Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy II
GA 218
19 November 1922, London
I. Education and Teaching
Anthroposophy, as I have described it for the past two days, is not just a theoretical view intended to help people get past the sorrows, misfortunes, and pains of life, enabling them to escape into a mystical world. Anthroposophy can help people in practical life. It is connected with the practical questions of existence for the simple reason that the knowledge of which I spoke yesterday and the day before is intended to lead to a genuine penetration, to an accurate view, of the spiritual world. That viewpoint does not, in itself, lead to a life cut off from reality, but actually becomes part of all material events. When we look at a living human being, we are faced not only with what we see, what we understand through speech, and perhaps everything else that person’s being expresses that we can perceive with normal consciousness; we also confront the spiritual being living in that person, the spiritual, supersensible being that continually affects that individual’s material body.
We can never comprehend very much of the world through the knowledge we gain through normal sense perceptions and the intellect connected with those perceptions. People delude themselves into thinking that, when we someday perfect conventional science, we will comprehend more of the world through our intelligence, sense perceptions, and experiments. However, those who are able to consider the relationship between the human being and the world as described in my two earlier lectures know that we can understand only the mineral kingdom through sense perception and intellect. Even when we limit ourselves to the plant kingdom, we must understand that our intellect and senses cannot comprehend the very subtle cosmic rhythms and forces that affect the plant kingdom. That is even more true of the animal kingdom and truer still for human beings. The physical constitution of plants (the least so), animals, and human beings is such that the forces active within them act on their substance like ideal magic. People delude themselves when they believe we can perform the same kinds of laboratory experiments on animals or human beings that we perform on minerals. The purely physical processes that occur in animal and human organisms are caught in an ideal magic. We can gain some understanding of human beings if we can penetrate that ideal magic, that is, if we can look at human beings so that we see through material processes into the continuous inner spiritual activity.
We can achieve insight into spiritual magic only through the understanding I spoke of yesterday and the day before. I showed that one of the first stages of understanding human beings indicates that people not only have a relationship to the world in the moment, but that they can move themselves back to any age they have passed through since their earthly birth. You can place yourself back into a time when you were eighteen or fifteen years old and experience what you experienced then. You can experience it not only as shadowy memories, but with the intensity and strength that existed for you at the time it occurred. You thus become fifteen or twelve years old or whatever again. You undergo a spiritual metamorphosis through this process. In doing so, you can perceive a second organism in the human being, a more subtle organism we call etheric because it has neither weight nor spatial dimensions. That more subtle organism is an organism of time. You have before you everything the etheric organism experienced in time. Nevertheless, you can recognize an organism is before you and learn to understand that the human being exists in that more subtle time organism in just the same way he or she exists in the spatial organism.
If you notice someone is suffering a headache, for example, then perhaps you could say a cure could be achieved by acting on some internal physical organ. You would not need to seek the cure by simply treating the head. We might cure it by treating an organ far from the head. In the spatial organism everything we carry with us is interconnected, and the time organism is the same. The time organism is particularly active in early childhood, but is continually active throughout life in much the following way: Suppose someone has an opportunity at age thirty-five to enter a new situation. If that person meets the situation by doing what is right, then such a person may become aware that at around age twelve important things were learned that now make it possible to move quickly into this new situation.
A certain kind of joy occurs at age thirty-five that arises from the interaction that person had as a child with a teacher. What occurred in that etheric body of eight or ten years old, due to the teacher and the instruction given to the child, acts exactly the same way that our treatment of an organ far from the head acts to cure the headache. Thus, the experiences of a young child affect the thirty-five-year-old person later and create a joyful mood or depression. The entire disposition of an adult depends on what the teacher developed in the etheric body of that adult as a child, in just the same way that one organ of the human spatial body depends upon all the others.
If you think about it, you would say that knowledge of how the etheric body develops, about the relationships of its individual aspects, is certainly the proper basis for educating children. If you think it through fully and conclusively, you must admit that, just as a painter or other artist must learn the techniques of their art, teachers must acquire an understanding of the technique of teaching in an ideal sense. A painter must look, not in the way a layman would, at forms, colors, and their harmonies and disharmonies, and the painter must work out the correct way to handle paints and colored pencils from such observations. A painter’s ability to observe properly forms the basis for what must be learned and will permeate his or her entire being. Likewise, a teacher must learn to use the spiritual observation of human beings, to observe what acts on them and unites the entire course of their lives. Teaching cannot be a science, it must be an art. In art, you must first learn a particular capacity for observing, and second learn how to use what you acquire through continuous observation in your continuous struggles with your medium. It is the same with the spiritual science I refer to here, namely, anthroposophical spiritual science that can provide a foundation for a real and true art of education.
Anthroposophy is also basic in another sense. If education is to be truly effective, it must care properly for what will develop from deep within the essence of a young person. Teachers must be able to accept a child as a divine moral task bestowed on them. As teachers, the things that elevate our moral relationship to teaching and permeate our educational activity with a kind of religious meditation, give us the necessary strength to act alongside the children and work with all the inner characteristics that need development. In other words, all educational activities must themselves be moral acts, and they must arise from moral impulses. We must use these moral impulses within the context of the human understanding and human observation just described.
When we consider these things, we will, of course, see how people’s lives clearly progress in developmental stages—much more so than people ordinarily think. People usually observe only superficially, for instance, that children get a second set of teeth when they are about seven years old. People often see the bodily symptoms accompanying that change, but do not look more closely at the transformations occurring in the child during such a change. People who can properly observe a child, before and after the age of seven, can see that, after seven, forces that were previously hidden develop out of the depths of the human being. If we look at things properly, then we must admit that the change of teeth is not simply a one-time, sudden event in human life. The change of teeth at age seven, although we do not repeat it, is something that occurs throughout the period between the time the child receives his or her first teeth until the change of teeth. During that whole time, forces in the human organism are pushing and shoving, and result in the second set of teeth breaking through. The change of teeth simply concludes the processes active during the child’s first period of life. Children do not change teeth ever again, but what does that mean? That means that until age seven, children develop those forces in their physical body that are needed to grow a second set of teeth, but those children will not change teeth again and now no longer need such forces. The question is, what becomes of those forces?
If we look supersensibly at a human being, we can again recognize those forces in the transformed life of the child’s soul between the change of teeth and puberty. The child’s soul is then different. A different capacity for learning has been added to the soul, and the child has a different orientation toward the surroundings. If we see things spiritually and not just physically, then the situation is different. We can then understand that what we can see in the child’s soul from approximately ages seven to fourteen existed previously in the child’s physical organism. Earlier, it was an activity connected with the process inducing the change of teeth, but at age seven it ceases to be physically active and begins to be active in the soul.
Thus, if you want to understand the forces active in the child’s soul between the change of teeth and puberty, you must look at the physical activities between birth until the change of teeth. The forces now active in the child’s soul then acted on the physical body. The result is that when we observe properly, we can see that, in a more subtle sense, the young child is entirely a sense organ. That is true particularly of a baby, but in a certain way still true right until the change of teeth. In a subtle way, a baby is a kind of groping eye. The way the eye looks at things and recreates what exists outside so the child has an inner picture of the external object, gives the child in earliest life a perception, but not a visual picture.
The baby is in its entirety a sense organ, and perhaps I can illustrate this. Let us think of a baby. As adults, we have our sense of taste in the tongue and gums. However, as spiritual science shows us, the baby has a hint of taste throughout the entire body. The baby is an organ of taste throughout. The baby as a whole is also an organ of smell and, more inwardly, an organ of touch. The entire constitution of the baby is sense-like in its nature, and this sense-like nature radiates throughout the whole body. For that reason, until age seven the child tends to recreate inwardly everything happening in the surroundings and to develop accordingly. If you observe children with your more subtle senses and with spiritual-scientific understanding, you will see that they recreate every gesture made in their surroundings, and they attempt to do what people do in their presence. You will thus see that the child is an imitative being until the change of teeth. The most important capacity of the young child becomes apparent from this imitative behavior. The most important capacity is the development of speech. That depends entirely on the fact that children live into what people in their surroundings do and develop speech through imitation—that is, through inwardly conforming to what occurs in their surroundings. Thus, as teachers, when we work with children during their first stage of life, we need to recognize imitation as the most important aspect of teaching. We can teach a very young child only by creating an environment filled with those activities and processes the child should imitate to gain strength in spirit, soul, and body; those things we implant not only in children’s spirits and souls, but also in their bodies, and the way they strengthen the inner organs remain as the children’s constitution throughout life. How I act around a child of four remains with that person into old age. Thus, my behavior determines, in a way, the child’s fate in later life.
That can be illustrated with an example. Sometimes people come to you when you work in this field and say, for example, that their child was always a good child and never did anything wrong, but the child has now done something terrible. If you ask in detail what occurred, you might hear that the child stole some money from the mother. If you are adept at such things, you might ask how old the child is, and receive the reply, “Five.” Thus, such activity is based primarily on imitation. You will then learn that the child had seen the mother take money from the cupboard every day. The child simply imitated and was not concerned with good or evil. The child only imitated what was seen at home. If we believe we can achieve anything by instructing the child about good and evil, we only delude ourselves. We can educate very young children only when we present them with examples they can imitate, including thoughts. A subtle spiritual connection exists between children and those who raise them. When we are with children, we should be careful to harbor only thoughts and feelings they can imitate in their own thoughts and feelings. In their souls, young children are entirely sense receptors and perceive things so subtle that we as adults could not dream they even occur.
After the change of teeth, forces lying deep within the child become forces of the soul. Earlier, children are devoted entirely to their surroundings; but now they can stand as one soul to another and can, compared to their earlier imitative behavior, accept authority as a matter of course. During earliest childhood until the change of teeth, our real desire is to be totally integrated into our surroundings, which is, in a sense, the physical manifestation of religious feeling. Religious feelings are a spiritual devotion to the spirit; the child devotes the physical body to the physical surroundings. That is the physical counterpart of religion.
After the age of seven, children no longer devote the physical body to their physical surroundings; rather, they devote the soul to other souls. A teacher steps forward to help the child, and the child needs to see the teacher as the source of the knowledge of everything good and evil. At this point children are just as devoted to what the teacher says and develops within the children as they were earlier to the gestures and activities around them. Between seven and fourteen years of age, an urge arises within children to devote themselves to natural authority. Children thus want to become what that authority is. The love of that natural authority and a desire to please now become the main principle, just as imitation was earlier.
You would hardly believe that someone like myself, who in the early 1890s wrote The Philosophy of Freedom, would support an unjustified principle of authority. What I mean is something like natural law. From approximately ages seven to fourteen, children view their teacher in such a way that they have no intellectual comprehension of “this is good or true or evil or false or ugly,” but rather, “this is good because the teacher says it is good,” or “this is beautiful because the teacher says it is beautiful.” We must bring all the secrets of the world to the child through the indirect path of the beloved teacher. That is the principle of human development from around the age of seven until fourteen.
We can therefore say that a religious-like devotion toward the physical surroundings fills a child during the first years of life. From the change of teeth until puberty, an esthetic comprehension of the surroundings fills the child, a comprehension permeated with love. Children expect pleasure with everything the teacher presents to them and displeasure from whatever the teacher withholds. Everything that acts educationally during this period should enter the child’s inner perspective. We may conclude that, whereas during the first stage of life the teacher should be an example, during the second period the teacher should be an authority in the most noble sense—a natural authority due to qualities of character. As teachers, we will then have within us what children need, in a sense, to properly educate themselves. The most important aspect of self-education is moral education. I will speak more of that when the first part of my lecture has been translated.
(At this point, Rudolf Steiner paused so that George Adams could deliver the first part of this lecture in English.)
When we say children are entirely sense organs before the age of seven, we must understand that, after the change of teeth, that is, after the age of seven, children’s sense-perceptive capacities have moved more toward the surface of the body and moved away from their inner nature. Children’s sense impressions, however, still cannot effectively enter the sense organs in an organized and regulated way. We see that from the change of teeth until puberty, therefore, the child’s nature is such that the child harbors in the soul a devotion to sense perceptions, but the child’s inner will is incapable of affecting them.
Human intellect creates an inner participation in sense perception, but we are intellectual beings only after puberty. Our relationship to the world is appropriate for judging it intellectually only after puberty. To reason intellectually means to reason from personal inner freedom, but we can do this only after puberty. Thus, from the change of teeth until puberty we should not educate children in an intellectual way, and we should not moralize intellectually. During the first seven years of life, children need what they can imitate in their sense-perceptible reality. After that, children want to hear from their educational authority what they can and cannot do, what they should consider to be true or untrue, just or unjust and so forth.
Something important begins to stir in the child around the age of nine or ten. Teachers who can truly observe children know that, at about the age of nine or ten, children have a particularly strong need. Then, although children do not have intellectualized doubts, they do have a kind of inner unrest; a kind of inner question, a childlike question concerning fate they cannot express and, indeed, do not yet need to express. Children feel this in a kind of half sleep, in an unconscious way. You need only look with the proper eye to see how children develop during this period. I think you know exactly what I am referring to here—namely, that children want something special from the teacher whom they look up to with love. Ordinarily, you cannot answer that desire the way you would answer an intellectually posed question. It is important during this time that you develop an intense and intimate, trusting relationship so that what arises in the children is a feeling that you as teacher particularly care for and love them.
The answer to children’s most important life question lies in their perception of love and their trust in the teacher. What is the actual content of that question? As I said, children do not ask through reasoning, but through feeling, subconsciously. We can formulate things children cannot, and we can say, therefore, that children at that stage are still naïve and accept the authority of the beloved teacher without question. However, now a certain need awakens in the child. The child needs to feel what is good and what is evil differently, as though they exist in the world as forces.
Until this time, children looked up to the teacher, in a sense, but now they want to see the world through the teacher’s eyes. Children not only want to know that the teacher is a human being who says something is good or bad, they also want to feel that the teacher speaks as a messenger of the Spirit, a messenger of God, and knows something from the higher worlds. As I said, children do not say it through reasoning, but they feel it. The particular question arising in the child’s feeling will tell you that a certain thing is appropriate for that child. It will be apparent that your statement that something is good or bad has very deep roots, and, thus, the child will gain renewed trust.
That is also the point in moral education where we can begin to move away from simple imitative behavior or saying something is good or bad. At about the age of nine or ten, we can begin to show morality pictorially, because children are still sense oriented and without reasoning. We should educate children pictorially—that is, through pictures, pictures for all the senses—during the entire period of elementary school, between the change of teeth and puberty. Even though children at that age may not be completely sense oriented, they still live in their senses, which are now more recognizable at the surface of the body.
Tomorrow evening I will discuss how to teach children from the age of six or seven through the time when they learn to read or write. Right now I want to consider only the moral side of education.
When children have reached age nine or ten, we may begin to present pictures that primarily stimulate the imagination. We may present pictures of good people, pictures that awaken a feeling of sympathy for what people do. Please take note that I did not say we should lecture children about moral commandments. I did not say we should approach children’s intellect with moral reasoning. We should approach children through esthetics and imagination. We should awaken a pleasure or displeasure of good and bad things, of just or unjust things, of high ideals, of moral action, and of things that occur in the world to balance incorrect action. Whereas previously we needed to place ourselves before the children as a kind of moral regulator, we now need to provide them with pictures that do no more than affect the imagination living within their sense nature. Before puberty, children should receive morality as a feeling. They should receive a firm feeling that, “Something is good, and I can be sympathetic toward it,” or “I should feel antipathy toward something bad.” Sympathies and antipathies, that is, judgments within feelings, should be the basis of what is moral.
If you recognize, in the way I have presented it, that everything in the human time organism is interconnected, then you will also recognize that it is important for the child that you do the right things at the right time. You cannot get a plant to grow in a way that it immediately flowers; blooming occurs later. First, you must tend the roots. Should you want to make the roots bloom, you would be attempting something ridiculous. Similarly, it would be just as ridiculous to want to present intellectually formulated moral judgments to the child between the change of teeth and puberty. You must first tend the seed and the root—that is, a feeling for morality. When children have a feeling for morality, their intelligence will awaken after puberty. What they have gained in feeling during that period will then continue into an inner development afterward. Moral and intellectual reasoning will awaken on their own. It is important that we base all moral education on that.
You cannot make a plant’s root blossom; you must wait until the root develops into the plant and then the plant blossoms. In the same way, you must, in a sense, tend the moral root in the feeling and develop sympathy for what is moral. You must then allow children to carry that feeling into their intellect through their own forces as human beings. Later in life they will have the deep inner satisfaction of knowing that something more lives within them than just memories of what their teacher said was right or wrong. Instead, an inner joy will fill their entire soul life from the knowledge that moral judgment awoke within them at the proper time. That we do not slavishly educate children in a particular moral direction, rather, we prepare them so that their own free developing souls can grow and blossom in a moral direction, strengthens people not only with a capacity for moral judgment, but also gives them a moral strength. When we want a spiritual foundation for education, this fact reminds us again and again that we must bring everything to developing children in the proper way and at the proper time.
Now you might ask: If one should not provide commandments that appeal to the intellect, what should you appeal to when you want to implant a feeling for moral reasoning in the school-age child? Well, authority in its own right certainly does lead to intangible things in the relationship between the teacher and the child! I would like to illustrate this through an example. I can teach children pictorially—that is, non-intellectually—about the immortality of the human soul. Until the time of puberty, the intellect is actually absent in the child. I must interweave nature and spirit, and thus what I tell the children is fashioned into an artistic picture: “Look at this butterfly’s cocoon. The butterfly crawls out of the cocoon. In just the same way, the soul comes out of the human body when the body dies.” In this way, I can stimulate the children’s imagination and bring a living, moral picture to their souls. I can do that in two ways. I could say to myself: I am a mature teacher and tremendously wise. The children are small and extremely ignorant, and since they have not yet elevated themselves to my stature, I need to create a picture for them. I create a picture for them, even though I know it has little value for myself. If I were to say that to myself, and bring a picture to the children with that attitude, it would not act on their souls. It would just pass quickly through their souls, since intangible relationships exist between the teacher and child. However, I could say to myself: I am really not much wiser than the children, or they are, at least subconsciously, even wiser than I—that is, I could respect the children. Then I could say to myself: I did not create that picture myself; nature gave us the picture of the butterfly creeping from its cocoon. And then, I believe in that picture just as intensely as I want the children to believe. If I have the strength of my own beliefs within me, then the picture remains fixed in the children’s souls, and the things that will live do not lie in the coarseness of the world, but in the subtleties that exist between the teacher and child.
The incomprehensible things that play between teacher and child richly replace everything we could transfer through an intellectual approach. In this manner, children gain an opportunity to freely develop themselves alongside the teacher. The teacher can say: I live in the children’s surroundings and must, therefore, create those opportunities through which they can develop themselves to the greatest possible extent. To do this I must stand next to the children without feeling superior, and recognize that I am only a human being who is a few years older.
In a relative sense we are not always wiser, and we therefore do not always need to feel superior to children. We should be helpers for their development. If you tend plants as a gardener, you certainly do not make the sap move from the root to the flower. Rather, you prepare the plant’s environment so that the flow of sap can develop. As teachers we must be just as selfless so that the child’s inner forces can unfold. Then we will be good teachers, and the children can flourish in the proper way.
(Rudolf Steiner paused again to allow the second part of the lecture to be translated for the audience.)
When we develop morality in the human being in that way, it then develops just as one thing develops from another in the plant. At first, humanly appropriate moral development arises from the imitative desires within the human organism. As I already described, morality gains a certain firmness so that people have the necessary inner strength later in life, a strength anchored in the physical organism, for moral certainty. Otherwise, people may be physically weak and unable to follow their moral impulses, however good they may be. If the moral example acts strongly and intensely on the child during the first period of childhood, then a moral fortitude develops. If children, from the change of teeth until puberty, can properly take hold of the forces of sympathy and antipathy for good and against evil, then later they will have the proper moral stance regarding the uncertainties that might keep them from doing what is morally necessary. Through imitation, children will develop within their organism what their souls need, so that their moral feelings and perceptions, their sympathies and antipathies, can properly develop during the second period of childhood. The capacity for intellectual moral judgment awakens in the third period of the child’s development, which is oriented toward the spirit. This occurs as surely as the plant in the light of the Sun blossoms and fruits. Morality can only take firm root in the spirit if the body and soul have been properly prepared. It can then freely awaken to life, just as the blossom and fruit freely awaken in the plant in the light of the Sun.
When we develop morality in human beings while respecting their inner freedom, then the moral impulse connects with their inner being so that they can truly feel it is something that belongs to them. They feel the same way toward their moral strength and moral actions as they do toward the forces of growth within their body, toward the circulation of their own blood. People will feel about the morality developed within themselves in the proper manner as they feel about the natural forces of life throughout their bodies, that they pulse and strengthen them right up to the surface of the skin.
What happens then? People realize that if they are immoral, they are deformed. They feel disfigured in the same way they would feel if they were physically missing a limb. Through the moral development I have described, people learn. They come to say to themselves that if they are not filled with morality, and if their actions are not permeated with morality, then they are deformed human beings.
The strongest moral motive we can possibly develop within human beings is the feeling that they are disfigured if they are immoral. People only need proper development and then they will be whole. If you help develop people so that they want to be whole human beings, they will of themselves develop an inner tendency toward the spiritual due to this approach to morality. They will then see the good that flows through the world and that it acts within them just as effectively as the forces of nature act within their bodies. To put it pictorially, they will then understand that if they see a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron, someone might then come along and say we could use that horseshoe as a magnet because it has its own inner forces. But, another might say that it is only iron and is unimportant, and would use it to shoe a horse. Someone who sees things in the latter way could not, due to the way their life developed, see that spiritual life exists within the human being. Someone who only sees the superficial, and not how the spirit acts and interacts within the human being, is the kind of person who would shoe a horse with a horseshoe-shaped piece of magnetic iron. In such a case, the person has not been educated to see life properly and to develop the proper strengths. When comprehended spiritually, a proper education, felt and brought to the will, is the strongest motive for social activity.
Today, we are standing under the star of the social problem. This problem exists for a reason, and I would be happy to say more about it, but my time is now coming to an end. However, I would like to mention that the social problems of today have many aspects, and much is needed to approach these questions in all detail. Modern people who look at things objectively want much for the future of humanity and for reforming social life. However, everything we can think of and create in practice for our institutions, everything we can think of in the way of schemes or about the nature of modern social life, demonstrates to those who see morality in the light of spirituality that dealing with today’s social problems without including the question of morality is like hunting for something in a dark room.
We can bring the social question into proper perspective only through a genuine comprehension of morality. Anyone who looks at life with an eye toward the comprehensive connections found there would say that morality is the light that must enlighten social life if we are to see the social questions in a truly human way. Modern people, therefore, need to gain an understanding of the moral question connected with the social question. I believe that it is perhaps possible to show that what I have called spiritual science, or anthroposophy, wants to tackle the great questions of our times, and that it has earnest intentions regarding the questions of morality and developing morality within human beings.
(George Adams completed his English translation of the lecture.)
Rudolf Steiner on “ideal magic,” from lecture of November 17, 1922 (see footnote, page 1):
Along with exact clairvoyance, you must also achieve something I refer to as ideal magic. This is a kind of magic that must be differentiated from the false magic practiced externally, and associated with many charlatans. You must certainly differentiate that from what I mean by ideal magic.
What I mean by ideal magic is the following: when someone looks back over life with ordinary consciousness, one will see how, from year to year and from decade to decade, one has changed in a certain sense. Such a person would see that habits have changed, however slowly. One gains certain capacities while others disappear. If one looks honestly at the capacities that exist during earthly life, one would have to say that, over time, one becomes someone else. Life causes that to happen. We are completely devoted to life and life educates us, trains us and forms the soul.
If, however, people want to enter the spiritual world—in other words, want to attain ideal magic—they must not only intensify inner thinking so that they recognize a second level of existence, as I previously described, but they must also free their will from its connection to the physical body. Ordinarily, we can activate the will only by using the physical body—the legs, arms, or the organs of speech. The physical body is the basis for our will. However, we can do the following: as spiritual researchers we must carry out exercises of the will in a very systematic way to achieve ideal magic along with exact clairvoyance. Such a person must, for example, develop the will so strongly that, at a particular point in life, one recognizes that a specific habit must be broken and replaced with another in the soul.
You will need many years, but if you energetically use your will to transform certain experiences in the way I described, it is nevertheless possible. Thus, you can, as it were, go beyond allowing only the physical body to be your teacher and replace that kind of development with self-discipline.
Through energetic exercise of the will, such as I have described in my books, you will become an initiate in a modern sense, and no longer merely re-experience in sleep what you experience during the day. You will achieve a state that is not sleep, but that can be experienced in complete consciousness. This state provides you with the opportunity to be active while you sleep—that is, the opportunity while you are outside your body to not merely remain passive in the spiritual world, as is normally the case. Rather, you can act in the spirit world; you can be active in the spiritual world. During sleep, people are ordinarily unable to move forward, to progress. However, those who are modern initiates, in the sense I have described, have the capacity to be active as a human being in the life that exists between falling asleep and waking up. If you bring your will into the state in which you live outside your body, then you can develop your consciousness in a much different way. You will be able to develop consciousness in a way that you can see what people experience in the period directly following death. Through this other kind of consciousness, you can experience what occurs during the period after earthly life, just as you will be able to see what occurs in pre-earthly life. You can see how you pass through a life of existence in the spiritual world just as you go through life in the physical world during earthly existence. You recognize yourself as a pure spirit in the spiritual world just as you can recognize yourself as a physical body within the physical world. Thus, you have the opportunity to create a judgment about how long life lasts during what I would refer to as the time of moral evaluation.
Moralische Erziehung Vom Gesichtspunkte Der Anthroposophie
Anthroposophie, wie ich mir erlaubte, sie in den zwei letzten Tagen hier zu charakterisieren, will nicht bloß eine theoretische Ansicht sein, durch die der Mensch sich über das Unerfreuliche, das Schmerzliche und Unglückliche des Lebens hinwegsetzen, sich in eine mystische Welt flüchten kann, sondern sie will etwas sein, das namentlich in das praktische Leben des Menschen einzugreifen vermag. Sie muß eine praktische Angelegenheit des Daseins werden aus dem Grunde, weil diejenige Geisteserkenntnis, von der ich gestern und vorgestern gesprochen habe, ja führen soll zu einer wirklichen Durchdringung, zu einer wirklichen Anschauung der geistigen Welt, die nicht nur für sich ein abgesondertes Dasein führt, sondern die eingreift in alles materielle Geschehen. Wenn wir im Leben dem Menschen gegenüberstehen, so haben wir es gar nicht nur mit dem zu tun, was unsere Augen an ihm wahrnehmen können, was unser Sprachvermögen durch seine Rede zu verstehen vermag, was wir vielleicht sonst an ÄAußerungen, an Offenbarungen seines Wesens durch das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein empfangen können, sondern wir haben es zu tun mit einem geistigen, mit einem spirituellen Wesen, das in ihm lebt, mit einem solchen spirituellen, mit einem solchen übersinnlichen Wesen, das fortwährend eingreift in seine materielle Organisation.
Mit derjenigen Erkenntnis, welche wir uns erwerben durch unsere gewöhnliche Sinnesanschauung, und durch den Intellekt, der an diese Sinnesanschauung gebunden ist, können wir ja niemals viel von der Welt begreifen. Man gibt sich zwar der Illusion hin, daß man einmal, wenn die Wissenschaft, wie man sagt, vollkommener sein wird, mehr begreifen wird von der Welt durch die Intelligenz, durch die Sinnesbeobachtung und durch das Experiment, als gegenwärtig. Aber wer das ganze Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt so beurteilen kann, wie es sich ergibt aus den beiden Vorträgen, die ich hier halten durfte, weiß, daß man mit der Sinnesanschauung und mit dem Intellekt nur das Mineralreich begreifen kann. Schon wenn es sich um das Pflanzenreich handelt, muß man sich darüber klar sein, daß ein viel Feineres gesetzmäßig und kraftmäßig aus dem Weltenall eingreift in die Pflanzenwelt, als das, was Verstand und Sinne begreifen können. Noch mehr ist das dann der Fall bei der tierischen, bei der animalischen Welt, und am meisten ist das der Fall beim Menschen. Denn Pflanzen — diese am wenigsten —, Tiere und Menschen, sind auch in ihrer physischen Organisation durchaus so, daß dasjenige, was in ihnen als Kräfte wirkt im Materiellen, so wirkt wie eine ideelle Magie. Und wer glaubt, daß er irgendeinen Vorgang, den er im Laboratorium verfolgt hat, auch in derselben Weise in dem Tiere oder in dem Menschenorganismus verfolgen könne, der täuscht sich gar sehr. Denn mit dem tierischen und menschlichen Organismus wird der rein physikalische Vorgang eingefangen in eine ideelle Magie. Und innerhalb des Menschen verstehen wir dann etwas, wenn wir diese ideelle Magie durchschauen, wenn wir also imstande sind, den Menschen so zu beurteilen, daß wir in ihm gewissermaßen durch seine materiellen Vorgänge hindurch schauen, wie das Spirituelle fortwährend in ihm tätig ist.
Die Einsicht in eine solche spirituelle Magie kann dem Menschen nur kommen durch diejenigen Erkenntnisse, von denen ich gestern und vorgestern hier gesprochen habe. Ich habe zeigen können, daß eine erste Stufe dieser Erkenntnis den Menschen so zeigt, daß er nicht nur im gegenwärtigen Augenblicke zu der Welt ein Verhältnis hat, sondern daß er sich zurückversetzen kann in jenes Lebensalter, das er durchgemacht hat seit seiner irdischen Geburt. Man kann, sagte ich, sich zurückversetzen in die Zeit, da man achtzehn, fünfzehn Jahre alt war, und man erlebt das, was man damals erlebt hat, nicht nur in der schattenhaften Erinnerung, man erlebt es so, daß man mit Intensität und Kraft darinnensteckt, wie man dazumal drinnengesteckt hat. Man wird wiederum fünfzehn-, zwölfjährig und so weiter. Man macht in sich diese geistige Metamorphose durch. Dadurch aber ist man in der Lage, im Menschen einen zweiten Organismus, einen feinen Organismus, den man deshalb ätherisch nennen kann, weil er kein Gewicht hat wie der Raumeskörper, einen solchen feineren Organismus wahrzunehmen. Dieser feinere Organismus ist aber ein Zeitorganismus. Man hat auf einmal in einer Gesamtanschauung dasjenige alles an sich, was diesen ätherischen Organismus als ein Geschehen in der Zeit ausmacht. Aber man weiß, daß man dennoch einen Organismus an sich hat, und man lernt erkennen, daß der Mensch sich in diesem feineren Zeitorganismus so befindet, wie er sich sonst im Raumesorganismus befindet.
Wenn man zum Beispiel merkt, daß der Mensch, sagen wir, an einem bestimmten Kopfschmerz leidet, muß man sich sagen können, daß man vielleicht die Heilung von irgendeinem inneren Organ des Leibes aus bewirken muß, daß man durchaus nicht die Heilung bloß gegenüber dem Kopfe vornehmen kann, sondern gegenüber einem Organe, das weit abliegt vom Kopfe. In dem Raumesorganismus, den wir an uns tragen, hängt eben alles zusammen. Aber so ist es auch mit dem ätherischen Zeitorganismus, der ganz besonders regsam ist im frühesten Kindesalter des Menschen, der aber in Beweglichkeit ist durch das ganze Leben hindurch und in dem die Kräfte sind, die zum Beispiel in der folgenden Art wirken: Man nehme an, jemand hat als fünfunddreißigjähriger Mensch die Möglichkeit, einer neuen Lebenssituation entgegenzutreten; wenn er nun dieser Lebenssituation gewachsen ist, so daß er in die Lage kommt, das Richtige zu tun in dieser Lebenssituation, so kann er sich bewußt werden, daß er einmal vielleicht als zwölfjähriges, als achtjähriges Kind, das Wichtigste von dem gelernt hat, was ihm die Möglichkeit bietet, jetzt sich schnell in diese Situation hineinzufinden. Und eine gewisse Freude strahlt aus im fünfunddreißigsten Jahre von dem, was im achten oder im zwölften Jahre durch den Erzieher, durch den Lehrer an das Kind herangetreten ist, weil das, was im achten oder zehnten Jahre im menschlichen Ätherleib vor sich geht durch den Erzieher, durch den Unterricht, geradeso wirkt wie ein Organ, das weit vom Kopfe abliegt, auf die Gesundung des Kopfes wirkt, wenn wir es heilen. So wirkt das im sechsten oder zwölften Jahre Erlebte im fünfunddreißigsten Jahre und später nach und erzeugt eine freudige Stimmung oder eine Depression. Die ganze Lebensverfassung des Menschen noch im spätesten Erwachsenenzustande ist abhängig von dem, was der Erzieher in dem Ätherleibe des Menschen ausbildet, wie das eine Organ des menschlichen Raumesleibes abhängig ist von dem anderen. Wenn man das bedenkt, dann muß man sich sagen: Diejenige Erkenntnis, die herauskommt aus einer Anschauung, wie dieser ätherische Leib sich entwickelt, wie seine einzelnen Tatsachen zusammenhängen, diese Erkenntnis kann erst die richtige Grundlage geben für die erzieherische Behandlung des Menschen. Und wenn man dies, was ich eben ausgesprochen habe, in der richtigen Weise zu Ende denkt, dann sagt man sich: Ja, wie der Maler oder der andere Künstler die Technik lernen muß zu seiner Kunst, so ist es notwendig für den Erzieher, für den Lehrer, daß er sich aneignet eine, und zwar jetzt im ideellsten Sinne gemeinte Technik des Erziehens. Wie der Maler beobachten muß in seiner Art — nicht wie der Laie — die Formen, wie er beobachten muß die Farben und ihre Zusammenstimmungen oder ihre Dissonanzen, und wie er aus der Beobachtung heraus dasjenige gewinnen muß, was dann in die Handhabung der Farben, in die Handhabung des Stiftes hineingeht, wie er sich aneignen muß etwas, was durch seinen ganzen Menschen wirkt, und was beruht auf der Möglichkeit, daß er richtig beobachten kann, so muß der Erzieher, muß der Lehrer dasjenige verwerten können, das die Beobachtung dessen ergibt, was spirituell im Menschen arbeitet und was seinen ganzen Lebenslauf zu einer organischen Einheit macht. Denn das Erziehen kann nicht eine Wissenschaft sein, das Erziehen muß eine Kunst sein. Bei der Kunst muß man sich aneignen: erstens die besondere Beobachtungsgabe; zweitens muß man sich aneignen die Handhabung desjenigen, was man in fortwährender Beobachtung, in fortwährendem Kampfe mit dem Stoffe zu tun hat. So ist die spirituelle Wissenschaft, wie sie hier gemeint ist, die anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft, dasjenige, was die Grundlage abgeben kann für eine wirkliche, wahrhaftige Erziehungskunst.
Sie ist das aber auch noch in einer anderen Beziehung: Wenn das Erziehen wirklich kraftvoll sein soll, so muß es das, was im Menschen aus dem tiefen Inneren seiner Wesenheit als Kindheit sich heraus entwickeln will, in der richtigen Weise pflegen. Es muß diese Erziehungskunst durchaus in der Lage sein, das Kind so zu beurteilen, daß es ihm erscheint, wie wenn es ihm übergeben wäre durch eine göttlich-moralische Mission. Nur das, was uns als Erzieher oder Lehrer innerlich moralisch selber erhebt an der Erziehung, was wie eine religiöse Andacht unser erzieherisches Handeln durchdringt, gibt jene Kraft her, durch die wir in die Lage kommen, neben dem Kinde so zu wirken, daß alle Anlagen, die in ihm liegen, aus ihm heraus entfaltet werden. Mit anderen Worten: jedes Erziehen und Unterrichten muß selber eine moralische Handlung sein, muß durchaus moralischen Impulsen entspringen. Und diese moralischen Impulse müssen angewendet werden auf eine so geartete Menschenerkenntnis und Menschenbeobachtung, wie ich sie eben jetzt charakterisiert habe.
Wenn wir dies beachten, dann sehen wir allerdings, wie der Mensch in seinem Leben in einer viel deutlicheren Weise gewisse Lebensabschnitte hat, als man das gewöhnlich meint. Gewöhnlich sieht man in einer äußerlichen Weise zum Beispiel das an, daß der Mensch, wenn er so ungefähr im siebenten Lebensjahre steht, die zweiten Zähne bekommt. Man sieht manchmal, welche körperlichen Zustände diesen Zahnwechsel begleiten, aber man sieht nicht genauer hin, welche Verwandlung mit dem Menschen während dieses Zahnwechsels vor sich geht. Derjenige, der richtig zu beurteilen vermag, wie der Mensch vor seinem siebenten Lebensjahre war und wie er nachher ist, der sieht, daß sich nach diesem siebenten Lebensjahre aus den Tiefen des menschlichen Wesens heraus Kräfte entwickeln, die vorher tief im Organismus verborgen waren. Wenn wir die Sache recht ansehen, dann müssen wir uns nämlich das Folgende sagen: Der Zahnwechsel ist ja nicht nur ein einmaliges, plötzliches Ereignis im menschlichen Leben. Der Zahnwechsel, der im siebenten Lebensjahre eintritt, der sich zwar nicht wiederholt, ist aber ein Ereignis, das das ganze Leben von dem Bekommen der ersten Zähne bis zum Zahnwechsel ausfülit. In der ganzen Zeit drängen und treiben die Kräfte, die zuletzt die zweiten Zähne herausstülpen aus dem Kinde, im menschlichen Organismus. Und im Zahnwechsel ist nur ein Abschluß vorhanden für dasjenige, was in dem ganzen ersten Lebensabschnitt des Kindes wirkt. Nun zahnt ja das Kind nicht wiederum in seinem Leben. Was heißt das? Das heißt, das Kind hat in seinem physischen Organismus bis zum siebenten Lebensjahr Kräfte entwickelt, die es braucht, bis es die zweiten Zähne bekommen hat, die es dann nicht mehr braucht für seinen physischen Organismus, weil es nicht wiederum einem Zahnwechsel unterliegt. Was wird aus diesen Kräften?
Diese Kräfte erkennen wir wiederum, wenn wir mit einer übersinnlichen Erkenntnis den Menschen ansehen können, in dem veränderten Seelenleben des Kindes zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife; dieses Seelenleben wird anders. Es gliedert sich eine andere Art von Gedächtnishaftem der Seele ein. Das Kind richtet sich in anderer Weise zu seiner Umgebung. Und wenn wir geistig, spirituell, nicht bloß physisch zu beobachten verstehen, dann stellt sich die Sache so dar, daß wir uns sagen müssen: Dasjenige, was wir in der Seele des Kindes vom ungefähr siebenten bis vierzehnten Jahre sehen, das war vorher in seinem physischen Organismus, war also noch eine Betätigung, die zusammenhängt, die ein einzelnes Glied hat in dem Zahnwechsel, die aber viele Vorgänge in dem menschlichen Organismus bewirkt, und die nunmehr mit dem siebenten Jahre aufhört in physischer Weise tätig zu sein und beginnt, seelisch tätig zu sein. Wir können also sagen: Willst du dasjenige beurteilen, was als besondere Kräfte im Seelischen des Kindes zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife wirkt, so mußt du hinschauen auf das, was physisch in dem Kinde vorgeht von seiner Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel. Da arbeiten die seelischen Kräfte, die dann noch im physischen Organismus sich als seelisch-geistig offenbaren. Und die Folge davon ist, daß das Kind, wenn wir es richtig betrachten — am meisten solange es noch ein Säugling ist, aber auch noch in einer gewissen Weise bis zum Zahnwechsel hin -, in einer feineren, nicht in einer groben Art ganz Sinnesorgan ist. In einer feineren Art, möchte ich sagen, ist das Kind ganz eine Art von tastendem Auge. Wie das Auge, indem es die Gegenstände um sich her sieht, innerlich nachbildet dasjenige, was draußen ist, so daB der Mensch ein innerliches Bild von dem hat, was die Gegenstände draußen darstellen, wie das Auge ein innerliches Bild hat, so hat das Kind in seinem frühesten Lebensabschnitte zwar kein Sehbild, aber ein anderes Wahrnehmungsbild. Es ist ganz Sinnesorgan, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf. Ich möchte das anschaulich so aussprechen: Nehmen wir den Säugling. Wir als erwachsene Menschen haben unseren Geschmack auf der Zunge und im Gaumen, und das Kind - das zeigt uns die spirituelle Wissenschaft, von der ich Ihnen hier in diesen Tagen gesprochen habe — hat einen Anflug von Geschmack durch den ganzen Organismus hindurch: es ist ganz Geschmacksorgan. Es ist auch noch ganz Geruchsorgan, auch ganz in einer gewissen innerlichen Beziehung innerliches Tastorgan. Also es hat seine ganze Organisation eine sinnesgemäße Natur, und diese sinnesgemäße Natur strahlt im ganzen Organismus des Kindes aus. Dadurch ist das Kind bis zum siebenten Jahre dazu veranlagt, alles dasjenige, was in seiner Umgebung vorgeht, innerlich nachzubilden und sich selber danach zu entfalten. Wer mit demjenigen Sinne, der feiner organisiert wird, wenn man zugleich geisteswissenschaftlich erkennen kann, ein Kind betrachtet, wie es jede Geste, die derjenige, der in seiner Umgebung ist, macht, auf sich bezieht, innerlich nachbildet und sie selbst darstellen will, wie das Kind so ganz in dem lebt, was die Menschen seiner Umgebung tun, der sieht, wie das Kind ein nachahmendes Wesen bis zum Zahnwechsel ist. Und aus dieser Nachahmung geht ja dasjenige hervor, was die wesentlichste Gabe ist für das erste Lebensalter des Kindes. Es geht die menschliche Sprache hervor, die ganz allein darauf beruht, daß das Kind in das sich hineinlebt, was die Menschen seiner Umgebung sind und tun, und durch Nachahmung, indem es innerlich sich anpaßt an das, was in seiner Umgebung geschieht, die Sprache ausbildet. Wir können daher, wenn wir als Erzieher neben dem kleinen Kinde in seiner ersten Lebensepoche stehen, nicht anders, als mit diesem nachahmenden Prinzip als dem allerwichtigsten in der Erziehung rechnen. Und man muß sich dann sagen: Wir können das ganz kleine Kind nur dadurch erziehen, daß wir in seiner Umgebung jene Tätigkeiten und Vorgänge hervorrufen, die das Kind nachmachen soll, damit es stark an Geist, Seele und Leib werde. Denn das, was sich da nicht nur seinem Geist und seiner Seele, sondern auch seinem Leibe einpflanzt, wie sich innerlich die Organe verstärken, das bleibt als eine Konstitution das ganze Leben hindurch. Wie ich mich neben einem Kinde von vier Jahren benehme, daran hat das Kind bis in sein sechzigstes Jahr hinauf in seinem Leben zu tragen; so daß es mein Verhalten neben ihm im spätesten Lebensalter als sein Schicksal empfindet.
Wir können dies etwa durch ein solches Beispiel erörtern: es kommen zu einem, wenn man mit solchen Dingen zu tun hat, Menschen, die sagen einem zum Beispiel das Folgende: Ach, mein Kind war immer ein braves Kind, es hat niemals etwas Unrechtes getan, und nun verfällt mir mein Kind in ein furchtbares Unrecht! — Frägt man genauer nach, was geschehen sei, erfährt man zum Beispiel: Ja, es hat der Mutter Geld gestohlen. - Wenn man in diesen Dingen bewandert ist, frägt man zunächst: Ja, wie alt ist das Kind? - Fünf Jahre! — Es ist also in erster Linie in ihm noch das nachahmende Prinzip in Tätigkeit. Man bekommt heraus: das Kind hat jeden Tag gesehen, daß die Mutter aus dem Schrank Geld nimmt; das ahmt es nach, hat überhaupt noch nicht irgendwie einen Impuls von Gut und Böse, sondern es hat nur den Impuls, dasjenige zu tun, was in seiner Umgebung getan wird. Wenn wir glauben, daß man mit Geboten von Gutem und Bösem an dem Kinde irgend etwas machen könne, geben wir uns der stärksten Illusion hin. Durch das, wodurch wir erziehen können, bewirken wir nur etwas, wenn wir vor das Kind hinstellen das Vorbild, das es nachahmen kann. Das geht bis in die Gedanken hinein. Oh, zwischen demjenigen, der erziehen soll, und dem Kinde, ist ein feiner, innerlicher geistiger Zusammenhang! Und wir sollten uns selbst in der Nähe des Kindes befleiRigen, nur diejenigen Gedanken und Empfindungen zu haben, welche auch von dem Kinde innerlich als Gedanken und Empfindungen nachgeahmt werden können. Denn, sehen Sie, es ist eben das Kind seelisch ganz Sinn, und es nimmt in den feinsten Regungen, von denen sich unsere Erwachsenensinne gar nichts träumen lassen, dasjenige wahr, was in seiner Umgebung vorgeht.
Indem das Kind den Zahnwechsel durchgemacht hat, sind diejenigen Kräfte, die vorher tief in seinem Organismus drinnen sitzen, seelische Kräfte geworden. Nun kann es, während es früher hingegeben war seiner Umgebung, auch als Seele der Seele gegenüberstehen, in einer solchen Empfindung, die jetzt gegenüber dem bloßen Nachahmen ein Sich-Fügen der selbstverständlichen Autorität ist. Wir haben wirklich dieses, daß wir in den ersten Kindesjahren bis zum Zahnwechsel so sind, daß wir uns ganz verbinden möchten mit der Umgebung und uns ganz hingeben möchten an die Umgebung. Das ist, ich möchte sagen, das physische Gegenbild der religiösen Empfindung. Die religiöse Empfindung, die gibt sich im Geiste hin an den Geist; das Kind gibt sich mit seinem Körper hin seiner physischen Umgebung. Es ist das physische Korrelat, das physische Gegenbild des Religiösen.
Wenn das Kind dann das siebente Jahr überschritten hat, dann gibt es sich nicht mit seinem Körper hin seiner physischen Umgebung, sondern mit seiner Seele der Seele. Der Lehrer tritt an seine Seite, und es ist notwendig für das Kind, daß es den Lehrer ansieht als eine Quelle alles dessen, was für es Gut und Böse ist, daß es jetzt ebensoviel gibt auf das, was der Lehrer sagt und an ihm heranerzieht, wie es früher auf die Geste, auf die äußere Betätigung in der Umgebung gegeben hat. Und jetzt tritt nun bei dem Kinde zwischen dem siebenten und vierzehnten Jahre ungefähr der Drang auf, sich einer selbstverständlichen Autorität hinzugeben, so daß das Kind werden will, wie diese Autorität ist. Die Liebe zu dieser selbstverständlichen Autorität, das Hinhorchen auf sie, das ist jetzt ebenso Prinzip, wie es früher die Nachahmung war.
Wer, wie ich, in dem Beginn der neunziger Jahre eine «Philosophie der Freiheit» geschrieben hat, dem werden Sie nicht zutrauen, daß er hier für irgendein unberechtigtes Autoritätsprinzip eintritt. Was ich meine, ist: daß es wie ein Naturgesetz im menschlichen Leben ist, wenn zwischen dem siebenten und vierzehnten Jahre ungefähr der Mensch dem Lehrenden, dem Erziehenden so gegenüberstehen muß, daß für ihn nicht intellektuell gilt: das ist gut, das ist wahr, das ist böse, das ist falsch oder häßlich, sondern daß für ihn gilt: das ist gut, weil der Lehrer, weil der Erzieher es für gut findet; das ist schön, weil der Erzieher es schön findet. Alle Weltengeheimnisse müssen auf dem Umwege des geliebten Lehrers oder Erziehers an das Kind herankommen. Das ist das Prinzip der menschlichen Entwickelung ungefähr zwischen dem siebenten und dem vierzehnten Jahre. So daß wir sagen können, das Kind ist durchdrungen in seiner ersten Lebensepoche wie von einem ins Physische umgesetzten religiösen Hingegebensein an die Umgebung. Das Kind ist durchdrungen von seinem Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife von einem ästhetischen Auffassen der Umgebung, einem ästhetischen, von Liebe durchdrungenen Auffassen der Umgebung. Es verlangt, daß ihm gefalle dasjenige, was ihm der Lehrer, der Erzieher gegenüberstellt und daß ihm mißfalle das, was dieser von ihm abhalten will. In die innere Anschauung soll das hineingehen, was erzieherisch wirken soll in diesem Lebensalter. So müssen wir sagen: Vorbild muß der Lehrer und Erzieher sein für die erste Lebensepoche, Autorität im edelsten Sinne, selbstverständliche Autorität, die er durch sein Wesen, durch seinen Charakter sein kann, soll er sein in der zweiten Lebensepoche. Dann tragen wir als Lehrer schon das in uns, wodurch sich das Kind neben uns, man möchte schon sagen, in der richtigen Weise selbst erzieht. Das Wichtige in der Selbsterziehung ist die moralische Erziehung. Von der werde ich gleich nachher zu sprechen beginnen, wenn der erste Teil übersetzt sein wird.
Wenn man sagen kann, daß das Kind bis zu seinem siebenten Jahr ganz Sinnesorgan ist, so muß man es nach dem Zahnwechsel, nach dem siebenten Jahre so ansehen, daß das Prinzip der sinnlichen Auffassung mehr an die Oberfläche der Menschenorganisation getreten ist und sich zurückgezogen hat von dem Inneren. Aber es ist bei dem Kinde noch so, daß Sinneseindrücke noch nicht in die Sinnesorgane hinein ordnend, regulierend eingreifen können. Und so sehen wir, daß das Kind vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife das an sich hat, daß es seiner gesamten Sinnesorganisation seelisch hingegeben sein will, daß es aber noch nicht von innen heraus mit dem Willen teilnimmt an dieser Sinnesorganisation. Das Teilnehmen von innen an der Sinnesorganisation macht intellektuelle Menschen. Solche intellektuelle Menschen werden wir erst nach der Geschlechtsreife. Eigentlich sind wir erst dann in der richtigen Weise dazu veranlagt, die Welt nach dem Intellekt zu beurteilen. Denn intellektuell beurteilen heißt, persönlich, aus der inneren Freiheit heraus urteilen. Das eignen wir uns erst an, wenn wir die Epoche der Geschlechtsreife angetreten haben. Das aber macht notwendig, daß wir das Kind im schulpflichtigen
\lter, also vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, nicht in intellektualistischer Weise erziehen, daß wir es auch nicht moralisch-intellektuell erziehen. Das Kind will in den ersten sieben Lebensjahren in der äußeren sinnlichen Wirklichkeit das vor sich haben, was es nachahmen kann. Das Kind will dann nach dem siebenten Jahre von seiner Erzieherautorität hören, was es tun kann und was es nicht tun kann, was es für wahr halten soll, oder nicht für wahr halten soll, für unrecht und so weiter.
Nun aber beginnt so zwischen dem neunten und zehnten Jahre sich etwas außerordentlich Wichtiges in dem Kinde zu regen. Der Erzieher, der wirklich ein Menschenbeobachter ist, weiß, daß das Kind irgendeinmal zwischen dem neunten und zehnten Jahre ganz besonders stark etwas braucht. Das Kind hat zwar nicht intellektualistische Zweifel, aber es hat eine innerliche Unruhe, es hat etwas von dem, was eine innerliche Frage, möchte ich sagen, in kindlicher Art an das Schicksal ist, was es nicht aussprechen kann, was es auch noch nicht auszusprechen braucht; aber es empfindet es halbtraumhaft, halb unbewußt. Man soll nur einmal mit dem richtigen Erzieherblicke gesehen haben, wie die Kinder gerade an dieses Lebensalter herankommen. Sie wissen genau: von dem Erzieher, zu dem sie mit Liebe hinaufschauen, wollen sie etwas ganz Besonderes. Man kann ihnen gewöhnlich das auch nicht so beantworten, daß man ihnen eine intellektualistische Frage beantwortet. Es handelt sich vielmehr darum, daß sich gerade in diesem Lebensalter ein besonders intensives und intimes Vertrauensverhältnis herausbilde, daß man in dem Kinde die Meinung hervorrufe: man spricht in diesem Lebensalter ganz besonders viel zu ihm, man ist ganz besonders lieb zu ihm. In diesem Empfangen der Liebe, in diesem Vertrauenfassen zu dem Erzieher, liegt die Beantwortung einer kindlichen Lebensfrage von der allergrößten Bedeutung. Denn, worinnen besteht diese Lebensfrage? — Wie gesagt, das Kind stellt sie nicht mit dem Verstand, es stellt sie mit dem Gefühl, mit dem ganzen unterbewußten Menschen. Aber wir können sie formulieren und es formuliert nicht. Da müssen wir sagen: bis zu diesem Lebensalter hat das Kind naiv, ohne weiteres die Autorität des geliebten Erziehers hingenommen. Jetzt ist in ihm das Bedürfnis erwacht: Gut und Böse noch in einer neuen Weise zu empfinden, so wie wenn sie in der Welt als Kräfte vorhanden wären. Bisher schaute es gewissermaßen auf zum Erzieher; jetzt möchte es durch den Erzieher durchschauen und sich sagen können: dieser Erzieher ist nicht nur der Mensch, der da sagt, es ist etwas gut oder böse, sondern dieser Erzieher sagt es, weil er ein Geistesbote ist, ein Gottesbote, er weiß es aus höheren Welten. — Wie gesagt, das Kind sagt es sich nicht durch den Verstand, aber es fühlt das. Und seine besondere Frage, die auch gefühlsmäßig auftaucht, die sagt einem: das und das eignet sich für dieses Kind. So daß sich wirklich zeigt: es wurzelt in einem 'Tieferen das, wovon man sagt, es sei gut oder böse, wahr oder falsch. Dann faßt das Kind neues Vertrauen.
Das ist aber auch der Zeitpunkt, wo man mit der moralischen Erziehung zu etwas anderem übergehen kann als zu der bloßen Nachahmung, oder daß wir sagen, etwas sei gut oder böse. Es ist dieser Zeitpunkt zwischen dem neunten und zehnten Jahr derjenige, wo man anfangen kann, dem Kinde in bildhafter Weise — denn es ist ganz seinen Sinnen, ohne den Intellekt hingegeben - das Moralische vorzuführen. Man muß überhaupt in dem ganzen schulpflichtigen Alter zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife das Kind bildhaft erziehen, durch Bilder erziehen, durch Bilder für alle Sinne. Denn wenn es auch nicht mehr ganz Sinn ist, so lebt es doch in seinen Sinnen, die sich jetzt an seiner Körperoberfläche offenbaren. Wie man das Kind von sieben oder sechs Jahren an im allgemeinen durch Lesen oder Schreiben zu erziehen hat, das werde ich morgen in dem Abendvortrag im besonderen auszuführen haben. Jetzt möchte ich nur eingehen auf die moralische Seite der Erziehung.
Wenn das Kind angelangt ist bei diesem Zeitpunkt zwischen dem neunten und zehnten Lebensjahre, dann dürfen wir beginnen, ihm vorzuführen Bilder, die seine Phantasie vor allen Dingen anregen, Bilder von guten Menschen, Bilder von solchen Menschen, die in ihm ein Gefühl, eine Sympathie mit dem, was diese Menschen tun, hervorrufen. Merken Sie wohl, ich sage nicht, man soll dem Kinde sittliche Gebote vordozieren; ich sage nicht, man soll mit dem moralischen Urteil an den Intellekt herangehen. — Man soll an das Ästhetische, an die Phantasie herangehen. Man soll ein Gefallen oder Mißfallen auch an dem Guten oder dem Schlimmen, an dem Rechten oder Unrechten wecken, an dem Erhabenen, an der sittlichen Tat, oder auch an dem in der Welt herbeigeführten Ausgleich für unrichtige Handlungen. Hat man vorher sich selber hinzustellen gehabt vor das Kind, um ein sittlicher Regulator zu sein, so hat man jetzt Bilder hinzuzufügen, Bilder, die nun nicht mehr auf etwas anderes wirken als auf die in dem Sinnenwesen sich auslebende Phantasie. So soll das Kind zunächst bis zur Geschlechtsreife hin aufnehmen die Moralität als Gefühl. Es soll fest werden in dem Gefühlsurteil: Das ist etwas, womit ich Sympathie habe, das Gute; das ist etwas, wogegen ich Antipathie habe, das Böse. - Sympathien und Antipathien, Gefühlsurteile, sollen die Grundlage des Moralischen ausmachen.
Wenn man so einsieht, wie ich es dargelegt habe, daß der menschliche Zeitleib ein Organismus ist, in dem alles zusammenhängt, dann wird man sich sagen: es kommt darauf an, daß man in der rechten Zeit das Rechte tut für das Kind. Sie können eine Pflanze nicht so wachsen lassen, daß sie gleich Blüte wird. Das Zur-Blüte-Werden, das muß später geschehen. Sie müssen die Pflanze zuerst in der Wurzel pflegen. Wenn Sie die Wurzel zur Blüte machen wollten, würden Sie einen Unsinn machen. Wenn Sie dem Kinde zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife intellektualistisch formulierte Moralurteile beibringen wollten, so wäre das so, wie wenn Sie die Pflanzenwurzel zur Blüte machen wollten. Sie müssen zuerst den Keim, die Wurzel pflegen; das ist: die Moralität im Gefühl. Wenn das Kind die Moralität im Gefühl gepflegt hat, dann wird es nach der Geschlechtsreife erwachen zur Intelligenz, und dann setzt es selber dasjenige, was es im Gefühl gehabt hat zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife, durch die Geschlechtsreife durch die innere Entwickelung fort. Dann kann in ihm selber erwachen das moralische, intellektuelle Urteil. Und das ist etwas so Wichtiges für das Leben, daß alle Moralerziehung darauf fundiert werden muß! Wie Sie eben nicht die Pflanzenwurzel zur Blüte machen können, sondern warten müssen, bis sich die Wurzel entfaltet und die Pflanze zuletzt zur Blüte kommt, sich zur Blüte entfaltet, so müssen Sie gewissermaßen die moralische Wurzel pflegen in dem Gefühlsurteil, in der Sympathie für das Moralische. Und dann müssen Sie den Menschen durch die eigene Kraft des menschlichen Wesens selber sein Gefühl in den Intellekt hineintragen lassen. Dann hat er die tiefe innere Befriedigung darüber, daß in ihm nicht im späteren Leben bloß Erinnerungen leben an das, was einem die Erzieher gesagt haben, daß es richtig oder unrichtig im Moralischen sei, sondern es lebt mit innerer Freudigkeit, mit innerer Kraft das ganze seelische Leben erfüllend so, daß es selber zum moralischen Urteil in der richtigen Zeit in Freiheit erwacht ist. Daß man das Kind nicht sklavenmäßig erzieht zu irgendeiner moralischen Richtung, sondern daß man die moralische Richtung vorbereitet, so daß sie aus dem freiwachsenden Seelenwesen des Menschen selber aufsprießt, das rüstet den Menschen zugleich nicht nur mit moralischem Urteil, sondern mit moralischer Kraft aus. Und das ist es, was uns immer wieder und wieder darauf hinweist, wenn wir eine spirituelle Grundlage der Erziehung anstreben, daß wir alles in der richtigen Weise und Zeit an den werdenden Menschen heranbringen.
Nun werden Sie mich fragen: Ja, wenn ich das Kind so erziehen soll, daß ich sein moralisch-fühlendes Urteil zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife einpflanze, und nicht so, daß ich ihm Gebote gebe, an seinen Intellekt appelliere, an was soll ich dann appellieren? — Ja, jenes selbstverständliche Autoritätsverhältnis, das führt zu Imponderabilien zwischen dem Erzieher und dem Kinde! Das will ich nun durch ein Beispiel veranschaulichen. Ich kann bildhaft dem Kinde beibringen wollen etwas über die Unsterblichkeit des menschlichen Seelenwesens; bildhaft beibringen, nicht durch Wissenschaftliches. Wissenschaft ist eigentlich für das Kind im Grunde genommen bis zur Geschlechtsreife nicht da. Ich muß Natur und Geist in eins verweben, und ich sage zu dem Kinde vielleicht etwas, was ich in ein künstlerisches Bild forme: Sieh einmal, die Schmetterlingspuppe ist da; der Schmetterling kriecht aus der Puppe heraus. Wie der Schmetterling aus der Puppe auskriecht, so die Seele aus dem menschlichen Leibe, wenn der menschliche Leib dem Tode verfällt. - Ich rege dadurch seine Phantasie an, ich bringe ein lebendiges moralisches Bild vor seine Seele. Das kann ich in zweifacher Weise bringen. Ich kann sagen: Ich bin also ein gereifter Erzieher, furchtbar gescheit; das Kind ist klein, furchtbar dumm, und weil sich das Kind noch nicht zu meiner Höhe erhoben hat, so forme ich für es ein Bild. Das Bild gestalte ich so: ich weiß, das hat für mich keinen Wert, aber ich forme es für das Kind. Wenn ich mir dieses sage und mit dieser Gesinnung dem Kinde das Bild beibringen will: es wirkt nicht in der Seele, es geht wieder ebenso heraus, wie es hineingegangen ist; denn es wirken Imponderabilien zwischen dem Erzieher und dem Kinde. — Wenn ich aber so sage: Ich bin eigentlich nicht viel klüger als das Kind -, oder vielleicht: Das Kind ist im Unterbewußten viel klüger als ich -, wenn ich für das Kind Ehrfurcht habe, und mir in bezug auf dieses Bild sage: Ja, das Bild bilde ich gar nicht selber, sondern die Natur selbst hat in dem auskriechenden Schmetterling das Bild vor uns hingestellt, ich glaube mit derselben Intensität an dieses Bild, wie das Kind glauben soll —, wenn ich diese Stärke der eigenen Glaubenskraft in mir habe, dann sitzt das Bild in der Seele des Kindes, dann wirken diejenigen Dinge, die nicht in der groben Welt liegen, sondern die in der feineren Welt zwischen dem Erzieher und dem Kinde leben. Und das, was so zwischen dem Erzieher und dem Kinde sich abspielt an Imponderabilien, das ersetzt reichlich all das, was an intellektueller Lehre vom Lehrer auf das Kind übergehen könnte! Das Kind erhält auf diese Weise Gelegenheit, sich frei neben dem Lehrer zu entwickeln. Der Lehrer sagt sich: ich lebe in der Umgebung des Kindes, muß diejenigen Gelegenheiten herbeiführen, durch die sich das Kind möglichst selbst erzieht. Aber dann muß ich auch in dieser Weise neben dem Kinde stehen, daß ich mich nicht ungeheuer erhaben fühle, sondern nur als ein Mensch, der ein paar Jahre älter ist. Man wird ja nicht immer - hier nur in relativer Weise anwendbar - gescheiter; also man braucht sich nicht immer über das Kind zu erheben, sondern man soll nur ein Helfer der Entwickelung des Kindes sein. Wenn man die Pflanze als Gärtner pflegen soll, so schiebt man ja auch nicht den Saftstrom, der von der Wurzel nach der Blüte geht, sondern man bereitet die Umgebung ringsumher so zu, daß der Saftstrom sich entfalten kann. So selbstlos muß man sein als Erzieher, daß sich die inneren Kräfte des Kindes entfalten können, dann wird man ein guter Erzieher, und dann wird das Kind in der richtigen Weise gedeihen können.
Wenn in einer solchen Weise das Moralische in dem Menschen entwickelt wird, dann bildet sich, so wie bei der Pflanze, ein Teil nach dem anderen aus. Zunächst das Moralische genau so, wie es der menschlichen Natur entspricht, indem es sich offenbart im nachahmenden menschlichen Organismus. Da befestigt es sich gewissermaßen in der geschilderten Weise, damit der Mensch später im Leben auch die nötige innere, auch durch den physischen Organismus gehaltene Kraft hat, um im Moralischen sicher zu sein, sonst kann er vielleicht durch den physischen Organismus erlahmen, schwach werden und ein gutes moralisches Urteil haben, aber ihm nicht folgen können. Wenn das Vorbild in der ersten kindlichen Lebensepoche ein stark und intensiv wirkendes war, bildet sich moralische Festigkeit aus. Wenn vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife die Sympathie- und Antipathiekräfte für das Gute und gegen das Böse in der richtigen Weise den Menschen ergriffen haben, dann hat auch später der Mensch an dem Moralischen die richtige Erhebung gegenüber den und jenen Depressionen, die ihn davon abhalten, das zu tun, was für das Moralische notwendig ist. In seinem Organismus hat er als nachahmendes Wesen dasjenige ausgebildet, was für seine Seele notwendig ist, auf die Art ausgebildet, wie sein Moralgefühl, seine Empfindung, seine Sympathie und Antipathie gepflegt worden sind in der zweiten menschlichen Lebensepoche. Und in der dritten Lebensepoche erwacht in der freien menschlichen Entwickelung, an dem Leben orientiert für den Geist: das moralische Urteilen im Intellekt, so wie die Pflanze zur Blüte und zur Frucht erwacht an dem Sonnenlichte. Im Geiste setzt sich das Moralische nur dann richtig fest, wenn das, was in Körper und Seele für das Moralische vorbereitet ist, an dem Leben erwacht, frei, wie frei erwacht die Blüte und die Frucht der Pflanze an dem Sonnenlicht.
Dann aber, wenn in dem Menschen das Moralische also entwickelt wird, so daß der Mensch gewissermaßen selbst in seiner inneren Freiheit geachtet wird, dann verbindet sich mit dem Menscheninneren der moralische Impuls so, daß der Mensch wirklich empfinden kann: das ist etwas, was zu ihm gehört. Und er fühlt sich dann in seinen moralischen Kräften, seinem moralischen Wirken so, wie er sich körperlich in dem Zirkulieren seines Blutes in seinen Wachstumskräften fühlt. Wie er das natürliche Leben so zu ihm gehörig betrachten muß, daß es seinen ganzen Körper bis an die Oberfläche der Haut durchpulst und durchkraftet, so fühlt er, weil er es in der richtigen Weise an sich selber entwickelt hat, das Moralische.
Und was kommt dann? Dann kommt es über den Menschen, daß er sich sagt: Bin ich nicht moralisch, so Din ich verstümmelt. — Wie man sich dem Physischen gegenüber sagt: Wenn mir ein Glied fehlt, bin ich verstümmelt -, so lernt man sich sagen durch die angedeutete moralische Entwickelung: Wenn ich nicht mich mit Moralität ausfülle, wenn ich nicht mein äußeres Handeln durch Moralität durchzogen sein lasse, bin ich ein verstümmelter Mensch.
Das, bei einer sonst gut geleiteten Erziehung, als ein Urteil im Menschen begründen, daß er ein verstümmelter Mensch ist, wenn er nicht moralisch ist, das ist der stärkste moralische Antrieb, der im Menschen überhaupt entwickelt werden kann. Denn man braucht den Menschen nur in der rechten Weise zu entwickeln, dann will er ein ganzer Mensch sein. Dann aber, wenn man ihn so entwickelt, daß er ein ganzer Mensch sein will, dann entwickelt er ganz von selber, gerade durch ein solches Herankommen des Moralischen an sich selber, auch die innerliche Hinneigung zum Geistigen im Menschen. Und dann sieht er dasjenige, was die Welt als das Gute durchflutet, ebenso an als in ihm wirksam, wie er ansieht die Naturkräfte als in seinem Körper wirksam. Dann versteht er, wenn man ihm etwa bildhaft sagen will: Ja, da liegt ein Hufeisen, ein als Hufeisen gestaltetes Eisen. Da kommt einer und sagt: Dieses Hufeisen kann man als Magnet verwenden, denn es hat innere Kräfte! - Dann kommt aber ein anderer, der sagt: Ach was, Eisen ist Eisen, da gebe ich nichts darauf; ich verwende dieses Hufeisen zum Beschlagen meines Pferdes. — Ja, sehen Sie, so etwa wie der letztere, ist derjenige, der nicht durch die verschiedenen Entwickelungsgänge des Lebens dazu kommen kann, im ganzen Menschen das Geistige des Lebens zu sehen. Derjenige von den beiden, der nur auf das Äußerliche blickt, nicht auf das, was spirituell im Menschen waltet und webt, der ist so, daß er ein wie ein Hufeisen gestaltetes Magneteisen eben zum Pferdebeschlagen verwendet. Das heißt, man erzieht den Menschen nicht für den richtigen Blick im Leben und nicht zur Entfaltung der richtigen Kräfte im Leben. Das wird, wenn es im spirituellen Sinne erfaßt, gefühlt und in den Willen übergeführt ist, der stärkste Antrieb auch im Sozialen sein.
Nun, wir stehen heute unter dem Zeichen der sozialen Frage. Diese soziale Frage, sie hat gewiß ihre volle Berechtigung, und ich wäre ja froh, wenn ich mehr über sie sagen könnte, allein meine Zeit zu sprechen ist zu Ende. Kurz nur noch will ich sagen: diese soziale Frage, sie hat außerordentlich viele Seiten, und vieles wird notwendig, um allen Einzelheiten dieser sozialen Frage so nahe zu kommen, daß dasjenige entstehe, was ein Mensch, der heute unbefangen ist, dennoch für die Menschenzukunft an einer Umformung des sozialen Lebens ersehnen muß. Aber alles das, was wir etwa erdenken und auch praktisch einführen können als äußere Institutionen, was wir sonst ausdenken in den vielen Schemen, die über das soziale Leben heute existieren, es erscheint dem, der das Moralische im Lichte des Spirituellen sieht, so, daß er sagt: Die soziale Frage zu behandeln ohne die moralische Frage, ist, wie wenn man ein Zimmer ohne Licht hätte und die Gegenstände darin suchen sollte, ohne daß Licht drinnen ist.
Die soziale Frage kann erst durch eine wirkliche Erfassung der moralischen Frage in das richtige Beurteilungsfeld gerückt werden. Wer das Leben in seinem ganzen Zusammenhange betrachtet, der wird sich sagen müssen: Die moralische Frage ist wie das Licht, welches das soziale Leben beleuchten muß, wenn die soziale Frage in einem menschlich-wahren Sinn zu dem kommen soll, was man ein Religiöses nennt. Daher ist es vor allen Dingen auch in sozialer Beziehung notwendig, daß der Mensch heute einen Standpunkt gewinne zur moralischen Frage. Und ich denke, es ist vielleicht möglich gewesen zu zeigen, daß dasjenige, was ich hier eine spirituelle Wissenschaft, eine anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft nenne, auch in diesem Sinne ehrlich an die großen Zeitenfragen der Gegenwart herantritt, und daß sie es ernst mit der moralischen Frage und mit der Heran-Erziehung des moralischen Menschen meint.
Moral Education from the Point of View of Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, as I have taken the liberty of characterizing it here in the last two days, does not merely want to be a theoretical view through which man can overcome the unpleasant, painful and unhappy aspects of life and take refuge in a mystical world, but it wants to be something that is able to intervene in the practical life of man in particular. It must become a practical matter of existence for the reason that the spiritual knowledge of which I spoke yesterday and the day before yesterday should lead to a real penetration, to a real view of the spiritual world, which not only leads a separate existence for itself, but which intervenes in all material events. When we face a human being in life we are not only dealing with what our eyes can perceive about him, what our faculty of speech is able to understand through his speech, what we can perhaps otherwise receive in terms of utterances, revelations of his nature through ordinary consciousness, but we are dealing with a spiritual, with a spiritual being that lives in him, with such a spiritual, with such a supersensible being that continually intervenes in his material organization.
With the knowledge we acquire through our ordinary sensory perception and through the intellect, which is bound to this sensory perception, we can never understand much of the world. We are under the illusion that one day, when science, as they say, will be more perfect, we will understand more of the world through intelligence, sensory observation and experiment than we do at present. But anyone who can judge the whole relationship of man to the world as it emerges from the two lectures I was allowed to give here knows that one can only comprehend the mineral kingdom with sense perception and with the intellect. Even when we are dealing with the plant kingdom, we must be aware that something much more subtle intervenes lawfully and powerfully from the universe into the plant world than what the intellect and senses can comprehend. This is even more the case with the animal world, and most of all with man. For plants - these least of all -, animals and men, are also in their physical organization quite such that that which works in them as forces in the material works like an ideal magic. And anyone who believes that he can follow any process that he has observed in the laboratory in the same way in the animal or in the human organism is very much mistaken. For with the animal and human organism the purely physical process is captured in an ideal magic. And within man we understand something when we see through this ideal magic, when we are able to judge man in such a way that we see through his material processes, as it were, to see how the spiritual is constantly active in him.
The insight into such spiritual magic can only come to man through those realizations of which I spoke here yesterday and the day before yesterday. I have been able to show that a first stage of this realization shows man that he has a relationship to the world not only in the present moment, but that he can take himself back to that age of life which he has passed through since his earthly birth. One can, I said, take oneself back to the time when one was eighteen, fifteen years old, and one experiences what one experienced then not only in the shadowy memory, one experiences it in such a way that one is in it with intensity and strength, as one was in it at that time. You become fifteen, twelve years old again and so on. You go through this spiritual metamorphosis. This enables us to perceive a second organism in the human being, a subtle organism, which can be called etheric because it has no weight like the spatial body, a subtler organism. But this finer organism is a time organism. All of a sudden, in an overall view, one has everything in oneself that constitutes this etheric organism as an event in time. But one knows that one nevertheless has an organism in itself, and one learns to recognize that the human being is in this finer time organism in the same way as he is otherwise in the space organism.
For example, if one realizes that a person suffers from, say, a certain headache, one must be able to say to oneself that one must perhaps effect the healing from some inner organ of the body, that one can certainly not effect the healing merely towards the head, but towards an organ that lies far away from the head. In the spatial organism that we carry with us, everything is connected. But it is the same with the etheric organism of time, which is particularly active in the earliest childhood of the human being, but which is mobile throughout life and in which are the forces that work, for example, in the following way: Suppose someone, at the age of thirty-five, has the opportunity to face a new life situation; if he is now able to cope with this life situation, so that he is in a position to do the right thing in this life situation, he can become aware that once, perhaps as a twelve-year-old, as an eight-year-old child, he has learned the most important of what offers him the opportunity to now quickly find his way into this situation. And a certain joy radiates in the thirty-fifth year from that which has come to the child in the eighth or twelfth year through the educator, through the teacher, because that which takes place in the human etheric body in the eighth or tenth year through the educator, through the teaching, has the same effect as an organ that lies far away from the head has on the healing of the head when we heal it. Thus what is experienced in the sixth or twelfth year continues to have an effect in the thirty-fifth year and later and produces a joyful mood or a depression. The whole constitution of a person's life, even in the latest state of adulthood, is dependent on what the educator forms in the etheric body of the person, just as one organ of the human spatial body is dependent on the other. If one considers this, then one must say to oneself: that knowledge which comes out of a view of how this etheric body develops, how its individual facts are connected, this knowledge can only give the right basis for the educational treatment of the human being. And if one thinks through what I have just said in the right way, then one says to oneself: Yes, just as the painter or other artist must learn the technique for his art, so it is necessary for the educator, for the teacher, to acquire a technique of education, now meant in the most ideal sense. Just as the painter must observe in his own way - not like the layman - the forms, just as he must observe the colors and their harmonies or their dissonances, and just as he must gain from his observation that which then enters into the handling of the colors, into the handling of the pencil, just as he must acquire something that works through his whole human being, just as he must acquire something which works through his whole being and which is based on the possibility that he can observe correctly, so the educator, the teacher must be able to utilize that which results from the observation of that which works spiritually in man and which makes his whole course of life into an organic unity. For education cannot be a science, education must be an art. In art one must acquire: firstly, the special gift of observation; secondly, one must acquire the handling of that which one has to do with the material in continual observation, in continual struggle. Thus spiritual science, as it is meant here, anthroposophical spiritual science, is that which can provide the basis for a real, true art of education.
But it is also this in another respect: if education is to be truly powerful, it must nurture in the right way that which wants to develop in man from the depths of his being as childhood. This art of education must be quite capable of judging the child in such a way that it appears to him as if it had been handed over to him by a divine moral mission. Only that which elevates us morally as educators or teachers, that which permeates our educational actions like a religious devotion, provides the strength through which we are able to work alongside the child in such a way that all the talents that lie within him are unfolded out of him. In other words, all education and teaching must itself be a moral act, must spring from moral impulses. And these moral impulses must be applied to the kind of knowledge and observation of man that I have just characterized.
If we pay attention to this, then we can see how man has certain stages in his life in a much clearer way than is usually thought. For example, we usually see in an outward way that a person gets his second teeth when he is about seven years old. One sometimes sees what physical conditions accompany this change of teeth, but one does not look more closely at what transformation takes place with the human being during this change of teeth. Those who are able to judge correctly what a person was like before his seventh year of life and what he is like afterwards, will see that after this seventh year of life, forces develop from the depths of the human being that were previously hidden deep within the organism. If we look at the matter properly, then we must say the following: the change of teeth is not just a one-off, sudden event in human life. The change of teeth, which occurs in the seventh year of life and is not repeated, is an event that lasts the whole of life from the time the first teeth appear until the change of teeth. Throughout this time, the forces that finally push the second teeth out of the child are pushing and driving the human organism. And in the change of teeth there is only a conclusion to what is at work in the entire first phase of the child's life. Now, the child does not teethe again in its life. What does that mean? It means that the child has developed forces in its physical organism up to the age of seven that it needs until it has got its second teeth, which it then no longer needs for its physical organism because it is not subject to another change of teeth. What becomes of these powers?
We recognize these forces again, if we can look at the human being with a supersensible insight, in the changed soul life of the child between the change of teeth and sexual maturity; this soul life becomes different. A different kind of memory is incorporated into the soul. The child relates to its environment in a different way. And if we know how to observe mentally, spiritually, not merely physically, then the matter presents itself in such a way that we must say to ourselves: That which we see in the child's soul from about the age of seven to fourteen was previously in his physical organism, was therefore still an activity which is connected, which has a single link in the change of teeth, but which causes many processes in the human organism, and which now ceases to be physically active at the age of seven and begins to be spiritually active. So we can say: If you want to judge what works as special forces in the child's soul between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, you have to look at what happens physically in the child from birth to the change of teeth. There the spiritual forces are at work, which then reveal themselves in the physical organism as soul-spiritual. And the consequence of this is that the child, if we look at it correctly - especially as long as it is still an infant, but also in a certain way up to the change of teeth - is entirely a sensory organ in a finer, not in a coarse way. In a finer way, I would say, the child is entirely a kind of sensing eye. Just as the eye, by seeing the objects around it, inwardly reproduces what is outside, so that man has an inward image of what the objects outside represent, just as the eye has an inward image, so the child in its earliest stage of life has no visual image, but a different perceptual image. It is entirely a sensory organ, if I may put it that way. I would like to express this vividly: Let's take the infant. We as adults have our taste on the tongue and in the palate, and the child - as spiritual science, which I have been talking to you about these days, shows us - has a hint of taste throughout the whole organism: it is entirely an organ of taste. It is also an organ of smell, and in a certain inner sense an organ of touch. Thus its whole organization has a sensory nature, and this sensory nature radiates throughout the child's whole organism. Thus up to the seventh year the child is predisposed to inwardly imitate everything that goes on in its environment and to develop itself accordingly. Whoever observes a child with that sense which is more finely organized when one can at the same time recognize spiritually and scientifically, how it relates to itself every gesture made by those around it, how it inwardly imitates it and wants to represent it itself, how the child thus lives completely in what the people around it do, will see how the child is an imitative being up to the change of teeth. And from this imitation emerges what is the most essential gift for the first age of the child. Human language emerges, which is based solely on the fact that the child lives in what the people around him are and do, and through imitation, by adapting inwardly to what happens in his environment, he develops language. Therefore, when we as educators stand next to the small child in its first period of life, we cannot but count on this imitative principle as the most important one in education. And we must then say to ourselves: we can only educate the very young child by evoking in its environment those activities and processes which the child should imitate so that it becomes strong in spirit, soul and body. For what is implanted not only in his spirit and soul but also in his body, how the organs strengthen internally, remains as a constitution throughout his whole life. How I behave next to a child of four years, the child has to bear in his life up to his sixtieth year; so that he feels my behavior next to him in the latest age as his fate.
We can illustrate this with an example like this: when you have to deal with such things, people come to you and tell you the following, for example: Oh, my child has always been a good child, it has never done anything wrong, and now my child is doing me a terrible injustice! - If you ask more precisely what happened, you find out, for example: Yes, he stole money from his mother. - If you are familiar with these things, you first ask: Yes, how old is the child? - Five years old! - So first and foremost, the imitative principle is still active in him. You find out that the child has seen its mother take money out of the cupboard every day; it imitates this and does not yet have any kind of impulse of good and evil, but only the impulse to do what is done in its environment. If we believe that we can do anything to a child with commandments of good and evil, we are indulging in the strongest illusion. We can only achieve something through what we can educate if we place an example in front of the child that it can imitate. This goes right down to the thoughts. Oh, there is a subtle, inner spiritual connection between the person who is to educate and the child! And when we are close to the child, we should make sure that we only have those thoughts and feelings that the child can also imitate inwardly as thoughts and feelings. For, you see, the child's soul is completely sensory, and it perceives what is going on in its environment in the most subtle impulses, which our adult senses cannot even dream of.
When the child has gone through the change of teeth, those forces that were previously deep within its organism have become spiritual forces. Now, whereas before it was devoted to its surroundings, it can also stand before the soul as the soul of the soul, in a feeling which, in contrast to mere imitation, is now a submission to self-evident authority. We really have this, that in the first years of childhood up to the change of teeth we are such that we want to connect ourselves completely with our surroundings and give ourselves completely to them. That is, I would say, the physical counterpart of religious feeling. Religious feeling gives itself in spirit to the spirit; the child gives itself with its body to its physical surroundings. It is the physical correlate, the physical counter-image of the religious.
When the child has then passed the seventh year, it does not give itself with its body to its physical surroundings, but with its soul to the soul. The teacher comes to his side, and it is necessary for the child to regard the teacher as the source of all that is good and evil for him, that he now gives as much to what the teacher says and teaches him as he formerly gave to the gesture, to the outer activity in the environment. And now, between the ages of seven and fourteen, the child has an urge to surrender to a self-evident authority, so that he wants to become what this authority is. Love for this self-evident authority, listening to it, is now just as much a principle as imitation used to be.
Whoever, like me, wrote a “Philosophy of Freedom” in the early nineties, you will not believe that he is advocating any unjustified principle of authority here. What I mean is that it is like a law of nature in human life when, between the seventh and fourteenth years approximately, man must face the teacher, the educator, in such a way that it does not apply to him intellectually: this is good, this is true, this is bad, this is false or ugly, but that it applies to him: this is good because the teacher, because the educator, thinks it is good; this is beautiful because the educator thinks it is beautiful. All the secrets of the world must reach the child through the detour of the beloved teacher or educator. This is the principle of human development between about the seventh and fourteenth year. So that we can say that the child is imbued in its first epoch of life with a religious devotion to its surroundings that has been translated into the physical. From the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the child is imbued with an aesthetic perception of its surroundings, an aesthetic perception of its surroundings imbued with love. It demands to like that which the teacher, the educator, presents to it and to dislike that which the teacher wants to keep away from it. That which is to have an educational effect at this age should enter into the inner perception. Thus we must say: the teacher and educator must be a model for the first epoch of life, authority in the noblest sense, self-evident authority, which he can be through his nature, through his character, he should be in the second epoch of life. Then, as teachers, we already carry within us that which enables the child to educate itself alongside us, one might even say, in the right way. The important thing in self-education is moral education. I will begin to talk about this a little later, when the first part has been translated.
If one can say that the child is entirely a sensory organ up to its seventh year, then after the change of teeth, after the seventh year, one must regard it in such a way that the principle of sensory perception has come more to the surface of the human organization and has withdrawn from the interior. But it is still the case with the child that sensory impressions cannot yet intervene in the sensory organs in an organizing, regulating way. And so we see that the child, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, has it in itself that it wants to be soulfully devoted to its entire sensory organization, but that it does not yet participate from within with the will in this sensory organization. Participation from within in the organization of the senses makes intellectual human beings. We only become such intellectual human beings after sexual maturity. Only then are we actually predisposed in the right way to judge the world according to the intellect. Because to judge intellectually means to judge personally, out of inner freedom. We only acquire this when we have reached the age of sexual maturity. But this makes it necessary for us to judge the child at school age
\p>\lter, i.e. from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, that we do not educate it in an intellectualistic manner, nor do we educate it morally and intellectually. In the first seven years of life, the child wants to see what it can imitate in external sensory reality. After the seventh year, the child then wants to hear from its educator authority what it can and cannot do, what it should or should not consider to be true, wrong and so on.
But now, between the ninth and tenth year, something extraordinarily important begins to stir in the child. The educator, who is really an observer of human nature, knows that at some point between the ninth and tenth years the child needs something particularly strongly. The child does not have intellectual doubts, but it has an inner restlessness, it has something of what I would say is an inner question to destiny in a childlike way, which it cannot express, which it does not yet need to express; but it feels it half dreamily, half unconsciously. One should only once have seen with the right educator's eye how children approach this age. They know exactly that they want something very special from the educator to whom they look up with love. This cannot usually be answered by asking them an intellectual question. It is rather a question of developing a particularly intensive and intimate relationship of trust at this age, of creating the opinion in the child that at this age you speak to him particularly much, that you are particularly kind to him. In this reception of love, in this trust in the educator, lies the answer to a child's life question of the greatest importance. For what is this question of life? - As I said, the child does not ask it with its intellect, it asks it with its feelings, with the whole subconscious human being. But we can formulate it and it does not formulate it. So we have to say: up to this age the child has naively accepted the authority of the beloved educator without further ado. Now the need has awakened in him: to perceive good and evil in a new way, as if they were present in the world as forces. Until now it looked up to the educator, so to speak; now it wants to see through the educator and be able to say to itself: this educator is not only the person who says that something is good or evil, but this educator says it because he is a messenger of the spirit, a messenger of God, he knows it from higher worlds. - As I said, the child does not say it to himself through his mind, but he feels it. And his particular question, which also arises emotionally, tells you: this and that is suitable for this child. So that it really shows: it is rooted in something deeper, that which is said to be good or bad, true or false. Then the child gains new confidence.
But this is also the time when moral education can move on to something other than mere imitation, or that we say something is good or bad. It is at this point between the ninth and tenth year that one can begin to present the moral to the child in a pictorial way - for it is entirely devoted to its senses, without the intellect. Throughout the entire school age between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the child must be educated pictorially, educated through images, through images for all the senses. For even if it is no longer completely sensual, it still lives in its senses, which now reveal themselves on the surface of its body. How to educate the child from the age of seven or six in general through reading or writing, I will have to explain in particular tomorrow in the evening lecture. Now I would just like to go into the moral side of education.
When the child has reached this point between the ninth and tenth year of life, then we may begin to present him with pictures that stimulate his imagination above all, pictures of good people, pictures of people who evoke in him a feeling, a sympathy with what these people do. Please note that I am not saying that children should be taught moral precepts; I am not saying that one should approach the intellect with moral judgment. - One should approach the aesthetic, the imagination. One should also take pleasure or displeasure in the good or the bad, in the right or the wrong, in the sublime, in the moral deed, or in the compensation brought about in the world for wrong actions. If previously one had to place oneself before the child in order to be a moral regulator, now one has to add images, images that no longer have an effect on anything other than the imagination living itself out in the sensory being. Thus the child should initially absorb morality as a feeling until it reaches sexual maturity. It should become firmly established in the emotional judgment: this is something with which I have sympathy, the good; this is something against which I have antipathy, the bad. - Sympathies and antipathies, emotional judgments, should form the basis of morality.
If you realize, as I have explained, that the human temporal body is an organism in which everything is connected, then you will say to yourself: it is important to do the right thing for the child at the right time. You cannot let a plant grow in such a way that it immediately becomes a flower. The flowering must happen later. You must first nurture the plant at the root. If you wanted to make the root blossom, you would be doing nonsense. If you wanted to teach the child intellectualistically formulated moral judgments between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, it would be like trying to turn the root of the plant into a flower. You must first nurture the germ, the root; that is: morality in feeling. If the child has cultivated morality in feeling, then after sexual maturity it will awaken to intelligence, and then it will itself continue what it had in feeling between the change of teeth and sexual maturity through sexual maturity through inner development. Then the moral, intellectual judgment can awaken in it. And this is something so important for life that all moral education must be based on it! Just as you cannot turn the root of a plant into a flower, but must wait until the root develops and the plant finally blossoms, develops into a flower, so you must, so to speak, cultivate the moral root in emotional judgment, in sympathy for the moral. And then you must allow the human being to carry his feelings into his intellect through the power of his own being. Then he will have the deep inner satisfaction of knowing that in later life he will not live with mere memories of what his educators have told him is right or wrong in moral matters, but will live with inner joy, with inner strength, filling the whole life of the soul in such a way that he himself has awakened to moral judgment in freedom at the right time. The fact that the child is not brought up as a slave to some moral direction, but that the moral direction is prepared so that it sprouts from the free-growing soul being of the human being itself, equips the human being not only with moral judgment, but also with moral strength. And it is this that reminds us again and again, when we strive for a spiritual basis for education, that we should bring everything to the nascent human being in the right way and at the right time.
Now you will ask me: Yes, if I am to educate the child in such a way that I implant his moral and emotional judgment between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, and not in such a way that I give him commandments, appeal to his intellect, then what should I appeal to? - Yes, this self-evident relationship of authority leads to imponderables between the educator and the child! I will now illustrate this with an example. I can want to teach the child something about the immortality of the human soul through imagery, not through science. Science is not really there for the child until it reaches sexual maturity. I have to weave nature and spirit into one, and I might say something to the child that I form into an artistic image: Look, the butterfly chrysalis is here; the butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis. Just as the butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis, so the soul crawls out of the human body when the human body dies. - I thereby stimulate his imagination, I bring a living moral image before his soul. I can do this in two ways. I can say: I am a mature educator, terribly clever; the child is small, terribly stupid, and because the child has not yet risen to my height, I form an image for it. I form the image like this: I know it has no value for me, but I form it for the child. If I say this to myself and with this attitude want to teach the child the image: it does not work in the soul, it goes out again just as it went in; for there are imponderables at work between the educator and the child. - But if I say thus: I am not really much cleverer than the child - or perhaps: The child is much cleverer than I am in the subconscious - if I have reverence for the child, and say to myself in relation to this image: Yes, I do not form the image myself at all, but nature itself has placed the image before us in the butterfly crawling out, I believe in this image with the same intensity as the child is supposed to believe - if I have this strength of my own power of belief in me, then the image sits in the child's soul, then those things are at work which do not lie in the gross world, but which live in the finer world between the educator and the child. And the imponderables that take place between the educator and the child in this way amply replace all the intellectual teaching that could pass from the teacher to the child! In this way, the child is given the opportunity to develop freely alongside the teacher. The teacher says to himself: I live in the child's environment and must bring about those opportunities through which the child educates itself as far as possible. But then I must also stand beside the child in such a way that I do not feel immensely exalted, but only as a person who is a few years older. One does not always - here only in a relative sense - become more clever; therefore one need not always elevate oneself above the child, but one should only be a helper in the child's development. If one is to nurture the plant as a gardener, one does not push the sap flow that goes from the root to the blossom, but one prepares the surrounding environment so that the sap flow can unfold. You have to be so selfless as an educator that the inner forces of the child can unfold, then you become a good educator, and then the child will be able to flourish in the right way.
If the moral aspect of the human being is developed in this way, then, as with the plant, one part will develop after the other. First of all, the moral is developed exactly as it corresponds to human nature, by revealing itself in the imitating human organism. There it strengthens itself, so to speak, in the way described, so that later in life the human being has the necessary inner strength, also held by the physical organism, to be secure in the moral, otherwise he may weaken through the physical organism, become weak and have a good moral judgment, but not be able to follow it. If the model in the first epoch of childhood was a strong and intensely effective one, moral firmness develops. If the forces of sympathy and antipathy for good and against evil have taken hold of the human being in the right way from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, then the human being will also later have the right elevation in the moral sphere in the face of those depressions that prevent him from doing what is necessary for the moral sphere. In his organism, as an imitative being, he has developed that which is necessary for his soul in the way in which his moral feeling, his sentiment, his sympathy and antipathy have been cultivated in the second epoch of human life. And in the third epoch of life, moral judgment awakens in the intellect in free human development, oriented towards life for the spirit, just as the plant awakens to blossom and fruit in the sunlight. Morality only takes root in the spirit when that which is prepared for morality in body and soul awakens freely in life, just as the blossom and fruit of the plant awaken freely in the sunlight.
But then, when the moral is thus developed in the human being, so that the human being himself is, so to speak, respected in his inner freedom, then the moral impulse connects with the human being's inner being in such a way that the human being can really feel: this is something that belongs to him. And he then feels himself in his moral powers, his moral activity, just as he feels himself physically in the circulation of his blood in his powers of growth. Just as he must regard the natural life as belonging to him in such a way that it pulsates and forces through his whole body to the surface of the skin, so he feels the moral because he has developed it in the right way in himself.
And what comes next? Then it comes over man that he says to himself: "If I am not moral, then I am mutilated. - Just as one says to the physical: If I am missing a limb, I am maimed - so one learns to say to oneself through the moral development indicated: If I do not fill myself with morality, if I do not let my outer actions be permeated by morality, I am a maimed man.
This, in an otherwise well-guided education, is the strongest moral impulse that can be developed in man at all, as a judgment that he is a mutilated man if he is not moral. For man only needs to be developed in the right way, then he will want to be a whole man. But then, if you develop him in such a way that he wants to be a whole human being, then he will also develop the inner inclination towards the spiritual in man quite by himself, precisely through such an approach of the moral to himself. And then he sees that which floods the world as good as being effective in him, just as he sees the forces of nature as being effective in his body. Then he understands if you want to say to him figuratively: Yes, there is a horseshoe, an iron shaped like a horseshoe. Then someone comes along and says: "You can use this horseshoe as a magnet, because it has inner powers! - But then someone else comes along and says: "Oh well, iron is iron, I don't give a damn; I use this horseshoe to shoe my horse. - Yes, you see, he is like the latter who cannot, through the various developmental processes of life, come to see the spiritual side of life in the whole human being. The one of the two who looks only at the external, not at that which spiritually rules and weaves in man, is such that he uses a magnetic iron shaped like a horseshoe for shoeing horses. In other words, people are not educated for the right view in life and not for the development of the right powers in life. When this is grasped in the spiritual sense, felt and transferred into the will, it will also be the strongest drive in the social sphere.
Now, we stand today under the sign of the social question. This social question certainly has its full justification, and I would be glad if I could say more about it, but my time to speak is over. I will only say briefly that this social question has many sides, and much will be necessary in order to come so close to all the details of this social question that what a person who is unbiased today must nevertheless desire for the future of mankind in a transformation of social life will emerge. But everything that we can conceive and also practically introduce as external institutions, what we otherwise think up in the many schemes that exist about social life today, it appears to him who sees the moral in the light of the spiritual that he says: To deal with the social question without the moral question is like having a room without light and searching for the objects in it without there being any light in it.
The social question can only be placed in the correct field of judgment through a real grasp of the moral question. Whoever looks at life in its entire context will have to say to himself: The moral question is like the light which must illuminate social life, if the social question is to come to what is called a religious one in a humanly true sense. Therefore it is necessary, above all in social relations, that man today should gain a standpoint on the moral question. And I think it has perhaps been possible to show that what I call here a spiritual science, an anthroposophical spiritual science, also approaches the great questions of our time honestly in this sense, and that it is serious about the moral question and the education of the moral human being.