Education for Life: Self-Education and Pedagogical Practice

GA 297a — 24 February 1921, Utrecht

1. Educational, Teaching and Practical Life From the Point of View of Spiritual Science

The subject I addressed last Monday here in Utrecht was the question of how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can provide a method, a scientific path for penetrating the spiritual, supersensible world.

I have pointed out how it is only possible to penetrate into this environment if man brings forth from this soul certain abilities and powers that indeed lie dormant in every soul, and if he lifts up what is ordinary knowledge to the level of vision; to a vision that, for example, comes to develop full awareness of what it means to have a soul-spiritual life independent of all corporeality. We know precisely through modern science - and with regard to the everyday life of the soul, this science is absolutely right - that this ordinary life of the soul is bound to the instrument of the body. And only spiritual scientific methods can tear the spiritual-soul life away from the body, can thereby penetrate to the being in the human being that dwells in the spiritual world before it has united with a physical body through conception or birth, that passes through the gate of death, discards the human body and again consciously enters a spiritual world.

And I continued last Monday by saying that anyone who makes such an acquaintance with man's own supersensible being is also able to perceive, behind nature's sensuality and behind everything that can be explored with the ordinary mind, a supersensible environment, an environment of spiritual beings.

What is recognized in this way as the spiritual and soul life in man, what is recognized as the spiritual essence of the world in which we live, is what actually enables us to gain a true knowledge of the human being.

Over the last three to four centuries, we have acquired a complete natural science, but we have not been able to draw any knowledge about human beings from this natural science. In developmental theory, we start from the lowest living creatures. We ascend to the human being; we regard him, so to speak, as the end link in the animal series. We learn what humans have in common with other organisms, but we do not learn what humans actually are in the world as a separate being. We can only learn this through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And what asserts itself in this way in knowledge ultimately also asserts itself in the feelings and impulses that modern humanity has developed in social life.

Just think how many people who, through modern technology, have developed as a new class of people, through the whole modern economy - actually under the influence of certain socialist theories - believe that what lives in people as morality, as science, as religion, as art, is not drawn from an original spiritual source, but that it is only drawn from what economic, material processes are. The theory professed by modern social democracy, the theory that has sought to become reality in such a destructive way in Eastern Europe, this theory basically sees the forces that rule history as being outside of the human. And what man brings forth in art, custom, law, religion, that appears only as a kind of smoke. People call it a superstructure that rises up on the substructure. It is like a smoke that comes out of the purely economic-material. There, too, in this placing of the human being in the practical world, the actual human being is extinguished. If we are to characterize what modern education and the modern social consciousness have brought about, we cannot say otherwise than: the human being has been extinguished.

What spiritual science, as it is meant here, is to bring to humanity again is the knowledge of the human being, the appreciation of the human being, the connection of the human being as a supersensible being to the supersensible, universal being of the world.

And only with this do we stand in true reality. Only with this do we stand on ground that leads into a truly practical life. This is what I would like to substantiate today, first in the question of education and teaching. And here, in the way it has emerged from the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has from the very beginning been conceived not as something unworldly and far removed from the world, but as something thoroughly realistic and practical. And one of the first practical foundations was in the field of education with the Free Waldorf School, which Emil Molt founded in Stuttgart and which I myself have the educational and didactic responsibility for. In this Free Waldorf School, the impulses of a true knowledge of the human being that can flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science are developed pedagogically and didactically.

For a long time people have been talking about the fact that education and teaching should not graft this or that into the child's soul, but rather develop what is in the human being out of the human soul. But when it is expressed in this way, it is, of course, initially only an abstract principle. The point, however, is not to have this principle intellectually, to extract something from the human soul, but to be able to truly observe the developing human soul in the child. And for that, one must first develop a sense for it. This sense is only developed by someone who is aware of how the actual individuality of the human being, the actual spiritual-soul entity from a spiritual world in which it has lived for a long time, descends; how from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, in all that develops physically and psychically in the child, a supersensible element lives; how we, as educators, as teachers, have been entrusted with something from a supersensible world that we have to unravel. When we see from day to day how the child's physiognomic traits become clearer and clearer, when we can decipher how a spiritual-soul element, sent down to us from the spiritual world, gradually unravels and reveals itself in these physiognomic traits , it is important to develop, above all, a sense of reverence for the supersensible human being descending from the spiritual worlds as the basis of a pedagogical-didactic art.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science makes it possible to observe the child's development from year to year. First of all, I would like to show the main stages of human development.

It is often said that nature or the world does not make any leaps. Such things are constantly repeated without actually looking at what they are supposed to mean. Does not nature constantly make leaps when it develops the green leaf and then, as if with a leap, the sepal and the colored petal and then again the stamens and so on? And so it is with human life. For the person who, unbiased by all the stimuli and impulses that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can give him, observes this developing human life in the child, he finds, above all, not out of mystical grounds, but out of faithful observation, a leap in development around the seventh year, when the child begins to get the second teeth. Here we see how our knowledge of the soul, as it is currently used in science, has basically become somewhat exaggerated. Unless one has become completely materialistic, one differentiates between body and soul. But one speaks of the relationship between body and soul in an extraordinarily abstract way. One does not get used to observing in this field with the same kind of faithful and unprejudiced observation as one has learned in natural science. In natural science, for example, one learns that when heat appears through some process, and one has not added it, this heat was in some other form in the body. In physics one says “latent”. One says that the latent heat has been released. This attitude, which is provided by natural science, must also be adopted for the science of man, which, however, must then be spiritualized in relation to natural science. Thus, one must observe carefully: What then changes in the human being when he passes the age of changing teeth?

Now, if we really have the necessary impartiality for observation, we can see how the child, when it passes the age of seven, actually only begins to have outlined, contoured ideas, whereas before that it had no such ideas. We can see how it is only with this period that the possibility of thinking in actual thoughts, however childlike they may be, begins. We see how something emerges from the child's soul that was previously hidden in the human organism. Anyone who has acquired a spiritual eye for this matter can see how the child's soul life changes completely when the second dentition begins; how something emerges from the deepest, most hidden part of the soul and comes to the surface. Where did it come from, this thinking that now appears as a definite life of ideas? It was there as a principle of growth in the human being; permeating the organism; living as a spiritual-soul element in the growth that then comes to an end when the teeth are pushed out from within and replace the earlier teeth. When an end is put to this growth, which finds its conclusion in the change of teeth, then, so to speak, only one growth remains, for which less intensive forces are necessary. We see, then, how that which later becomes thinking in the child was once an inward organic growth force, and how this organic growth force is metamorphically transformed and comes to light as soul power.

By adopting this approach, we arrive at a science of the soul that is not clichéd, which, when it comes down to it, is simply transposed into the spiritual and is based on the same methods as those on which natural science is also based. Just as natural science is a faithful observation of a physical nature, so in order to understand the human being, a faithful observation is necessary, but now of the soul and spirit. If one learns to see through the human being in this way, then this way of looking at the human being is transformed into an artistic way of looking. It is indeed the case that today people often say, when someone expresses something like I just did: Yes, one should just look at something scientifically, in terms of knowledge; one should stick to sober logic; one should work through the intellect to arrive at abstractly formulated natural laws. This may be a comfortable human demand. It may appear to man that he would like to grasp everything in the wide-meshed logic of concepts in order to get to the bottom of things. But what if nature does not proceed in this way? What if nature works artistically? Then it is necessary that we follow her on her artistic path with our capacity for knowledge. Anyone who looks into nature and the world in general will perceive that what we bring about in natural laws through sober logic bears the same relation to the whole, full, intense reality as a drawing made with charcoal strokes does to a painting done in full color.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science draws from the full physical and spiritual reality. Therefore, it transforms mere logical recognition into artistic comprehension. But this also enables one to turn the teacher, the instructor, the educator into a pedagogical-didactic artist who acquires a fine sense for every single expression of the child's life. And indeed it is the case that every child has their own particular, individual way of expressing themselves. These cannot be registered in an abstract pedagogical science, but they can be grasped if one receives anthroposophically oriented impulses from the fullness of humanity and thereby gains an intuitive view of the spiritual and soul life in the human being, which then has an effect on the physical and bodily life. For what works roughly as the power of thought before the change of teeth in the growth of the child, we see more finely as a spiritual-soul activity in the child. As teachers and educators, we must pursue this from day to day with an artistic sense, then we will be able to be for the child what a real educator, a real teacher should be for the child.

I would like to give a brief description of how the first period of life, from birth to the change of teeth, and the second period of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, now emerges.

In the first period, from the first to the seventh year of life, the human being is primarily an imitative being. But we must understand this in the fullest sense of the word. The human being enters the world and gives himself completely to his surroundings. In particular, he develops what he initially brings to light as his impulses of will and instinct in such a way that he imitates what is around him. Language, too, is initially learned in such a way that it is based on imitation. Between birth and the age of seven, the child is entirely an imitator. This must be taken into account. In such matters, one must be able to draw the right conclusions. If you associate with the world in these matters, people sometimes come to you for advice on one matter or another. For example, a father once told me that he had a complaint about his five-year-old child. “What did the five-year-old child do?” I asked. “He stole,” said the father sadly. “But then you have to first understand what theft actually is.” He told me that the child had not stolen out of ill will. He had taken money from his mother's drawer and bought sweets, but then distributed them to other children on the street. So it was not blind selfishness. What was it then? Well, the child had seen his mother take the money out of the drawer day after day. At the age of five, the child is an imitator. It did not steal, it simply imitated the things that its mother does day after day, because the child instinctively regards what its mother always does as the right thing to do. - This is just one example of all the subtle things one needs to know if one is to understand the art of education in a way that truly corresponds to the human being.

But we also know that children play at imitating. Basically, the play instinct is not something original, but an imitation of what is seen in the environment. If we look with unbiased eyes, we can see that imitation is at the root of play. But every child plays differently. The teacher of a small child before the age of seven must acquire a careful judgment about this, and one necessarily has to have an artistic sense to make such a judgment, because it is different for each child. Basically, each child plays in its own way. And the way a child plays, especially in the fourth, fifth, or sixth year, goes down into the depths of the soul as a force. The child grows older, and at first we do not notice how one or other of the special ways of playing comes to light in the child's later character traits. The child will develop other powers, other soul abilities; what was the special essence of his play slips into the hidden part of the soul. But it comes to light again later, and in a peculiar way, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, in the period of life when the human being has to find his way into the outer world, into the world of outer experience, of outer destinies. Some people adapt to this world skillfully, others awkwardly. Some people come to terms with the world in such a way that they derive a certain satisfaction from their own actions in relation to the world; others cannot intervene with their actions here or there, and they have a difficult fate.

You have to get to know the life of the whole person, you have to see how, in a mysterious way, the sense of play comes out again in this sense of life in the twenties. Then you will gain an artistically oriented idea of how to direct and guide the play instinct, so that you can give something to the person for a later period of life.

Today's pedagogy often suffers from abstract principles. By contrast, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims to give pedagogy an artistic-didactic sense, to work in the earliest youth in such a way that what is formed there is a dowry for the whole life of the human being. For anyone who wants to teach and educate children must get to know the whole of human life. The magnificent scientific development of the last few centuries has not taken this kind of knowledge of human nature into account. Consider the social significance of really being able to give children the kind of education I have described.

When the child has now changed its teeth, or at least has got them, the second epoch of the child's life begins. Then the actual school age sets in, that which one has to study particularly carefully if one wants to pursue pedagogy from the point of view of true human knowledge. While the child up to the age of seven is essentially an imitator, from the age of seven until sexual maturity, that is, from about the age of thirteen to sixteen, there develops (and this varies from individual to individual) what the unbiased observer recognizes as a natural urge to submit to an authority, a human authority, a teacher or educator. Today, it is a sad day when one hears from all sorts of political parties that some kind of democratic spirit should enter the school; that children should, to a certain extent, already practice a kind of self-government. With such things, which arise from all kinds of partisan views, one rebels against what human nature itself demands. Those who truly understand human nature know what it means for one's entire later life if, between the ages of seven and fifteen, one has been able to look up with devoted veneration to one or more human authorities; if one has called true that what these human authorities said was true; if one felt that what these human authorities felt was beautiful; if one found that what such revered personalities presented as good was also good. - Just as one imitates until the age of seven, so one wants to believe in what comes from authority until sexual maturity. This is the time when one must be open to the imponderable influences that can come from a soul, from a personality.

We founded the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Many people say they would like to attend the Waldorf School to get to know something of the method and so on of this Waldorf School. Imagine a copperplate engraving of the Sistine Madonna, and someone cuts a piece out of it to get an idea of the Sistine Madonna. That would be the same as perhaps looking at what happens in the Waldorf School for a fortnight or three weeks. You wouldn't even see anything special. Because what happens in the Waldorf School is a result of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Those who are teachers there have acquired their artistic pedagogy and didactics from the impulses of anthroposophical spiritual science. If you want to get to know the Waldorf school, you have to get to know anthroposophically oriented spiritual science above all. But not in the way one gets to know it from the outside, where people are led to believe that it is some kind of complicated, nebulous mysticism, some kind of sectarianism; no, one has to get to know this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the inside, how it draws from the full humanity what the human being really is as a sensual and supersensible being within the world and within time.

These things do, however, lead one to perceive the supersensible nature of the working of such an authoritative personality. Let me give an example. One could imagine a picture – and it is best to speak in pictures to children from seven to fourteen years of age, especially up to the age of ten. Let us take any picture by which we want to teach the child an idea, a feeling, about the immortality of the soul. One can think up this picture. But one can also point out to the child the butterfly pupa, how the butterfly crawls out of the pupa. And one says to the child: the human body is like the pupa. The butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. When a human being dies, the immortal soul leaves the body as the butterfly leaves the chrysalis. It passes over into the spiritual world. There is much to be gained from such a picture. But a real intuitive perception of the immortality of the soul can only be conveyed to a child under very definite conditions. If, for example, a teacher thinks, “I am clever, the child is stupid, it must first become clever” – and the teacher thinks something like this in order to make the child understand something – then the teacher may perhaps achieve something, but what really brings the child to a sense of immortality will certainly not be achieved. For only that which one oneself believes, in which one oneself is completely immersed, has an effect on the child. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives you the opportunity to say: I myself believe in this image; for me, this crawling out of the butterfly from the chrysalis is absolutely the one that I did not think up, but what nature itself presents at a lower level for the same fact that, at a higher level, is the emergence of the immortal soul from the body. If I myself believe in the picture, if I stand within the content of the picture, then my faith has the effect of awakening faith, imagination and feeling in the child. These things are absolutely imponderable.

What happens on the outside is not even as important as what takes place between the feelings of the teacher and those of the pupil. It matters whether I go into the school with noble thoughts or ignoble ones, and whether I believe that simply what I say is what has an effect. I will give what I say a nuance that does not affect the soul if I do not enter the classroom with noble thoughts and, above all, with thoughts that are true to what I am saying. - That, first of all, about the relationship between the pupil and the teacher in the second epoch of life from the seventh to the fifteenth year. There would be much more to say about this, but I will only highlight a few specific points so that you can get to know the whole spirit that inspires the pedagogy and didactics that flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Then we started at the Waldorf school with really bringing out what the child should learn. We are faced with very significant questions, especially when we take the child into primary school. We have to teach the child to read and write; but when it comes to what lives in the human being, writing, the printed word, has long since become something quite abstract within human civilization, something that has taken on the nature of a sign and is no longer intimately connected with the full, original, elementary soul life of the human being. The external history of civilization does provide some information about such things, although only to a limited extent. If we go back to the various cultures, we find pictographic writing, where, however, what was fixed externally was pictorially recorded, which is what was actually meant. In older cultures, writing had not been developed to the point of the mere sign being as abstract as it is today. In fact, when we teach reading and writing in the usual way, we introduce something to the child that is not initially related to his nature. Therefore, a pedagogy and didactics that is truly based on a full knowledge of the human being will not teach reading and writing as it is usually done. Instead, we start from the child's artistic nature in our method. We do not begin with reading at all, not even with writing in the usual sense of the word, but with a kind of painting-drawing, drawing-painting. We lead the child to learn to form letters not only from the head, but from the whole human being, bringing lines and forms, even in colored drawing, onto paper or some other surface; lines and forms that naturally emerge from the human organism. Then we gradually introduce what has been taken from the artistic into the letter forms, first through writing, and from writing we only then move on to reading. That is our ideal. It may be difficult to implement in the early days, but it is an ideal of a true didactics that follows from a full knowledge of the human being. And as in this case, the essence of human nature is the basis for all education and teaching.

We start, for example, from the child's musical and rhythmic abilities because these flow from human nature and because we know that a child who is properly stimulated in a musical way around the age of seven experiences a particular strengthening and hardening of the will through this musical instruction.

Now, we try to teach the child in pictorial form what is to be taught to the child, so that the child is not introduced too early into an intellectualized life. We also note that there is an important turning point between the ninth and tenth to eleventh year of the child's life. Anyone who can observe childhood in the right way knows that between the ages of nine and eleven, there is a point in a child's development that, depending on how it is recognized by the educator and teacher, can influence the fate, the inner and often also the outer destiny of the person in a favorable or unfavorable sense. Up to this point, the child does not isolate itself much from its surroundings, and it must be borne in mind that a plant described by a child before the age of nine must be described differently than afterwards. Before this time, the child identifies itself with everything around it; then it learns to distinguish; only then does the concept of the self actually arise – before that, it only had a sense of self. We must observe how the child behaves, how it begins to formulate certain questions differently from this point on. We must respond to this important point in time for each individual child, because it is crucial for the whole of the following life.

We must also be aware, for example, that subjects such as physics and the like, which are completely separate from the human being and only attain a certain perfection by excluding everything subjective from the formulation of their laws, may only be introduced to the child from the age of eleven or twelve. On the other hand, we teach our children the usual foreign languages in a practical way right from the beginning of primary school. We see how, by not teaching a foreign language by translation but by letting the child absorb the spirit of the other language, the child's entire soul structure is indeed broadened. This is how an artistic didactics and pedagogy is formed out of this spirit. I could go on talking here for another eight days about the design of such a pedagogy and didactics as art. But you can see how what comes from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science flows directly into the practical side of education.

And how does this apply to the individual teacher? It applies in such a way that he actually gets something different from this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science than can be obtained from the rest of today's scientific education. And here we touch on one of the most significant social issues of the present day.

The social question is said to be the fundamental question of our time, but it is usually understood only as an external economic question, not really grasped in its depth. This depth only comes to mind when one becomes aware of how, in the broad masses of today's proletariat, one word can be heard again and again. That word is ideology. What does the modern proletarian mean when he speaks of ideology, according to his Marxist instruction? He means: When we develop any ideas about custom, law, art, religion, it is not something real in itself, it is only an abstraction, it is only an unreal idea. Everything we have in this way is not reality, it is an ideology. Reality is only the external, material production processes.

From this fact one can sense the radical change that has taken place in human development in terms of world view and state of mind. Consider the basic tenet of ancient Oriental wisdom. Last time I spoke here, I said that we should not long for the past, but there are many things we can take from it for our own orientation. The ancient Oriental spoke of Maya. What did Maja mean in the ancient Orient? It meant everything that man can recognize in the external sense world. For reality was that which lived within him, which sprouted within as custom, religion, art, science. That was reality. What the eyes saw, what the ears heard, what one otherwise perceived, that was Maja. Today, in the Orient, only a decadent form of that which, from a certain point of view, can be characterized as I have just done, is present. Our broad masses of people have come to the opposite through Marxist guidance. One could say that the development of humanity has taken a complete turn. The external, the sensual, is the only reality, and that which is formed within, custom, religion, science, art, is Maya. Only one does not say Maya, but one says ideology. But if one were to translate Maja in a general sense, then one would have to translate it with ideology, and if one wanted to translate into the language of the old world view of the Orient what the modern proletarian means by ideology, then one would have to translate it with Maja, only that the application is the opposite.

I mention this because I want to show what an enormous turn human development has taken, how we in the West have in fact developed the final consequences of a world view that runs directly counter to what is still contained in the Orient in a decadent way. Those who are able to observe the conflicts of humanity from such depths know what potential for conflict exists between East and West today. Things appear differently in the various historical epochs; but however materialistic the striving of today's East may be, in a certain way it is the striving that was also present in ancient Buddhism and the like, which has now become decadent. And our Western culture has undergone a complete turnaround in relation to this. We have now arrived at a point where broad masses of people do not speak of the fact that spiritual reality fills them within, but that everything that fills them within is only Maya, ideology.

This is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives back to humanity: not just thoughts that can be seen as ideology, not just unrealities; but man is again filled with what he was filled with at that time, with the consciousness: Spirit lives in my thoughts. The spirit enters into me; not a dead, ideological spirit, but a living spirit lives in me. To lead people back to the direct experience of the living spirit is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to give. This is then what is incorporated into anthroposophical pedagogy and didactics. This is what should live in the teacher's dealings with the pupil.

But it is also that which is directly involved in dealing with the social question. Those people who talk about ideology today have gone through our schools. But we need a humanity that actually develops social impulses from the very depths of its being. This humanity must emerge from other schools. What has emerged from the schools we so admire has led to the social chaos we see today. We need a humanity that has been educated in such a way that the education corresponds to a real, comprehensive knowledge of the human being. This is what makes the question of education a universal social question. Either we will have to decide to see the question of education in this sense as a social question, or we will be blind to the great social demands of the present.

But we must sense what is necessary for the teacher, for the educator, in order to practise such an education, in order to allow knowledge of the human being to be transformed into a pedagogical-didactic art. We must sense that this is only possible if the teacher, the educator, does not need to follow any other norm than the norm that is within his or her own inner being. The teacher and educator must be answerable to the spirit that he experiences. This is only possible within the threefold social organism, in a free spiritual life. As long as the spiritual life is dependent on the economic life on the one hand and on the state life on the other, the teacher is in the thrall of the state or of economic life. You will find, when you study the connections, what this thrall consists of.

In truth, one can only establish a surrogate for a free school today. It was possible in Württemberg to establish the Waldorf School as a free school in which only the demands of the pedagogical art prevail, before socialism created the new school law.

If freedom is to prevail, then every teacher must be directly involved in the administration; then the most important part of spiritual life - like all spiritual life, in fact - must have its free self-government. One cannot imagine a spiritual life in which such free schools are common other than in such a way that from the teacher of the lowest elementary school class to the highest teacher, everything falls into corporations that are not subordinate to any state or economic authorities and that do not receive instructions from any side. What happens in the administration must be such that every teacher and instructor needs only so much time to teach or instruct that he still has so much time left to help administer. Not those who have retired or who have left the field of teaching and education, but those who are currently teaching and educating should also be the administrators. Hence the authority of the capable arises as a matter of course. Just try self-administration and you will find that because you need someone who can really achieve something, their authority will naturally assert itself. If the spiritual life administers itself, it will not be necessary to use this authority or the like. Just let this free spiritual life develop and you will see that because people need the capable, they will also find them.

I have only been able to sketch out the issues here, but you will have seen how a truly artistic approach to education requires a free spiritual life. We can see how it is necessary to first separate the free spiritual life from the entire social organism.

Just as Karl Marx or Proudhon or other bourgeois economists base what they want to base, so one does not base things of life experience, things of life practice. What is said in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question” or in other writings on the threefold social organism is based on decades of all-round observation of life, and is spoken and written from practice. Therefore, one cannot grasp it with lightly-draped concepts. I know exactly where one can easily start a logical critique. But what has just been taken from reality is as multifaceted as reality itself. And just as little as reality can be captured in lightly-draped logical concepts, so little can something that is supposed to fit reality be captured in such concepts. But anyone who has ever inwardly felt what it means to be in school, in class, in education, as it is necessary to do so through a true understanding of the developing human being, the child, has, in their feeling, in the whole experience, full proof that the spiritual life must be given its free administration. And all the objections do not apply, so that one simply raises them, but only so that one must eliminate them through reality.

Then people come and say: If spiritual life is to be based on free recognition, people will not send their children to school, so you cannot establish a free spiritual life. — That is not what someone who thinks realistically says. Above all, he feels the full necessity of liberating spiritual life. He says: spiritual life must be freed; it may perhaps have the disadvantage that some people do not want to send their children to school; then one must think of means to prevent this from happening. One must not treat this as an objection, but one must raise such a thing and then think about how it can be remedied. In many things that concern the full reality of life, we will have to learn to think like this.

They sense that a complete turnaround must occur, especially with regard to intellectual life – and public intellectual life is, after all, essentially provided in its most important parts through teaching and education. Those who are accustomed to working in today's intellectual life will not go along with these things. I know that certain teachers at secondary schools, when they were approached with the suggestion of moving towards self-management, said: I would rather be under the minister than manage with colleagues; it's not possible. I am less likely to be with my colleagues from the faculty than with the minister, who is outside.

Perhaps one will not exactly get the necessary impetus in this direction. But just as, with regard to the big questions of life today, it is not the producer but the consumer who is becoming more and more decisive, so one would like the consumers of the educational system to reflect on what is necessary in the teaching and educational system as the most important public part of intellectual life. These are, above all, people who have children. We have seen the impression that parents have gained from the end of the school year, from everything else that children have experienced during the school year at the Waldorf School. We have seen how, when these children come home, their parents have realized that a new social spirit is actually emerging that is of tremendous importance for the next generation — provided, of course, that the Waldorf School does not remain a small school in a corner of Stuttgart, but that this spirit, which prevails there, already becomes the spirit of the widest circles.

But it is not only parents who are interested in what goes on in schools and educational institutions. Basically, every person who is serious about human development has an interest in it. Every human being must care about the next generation. Those who think this way and who have a sense of how we need a spiritual renewal today, as I explained in the last lecture here in Utrecht, should become interested in this new education that can be achieved through the school system from the lowest to the highest levels.

At the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, we are trying to establish an educational institution in the highest sense of the word, based on this spirit. We still have a hard time of it today. We can give people renewal and inspiration in the individual specialized sciences; we can give them something like our autumn courses were, like our Easter courses will be. We can show them how, for example, medicine, but also all the other sciences of practical life, can receive through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science what is necessary for the present and especially for the near future.

But for the time being we can give nothing but spirit, and that is not yet highly valued today. Today, people still value the testimonies that we cannot yet give. We must fight for what is recognized as a necessity for the development of humanity and for the near future to become official. This can only come about if a mood develops in the widest international circles for what I would call a kind of world school association. Such a world school association need not limit itself to founding lower or higher schools, but should include all impulses that lead to something like what has been attempted in Dornach in a certain special way. Such a world school association would have to embrace all those people who have an interest in the forces of ascent entering into the developmental forces of humanity in the face of the terrible forces of descent that we have in humanity today. For such a world school association would not become a kind of federation from the impulses that are already there; it would not try to shape the world according to the old diplomatic or other methods. Such a union, such a world school association would try to form a world union of humanity out of the deepest human forces, out of the most spiritual human impulses. Such a union would therefore mean something that could really give a renewal of that life, which has shown its fragility so much in the terrible years of the second decade of the 20th century.

The people who are educated there will have the social impulses, and they will be the ones who can develop the right strength in the other areas of social life, in the area of an independent legal or state or political life and in the area of an independent economic life. Just as a free spiritual life can only be built on objectivity and expertise, and not on what comes to the fore through the majority, economic life can only be beneficial for humanity if it is separated from all majority rule, from all those areas in which people judge simply from their humanity, not from their knowledge of the subject or field. In economic life we need associations where people who belong to the sphere of consumption, people who belong to the sphere of production, and people who belong to the sphere of trade, join together. I have shown in my writings that these associations, by their very nature, will have a certain size. Such associations can truly provide that in economic life which I would call a collective judgment, just as it is true [on the other hand] that in spiritual life everything must come from the human personality. For through birth we bring with us our gifts from the spiritual world. Every time a human being is born, a message comes down from the spiritual world into the physical world. We have to take it in, we have to look at the human individuality; the teacher at the human individuality in the child, the whole social institution at the free spiritual life, in which the teacher is so situated that he can fully live out his individuality.

What can turn out to be a blessing for humanity in this free spiritual life would turn out to be a disaster in economic life. Therefore, we should not have any illusions. As much as we have to strive for a comprehensive and harmonious judgment through our individuality in spiritual life, we can do so much less in economic life. There we are only able to form a judgment together with the other people, to form a judgment in associations. One knows, by having worked, in a certain area, but what one knows there is one-sided under all circumstances. A judgment comes about only by not merely dealing theoretically with the others, but by having to supply a certain commodity to the other, to satisfy certain needs for the other, to conclude contracts. When the real interests face each other in contracts, then the real, expert judgments will form.

And what is basically the main thing in economic life is also formed from what works within the associations: the right price level. You can read all this in more detail in my books “The Key Points of the Social Question” and “In the Execution of the Threefold Order”, as well as in the journals. There is even a Dutch magazine about threefolding. There you can read about how a collective judgment must be sought in economic life. Since we have had a world economy instead of the old national economies in economic life, it has become necessary for the organization of economic life to be based on free economic points of view, for economic life to be lived out in associations that deal only with economic matters, but in such a way that majorities are not decisive anywhere, but rather expertise and professional competence are decisive everywhere. The result will be a division of labor. Those who have the necessary experience or other reasons will be in the right place. This will happen naturally in the associations, because we are not dealing with abstract definitions but with the activity of a contract. For example, if an article is being overproduced in a particular area, it must be ensured that people are employed in other ways; because where this is the case, the article becomes too cheap, and the one that is underproduced becomes too expensive. The price can only be set when a sufficient number of people are employed by associations in a particular area. If such a thing is to become real, it requires an intense interest in the entire economic life of humanity. It is a matter of developing, not merely as an empty phrase, what is called human brotherhood, but of bringing about this human fraternization in associations in the economic sphere.

Today I can only sketch out the main lines. The literature on threefolding already discusses the details. But what I want to suggest is only how spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy can practically take hold of life here as well.

And so, in the social organism, we have on the one hand the free spiritual life based on the human individuality; on the other, economic life based on associations that come together to form the global economy as a whole – without taking into account the political state borders, which today contradict economic interests. This may still be uncomfortable for some people to think, but it is what can bring about change from the chaotic conditions.

Between the two, the free spiritual life and the associative economic life, stands the actual political life, the actual state life, where majority decisions have their justification; where everything, including human work, comes up for negotiation, for which every mature person is competent. In the free life of the spirit, not every mature person is competent; here, majority decisions could only spoil everything, as they can in economic life. But there are, for example, the nature and measure of work, of human work; there are areas where every human being, when mature, is competent, where one person stands before another as an equal. This is the actual state-judicial, political area in the threefold social organism. This is what spiritual life is already pointing to most clearly today, but it can also be pursued in the other areas of social existence in accordance with the demands and necessities.

Threefold social organism: a free spiritual life, based on the full and free expression of the individual human personality; a legal or state life that is truly democratic, where people face each other as equals and where majorities decide, because only in this link of the social organism does it come to a decision on which every adult person is competent; an economic life that is built on associations, which in turn decides on the basis of factual and technical knowledge, where the contract applies, not the law.

There are people who say that this would destroy the unity of the social organism. For example, someone objected to me that the social organism is a unified whole and must remain so, otherwise everything would be torn apart. At that time I could only answer the objection: A rural family is also a unit. But if one claims that the state must also manage the economy and administer the schools, then one could also claim that a rural household, which is also a unit with master and mistress and maid and cow, because the whole is a unit, everyone should give milk, not just the cow. The unity would arise precisely from the fact that each one does the right thing in its place. The unity arises precisely from the fact that the three links arise. One should just not rush into a matter that is based on correct observation of those things that are pressing for transformation in contemporary social life, based on a partial or incomplete understanding.

Liberty, equality, fraternity – these are the three great ideals that resound from the 18th century. What human heart would not have felt deeply about the three ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Nevertheless, there were always clever people in the course of the 19th century who constructed a contradiction between freedom and equality: How could one be free if, after all, all people had to develop their abilities to the same extent and how that was also not true of fraternity? — Much clever and concise things have been said in favor of the contradictory nature of these three ideals. Nevertheless, we feel them and feel their justification. What is actually at issue here? Well, people have formed the three ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity out of the intense depths of the soul, and these are truly as justified as anything historical and human can be justified. But for the time being people remained under the suggestion of the unitary state. In the unified state, however, these three ideals contradict each other. Nevertheless, they must be realized. Their realization will lead to the tripartite social organism. If one realizes that this is something that can be started tomorrow, that it is thought out and formed out of practice, that it does not remotely have a utopian character like most social ideas, that it is thoroughly practical, if one realizes how the unity state today, out of itself, creates the necessity to divide itself into three parts: then one will also understand the historical and human significance of the three great ideals that have been resonating in humanity since the 18th century. Then we will say to ourselves: the threefold social organism is what first consolidates these three ideals, it is what gives these three ideals the possibility of life. In conclusion, let me express, as a summary of what I wanted to say today about the practical development of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, how it must come about in humanity: the threefold social organism, Spiritual life administered for itself, economic life administered for itself, and in the middle the state-legal-political life administered for itself. Then, in a genuine, true sense, humanity will be able to realize itself: freedom in spiritual life, equality in democratic state life, brotherhood in associatively shaped economic life.

Answering questions

Question: How can we differentiate in the spiritual-scientific field between human and animal blood? The I expresses itself in human blood, but not in animal blood?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the materialistic way of thinking, which had been in preparation since the middle of the 15th century, but which became particularly strong in the 19th century and developed into the 20th, has gradually caused the sense of it to die away, that the external expression [of a thing] is not decisive for the inner structure and for the whole context [in which it stands]. I have to refer to some of this, which of course I cannot explain in detail today. You can find it in the spiritual scientific literature, but I have to say a few words about the question.

We have to distinguish between the physical body, which can be seen with the eyes and which is also considered in ordinary science through anatomy and physiology, for example. We then distinguish the etheric or life body, which we become aware of when we observe something like the release of thinking during the change of teeth; this is how we get to know the life of the etheric body. We must not confuse this with the old, hypothetical life force; it has nothing to do with it. This is the result of direct observation. Then we learn to recognize what part of the soul governs this etheric body, what one can call the soul organism, and the actual I.

These four members, however, express themselves in turn in the physical. For example, the etheric body has a particular effect on the glandular system, the I has a particular effect on the blood system in humans. Now one can raise such a question as the one asked here, but one must first acquire something that I would like to make clear through the following comparison. Imagine someone were to say: a knife is just a knife, it is used to cut meat. You cannot say that. Nor can you say: man has red warm blood, animals have red warm blood – the expression for the I. Suppose someone finds a razor and uses it to cut meat because it is a knife. It is not a matter of how something is outwardly and materially formed, but how it fits into a whole context. For an animal, the red warm blood is the expression of the soul organism; for a human being, the same red blood is the expression of the I, just as the razor is a knife for shaving and the knife on the table is a knife for cutting meat. One should not ask: What is blood as blood? It can be an expression for this in one context and for something else in another context.

Question: Is it also possible in other countries to establish schools like the Waldorf School?

Rudolf Steiner: Whether such schools can be founded in other countries depends on the laws of the country concerned. I have already expressed myself appropriately with regard to the Waldorf School. I said: Before the new democratic, republican school constitution came into being, it was possible to found the Waldorf School. Recent developments have been such that we are gradually forfeiting one freedom after another. And if we in Central Europe were to arrive at Leninism, then the Central Europeans would also get to know what the grave of human freedom means. But it depends everywhere on the laws in question whether you can found schools like the Waldorf School. So it depends entirely on the individual state laws. You can try to go as far as possible. Recently, for example, I was asked to appoint teachers for a kind of initial school in another place, and I said that we would of course have to do a trial first. I initially appointed two very capable teachers for the first class, but they had not taken an exam, so that people could see whether they could implement such teachers. It is certainly not out of the question in a Waldorf school to employ teachers who have not taken the exam. For example, when I was recently asked by a teacher whether it would be possible to employ her even though she had not yet passed her exams, but was on the exam list, I said: That doesn't matter; you will also have the exam one day.

Now, the point is to work towards a real liberation of the spirit and of school life on a large scale. For this, something like a world school association is needed. It must become possible that the question of whether schools like the Waldorf School can be established in different countries will no longer arise, but that this possibility will be created everywhere through the power of conviction of a sufficiently large number of people. We also experienced the same in other areas, as is also beginning today in the area of education. Many people do not agree with conventional medicine, so they turn to those who want to go beyond conventional medicine – not in a quackish way, but in a thoroughly appropriate way. I even met a minister of a Central European state who trumpeted the monopoly of conventional medicine in his parliament with all his might, but then came himself and wanted help in a different way. This is the striving, on the one hand, to leave what the feeling actually wants to overcome, but to leave it and to achieve the other through all possible back doors. We have to get beyond that. We don't have to want to set up private schools, but we have to create the opportunity everywhere to set up a free school in the sense described today. If we do not have the courage to do this, then those who understand these things will not allow themselves to be used to establish private schools or to appoint teachers for them. A great movement should arise in which every person who reflects on the tasks of the time should become a member, so that through the power of such a world federation, what could lead to the creation of such schools everywhere.

But above all, in the case of such a world school association - please allow me to mention this only in passing, in parentheses - a certain idealism in humanity must disappear, I mean the kind that says: Oh, spiritual things, anthroposophy, that's so high, the material must not approach it; it would defile anthroposophy if the material were to approach it. This idealism, which is so idealistic that it uses all kinds of phrases to describe the spiritual and elevates it to heaven, to a cloud-cuckoo-land, while keeping a firm hand on the purse, does not go together with the reasoning of a world school association or the like. Here one must muster an idealism that does not disdain the purse in order to do something for the ideals of humanity. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must think its way into practical life, that is, not just into the clouds, but also into the stock market. There are also nooks and crannies there that belong to practical life. —- That is just a characteristic of what a right worldview is.

Question: Are there contradictions between anthroposophical spiritual science and Protestant Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: There is no need to construct contradictions. Two things must be distinguished: The Mystery of Golgotha is a fact: that a spiritual being from the supermundane worlds descended to earth and united with the man Jesus of Nazareth. This spiritual fact, which alone gives meaning to our earthly development, will be grasped in different ways by each age. Our age needs a new understanding of this fact. We can best grasp this fact if we learn to understand spiritual facts in general. Anyone who believes that some discovery, whether in the physical or spiritual realm, should somehow shake Christianity, thinks little of it. If the official representatives of Christianity, or rather of the traditional denominations, turn so fiercely against anthroposophy today, it only speaks against these official representatives, who do not really have true Christianity in mind, but the rule of their respective church. True Christianity has indeed grasped anthroposophical spiritual science, but only in a supersensible way, through supersensible knowledge. You can read more about this in my book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact' and in other writings.

Question: Does spiritual life have a kind of supremacy over the other two areas in the threefold social organism?

Rudolf Steiner: You can see in my book on “The Core Points of the Social Question” how capital is used in the threefold social organism. It enters into a kind of circulation, like blood in the human organism, and remains with the one who is best qualified to manage it and thus also manages it in the interest of the community. For this, however, spiritual life must constantly interact with the other limbs. This is the peculiar thing about such a natural structure of the social organism as the human organism. The human organism – and this is the result of thirty years of research for me – is tripartite by nature. Firstly, there is the nervous-sensory organism, which is mainly localized in the head; secondly, the rhythmic system, which is localized in the chest as breathing and blood circulation; and thirdly, the metabolic system, which is connected to the limbs. But these three limbs work together in such a way that, in a sense, the head is indeed leading, but in another sense, the other two limbs are leading as well. So one cannot say that something has supremacy, but precisely because of the way the three limbs are structured according to their essence, a harmonious wholeness will arise in the social organism. Question: Should children from seven to fourteen believe what the teacher says, or are they taught freely?

Rudolf Steiner: The nature of the human being demands what I have expressed in the lecture: a certain self-evident authority. This demand for a self-evident authority is based, in turn, on a certain development of human life as a whole. Certainly, no one can develop more feeling for the social rule of human freedom than I, who wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1892, which is intended to provide the foundations for a liberal, social human life. But still, if a person is to face life freely in the right way, he must develop a sense of authority within himself between the ages of seven and fifteen. If one does not learn to recognize others through this self-evident authority, then the later demand for freedom is something that leads precisely to the impossibility of life, not to true freedom. Just as man only comes to a true brotherhood if he is educated in the appropriate way, by being guided in the right way in his imitation in the childhood years until the seventh year, so the sense of authority is necessary if man is to become free. Everything that is said today about governing school communities in a republican form is only asserted out of party considerations. That would destroy human nature. I say this out of a thorough knowledge of the human being. Such a demand for a healthy, authoritative way of teaching between the ages of seven and fifteen must be made. Only objectivity can be considered. Buzzwords should not be the deciding factor. It is precisely those who stand on the ground of freedom who must demand an authoritative education for this age group.