LECTURE IV
Arnheim, 20th July, 1924.
Arising out of yesterday's lecture a further question has been
put to me in connection with our subject and I should like to
deal with it here. The question is this: “With reference
to the law of imitation in a child's movements I regard as
important an explanation of the following fact. My grandfather
died when my father was between eighteen months and two years
old. When he was about forty-five my father visited one of my
grandfather's friends who was astonished at the similarity of
all my father's movements and gestures with those of my
grandfather. What was the cause of this, seeing that owing to
my grandfather's early death there could hardly be any question
of imitation!”
So
a man died when his son was between eighteen months and two
years old and long afterwards, when the latter was in his 45th
year, he heard from this friend, who was in a position to know,
that as late as his 45th year he still imitated, or rather had
the same gestures as his father.
Of
course we are dealing here with matters of such a nature that
it is scarcely possible to do more than give certain guiding
lines, omitting detailed explanations. Unfortunately our
courses of lectures are short, and the theme, if it were to be
gone into fully, would need many lectures and ample time, six
months for instance, or even a whole year. Very many questions
are therefore likely to arise, and it may well be
possible to answer these if they are brought forward. I must
however point out that owing to the limited time at our
disposal a certain lack of clarity will inevitably arise and
this could only be cleared up if it were possible to enter
fully into every detail. With reference to the question which
has been put I should like to interpolate the following
remarks.
If
we take the first epoch of a child's life, that is, the time
between birth and the change of teeth, the organisation of the
child is working and developing in such a way that those
predispositions are incorporated into the organism which I
described yesterday as consisting of walking, which includes
the general orientation of the human being, of speaking and
thirdly of thinking.
Now
this is how things follow one another. Between the first and
seventh year of life the child is so organised that he is
mainly concerned with gesture; between approximately the
seventh and fourteenth year he is concerned with speech, as I
explained yesterday; and, again speaking approximately, between
his fourteenth and twenty-first year he is so organised that he
is mainly concerned with thinking. What thus makes its
appearance in the course of twenty-one years is however already
taking shape as predisposition in the first period of life,
between birth and the change of teeth. In so far as the
assimilation of gesture is concerned, and this includes walking
freely in space without need of support, so that the arms and
also the muscles of the face can move in an expressive way
— in other words a general orientation, finding a living
relationship with gesture and movement — all this is
developed mainly in the first third of these years, that is to
say in the first 2⅓ years. The main development
of the child during this time lies in the unfolding and building
up of gesture. The gestures then continue to develop, but in
addition something more intimate and inward is now impressed
into the speech organism. Although the child has already
uttered a few words nevertheless the experience of speech as
predisposition takes place after 2⅓ years. The actual
experience and feeling for speech is fully developed between
the seventh and fourteenth year, but as predisposition it is
there between 2⅓ and 4⅔
years old. Naturally all this must be taken as an average. From
then on the child develops the faculty of experiencing inwardly
the first beginnings of thought. What unfolds and blossoms
later, between the 14th and 21st year is already developing
germinally between 4⅔ and 7 years old. The
forming of gestures continues of course throughout these years,
but other faculties enter in. We see therefore that in the main
we have to place the time for the unfolding and forming of
gestures right back to the first 2½ years. What is
gained during this time lies deepest. This is only natural, for
we can well imagine how fundamentally the principle of
imitation works in the very first years of life.
If
you take all this together you will no longer find anything
astonishing in what gave rise to the question that has been put
here. The grandfather died when the father was between
1½ and 2 years old. Now this is precisely the time
in which the forming of gesture is working most deeply. If the
grandfather died then, the gestures the child imitated from him
made by far the deepest impression. That is in no way altered
by what may have been imitated later from other people. So just
this particular case is extraordinarily significant when
we consider it in detail.
We
tried yesterday to explain how in the second period of life,
between the change of teeth and puberty, the child in the
course of his development experiences everything that finds its
expression through speech, in which the self-understood
authority of the teacher and educator must play its part.
The intercourse between teacher and child must be of such
a kind that it works in a pictorial, imaginative way. And I
pointed out how at this age one cannot approach the child with
moral precepts but can only work effectively on his moral
nature by awakening in him such feelings as can be awakened by
pictures: so that the child receives pictures described by his
teacher and educator, who is also his model. These work
in such a way that what is good pleases him and what is bad
gives him a feeling of distaste. Therefore at this preparatory
or elementary school age morality must be instilled in
pictorial form by way of the feelings.
I
explained further how writing must be brought to the child in a
pictorial way and I showed how the forms of the letters must be
developed out of the drawing-painting and the painting-drawing.
Of all the arts this must be cultivated first, for it leads the
child into civilisation. Everything which introduces the child
at the very outset into the forms of the letters, which are
completely strange to him, is quite wrong from an educational
point of view; for the finished forms of the letters used in
our present day civilisation work on the child like little
demons.
Now
in an education built up on a knowledge of man, learning to
write must precede learning to read. If you want to come near
to a child of this age, immediately after the change of teeth,
you must as far as possible approach the whole being of the
child. The child when occupied in writing does at least bring
the whole of the upper part of the body into activity; there is
an inner mobility which is quite different from when only the
head is kept busy learning the forms of the letters. The
emancipated, independent faculties of the head can only be made
use of at a later age. For this reason we can make a transition
by allowing the child also to read what he has written. In this
way an impression is made on him.
By
carrying out our teaching in this way at the Waldorf School it
transpired that our children learn to read somewhat later than
others; they even learn to write the letters a little later
than children in other schools. It is necessary however, before
forming a judgment in regard to this to be able really to enter
into the nature of man with understanding. With the limited
perception and feeling for a knowledge of man usual at the
present day, people do not notice at all how detrimental it is
for the general development of the human being if, as a child,
he learns too early things so remote from him as reading and
writing. Certainly nobody will experience any deficiency in his
capacity to read and write, whose proficiency in these arts is
attained somewhat later than others; on the other hand everyone
who learns to read and write too early will suffer in this very
respect. An education based on a knowledge of man must from the
very beginning, proceed out of this ability to read human
evolution and by understanding the conditions of life help the
child in furthering the development of his own nature. This is
the one and only way to a really health-giving education.
To
gain deeper insight we must enter somewhat into the being of
man. In man we have in the first place his physical body which
is most intensively developed in the first epoch of life. In
the second epoch the higher, finer body, the etheric body,
develops predominantly. Now it is a matter of great importance
that in this study of man we should proceed in a truly
scientific way, and we must conjure up the same courage as is
shown today in other branches of science. A substance showing a
definite degree of warmth, can be brought into a condition in
which that warmth, hitherto bound up with substance, becomes
freed. It is liberated and then becomes “free”
warmth. In the case of mineral substances we have the courage
to speak scientifically when we say that there is
“bound” warmth and “free” warmth. We
must acquire the same courage when we study the world as a
whole. If we have this courage then the following reveals
itself to us in regard to man.
We
can ask: Where are the forces of the etheric body in the first
epoch of life? During this time they are bound up with the
physical body and are active in its nourishment and growth. In
this first epoch the child is different from what he becomes
later. The entire forces of the etheric body are at first bound
up with the physical body. At the end of the first epoch they
are freed to some extent, just as warmth becomes free from the
substances with which it was formerly bound up. What takes
place now? Only a part of the etheric body is working after the
change of teeth in the forces of growth and nourishment; the
freed part becomes the bearer of the more intensive development
of the memory, of qualities of soul. We must learn to speak of
a soul that is “bound” during the first seven years
of life and of a soul that has become free after the 7th year.
For it is so. What we use as forces of the soul in the second
seven years of life is imperceptibly bound up with the physical
body during the first seven years; this is why nothing of a
psychic nature becomes body free. A knowledge of how the soul
works in the first seven years of life must be gained from
observation of the body. And only after the change of teeth can
any direct approach be made to what is purely of a soul
nature.
This is a way of looking at things which leads directly from
the physical to the psychological. Just think of the many
different approaches to psychology today. They are based on
speculation pure and simple. People think things over and
discover that on the one hand we have the soul and on the other
hand the body. Now the following question arises: Does the body
work on the soul as its original cause, or is it the other way
round? If they get no further either way, they discover
something so extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical
parallelism, the idea of which is that both
manifestations run parallel, side by side. In this way no
explanation is given for the interaction of one with the other,
but one speaks only of parallelism. This is a sign that nothing
is known about these things out of experience. Out of
experience one would have to say: In the first seven years of a
child's life one perceives the soul working in the body. How it
works must be learned through observation, not through mere
speculation. Anthroposophy as a means of knowledge rejects all
speculation and proceeds everywhere from experience, but of
course from physical and spiritual experience.
So
in the second period of life, in the time between the change of
teeth and puberty the etheric body of man is our chief concern
in education. Both teacher and child need above all those
forces which are working in the etheric body, for these release
the feeling life of the child, not yet judgment and thought.
Deeply embedded in the nature of the child between the change
of teeth and puberty is the third member of the human being,
the astral body, which is the bearer of all feeling life and
sensation. During this second period of life the astral body is
still deeply embedded in the etheric body. Therefore, because
the etheric body is now relatively free, we have the task to
develop it in such a way that it can follow its own tendencies,
helped and not hindered by education. When can it be so helped?
This can happen when in the widest possible sense we teach and
educate the child by means of pictures, when we build up
imaginatively and pictorially everything that we wish him
to absorb. For the etheric body is the body of formative
forces; it models the wonderful forms of the organs, heart,
lungs, liver and so on. The physical body which we inherit acts
only as a model; after the first seven years, after the change
of teeth, it is laid aside, and the second physical body is
fashioned by the etheric body. This is why at this age we must
educate in a way that is adapted to the plastic formative
forces of the etheric body.
Now, just as we teach the child by means of pictures, just as,
among other things, he learns to write by a kind of
painting-drawing — and we cannot introduce the child too
early to what is artistic, for our entire teaching must be
permeated with artistic feeling — so must we also
bear the following in mind. Just as the etheric body is
inseparably associated with what is formative and pictorial, so
the astral body, which underlies the life of feeling and
sensation, tends in its organisation towards the musical nature
of man. To what then must we look when we observe the child?
Because the astral body between the change of teeth and puberty
is still embedded in the physical and etheric bodies every
child whose soul life is healthy is inwardly deeply musical.
Every healthy child is inwardly deeply musical. We have only to
call up this musicality by making use of the child's natural
liveliness and sense of movement. Artistic teaching therefore
must, from the very beginning of school life, make use both of
the plastic and pictorial arts and also of the art of music.
Nothing abstract must be allowed to dominate; it is the
artistic approach which is all-important, and out of what is
artistic the child must be led to a comprehension of the
world.
But
now we must proceed in such a way that the child learns
gradually to find his own orientation in the world. I have
already said that it is most repugnant to me if I see
scientific text books brought into school and the teaching
carried out along those lines. For today in our scientific
work, which I fully recognise, we have deviated in many
respects from a conception of the world which is in accordance
with nature. We will now ask ourselves the following question,
bearing in mind that in the course of discussion other things
may have to be added. At about what age can one begin to teach
children about the plant world?
This must be done neither too late nor too early. We must be
aware that a very important stage in a child's development is
reached between the 9th and 10th year. Those who see with the
eye of a teacher observe this in every child. There comes a
time in which the child, although he does not usually express
it in words, nevertheless shows in his whole behaviour that he
has a question, or a number of questions, which betray an inner
crisis in his life. This is an exceptionally delicate
experience in the child and an exceptionally delicate
sense for these things is necessary if one is to perceive it.
But it is there and it must be observed. At this age the child
learns quite instinctively to differentiate himself from
the outer world. Up to this time the “I” and the
outer world interpenetrate each other, and it is therefore
possible to tell the child stories about animals, plants and
stones in which they all behave as though they were human
beings. Indeed this is the best approach, for we should appeal
to the child's pictorial, imaginative sense, and this we do if
we speak about the kingdoms of nature in this way. Between the
9th and 10th year however the child learns to say
“I” in full consciousness. He learns this earlier
of course, but now he does so consciously. These years,
therefore, when the consciousness of the child is no longer
merged with the outer world, but when he learns to
differentiate himself from it, are the time when we can begin,
without immediately renouncing the pictorial element, to lead
the child to an understanding of the plant world, but to an
understanding imbued with feeling.
Today we are accustomed to look at one plant alongside of
another, we know their names and so on; we do this as though
the single plant was there for itself. But when we study the
plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pull out a
hair, and forgetting that it was on your head examine it for
itself, in the belief that you can know something about its
nature and life-conditions without considering it as growing
out of your head. The hair only has meaning when it is
growing on the head; it cannot be studied for itself. It
is the same with the plant. One cannot pull it up and study it
separately, but one must consider the whole earth as an
organism to which the plants belong. This is actually what it
is. The plants belong to the entire growth of the earth, in the
same way as the hairs belong to our head. Plants can never be
studied in an isolated way, but only in connection with the
whole nature of the earth. The earth and the world of plants
belong together.
Let
us suppose that you have a herbaceous plant, an annual, which
is growing out of the root, shooting up into stalk, leaves and
flowers, and developing the fruit which is sown again in the
following year. Then you have the earth underneath, in which
the plant is growing. But now, think of a tree. The tree lives
longer, it is not an annual. It develops around itself the
mineralised bark which is of such a nature that pieces of it
can be broken off. What is this in reality? The process is as
follows: If you were to pile up around a plant the surrounding
earth with its inherent forces, if you were more or less to
cover it with earth, then you would bring this about in an
external, mechanical way, through human activity. Nature
however does the same thing by wrapping the tree round with the
bark; only in this case it is not completely earth. In the bark
there is a kind of hill of earth, the earth heaps itself up. We
can see the earth flourishing and growing when we see the
growing tree. This is why what surrounds the root of the plant
must most certainly be reckoned as belonging to it. We must
regard the soil as belonging to the plant.
Anyone who has trained himself to observe such things and
happens to travel in a district where he notices many plants
with yellow flowers will at once look to see what kind of soil
it is. In such a case, where specifically many yellow flowers
are to be seen, one is likely to find, for instance, a soil
which is somewhat red in colour. You will never be able to
think about the plant without taking into consideration the
earth in which it grows. Both belong together. And one should
lose no time in accustoming oneself to this; as otherwise one
destroys in oneself a sense for realities.
A
deep impression was made on me recently, when at the request of
certain farmers, I gave an agricultural course, at the end of
which a farmer said: Today everybody knows that our vegetables
are dying out, are becoming decadent and this with alarming
rapidity. Why is this? It is because people no longer
understand, as they understood in bygone days, as the peasants
understood, that earth and plants are bound together and must
be so considered. If we want to foster the well-being of our
vegetables so that they flourish again we must understand
how to treat them in the right way, in other words, we must
give them the right kind of manure. We must give the earth the
possibility of living rightly in the environment of the plant
roots. Today, after the failure of agricultural methods of
development, we need a new impulse in agriculture based on
Spiritual Science. This will enable us to make use of manure in
such a way that the growth of plants does not degenerate.
Anyone as old as I am can say: I know how potatoes looked 50
years ago in Europe — and how they look today! Today we
have not only the decline of the West in regard to its cultural
life, but this decline penetrates deeply also into the kingdoms
of nature, for example, in regard to agriculture.
It
really amounts to this, that the sense for the connection
between the plant and its environment should not be destroyed,
that on school outings and similar occasions die plants should
not be uprooted and put into specimen containers and then
brought into the classroom in the belief that thereby
something has been achieved. For the uprooted plant can
never exist just for itself. Today people indulge in totally
unreal ideas. For instance they look upon a piece of chalk and
a flower as having reality in the same sense. But what nonsense
this is! The mineral can exist for itself, it can really do
this. So the plant also (they say) should have an independent
existence;
but
it cannot, it ceases to be when it is uprooted from the ground.
It only has earthly existence when it is attached to something
other than itself, and that other only has existence in so far
as it is part of the whole earth. We must study things as they
are in their totality, not tear them out of it.
Almost all our knowledge based on observation teems with
unrealities of this kind. This is why Nature Study has become
completely abstract, although this is partly justified, as with
the theory of relativity. Anyone, however, who can think in a
realistic way cannot allow abstract concepts to run on and on,
but notices when they cease to have any relationship with what
is real. This is something he finds painful. Naturally you can
follow the laws of acoustics and say: When I make a sound, the
transmission of this sound has a definite speed. When I hear a
sound anywhere, at any particular place, I can calculate the
exact time its transmission will take. If now I move, no matter
at what speed, in the direction the sound is travelling, I
shall hear it later. Should my speed exceed the speed of the
sound I shall not hear it at all; but if I move towards the
sound I shall hear it earlier. The theory of relativity has its
definite justification. According to this, however, we can also
come to the following conclusion: If I now move towards the
sound more quickly than the sound travels, I shall finally go
beyond it, so that I shall hear the sound before it is made!
This is obvious to anyone able to think realistically. Such a
person also knows that logically it is absolutely correct,
wonderfully thought out, to say that a clock (to take the
famous comparison of Einstein) thrown with the speed of light
into universal space and returning from thence, will not have
changed in any respect. This can be wonderfully thought out.
But for a realistic thinker the question must necessarily
arise: What will the clock look like on its return? for he does
not separate his thinking from reality, he remains always in
the sphere of reality.
This is the essential characteristic of Spiritual Science. It
never demands a merely logical approach, but one in
accordance with reality. That is why people today, who
carry abstractions even to the splitting of hairs, reproach us
anthroposophists with being abstract, just because our way of
thinking seeks everywhere the absolute reality, never losing
the connection with reality, although here certainly the
spiritual reality has to be included and understood. This is
why it is possible to perceive so clearly how unnatural it is
to connect plant study with specimens in a container.
It
is therefore important when introducing the child to plant
study that we consider the actual face of the earth and deal
with the soil and plant growth as a whole, so that the child
will never think of the plant as something detached and
separate. This can be unpleasant for the teacher, for now he
cannot take the usual botany books into class with him, have a
quick glance at them during the lesson and behave as though he
knew it all perfectly. I have already said that today there are
no suitable botany text-books. But this sort of teaching takes
on another aspect when one knows the effect of the imponderable
and when one considers that in the child the subconscious works
still more strongly than in older people. This subconscious is
terribly clever and anyone able to perceive the spiritual life
of the child knows that when a class is seated facing the
teacher and he walks up and down with his notes and wants to
impart the content of these notes to the children, they always
form a judgment and think; Well, why should I know that? He
doesn't even know it himself! This disturbs the lesson
tremendously, for these feelings rise up out of the
subconscious and nothing can be expected of a class which is
taught by someone with notes in his hand.
We
must always look into the spiritual side of things. This is
particularly necessary when developing the art of education,
for by doing so we can create in the child a feeling of
standing firmly and safely in the world. For (in lessons on the
plant) he gradually grasps the idea that the earth is an
organism. And this it actually is and when it begins to become
lifeless we must help it by making the right use of manure. For
instance, it is not true that the water contained in the air is
the same as that in the earth below. The water below has a
certain vitality; the water above loses this vitality and only
regains it when it descends. All these things are real,
absolutely real. If we do not grasp them we do not unite
ourselves with the world in a real way. This then is what I
wished to say in regard to the teaching about the world of
plants.
Now
we come to the animal world and we cannot consider the animals
as belonging to the earth in the same way. This is apparent
from the mere fact that the animals can move about; in this
respect they are independent. But when we compare the animals
with man we find something very characteristic in their
formation. This has always been indicated in an older,
instinctive science, the after-effects of which still
remained in the first third of the 19th century. When however a
modern man with his way of looking at things reads the opinions
expressed by those philosophers of nature who, following old
traditions, still regarded the animal world in its relation to
the human world, these strike him as being utterly foolish. I
know that people have hardly been able to contain their
laughter when in a study circle, during the reading from the
nature philosopher, Oken, the following sentence occurred:
“The human tongue is a cuttlefish.” Whatever could
he have meant? Of course in actual fact this statement of
Oken's can no longer be regarded as correct, but it contains an
underlying principle which must be taken into account. When we
observe the different animal forms, from the smallest protozoa
up to the fully developed apes, we find that every animal form
represents some part of the human being, a human organ, or an
organic system, which is developed in a one-sided way. You need
only look at these things quite crudely. Imagine that the human
forehead were to recede enormously that the jaw were to jut
right out, that the eyes were to look upwards instead of
forwards, that the teeth and their whole nexus were also to be
formed in a completely one-sided way. By imagining such an
exaggerated, one-sided development you could get a picture of a
great variety of mammals. By leaving out this or that in the
human form you can change it into the form of an ox, a sheep
and so on. And when you take the inner organs, for instance
those which are connected with reproduction, you come into the
region of the lower animals. The human being is a synthesis, a
putting together of the single animal forms, which becomes
softer, gentler, when they are united. The human being is made
up of all the animal forms moulded into one harmonious
structure. Thus when I trace back to their original forms all
that in man is merged together I find the whole animal world.
Man is a contraction of the whole animal world.
This way of looking at things places us with our soul life once
more in a right relationship to the animal world. This has been
forgotten, but it is nevertheless true; and as it belongs
fundamentally to the principles of evolution it must
again be brought to life. And, after having shown the child how
the plant belongs to the earth, we must, in so far as it is
possible today, proceed at about the nth year to a
consideration of the animal world; and we must do this in such
a way that we realise that in its various forms the animal
world belongs, strictly speaking, to man himself. Think how the
young human being will then stand in his relation to animal and
plant. The plants go to the earth, become one with the earth;
the animals become one with him! This gives the basis for a
true relationship to the world; it places man in a real
relationship to the world. This can always be brought to the
child in connection with the teaching matter. And if this is
done artistically, if we approach the subject in a living way,
so that it corresponds with what the child in his inner being
is able to grasp, then we give him living forces with which to
establish a relationship to life. Otherwise we may easily
destroy this relationship. But we must look deeply into the
whole human being.
What really is the etheric body? Well, if it were possible to
lift it out of the physical body and so impregnate it that its
form were to become visible — then there would be no
greater work of art than this. For the human etheric body
through its own nature and through what man creates within it,
is at one and the same time both work of art and artist. And
when we introduce the formative element into the child's
artistic work, when we let him model in the free way I
described yesterday, we bring to him something that is deeply
related to the etheric body. This enables the child to take
hold of his own inner being and thereby place himself as man in
a right relationship to the world.
By
introducing the child to music we form the astral body. But
when we put two things together, when we lead what is plastic
over into movement, and when we form movements that are
plastic, then we have eurythmy, which follows exactly the
relationship of the child's etheric body to his astral body.
And so now the child learns eurythmy, speech revealing itself
in articulated gestures, just as he learned to speak quite
naturally in his earlier years. A healthy child will find no
difficulty in learning eurythmy, for in eurythmy he simply
expresses his own being, he has the impulses to make his own
being a reality. This is why, in addition to gymnastics,
eurythmy is incorporated into the curriculum as an obligatory
subject from the first school years right up into the highest
classes.
So
you see, eurythmy has arisen out of the whole human being,
physical body, etheric body and astral body; it can only be
studied by means of an anthroposophical knowledge of man.
Gymnastics today are directed physiologically in a one-sided
way towards the physical body; and because physiology cannot do
otherwise, certain principles based on life-giving processes
are introduced. By means of gymnastics, however, we do not
educate the complete human being, but only part of him. By
saying this nothing is implied against gymnastics, only in
these days their importance is over-estimated. Therefore in
education today eurythmy should stand side by side with
gymnastics. I would not go as far as a famous physiologist did,
who once happened to be in the audience when I was speaking
about eurythmy. On that occasion I said that as a means of
education gymnastics are over-rated at the present time, and
that a form of gymnastics calling on the forces of soul and
spirit, such as is practised in eurythmy side by side with the
study of eurythmy as an art, must be introduced in addition to
gymnastics as usually understood. At the end of my lecture the
famous physiologist came up to me and said: Do you say that
gymnastics may have their justification as a means of
education because physiologists say so? I, as a physiologist,
must say that gymnastics as a means of education are nothing
less than barbarism! You would certainly be very astonished if
I were to tell you the name of this physiologist. At the
present time such things are already apparent to people who
have some right to speak; and we must be careful not to
advocate certain things in a fanatical way without a full
knowledge of what is involved. To stand up fanatically for
certain things is utterly out of place in connection with the
art of education, because here we are dealing with the manifold
aspects of life.
When we approach the other subjects which children have to be
taught and do so from the various points of view which have
here been considered, we come first to the years during which
the child can only take in the pictorial through his life of
feeling. History and geography, for instance, must be taught in
this way. History must be described pictorially; we must paint
and model with our words. This develops the child's mind. For
during the first two stages of the second main epoch of life
there is one thing above all to which the child has no
relationship and this is what may be termed the concept
of causation. Before the 7th year the child should most
certainly not go to school.
[i.e. to school as distinguished
from a kindergarten.]
If we take the time from 7 to
9⅓ years old we have the first subdivision
of the second main epoch; from 9⅓ to
11⅔ years old we have the second stage and
from 11⅔ until approximately the age
of 14 we have the third stage. During the first stage of this
second main epoch the child is so organised that he responds
immediately to what is pictorial. At this age therefore we must
speak as one does in fairy-tales, for everything must still be
undifferentiated from the child's own nature. The plants must
speak with one another, the minerals must speak with one
another; the plants must kiss one another, they must have
father and mother, and so on. At about 9⅓
years old the time has come which I have already characterised,
when the ego begins to differentiate itself from the outer
world. Then we can make a more realistic approach in our
teaching about plants and animals. Always, however, in the
first years of life history must be treated in fairy-tale,
mythical mood. In the second subdivision of this longer epoch,
that is to say, from 9⅓ until
11⅔ years old, we must speak pictorially.
And only when the child approaches the age of 12 can one
introduce him to the concept of causation, only then can one
lead over to abstract concepts, whereby cause and effect can be
allowed to enter in. Before this time the child is as
inaccessible to cause and effect as anyone colour blind is to
colours; and as an educator one often has absolutely no idea
how unnecessary it is to speak to the child about cause and
effect. It is only after the age of 12 that we can speak to him
about things which today are taken for granted when looked at
from a scientific point of view.
This makes it essential to wait until about the 12th year
before dealing with anything that has to do with the lifeless,
for this involves entering into the concept of causation. And
in the teaching of history we must also wait until about this
age before passing over from a pictorial presentation to one
which deals with cause and effect, where the causes underlying
historical events have to be sought. Before this we should only
concern ourselves with what can be brought to the child as
having life, soul-imbued life.
People are really very strange. For instance, in the course of
cultural development a concept has arisen which goes by the
name of animism. It is maintained that when a child knocks
himself against a table he imagines the table to be alive and
hits it. He dreams a soul into the table, and it is thought
that primitive people did the same. The idea is prevalent that
something very complicated takes place in the soul of the
child. He is supposed to think that the table is alive,
ensouled, and this is why he hits it when he bumps up against
it. This is a fantastic notion. On the contrary those who study
the history of culture are the ones who do actually
“ensoul” something, for they “ensoul”
this imaginative capacity into the child. But the soul
qualities of the child are far more deeply embedded in the
physical body than they are later, when they are emancipated
and can work freely. When the child bumps against a table a
reflex action is set up without his imagining that the table is
alive. It is purely a reflex movement of will, for the child
does not yet differentiate himself from the outer world. This
differentiation first makes its appearance at about the
12th year when a healthy child can grasp the concept of
causation. But when this concept is brought to the child too
early, especially if it is done by means of crude external
methods, really terrible conditions are set up in the
child's development. It is all very well to say that one should
take pains to make everything perfectly clear to a child.
Calculating machines already exist in which little balls are
pushed here and there in order to make the operations of
arithmetic externally obvious. The next thing we may expect is
that those of the same frame of mind will make moral concepts
externally visible by means of some kind of machine in which by
pushing something about one will be able to see good and evil
in the same way as with the calculating machines one can see
that 5 plus 7 equals 12. There are, however, undoubtedly
spheres of life in which things cannot be made externally
apparent and which are taken up and absorbed by the child in
ways that are not at all obvious; and we greatly err if we try
to make them so. Hence it is quite wrong to do as is often
attempted in educational books and make externally apparent
what by its very nature cannot be so treated. In this respect
people often fall into really frightful trivialities.
In
the years between the change of teeth and puberty we are not
only concerned with the demonstrably obvious, for when we take
the whole of human life into consideration the following
becomes clear. At the age of 8 I take in some concept, I do not
yet understand it fully; indeed I do not understand it at all
as far as its abstract content is concerned. I am not yet so
constituted as to make this possible. Why then do I take in the
concept at all? I do so because it is my teacher who is
speaking, because the authority of my teacher is
self-understood and this works upon me. But today we are not
supposed to do this; the child is to be shown what is visual
and obvious. Now let us take a child who is taught everything
in this way. In such a case what a child experiences does not
grow with his growth, for by these methods he is treated as a
being who does not grow. But we should not awaken in the child
ideas which cannot grow with him, for then we should be doing
the same thing as if we were to have a pair of shoes made for a
three-year-old child and expect him to wear them when he is 12.
Everything in the human being grows, including his power of
comprehension; and so the concepts must grow with him. We must
therefore see to it that we bring living concepts to the child,
but this we can only do if there is a living relationship to
the authority of the teacher. It is not achieved if the teacher
is an abstract pedant who stands in front of the child and
presents him with concepts which are as yet totally foreign to
him. Picture two children. One has been taught in such a way
that he takes in concepts and at the age of 45 he still gives
things the same explanation that he learned when he was 8 years
old. The concept has not grown with the child; he paid careful
attention to it all, and at 45 can still explain it in the same
way. Now let us take a second child who has been educated in a
living way. Here we shall find that just as he no longer wears
the same size shoes as he did when he was 8 years old, so at a
later age he no longer carries around with him the same
concepts that he learned when he was 8. On the contrary; these
concepts have expanded and have become something quite
different. All this reacts on the physical body. And if we look
at these two people in regard to their physical fitness we find
that the first man has sclerosis at the age of 45, while the
second has remained mobile and is not sclerotic. How great do
you think the differences are which come to light between human
beings? In a certain place in Europe there were once two
professors of philosophy. One was famous for his Greek
philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, an adherent of the
school of Hegel, where people were still accustomed to take in
living concepts, even after the age of 20. Both were lecturers
at the same university. At the age of 70 the first decided to
exercise his right to retire on a pension, he felt unable to
continue. The second, the Hegelian professor, was 91 and said:
“I cannot understand why that young fellow is settling
down to retirement already.” But the conceptual life of
this second professor had retained its mobility. People
criticised him for this very reason and accused him of being
inconsistent. The other man was consistent, but he suffered
from sclerosis!
There exists a complete unity in the child between the
spiritual and the bodily, and we can only deal rightly with him
when we take this into consideration. Today people who do not
share the views of materialists say that materialism is a bad
thing. Why? Many will say that it is bad because it understands
nothing of the spiritual. This, however, is not the worst, for
little by little people will become aware of this lack, and as
a result of the urge to get the better of it they will come to
the spiritual. The worst thing about materialism is that it
understands nothing of matter! Look into it yourselves and see
what has become of the knowledge of the living forces of man in
lung, liver and so on under the influences of
materialism. Nothing is known about how these things
work. A portion is removed from the lung, the liver and so
forth and this is prepared and examined, but by means of
present-day scientific methods nothing is learned of the spirit
working actively in the human organs. Such knowledge can only
be gained through spiritual science. The material reveals its
nature only when studied from the aspect of spiritual science.
Materialism has fallen sick, and the cause of this sickness is
above all because the materialist understands nothing of
matter. He wants to limit himself to what is material but he
cannot penetrate to any knowledge of what is material in a real
sense. In saying this I do not mean the
“thought-out” material, where so and so many atoms
are supposed to dance around a central nucleus: for things of
this kind are not difficult to construct. In the earlier days
of the Theosophical Society there were theosophists who
constructed a whole system based on atoms and molecules; but it
was all just thought out. What we have to do now is to approach
reality once again. And if one actually does this one has a
feeling of discomfort when one is supposed to grasp some
concept which is entirely devoid of reality. One experiences
pain when, for instance, someone propounds a theory such as
this: Fundamentally it is one and the same thing whether I
drive my car to a town, or whether the car stands still and the
town comes to me. Certainly things of this kind are justified
when looked at from a certain point of view. But drawn out to
the extent that occurs today among those who hold completely
abstract opinions, they impoverish the entire life of the human
soul. And anyone who has a sense for such things experiences
great pain in regard to much of what people think today, which
works so destructively on teaching methods. For instance, I see
the tendencies of certain methods applied already to little
children in the kindergarten, who are given ordinary cut-out
letters and then learn to pick them out of a heap and put them
together to form words. By occupying the child in this way at
such an early age we are bringing him something to which as yet
he has absolutely no relationship. When this happens to him the
effect is the same as if in real thinking one were to say: I
was once a man who still had muscles, skin and so on; now I am
merely a skeleton. So it is today under the influence of this
propensity for abstractions in the spiritual life of mankind:
one sees oneself suddenly as a skeleton. With such an outlook,
however, which is the bare skeleton of reality, we cannot
approach the child in education.
Because of this I wanted to show today how everything depends
on the teacher approaching life in a true and living way.
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