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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Study of Man
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Study of Man
Schmidt Number: S-3801
On-line since: 23rd June, 2002
We will begin by making a preliminary survey of our educational task;
and to this I would like to give you a kind of introduction to-day. Of
necessity our educational task will differ from those which mankind
has set itself hitherto. Not that we are so vain or proud as to
imagine that we, of ourselves, should initiate a new world-wide order
in education, but because from anthroposophical spiritual science we
know that the epochs of human evolution as they succeed each other
must always set humanity fresh tasks. The task of mankind in the first
Post-Atlantean epoch was different, it was different again in the
second, and so on down to our fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. And we must
realise that, in actual fact, what has to be accomplished in any one
epoch of human evolution does not enter into the consciousness of
mankind until some time after this epoch has begun.
The epoch of evolution in which we live to-day began in the middle of
the fifteenth century. And only now is there coming forth, from
spiritual depths as it were, a perception of what has to be done in
this epoch, particularly in the realm of education.
Hitherto, even with the best will in the world, men's work in
education has been done in the light of the old education; I mean in
the sense of the education of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch. Now
much will depend on our placing ourselves in the right relation to our
task at the outset. We must learn to understand that we have to give a
very definite guidance to our age guidance which is of
importance, not because it is considered valid for the whole evolution
of humanity, but because it is valid just for this age of ours. For,
amongst other things, materialism has brought it about that men have
no idea of the particular tasks of a particular age. Please do
understand this at the very beginning: particular epochs have their
own particular tasks.
You will have to take over children for their education and
instruction children who will have received already (as you
must remember) the education, or mis-education given them by their
parents. Indeed our intentions will only be fully accomplished when
we, as humanity, will have reached the stage where parents, too, will
understand that special tasks are set for mankind to-day, even for the
first years of the child's education. But when we receive the children
into the school we shall still be able to make up for many things
which have been done wrongly, or left undone, in the first years of
the child's life. For this we must fill ourselves with the
consciousness through which alone we can truly teach and educate.
In devoting yourselves to your task do not forget that the whole
civilisation of to-day, even into the sphere of the most spiritual
life, is founded on the egoism of humanity. In the first place,
consider with an open mind that domain of spiritual life which
receives men's reverence to-day the domain of religion. Ask
yourselves if our present civilisation, particularly in the religious
sphere, is not so constituted, as to appeal to man's egoism. It is
typical of all sermons and preaching of our time that the preacher
tries to reach men through their egoism. Take for example that
question which should concern people most deeply the question
of immortality. You will see how almost everything to-day, even in
sermons and exhortations, is directed by the preachers to appeal to
man's egoism in the super-sensible sphere. Egoism impels man to cling
to his own being as he passes through the gate of death, to preserve
his Ego. This is a form of egoism, however refined. And to-day every
religious denomination appeals largely to this egoism when treating of
immortality. Hence official religion mostly forgets one end of our
earthly existence in addressing man, and takes account only of the
other. It fixes its gaze on death and forgets birth. Though these
things may not be openly acknowledged, they are nevertheless
underlying tendencies.
We live in a time when this appeal to human egoism must be combated in
every domain, if the life of mankind is not to decline further and
further on its present downward course. We must become more and more
conscious of the other end of man's development on earth, namely
birth. We must consciously face this fact: that man evolves through a
long period between death and a new birth and that then, within this
evolution, he reaches a point where he dies, as it were, for the
spiritual world where conditions of his life in the spiritual
world oblige him to pass over into another form of existence. He
receives this other form of existence in that he lets himself be
clothed with the physical and etheric body. What he has to receive by
being clothed with the physical and etheric body he could not receive
if he were simply to go on evolving in a straight line in the
spiritual world. Hence although from his birth onwards we may only
look upon the child with physical eyes, we will all the time be
conscious of the fact this too is a continuation.
And we will not only look to what human existence experiences after
death, i.e. to the spiritual continuation of the physical; but we will
be conscious that physical existence here is a continuation of the
spiritual, and that we, through education, have to carry on what has
hitherto been done by higher beings without our participation. This
alone will give the right mood and feeling to our whole system of
teaching and education, if we fill ourselves with the consciousness:
here, in this human being, you, with your action, have to achieve a
continuation of what higher beings have done before his birth.
In this age when men have lost connection with the spiritual worlds in
their thought and feeling, we are often asked an abstract question
which in the light of a spiritual conception of the world has no real
meaning. We are asked how so-called pre-natal education should be
conducted. There are many people to-day who take things abstractly,
but, if one takes them concretely,' then in certain domains one simply
cannot continue asking questions in an arbitrary manner. I once gave
this example: on a road we see tracks. We can ask: Why are they there?
Because a carriage has been driven over the road. Why was the carriage
driven? Because its occupants wanted to reach a certain destination.
Why did they want to reach a certain destination? The asking of
questions must come to a stop somewhere in reality. If we remain in
abstractions we can continue for ever asking: Why? We can go on
turning the wheel of questions without end. Concrete thought will
always find an end, but abstract thought goes on running round like a
wheel for ever. And so it is with the questions that are asked about
domains that do not lie so close at hand. People begin thinking about
education and then they ask about pre-natal education. But, my dear
friends, before birth the human being is still in the protection of
Beings who stand above the physical. It is to them that we must leave
the immediate and individual relationship between the world and the
human being. Hence a pre-natal education cannot be addressed to the
child itself. It can only be an unconscious result of what the parents
especially the mother achieve. If until birth the mother
behaves in such a way that she brings to expression in herself what is
morally and intellectually right, in the true sense of the word, then
of its own accord what the mother achieves in this continuous
self-education will pass over to the child. The less we think of
beginning to educate the child before it sees the light of the world
and the more we think of leading a right and proper life ourselves,
the better will it be for the child. Education can only begin when the
child becomes a true member of the physical world and that is
when he begins to breathe the external air.
Now when the child has come forth on to the physical plane, we must
realise what has really happened for him in the transition from a
spiritual to a physical plane. Firstly, we must recognise that the
human being is really composed of two members. Before the human being
comes down to earth a union is entered into between the spirit and the
soul meaning by spirit what for the physical world of to-day is
still entirely hidden, and what in Spiritual Science we call
Spirit-Man, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Self. These three members of man's
being are present in a certain way in the super-sensible sphere to
which we must now work our way through. And between death and a new
birth we do already stand in a certain relationship to Spirit-Man,
Life-Spirit, Spirit-Self. Now the force which proceeds from this
trinity permeates the Soul element in man: Consciousness Soul,
Intellectual or Mind Soul, and Sentient Soul. And if you were to
observe the human being when, having passed through the existence
between death and a new birth, he is just preparing to descend into
the physical world, then you would find the spiritual which we have
just described united with the soul. Man descends, as it were, as
Spirit-Soul or Soul-Spirit from a higher sphere into earthly
existence. He clothes himself with earthly existence.
In a similar way we can describe the other member of man's being which
unites itself with the one just described. We can say: down there on
the earth the Spirit-Soul is met by what arises through the processes
of physical inheritance. And now the Soul-Spirit or Spirit-Soul meets
with the Life-Body in such a way that two trinities are united with
two other trinities. In the Spirit-Soul: Spirit-Man, Life-Spirit and
Spirit-Self are united with that which is soul, namely:
Consciousness-Soul, Intellectual Soul and Sentient Soul. These two
trinities are united with one another, and descend into the physical
world where they are now to unite with the Sentient or Astral body,
Etheric body and Physical body. But these in turn are united
first in the body of the mother and then in the physical world
with the three kingdoms of the physical world: the mineral, the plant
and the animal kingdoms. So that here again, two trinities are united
with one another.
If you regard with an open mind the child who has found his way into
earthly life, you will observe that here in the child, Soul-Spirit or
Spirit-Soul is as yet dis-united from the Life-Body. The task of
education conceived in the spiritual sense is to bring the Soul-Spirit
into harmony with the Life-Body. They must come into harmony with
one another. They must be attuned to one another; for when the child
is born into the physical world, they do not as yet fit one another.
The task of the educator, and of the teacher too, is the mutual
attunement of these two members.
Let us now consider this task more concretely. Amongst all the
relationships which man has to the external world, the most important
of all is breathing. We begin breathing at the very moment we enter
the physical world. Breathing in the mother-body is still, if I may
put it so, a preparatory breathing: it does not yet bring the being
into a complete connection with the external world. The child only
begins to breathe in the right sense of the word when he has left the
mother-body. Now this breathing signifies a very great deal for the
human being, for in this breathing there dwells already the whole
threefold system of physical man. You know that amongst the members of
the threefold physical human system we reckon, in the first place, the
digestion and metabolism. But the metabolism, the assimilation, is
intimately connected at one end with the breathing. The breathing
process is connected with the blood circulation through metabolism.
The blood circulation receives into the human body the substances of
the external world which are introduced by another path, so that on
the one hand the breathing is connected with the whole metabolic
system or digestive system.
On the other hand the breathing is also connected with the nerve-sense
life of man. As we breathe in, we are continually pressing the
cerebro-spinal fluid into the brain: and, as we breathe out, we press
it back again into the body. Thus we transplant the rhythm of
breathing to the brain. And as the breathing is connected on the one
hand with digestion and assimilation, so on the other hand it is
connected with the life of nerves and senses. We may say: the
breathing is the most important mediator between the outer physical
world and the human being who is entering it. But we must also be
aware that this breathing cannot yet, by any means, function so as
fully to maintain the life of the body. This applies particularly to
the one side of breathing. At the beginning of his physical existence
man has not yet achieved the right harmony, the right connection
between the breathing process and the nerve-sense process. Observation
of the nature of the child will show us that he has not yet learnt to
breathe in such a way that breathing maintains the nerve-sense process
rightly. In this lies the finer characterisation of what we really
have to do with the child. We must first gain an
Anthropological-Anthroposophical understanding of the human being.
Thus, the most important measures in education will consist in paying
attention to all that rightly organises the breathing process into the
nerve-sense process. In the higher sense the child has to learn to
take up into his spirit what is bestowed on him in that he is born to
breathe.
This part of education will, you see, tend to the side of the soul and
spirit. By harmonising the breathing with the nerve-sense process we
draw all that is soul and spirit into the physical life of the child.
To express it roughly we may say: the child cannot yet breathe in the
right inner way, and education will have to consist in teaching the
child to breathe rightly.
But there is yet another thing which the child cannot do rightly, and
this must be taken in hand, in order that a harmony may thereby be
created between the two members of the child's being between
the bodily corporeality and the Spirit-Soul. What the child cannot do
properly at the beginning of his existence is this: he cannot yet
accomplish the alternation between waking and sleeping in the way
proper to man. It will strike you that what we have to emphasise from
the spiritual side generally appears to be in contradiction to the
external world-order. Externally speaking it is of course possible to
say: But the child can sleep perfectly well: indeed he sleeps
far more than the human being at a later stage of life. The child
sleeps his very way into life. Nevertheless, what inwardly
underlies sleeping and waking, this the child cannot yet do. The child
experiences all sorts of things on the physical plane. He uses his
little limbs: he eats, drinks and breathes. He alternates between
sleeping and waking, but he is not able to carry into the spiritual
world in sleep all that he experiences on the physical plane
all that he sees with his eyes, and hears with his ears, and does with
his little hands, and the way he kicks and tosses with his little
legs. All this he is not able to carry into the spiritual world and
work upon there, carrying the results of this work back again on the
physical plane. The child's sleep is characterised by the very fact
that it is a different sleep from that of the grown-up person. What
distinguishes the sleep of the adult is that his experiences during
waking life are then worked upon, are metamorphosed. The child is not
yet able to carry into his sleep what he has experienced between
waking and falling asleep again. Thus in sleep the child still lives
his way into the universal world order without being able to take with
him what he has experienced externally in the physical world. It is
this that a rightly guided education must accomplish: it must enable
the human being to carry over his experiences on the physical plane
into what the Soul-Spirit or Spirit-Soul is engaged upon during sleep.
We, as teachers and educators, cannot really teach the child anything
about the higher world. For what enters the human being from the
higher world enters in during the time between falling asleep and
waking again. All we can do is to use the time which the human being
spends on the physical plane in such a way that he gradually becomes
able to carry over into the spiritual world what we have done with him
here; and that, in carrying it over, he can receive and bring back
with him power from the spiritual world which will help him to be a
true human being in physical existence.
Thus you see that all our activity of teaching and education is first
directed to a very lofty domain namely to the teaching of right
breathing, and to the teaching of the right rhythm in the alternation
of sleeping and waking. Needless to say, my dear friends, in our
educational practice there will be no question of direct training of
the breathing, or of direct training of sleeping and waking. All this
will only be in the background. What we have to learn will be concrete
measures of educational practice. But we must be conscious of what
we are doing, right down to the foundations. When we teach this
subject or that, we must be fully aware that we are working either in
the one direction to bring the Spirit-Soul more into the earthly Body,
or in the other direction to bring the bodily nature into the
Spirit-Soul. Do not let us underestimate the importance of what has
now been said. For you can only become good teachers and educators if
you pay attention not merely to what you do, but also to what
you are. It is really for this reason that we have Spiritual
Science with its anthroposophical outlook: to perceive the
significance of the fact that man is effective in the world not only
through what he does, but above all through what he is. Truly, my dear
friends, it makes a very great difference whether one teacher of the
school or another comes through the classroom door to any group of
children. There is a big difference; and the difference is not merely
that the one teacher is more skilful in his practice than the other.
No, the main difference the one that is really influential in
teaching lies in what the teacher bears within him, as his
constant trend of thought, and carries with him into the classroom. A
teacher who occupies himself with thoughts of the evolving human being
will work very differently upon his pupils from a teacher who knows
nothing of all these things, and never gives them a thought. Once you
begin to know the cosmic significance of the breathing process and of
its transformation through education, and the cosmic significance of
the rhythm between sleeping and waking what is it that happens?
The moment you have such thoughts something in you is combating your
purely personal nature. The moment you have such thoughts the very
basis of this spirit of personality is of less effect. In that moment
all that enhances a personal spirit is damped down, all that man
possesses through the fact that he is a physical man. If you have
quenched this personal spirit, then, as you enter the classroom, it
will come about through inner forces that a relationship is
established between the pupils and yourself.
Now it may be that at first external facts will contradict this. You
enter the school and perhaps you find yourself faced with scamps, both
boys and girls, who make fun of you. Now you must be so strengthened
with such thoughts as we shall here cultivate, that you do not pay any
attention to their ridicule but accept it as something perfectly
external. Accept it, shall I say, like the external circumstances that
when you go out without an umbrella it suddenly begins to rain.
Undoubtedly this is an unpleasant surprise. But we usually make a
distinction between being ridiculed and being taken by surprise in a
shower when we have no umbrella. This distinction must not be
made. We must evolve thoughts so strong that the distinction is
not made that we take ridicule like a good shower of rain. If
we are permeated by these thoughts and have real faith in them then
(perhaps after a week, or a fortnight, or maybe longer still), we
shall certainly find that however much the children may laugh at us,
we have nevertheless established a relationship with them such as we
would wish.
Through what we make of ourselves we must come to this relationship,
even in the face of difficulty and resistance. And we must above all
become conscious of this first of educational tasks: that we must
first make something of ourselves, so that a relationship in thought,
an inner spiritual relationship, may hold sway between the teacher and
the children. So that we enter the classroom with the conscious
thought: this spiritual relationship is present not only the
words, not only all that I say to the children in the way of
instruction and admonition, not only my skilfulness in teaching. These
are externals which we must certainly cultivate, but we shall only
cultivate them rightly if we establish the importance of the relation
between the thoughts that fill us and the effects of our teaching on
the children, in body and soul.
Our whole conduct and bearing as we teach will not be complete unless
we keep this thought in our minds: the human being was born. Thereby
the possibility was given him to do what he could not do in the
spiritual world. We have to teach and educate first of all so as to
give the breathing its right harmony in relation to the spiritual
world. The human being could not accomplish the rhythmical alternation
between waking and sleeping in the same way in the spiritual world as
in the physical world. By education, by teaching, we must regulate
this rhythm in such a way that the bodily nature in the human being
becomes properly membered with the Soul-Spirit. Needless to say, this
is not something that we should have before us as an abstraction, and
apply it as such directly to our teaching, but this thought about the
human being must be our rule and guide.
This is what I wanted to give you in this present introduction.
To-morrow we will begin with the subject of education proper.
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