If we regard man in the way we have done here in evolving a true art
of education, his threefold bodily nature becomes evident from many
aspects. We can clearly distinguish between all that belongs to the
system of the head the head formation of man, and what belongs
to the formation of the chest, of the whole trunk; and these, again,
we distinguish from what belongs to the limb formation. At the same
time we must recognise that the limb formation is much more
complicated than is usually imagined: because what is present in the
limbs in germ and is really formed, as we have seen, from
without inwards is continued right into the interior of man's
being; hence we have to distinguish between what is built up from
within outwards and what is pushed into the human body, so to speak,
from without inwards.
If we have a picture in our minds of this threefold division of the
human being, it will be particularly clear how man's head is in itself
a whole human being, a whole human being raised from out the animal
stage.
In the head we have the real head; but we have also the trunk, that is
all that belongs to the nose; and we have the limb part, which is
continued into the bodily cavity, namely, all that comprises the
mouth. So we can see how the whole human being is present in the head
in bodily form. Only, the chest part of the head is stunted; it is so
stunted that the relation between the nose and the lung nature is no
longer conspicuous. A correspondence, however, does exist between the
nose and nasal passages and the lung nature. This nose is rather like
a metamorphosed lung. It therefore transforms the breathing process
also and makes it take on a more physical nature. Perhaps you think of
the lung as less spiritual than the nose? This is a mistake. The lung
is more of a work of art. It is more permeated with spirit, or at
least with soul, than is the nose which, to be sure, really
pokes out in the face in the most immodest way; whereas the lung,
although more soul-like than the nose, conceals its existence with
more modesty.
And it is the mouth, and all that belongs with it, that is
related to the metabolic system, to digestion and nourishment, and to
all that is a continuation of the limb-forces into man; the mouth,
indeed, cannot disguise its relationship to nourishment and to the
limb nature.
Thus the head is a whole human being, only the non-head part of it is
stunted: chest and lower body are also present in the head but in a
stunted form.
Now when in contrast to this, we consider the limb man we find that
all its outer shapes, all its outer configuration is essentially a
transformation of man's two jaw bones, of the upper and lower jaw.
What encloses your mouth below and above is but a stunted form of your
legs and feet, and your arms and hands. Only you must think of the
thing in its right position. Now you can say: If I think of my arms
and hands as the upper jaw-bone, and my legs and feet as the lower
jaw-bone, I have to ask: To what are these jaw bones directed?
Where do these jaws bite? Where is the mouth? And you must
answer this question as follows: It is where your upper arm is
attached to your body, and where the upper part of your leg, the
femur, is attached to your body. So that if you think of this as the
human trunk (see drawing) you must think of the real head as somewhere
outside: it opens its mouth here above (see drawing) and here below
also; so that you can imagine a remarkable tendency of this invisible
head that opens its jaws in the direction of your chest and your
abdomen.
What then does this invisible head do? It is constantly devouring you.
It opens its jaws upon you. And here the outward form is a wonderful
representation of the real facts. Whereas man's proper head is a
material bodily head, the head belonging to his limb-nature is a
spiritual head, but one that becomes a little material so that it can
continually eat the human being up. And when death comes, it has
devoured him completely.
This, truly, is the wonderful process, that our limbs are so made as
constantly to be consuming us. Our organism slips continuously into
the yawning jaws of our own spirituality. The spiritual perpetually
demands of us a sacrificial devotion. And this sacrificial devotion is
expressed even in the form of the body. We have no understanding of
the human form unless we recognise the expression of this sacrifice to
the spirit in the relation of the limbs to the rest of the human body.
Thus we can say: the head and limb nature of man form a contrast to
one another and it is the chest or trunk nature, mid-way
between, that (from one aspect) maintains the balance of these
opposites.
In man's chest there is in reality just as much head nature as limb
nature. Limb nature and head nature are interwoven in the chest
nature. The chest has a continuous upward tendency to became head, and
a continuous downward tendency to fit in with the out-stretched limbs,
with the outer world, in other words to become a part of the limb
nature. The upper part of the chest nature has the constant tendency
to become head; the lower part has the tendency to become limb man.
That is to say: the upper part of the human trunk has the continual
desire to become head, but it cannot do so. The other head prevents
it. Therefore it produces continuously only an image of the head,
something that represents so to speak, a beginning of the head
formation. Can we not clearly recognise that in the upper part of the
chest formation there is a suggestion of head formation? Yes, there we
have the larynx, called Kehlkopf in German, from the native
genius of the language, i.e., the head of the throat. The larynx is
absolutely a stunted human head; a head which cannot become completely
head and therefore lives out its head nature in human speech. The
larynx continually makes the attempt in the air to become head; and
this attempt constitutes human speech. When the larynx tries to become
the uppermost part of the head we get those sounds which clearly show
that they are held back by man's nature more strongly than any. When
the human larynx tries to become nose it cannot, because the real nose
prevents it. But it produces in the air the attempt to become nose,
and this constitutes the nasal sounds. Thus in the nasal sounds the
actual nose is checking the air nose which is seeking to
arise. It is exceedingly significant how, when man speaks, he is
continually making the attempt in the air to produce pieces of a head,
and how these pieces of head are extended in wave-like movements which
are then checked by the physically developed head.
You can now see what human speech really is. Therefore you will not be
surprised that as soon as the head is more or less complete
physically, i.e., towards the seventh year when the change of teeth
takes place, opportunity is provided for the soul head which is
produced out of the larynx to be permeated by a kind of
skeletal system. But it must be a skeletal system of the soul. To
achieve this we must now leave off developing language merely at
random through imitation, and must devote our powers to the
grammatical side of language. Let us be conscious that when the child
comes to us in his seventh year we have to do for his soul a thing
similar to that done by his body in pushing up into his organism the
second teeth. Thus we shall impart power and firmness to his language
(but a firmness of the soul only) by introducing grammar in a
reasonable way: that is, the working of language in writing and
reading. We shall get the right attitude of mind to human speaking if
we know that the words man forms actually express a tendency to become
head.
Now, just as the upper part of the chest system in man has the
tendency to become head, so the lower part has the tendency to become
limbs. And just as all that proceeds from the larynx in the form of
speech is a refined head, a head formed out of air, so all that
proceeds downwards from the chest nature of man to take on something
of the limb organisation, is a coarsened limb nature. The outer world
pushes into man, so to speak, a densified, coarsened limb nature. And
once natural scientists discover the secret that a coarsened form of
hands and feet, arms and legs is present in man more of the
limbs being pressed inside than remains visible outside then
indeed they will have fathomed the riddle of sex nature. And then only
will man find the right tone for speaking of these things. It is no
wonder therefore that the talk prevalent to-day about sex instruction
is mostly meaningless. For one cannot explain well what one does not
understand oneself. And contemporary science has not the least
understanding for the thing I have just barely touched on in
characterising the connection between the limb man and the trunk man.
Just as one finds in the first years of school life that what
penetrated the teeth before the age of seven is now pressing into the
soul, so in the later years of schooling one finds pressing into the
child's soul all that arises from the limb nature and comes to its
rightful expression after puberty. This must be known.
Thus, just as the power to write and read is an expression of the
teething of the soul, so all activity of imagination, all that is
permeated with inner warmth is an expression of what the soul develops
in the later school years, the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth years. In particular, there then appear all those capacities
of the soul which can be permeated and filled with inner love, all
that shows itself, namely, in the power of imagination. It is to this
power of imagination that we must especially appeal in the latter part
of the period between the change of teeth and puberty. We are much
more justified in encouraging the child of seven to develop its own
intellectuality by way of reading and writing than we are justified in
neglecting to bring imagination continually into the growing power of
judgment of the child of twelve. (It is from the age of twelve onwards
that the power of judgment gradually develops.) We must arouse the
child's imagination in all we teach him, in all the lessons he has to
learn during these years; all history, all geography teaching must be
steeped in imagination.
And we do really appeal to the child's imagination if, for instance,
we say to him: Now you have seen a lens, haven't you, a lens
that collects the light? Now, you have such a lens in your own eye.
And you know what a camera obscura is, where external objects are
reproduced? Your eye is really a camera obscura, a dark room of this
kind. In a case of this sort where we show how the external
world is built into the human organism through the sense organs
we are, once again, really appealing to the child's imagination. For
what is built into the body is only seen in its external deadness when
we take it out of the body, we cannot see it so in the living body.
Thus all the teaching, even what is given in geometry and arithmetic
must consistently appeal to the imagination. We appeal to the
imagination if, in dealing with plane surfaces, for instance, we
endeavour (as we have been doing in our practical course) not
only to make them comprehensible to the intellect, but to make them so
thoroughly comprehensible that a child needs to use his imagination
even in arithmetic and geometry. That is why I said yesterday (In
another course of lectures to teachers) that I wondered that nobody
had thought of explaining the theorem of Pythagoras in the following
way. The teacher could say: Suppose we have three children; the
first has just so much powder to blow that he can make it cover the
first square; the second so much that it will cover the second square;
the third so much that it will just cover the little square. We shall
be helping the child's imagination when we show him that the powder
needed to cover the largest square is the same in quantity as that
needed to cover the other two squares. Through this the child will
bring his power of comprehension on the powder blown on the squares,
perhaps not with mathematical accuracy, but in a form filled with
imagination. He will follow the surfaces with his imagination. He will
grasp the theorem of Pythagoras by means of the flying and settling
powder, that would have to be blown moreover into square shapes (a
thing impossible in reality of course, but calling out the exertion of
imagination). He will grasp the theorem with his imagination.
Therefore in these years we should foster an intercourse alive with
imagination between teacher and child. The teacher must keep alive all
his subjects, steep them in imagination. The only way to do this is to
permeate all that he has to teach with a willing rich in feeling. Such
teaching has a wonderful influence on children in their later years.
A thing of the very greatest importance, a thing to be particularly
cultivated during the later primary school years is the mutual
intercourse, the complete harmony of life, between teacher and
children. For this reason no one can be a good primary teacher unless
he constantly endeavours to bring imagination into all his teaching;
he must shape his teaching material afresh every time. For in actual
fact the thing one has once worked out in an imaginative way, if given
again years later in precisely the same form, is intellectually frozen
up. Of necessity imagination must always be kept living, otherwise its
products will became intellectually frozen.
This, in turn, throws light on what the teacher must be himself. He
must never for a single moment in his life get sour. And if life is to
be fruitful, two things must never meet, namely, the teaching vocation
and pedantry. Should the teaching vocation ever be joined to pedantry
the worst possible evil would result from this union. But I doubt if
we need even imagine such an incongruity, as that teaching and
pedantry have ever been united.
From this you see that there is a certain inner morality in teaching,
an inner obligation, a true categorical imperative for the
teacher. And this categorical imperative is as follows: Keep your
imagination alive. And if you feel yourself getting pedantic, then
say to yourself: for other people pedantry may be bad, for me it is
wicked and immoral. This must be the teacher's attitude of mind. If it
should not be his attitude of mind, then dear friends, the teacher
would have to consider how he could gradually learn to apply what he
had gained in his teaching profession to another walk of life. Of
course in actual life these things cannot always come up to the ideal,
but it is essential to know what the ideal is.
You will not, however, achieve the right enthusiasm for this
educational morality unless you turn ever and again to fundamentals
and make them part of yourself, You must know, for example, that the
head itself is really a whole human being with the limbs and chest
part stunted; that every limb is a whole human being only that in the
limb man the head is quite stunted; and in the chest man, head and
limbs are held in balance. If you have this fundamental ground, its
force will bring the necessary enthusiasm into your educational
morals.
The intellectual part of man is very apt to become lazy and sluggish.
And it will become most intensely sluggish if it is perpetually fed
with materialistic thoughts. But if it is fed with thoughts, with
mental pictures, won from the spirit it will take wings. Such
thoughts, however, can only come into our souls by way of imagination.
Now the second half of the nineteenth century has stormed against the
introduction of imagination into teaching! In the first half of the
nineteenth century there were brilliant men, men such as Schelling,
for example, whose sounder thought embraced education as well. You
should read the beautiful and stirring account written by Schelling of
the methods of academic study written, it is true, not about
primary schools but for college life but alive with the spirit
of pedagogy of the first half of the nineteenth century. His work was
attacked, in a veiled way, in the second half of the nineteenth
century, when everything seeking access to man's soul by way of
imagination was treated with scorn and abuse. This is because people
had become cowards in what concerns the life of the soul, and because
they believed that the moment they gave themselves up to imagination
they would be falling into the arms of falsehood. They had not the
courage to be free and independent in their thought and still to unite
themselves with truth instead of falsehood. They were afraid to move
freely in thought believing that if they did so they would straightway
be letting falsehood into their souls. Thus in addition to the
permeating of his teaching material with imagination, of which I have
just spoken, the teacher must have courage for the truth. Without this
courage for the truth he will find that his will in teaching will not
serve him, especially when it comes to the older children. But this
courage for the truth which the teacher develops must go hand in hand
with a feeling of responsibility towards the truth.
The need for imagination, a sense of truth, a feeling of
responsibility, these are the three forces which are the very nerves
of pedagogy. And whoever will receive pedagogy into himself, let him
inscribe the following as a motto for his teaching:
Imbue thyself with the power of imagination,
Have courage for the truth,
Sharpen thy feeling for responsibility of soul.
Durchdringe dich mit Phantasiefähigkeit,
habe den Mut zur Wahrheit,
schärfe dein Gefühl für seelische Verantwortlichkeit.
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