MUCH that the man of to-day inherits from generations
of the past is called in question by his present life. Hence the numerous
problems of the hour and demands of the age.
How many of these are occupying the attention of the world the
Social Question, the Women's Question, the various educational
questions, hygienic questions, questions of human rights, and so
forth! By the most varied means, men are endeavouring to grapple with
these problems. The number of those who come on the scene with this or
that remedy or programme for the solution or at any rate for
the partial solution of one or other of them, is indeed past
counting. In the process, all manner of opinions and shades of opinion
make themselves felt Radicalism, which carries itself with a
revolutionary air; the Moderate attitude, full of respect for existing
things, yet endeavouring to evolve out of them something new;
Conservatism, which is up in arms whenever any of the old institutions
are tampered with. Beside these main tendencies of thought and feeling
there is every kind of intermediate position.
Looking at all these things of life with deeper vision, one cannot but
feel indeed the impression forces itself upon one that
the men of our age are in the position of trying to meet the demands
involved in modern life with means which are utterly inadequate. Many
are setting about to reform life, without really knowing life in its
foundations. But he who would make proposals as to the future must not
content himself with a knowledge of life that merely touches life's
surface. He must investigate its depths.
Life in its entirety is like a plant. The plant contains not only what
it offers to external life; it also holds a future state within its
hidden depths. One who has before him a plant only just in leaf, knows
very well that after some time there will be flowers and fruit also on
the leaf-bearing stem. In its hidden depths the plant already contains
the flowers and fruit in embryo; yet by mere investigation of what the
plant now offers to external vision, how should one ever tell what
these new organs will look like? This can only be told by one who has
learnt to know the very nature and being of the plant.
So, too, the whole of human life contains within it the germs of its
own future; but if we are to tell anything about this future, we must
first penetrate into the hidden nature of the human being. And this
our age is little inclined to do. It concerns itself with the things
that appear on the surface, and thinks it is treading on unsafe ground
if called upon to penetrate to what escapes external observation.
In the case of the plant the matter is certainly more simple. We know
that others like it have again and again borne fruit before. Human
life is present only once; the flowers it will bear in the future have
never yet been there. Yet they are present within man in the embryo,
even as the flowers are present in a plant that is still only in leaf.
And there is a possibility of saying something about man's future, if
once we penetrate beneath the surface of human nature to its real
essence and being. It is only when fertilized by this deep penetration
into human life, that the various ideas of reform current in the
present age can become fruitful and practical.
Anthroposophy, by its inherent character and tendency, must have the
task of providing a practical conception of the world one that
comprehends the nature and essence of human life. Whether what is
often called so is justified in making such a claim, is not the point;
it is the real essence of Anthroposophy and what, by virtue of
its real essence, Anthroposophy can be that here concerns us.
For Anthroposophy is not intended as a theory remote from life, one
that merely caters for man's curiosity or thirst for knowledge. Nor is
it intended as an instrument for a few people, who for selfish reasons
would like to attain a higher level of development for themselves. No,
it can join and work at the most important tasks of present-day
humanity, and further their development for the welfare of mankind.
(See Footnote 1)
It is true that in taking on this mission, Anthroposophy must be
prepared to face all kinds of scepticism and opposition. Radicals,
Moderates and Conservatives in every sphere of life will be bound to
meet it with scepticism. For in its beginnings it will scarcely be in
a position to please any party. Its premises lie far beyond the sphere
of party movements, being founded, in effect, purely and solely on a
true knowledge and perception of life. If a man has knowledge of life,
it is only out of life itself that he will be able to set himself his
tasks. He will draw up no arbitrary programmes, for he will know that
no other fundamental laws of life can prevail in the future than those
that prevail already in the present. The spiritual investigator will
therefore of necessity respect existing things. However great the need
for improvement he may find in them, he will not fail to see, in
existing things themselves, the embryo of the future. At the same
time, he knows that in all things becoming there must be
growth and evolution. Hence he will perceive in the present the seeds
of transformation and of growth. He invents no programmes; he reads
them out of what is there. What he thus reads becomes in a certain
sense itself a programme, for it bears in it the essence of
development. For this very reason an anthroposophical insight into the
being of man must provide the most fruitful and the most practical
means for the solution of the urgent questions of modern life.
In the following pages we shall endeavour to prove this for one
particular question the question of Education. We shall not set
up demands nor programmes, but simply describe the child-nature. From
the nature of the growing and evolving human being, the proper point
of view for Education will, as it were, spontaneously result.
IF we wish to perceive the nature of the evolving man, we must begin
by considering the hidden nature of man as such. What
sense-observation learns to know in man, and what the materialistic
conception of life would consider as the one and only element in man's
being, is for spiritual investigation only one part, one member of his
nature: it is his Physical Body. This physical body of man is subject
to the same laws of physical existence, and is built up of the same
substances and forces, as the whole of that world which is commonly
called lifeless. Anthroposophical Science says, therefore: man has a
physical body in common with the whole of the mineral kingdom. And it
designates as the Physical Body that alone in man, which
brings the substances into mixture, combination, form, and dissolution
by the same laws as are at work in the same substances in the mineral
world as well.
Now over and above the physical body, Anthroposophical Science
recognizes a second essential principle in man. It is his Life-Body or
Etheric Body. The physicist need not take offence at the term
Etheric Body. The word Ether in this
connection does not mean the same as the hypothetical Ether of
Physics. It must be taken simply as a designation of what will here
and now be described. In recent times it was considered a highly
unscientific proceeding to speak of such an Etheric Body;
though this had not been so at the end of the eighteenth and in the
first half of the nineteenth century. In that earlier time people had
said to themselves: the substances and forces which are at work in a
mineral cannot of their own accord form the mineral into a living
creature. In the latter there must also be inherent a peculiar
force. This force they called the Vital Force,
and they thought of it somewhat as follows: the Vital Force is working
in the plant, in the animal, in the human body, and produces the
phenomena of life, just as the magnetic force is present in the magnet
producing the phenomena of attraction. In the succeeding period of
materialism, this idea was set aside. People began to say: the living
creature is built up in the same way as the lifeless creation.
There are no other forces at work in the living organism than in the
mineral; the same forces are only working in a more complicated way,
and building a more complex structure.
To-day, however, it is only the most rigid materialists who hold fast
to this denial of a life-force or vital force. There are a number of
natural scientists and thinkers whom the facts of life have taught,
that something like a vital force or life-principle must be assumed.
Thus modern science, in its later developments, is in a certain sense
approaching what Anthroposophical Science has to say about the
life-body. There is, however, a very important difference. From the
facts of sense-perception, modern science arrives, through intellectual
considerations or reflections, at the assumption of a kind of vital
force. This is not the method of genuine spiritual investigation which
Anthroposophy adopts and from the results of which it makes its
statements. It cannot often enough be emphasized how great is the
difference, in this respect, between Anthroposophy and the current
science of to-day. For the latter regards the experiences of the
senses as the foundation for all knowledge. Anything that cannot be
built up on this foundation, it takes to be unknowable. From the
impressions of the senses it draws deductions and conclusions. What
goes on beyond them it rejects, as lying beyond the frontiers of
human knowledge.
From the standpoint of Anthroposophical Science, such a view is like
that of a blind man, who only admits as valid things that can be
touched and conclusions that result by deduction from the world of
touch a blind man who rejects the statements of seeing people
as lying outside the possibility of human knowledge. Anthroposophy
shows man to be capable of evolution, capable of bringing new worlds
within his sphere by the development of new organs of perception.
Colour and light are all around the blind man. If he cannot see them,
it is only because he lacks the organs of perception. In like manner
Anthroposophy asserts: there are many worlds around man, and man can
perceive them if only he develops the necessary organs. As the blind
man who has undergone a successful operation looks out upon a new
world, so by the development of higher organs man can come to know new
worlds worlds altogether different from those which his
ordinary senses allow him to perceive.
Now whether one who is blind in body can be operated on or not,
depends on the constitution of his organs. But the higher organs
whereby man can penetrate into the higher worlds, are present in
embryo in every human being. Everyone can develop them who has the
patience, endurance, and energy to apply in his own case the methods
described in the volume, Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its
Attainment.
Anthroposophical Science, then, would never say that there are
definite frontiers to human knowledge. What it would rather say is
that for man those worlds exist, for which he has the organs of
perception. Thus Anthroposophy speaks only of the methods whereby
existing frontiers may be extended; and this is its position with
regard to the investigation of the life-body or etheric body, and of
all that is specified in the following pages as the yet higher members
of man's nature. Anthroposophy admits that the physical body alone is
accessible to investigation through the bodily senses, and that
from the point of view of this kind of investigation it will at
most be possible by intellectual deductions to surmise the existence
of a higher body. At the same time, it tells how it is possible to
open up a world wherein these higher members of man's nature emerge
for the observer, as the colour and the light of things emerge after
operation in the case of a man born blind. For those who have
developed the higher organs of perception, the etheric or life-body is
an object of perception and not merely of intellectual deduction.
Man has this etheric or life-body in common with the plants and
animals. The life-body works in a formative way upon the substances
and forces of the physical body, thus bringing about the phenomena of
growth, reproduction, and inner movement of the saps and fluids. It is
therefore the builder and moulder of the physical body, its inhabitant
and architect. The physical body may even be spoken of as an image or
expression of the life-body. In man the two are nearly, though by no
means wholly, equal as to form and size. In the animals, however, and
still more so in the plants, the etheric body is very different, both
in form and in extension, from the physical.
The third member of the human body is what is called the Sentient or
Astral Body. It is the vehicle of pain and pleasure, of impulse,
craving, passion, and the like all of which are absent in a
creature consisting only of physical and etheric bodies. These things
may all be included in the term: sentient feeling or sensation. The
plant has no sensation. If in our time some learned men, seeing that
plants will respond by movement or in some other way to external
stimulus, conclude that plants have a certain power of sensation, they
only show their ignorance of what sensation is. The point is not
whether the creature responds to an external stimulus, but whether
the stimulus is reflected in an inner process as pain or
pleasure, impulse, desire, or the like. Unless we held fast to this
criterion, we should be justified in saying that blue litmus-paper has
a sensation of certain substances, because it turns red by contact
with them.
(See Footnote 2)
Man has therefore a sentient body in common with the animal kingdom
only, and this sentient body is the vehicle of sensation or of
sentient life.
We must not fall into the error of certain theosophical circles, and
imagine the etheric and sentient bodies as consisting simply of finer
substances than are present in the physical body. For that would be a
materialistic conception of these higher members of man's nature. The
etheric body is a force-form; it consists of active forces, and not of
matter. The astral or sentient body is a figure of inwardly moving,
coloured, luminous pictures. The astral body deviates, both in shape
and size, from the physical body. In man it presents an elongated
ovoid form, within which the physical and etheric bodies are embedded.
It projects beyond them a vivid, luminous figure on
every side.
(See Footnote 3)
Now man possesses a fourth member of his being; and this fourth member
he shares with no other earthly creature. It is the vehicle of the
human I , of the human Ego. The little word I
as used, for example, in the English language is
a name essentially different from all other names. To anyone who
ponders rightly on the nature of this name, there is opened up at once
a way of approach to a perception of man's real nature. All other
names can be applied, by all men equally, to the thing they designate.
Everyone can call a table table, and everyone can call a
chair chair; but it is not so with the name I
. No one can use this name to designate another. Each human
being can only call himself I ; the name I
can never reach my ear as a designation of myself. In designating
himself as I , man has to name himself within himself. A
being who can say I to himself is a world in himself.
Those religions which are founded on spiritual knowledge have always
had a feeling for this truth. Hence they have said: With the I
, the God who in the lower creatures reveals
himself only from without, in the phenomena of the surrounding world
begins to speak from within. The vehicle of this faculty of
saying I , of the Ego-faculty, is the Body of the
Ego, the fourth member of the human being.
(See Footnote 4)
This Body of the Ego is the vehicle of the higher soul of
man. Through it man is the crown of all earthly creation. Now in the
human being of the present day the Ego is by no means simple in
character. We may recognize its nature if we compare human beings at
different stages of development. Look at the uneducated savage beside
the average European, or again, compare the latter with a lofty
idealist. Each one of them has the faculty of saying I
to himself; the Body of the Ego is present in them all.
But the uneducated savage, with his Ego, follows his passions,
impulses, and cravings almost like an animal. The more highly
developed man says to himself, Such and such impulses and
desires you may follow, while others again he holds in check or
suppresses altogether. The idealist has developed new impulses and new
desires in addition to those originally present. All this has taken
place through the Ego working upon the other members of the human
being. Indeed, it is this which constitutes the special task of the
Ego. Working outward from itself, it has to ennoble and purify the
other members of man's nature.
In the human being who has reached beyond the condition in which the
external world first placed him, the lower members have become changed
to a greater or lesser degree under the influence of the
Ego. When man is only beginning to rise above the animal,
when his Ego is only just kindled, he is still like an
animal so far as the lower members of his being are concerned. His
etheric or life-body is simply the vehicle of the formative forces of
life, the forces of growth and reproduction. His sentient body gives
expression to those impulses, desires, and passions only, which are
stimulated by external nature. As man works his way up from this stage
of development, through successive lives or incarnations, to an ever
higher evolution, his Ego works upon the other members and
transforms them. In this way his sentient body becomes the vehicle of
purified sensations of pleasure and pain, refined wishes and desires.
And the etheric or life-body also becomes transformed. It becomes the
vehicle of the man's habits, of his more permanent bent or tendency in
life, of his temperament and of his memory. A man whose Ego has not
yet worked upon his life-body, has no memory of the experiences he
goes through in life. He just lives out what Nature has implanted in
him.
This is what the growth and development of civilization means for man.
It is a continual working of his Ego upon the lower members of his
nature. The work penetrates right down into the physical body. Under
the influence of the Ego, the whole appearance and physiognomy, the
gestures and movements of the physical body, are altered. It is
possible, moreover, to distinguish the way in which the different
means of culture or civilization work upon the several members of
man's nature. The ordinary factors of civilization work upon the
sentient body and imbue it with pleasures and pains, with impulses and
cravings, of a different kind from what it had originally. Again, when
the human being is absorbed in the contemplation of a great work of
art, his etheric body is being influenced. Through the work of art he
divines something higher and more noble than is offered by the
ordinary environment of his senses, and in this process he is forming
and transforming his life-body. Religion is a powerful means for the
purification and ennobling of the etheric body. It is here that the
religious impulses have their mighty purpose in the evolution of
mankind.
What we call conscience is nothing else than the outcome
of the work of the Ego on the life-body through incarnation after
incarnation. When man begins to perceive that he ought not to do this
or that, and when this perception makes so strong an impression on him
that the impression passes on into his etheric body,
conscience arises.
Now this work of the Ego upon the lower members may either be
something that is proper to a whole race of men; or else it may be
entirely individual, an achievement of the individual Ego working on
itself alone. In the former case, the whole human race collaborates,
as it were, in the transformation of the human being. The latter kind
of transformation depends on the activity of the individual Ego alone
and of itself. The Ego may become so strong as to transform, by its
very own power and strength, the sentient body. What the Ego then
makes of the Sentient or Astral Body is called Spirit-Self
(or by an Eastern expression, Manas). This transformation
is wrought mainly through a process of learning, through an enriching
of one's inner life with higher ideas and perceptions.
Now the Ego can rise to a still higher task, and it is one that
belongs quite essentially to its nature. This happens when not only is
the astral body enriched, but the etheric or life-body transformed. A
man learns many things in the course of his life; and if from some
point he looks back on his past life, he may say to himself: I
have learned much. But in a far less degree will he be able to
speak of a transformation in his temperament or character during life,
or of an improvement or deterioration in his memory. Learning concerns
the astral body, whereas the latter kinds of transformation concern
the etheric or life-body. Hence it is by no means an unhappy image if
we compare the change in the astral body during life with the course
of the minute hand of a clock, and the transformation of the life-body
with the course of the hour hand.
When man enters on a higher training or, as it is called,
occult training it is above all important for him to undertake,
out of the very own power of his Ego, this latter transformation.
Individually and with full consciousness, he has to work out the
transformation of his habits and his temperament, his character, his
memory ... In so far as he thus works into his life-body, he
transforms it into what is called in anthroposophical terminology,
Life-Spirit (or, as the Eastern expression has it,
Budhi).
At a still higher stage man comes to acquire forces whereby he is able
to work upon his physical body and transform it (transforming, for
example, the circulation of the blood, the pulse). As much of the
physical body as is thus transformed is Spirit-Man (or, in
the Eastern term, Atma).
Now as a member of the whole human species or of some section of it
for example, of a nation, tribe, or family man also
achieves certain transformations of the lower parts of his nature. In
Anthroposophical Science the results of this latter kind of
transformation are known by the following names. The astral or
sentient body, transformed through the Ego, is called the Sentient
Soul; the transformed etheric body is called the Intellectual Soul;
and the transformed physical body the Spiritual Soul. We must not
imagine the transformations of these three members taking place one
after another in time. From the moment when the Ego lights up, all
three bodies are undergoing transformation simultaneously. Indeed, the
work of the Ego does not become clearly perceptible to man until a
part of the Spiritual Soul has already been formed and developed.
FROM what has been said, it is clear that we may speak
of four members of man's nature: the Physical Body, the Etheric or Life-Body,
the Astral or Sentient Body, and the Body of the Ego. The Sentient Soul,
the Intellectual Soul, and the Spiritual Soul, and beyond these the
still higher members of man's nature Spirit-Self, Life-Self,
Spirit-Man appear in connection with these four members as
products of transformation. Speaking of the vehicles of the qualities
of man, it is in fact the first four members only which come into
account.
It is on these four members of the human being that the educator
works. Hence, if we desire to work in the right way, we must
investigate the nature of these parts of man. It must not be imagined
that they develop uniformly in the human being, so that at any given
point in his life the moment of birth, for example they
are all equally far developed. This is not the case; their development
takes place differently in the different ages of a man's life. The
right foundation for education, and for teaching also, consists in a
knowledge of these laws of development of human nature.
Before physical birth, the growing human being is surrounded on all
sides by the physical body of another. He does not come into
independent contact with the physical world. The physical body of his
mother is his environment, and this body alone can work upon him as he
grows and ripens. Physical birth indeed consists in this, that the
physical mother-body, which has been as a protecting sheath, sets the
human being free, thus enabling the environment of the physical world
thenceforward to work upon him directly. His senses open to the
external world, and the external world thereby gains that influence on
the human being which was previously exercised by the physical
envelope of the mother-body.
A spiritual understanding of the world, as represented by
Anthroposophy, sees in this process the birth of the physical body,
but not as yet of the etheric or life-body. Even as man is surrounded,
until the moment of birth, by the physical envelope of the
mother-body, so until the time of the change of teeth until
about the seventh year he is surrounded by an etheric envelope
and by an astral envelope. It is only during the change of teeth that
the etheric envelope liberates the etheric body. And an astral
envelope remains until the time of puberty, when the astral or
sentient body also becomes free on all sides, even as the physical
body became free at physical birth and the etheric body at the change
of teeth.
(See Footnote 5)
Thus, Anthroposophical Science has to speak of three births of the
human being. Until the change of teeth, certain impressions intended
for the etheric body can as little reach it as the light and air of
the physical world can reach the physical body so long as this latter
is resting in the mother's womb.
Before the change of teeth takes place, the free life-body is not yet
at work in man. As in the body of the mother the physical body
receives forces which are not its own, while at the same time it
gradually develops its own forces within the protecting sheath of the
mother's womb, so it is with the forces of growth until the change of
teeth. During this first period the etheric body is only developing
and moulding its own forces, con jointly with those not its own
which it has inherited. Now while the etheric body is thus
working its way into liberation, the physical body is already
independent. The etheric body, as it liberates itself, develops and
works out what it has to give to the physical body. The second
teeth, i.e. the human being's own teeth, taking the place of
those which he inherited, represent the culmination of this work. They
are the densest things embedded in the physical body, and hence they
appear last, at the end of this period.
From this point onward, the growth of man's physical body is brought
about by his own etheric body alone. But this etheric body is still
under the influence of an astral body which has not yet escaped from
its protecting sheath. At the moment when the astral body too becomes
free, the etheric body concludes another period of its development;
and this conclusion finds expression in puberty. The organs of
reproduction become independent because from this time onward the
astral body is free, no longer working inwards, but openly and without
integument meeting the external world.
Now just as the physical influences of the external world cannot be
brought to bear on the yet unborn child so until the change of
teeth one should not bring to bear on the etheric body those forces
which are, for it, what the impressions of the physical environment
are for the physical body. And in the astral body the corresponding
influences should not be given play until after puberty.
Vague and general phrases the harmonious development of
all the powers and talents in the child, and so forth
cannot provide the basis for a genuine art of education. Such an art
of education can only be built up on a real knowledge of the human
being. Not that these phrases are incorrect, but that at bottom they
are as useless as it would be to say of a machine that all its parts
must be brought harmoniously into action. To work a machine you must
approach it, not with phrases and truisms, but with real and detailed
knowledge. So for the art of education it is a knowledge of the
members of man's being and of their several development which is
important. We must know on what part of the human being we have
especially to work at a certain age, and how we can work upon it in
the proper way. There is of course no doubt that a truly realistic art
of education, such as is here indicated, will only slowly make its
way. This lies, indeed, in the whole mentality of our age, which will
long continue to regard the facts of the spiritual world as the
vapourings of an imagination run wild, while it takes vague and
altogether unreal phrases for the result of a realistic way of
thinking. Here, however, we shall unreservedly describe what will in
time to come be a matter of common knowledge, though many to-day may
still regard it as a figment of the mind.
With physical birth the physical human body is exposed to the physical
environment of the external world. Before birth it was surrounded by
the protecting envelope of the mother's body. What the forces and
fluids of the enveloping mother-body have done for it hitherto, must
from now onward be done for it by the forces and elements of the
external physical world. Now before the change of teeth in the seventh
year, the human body has a task to perform upon itself which is
essentially different from the tasks of all the other periods of life.
In this period the physical organs must mould themselves into definite
shapes. Their whole structural nature must receive certain tendencies
and directions. In the later periods also, growth takes place; but
throughout the whole succeeding life, growth is based on the forms
which were developed in this first life-period. If true forms were
developed, true forms will grow; if misshapen forms were developed,
misshapen forms will grow. We can never repair what we have neglected
as educators in the first seven years. Just as Nature brings about the
right environment for the physical human body before birth, so after
birth the educator must provide for the right physical environment. It
is the right physical environment alone, which works upon the child in
such a way that the physical organs shape themselves aright.
There are two magic words which indicate how the child enters into
relation with his environment. They are: Imitation, and Example. The
Greek philosopher Aristotle called man the most imitative of
creatures. For no age in life is this more true than for the first
stage of childhood, before the change of teeth. What goes on in his
physical environment, this the child imitates, and in the process of
imitation his physical organs are cast into the forms which then
become permanent. Physical environment must, however, be
taken in the widest imaginable sense. It includes not only what goes
on around the child in the material sense, but everything that takes
place in the child's environment everything that can be
perceived by his senses, that can work from the surrounding physical
space upon the inner powers of the child. This includes all the moral
or immoral actions, all the wise or foolish actions, that the child
sees.
It is not moral talk or prudent admonitions that influence the child
in this sense. Rather is it what the grown-up people do visibly before
his eyes. The effect of admonition is to mould the forms, not of the
physical, but of the etheric body; and the latter, as we saw, is
surrounded until the seventh year by a protecting etheric envelope,
even as the physical body is surrounded before physical birth by the
physical envelope of the mother-body. All that has to evolve in the
etheric body before the seventh year ideas, habits, memory, and
so forth all this must develop of its own accord,
just as the eyes and ears develop within the mother-body without the
influence of external light ... What we read in that excellent
educational work Jean Paul's Levana or
Science of Education is undoubtedly true. He says
that a traveler will have learned more from his nurse in the first
years of his life, than in all his journeys round the world.
The child, however, does not learn by instruction or admonition, but
by imitation. The physical organs shape their forms through the
influence of the physical environment. Good sight will be developed in
the child if his environment has the right conditions of light and
colour, while in the brain and blood-circulation the physical
foundations will be laid for a healthy moral sense if the child sees
moral actions in his environment. If before his seventh year the child
sees only foolish actions in his surroundings, the brain will assume
such forms as adapt it also to foolishness in later life.
As the muscles of the hand grow firm and strong in performing the work
for which they are fitted, so the brain and other organs of the
physical body of man are guided into the right lines of development if
they receive the right impression from their environment. An example
will best illustrate this point. You can make a doll for a child by
folding up an old napkin, making two corners into legs, the other two
corners into arms, a knot for the head, and painting eyes, nose and
mouth with blots of ink. Or else you can buy the child what they call
a pretty doll, with real hair and painted cheeks. We need
not dwell on the fact that the pretty doll is of course
hideous, and apt to spoil the healthy aesthetic sense for a lifetime.
The main educational question is a different one. If the child has
before him the folded napkin, he has to fill in from his own
imagination all that is needed to make it real and human. This work of
the imagination moulds and builds the forms of the brain. The brain
unfolds as the muscles of the hand unfold when they do the work for
which they are fitted. Give the child the so-called pretty
doll, and the brain has nothing more to do. Instead of unfolding, it
becomes stunted and dried up. If people could look into the brain as
the spiritual investigator can, and see how it builds its forms, they
would assuredly give their children only such toys as are fitted to
stimulate and vivify its formative activity. Toys with dead
mathematical forms alone, have a desolating and killing effect upon
the formative forces of the child. On the other hand everything that
kindles the imagination of living things works in the right way. Our
materialistic age produces few good toys. What a healthy toy it is,
for example, which represents by movable wooden figures two smiths
facing each other and hammering an anvil. The like can still be bought
in country districts. Excellent also are the picture-books where the
figures can be set in motion by pulling threads from below, so that
the child itself can transform the dead picture into a representation
of living action. All this brings about a living mobility of the
organs, and by such mobility the right forms of the organs are built
up.
These things can of course only be touched on here, but in future
Anthroposophy will be called upon to give the necessary indications in
detail, and this it is in a position to do. For it is no empty
abstraction, but a body of living facts which can give guiding lines
for the conduct of life's realities.
A few more examples may be given. A nervous, that is to
say excitable child, should be treated differently as regards
environment from one who is quiet and lethargic. Everything comes into
consideration, from the colour of the room and the various objects
that are generally around the child, to the colour of the clothes in
which he is dressed. One will often do the wrong thing if one does not
take guidance from spiritual knowledge. For in many cases the
materialistic idea will hit on the exact reverse of what is right. An
excitable child should be surrounded by and dressed in the red or
reddish-yellow colours, whereas for a lethargic child one should have
recourse to the blue or bluish-green shades of colour. For the
important thing is the complementary colour, which is created within
the child. In the case of red it is green, and in the case of blue
orange-yellow, as may easily be seen by looking for a time at a red or
blue surface and then quickly directing one's gaze to a white surface.
The physical organs of the child create this contrary or complementary
colour, and it is this which brings about the corresponding organic
structures that the child needs. If the excitable child has a red
colour around him, he will inwardly create the opposite, the green;
and this activity of creating green has a calming effect. The organs
assume a tendency to calmness.
There is one thing that must be thoroughly and fully recognized for
this age of the child's life. It is that the physical body creates its
own scale of measurement for what is beneficial to it. This it does by
the proper development of craving and desire. Generally speaking, we
may say that the healthy physical body desires what is good for it. In
the growing human being, so long as it is the physical body that is
important, we should pay the closest attention to what the healthy
craving, desire and delight require. Pleasure and delight are the
forces which most rightly quicken and call forth the physical forms of
the organs.
In this matter it is all too easy to do harm by failing to bring the
child into a right relationship, physically, with his environment.
Especially may this happen in regard to his instincts for food. The
child may be overfed with things that completely make him lose his
healthy instinct for food, whereas by giving him the right nourishment
the instinct can be so preserved that he always wants what is
wholesome for him under the circumstances, even to a glass of water,
and turns just as surely from what would do him harm. Anthroposophical
Science, when called upon to build up an art of education, will be
able to indicate all these things in detail, even specifying
particular forms of food and nourishment. For Anthroposophy is
realism, it is no grey theory; it is a thing for life itself.
Thus the joy of the child, in and with his environment, must be
reckoned among the forces that build and mould the physical organs.
Teachers he needs with happy look and manner, and above all with an
honest unaffected love. A love which as it were streams through the
physical environment of the child with warmth may literally be said to
hatch out the forms of the physical organs.
The child who lives in such an atmosphere of love and warmth and who
has around him really good examples for his imitation, is living in
his right element. One should therefore strictly guard against
anything being done in the child's presence that he must not imitate.
One should do nothing of which one would then have to say to the
child, You must not do that. The strength of the child's
tendency to imitate can be recognized by observing how he will paint
and scribble written signs and letters long before he understands
them. Indeed, it is good for him to paint the letters by imitation
first, and only later learn to understand their meaning. For imitation
belongs to this period when the physical body is developing; while the
meaning speaks to the etheric, and the etheric body should not be
worked on till after the change of teeth, when the outer etheric
envelope has fallen away. Especially should all learning of speech in
these years be through imitation. It is by hearing that the child will
best learn to speak. No rules or artificial instruction of any kind
can be of good effect.
For early childhood it is important to realize the value of children's
songs, for example, as means of education. They must make a pretty and
rhythmical impression on the senses; the beauty of sound is to be
valued more than the meaning. The more living the impression made on
eye and ear, the better. Dancing movements in musical rhythm have a
powerful influence in building up the physical organs, and this too
should not be undervalued.
WITH the change of teeth, when the etheric body lays
aside its outer etheric envelope, there begins the time when the etheric body
can be worked upon by education from without. We must be quite clear what it
is that can work upon the etheric body from without, The formation and
growth of the etheric body means the moulding and developing of the
inclinations and habits, of the conscience, the character, the memory
and temperament. The etheric body is worked upon through pictures and
examples i.e. by carefully guiding the imagination of the
child. As before the age of seven we have to give the child the actual
physical pattern for him to copy, so between the time of the change of
teeth and puberty we must bring into his environment things with the
right inner meaning and value. For it is from the inner meaning and
value of things that the growing child will now take guidance.
Whatever is fraught with a deep meaning that works through pictures
and allegories, is the right thing for these years. The etheric body
will unfold its forces if the well-ordered imagination is allowed to
take guidance from the inner meaning it discovers for itself in
pictures and allegories whether seen in real life or
communicated to the mind. It is not abstract conceptions that work in
the right way on the growing etheric body, but rather what is seen and
perceived not indeed with the outward senses, but with the eye
of the mind. This seeing and perceiving is the right means of
education for these years.
For this reason it matters above all that the boy and girl should have
as their teachers persons who can awaken in them, as they see and
watch them, the right intellectual and moral powers. As for the first
years of childhood Imitation and Example were, so to say, the magic
words for education, so for the years of this second period the magic
words are Discipleship and Authority. What the child sees directly in
his educators, with inner perception, must become for him authority
not an authority compelled by force, but one that he accepts
naturally without question. By it he will build up his conscience,
habits and inclinations; by it he will bring his temperament into an
ordered path. He will look out upon the things of the world as it were
through its eyes. Those beautiful words of the poet, Every man
must choose his hero, in whose footsteps he will tread as he carves
out his path to the heights of Olympus, have especial meaning
for this time of life. Veneration and reverence are forces whereby the
etheric body grows in the right way. If it was impossible during these
years to look up to another person with unbounded reverence, one will
have to suffer for the loss throughout the whole of one's later life.
Where reverence is lacking, the living forces of the etheric body are
stunted in their growth.
Picture to yourself how such an incident as the following works upon
the character of a child. A boy of eight years old hears tell of
someone who is truly worthy of honour and respect. All that he hears
of him inspires in the boy a holy awe. The day draws near when for the
first time he will be able to see him. With trembling hand he lifts
the latch of the door behind which will appear before his sight the
person he reveres. The beautiful feelings such an experience calls
forth are among the lasting treasures of life. Happy is he who, not
only in the solemn moments of life but continually, is able to look up
to his teachers and educators as to his natural and unquestioned
authorities.
Beside these living authorities, who as it were embody for the child
intellectual and moral strength, there should also be those he can
only apprehend with the mind and spirit, who likewise become for him
authorities. The outstanding figures of history, stories of the lives
of great men and women: let these determine the conscience and the
direction of the mind. Abstract moral maxims are not yet to be used;
they can only begin to have a helpful influence, when at the age of
puberty the astral body liberates itself from its astral
mother-envelope.
In the history lesson especially, the teacher should lead his teaching
in the direction thus indicated. When telling stories of all kinds to
little children before the change of teeth, our aim cannot be more
than to awaken delight and vivacity and a happy enjoyment of the
story. But after the change of teeth, we have in addition something
else to bear in mind in choosing our material for stories; and that
is, that we are placing before the boy or girl pictures of life that
will arouse a spirit of emulation in the soul.
The fact should not be overlooked that bad habits may be completely
overcome by drawing attention to appropriate instances that shock or
repel the child. Reprimands give at best but little help in the matter
of habits and inclinations. If, however, we show the living picture of
a man who has given way to a similar bad habit, and let the child see
where such an inclination actually leads, this will work upon the
young imagination and go a long way towards the uprooting of the
habit. The fact must always be remembered: it is not abstract ideas
that have an influence on the developing etheric body, but living
pictures that are seen and comprehended inwardly. The suggestion that
has just been made certainly needs to be carried out with great tact,
so that the effect may not be reversed and turn out the very opposite
of what was intended. In the telling of stories everything depends
upon the art of telling. Narration by word of mouth cannot, therefore,
simply be replaced by reading.
In another connection too, the presentation of living pictures, or as
we might say of symbols, to the mind, is important for the period
between the change of teeth and puberty. It is essential that the
secrets of Nature, the laws of life, be taught to the boy or girl, not
in dry intellectual concepts, but as far as possible in symbols.
Parables of the spiritual connections of things should be brought
before the soul of the child in such a manner that behind the parables
he divines and feels, rather than grasps intellectually, the
underlying law in all existence. All that is passing is but a
parable, must be the maxim guiding all our education in this
period. It is of vast importance for the child that he should receive
the secrets of Nature in parables, before they are brought before his
soul in the form of natural laws and the like. An example
may serve to make this clear. Let us imagine that we want to tell a
child of the immortality of the soul, of the coming forth of the soul
from the body. The way to do this is to use a comparison, such for
example as the comparison of the butterfly coming forth from the
chrysalis. As the butterfly soars up from the chrysalis, so after
death the soul of man from the house of the body. No man will rightly
grasp the fact in intellectual concepts, who has not first received it
in such a picture. By such a parable, we speak not merely to the
intellect but to the feeling of the child, to all his soul. A child
who has experienced this, will approach the subject with an altogether
different mood of soul, when later it is taught him in the form of
intellectual concepts. It is indeed a very serious matter for any man,
if he was not first enabled to approach the problems of existence with
his feeling. Thus it is essential that the educator have at his
disposal parables for all the laws of Nature and secrets of the World.
Here we have an excellent opportunity to observe with what effect the
spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy must work in life and practice.
When the teacher comes before a class of children, armed with parables
he has made up out of an intellectual materialistic mode
of thought, he will as a rule make little impression upon them. For he
has first to puzzle out the parables for himself with all his
intellectual cleverness. Parables to which one has first had to
condescend have no convincing effect on those who listen to them. For
when one speaks in parable and picture, it is not only what is spoken
and shown that works upon the hearer, but a fine spiritual stream
passes from the one to the other, from him who gives to him who
receives. If he who tells has not himself the warm feeling of belief
in his parable, he will make no impression on the other. For real
effectiveness, it is essential to believe in one's parables as in
absolute realities. And this can only be when one's thought is alive
with spiritual knowledge. Take for instance the parable of which we
have been speaking. The true student of Anthroposophy need not torment
himself to think it out. For him it is reality. In the coming forth of
the butterfly from the chrysalis he sees at work on a lower level of
being the very same process that is repeated, on a higher level and at
a higher stage of development, in the coming forth of the soul from
the body. He believes in it with his whole might; and this belief
streams as it were unseen from speaker to hearer, carrying conviction.
Life flows freely, unhindered, back and forth from teacher to pupil.
But for this it is necessary that the teacher draw from the full
fountain of spiritual knowledge. His words and all that comes from him
must receive feeling, warmth and colour from a truly anthroposophic
way of thought.
A wonderful prospect is thus opened out over the whole field of
education. If it will but let itself be enriched from the well of life
that Anthroposophy contains, education will itself be filled with life
and understanding. There will no longer be that groping which is now
so prevalent. All art and practice of education that is not
continually receiving fresh nourishment from such roots as these is
dry and dead. The spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy has for all the
secrets of the world appropriate parables pictures taken from
the very being of the things, pictures not first made by man, but laid
by the forces of the world within the things themselves in the very
act of their creation. Therefore this spiritual knowledge must form
the living basis for the whole art of education.
A force of the soul on which particular value must be set during this
period of man's development, is memory. The development of the memory
is bound up with the moulding of the etheric body. Since the latter
takes place in such a way that the etheric body becomes liberated
between the change of teeth and puberty, so too this is the tune for a
conscious attention from without to the growth and cultivation of the
memory. If what is due to the human being at this time has been
neglected, his memory will ever after have less value than it might
otherwise have had. It is not possible later to make up for what has
been left undone.
In this connection many mistakes may be made by an intellectual
materialistic way of thought. An art of education based on such a way
of thought easily arrives at a condemnation of what is mastered merely
by memory. It will often set itself untiringly and emphatically
against the mere training of the memory, and will employ the subtlest
methods to ensure that the boy or girl commits nothing to memory that
he does not intellectually understand. Yes, and after all, how much
has really been gained by such intellectual understanding? A
materialistic way of thought is so easily led to believe that any
further penetration into things, beyond the intellectual concepts that
are as it were extracted from them, simply does not exist; and only
with great difficulty will it fight its way through to the perception
that the other forces of the soul are at least as necessary as the
intellect, if we are to gain a comprehension of things. It is no mere
figure of speech to say that man can understand with his feeling, his
sentiment, his inner disposition, as well as with his intellect.
Intellectual concepts are only one of the means we have to understand
the things of this world, and it is only to the materialistic thinker
that they appear as the sole means. Of course there are many who do
not consider themselves materialists, who yet regard an intellectual
conception of things as the only kind of understanding. Such people
profess perhaps an idealistic or even a spiritual outlook. But in
their soul they relate themselves to it in a materialistic way. For
the intellect is in effect the instrument of the soul for
understanding what is material.
We have already alluded to Jean Paul's excellent book on education;
and a passage from it, bearing on this subject of the deeper
foundations of the understanding, may well be quoted here. Jean Paul's
book contains, indeed, many a golden word on education, and deserves
far more attention than it receives. It is of greater value for the
teacher than many of the educational works that are held in highest
regard to-day. The passage runs as follows:
Have no fear of going beyond the childish understanding, even in
whole sentences. Your expression and the tone of your voice, aided by
the child's intuitive eagerness to understand, will light up half the
meaning, and with it in course of time the other half. It is with
children as with the Chinese and people of refinement; the tone is
half the language. Remember, the child learns to understand his own
language before ever he learns to speak it, just as we do with Greek
or any other foreign language. Trust to time and the connections of
things to unravel the meaning. A child of five understands the words
yet, even, of course,
just; but now try to give an explanation of them
not to the child, but to his father! In the one word of
course there lurks a little philosopher! If the eight-year-old
child, with his developed speech, is understood by the child of three,
why do you want to narrow down your language to the little one's
childish prattle? Always speak to the child some years ahead do
not the men of genius speak to us centuries ahead in books? Talk to
the one-year-old as if he were two, to the two-year-old as if he were
six, for the difference in development diminishes in inverse ratio
with the age. We are far too prone to credit the teachers with
everything the children learn. We should remember that the child we
have to educate bears half his world within him all there and ready
taught, namely the spiritual half, including, for example, the moral
and metaphysical ideas. For this very reason language, equipped as it
is with material images alone, cannot give the spiritual archetypes;
all it can do is to illumine them. The very brightness and decision of
children should give us brightness and decision when we speak to them.
We can learn from their speech as well as teach them through our own.
Their word-building is bold, yet remarkably accurate! For instance, I
have heard the following expressions used by three- or four-year-old
children: the barreler (for the maker of barrels)
the sky-mouse (for the bat) I am the
seeing-through man (standing behind the telescope)
I'd like to be a ginger-bread-eater he joked
me down from the chair See how one o'clock it
is! ...
Our quotation refers, it is true, to a different subject from that
with which we are immediately concerned; but what Jean Paul says about
speech has its value in the present connection also. Here too there is
an understanding which precedes the intellectual comprehension. The
little child receives the structure of language into the living
organism of his soul, and does not require the laws of
language-formation in intellectual concepts for the process. Similarly
the older boy and girl must learn for the cultivation of the memory
much that they are not to master with their intellectual understanding
until later years. Those things are afterwards best grasped in
concepts, which have first been learned simply from memory in this
period of life, even as the rules of language are best learned in a
language one is already able to speak. So much talk against
unintelligent learning by heart is simply materialistic
prejudice. The child need only, for instance, learn the essential
rules of multiplication in a few given examples and for these
no apparatus is necessary; the fingers are much better for the purpose
than any apparatus, then he is ready to set to and memorize the
whole multiplication table. Proceeding in this way, we shall be acting
with due regard to the nature of the growing child. We shall, however,
be offending against his nature, if at the time when the development
of the memory is the important thing we are making too great a call
upon the intellect.
The intellect is a soul-force that is only born with puberty, and we
ought not to bring any influence to bear on it from outside before
this period. Up to the time of puberty the child should be laying up
in his memory the treasures of thought on which mankind has pondered;
afterwards is the time to penetrate with intellectual understanding
what has already been well impressed upon the memory in earlier years.
It is necessary for man, not only to remember what he already
understands, but to come to understand what he already knows
that is to say, what he has acquired by memory in the way the child
acquires language. This truth has a wide application. First there must
be the assimilation of historical events through the memory, then the
grasping of them in intellectual concepts;
first the faithful committing to memory of the facts of geography,
then the intellectual grasp of the connections between them. In a
certain respect, the grasping of things in concepts should proceed
from the stored-up treasures of the memory. The more the child knows
in memory before he begins to grasp in intellectual concepts, the
better.
There is no need to enlarge upon the fact that what has been said
applies only for that period of childhood with which we are dealing,
and not later. If at some later age in life one has occasion to take
up a subject for any reason, then of course the opposite may easily be
the right and most helpful way of learning it, though even here much
will depend on the mentality of the person. In the time of life,
however, with which we are now concerned, we must not dry up the
child's mind and spirit by cramming it with intellectual conceptions.
Another result of a materialistic way of thought is to be seen in the
lessons that rest too exclusively on sense-perception. At this period
of childhood, all perception must be spiritualized. We ought not to be
satisfied, for instance, with presenting a plant, a seed, a flower to
the child merely as it can be perceived with the senses. Everything
should become a parable of the spiritual. In a grain of corn there is
far more than meets the eye. There is a whole new plant invisible
within it. That such a thing as a seed has more within it than can be
perceived with the senses, this the child must grasp in a living way
with his feeling and imagination. He must, in feeling, divine the
secrets of existence. The objection cannot be made that the pure
perception of the senses is obscured by this means; on the contrary,
by going no further than what the senses see, we are stopping short of
the whole truth. For the full reality consists of the spirit as well
as the substance; and there is no less need for faithful and careful
observation when one is bringing all the faculties of the soul into
play, than when only the physical senses are employed. Could men but
see, as the spiritual investigator sees, what desolation is wrought in
soul and body by an instruction that rests on external
sense-perception alone, they would never insist upon it so strongly as
they do. Of what good is it in the highest sense, that children should
have shown to them all possible varieties of minerals, plants and
animals, and all kinds of physical experiments, if something further
is not bound up with the teaching of these things; namely, to make use
of the parables which the sense-world gives, in order to awaken a
feeling for the secrets of the spirit?
Certainly a materialistic way of thought will have little use for what
has here been said; and this the spiritual investigator understands
only too well. But he also knows that the materialistic way of thought
will never give rise to a really practical art of education. Practical
as it appears to itself, materialistic thought is unpractical when the
need is to enter into life in a living way. In face of actual reality,
materialistic thought is fantastic, though indeed to the
materialistic thinker the anthroposophical teachings, adhering as they
do to the facts of life, cannot but appear fantastic. There will no
doubt be many an obstacle yet to overcome before the principles of
Anthroposophy, which are indeed born out of life itself, can make
their way into the art of education. It cannot be otherwise. The
truths of this spiritual science cannot but seem strange as yet, and
unaccustomed to many people. None the less, if they are true indeed,
they will become part of our life and civilization.
ONLY the teacher who has a conscious and clear
understanding of how the several subjects and methods of education work upon
the growing child, can have the tact to meet every occasion that offers, in the
right way. He has to know how to treat the several faculties of the
soul Thinking, Feeling and Willing, so that their
development may react on the etheric body, which in this period
between the change of teeth and puberty can attain more and more
perfect form under the influences that affect it from without.
By a right application of the fundamental educational principles,
during the first seven years of childhood, the foundation is laid for
the development of a strong and healthy Will. For a strong and
healthy will must have its support in the well-developed forms of the
physical body. Then, from the time of the change of teeth onwards, the
etheric body which is now developing must bring to the physical body
those forces whereby it can make its forms
firm and inwardly complete. Whatever makes the strongest impression on
the etheric body, works also most powerfully towards the consolidation
of the physical body. The strongest of all the impulses that can work
on the etheric body, come from the feelings and thoughts by which man
divines and experiences in consciousness his relation to the
Everlasting Powers. That is to say, they are those that come from
religious experience. Never will a man's will, nor in consequence his
character, develop healthily, if he is not able in this period of
childhood to receive religious impulses deep into his soul. How a man
feels his place and part in the universal Whole, this will find
expression in the unity of his life of will. If he does not feel
himself linked by strong bonds to a Divine-spiritual, his will and
character must needs remain uncertain, divided and unsound.
The world of Feeling is developed in the right way through the
parables and pictures we have spoken of, and especially through the
pictures of great men and women, taken from History and other sources,
which we bring before the children. A correspondingly deep study of
the secrets and beauties of Nature is also important for the right
formation of the world of feeling. Last but not least, there is the
cultivation of the sense of beauty and the awakening of the artistic
feeling. The musical element must bring to the etheric body that
rhythm which will then enable it to sense in all things the rhythm
otherwise concealed. A child who is denied the blessing of having his
musical sense cultivated during these years, will be the poorer for it
the whole of his later life. If this sense were entirely lacking in
him, whole aspects of the world's existence would of necessity remain
hidden from him. Nor are the other arts to be neglected. The awakening
of the feeling for architectural forms, for moulding and sculpture,
for lines and for design, for colour harmonies none of these
should be left out of the plan of education. However simple life has
to be under certain circumstances, the objection can never hold that
the circumstances do not allow of anything being done in this
direction. Much can be done with the simplest means, if only the
teacher himself has the right artistic feeling. Joy and happiness in
living, a love of all existence, a power and energy for work
such are among the lifelong results of a right cultivation of the
feeling for beauty and for art. The relationship of man to man, how
noble, how beautiful it becomes under this influence! Again, the moral
sense, which is also being formed in the child during these years
through the pictures of life that are placed before him, through the
authorities to whom he looks up, this moral sense becomes
assured, if the child out of his own sense of beauty feels the good to
be at the same time beautiful, the bad to be at the same time ugly.
Thought in its proper form, as an inner life lived in abstract concepts, must remain still in the background during this period of childhood. It must develop as it were of itself, uninfluenced from without, while life and the secrets of nature are being unfolded in parable and picture. Thus between the seventh year and puberty, thought must be growing, the faculty of judgement ripening, in among the other experiences of the soul; so that after puberty is reached, the youth may become able to form quite independently his own opinions on the things of life and knowledge. The less the direct influence on the development of judgement in earlier years, and the more a good indirect influence is brought to bear through the development of the other faculties of soul, the better it is for the whole of later life.
The spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy affords the true foundations,
not only for spiritual and mental education, but for physical. This
may be illustrated by reference to children's games and gymnastic
exercises. Just as love and joy should permeate the surroundings of
the child in the earliest years of life, so through physical exercises
the growing etheric body should experience an inner feeling of its own
growth, of its ever increasing strength. Gymnastic exercises, for
instance, should be of such a nature that each movement, each step,
gives rise to the feeling within the child: I feel growing
strength in me. This feeling must take possession of the child
as a healthy sense of inner happiness and ease. To think out gymnastic
exercises from this point of view requires more than an intellectual
knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. It requires an intimate
intuitive knowledge of the connection of the sense of happiness and
ease with the positions and movements of the human body a
knowledge that is not merely intellectual, but permeated with feeling.
Whoever arranges such exercises must be able to experience in himself
how one movement and position of the limbs produces a happy and easy
feeling of strength, another, as it were, an inner loss of strength.
... To teach gymnastics and other physical exercises with these things
in view, the teacher will require what Anthroposophy alone and
above all, the anthroposophical habit of mind can give. He need
not himself see into the spiritual worlds at once, but he must have
the understanding to apply in life only what springs from spiritual
knowledge. If the knowledge of Anthroposophy were applied in practical
spheres like education, the idle talk that this knowledge has first to
be proved would quickly disappear. Whoever applies it correctly, will
find that the knowledge of Anthroposophy proves itself in life by
making life strong and healthy. He will see it to be true in that it
holds good in life and practice, and in this he will find a proof
stronger than all the logical and so-called scientific arguments can
afford. Spiritual truths are best recognized in their fruits and not
by what is called a proof, be this ever so scientific; such proof can
indeed hardly be more than logical skirmishing.
With the age of puberty the astral body is first born. Henceforth the
astral body in its development is open to the outside world. Only now,
therefore, can we approach the child from without with all that opens
up the world of abstract ideas, the faculty of judgement and
independent thought. It has already been pointed out, how up to this
time these faculties of soul should be developing free from
outer influence within the environment provided by the
education proper to the earlier years, even as the eyes and ears
develop, free from outer influence, within the organism of the mother.
With puberty the time has arrived when the human being is ripe for the
formation of his own judgements about the things he has already
learned. Nothing more harmful can be done to a child than to awaken
too early his independent judgement. Man is not in a position to judge
until he has collected in his inner life material for judgement and
comparison. If he forms his own conclusions before doing so, his
conclusions will lack foundation. Educational mistakes of this kind
are the cause of all narrow onesidedness in life, all barren creeds
that take their stand on a few scraps of knowledge and are ready on
this basis to condemn ideas experienced and proved by man often
through long ages.
In order to be ripe for thought, one must have learned to be full of
respect for what others have thought. There is no healthy thought
which has not been preceded by a healthy feeling for the truth, a
feeling for the truth supported by faith in authorities accepted
naturally. Were this principle observed in education, there would no
longer be so many people, who, imagining too soon that they are ripe
for judgement, spoil their own power to receive openly and without
bias the all-round impressions of life. Every judgement that is not
built on a sufficient foundation of gathered knowledge and experience
of soul throws a stumbling-block in the way of him who forms it. For
having once pronounced a judgement concerning a matter, we are ever
after influenced by this judgement. We no longer receive a new
experience as we should have done, had we not already formed a
judgement connected with it. The thought must take living hold in the
child's mind, that he has first to learn and then to judge. What the
intellect has to say concerning any matter, should only be said when
all the other faculties of the soul have spoken. Before that time the
intellect has only an intermediary part to play: its business is to
grasp what takes place and is experienced in feeling, to receive it
exactly as it is, not letting the unripe judgement come in at once and
take possession. For this reason, up to the age of puberty the child
should be spared all theories about things; the main consideration is
that he should simply meet the experiences of life, receiving them
into his soul. Certainly he can be told what different men have
thought about this and that, but one must avoid his associating
himself through a too early exercise of judgement with the one view or
the other. Thus the opinions of men he should also receive with the
feeling power of the soul. He should be able, without jumping to a
decision or taking sides with this or that person, to listen to all,
saying to himself: This man said this, and that man that.
The cultivation of such a mind in a boy or girl certainly demands the
exercise of great tact from teachers and educators; but tact is just
what anthroposophical thought can give.
All we have been able to do is to unfold a few aspects of education in
the light of Anthroposophy. And this alone was our intention,
to indicate how great a task the anthroposophical spiritual impulse
must fulfil in education for the culture of our time. Its power to
fulfil the task will depend on the spread of an understanding for this
way of thought in ever wider and wider circles. For this to come
about, two things are, however, necessary. The first is that people
should relinquish their prejudices against Anthroposophy. Whoever
honestly pursues it, will soon see that it is not the fantastic
nonsense many to-day hold it to be. We are not making any reproach
against those who hold this opinion; for all that the culture of our
time offers must tend on a first acquaintance to make one regard the
followers of Anthroposophy as fantastic dreamers. On a superficial
consideration no other judgement can be reached, for in the light of
it Anthroposophy, with its claim to be a spiritual Science, will seem
in direct contradiction to all that modern culture gives to man as the
foundation of a healthy view of life. Only a deeper consideration will
discover that the views of the present day are in themselves deeply
contradictory and will remain so, as long as they are without the
anthroposophical foundation. Indeed, of their very nature they call
out for such foundation and cannot in the long run be without it.
The second thing that is needed concerns the healthy cultivation of
Anthroposophy itself. Only when it is perceived, in anthroposophical
circles everywhere, that the point is not simply to theorize about the
teachings, but to let them bear fruit in the most far-reaching way in
all the relationships of life, only then will life itself open
up to Anthroposophy with sympathy and understanding. Otherwise people
will continue to regard it as a variety of religious sectarianism for
a few cranks and enthusiasts. If, however, it performs positive and
useful spiritual work, the Anthroposophical Movement cannot in the
long run be denied intelligent recognition.
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