The Study of Man

These Lectures were given as a preparation for their task to the teachers of the original Waldorf School in Stuttgart, the first School to be founded on the work of Rudolf Steiner in 1919. They are not, however, only concerned with education; they contain Steiner's fundamental views on the psychology of man.

Steiner's psychology differs from all other psychologies in that it takes account not only of the forces playing into man from the past, but also of future states of consciousness and being, which will not be realised till the far distant future, but which are already affecting his character and density.

All new things have to find their unique vocabulary and the reader will find some unfamiliar terms in these lectures. But as Steiner's picture of man unfolds itself they will gradually assume shape and meaning.

It is in the balancing out of the past with the future that man escapes determinism and finds his true nature as a free being. In this lies the importance of these lectures. All students of psychology, and not only teachers, will find in them new light on the absorbing riddle of man.