the mother a space that stands in immediate connection with the cosmos, a space within which cosmic influences have free play. And there, in that enclosed space, the development of the head organisation goes forward.

When the time comes for the human forces of the mother's womb, in so far as these do receive the child at all—when the time comes for these human forces of the womb to work upon the child, then the metabolism-and-limbs organisation begins to let itself be orientated into these forces. In this child, the cosmic forces have simply continued their working into the post-embryo condition. The cosmic forces have had here the ascendancy over what should have been provided for by the strength and forces that normally a child receives in addition for his earthly development, notably for the development of the system of metabolism and limbs. What follows from this is obvious. For suppose the child had remained longer in the womb of the mother. It is of course an absurd hypothesis, but suppose the child had remained there beyond the ten months, what would have happened? The head would have gone on growing, and the limbs would not have been able to develop. For there, in the mother's womb, it is the extra-earthly, the cosmic, in the human being, that alone is given opportunity to grow.

And now we have to ask ourselves the question: What has led to this condition? And here I must say, it is most significant, it is indeed quite startling, that in the very moment when we are going to speak together about this whole strange case, a telegram is handed in, telling that the father has died of a heart attack. The following became clear to me and I confirmed it afterwards from the mother's memory. For I felt it necessary to ask her: “Did you not have a rather special feeling in your soul during pregnancy?” I even worded the question as follows: “Were you not sorry that the child did not remain within you instead of coming into the world?” The mother assented to this. She had founded her whole connection with the child upon the close association of the embryo period; as far as her feeling was concerned, the situation was that she was sorry she could not keep the child with her in the womb, she was sorry when it was torn away from her by the event of birth. This feeling on the part of the mother points on the one hand to an extraordinarily strong karmic connection between her and the child; on the other hand it has provided the conditions under which the forces that are active in the embryo time have been able to remain in the child. The abnormality of soul begins, you see, in the mother, and as one would naturally expect with such a deep karmic connection, transfers itself to the child.

The relationships of life are very complicated, and it is not at all easy always to see everything in its right connection. Many a time, however, the facts themselves will place the things together for our perception; and they do so here. Look at what has happened! Not a year has gone by since the child was born, and the father dies of a heart attack. There is always some connection to be found in such events; they don't just “happen”. The father had for a long time been suffering from a diseased heart. Now, you know what a strong connection there is between heart disease and the condition of the limbs. Under the influence of certain kinds of heart disease, the organisation of the legs will grow weak at once; for just the most important and essential part of the limbs, namely the tissues of the joints and the synovial fluid, suffer in consequence of heart disease. And then you must remember that, in the relationships of heredity, it is the limb organisation that is more strongly influenced by the father, and the head organisation by the mother. Now imagine, conception takes place. In certain circumstances it can happen that an incapacity on the part of the father to bring the forces of his organisation into the limbs is transferred to the child; in which case the head organisation, which is under the influence of the mother, is bound to undergo an inordinate development. And now you have the explanation of the fact that the mother loved to have the child in her womb. It was because the child received but little of heredity forces from the father, and the mother was accordingly able to make the main contribution.

There you have then a description of the case that is before us. And you must know that such a case is typical of a great number of children suffering from abnormality. For what you have observed in this child is an extreme instance of infantilism—an infantilism, namely, that goes back to the embryo condition; and you will find infantilism in all possible forms throughout the stages of child development. Here it is the embryo condition which, like an overgrown plant, spreads itself out over the later development; but the first epoch of life may do the same, extending its working beyond the change of teeth. Or again, just as there can be this failure to grow and develop rightly into the post-embryo condition, so can it also happen that a boy or girl does not grow into the third epoch of life in the right way. There are children who attain puberty in the outward sense, but do not with their full and entire constitution grow into the epoch that lies between puberty and the beginning of the twenties; such children retain instead during that epoch the orientation of the forces that work between the seventh and fourteenth year. Actually a whole succession of infantilisms can be met with. We have here the absolutely radical example; and it is fortunate from a medical and educational point of view that you should have opportunity to observe in this extreme case what you will be able to detect, to a lesser extent and in less pronounced form, in a vast number of backward children.

Our purpose in today's lecture is to make adequate preparation for passing on tomorrow to the therapy and pathology of the cases in question; I will accordingly confine myself to giving descriptions of the cases, and then tomorrow we will carry our consideration of the same to a conclusion and speak also of their pedagogical aspect.

You saw, at the beginning of the lecture, the boy of whom you may well be inclined to ask: Why ever is he brought forward for demonstration? A sensible question, for when you make his acquaintance in an ordinary superficial way, you can hardly do otherwise than find him a kindly disposed and friendly little boy, who learns painting just as other children do, who answers you quite properly and with perfect friendliness when you speak to him, a little boy, in fact, with whom you could quite happily converse by the hour. Is it not so? Those who have to do with him will tell you that it is as I have said. You would not be able to notice anything abnormal about the child, and would perhaps say to yourself: “Strange people these Anthroposophists! They put their children in a clinic for treatment, when all the time they are children who might well be held up as an example to other children!” The fact is, the boy is a kleptomaniac. You would never think it! But that is due to a characteristic feature of kleptomania—namely, its almost complete isolation from the rest of the soul life. And in this boy you will find that consciousness—which should, generally speaking, send its light into all the events and doings that occur in the life of man—is simply shut out from his kleptomaniac actions. You will have the distinct feeling that he himself has very little knowledge of what he is doing, in spite of the fact that he carries it out—and please note this!—in a most clever and crafty manner. He had to be expelled when he went to school in Berne, and again also when he attended a school in another town; and he had arranged everything so slyly, that the authorities had to go to no end of trouble before they could establish grounds for his expulsion.

The boy is not at all egoistic in the matter. He is quite capable of making presents to his friends of the things that he steals in this wily manner, or of spending it all on some jollification in order to give them pleasure. The whole situation leads to the development of a special form of not altogether conscious lying; for he does not himself know exactly what has happened, the details of the event not being shone upon by the light of consciousness. He will relate the most incredible stories to explain how he has come by some object, which he has of course simply stolen. He will show you, with real shyness, just how he found the things and just where they all were, making a long story of how it all came about. There is really something impish about the way these thefts take place. If I understood Frau Dr. Wegman aright, quite a long time can elapse during which it seems as though the boy has become a perfectly well-behaved little fellow, and then suddenly one day, without our knowing that he has taken anything it will transpire that something is missing out of someone's pocket. In a curious way different people will begin to make the discovery that things of theirs are simply disappearing. So then we would be confronted with these two facts side by side. On the one hand, the strange report of the dematerialisation of things in the Clinic, and on the other hand the knowledge that the boy had been compelled to leave one school after another. For that was known to us from his past history. These two facts stood there together, side by side.

It is, moreover, you will agree, an unpleasant situation suddenly to be placed under the necessity of supposing that it might also be some adult who had taken the things! We have in the Clinic at present fifty-two persons, and it might be this one or that one, one simply did not know. What one did know was that a spiritualist would have had here a grand opportunity to make a full and thorough explanation of how things dematerialise! A whole theory of the dematerialisation of objects could have been built up.

We have the child here with us in the Clinic, and I would like you to observe him and notice how firmly the head organisation is compressed here (at the temples) and how it goes apart here (towards the back of the head). As to the spiritual findings, they are to the effect that the parts of the astral body belonging to the several organs are extraordinarily strongly developed, particularly here on the left side. Externally, you will not find much else to note about the boy.

And now be so good as to bring in the other child. We will speak about methods of treatment tomorrow.

(The next child is brought in.) Look at her! A dear little girl! Charming, is she not? Look at her lovely fair hair. An interesting incident has taken place with this little girl. One day the children were left alone together for a short time. They were on very friendly terms with one another; and presently the boy whom you saw the day before yesterday got the idea that he must go and find some scissors. It was this little girl of course who made him fetch the scissors. Being a polite and obedient little gentleman, he brought them to her. What did she do, but cut off all her hair! As you see, not at all a conventional young lady! And now I would especially draw your attention to her lovely blue eyes, and then to her fair hair with its beautiful lustre. You can see at once, the child is very sulphurous. And she is so in her behaviour too—extraordinarily sulphurous. A dear child, but with this strongly marked sulphurous quality. She is always on the go and full of vigour. (The girl bites at Dr. Steiner's arm.) She is only biting my sleeve. She weighed at birth a little under 4 ¼ lb., but had been carried in the womb for the full nine months. Thus the embryo period had been gone through in the regular manner. The child was breast-fed for seven months, and when a year old learned to walk. That is a comparatively early age to learn to walk, but not abnormal. She learned also to talk at the right time. Development continued to give the appearance of being normal. By the time she was a year and a half the child had ceased to wet the bed, although she still wet herself during the day, but never any more at night. Here, you see, is already an abnormality, in the fact that this weakness in the child's organisation makes itself evident only when the astral body is present, and not when the astral body has been removed.

A year and a half ago, when she was three and a half years old—note that this is exactly half-way through the epoch of the first seven years and is a moment of great importance, as is also the corresponding moment in the second epoch, half-way between the seventh and fourteenth years—when three and a half years old, the child had headaches with high fever, and immediately afterwards measles. She was a child who readily caught illnesses. Since that time, she has been particularly restless and excitable. The mother too was ill at the same time with influenza and has also been restless since, and easily upset. You see the parallelism between mother and child. The child's appetite is always poor. And yet she is a fine, sturdy little girl, with powerful limbs. As you know, however, the organisation of the limbs is not built up, so far as substance is concerned, from food, but from the cosmos via the breathing and the activity of the senses. It is in the head that you will find the results of this poorness of appetite. A poor appetite, which means then of course impaired nutrition, affects the activity of the child's head. The little girl is lively and imaginative; she is restless, not merely in her body, but in her thoughts too. It can plainly be seen in her that her imagination and fantasy come not from the head but from the limbs. Her head organisation is very weak, her limb organisation particularly strong. Clearly, her life of fantasy comes from her limbs.

The child often has restless dreams. Now, it is important to take careful note of how she dreams—in particular, whether the dreams occur just after falling asleep or before waking up. Up to now, according to this report of her case, it is the former alone that have been observed. But the waking-up dreams must also come under observation. If we can bring her now and then to relate these, they will be found to reveal much that is of very great interest for us when they are in this way recalled to memory. We must get her to tell them to us.

These then are the three cases I wanted to put before you. Tomorrow we will meet again at 8:30 and speak about methods of treatment.

• 1. If accurately reported, this must refer to the earlier time when the child was first brought to the Clinic for advice.