The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d — 10 January 1907, Berlin

8. The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

It has often been emphasized here on other occasions that what is called spiritual science or, in more recent times, theosophy, that these are by no means mere theories floating in worlds far away, that theosophy does not merely seek to satisfy curiosity about higher worlds. Theosophy should not be something far-removed from the world, something unworldly. If it wants to fulfill its task, its mission, it must draw the forces and the impulses for its work from the higher worlds, and its work towards its goal and its mission must take place under the authority of these forces. Only then can it help in the further development and salvation of humanity. It would be a rather idle knowledge of the higher worlds if one did not want to apply it in practice, to life. For no one can understand life who does not know the deeper forces on which it is based. These forces do not lie on the surface; they lie hidden in the depths. Just as iron, when first seen as a substance, does not reveal that it contains electricity, which only becomes apparent when it is rubbed, so too these forces must lie dormant in iron and must first be drawn out of it. If we wanted to work on the service of progress for humanity without knowing these hidden realities, then our work could only be superficial. Beneficial work is only possible if we explore the deeper forces and entities.

Of course, we must also recognize the goals of our work. What does man work for? For the future! But nothing lies in the lap of the future that is not already present in the present. Let us look at the plant. It does not yet bear flowers or fruit. It will only produce these in the future. But the forces for these flowers and fruits already lie dormant in the plant. It already contains in an invisible form what will happen in the future. And only because people usually remember how similar plants have borne blossoms and fruits can they say that this plant will bloom in this way and not in another way, and bear fruit in this way and not in another way. But if man could see into the interior of the plant, then he could see the forces at work in the plant that will produce those flowers and those fruits.

There is something that lies in the future and that we cannot know, whose development we cannot foresee, and that is the body of the human being. What will one day be in the physical world already rests today in humanity, just as the flower and fruit already rest in the plant. If we are not able to delve into what lies dormant in the womb of humanity today, we cannot become rulers over the forces that will unfold in the future. Those who want to work on the development of humanity are thereby working on something that has not yet existed, and those who want to grasp that must descend below the surface. The theosophical worldview must take on this task and carry it out in practice.

Nowhere is the eminently practical nature of the theosophical world view more evident than in the field of child education. In the child, we have before us, so to speak, the riddle that lies hidden in the future. And every day we have to solve this riddle anew. For the child of seven is not the same child as he was at six, and he is not the same as the child of fourteen or sixteen. Only when we are in harmony with the deep forces that work in secret, only then can we approach the numerous questions in the field of education that are so burning for humanity today. Real orientation in all these questions will only be possible when the theosophical view dominates people's minds.

Today we want to take a closer look at the mission that Theosophy has in modern culture in relation to educational issues. To do this, it is necessary that we know the whole structure of human nature. We know that, in the sense of spiritual science, man is a complex being. For those who look more deeply, the material body is only part of the human being. This physical body combines the same substances that are present in the natural world. In the human body, they are combined in a highly complex interaction. Science tells us: When we look at a machine, we see the effect of the materials of which it is composed; but when we look at a living being, we see not a mere structure of dead materials, but a body that is permeated by life, which regulates the physical forces and brings them to life.

This life was described by an earlier science as “life force”. But today's materialistic science claims that there is no “life force”, that substances develop life within themselves. In recent times, however, people have been moving away from this point of view. It is seen that one does not get very far with this theory, that one must indeed reckon with some kind of life-force to explain the living. But even in this sense of the newer natural sciences, the theosophical view does not speak when it speaks of the second link in the human being, the etheric or life body. It is not concerned with mere theorizing, it does not speculate, but its way is to develop the higher vision in man himself. Just as other beings are only present in the world for man if he has the organs to perceive these beings, just as he perceives light and color only if he has the eye for it, just as he perceives sounds only perceives sounds only if he possesses the ear for them, so for man the higher beings are only present if he has developed organs within himself to perceive them through the training that has often been mentioned here.

If there were a man who had no eyes but organs to perceive electricity, for example, if such a man could see the forces at work that ignite the light here in the room, that play back and forth outside in the telegraphic lines, how very different the world would appear to such a person! With each new sense, new worlds arise for man, and slumbering within him lie the senses that make the higher worlds perceptible to him. They can be developed. No one can justifiably assert that such worlds cannot exist. It would be the same if he were to say that there are no higher worlds because he cannot see them. It would be the same as if a blind man were to say about color that it does not exist because he cannot perceive it.

But if a person has developed through schooling, then the etheric body is an experience for him; he can then see it. In its size, it is almost the same as the physical body. One often imagines the etheric body as consisting of a finer substance, a kind of mist, but that does not correspond to reality. Rather, it consists of forces and currents of a spiritual nature that interact.

The third link, the astral body, differs from the etheric body in that, while in the latter the forces of growth, reproduction and so on are at work, it is the essence of the astral body to feel and to be conscious. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of desires and passions.

Beyond these three members is what makes man the crown of earthly creation: the self-aware ego, the center of the human being, the innermost power in man. So when we have a fully developed human being before us, we have a structure of four members before us.

But you can only understand how to act as an educator if you understand this structure of the human being correctly, if you know that it does not play the same role in a newly born child as in a child of seven or fourteen years, if you know that the development of these links is different at each age level of the adolescent. Only when you know all this can you solve the puzzle that the child presents to us day after day. And we learn to understand all of this best when we start from the assumption that we see how the human being lives before birth.

Before the child is born, we have enclosed the child's physical body, enclosed in the mother's body. Nothing can reach the child without passing through the mother's body. No ray of light, no external influence reaches the child directly. It rests enclosed in another body; one physical body rests in another. Birth consists of the physical mother's shell being shed. But in this moment, from a spiritual point of view, not the whole human being is born, but only the physical body. The second birth takes place gradually, not in a single moment like the physical one. It essentially takes place when the child changes teeth. At this point, something similar happens in the spiritual realm to what happens in the physical birth.

Up to the age of seven, the child is surrounded by an etheric shell, just as it was surrounded by a physical shell before the physical birth, the womb. And so one could say: up to the age of seven, the child is surrounded by an etheric mother. Just as one cannot get to the child before the physical birth other than through the mother's body, one can no more get to the child's actual etheric body before the age of seven. And just as one must care for the mother before the physical birth if one wants to care for the child, so too, in order to care for and develop the child's etheric body, one must, until the seventh year, keep away everything that could harm it and give it everything that can promote its development. In the seventh year, the etheric covering is pushed back, the etheric body of the human being is born, very similar to the physical birth of the physical body.

And later on there is a third birth, the birth of the astral body. When the human being has shed his etheric cover in the seventh year, he has not yet fully developed his astral body; to the spiritual seer's eye he is still surrounded by an outer astral cover. He is wrapped in this until he reaches sexual maturity; then it is also shed: the actual astral body of the human being is born.

The educator must know all this. He must know about the physical, etheric and astral birth of the human being, because the individual educational epochs are based on this. He must know that just as it would be nonsensical to want to reach the physical child in the mother's body, it is also nonsensical to want to reach something that concerns the etheric body through education up to the age of seven, or something that concerns the astral body until sexual maturity. The limbs of the human being are the carriers of very special soul forces. The physical body is the carrier of the physical sense organs; the etheric body is initially the carrier of the growth and reproduction forces. But that is not all, because all these different bodies are worked on from within by the human ego. This works from the inside. And so the bodies of the human being are particularly related to the soul forces. The ether body is the carrier of memory, of all lasting habits and inclinations, of temperament.

We find concepts of the intellect, images of external objects and so on in the astral body. But when the image is also a symbol, a parable, when it rises to artistic imagination, when it becomes productive in the soul, then the etheric body is the carrier. What we call judgment, criticism, intellectual activity depends on the astral body.

If we know all this, then we will be able to apply it in relation to the emergence of these limbs in the course of the child's development. If we know that the etheric body is enclosed until the seventh year, we also know that until then we must not act on what the properties of this etheric body are. Only when it is released by the second birth may we educate it. There is a saying that can spread light and should be the basic principle for the education of a child up to the age of seven. Aristotle expresses this saying when he says: 'Man is the imitator of animals'. Imitation is what characterizes the child up to the age of seven. The child must see what it is supposed to learn, it must see and hear it. There must be something in its environment that is intended to have an effect on the child. It should not be taught overnight, but rather it should be shown and exemplified what it is supposed to imitate.

Exemplarity and imitation are the two magic words for a child up to seven years of age. What kind of teachings you give them, what principles you have, is not important, only what you do in the presence of the child. That alone is important. The example is what is actually effective. What the child is to acquire must be introduced into the physical world. One should avoid, as far as possible, allowing something into the child that the child should not imitate. A thousand good teachings are of no use to a child of this age; the child should imitate what it experiences with its physical body in the physical world. A little story will show you how far this imitation can go. A child of five years, who had been well-educated until then, suddenly took money from his parents' cash box. They were extremely upset. The child stole and gave the money to another child. The parents could not understand how their child came to steal. The explanation is simple. The child saw how the parents took money from the cash box and simply imitated them.

We can see from this how far we must go to avoid anything we do not want our children to imitate when it is also allowed to adults. Anyone who observes a little sees that children copy writing – like signs, without understanding the meaning. The meaning of what is written can only be conveyed to the child when the etheric body is born; but it can imitate the writing before that. Learning to write should begin by having the child first copy the shapes of the letters. Later, one can then explain to him what he can already do.

Today, far too much emphasis is placed on the fact that meaning should be involved in everything that is taught to the child. But it is far more important to ensure that the child's entire environment is set up in such a way that the external forces surrounding the child have an awakening and life-promoting effect on its etheric body. — In doing so, we recall Goethe's words: The eye is formed by light for light. The animal that is forced to live in dark caves gradually loses its eyesight and becomes blind. Light has a creative and formative effect on the eye. The forces of nature create organs and develop them. A human being is not yet complete when he is born. Every ray of light continues to have a formative effect on the eye. And so everything in the child's environment can have the effect of awakening life or stunting it.

Here spiritual science shines through to the smallest details. For example, it is not unimportant whether the child's surroundings are red or blue. The same color is by no means suitable for a lively, perhaps even nervous, child as for one that is quiet or even apathetic. Blue is the right color for the latter, red for the former. Thus, even clothing can have a beneficial or debilitating effect on the child. In this way, it is influenced right down to the brain and heart, these instruments of the soul. It depends on the child's environment whether these organs dry up or mature into liveliness, whether they develop slowly and sluggishly or whether they are awakened to active life.

Education has to ensure that what is an indicator of inner prosperity is taken into account: pleasure and joy. These are not there for nothing; they should not be suppressed, especially not in childhood. They should not be suppressed, but ennobled. Thus, for example, the body's need for a particular kind of nourishment is indicated by the fact that one has a desire for it. In this way the body indicates that it needs it in order to thrive. Everything that gives pleasure, that arouses interest, has the effect of creating organs. The organs are brought to life by this, and regulated.

But if a child becomes bored, then you kill something, you have a weakening effect on your organs; and that is very bad. Because what has not been developed by the age of seven is lost forever. The whole direction, the growth tendency is indeed given by then. One might try – or rather, one had better not try – to test the truth of these assertions of spiritual science by, for instance, giving one child a lot of eggs to eat and another very few. The latter child will show remarkably healthy instincts for what his body needs as nourishment; the former, on the other hand, will not. This is because an excessive amount of egg white extinguishes healthy nourishment instincts.

So it is in the seventh year that the child's etheric body is born. The body that is the carrier of habits, temperament, memory, is freed. All these qualities must be cultivated in the period up to sexual maturity. This is the epoch in which one approaches the child with the subject matter of learning. For this time, not only what is present in the physical world applies. Imitation is the magic word up to the age of seven; there is now also a guiding principle for the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity: imitation and authority. Just as the child imitated before, so now, to use a saying of Goethe's, it must choose its hero and follow him on his path up to Mount Olympus. If you expound the most beautiful moral principles or pass harsh judgments in front of the child, you will find that such teachings are of no use to the child. However, if you place a personality in the child's environment as an authority, then it has an effect. Not moral principles, but embodied morality should be given to the child. The soul and conscience of the child are not developed by mere teaching, but by the child saying to itself when it sees such a personality: What he does is right. And it learns to look up with reverence to such a personality.

Nothing is more beneficial for later life than reverence cultivated in childhood, nothing more fruitful for the whole of life. When a child hears about someone who is a person to whom everyone looks up with reverence, and then sees this person for the first time and feels a shiver of awe run through his heart, too, then that is a wonderful basis for education. Respect and authority, these words must gain resonance if one wants to have a firm basis for education.

The child can only properly follow principles if it has previously seen them embodied in a person. Only then do the principles become second nature, or rather part of the etheric body. They remain in the memory. Anything missed during this time remains missed for life. To exercise the memory, the child must also absorb a great deal of material; he can then later permeate it with his own judgment; now he must first practice the memory. Later he must have material in order to be able to judge it. It is bad for the developing human being to be called upon to criticize too early. First it must get to know the world, must learn from great historical examples, must feel reverence. One must paint for the child in words and pictures what great personalities have achieved. The pictorial imagination must be cultivated in this period.

In this respect, the current materialistic way of thinking is in a sorry state. One must compare two things. Up to the age of seven, only the physical organs are developed, then the character and temperament; and we have seen how education can have the effect of awakening or stifling life. A child that is healthy in body and soul will always prefer a toy that it has created itself to a finished, beautiful and complicated thing. His rag doll, which has been given eyes, nose and mouth by ink blots, will be a dearer toy to him than the most beautiful doll bought. Why? Because when the child looks at his beloved rag doll, he has to do something, because he has to complement what he has in front of him through his imagination and power of imagination. The imagination must work, otherwise it withers away.

There is a great difference between letting a child develop by putting together artificial structures from individual parts and having something alive in front of you. There will come a time when people will no longer worship the construction kit. Truly, the occultist should not become sentimental, but here is a point where he is tempted to become so. He sees the materialistic way of thinking developing in the tender, childlike growing human being and knows that it comes from having put together dead individual things into a dead whole in the nursery. Just as the building blocks produce a lifeless thing, so the materialistic point of view achieves a lifeless world development. The materialist's brain has atrophied; it cannot be led to the living, cannot be pointed to it.

Therefore, give the child something alive, so that his brain may be awakened to life. Give him the simple toys of the country fair, where, for example, two figures set the blacksmith's hammer in motion, or a picture book in which figures pulled on strings can move. That is much better, that is alive. That is much more beneficial for the child than if he puts together dead things from dead things. There the child sees life, there it seeks the reason for the movement. This is how the child's soul develops. — All the pain in the world is deposited on the soul of the spiritual researcher when he has to see how the wrong things are brought into the child's environment. The spiritual researcher sees the forces in the organs of the developing human being wither and know: they are permanently withered.

In the period after the child's second dentition, what the etheric body is the carrier of begins to develop: a lasting stock of habits. If you want to cultivate calmness, security, simplicity and straightforwardness in the child, a personality with these character traits must walk before him as a living human being until the age of fourteen to sixteen. He must learn to develop these qualities by observing them in others. But the etheric body is also the carrier of all artistic powers. We must realize what should be given to the child artistically during this period. If the child's taste is spoiled during this time by bad pictures and so on, then it remains spoiled. From the age of seven, the child is also receptive to comparison. In this respect, there is the greatest lack of understanding in our time. For example, research is being done into the meaning of children's songs. Meaning should underlie everything. But children's songs, such as “Fly, little beetle, fly!... Your mother is in Pommerland” — that is, in Kinderland — they don't want to have any meaning at all; they are partly symbols, partly they should just give euphony.

The point is that from the age of seven, sound and color are transformed from the sensual into the meaningful. Our materialistic age is not exactly suited to this. It is not inclined to make itself understood allegorically. If, for example, you want to show the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis as a symbol for the emergence of the soul from the body, you yourself must also believe in such a parable as reality. Who really does that today? You may say to yourself half pityingly, the child with his still undeveloped mind cannot yet grasp what I mean, so I will make it clear to him in a symbolic way. But if you delve into the spirit of things, then such a parable is a profound mysterious process; then what the doll and the butterfly show us in a subordinate sphere is the same process that is repeated at a higher level when the soul emerges from the body.

If we realize this, if we feel it vividly, if we take this process not just as a comparison but as a pictorial expression of a higher truth, then the power of this idea flows into the child's soul. Everywhere, in everything, the educator should see a parable for the eternal and pour the power of this parable into the child's soul. Only then will he be able to work fruitfully. And this is not just the affair of some specially gifted or chosen person, but every educator can work in this way, every educator can impart these things from soul to soul and thus awaken productive life in the etheric body of the child.

With the time of sexual maturity, the last cover is then removed. Only now has the time come for the child to awaken to criticism and discernment, only now can abstract teachings be given, not before. And it is wrong to lead a person to their own judgment earlier than this. It is essential for the period between the ages of seven and fourteen that religious ideas also be brought to life. Religious education is just as essential for this period as the right physical environment was for the previous period. The child should not just hear about what is in the worlds beyond, but faith should be implanted in him as a matter of course.

But nothing is worse than calling a person to judgment before the astral body has awakened. First he should learn to worship, then to judge. First he should possess a great deal of memory knowledge before penetrating it with his mind. But to call him to judgment and confession before he can distinguish is the greatest corruption. First he should be imbued with a sense of authority, only then can one appeal to his judgment. It is not there before; it has not yet developed. It only develops in the years before and after sexual maturity. It is therefore grotesque when young people of eighteen appear and give their judgments, and even write thick books in which they want to overturn what has been created over thousands of years. In this respect, much will be able to change through spiritual science. Through right education, judgment can be formed and guided in the right way.

On the whole and in particular, it should be shown how one can become the right educator through a deeper knowledge of the development of the individual members of the human being. If someone says that one cannot know about this, then it must be answered: Just try educating people in this way, in the sense of these three births, and you will find the proofs of the theosophical truths in life and in practice. It is not a matter of formulating theories or principles, but of putting them into practice. The principles are good that prove beneficial in life, that, when applied in life, bear witness to their influence on culture in a beneficial way. What promotes culture, what awakens life, that is true. When the teachings that relate to the supernatural are applied, one will receive the proof of their truth. It will be recognized that Theosophy is something eminently practical, that it is not foreign and far removed from life, but that it is full of life and awakens life, that it gives strength and security to the human being. And what is more important than this in the education of a child? Education should bring down into the visible, into the sensory, what lies hidden in the supersensible. Therein lies the key to what happens in the childhood of the human being. The full significance of the question of education arises when we realize that every human being is a mystery that we as educators must solve by truly delving into their inner being.

Answer to question

Question: A spirit of contradiction in children?

Answer: The best way to counteract and eradicate this is to let the child achieve what it wants to achieve through this spirit of contradiction, so that the child experiences that what has been achieved is wrong and that it is harming itself by doing so. By forbidding, instructing and so on, little is achieved, and in most cases even more contradiction is provoked. The child learns best through its own experience.

Question: How can we explain the influence of colors on children?

Answer: Take the following example: If you look at a white surface with red squares on it, and then after a while look at an empty white surface, you will find that the squares that you previously saw as red now appear green to your eye on the empty white surface. The red that one was looking at has turned into green in the person. Green is now a soothing, calming color. Even the overly lively, nervous child, who has a lot of red in his environment, transforms this red into soothing, calming green.

Question: A spirit of contradiction in children?

Answer: It is so harmful to young people because it leads to impoverishment in later years. People then have no understanding for certain things. One can only judge about what one has experienced oneself. The power of judgment, summoned up too early, puts a stop to the whole broad reality of life. Life becomes impoverished; because only those who know can judge. Hence the rapidly impoverishing writers of our time.

Question: The sexual question: Should we educate children?

Answer: The question that is now so often asked in discussions about whether to explain sexual processes to children is often answered: I do not want to and must not tell the child any untruths. Well, one should not tell the child an untruth, one should tell him the whole truth, but a truth that lies in a completely different area than in the banal description of the physical processes of conception and birth. Our ancestors did not tell their children untruths when they said to them: “Your mother is in Pommerland, fly, little beetle, fly!” Pommerland is the land of children, the land of the soul's home. There is also a spiritual aspect to “flying”. People knew more than people today, they knew about the spiritual processes that take place at the physical birth of a child, they knew that these processes are more important, that birth is not just a physical act. And in this sense, we should also speak to children today when the question of the origin of man arises for them. We should tell them in the most beautiful poetic images about the soul that descends to give birth, we should fill their soul with images full of spiritual beauty and purity, holiness and reverence. We cannot reach high enough, we cannot be poetic enough when we place these images in their souls. And when the time comes when, with sexual maturity, the physical processes of conception and birth also become clear to them, these will appear to children only as what they are, as the inessential. Their soul, filled with high, sacred, awe-inspiring images and ideas, will regard the birth of the body as a more trivial matter.