THE NECESSITY FOR A SPIRITUAL INSIGHT
My first words shall be to ask your forgiveness that I cannot speak to
you in the language of this country. But as I lack practise I must
needs formulate things in the language I can use. Any disadvantage
this involves will be made good, I trust, in the translation to
follow.
In the second place, allow me to say that I feel extra-ordinarily
grateful to the distinguished committee which enables me to hold these
lectures at this gathering in Oxford. I feel it an especial honour to
be able to give these lectures here, in this venerable town. It was
here, in this town, that I myself experienced the grandeur of ancient
tradition, twenty years ago.
And now that I am about to speak of a method of education which in a
sense may be called new, I should like to say: In our day novelty is
sought by many simply qua novelty, but whoever strives for a
new thing in any sphere of human culture must first win the right to
do so by knowing how to respect what is old.
Here in Oxford I feel how the power of what lives in these old
traditions inspires everything. And one who can feel this has perhaps
the right also to speak of what is new. For a new thing, in order to
maintain itself, must be rooted in the venerable past. Perhaps it is
the tragedy and the great failing of our age that there is a constant
demand for this new thing and that new thing, while so few people are
inclined worthily to create the new from out of the old.
Therefore, I feel such deep thankfulness to Mrs. Mackenzie, the
organiser of this conference, in particular, and to the whole
committee who undertook to arrange the lectures here. I feel deep
gratitude because this makes it possible to give expression to what,
in a sense, is indeed a new thing in the environment of that revered
antiquity which alone can sponsor it.
I am equally grateful for the very kind words of introduction which
Principal Jacks spoke in this place yesterday.
And now I have already indicated, perhaps, the stand-point from which
these lectures will be given: what will be said here concerning
education and teaching is based on that spiritual-scientific knowledge
which I have made it my life's work to develop.
This spiritual science was cultivated to begin with for its own sake;
in recent years friends have come forward to carry it also into
particular domains of practical life. Thus it was Emil Molt, of
Stuttgart, who having acquaintance with the work in spiritual science
going forward at the Goetheanum — (in Dornach, Switzerland)
— wished to see it applied in the education of children at
school. And this led to the founding of the Waldorf School in
Stuttgart.
The pedagogy and didactic of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart was
founded in that spiritual life which, I hold, must lead to a renewal
of education in conformity with the spirit of our age: a renewal of
education along the lines demanded by the spirit of the age, by the
tasks and the stage of human development which belong to this epoch.
The education and curriculum in question is based entirely upon
knowledge of man. A knowledge of man which spans man's whole being
from his birth to his death. But a knowledge which aims at comprising
all the super-sensible part of man's being between birth and death,
all that bears lasting witness that man belongs to a super-sensible
world.
In our age we have spiritual life of many kinds, but above all a
spiritual life coming down to us from ancient times, a spiritual life
handed down by tradition. Alongside of this spiritual life and in ever
diminishing contact with it, we have the life that flows to us from
the magnificent discoveries of modern natural science. In an age which
includes the life-time of the great natural scientists, the leading
spirits in natural science, we cannot, when speaking of spiritual life
neglect the potent contribution to knowledge of man made by natural
science itself.
Now this natural science can give us insight into the bodily nature of
man, can give us insight into bodily, physio-logical functions during
man's physical life. But this same natural science conducted as it is
by experiment with external tools, by observation with external senses
has not succeeded, for all its great progress, in reaching the
essentially spiritual life of man. I do not say this in disparagement.
It was the great task of natural science as systematised, for example,
by such a personality as Huxley — it was the great service it
rendered that for once it looked at nature with complete disregard of
everything spiritual in the world.
Neither, therefore, can the knowledge of man we have in psychology and
anthropology help us to a practical grasp of what is spiritual. We
have, in our modern civilisation a life of the spirit, and the various
religious denominations maintain and spread this life of the spirit.
But this spiritual culture is not capable of giving answers to man's
questions as to the nature of that eternity and immortality, the
super-sensible life, to which he belongs. It cannot give us
conviction. Conviction, when the isolation of our worldly life
and worldly outlook makes us ask: “What is the eternal,
super-sensible reality underlying the world of sense-perception?”
We may have beliefs as to what we were before birth in the womb
of divine, super-sensible worlds. We may form beliefs as to what our
souls will have to go through after passing the portal of death. And
we may formulate such beliefs into a cult. This can warm our hearts
and cheer our spirits. We can say to ourselves: “Man is a greater
being in the whole universe than in this physical life between birth
and death.” But what we achieve in this way remains a belief,
it remains a thing we think and feel. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to put in practice the great findings and
tenets of natural science while still holding such spiritual beliefs.
We know of the spirit, we no longer understand how to
use the spirit, how to do anything with it, how to permeate our
work and daily life with spirit.
What domain of life most calls for a dealing with the spirit? The
domain of teaching and education. In education we must comprehend man
as a whole; and man in his totality is body, soul and spirit. We must
be able to deal with spirit if we would educate. In all ages it has
been incumbent on man to take account of the spirit and work by its
power: now above all, because we have made such advances in external
science, this summons to work with the spirit is the most urgent.
Hence the social question to-day is first and foremost a question of
education. For to-day we may justly ask: What must we do to give rise
to social organisation and social institutions less tragic than those
of the present day, less full of menace? We can give ourselves no
answer but this: First we must place into practical life, into the
social community, men who are educated from out of the spirit, by
means of a creative activity of the spirit.
The kind of knowledge we are describing pre-supposes a continuous
doing in life, a dealing with life; hence it must seek out the
spirituality within life and make this the basis of education
throughout the differing life-epochs. For in a child the spirit is
closer to the body than it is in the adult. We can see in a child how
physical nature is formed plastically by the spirit. What precisely is
the brain of a child when it is first born, according to our modern
natural science? It is something like the clay which a sculptor takes
up when he prepares a model. And now let us look at the brain of a
seven year old child when we begin his primary education; it has
become a wonderful work of art, but a work of art which must be worked
upon further, worked upon right up to the end of school life. Hidden
spiritual powers are working at the moulding of the human body. And we
as educators are called upon to contribute to that work. Are called
upon not only to observe the bodily nature, but — while we must
never neglect the bodily nature — to observe in this bodily
nature how the spirit is at work upon it. We are called upon to work
with the unconscious spirit — to link ourselves not only with the
natural, but with the divine ordering of the world.
When we confront education earnestly it is demanded of us not only to
acknowledge God for the peace of our soul, but to will God's will, to
act the intentions of God. To do this however, we need a spiritual
basis for education. Of this spiritual basis for education I will
speak to you in the following days.
We must feel when we observe child life how necessary it is to have a
spiritual insight, a spiritual vision if we are adequately to follow
what takes place in the child day by day, what takes place in his
soul, in his spirit. We should consider how child life in its very
earliest days and weeks differs totally from later childhood, let
alone adulthood. We should call to mind what a large proportion of
sleep a child needs in the early days of its life. And we must ask
ourselves what takes place in that interchange between spirit and body
when a child in early childhood needs nearly 22 hours sleep? The
current attitude to such things, both in philosophy and practical
life, is: Well it is not possible to see into the soul of a child, any
more than one can see into the soul of an animal or of a plant; here
we encounter limits of human knowledge.
The spiritual view which we are here representing does not say: Here
are limits of human knowledge, of human cognition. It says: We must
bring forth from the depths of human nature powers of cognition equal
to observing man's complete nature, body, soul and spirit; just as we
can observe the arrangement of the human eye or the human ear in
physiology.
If in ordinary life we have not so far got this knowledge owing to our
natural scientific education, we must set about building it up. Hence
I shall have to speak to you of the development of a knowledge which
can guarantee a genuine insight into the inner texture of child life.
And devoted and unprejudiced observation of life itself goes far to
bring about such an insight.
We look at a child. If our view is merely external we cannot actually
find any definite points of development from birth on to about the
twentieth year. We look upon everything as a continuous development.
It is not so for one who comes to the observation of child life
equipped with the knowledge of which I shall have to speak in the next
few days. Then the child is fundamentally a different being up to his
seventh year or eighth year, — when the change of teeth sets in
— from what he is later in life, from the change of teeth to
about the fourteenth year, to puberty. And infinitely significant
problems confront us when we endeavour to sink deep into the child's
life and to ask. How does the soul and spirit work upon the child up
to the change of teeth? How does the soul and spirit work upon the
child when we have to educate and teach him in the elementary or
primary school? How must we ourselves co-operate here with the soul
and spirit?
We see for example how speech is developed instinctively during the
first period of a child's life up to the change of teeth, —
instinctively as far as the child is concerned, and instinctively as
regards his surroundings. Nowadays we devote a good deal of thought to
the question of how a child learns to speak (I will not go into the
historical aspect of the origin of speech to-day.) But how does a
child actually learn to speak? Has he some kind of instinct whereby he
makes his own the sounds he hears about him? Or does he derive the
impulse for speech from some other kind of connection with his
surroundings? If, however, one looks more closely into the life of a
child one can observe that all speech and all learning to speak rests
upon the imitation of what the child observes in his surroundings by
means of his senses — observes unconsciously. The whole life of
the child up to his seventh year is a continuous imitation of what
takes place in his environment. And the moment a child perceives
something, whether it be a movement, or whether it be a sound, there
arises in him the impulse of an inward gesture, to re-live what has
been perceived with the whole intensity of his inner nature.
We only understand a child when we contemplate him as we should
contemplate the eye or the ear of an older person. For the child is
entirely sense-organ (i.e. a child up to the seventh year). His blood
is driven through his body in a far livelier way than in later life.
We can perceive by means of a fine physiology what the development of
our sense-organs, for example the eye, depends on Blood preponderates
in the process of development of the eye, in the very early years.
Then, later, the nerve life in the senses preponderates more and more.
For the development of the organism of the senses in man is a
development from blood circulation to nerve activity. It is possible
to acquire a delicate faculty for perceiving how the life of the blood
gradually goes over into the life of the nerves.
And as it is with a single sense (e.g. the eye), so it is with the
whole human being. The child needs so much sleep because it is
entirely sense-organ. Because it could not otherwise endure the dazzle
and noise of the outer world. Just as the eye must shut itself against
the dazzling sunlight, so must this sense-organ: child — for the
child is entirely sense-organ — shut itself off against the
world, so must it sleep a great deal. For whenever it is confronted
with the world, it has to observe, to hold inward converse. Every
sound of speech arises from an inward gesture.
What I am now saying from out of a spiritual knowledge is — let
me say — open to-day to scientific demonstration. There is a
scientific discovery — and, forgive the personal allusion, but
this discovery has dogged me all through my life and is just as old as
I am myself, it was made in the year in which I was born. Now the
discovery is to the effect that human speech depends on the left
parietal con-volution of the brain. This is developed plastically in
the brain. But the whole of this development takes place during
childhood by means of these plastic forces of which I have spoken. And
if we contemplate the whole connection which exists between the
gestures of the right arm, and the right hand (which preponderate in
normal children), we shall see how speech forms itself from out of
gesture by imitation of the environment through an inner, secret
connection between blood, nerves and the convolution of the brain: (of
left-handed children and their relation to the generality of children
I shall have something to say later; they form an exception, but they
prove very well how what builds up the power of speech is bound up
with every single gesture of the right arm and hand, even down to
minutest details).
If we had a more delicate physiology than our physiology of to-day, we
should be able to discover for each time of life, not only the passive
but the active principle. Now the active principle is particularly
lively in this great organ of sense, the child. Thus a child lives in
its environment in the manner in which, in later years our eye dwells
in its environment. Our eye is especially formed from out the general
organisation of the head. It lies, that is, in a cavity apart, so that
it can participate in the life of the outer world. In the same way the
child participates in the life of the outer world, lives entirely
within the external world — does not yet feel itself
— but lives entirely in the outer world.
We develop nowadays a form of knowledge, called intellectual
knowledge, which is entirely within us. It is the form of knowledge
appropriate to our civilisation. We believe that we can comprehend the
outer world, but the thoughts and the logic to which alone we grant
cognitive value dwell within ourselves. And a child lives entirely
outside of himself. Have we the right to believe that with our
intellectual mode of knowledge we can ever participate in that
experience of the outer world which the child has? — the child
who is all sense-organ? This we cannot do. This we can only hope to
achieve by a cognition which can go right out of itself, which can
enter into the nature of all that lives and moves. Intuitional
cognition is the only cognition which can do this. Not intellectual
knowledge which leaves us within ourselves; which makes us ask of
every idea: is it logical? No, but a knowledge by means of which the
spirit penetrates into the depths of life itself — intuitional
knowledge. We must consciously acquire an intuitional knowledge, then
only shall we be practical enough to do with spirit what has to be
accomplished with the child in his earliest years.
Now, as the child gradually accomplishes the changing of teeth, when
in place of the inherited teeth there appear those which have been
formed during the first period of life (1-7) — there comes about
a change in the child's whole life. Now no longer is he entirely
sense-organ, but he is given up to a more psychical element than that
of the sense impressions. The child of primary school age now no
longer absorbs what he observes in his surroundings, but rather that
which lives in what he observes. The child enters upon the stage which
must be based mainly on the principle of authority, the authority a
child meets with in his educators or teachers. Do not let us deceive
ourselves into thinking that a child between seven and fourteen, whom
we are educating, does not adopt from us the judgments we give
expression to. If we compel a child to listen to a judgment expressed
in a certain phrase, we are giving him something which rightly belongs
only to a later age. What the true nature of the child demands of us
is to be able to believe in us, to have the instinctive feeling:
‘Here stands one beside me who tells me something. He can tell
things because he is so connected with the whole world that he
can tell. For me he is the mediator between myself and the
whole universe. This is how the child confronts his teacher and
educator — not of course outspokenly but instinctively. For the
child the adult is the mediator between the divine world and himself
in his helplessness. And only when the educator is conscious that he
must be such an authority as a matter of course, that he must be such
as the child can look up to in a perfectly natural way, can he be a
true educator.
Hence we have found in the course of our Waldorf School teaching and
our Waldorf School education that the question of education is
principally a question of teachers. What must the teacher: be like in
order to be a natural authority, the mediator between the divine order
of the world and the child? Well, what has the child become? Between
the 7th and 14th or 15th year from
being sense-organ the child has become all soul. Not spirit as yet
— not such that he sets the highest value on logical connections,
on intellect; this would cause inner ossification in his soul. It is
far more significant for a child between seven and fourteen years to
tell him about a thing in a kindly, loving way, than to demonstrate by
proof. Kindly humour and geniality in a lesson have far more value
than logic. For the child does not yet need logic. For the child does
not yet need logic. The child needs us, needs our humanity.
Hence in the Waldorf School we set the greatest importance on the
teachers of children from seven to fourteen years being able to give
them what is appropriate to their age with artistic love and loving
art. For it is fundamental to the education of which we are speaking
that one should know the human being, that one should know what each
age demands of us in respect of education and instruction. What is
demanded by the first year? What is demanded up to the seventh year?
What is required of the primary school period? The way of educating
children up to the tenth year must be quite different, and different
again must be the way we introduce them to human knowledge between 10
and 14. To have in our souls a lively image of the child's nature in
every single year, nay, in every single week, — this constitutes
the spiritual basis of education.
Thus we can say: As the child is an imitator, a ‘copy-cat’
in his early years, so, in his later years he becomes a follower, one
who develops in his soul according to what he is able in his psychic
environment to experience in soul. The sense organs have now become
independent. The soul of the child has actually only just come into
its own. We must now treat this soul with infinite tenderness. As
teacher and educator we must come into continually more intimate
contact with what is happening day by day in the child's soul.
In this introductory talk to-day I will indicate only one thing. There
is, namely, for every child a critical point during the age of school
attendance; roughly between the 9th and 11th year there is a critical
moment, a moment which must not be over-looked by the teacher. In this
age between the 9th and 11th year there comes for every child —
if he is not abnormal — the moment when he says to himself:
‘How can I find my place within the world?’ One must not
suppose that the question is put just as I have said it. The question
arises in indefinite feelings, in unsatisfied feelings. The question
shows itself in the child's having a longing for dependence on a
grown-up person. Perhaps it will take the form of a great love and
attachment felt for some grown-up person. But we must understand how
rightly to observe what is happening in the child at this critical
time. The child suddenly finds himself isolated. He seeks something to
hold on to. Up till now he has accepted authority as a matter of
course. Now he begins to ask: What is this authority? Our finding or
not finding the right word to say at this moment will make an enormous
difference to the whole of the child's later life.
It is enormously important that the physician observing a childish
illness should say to himself: What is going on in the organism are
processes of development which are not significant only for the child
— if they do not go rightly in the child the man will suffer the
effects when he is old. Similarly must we realise that the ideas,
sensations or will impulses we give the child must not be formulated
in stiff concepts which the child has only to heed and learn: the
ideas, the impulses and sensations which we give the child must be
alive as our limbs are alive. The child's hand is small. It must grow
of its own accord, we may not constrain it. The ideas, the psychic
development of the child are small and delicate, we must not confine
them within hard limits as if we assumed that the child must retain
them in thirty years' time when grown-up — in the same form as in
childhood. We must so form the ideas we bring the child that they can
grow. The Waldorf School does not aim at being a school, but a
preparatory school; for every school should be a preparatory school to
the great school of manhood, which is life itself. We must not learn
at school for the sake of performance, but we must learn at school in
order to be able to learn further from life. Such must be the basis of
what may be called a spiritual physiological pedagogy and didactics.
One must have a sense and feeling for bringing to the child living
things that can continue with him into later life. For that which is
fostered in a child often dwells in the depths of the child's soul
imperceptibly. In later life it comes out. One can make use of an
image — it is only by way of image, but it rests upon a truth:
There are people who at a certain time of their lives have a
beneficent influence upon their fellow men. They can — if I may
use the expression — bestow blessing. There are such people,
— they do not need to speak, they only need to be there with
their personality which blesses. The whole course of a man's life is
usually not observed, otherwise notice would be taken of the
upbringing of such people — of people like this who later have
the power of blessing; it may have been the conscious deed of some one
person, or it may have been unconscious on the part of teacher and
educator: — Such people have been brought up as children to learn
reverence, to learn, in the most comprehensive meaning of the word, to
pray — to look up to something; — and hence they could will
down to something. If one has learned at first to look up, to honour,
to be entirely surrounded by authority, then one has the possibility
to bless, to work down, oneself to become an authority, an
unquestioned authority.
These are the things which must not merely live as precepts in the
teacher, but must pass into him, become part of his being — going
from his head continuously into his arms. So that a man can do deeds
with his spirit, not merely think thoughts. These things must come to
life in the teacher. In the next few days I will show how this can
come about in detail throughout each single year of school life
between seven, and fourteen. But before all things I wanted to explain
to-day how a certain manner of inner life, not merely an outlook on
life but an inner attitude must form the basis of education.
Then, when the child has outgrown the stage of authority, when he has
attained puberty and through this has physio-logically quite a
different connection with the outer world than before, he also attains
in soul and body (in his bodily life in its most comprehensive sense)
a quite different relation-ship to the world than he had earlier. This
is the time of the awakening of Spirit in Man. This now is the time
when the human being seeks out the rational and logical aspect in all
verbal expression. Only now can we hope to appeal with any success to
the intellect in our education and instruction. It is immensely
important that we do not consciously or unconsciously call upon the
intellect prematurely, as people are so prone to do to-day.
And now let us ask ourselves: What is happening when we observe how
the child takes on authority, everything that is to guide and lead his
soul. For a child does not listen to us in order to check and prove
what we say. Unconsciously the child takes up as an inspiration what
works upon his soul, what, through his soul, builds and influences his
body. And we can only rightly educate when we understand the
wonderful, unconscious inspiration, which holds sway in the whole life
of a child between seven and fourteen, when we can work into the
continuous process of inspiration. To do this we' must acquire still
another power of spiritual cognition, we must add to Intuition,
Inspiration itself. And when we have led the child on its way as far
as the 14th year we make a peculiar discovery. If we attempt to give
the child things that we have conceived logically — we become
wearisome to him. To begin with he will listen, when we thus formulate
every-thing in a logical way; but if the young man or maiden must
re-think our logic after us, he will gradually become weary. Also in
this period we, as teachers need something besides pure logic. This
can be seen from a general example.
Take a scientist such as Ernst Haeckel who lived entirely in external
nature. He was himself tremendously interested in all his microscopic
studies, in all he built up. If this is taught to pupils, they learn
it but they cannot develop the same interest for it. We as teachers
must develop something different from what the child has in himself.
If the child is coming into the domain of logic at the age of puberty,
we (in our turn) must develop imagery, imagination. If we ourselves
can pour into picture form the subjects we have to give the children,
if we can give them pictures, so that they receive images of the world
and the work and meaning of the world, pictures which we create for
them, as in a high form of art — then they will be held by what
we have to tell them.
So that in this third period of life we are directed to Imagination,
as in the other two to Intuition and Inspiration. And we now have to
seek for the spiritual basis which can make it possible for us as
teachers to work from out of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition
— which can make it possible not merely to think of spirit, but
to act with spirit.
This is what I wished to say to you by way of introduction.
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