LECTURE VII
Arnheim, 23rd July, 1924.
From the lectures which have been given here, dealing with an
art of education built upon the foundation of a knowledge of
man, you formed a clear idea of what should be the relation
between teacher and taught. What lives in the soul, in the
whole personality of the teacher, works in hundreds of unseen
ways from the educator over to the children his pupils. But it
only works if the educator bears within his soul a true and
penetrating knowledge of man, a knowledge which is
approaching the transition leading over into spiritual
experience. And today I must precede my lecture with a few
remarks which may serve to clarify what is to be understood in
the anthroposophical sense by spiritual experience, for
just in regard to this the most erroneous ideas abound.
It
is so easy to think that in the first place spiritual
perception must rise above everything of a material
nature. Certainly one can attain to a deeply satisfying soul
experience, even though this may be coloured by egotistical
feeling, when, rising above the material, one ascends into the
spiritual world. We must do this also. For we can only learn to
know the spiritual when we acquire this knowledge in the realm
of the spirit; and anthroposophy must deal in many ways with
spiritual realms and spiritual beings which have nothing to do
with the physical world of the senses. And when it is a
question of learning to know what is so necessary for modern
man, to know about the life between death and a new birth, the
actual super-sensible life of man before birth or conception and
the life after death, then we must certainly rise up to
body-free, super-sensible, super-physical perception. But we
must of course act and work within the physical world; we must
stand firmly in this world. If we are teachers, for instance,
we are not called upon to teach disembodied souls. We cannot
ask ourselves, if we wish to be teachers; What is our
relationship to souls who have passed through death and are
living in the spiritual world? — But if we wish to work
as teachers between birth and death, we must ask ourselves: In
what way does a soul dwell within the physical body? And indeed
we must consider this, at any rate for the years after birth.
It is actually a question of being able to gaze with the spirit
into the material. And Anthroposophy, Spiritual Science, is in
this respect largely a matter of looking into the material with
the spirit.
But
the opposite procedure is also right: one must penetrate with
spiritual vision into the spiritual world, penetrate so far
that the spiritual seems to be every bit as full of
“living sap” as anything in the sense world; one
must be able to speak about the spiritual as if it radiated
colours, as if its tones were audible, as if it were standing
before one as much “embodied” as the beings of the
sense world. In anthroposophy it is first this which causes
abstract philosophers such intense annoyance. They find it
exceedingly annoying that the spiritual investigator describes
the spiritual world and spiritual beings in such a way that it
seems as if he might meet these beings at any moment, just as
he might meet human beings; that he might hold out his hand to
them and speak with them. He describes these spiritual beings
just as though they were earthly beings; indeed his description
makes them appear almost as if they were earthly beings. In
other words, he portrays the spiritual in pictures
comprehensible to the senses. He does this in full
consciousness, because for him the spiritual is an absolute
reality. There is some truth in it, too, because a real
knowledge of the whole world leads to the point at which one
can “give one's hand” to spiritual beings, one can
meet them and converse with them. That strikes the
philosopher, who is only willing to conceive the
spiritual world by means of abstract concepts, as being
paradoxical, to say the least of it; nevertheless such a
description is necessary. On the other hand it is also
necessary to look right through a human being, so that the
material part of him vanishes completely, and he stands there
purely as a spirit. When however a non-anthroposophist wishes
to look upon a man as spirit, then this man is not only a
ghost, but something much less than a ghost. He is a sort of
coat-hanger on which are hung all kinds of concepts which serve
to activate mental pictures and so on. In comparison a ghost is
quite respectably solid, but a human being as described by such
a philosopher is really indecently naked in regard to the
spirit. In anthroposophy physical man is contemplated by means
of purely spiritual perception, but nevertheless he still has
brains, liver, lungs and so on; he is a concrete human being;
he has everything that is found in him when the corpse is
dissected. Everything that is spiritual in its nature works
right down into the physical. The physical is observed
spiritually, but nevertheless man possesses a physical body. He
can even “blow his nose” in a spiritual sense;
spiritual reality goes as far as this. Only by becoming aware
that in contemplating the physical it can become completely
spiritual, and in contemplating the spiritual it can be brought
down again so that it becomes almost physical, only by this
awareness can the two be brought together. The physical human
being can be contemplated in a condition of health and illness;
but the ponderable material vanishes, it becomes spiritual. And
the spiritual can be contemplated as it is between death and a
new birth and, pictorially speaking, it becomes physical. Thus
the two are brought together.
Man
learns to penetrate into the real human being through the fact
that there are these two possibilities, the possibility of
beholding the spiritual by means of sense-perceptible pictures
and the possibility of beholding spiritual entities in the
world of the senses. If therefore the question arises: How may
spiritual vision be understood in its real and true sense?
— the answer must be: One must learn to see all that
appertains to the senses in a spiritual way, and one must look
at the spiritual in a way that is akin to the senses. This
seems paradoxical, but it is so. And only after entering into
what I have just said and realising its truth, can one reach
the point of looking at the child in the right way.
I
will give you an example. A child in my class becomes paler and
paler. I see this increasing pallor. It shows itself in the
physical life of the child, but we gain nothing by going to the
doctor and getting him to prescribe something that will bring
back the child's colour; for, should we do so, the following
may well be the result: The child grows pale and this is
observed, so the school doctor comes and prescribes something
which is intended to restore the lost colour. Now even if the
doctor has acted perfectly correctly and has prescribed a quite
good remedy, which he must do in such cases, nevertheless
something rather strange will be observed in the child who is
now “cured.” Indeed in a sense he is cured, and
anyone in a position of seniority to the doctor, who might be
called upon to write a testimonial for the authorities, could
well say that the doctor had cured the child — later,
however, it is noticeable at school that the child who has been
cured in this way is no longer able to take things in properly;
he has become fidgety and restless and has lost all power of
attention. Whereas previously he used to sit in his place, pale
and somewhat indolent, he now begins to pommel his neighbour;
and whereas previously he had clipped his pen gently into the
inkwell, he now sticks it in with so much force that the ink
spurts up and bespatters his exercise book. The doctor did his
duty but the result was the reverse of beneficial, for it
sometimes happens that people who have been “cured”
suffer later on from extraordinary after-effects.
Again, in such a case it is important to recognise what
actually lies at the root of the trouble. If the teacher is
able to penetrate into the soul-spiritual cause of what finds
its outer physical expression in a growing pallor, he will
become aware of the following. The power of memory which works
in the soul-spiritual is nothing else than the transformed,
metamorphosed force of growth; and to develop the forces
of growth and nourishment is just the same, albeit on a
different level, as it is, on a higher level, to cultivate the
memory, the power of recollection. It is the same force, but in
a different stage of metamorphosis. Pictured systematically we
can say: During the first years of a child's life both these
forces are merged into one another, they have not yet
separated; later on memory separates from this state of
fusion and becomes a power in itself, and the same holds good
for the power of growth and nourishment. The small child still
needs the forces which later develop memory in order that
he may digest milk and the stomach be able to carry out its
functions; this is why he cannot remember anything.
Later, when the power of memory is no longer the servant of the
stomach, when the stomach makes fewer demands on it and only
retains a minimum of these forces, then part of the forces of
growth are transformed into a quality of soul, into memory, the
power of recollection. Possibly the other children in the class
are more robust, the division between the power of memory and
of growth may be better balanced, and so, perhaps, the teacher
pays less heed to a child who in this respect has little to
fall back on. If this is the case it may easily happen that his
power of memory is overburdened, too much being demanded of
this emancipated faculty. The child grows pale and the teacher
must needs say to himself: “I have put too much strain on
your memory; that is why you have grown so pale.” It is
very noticeable that when such a child is relieved of this
burden he gets his colour back again. But the teacher must
understand that the growing pale is connected with what he has
done himself in the first place, by overburdening the child
with what has to be remembered. It is very important to be able
to look right into physical symptoms and to realise that if a
child grows too pale it is because his memory has been
overburdened.
But
I may have another child in the class who from time to time
becomes strikingly red in the face and this also may be a cause
for concern. If this occurs, if a hectic red flush makes its
appearance, it is very easy to recognise certain accompanying
conditions in the child's soul-life; for in the strangest way,
at times when one would least expect it, such children fall
into a passion of anger, they become over-emotional. Naturally
there can be the same procedure as before: A rush of blood to
the head — something must be prescribed for it. Of
course, in such cases too, the doctor does his duty. But it is
important to know something else, namely, that this child, in
contrast to the other, has been neglected in respect of his
faculty of memory. Too many of these forces have gone down into
the forces of his growth and nourishment. In this case one must
try to make greater demands on the child's power of memory. If
this is done such symptoms will disappear.
Only when we take into our ken the physical and the spiritual
as united do we learn to recognise many things in the school
which are in need of readjustment. We train ourselves to
recognise this interconnection of physical and spiritual when
we look at what lies between them as part of the whole human
organisation, namely, the temperaments. The children come to
school and they have the four temperaments, varied of course
with all kinds of transitions and mixtures: the melancholic,
the phlegmatic, the sanguine and the choleric. In our Waldorf
education great value is laid on being able to enter into and
understand the child according to his temperament. The actual
seating of the children in the classroom is arranged on this
basis. We try for instance to discover which are the choleric
children; these we place together, so that it is possible for
the teacher to know: There in that corner I have the children
who tend to be choleric. In another, the phlegmatic children
are seated, somewhere in the middle are the sanguines and again
somewhere else, grouped together are the melancholies. This
method of grouping has great advantages. Experience shows that
after a while the phlegmatics become so bored with sitting
together that, as a means of getting rid of this boredom, they
begin to rub it off on one another. On the other hand the
cholerics pommel one another so much that quite soon this too
becomes very much better. It is the same with the fidgety ways
of the sanguines, and the melancholies also see what it is like
when others are absorbed in melancholy. Thus to handle the
children in such a way that one sees how “like reacts
favourably on like” is very good even from an external
point of view, quite apart from the fact that by doing so the
teacher has the possibility of surveying the whole class,
for this is much easier when children of similar temperament
are seated together.
Now
however we come to the essential point. The teacher must enter
so deeply into the nature of the human being that he is able to
deal in a truly practical way with the choleric, the sanguine,
the melancholic temperament. There will naturally be cases
where it is necessary to build the bridge of which I have
already spoken, the bridge between school and home, and this
must be done in a friendly and tactful way. Let us suppose that
I have a melancholic child in the class, with whom I can do
scarcely anything. I am unable to enter into his difficulties
in the right way. He broods and is withdrawn, is occupied with
himself and pays no heed to what is going on in the class. If
one applies an education that is not founded on a knowledge of
man one may think that everything possible should be done to
attract his attention and draw him out of himself. As a rule
however such a procedure will make things still worse; the
child broods more than ever. All these means of effecting a
cure, thought out in such an amateurish way, help but little.
What helps most in such a case is the spontaneous love which
the teacher feels for the child, for then he is aware of
sympathy, and this stirs and moves what is more subconscious in
him. We may be sure that anything in the way of exhortation is
not only wasted effort, but is actually harmful, for the child
becomes more melancholic than before. But in class it helps
greatly if one tries to enter into the melancholy, tries to
discover the direction to which it tends, and then shows
interest in the child's attitude of mind, becoming in a certain
way, by what one does oneself, melancholic with the melancholic
child. As a teacher one must bear within oneself all four
temperaments in harmonious, balanced activity. And this
balance, which is in direct contradiction to the child's
melancholy, if it is continued and is always present in one's
relationship to the child, is perceived by him. He sees what
kind of man his teacher is by what underlies his words. And in
this way, creeping in behind the mask of melancholy, which the
teacher accepts, there is implanted in the child his teacher's
loving sympathy. This can be of great help in the class.
But
now we will go further, for we must know that every
manifestation of melancholy in a human being is connected with
some irregularity in the function of the liver. This may seem
unlikely to the physicist, but it is nevertheless a fact that
every kind of melancholy, especially if it goes so far in a
child as to become pathological, is due to some irregularity of
this kind. In such a case I shall turn to the parents of the
child and say: “It would be good to put more sugar in his
food than you usually do.” He needs sweet things, for
sugar helps to normalise the function of the liver. And by
giving the mother this advice: “Give the child more
sugar” — I shall get school and home working
together, in order to lift this melancholy out of the
pathological condition into which it has sunk and so create the
possibility of finding the right constitutional treatment.
Or
I may have a sanguine child, a child who goes from one
impression to another; who always wants what comes next, almost
before he has got hold of what precedes it; who makes a strong
start, showing great interest in everything, but whose interest
soon fades out. He is not dark as a rule, but fair. I am now
faced with the problem of how to deal with him at school. In
everything I do I shall try to be more sanguine than the child.
I shall change the impressions I make on him extremely quickly,
so that he is not left hurrying from one impression to another
at his own sweet will, but must come with me at my pace. This
is quite another story. He soon has enough of it and finally
gives up. But between what I myself do in bringing impressions
to the child in this very sanguine way, and what he does
himself in hurrying from one thing to another in
accordance with his temperament, there is gradually
established in him, as a kind of natural reaction, a more
harmonious condition. So I can treat the child in this
way. I can present him with rapidly changing impressions,
always thinking out something new, so that he sees, as it
were, first black, then white, and must continually hurry from
one thing to another. I now get in touch with the mother and I
will certainly hear from her that the child has an inordinate
love of sugar. Perhaps he is given a great many sweets or
somehow manages to get hold of them, or maybe the family as
such is very fond of sweet dishes.
If
this is not so, then his mother's milk was too sweet, it
contained too much sugar. So I explain this to the mother and
advise her to put the child on a diet for a time and reduce the
amount of sugar she gives him. In this way, by arranging with
the parents for a diet with little sugar, co-operation is
brought about between home and school. The reduction of sugar
will gradually help to overcome the abnormality which, in the
case of this child also, is caused by irregularity in the
activity of the liver in respect of the secretion of gall.
There is a very slight, barely noticeable irregularity in the
secretion of gall. Here too I shall recognise the help given me
by the parents.
So
we must know as a matter of actual fact where, so to speak, the
physical stands within the spiritual, where it is one with the
Spiritual.
It
is possible to go into more detail and say: A child shows a
rapid power of comprehension, he understands everything very
easily; but when after a few days I come back to what he
grasped so quickly and about which I was so pleased, it has
vanished; it is no longer there. Here again I can do a good
deal at school to improve matters. I shall try to put forward
and explain something which demands a more concentrated
attention than the child is accustomed to give. He
understands things too quickly, it is not necessary for him to
make enough inner effort, so that what he learns may really
impress itself on him. I shall therefore give him hard nuts to
crack, I shall give him something which is more difficult to
grasp and demands more attention. This I can do at school. But
now once more I get in touch with the child's parents and from
them I may hear various things. What I am now saying will not
hold good in every case, but I want to give some indication of
the path to be pursued. I shall have a tactful discussion with
the mother, avoiding any suspicion of riding the high horse by
talking down to her and giving her instructions. From our
conversation I shall find out how she caters for the family and
I shall most likely discover that this particular child eats
too many potatoes. The situation is a little difficult because
now the mother may say, “Well, you tell me that my child
eats too many potatoes; but my neighbour's little daughter eats
more still and she has not the same failing, so the trouble
cannot be caused by potato-eating.” Something of this
kind is what the mother may say. And nevertheless it does come
from eating potatoes, because the organisation of children
differs, one child being able to assimilate more potato and
another less. And the curious thing is this. The condition of a
particular child shows that he has been getting too many
potatoes; it is shown by the fact that his memory does not
function as it should. Now in this case the remedy is not to be
found by giving him fewer potatoes. It may even happen that
this is done and there is some improvement; but after a time
things are no better than before. Here the immediate reduction
of the amount of potato does not bring about the required
effect, but it is a question of gradually breaking a habit, of
exercising the activity needed in order to break a habit. So
one must say to the mother, “For the first week give the
child a tiny bit less potato; for the second week a very little
less still; and continue in this way, so that the child is
actively engaged in accustoming himself to eating only a small
amount of potato.” In this case it is a question of
breaking a habit, and here one will see what a healing effect
can be induced just by this means.
Now
idealists, so-called, very likely reproach anthroposophy and
maintain that it is materialistic. They actually do so. When
for example an anthroposophist says that a child who
comprehends easily but does not retain what he has
learnt, should have his potato ration gradually decreased, then
people say: You are an absolute materialist. Nevertheless there
exists such an intimate interplay between matter and spirit
that one can only work effectively when one can penetrate
matter with spiritual perception and master it through
spiritual knowledge. It is hardly necessary to say how greatly
these things are sinned against in our present-day social life.
But if a teacher is open to a world conception which reveals
wide vistas he will arrive at an understanding of these things.
He must only extend his outlook. For instance it will impress a
teacher favourably and help him to gain an understanding of
children if he learns how little sugar is consumed in Russia
and how much in England. And if he proceeds to compare the
Russian with the English temperament he will readily understand
what an effect sugar has on temperament. It is advantageous to
learn to know the world, so that this knowledge can come to our
assistance in the tasks of every day. But now I will add
something else. In Baden, in Germany, there is a remarkable
monument erected as a memorial to Drake. I once wanted to know
what was specially significant about this Drake, so I looked it
up in an encyclopaedia and read: In Offenburg a monument
was erected in memory of Drake because he was thought, albeit
erroneously, to be the man who introduced the potato into
Europe. There it stands in black and white. So a memorial was
erected in honour of this man because he was considered to be
the one who introduced the potato into Europe. He didn't do so,
but nevertheless he has got a memorial in Offenburg.
The
potato was, however, introduced into Europe in
comparatively recent times. And now I am going to tell
you something about which you can laugh as much as you like.
Nevertheless it is the truth. It is possible to study how the
faculties of intelligence in human beings are related in their
development from the time when there were no potatoes to the
time when they were introduced. And, as you know, the potato is
made use of in alcohol-distilleries. So potatoes suddenly began
to play an important part in the development of European
humanity. If you compare the increasing use of the potato with
the curve of the development of intelligence, you will find
that in comparison with the present day people living in
the pre-potato age grasped things with less detail, but what
they grasped they held fast. Their nature tended to be
conservative, it was deeply inward. After the introduction of
the potato people became quicker in regard to intelligent
mobility of comprehension, but what they took in was not
retained, it did not sink in deeply. The history of the
development of the intelligence runs parallel with that of
potato-eating. So here again we have an example of how
anthroposophy explains this materialistically. But so it is.
And much might be learned about cultural history if people
everywhere could only know how in man's subconsciousness the
external physical seizes hold of the spiritual. This becomes
apparent in the nature of his desires.
Let
us now choose as an example someone who has to write a great
deal. Every day he has to write articles for the newspapers, so
that he is obliged “to chew his pen” in order to
produce what is necessary. If one has been through this oneself
one can talk about it, but one has no right just to criticise
others unless one speaks out of personal experience. While
cogitating and biting one's pen one feels the need of coffee,
for drinking coffee helps cohesion of thought. Thoughts become
more logical when one drinks coffee than if one refrains from
doing so. A journalist must needs enjoy coffee, for if he does
not drink it his work takes more out of him. Now, as a
contrast, let us take a diplomat. Call to mind what a diplomat
had to acquire before the world war. He had to learn to use his
legs in a special, approved manner; in the social circles in
which he moved he had to learn to glide rather than set his
foot down firmly as plainer folk do. He had also to be able to
have thoughts which are somewhat fleeting and fluid. If a
diplomat has a logical mind he will quite certainly fail in his
profession and be unsuccessful in his efforts to help the
nations solve their dilemmas. When diplomats are together
— well, then one does not say they are having their
coffee but they are having tea — for at such times there
is the need to drink one cup of tea after another, so that the
interchange of thought does not proceed in logical sequence,
but springs as far as possible from one idea to the next. This
is why diplomats love to drink tea; tea releases one thought
from the next, it makes thinking fluid and fleeting, it
destroys logic. So we may say: Writers are lovers of coffee,
diplomats lovers of tea, in both cases out of a perfectly right
instinct.
If
we know this, we shall not look upon it as an infringement of
human freedom. For obviously logic is not a product of coffee,
it is only an unconscious, subconscious help towards it. The
soul therefore remains free.
It
is just when we are bearing the child especially in mind that
it is necessary to look into relationships such as these, about
which we get some idea when we can say: Tea is the drink for
diplomats, coffee the drink for writers, and so on. Then we are
also able gradually to gain an insight into the effects
produced by the potato. The potato makes great demands on the
digestion; moreover very small, almost homeopathic doses
come from the digestive organs and rise up into the brain. This
homeopathic dose is nevertheless very potent, it stimulates the
forces of abstract intelligence. At this point I may perhaps be
allowed to divulge something further. If we examine the
substance of the potato through the microscope we obtain
the well-known form of carbohydrates, and if we observe the
astral body of someone who has eaten a large portion of
potatoes we notice that in the region of the brain, about 3
centimetres behind the forehead, the potato substance begins to
be active here also and to form the same eccentric circles. The
movements of the astral body take on a similarity with
the substance of the potato and the potato-eater becomes
exceptionally intelligent. He bubbles over with
intelligence, but this does not last, it is quite transient.
Must one then not admit, provided one concedes that man
possesses spirit and soul, that it is not altogether foolish
and fantastic to speak of the spirit and to speak of it in
images taken from the world of sense? Those who want always to
speak of the spirit in abstract terms present us with nothing
of a truly spiritual nature. It is otherwise with those who are
able to bring the spirit down to earth in sense-perceptible
pictures. Such a man can say that in the case of someone
bubbling over with intelligence potato-substance takes on form
in the brain, but does so in the spiritual sense. In this way
we learn to recognise subtle and delicate
differentiations and transitions. We discover that tea as
regards its effects on logic makes a cleavage between thoughts,
but it does not stimulate thinking. In saying that diplomats
have a predilection for tea one does not imply that they can
produce thoughts. On the other hand potatoes do stimulate
thoughts. Swift as lightning they shoot thoughts upwards, only
to let them vanish away again. But, accompanying this swift
up-surging of thoughts, which can also take place in
children, there goes a parallel process, an undermining of the
digestive system. We shall be able to see in children whose
digestive system is upset in this way, so that they complain of
constipation, that all kinds of useless yet clever thoughts
shoot up into their heads, thoughts which they certainly lose
again but which nevertheless have been there.
I
mention these things in detail so that you may see how the
soul-spiritual and the physical must be looked upon as a whole,
as a unity, and how in the course of human development a state
of things must again be brought about which is able to hold
together the most varied streams of culture. At the present
time we are living in an epoch in which they are completely
sundered from one another. This becomes clear to us however
when we are able to look somewhat more deeply into the history
of the evolution of mankind.
Today we separate religion, art and science from one another.
And the guardians of religion, do all in their power to
preserve religion from being encroached upon in any way by
science. They maintain that religion is a matter of faith, and
science belongs elsewhere. Science has its base where nothing
is based on faith, where everything is founded on knowledge.
But if one is to succeed in separating them in this way, the
spiritual is cut off from science and the world is cut off from
religion, with the result that religion becomes abstract and
science devoid of spirit. Art is completely emancipated. In our
time there are people, who, when one would like to tell them
something about the super-sensible, assume an air of clever
superiority and regard one as superstitious: “Poor
fellow! We know all that is sheer nonsense!” — But
then a Björnson or someone else writes something or other
in which such things play a part; something of the kind is
introduced into art and thereupon everybody runs after it and
enjoys in art what was rejected in the form of knowledge.
Superstition sometimes appears in strange guise. I once had an
acquaintance — such actual examples should most certainly
be brought into the art of education, an art which can only be
learned from life — I once had an acquaintance who was a
dramatist. On one occasion I met him in the street; he was
running extraordinarily quickly, perspiring as he went. It was
3 minutes to 8 o'clock in the evening. I asked him where he was
going at such a pace. He was, however, in a great hurry and
only said that he must rush to catch the post, for the post
office closed at 8 o'clock. I did not detain him, but
psychologically I was interested to know the reason for his
haste so I waited until he returned. He came back after a while
in a great heat, and then he was more communicative. I wanted
to know why he was in such a hurry to catch the post, and he
said, “Oh, I have just sent off my play.”
Previously he had always said that this play was not yet
finished, and he said the same again now; “It is true
that it is still unfinished, but I wanted particularly to get
it off today, so that the director may receive it tomorrow. I
have just written him a letter to this effect asking him to let
me have it back. For you see, if a play is sent off before the
end of the month it may be chosen for a performance; there is
no chance otherwise!” — Now this dramatist was an
extremely enlightened, intelligent man. Nevertheless he
believed that if a play was despatched on a definite day it
would be accepted, even if, owing to being unfinished, it had
to be returned. From this incident you can see how things which
people are apt to despise creep into some hole and corner, out
of which they raise their heads at the very next
opportunity.
This is especially the case with a child. We believe we have
managed to rid him of something, but straightaway there it is
again somewhere else. We must learn to look out for this. We
must open our hearts when making a study of man, so that a true
art of education may be based on an understanding and knowledge
of the human being. Only by going into details shall we be able
to fathom all these things.
Today then, as I was saying, religion, art and science are
spoken about as though they were entirely unrelated. This was
not so in long past ages of human evolution. Then they were a
complete unity. At that time there existed Mystery Centres
which were also centres for education and culture, centres
dedicated at one and the same time to the cultivation of
religion, art and science. For then what was imparted as
knowledge consisted of pictures, representations and mental
images of the spiritual world. These were received in such an
intuitive and comprehensive way that they were transformed into
external sense-perceptible symbols and thereby became the basis
of cultic ceremonial. Science was embodied in such cults, as
was art also; for what was taken from the sphere of knowledge
and given external form must perforce be beautiful. Thus in
those times a divine truth, a moral goodness and a
sense-perceptible beauty existed in the Mystery Centres, as a
unity comprised of religion, art and science. It was only later
that this unity split up and became science, religion and art,
each existing by and for itself. In our time this separation
has reached its culminating point. Things which are essentially
united have in the course of cultural development become
divided. The nature of man is however such, that for him it is
a necessity to experience the three in their
“oneness” and not regard them as separate. He can
only experience in unity religious science, scientific religion
and artistic ideality, otherwise he is inwardly torn
asunder. For this reason wherever this division, this
differentiation, has reached its highest pitch it has become
imperative to find once more the connection between these three
spheres. And we shall see how in our teaching we can bring art,
religion and science to the child in a unified form. We shall
see how the child responds in a living way to this bringing
together of religion, art and science, for it is in harmony
with his own inner nature. I have therefore had again and again
to point out in no uncertain terms that we must strive to
educate the child out of a knowledge that he is in truth a
being with aesthetic potentialities; and we should neglect no
opportunity of demonstrating how in the very first years of
life the child experiences religion naturally and
instinctively.
All
these things, the harmonious coming together of religion, art
and science must be grasped in the right way and their value
recognised in those teaching methods about which we have still
to speak.
|