Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 16 September 1922, Dornach

79. On Pedagogy I

Dear guests,

The present is the age of intellectualism. Scientific development [of the last] century has celebrated its great triumphs precisely under the influence of intellectualism. And even if it is the case that actual science today still has many answers precisely because of its specialization, one must nevertheless say that the way of thinking of all people - one can already say today: of all people - is deeply influenced by intellectualism. If you want to characterize this intellectualism, you have to say: man becomes an intellectualist by forming thoughts through mere thinking and mental images. - Apparently this is a paradox, but it does describe a reality. It can also be said that in earlier times of human development, people had thoughts that emerged from within themselves. Such thoughts were also considered “scientific” in the past; because these thoughts emerged from within the human being to the surface of the soul, something of the human soul and its inner experiences was always given to us. One was given something of the warmth and clarity of the soul; one was given something of what man is in his innermost being. And if a natural science was developed in those times, the chemical processes of nature were described in such a way that something of the human soul was taken along in the description.

Today this is called anthropomorphic. But by using this term anthropomorphism, as we do today, we are committing a certain error in our thinking. In ancient times, people would have taken this from their imagination and would have dreamed these fantastic [contents into the] external natural processes and beings; people of earlier times once had a grandiose constitution of soul and in this very elementary way held together what they [absorbed] of external things and external processes of nature with what today only [fertilizes] us mentally. Today we have color or other non-warming things to offer. But this lies in the development of humanity and has actually only arisen with the conviction that people tend inwardly to have abstract thoughts, thoughts that are only developed through logical thinking, that are developed in such a way that there is a mental activity in every thought formation. These thoughts do not emerge from the deepest inner being of man, man gives them nothing from his soul. That is why they become cold. There is no warmth of soul in these thoughts. That is the special characteristic of human development in modern times, that it is intellectualistic.

'Artists have the most to complain about this intellectualism. The artistic man in one shrinks back from the intellectualist who only wants to “explain” his revelation. For through such an explanation, through such an introduction of cold intellectualistic thoughts, the warmth out of which the artist is reborn is virtually repelled. The artist does not find the warmth in the cold clarity! And that with which he has accompanied his works for a long time, the inner warmth of soul, that which he has given to the work in terms of inner soul, is pushed back. For this reason, artists do not love the aesthetic approach if it wants to be scientific. They do not love it for the reason that aesthetics only came into being when intellectualism broke out, and because these aesthetics then took on an intellectualistic character. What really matters to the artist is that the warmth that pervades the artistic work, of which it consists, can also be transferred to the viewer. It cannot do so if it is met with mere coldness.

This intellectualism then manifests itself in people's social life. In social life, people have to act as a community, and the way in which one individual acts and operates has an effect on other people. The weal and woe of the other person depends on what one person does. In our intellectualistic age, people's actions, especially those in public life, but also the actions of by far the greatest number of people, including intellectualists, arise from impulses conceived or otherwise arising from the life of the intellect. He who develops this on his own initiative or because some community, from which he has to act, compels him to do so, who acts in this way from a mere cold impulse, then gives his actions, his activity, nothing of social warmth. The actions themselves take on a cold, sober character. The intellectualistic element undermines the actual social life, which can only take place between soul and soul - not between mind and mind! People separate themselves from one another, chasms develop between them.

All this has been seen in recent times, and it has been felt in particular by higher-ranking scholars in the teaching and educational system. For a long time, therefore, scholars of teaching and education have demanded that children should be taught and educated in a way that does not merely appeal to the development of the child's intellect, so that the child should, as far as possible, carry out what belongs to its education and teaching out of its intellect; rather, it is demanded that the child should be treated in such a way that the heart develops alongside the head, that ability develops alongside understanding, that the child will learn and learn to work out of the whole person. The aim is to support intellectualism in the child through educational and teaching methods that approach the mind and the conception of the mind. But this view, this demand is made in such a way that one says: The child should not be educated and taught with the aim of intellectualism, the child should also receive an education of the heart for all areas of life that have long been under the influence of an intellectual education.

But this is not the only way to approach the question, for if something else is to be developed in the child in reality, in truth, than that which is based on intellectualistic foundations, then it is necessary above all for the pedagogy, the methodology itself to be animated, so that the pedagogy, the methodology itself has soul in it, is itself not merely comprehensible, intellectualistic, but emerges from the whole human being, from the human foundations, so that souls emerge. There are considerable obstacles to this in the present. Even the parents of the present have an almost invincible faith in scientific authority. Parents willingly surrender [to science], [to] what today's science, which is basically a science of the senses, says about the health and illness of the child, what it says about how the child should develop physically and mentally. [But also] the teacher who trains professionally to become a teacher here demands a higher level of teaching himself, which has been trained in what is generally recognized as a science of the senses.

And this science of the senses, it only trains thoughts that have become empty of all inner soul, that are without warmth of soul. They, these thoughts, receive no content from the human inner being. Therefore, they must also obtain their content from somewhere other than from within the human being. These thoughts must obtain their content through the [appreciation] of the senses, through the experiment, which is the [appreciation]. What the experiment reveals is clothed in the thoughts, which are virtually liberated from everything that springs from the human soul. Such a treatment of the world of thought - or such a soul-liberated treatment of the world of thought - is particularly suitable for what is called natural science today. For one arrives at a scientific knowledge that contains nothing of the human subject, that captures in thought only what the senses themselves see, through what the experiment [proves]. Thoughts are completely dehumanized. There can be no objection to this natural science and to what it strives for and its fully conscious character. In human terms, this natural science is purely intellectualistic.

With pure observation and in experimental content, [and in their long interaction, completely new possibilities were developed]. These possibilities of modern life have now created yet another. [The age of the development of the consciousness soul begins about the middle of the fifteenth century.] But with this other it has been accomplished that soul heat without consciousness of men always remains dull. /This could only be achieved in the intellectualist age. This intellectualist age has really raised man, given man natural science, which is the basis of technology, which needs nothing humanly subjective, and [thus also] given man wisdom for all time, for wisdom can only flourish when thoughts contain nothing trivial, nothing instinctive, nothing of what the soul does not put out of itself in full consciousness, but when thoughts are contained into which moral impulses are then poured, which are created purely spiritually.

It is fair to say that this age has achieved great things for humanity through intellectualism. But it has been seen that intellectualism is detrimental to the education of children. From the observation of this detrimental effect, people have come to the conclusion that children must not be brought up in the spirit of intellectualism. But they only had a sensory-scientific way of thinking. From this sensory-scientific way of thinking you only get to know the human being insofar as he is a physical being. One learns to educate him insofar as the senses can observe him. Then one cannot unfold such spiritual things with the senses, still less observe the spiritual, and so one falls into [gap in shorthand]). I would like to say [this is perhaps a little extreme], it is not always said, but it is meant today: yes, they say, there is nothing to be gained from scientific content for educational and teaching methods, this science can be intellectualistic, that is true. But what scientific observation says about human beings, [unclear passage in shorthand]

From physiology, and finally also from experimental psychology: This does not lead into the real soul, the real spiritual. That is why one appeals again to the simple elementary educational instincts of man.

Perhaps it is already said, it is not always said, but what is actually meant is: one should not be confused by what is scientifically proven, what is scientifically recognized, but should turn to what emerges from the educational instruments.

You could agree with this if it were possible. But it is not possible. It is not without reason that intellectualism has arisen in people. The reason it has arisen is that instincts have declined in strength, that man no longer has the instincts he once had. Man has passed from the stage of instinctive activity into the stage of full prudence, which [illegible word] can be achieved through full prudence. But this is only possible if the demand is not made that we should return to our instincts, return to our [illegible word] to the point of uncertainty, to a low point. You want all sorts of things and consider all sorts of things to be the right thing.

Look at what comes out of this kind of instinctive pedagogy today, where everyone actually notices what comes out of all kinds of educational and teaching methods. One person tries it out in the city school. The other says: nothing can be done with the city schools; the school has to be moved out to the country education center. But a third wants to do it differently. So everyone seeks something out of their instincts, which may be nice and cute, but which only shows that the instincts have all become insecure and confused.

It's quite true that we no longer live in the age of instinctive humanity. It is therefore only a sign that we do not understand our age when we call for an instinctive education today. What is called anthroposophical education sees through this fact. This anthroposophical education tells us that the instincts have been weakened and that we must achieve the full prudence of intellectualism. You have to reckon with this prudence of intellectualism. It is uncomfortable, because today anyone can actually establish a community somewhere without learning anything, set up programs; and [anyone can] say what is right. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you can be completely convinced of this: If ten or twelve people are together today - intellectually, everyone is clever, I don't mean it ironically, today people are often clever in their minds - they can set up educational programs with nice paragraphs. Paragraph 1, 2, 3 and so on. You can then also establish communities and bring it to many followers, and you trumpet it into [society] so that everyone [unclear place in the shorthand].

Anthroposophy, however, says that humanity has entered the age of intellectualism. We must reckon with this, that is, we must establish a spiritual science that is just as carefully founded as intellectualist, naturalist science, as intellectualist sense science is. You have to learn something first. You even have to think in order to know what to do in the sense of such a spiritual science. You first have to deal with learning - that is more uncomfortable than without the education of the spirit. The spiritual scientist says what is right and has a [illegible place in shorthand].

One must establish a spiritual science for such an education of the future. In most cases, it would turn out that if people who first have the intention to learn from what they believe is right in order to justify the teaching and educational methods of the future, were to learn something first, they would leave it alone. And this can lead them to unconsciously shy away from doing what they wanted to do once they have been woken up. And out of this unconscious reticence, if one could only know something consciously about the real things that anthroposophy teaches, then one holds back and says: Anthroposophy is fantastic, it fantasizes something together that is not natural at all. They can take the objections raised against anthroposophy as a basis, and this unconscious reticence frightens them.

If you take this [illegible word], ladies and gentlemen, it may be all right for one thing or another in life. But for pedagogy it is not enough to be a pedagogue, only those who really know people can educate them. And you can only get to know people if you don't see them with a scientific view and intellectual logic, not just through their physical appearance, but insofar as they are spiritual and mental beings. Therefore, before the demand to educate children in a non-intellectualistic way can be fulfilled, another study must be undertaken: To train teachers in such a way that built into their souls is a pedagogy that looks at the soul and the spiritual of the human being just as prudently as intellectualist science looks at nature. I will take the liberty of discussing further how such a pedagogy must be pursued when this first part of the presentation has been translated.

If someone, forced by the observation of the child, then admits that the human being - just as a corporeal being dwells within him - has an inherent soul, then the corporeal is merely studied in a corporeal way through the science of the senses. From the observation of the physical, a sum of conclusions is then formed about what is healthy, what is ill, what is psychically active in the physical child organism. And then one thinks, if one already admits a soul, if according to this sensory science one has correctly taken care of the child's mental health through intellectualistic nutrition, as indicated by this science, through intellectualistic physical exercise, climate and the like, then one can now determine from certain mental and [illegible word] conclusions what one should teach the child through instruction.

In the process, one would have had to impose completely different demands on the soul, even if one admits it, if one only surrenders to the statement of science in what has been recognized. We then repeat the statements of scholars about what science says about the physical, and we become incredibly amateurish when we talk about the spiritual. And the spiritual - indeed a large part of our teaching today, our so-called spiritual teaching - has become quite amateurish. For example, those who accept the soul but do not want to acquire a method for really recognizing it, those who [consider] the soul psychologically, which can be shown to exist without bodily attachment, come up with the idea [of those who want to accept the soul psychologically] of calling for psychology based on depth psychology. And for that for which one does not want to develop methods of observation in the mind, one transfers everything to the large reservoir of the unconscious or subconscious. This is not a particularly ingenious method. It is just as if someone wants to talk about the fact that there is a museum in the city, and instead of going into the museum and looking at it - in order to understand why the inhabitants of the city have gone in there, what they have taken into their souls by looking at the contents of the museum - [he is content] to say: I won't get involved in that, I don't want to go in there first, for me the museum is the institution, the institution. That's roughly what you do with the soul. You register what presents itself to external observation, the other is unconscious and so on.

It is not the case that we can accept as a reality what we have explored through science; that is an abstraction. The human being is not this physical organism in which there is a soul somewhere. The human being is a unity of soul, body and spirit - and the soul works in the body. If you only judge the physical, you don't know anything about the spiritual. This is because the soul must be studied together with the physical person for a true school of man.

This is particularly evident when it comes to really understanding the child at different ages. The change of teeth is a significant stage in a child's life. Anyone who can observe - even if only externally - will find that everything changes in the child with the change of teeth around the age of seven. In the child's organism we then observe that the second teeth have erupted, the first teeth have been shed and the second teeth have erupted. However, it must also be noted that certain forces of the psychic organism underlie this protrusion of the second teeth. These forces do not come about all at once when a second tooth erupts. They are [active] in full development from the birth of the child, already during embryonic life; they are active in the whole organism, and the child does not get third teeth and fourth teeth as it continues to grow. If the same forces that were active in the organism from embryonic life to the change of teeth and led to the second teeth being pushed out continue to be active in the same way, then third and fourth teeth must also appear - and they do not. So these forces have ceased to be what they were in the organism up to the seventh year, but they don't disappear; they become something else.

You see, anthroposophical spiritual science must introduce such stages of life experience and properly add the observation of the soul and spiritual life to mere scientific observation. In two lectures I can, of course, only sketch out what I would actually want to say in a lecture course of many lectures, if it is only to be made reasonably clear. But I do want to set out the principles today and tomorrow [gap in shorthand].

If we look at the child organism, it is already a human organism. But anthroposophical spiritual science shows through useful methods of observation, which I have explained today [illegible words in shorthand], that an etheric organism is incorporated into the human physique, as well as a special soul organism, which can also be called the astral organism - and without these people cannot actually manage. And this shows that for children up to the seventh year it is good to observe the connection between the physical body and the etheric organism.

If I may sketch the whole thing on the blackboard, the human being is integrated into a physis, into a physical organism. [It turns out that he also has a finer organism, the etheric organism. I will now sketch this etheric organism as it [gap in shorthand] can be observed when it is captured at this moment. I say, if it [gap in shorthand] can be sketched in this moment. For this etheric organism is not something permanently spatial in the same way that the physical organism is a spatial organism that remains in one place, but this etheric organism is in a constant state of becoming, in a constant state of fluctuation, it is actually a temporal organism. And you can no more paint it than you can paint a flash of lightning. You can only capture a moment of lightning in a painting. Just as you can capture lightning - even though it is a moving thing - for a moment, you can do the same with an etheric organism. This etheric organism thus permeates the physical organism of the human being. This etheric organism develops thought out of itself, the actual power of growth and nourishment. It stimulates nourishment, it [illegible word] in growth forces [gap in shorthand]

Now it is the case that this etheric organism is evenly distributed in the physical organism in a child up to the age when the change of teeth occurs, i.e. up to around the seventh year. So what is in the etheric organism extends its activity to the physical organism. Everything that is in the physical organism is under the influence of the etheric organism. This becomes different with the age of life, which is around the seventh year, with the age of the change of teeth.

It becomes apparent that the human being separates a part of his etheric organism from the rest of the etheric organism. The rest of the etheric organism remains integrated as it was before. But a part of the etheric organism becomes independent, emancipates itself from the activity that was previously carried out on the physical organism. I want to draw this part here in this way: It is strongly developed in the head, then proceeds [illegible word] in the rest of the organism. When the whole etheric organism was active as an organization that evenly permeated the physical organism, the forces that pushed out the second teeth were also active in this etheric organism. These forces that have pushed out these teeth in the etheric organism tear themselves away from the physical organism, they no longer want to have anything to do with it, so they are no longer there as tooth-forming forces.

[And after this, once the child has got its second teeth, this part can penetrate the physical organism as a growth and nourishing force]. This is the part painted reddish here, which now becomes independent. This part of the etheric organism, which becomes independent, is now clothed with a higher part of human nature with the actual spiritual life. It has become free from the physical. It permeates the head organs and part of the other organs. This is what we are dealing with when we address the child after the age of seven and carry out some kind of activity with its soul. There we turn to the soul, which is now embedded in this emancipated part of the etheric part. Just as the entire etheric part used to be embedded in the physical body, we now see the soul in such a way that its carrier is this part of the etheric body that has become free. It now contains the soul.

Not much has yet been achieved with the principle of these things, but only when the matter becomes free life education and the art of living, that is, when through an anthroposophy that is not merely anthropology, that is not merely intellectualistic, the teacher or instructor is trained in such a way that he can now see what is going on in the physical organism up to the seventh year, when the etheric organism is fully active in it. Today, under the influence of science, man learns an anatomy and physiology of the human being that has actually arisen from what can be placed on the dissecting table after death and from what can be obtained from illness or from comparing the human being with what can be obtained in an animal experiment and so on. And from this you then form mental images of how the human being is composed of liver, kidney, heart and so on.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this human being that you imagine in your mental image doesn't exist at all, it's an abstraction. There is only a certain inner human [cosmos] that exists up to the age of seven. Then everything - liver and stomach, lungs - is permeated by the etheric in a completely different way than later, until a part of the etheric body has torn itself away and becomes soul.

There again comes the fear that people have when anthroposophy does not come from anthropology. Yes, now they are comfortable, they learn what the liver is, what the lungs are. And now we hear from this terrible (ironically meant) anthroposophy that we should learn what the liver is up to the seventh year, what it then becomes up to sexual maturity, then further up to the age of 21 and so on. You should learn properly from the physiologists. But for the practice of life [this will only be fruitful if it becomes teachable and educable, if you don't stop at theory], but come to real practice and look at the [illegible passage in shorthand] ... what is working on the liver here (it doesn't just work on the teeth). Something similar has happened to the liver as to the teeth; the metabolism has also changed. You have to gradually learn to see through the human being, from the [illegible word in shorthand] around, so that you can't say: The human being has a physical organism that you study purely physically according to science, but you always have to know what the soul and spirit are in it. The physical-bodily work is different at every age. A true anthroposophy, not an anthropology based merely on the science of the senses, must form the basis of a true pedagogy. - What more can then be said about this can perhaps be communicated in the third part after the translation.

If you consider the artistic, you will be able to say to yourself: Because of the special way in which the etheric organism, which is evenly extended over the physical organism, is active in the human being, everything that happens to the child - everything that happens in the child up to the change of teeth - must find a physical expression. Only in a limited sense, which we will get to know tomorrow, is there anything in the child that does not gain a physical expression. In other words, what the child accomplishes up to the change of teeth, it accomplishes only in that the results of what makes an impression on it become a movement or activity of the body in it. The child thus becomes an imitative being, it perceives what is in its environment. And since it perceives everything that is in its surroundings, and this perception expresses itself as an impulse of an etheric organism, but this etheric organism, because of its connection with the physical, immediately transfers itself to something that must take place in the physical organism, this entire activity of the child, which was under the influence of its surroundings, consists in imitating what the child perceives, sees. Another, separate mental activity, which is not an imitation of what happens in the environment, is found in the child only to a very limited extent.

Therefore, all education and all teaching of the child up to the change of teeth can only be successful in that you give him what you want him to form into his organism. The child absorbs every teaching mentally. That which is presented to him stimulates the etheric body, which immediately stimulates the physical body; it is imitated. You see, the whole process of learning to speak, for example, immediately becomes transparent if you know this [imprinting] of the etheric body in the child's physical body and understand the child as an imitating being. The child hears the expression of the sound, which vibrates in its etheric organism, which stimulates the physical organism to imitate, the child imitates the sound in its formation, and so everything that is brought to the child up to the change of teeth must also be adjusted to imitation.

The child experiences itself quite differently from the later human being. I would like to draw your attention to another aspect of how the child experiences itself in the very early stages of life. As an adult, you have the taste of food in your mouth, in your palate. With a child this is not only the case, but the child also has a dull, dark feeling of taste that first forms in the stomach. As the child sucks in the mother's milk, the sensation of taste continues, so to speak, from the mouth into the stomach, except that the child does not lead such an awake mental life as the adult human being, but a more dreamlike mental life.

But into this dreamlike mental life come impulses that definitely play a role in the child's soul, and this includes the fact that a taste sensation is still developed in the stomach. This is due to the fact that in the child the etheric body is more intimately connected with the physical body than later. The child is in a sense relatively different, completely a sensory organ. It perceives certain impressions with the body, and from this perception it reproduces them. And the child perceives in the most subtle way. One might say that there are extraordinarily intimate things at play in this imitative activity of the child. [This goes so far that the perception of our later years is far too coarse to be imaginable.

The child still perceives and imitates in a dreamlike way. If we admit - this is not an exaggeration, but can certainly be observed through the science that I call anthroposophy here - if we harbor thoughts that are too frivolous, too immoral: Every such thought lives on in a way, after all, in - albeit more intimate - processes of the physical organism.

The adult human being has a coarse perceptive faculty. He perceives nothing of all that the child, which in its whole being is a sense organ, perceives. He himself perceives that which lies in the unfolding of thoughts in his surroundings and also perceives the unexpressed thought within. In this sense, one does not want to introduce outer but inner thoughts [illegible passage in the shorthand]

You should therefore be such an educator to the child who only has such thoughts towards the child in the classroom that the child can imitate and comprehend, so that it becomes a real person in life when the child passes the change of teeth. Then, I said, a part of the etheric emancipates itself from the physical and is no longer fully active in the physical body. This emancipated part of the etheric does not stimulate the inner imitation [illegible passage in the shorthand], but this receptive part of the etheric organism now flows into the soul as if into the recipient of an air pump when we open it. As a result, the child will now not only imitate what I say to it, but it will begin to receive an impression of what I do not say to it, but which lies in my words.

Until the change of teeth, the child is an imitative being. From the change of teeth to sexual maturity, however, where a similar transformation takes place, which I will describe tomorrow, the child is such that it already has an emancipated part of the etheric body with a soul inclusion, which is not yet sufficient to receive what is in the environment through the power of judgment, but is sufficient to receive it openly in images, to receive it according to the immediate impression, and now not merely to incorporate it into the body through imitation, but to incorporate it into the soul [gap in the shorthand], but not yet what comes to the child if we place too much value on its powers of judgment, but with the change of teeth the child transforms itself into a being for which that which it perceives is good, that it is expressed, becomes binding, is placed into the environment by the teacher, the educator, as the good.

In the same way, the child sees as beautiful that which is brought to it in this way by the environment. And likewise the true. The child from the change of teeth to sexual maturity does not regard something as true because it has been proven to it, but because it creates in [its] organization - which is composed of the emancipated etheric organism and the soul that has flowed into it - because it creates the very elementary in this organism, [because it] is here under the impression of authority.

From an imitative being, the child becomes one that wants to participate, that its soul is given direction in the sense that it receives this through the fact that the revered educational or teaching pedagogues consider something to be true, beautiful or good. This is what is now developing in the characterized etheric organism, which is permeated by the soul. That which flows in not through what the teacher says, but through what he is; and through the fact that the child receives a feeling, a compassion for what he is. That he lives the truth, lives the beauty, lives the goodness.

It is no longer, one might say, automatically imitated, it is absorbed into the soul, and the child follows it by way of inner soul stimulation. It is a higher activity than imitation, but it is a more immediate process than that which develops when we appeal to the child's power of judgment. [illegible passage in shorthand]

Therefore it is necessary that what the teacher himself presents to the child at that age, [what he] teaches him between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, he should [present] in an artistic way. So what the child has to learn or look at, what lives ethereally at this moment, [should] be presented in an artistic way. The lesson must be transformed from a teaching one into an artistic one. To the same extent that it succeeds in transforming pedagogy from something that always wants to build on intellectualistic science into a fully reflective art, so that the truth, the presentation of something that wants to develop in front of the child, [illegible passage in shorthand] is a work of art that can be understood artistically by the child.

Only if pedagogy can be made into an art in this way will pedagogy come very close to what is actually unconsciously demanded by many people today, what they instinctively feel with pedagogy, but which can only be based on a real anthroposophy that looks at the spiritual and the soul.

The human being who only ever looks at his watch is expected to see the links of the watch as well. Afterwards, however, intellectualist pedagogy should always be used in [illegible words].

People expect themselves to be able to treat a child in the same way as a clock. But they don't know much more about the child than they do about the watch. You have to find out what the etheric organism works out for the child's organism from year to year, indeed from month to month. But then you have to know how at school age, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the completely different organs work on the child from month to month. Then you can play with the living material; [then] what you have [learned] from listening [gap in shorthand] through teaching and education can be used to create a work of art, and this must, if pedagogy wants to move in a direction that the human being of the future [illegible word] can heal [gap in shorthand]. And I will discuss tomorrow how pedagogy can develop beyond the age discussed today.