III
A
Comprehensive Knowledge of Man as the Source of Imagination in
the Teacher
What I wish to offer you in these lectures is intended
essentially as an impulse toward the inner enrichment of the
teacher's profession. In continuation of what I said this
afternoon, I would like to add the following. You see, we must
bring our knowledge of the human being to the point where we
really can know in detail what is going on in the human being
in his ordinary activity in the world. I have shown you
that the first form of activity we perceive in the human being
is the one in which he moves his limbs. Now we must pose the
question: what actually moves his limbs? What force is at work
when a man walks or does something with his arms? What is it?
Now, the materialistic view will simply be that it is man
himself, and, thinking about man in this way, that it is a
piece of the cosmos consisting of blood, bones, and so
on, described as man, that moves the limbs! This is the true
initiator of action! Fundamentally, there is no sense in
putting it like that, since man himself is the object in
movement, is that which is moved. If we ask who is the actual
subject, who is moving the arm or the leg, then we arrive
at something spiritual, certainly not material. We are forced
to say to ourselves that it is the spiritual itself that must
bring physical forces, forces that usually we designate as
physical, into action. Our leg must be moved by something
spiritual just as, for example, we say that a piece of wood is
moved by us from one place to another.
Here, however, we come to something remarkable that generally
receives little attention, because a great illusion prevails
regarding it. Our human movement is really a magical effect,
because in it something is set in motion by the spirit. Our
movement as a human being is in truth a magical effect, and our
view of man is entirely incorrect if we do not associate
the magical element with the movements he makes. The will
— that is to say, something purely spiritual — must
intervene in physical activity; these are in truth magical
effects. When you walk, an inner magician, something
essential, is working within you. How does this happen?
The fact that we are physical human beings, made up of bones,
blood, and so forth, does not make us into moving human beings;
at best it is able to make us inert beings, beings who
lie permanently in bed. If we are to be able to move, the will
must be directly active. Materialistic science simplifies
things by theorizing about the motor nerves and the like. That
is nonsense. In actual fact we have in human movement a magical
effect, a direct intervention of the spirit into the bodily
movements. How is this possible? This will become clear in the
following.
I
pointed out to you this afternoon that as the life process in
man passes from the rhythmic system to the metabolic-limb
system, what comes out of carbon has an affinity for what comes
out of nitrogen, and there arises a continual tendency in the
human being to create combinations of carbon and nitrogen. This
tendency exists, and we shall never become clear about
the digestive process itself, and especially the excretory
process, if this tendency toward the combination of carbon and
nitrogen is not kept in mind. This tendency finally leads
to the formation of cyanic acid. As a matter of fact, there
exists from above downward in the human being a continual
tendency to produce cyanic acid, or at any rate,
cyanides. There is really no commonly accepted expression for
what happens here.
What happens only goes so far as just to reach the point of
coming into being, and then it is immediately arrested by the
secretions, particularly of the gall bladder. Thus,
downward in the human being, there is this continual tendency
to create cyanide combinations that are arrested in their
status nascendi by gall secretions. To create
cyanide combinations in man, however, means to destroy him; the
speediest method of destroying the human form
[Gestalt] is to permeate it with
cyanide. This tendency exists particularly in the
direction of the metabolic-limb system; the human
organism continually wants to create cyanide
combinations, which are in turn immediately broken up. At this
moment between the coming into being and the
immediate dissolution of the cyanide compounds, the will
lays hold of the muscular system. In the paralyzing of this
process lies the possibility for the will to take hold so that
man can move. From above downward there is always a tendency in
the human being to destroy organic substance through a
kind of poisoning. This is continually on the point of
beginning, and we would not be able to move, we could never
achieve any freeing of the will, if this continual
tendency to destroy ourselves were not present. Thus, to
express it in a grotesque way, from above downward we have this
continual tendency to make ourselves into ghosts and thereby to
move by magical means. We must not limit our gaze to the
physical body with the movements of man but must turn to his
will, to the calling forth of spatial movements by purely
magical means.
You
see, therefore, every time the human being brings himself into
movement, he is faced with the responsibility of intervening in
the processes that are the actual processes of illness and
death. On the other hand, we have the task of knowing that this
process of illness is opposed by the health-bringing process,
of which I spoke this afternoon. For everything that
occurs in the processes in lower man there is a
corresponding process above. Carbon has the tendency to
form nitrogen compounds downward but upward it has the tendency
to form oxygen compounds. Early alchemists called carbon
“The Stone of the Wise,” which is nothing other
than carbon fully understood. Upward it has the tendency to
form oxygen compounds, acids or oxides. These stimulate
the thoughts, and whenever we vitally occupy a child we
stimulate the formation of carbon compounds and therewith the
activity of thinking. Whenever we guide a child into some form
of action while he is thinking, we call forth a state of
balance between the formation of carbonic and cyanic acids. In
human life everything actually depends upon symmetry being
produced between these two things.
If
a human being is occupied only with intellectual work, the
process of the formation of carbonic acid is too strongly
stimulated in him; the upper organism is saturated with
carbonic acid. Now a proper, intelligently conducted
musical education counteracts this excessive formation of the
carbonic acid and enables the human being to bring again some
activity, inner activity at least, into the carbonic acid
process. By arranging a schedule so that the teaching of
music, for example, is interspersed among the other subjects,
we actually penetrate directly into the processes of illness
and health in the human organism. I am not telling you these
things today simply for the sake of the subject matter,
although I believe they are among the most interesting
things that could be found in physiology, for it is only in
this way that we can see clearly into the living activity
of the substances and forces within the being of man.
Processes of illness and health are continually taking
place in the human organism, and everything a person does
or is guided to do has its effect upon these processes. From
this knowledge must be created a feeling of responsibility and
a true consciousness of one's purpose as teacher. We must
realize, in all humility, the importance of our profession,
that we help to orient what are in the most eminent sense
cosmic processes. In fact, as teachers we are coworkers
in the actual guidance of the world. It is the particular value
of these things for our whole life of feeling
[Gemüt] and for consciousness that I wish to
stress today.
By
fully penetrating this, every one of our actions will take on
extraordinary importance. Think how often I have said that a
person will completely misapprehend the whole of human
evolution if he persists in trivial pictorial instructions
[Anschauungsunterricht] and never
attempts to introduce to a child more than he can already
understand; he fails to realize that a great deal of what is
taught a child in his eighth or ninth year will be accepted
only if the child feels himself in the presence of a beloved
teacher, confronted by an obvious authority. The teacher
should represent to the child the whole world of truth, beauty,
and goodness. What the teacher takes to be beautiful or true or
good should be so for the pupil. This obvious authority,
during the period between the change of teeth and puberty, must
be the basis of all the teaching. A child does not always
understand the things that he accepts under the influence of
this authority but accepts them because he loves the teacher.
What he has accepted will then emerge in later life, say in his
thirty-fifth year, and signify an essential enlivening of the
whole inner being of man. Anyone who says that one should
merely teach children trivial mental conceptions has no real
insight into human nature, nor does he know what a vital force
it is when in his thirty-fifth year a person can call up
something he once accepted simply through love for his teacher.
Now you can see the inner significance of what I have been
saying. The process in man that is the equilibrium
between the carbon and the cyanide processes is essentially
supported, made essentially more vital by the fact that
something of this condition remains deeply embedded in
human nature in the same way that something that we may have
accepted in love in our eighth or ninth year remains hidden and
is understood only decades later. What occurs between
receptivity and understanding, what lies directly in the soul
in the process of balance between the lower and upper man,
together with the corresponding action of carbon, has enormous
influence.
Of
course, you cannot apply these things in detail in your methods
of teaching, but you can go into the classroom supported by
this knowledge of man and apply one aspect or another in
various realms of your teaching; if one has acquired this
knowledge, a definite result will follow. One can distinguish
between those who have knowledge that is inwardly mobile or
inwardly immobile. One who simply knows how
diamonds, graphite, and coal appear in nature outside the
human being, and goes no further than that, will not teach in a
very lively way. If one knows, however, that the carbon in
coal, in graphite, and so on, also lives within man as a
substance metamorphosed; that on the one side it acts only in
death-bringing compounds and on the other only in compounds of
resurrection; if one speaks not only of the metamorphoses of
carbon, which in the various stages of the earth's evolution
produced diamond, coal, and graphite; if one realizes that
there are different kinds of metamorphosis of carbon in
man, which can become inwardly alive, can be spiritualized, can
mediate between death and life; if one understands this, one
has in this understanding an immediate source of inspiration.
If you can understand this, you will find the right method of
teaching in school; it is essential for the right method to
occur to you; you should not stand in the classroom with such a
sour look that anyone can tell from your expression that you
stand before the children in a morose, surly mood. Such a mood
is impossible if you possess an inwardly mobile, creative
knowledge. Then, in all humility, you will realize the
importance of the work, and this will reveal itself even in
your facial expression while teaching. Your expression is then
naturally illuminated by the etheric and astral and
unites with that which is outer form to create a whole.
The
face of a teacher has three main nuances of expression,
with any number of intermediate stages. There is the face with
which he meets ordinary people, when he forgets that he is a
teacher and simply engages in natural conversation; there is
the face he has when he has finished his lesson and leaves the
classroom; and there is the face he has in the classroom. We
may often be ashamed of human nature when we see the
difference in the face of a teacher when he is going into
his classroom and when he leaves it. These things are
connected with the whole consciousness of the teacher.
Perhaps it may comfort you a little if I say that every face
becomes twice as beautiful under the influence of an active,
vital knowledge than it is otherwise, but the knowledge must do
its work, the knowledge must live, and the faces of the
teachers should always be alive, inwardly expressive,
especially when the lessons are actually being given. In
what I am telling you, the important thing is not that
you should know these things but that they should work on your
life of feeling [Gemüt],
strengthening you, giving you the vigor to spiritualize your
profession.
Teachers ought to be conscious, especially nowadays, of
their great social task, and they should ponder a great deal
about this task. The teacher, above all others, should be
deeply permeated by awareness of the great needs of modern
civilization.
I
will give you an example of what is needed in order to adopt
the right attitude in our civilization today. You have
all heard of Mahatma Gandhi who, since the war, or really since
1914, has set a movement going for the liberation of India from
English rule. Gandhi's activities began first in South Africa
with the aim of helping the Indians who were living there under
appalling conditions and for whose emancipation he did a great
deal before 1914. Then he went to India itself and instituted a
movement for liberation in the life there. I shall speak today
only of what took place when the final verdict was passed on
Mahatma Gandhi and omit the court proceedings leading up to it.
I would like to speak only of the last act in the drama, as it
were, between him and his judge. Gandhi had been accused of
stirring up the Indian people against British rule in order to
make India independent. Being a lawyer, he conducted his
own defense and had not the slightest doubt that he would have
to be condemned. In his speech — I cannot quote the
actual words — he spoke more or less to the following
effect, “My Lords, I beg of you to condemn me in
accordance with the full strength of the law. I am perfectly
aware that in the eyes of British law in India my crime is the
gravest one imaginable. I do not plead any mitigating
circumstances; I beg of you to condemn me with the full
strength of the law. I affirm, moreover, that my
condemnation is required not only in obedience to the
principles of outer justice but to the principles of
expediency of the British Government. For if I were to be
acquitted I should feel it incumbent upon me to continue
to propagate the movement, and millions of Indians would
join it. My acquittal would lead to results that I regard as my
duty.”
The
contents of this speech are very characteristic of that which
lives and weaves in our time. Gandhi says that he must of
necessity be condemned and declares that it is his duty to
continue the activity for which he is to be condemned. The
judge replied, “Mahatma Gandhi, you have rendered my task
of sentencing you immeasurably easier, because you have made it
clear that I must of necessity condemn you. It is obvious that
you have transgressed against British law, but you and all
those present here will realize how hard it will be for me to
sentence you. It is clear that a large portion of the
Indian people looks upon you as a saint, as one who has taken
up his task in obedience to the highest duties devolving upon
humanity. The judgment I shall pass on you will be looked
upon by the majority of the Indian people as the condemnation
of a human being who has devoted himself to the highest service
of humanity. Clearly, however, British law must in all severity
be put into effect against you. You would regard it as your
duty, if you were acquitted, to continue tomorrow what you were
doing yesterday. We on our side have to regard it as our most
solemn duty to make that impossible. I condemn you in the full
consciousness that my sentence will in turn be condemned
by millions. I condemn you while admiring your actions, but
condemn you I must.” Gandhi's sentence was six
years at hard labor.
You
could hardly find a more striking example of what is
characteristic of our times. We have two levels of actuality
before us. Below is the level of truth, the level where the
accused declares that if he is acquitted, it will be his solemn
duty to continue what he must define as criminal in face of
outer law. On the level of truth, also, we have the judge's
statement that he admires the one whom, out of duty to
his Government, he sentences to six years' hard labor. Above,
at the level of facts, you have what the accused in this case,
because he is a great soul, defined as crime: the crime that is
his duty and that he would at once continue were he to be
acquitted. Whereas on the one level you have the admiration of
the judge for a great human being, on the other you have
the passing of judgment and its outer justification. You have
truths below, facts above, which have nothing to do with one
another. They touch on one another at only one point, at the
point where they confront each other in statement and
counter-statement.
Here, my dear friends, you have a most striking example
of the fact that nowadays we have a level of truth and a level
of untruth. The level of untruth, however, is in public events,
and at no point are the two levels in touch with each other. We
must keep this clearly in mind, because it is intimately bound
up with the whole life of spirit of our times. An example as
striking as this reveals things that occur everywhere but are
usually less obvious and startling. We must achieve first,
however, a real consciousness of what has come to pass in
the present in order to put truth in the place of what is
happening in the present. We simply must find the true path.
Naturally, it is not a matter of overturning everything or of
engaging in false radicalism, which leads only to destruction,
but of seeing what one can do. We have to find the way to a
clear insight and then work in the area where our efforts can
be most fruitful.
The
most fruitful sphere of activity of all is that of education.
There, even if education is controlled by dictatorial rules and
standards, the teacher can let what he gains from a true
feeling for his profession flow into the lessons he gives. He
must, however, have a knowledge of man that will imbue
life and spirit into what is otherwise dead knowledge, and, on
the other hand, have an enthusiasm arising from a really free
and open-minded conception of what life actually is today. You
must be clear that in outer life you are at the level above,
but as a teacher confronting children it is possible to
maintain the level below. It is not by practicing an
educational method based on clichés, but by
acquiring real enthusiasm for your profession, the
consciousness of your profession, that you can emancipate
yourselves from the constraints in educational activity
and be inspired by the majesty contained in a true
knowledge of man. It is sometimes a very bitter
experience to speak to anthroposophists, for example, and be
compelled to say things that — though not in the
bad sense- turn upside down what people have learned and then
to find that no attention is paid to what has been said. If you
grasped the full weight of what I said in the lecture
yesterday [Rudolf Steiner, “The Michael Inspiration,
Spiritual Milestones in the Course of the Year,”
The Festivals and Their Meaning, London, Rudolf
Steiner Press, 1981.] about meteoric iron, for instance,
you might well be astonished at the indifference with which
such a matter is received. I can understand this in the case of
people who have not learned anything but in the case of those
who are conversant with the scientific concepts about iron, it
is incomprehensible. But the world is like that today.
That is not, however, how the world should be in
the head and especially in the heart of the teacher and
educator. He must be filled with the consciousness that all the
knowledge acquired through modern science is dead
knowledge, out of which we must create something living, and
the only sort of knowledge that we can use in school arises
from this enthusiasm. If you are permeated on the one side with
the enthusiasm kindled by such a knowledge of man, and, on the
other, with the consciousness of the necessity to put truth in
place of the lies that are accepted today — you can find
no more impressive example than the legal case I just described
to you — if you realize this necessity with your
whole being and know that it is the teacher's task to find the
right direction through recognition of this necessity,
and of the appalling crudities inherent in what appears to be
truth in public life today, then something happens within
the human being that colors every sphere. You will become a
different kind of eurythmy teacher, a different kind of art
teacher, a different kind of mathematics teacher. In
every sphere you will become different if you are permeated in
the real sense by this consciousness. Everything is established
by this enthusiasm. This is not the time to talk about the
niceties of this or that method. We must bring life into the
world, which through its dead intellectualism is faced with the
danger of falling still further into death.
Basically, we have fallen out of the habit of being inwardly
incensed by things as they are. If you merely pull a long face,
however, about things that ought to be rejected in our
civilization, you certainly will not be able to educate. That
is why it is so necessary from time to time to speak of things
in such a way that they can really take hold of our feeling
[Gemüt]. If you go away from
these lectures with nothing more than the feeling that there
has to be a change in the spiritual factors governing the
world today, then you will have grasped my aim in giving
them.
The
dragon takes on the most diverse forms; he takes on every
possible form. Those that arise from human emotions are harmful
enough but not nearly as harmful as the form the dragon
acquires from the dead and deadening knowledge prevailing
today. There the dragon becomes especially horrible. One might
almost say that the correct symbol for institutions of higher
education today would be a thick black pall hung somewhere on
the wall of every lecture room. Then one would realize that
behind it there is something that must not be shown, because to
do so would throw a strange light on what goes on in these
lecture rooms! Behind the black pall there should be a picture
of Michael's battle with the dragon, the battle with
deadening intellectualism. What I have said today shows
you how the struggle between Michael and the dragon should live
in teachers. What I wanted to present to you is this: we must
come to be aware of this battle of Michael as a reality to us
in order to celebrate Michaelmas in the right way. No one
is more called to play a part in inaugurating the Michael
festival in the right way than the teacher. The teacher should
unite himself with Michael in a particularly close way, for to
live in these times means simply to crawl into the dragon and
further the old intellectual operation. To live in the truth
means to unite oneself with Michael. We must unite ourselves
with Michael whenever we enter the classroom; only through this
can we bring with us the necessary strength. Verily, Michael is
strong! If we understand Michael's struggle with the dragon in
a particular sphere, we are working for the healing of humanity
in the future. If I had been asked to give these lectures a
title, I would have had to say: Michael's Struggle with the
Dragon, presented for the teachers at the Waldorf School. One
should not speak about the possibility of celebrating a Michael
festival now but rather give thought to introducing into the
most diverse spheres of life the kind of consciousness with
which a Michael festival could be connected. If you can make
these things come alive in your hearts, to permeate your souls
with them; if you can bring this consciousness with you into
the classroom and sustain it there in complete tranquility,
without any element of agitation or high-sounding phrases; if
you can let yourselves be inspired to unpretentious action
through what can be kindled in your consciousness by
surrender to these necessities, then you will enter into
the alliance with Michael, as is essential for the teacher and
educator.
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