Knowledge and Immortality
GA 69b — 14 November 1910, Nuremberg
IV. The Child's Nature, Gifts and Education
Dear attendees,
If today, as an outsider, one considers the attitude and way of thinking of spiritual science – or, as one is accustomed to calling it, theosophy – and tries to form an opinion about the peculiarity of this spiritual science or theosophy based on the usual conceptions of our time , then an outsider can very easily form the, in a sense, justified opinion that spiritual science is something that conjures up high ideals before the human soul: ideals that tend towards certain insights - perhaps the outsider will say, towards supposed insights - about the human soul, about nature and spirit. And outsiders will say to themselves: Well, these ideas, these insights are very beautiful, they satisfy the human soul that longs for inner certainty, and so it is understandable that many profess Theosophy out of this thirst. And when those who have something to say in spiritual science express what they know about the world of appearances and what goes beyond what our natural science - which is admired by spiritual science - has to say, the outsider may say to himself: Yes, what the spiritual scientist has to say about natural phenomena sounds fantastic. The fantastic element is something that the outsider must notice at first. Those who are immersed in spiritual science will find it extremely understandable that the outsider finds so much fantasy in spiritual science. Those who really want to be grounded in natural science can only say: I can't do anything with it. That is quite understandable. If we now consider, by contrast, a person who has penetrated somewhat deeper into theosophy, who has familiarized himself with what is really presented to the striving soul, who has informed himself about what the human soul and human spirit are, we can see feelings of a completely different kind arising in him. Such a person can direct his gaze to what our present age, out of its scientific views, has to say about the task, goal, and value of spiritual life and its engagement in practical work. And here it sometimes seems truly fantastic to the person who is familiar with spiritual science what the materialistic attitude has to say about individual branches of spiritual life. One need only listen to what is offered in the field of education and pedagogy. To the spiritual researcher, it seems like a collection of empty phrases and words. One can look around in the wide range of what educational cultural endeavors are and will find all kinds of fine words. Who has not heard the words that everything that is implanted into the human soul should be avoided, because it is about the education of the human individuality. But who can say anything other than fantastic, empty words if they cannot grasp the true concept of what the human individuality is. Compared to spiritual science, materialistic science appears as a sum of abstractions; it appears as something unrealistic. And if you cannot convince yourself that spiritual science not only has to cultivate life practice, but that it is capable of realistically getting to the bottom of things, you misunderstand the importance of realistic knowledge for life practice.
When we reflect on the growing child, in relation to whom we have an educational task, with the ideas of spiritual science, then, as this child finds its way into life, we are overcome by the feeling that we have a sacred mystery before us in this being, which we can only solve with deep reverence. In every growing soul we sense that there is something in it that is different from anything we see. We sense an unknown in the developing human being, and we are right. Our awe and reverence cannot be great enough when we face the education of the child, and our humility before every being that always confronts us like a new mystery cannot be great enough either. I would not dare to speak about it if I had only been occupied with spiritual science. But I dare to speak about it because for fifteen years as an educator I have felt the sacred riddles myself.
From the point of view of the modern man, it is child's play not only to scoff but also to refute with the appearance of reason the fantastic idea of the re-embodiment of man, the idea of the reappearance of the human soul in a new life. Today, this idea of re-embodiment will only be mentioned in as much as it is pointed out that our soul, which today lives through the time between birth and death in our body, has often gone through life and that we live through the present life as a cause in order to experience the effects and fruits later. Theoretically, this idea is easy to refute. The matter looks different when one is involved in practical educational work and sees the child's soul growing and developing from week to week, from year to year, with the right feelings. If one starts from the premise that one wants to educate correctly, one must say to oneself: You have to intervene in what has been laid down for millennia. And if you look at every expression of the child from this point of view and take every measure accordingly, then you will see how fruitful the education is. Anyone who knows the laws of so-called logical refutation knows how little a theoretical refutation means. But if you work in the spirit of this view, then you feel its truth.
Now one is indeed faced with a difficult task if one wants to see clearly what is growing in the developing child's soul. Everyone knows the purely external facts. But who has not experienced in life how powerless the educator often is when certain tasks are set by external laws or by the demands of parents, how powerless he feels when the tasks set contradict the abilities and talents that are present in the child. Who has not felt and seen in life that we often cannot achieve anything, even with the greatest effort, if the child's talent does not meet us halfway. How often does life show us how powerless we are, not only because of the child's lack of talent, but also because of our lack of insight.
We have tried to educate the child; however, it is not immediately apparent when we have educated the child wrongly. If we follow a pupil in his later life, something peculiar often becomes apparent to us, namely that he must later squeeze talent and aptitude out of his soul through difficult struggles. And we realize: if we had recognized this, we would have been able to help him, we would have saved him much effort in what could only come later. And we realize how necessary it is to focus on this difficult question: what about the child's abilities and talents, and how should we approach the educational tasks?
Even today, there is understandable confusion regarding these fundamental questions, because there are still influential suggestive ideas and suggestive concepts that understandably have a numbing effect on people, and such concepts guide the whole of human thinking. One such concept is that of inheritance. When talking about a child's disposition and talents, who would not initially think: What has been inherited from parents and ancestors? I have already pointed out that Goethe once expressed the words with very understandable modesty, but they stem from deeper insights:
From my father I have the stature, the serious conduct of life, from my mother the cheerful nature and the desire to tell stories.
And after he expresses some more inheritance relationships, he concludes with the words:
What is now to be called original about the whole figure
?
Posterity has already answered this in part, and a later posterity will still answer it.
Anyone who has studied Goethe for a little more than twenty years has a right to speak about him without bias. All respect for the Frankfurt councilman, from whom Goethe inherited “the stature to lead a serious life”! And when one sees the mother's mobile, loving way of looking at life and dealing with people, then one also realizes what Goethe means to say about what he inherited from his mother, “the cheerful nature and the desire to tell stories.” Try adding all this up and see what comes out. When one adds up and reflects on all that was inherited, one finds: What Goethe could not inherit was precisely that which was effective – that was the actual Goethe himself, that was what allowed the guiding powers to flow in. They used the inheritance that presented itself to them to express [what was special about him.
And it is the same with every individual, as with great and significant people. You can't get by if you want to trace everything back to heredity and don't take into account the individuality that unfolds according to its own laws. For those who look at this life impartially, the question of how what we may trace back to our ancestors, what is visibly there, relates to the individual, is by no means simplified. What is inherited is not denied by spiritual science. But how does spiritual science relate to what is incorporated into what is inherited? After all, inheritance can be seen everywhere. There are people who say that when new traits appear that we do not find in our ancestors, we can still think of heredity, because the traits that we have inherited may have been present in our other ancestors, but they had no opportunity to develop them. This is something that is often said. If you talk like that, then you really have a very vague concept of traits. That is not realistic; one can dream up concepts anywhere. Such people seem to me like someone who says: every brick has the potential to fall on someone's head. But there has to be someone there [for the brick to fall on]. Those who think realistically cannot speak of potential in this way.
It is the task of true education to separate what is inheritable from what is not. Basically, one could – because it is popular today to delve into the animal kingdom – get an idea of heredity. The chicken egg contains what is inherited, but warmth must be added from the outside. Thus we see that an essential prerequisite is warmth, which is not present in the germ itself. Nevertheless, a superficial consideration shows that in animals the things are hereditary, while in humans we must certainly also speak of non-heritable things. Consider how, in the animal, what we call instinct is undoubtedly there from the start, and visibly so, in that it must lie in the line of inheritance; and the animal is a generic creature in that it inherits all the qualities that are more abundant in it than in man, for example, in relation to skill. In this respect, man is worse off than the animal. When he is humble, man tends to twist the concepts according to humility, or when he is proud, to twist them according to pride. And when he is proud, he is inclined to say that animals are far below man. This does not apply in such an absolute sense. Everyone can read about how culture has developed, how long it took human intelligence to come up with paper production, for example. The wasps had already invented paper long before that. So when we look at the animal kingdom, we can see that intelligence is simply realized directly from instincts. One could conclude from this that humans are actually no more intelligent than animals.
There are certain things that humans cannot inherit. Everyone will admit that the ability to build a wasp nest is inherited. But no one should doubt that a person who is placed in a wasteland will never develop language or self-awareness. Language and human self-awareness cannot be inherited; they are not passed on to the next generation, they must always be learned anew. Thus, outward appearances teach that the most important things are not to be judged as they are in the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, who would deny that there are indeed things that are inherited? Who would deny that? When Schopenhauer says that he inherited much of his thinking nature from his mother and much of his will nature from his father, who would deny that there is something important and true in this, even if it is expressed in a misleading way. Thus we see that man actually comes into existence with inherited traits, and we have the task of distinguishing these inherited traits from that which is not inheritable. Experience shows this. Now someone might say: We are happy to admit that language and self-awareness cannot be inherited, but we do not need to make such a subtle distinction, because that takes care of itself; if a person is born into a particular language area, it will simply follow that [he speaks that language].
But what if there are perhaps non-inheritable characteristics that we first have to extract from the deeper sources of human individuality? In this case, it is not quite so easy to distinguish these abilities and talents that lie at the core of a person's being from the inherited characteristics. It is certainly a matter of heredity when seven musicians come from the Bach family. Nevertheless, anyone who takes a practical approach to education will not be able to do other than to single out the inner core of the being from what is inherited. Here one must be completely clear about how the conditions of heredity present themselves in life. We see when a child comes into existence that it resembles the father or the mother more, that it has certain qualities that point to the mother and certain qualities that point to the father. Anyone who looks at life with an open mind will soon notice that there is indeed a difference between what is transmitted from the father and what is transmitted from the mother to the children. Of course, the circumstances mix, but one can still distinguish between what is maternal and what is paternal. And if you look deeper, it becomes clear how the two parts are distributed: it turns out that everything we see in inherited traits and that relates to the quality of intelligence or judgment, to the agility of intelligence or judgment, can be traced back to the mother's traits. And those qualities that can be summarized by saying that the strength of character, the strength and the power to face life, everything that is of a strong-willed nature in the son and daughter, can be traced back to the qualities of the father. I am not saying that the child's intelligence leads back to the mother's intelligence, but I am saying that the child's intelligence leads back to qualities of the mother's intelligence, and the child's strength of character leads back to qualities of the father's character.
If we look at these things more closely, it soon becomes apparent that there are great differences in the way parental life progresses and in the characteristics of the child's life, especially with regard to whether a child is, so to speak, an early child of marriage or a late one. If a child is born later, it shows the educator completely different relationships to the parents than if it is born during the parents' youth. Observation shows that in children born late in marriage, those qualities of the mother or father that have already been lived out in a certain way in their profession tend to emerge more strongly, and in these children the imprint of the parents is much more clearly visible. There is much greater flexibility of intelligence, and the character is much less clearly defined. It is interesting to consider these facts in relation to the child, because we have to take them into account and ask ourselves: what is it that carries the inheritance?
Inheritance is a process that takes place in the physical world. What is inherited? What is inherited is what has actually entered the physical body. If we say that the qualities of intelligence are inherited, we must know that what appears in the child is bound to the physical body, for example to the brain. Because we receive this as an instrument, so to speak, it is natural that we show hereditary traits. We inherit the more intimate formation of the organs and have to adapt to them. Thus it is explainable - because we have inherited organs - that we are dependent on these organs. A somewhat crude comparison: if you are born without a hand, you see how dependent you are on it. It is basically always the physical that comes into consideration when we speak of inheritance, as I have done now. And from this crystallizes that which shows itself to the practical observation of life as an individual core, which we do not understand when we trace it back to inheritance conditions.
The child comes into the world with a certain agility of intelligence and judgment. We look at the mother and see the origins. We study the child's character by looking at the father and thus gain insight into the child's character. But then something strange remains – and that is the most important thing for the educator. Only when he brings this into harmony with heredity can everything [that happens in education] be successful. The judgments that develop have qualities that point to the mother. But within this type of judgment, there are indications of very specific spheres of life that cannot be traced back to the mother. Within the mother's qualities, one child may show an inclination towards music, for example, while another may gravitate towards mathematics. It would be a serious mistake to direct the child's intelligence in any particular direction. The nature of the intelligence can be inherited, but the specific direction, the aptitude for this or that, may be revealed by the nature of the intelligence, but it cannot be inherited. It is left to us as educators to look at the mother and to understand the mobility of the intelligence, for example, why the child must think slowly or quickly. But it still remains for us to understand the inclination towards this or that, towards the specifically individual.
In other respects, strength of character and self-will clearly emerge as traits inherited from the father, and we understand this in the child when we look at the father. But there is one thing we cannot understand. Something emerges, crystallizing like a nucleus: that is the direction of interest towards which this character is turning. We see this direction of interest in one child, and a different direction of interest in another – these are specifically individual.
And if we are clever as educators, we will ask: What are the judgmental qualities of the mother and the character traits of the father? But if we want to educate properly, we need to know the direction of interest of the character and the direction of intelligence. It is very easy to confuse these two aspects. This is why, in a family where a child takes after the father, the father has a difficult time bringing up the child. And conversely, where the child takes after the mother, the mother has a difficult time. Children who take after their father are easier for their mother to bring up. Children who are particularly mother-oriented are more easily brought up by the father. If a child is father-oriented, then it has the will impulses of the father; the father cannot transfer the direction of interest, but the talents occur within the mother's sphere. One consequence is that the father will understand little of the child in this area; the child will take after the father in character, and the mother is best able to cultivate the talents. If, on the other hand, the child takes after the mother, the mother will find it difficult to direct the child's interest; the father can do that:
A talent develops in seclusion,
a character in the stream of the world.
Talents develop in the mildness of the mother's care; characters develop in the firmness of the father's care. This is a golden principle.
As a rule, people do not approach us in such a way that they clearly represent a mixture of the qualities inherited from father and mother; as a rule, it is the case that either more paternal or more maternal influence comes to the fore. This gives rise to extraordinarily important principles for the educator. If we assume that the maternal element predominates, then we can often see that the child appears to be of excellent character, and it is easy to guess the specific talent in this abundance of intelligence. But if the paternal element is suppressed, then it becomes really difficult for us to find the special direction of interest in the suppressed paternal inheritance. In such cases we, as educators, must supply what has not been provided by heredity. We must look particularly at the father to see whether he is relaxed or firm, and then we must replace what has been left out of the inheritance. We can do this by looking at the opposite side. We soon find the talents and abilities, but what is not given in the inheritance, we must replace through education.
What should the educator do? There is something infinitely important here: if he sees that what can be inherited from the father is not pronounced sharply enough, then he must work to ensure that the talents are not left without guidance. He must work to direct the child's attention to such activities and pursuits that correspond to his talents. The talents must be tied to external objects. The interests must be awakened. A child who is inclined towards the mother, we must especially accustom to the fact that it has the objects corresponding to its talents in the environment, to which we draw its attention. But we must not follow the principle: the child has its own abilities, so we let it follow them.
Now, let us assume that a child takes after his father, then it becomes difficult for us to guess the talents, abilities and aptitudes. On the other hand, the direction of interest confronts us with an extraordinarily strong will impulse. This interest will express itself in the intensity of desire. And we must be especially careful not to assume that the direction of interest will always point to the right gift. In such a case, we must pay particular attention to studying the interests in the right way. But if we allow interests to mature for which there is no gift, we harm the child. What expresses itself as a soul quality and does not correspond to any gift is reflected back into the soul. This is a constant source of illness that disturbs the physical nervous system. Many such disturbances can be traced back to a failure to harmonize interests with gifts and talents. It will show - which is extremely instructive to see - how certain interests express themselves impulsively, but lead to clumsiness, while others lead to skill. Far too little attention is paid to this. But one should carefully distinguish between the interests. And then, as an educator, one has the task of keeping away what would lead the interest to clumsiness.
The best way to get along is to ask yourself: What is the father like and what is the mother like? - and then carefully examine what appears as a crystal core within the paternal and maternal inheritance treasure. In this sense, we can say that education must really be based on knowledge and not on empty phrases such as “educate harmoniously” or “take the individuality into account”. How can we educate harmoniously if we do not know what the interests are? How can we emphasize the individuality if we do not know how to find what is specifically individual?
Now, this is only one side of education. The human being is not placed in the world for his own sake, but for the sake of humanity. We cannot merely take into account what appears in the child as inherited. The educator will soon realize that with the law of karma a great, harmonious relationship is expressed in spiritual-scientific terms. You can easily observe outside [in nature] how a being is placed where it belongs. The edelweiss does not grow in the lowlands, but on mountain heights. Every being grows into its environment and cannot thrive where it does not fit in. It is the same with the human core, which fits into the “environment” to which it belongs. Things fit together better than one might think. That is why the talents go well with the mother and the interests go well with the father. Nevertheless, we have to look at something else. The human being is not designed to speak his own language, but that of the community into which he is born. That is the generic. Thus, through the common language, the whole way of thinking and feeling penetrates into the soul.
This can be observed to a certain extent. Try to compare the soul of a Franconian person with that of a West Prussian person, and try to realize how the respective way of thinking and feeling works within him. It is the same with everything into which the human being is placed in accordance with the species. If we educate consciously, we must know that we do not educate the human being only individually. Just as we cannot give him his own language, we cannot do anything extra for each child as educators. Human nature is designed so that the human being fits into what is there in the cultural process. The human being must be educated into what belongs to humanity; it must take root in him. If we bear this in mind, we shall say to ourselves: In the face of these elements we seem quite powerless. If we look at the talents and at the demands of life, it may seem impossible to us to bring harmony into them.
[Only the intimate observation of the human being can help us here]. I will describe two children to you, [put them before you as examples]. One of them was born into an environment where a particular language was spoken. They grew up with this language; it became the property of their soul – a part of the whole inner human being. Anyone who has reflected on the relationship between language and the human being will know that through language, the human being not only learns to think logically, but also to feel. For example, the way the A or U sound works in any language has an enormous effect on the soul's capacity for feeling. Language provides a “skeleton” for feelings and sensations. If we place next to this child, who is completely interwoven with his language, so that he has not only learned to think in language but also to 'be' in language, another child who, by the will of fate, is forced to learn and make another language his own after he has barely learned his mother tongue. We will observe how his soul life is much more mobile, much less grounded. I would like to say that a language that acts like a “skeleton” of the soul gives more robust natures. A language that wears our soul like a “dress” makes the soul more fluid, less solid. The result is that the soul of such a child is much more easily influenced; it cannot face the external influences of life with such robustness.
If we now leave aside the language, it can teach us that it is of great importance for education when what is later to be the educational principle and purpose in life connects with the earlier stages. All erraticism in education destroys the soul life in an enormous way. One of the greatest damages to the soul is when one does not build on what has gone before. On the other hand, conscious building has a wonderful effect. If you have a child with a weak character and you sit down with him from time to time and begin to speak very subtly of what he did three years ago, you can do much more to correct the present than you can by directing your thoughts to the present. You can make the biggest mistakes if you lash out at the child with punishments and disciplinary measures out of anger. When the deed is fresh, it is easy to make mistakes. Life is not without contradictions, you cannot help but make mistakes, but they can be improved. If you are inclined to punish, sit down with the child and talk about a previous misbehavior; the child has moved on and no longer feels the previous one so strongly. Feelings become dulled; they take a completely different path than thoughts and memory. It turns out that we can discuss the past objectively, and the more often we do this, the more we can refresh our memory and turn our attention to the past, and the more we can do for the development of character.
These are the individual rules that arise for the unbiased observer. However, one needs the perspective of spiritual science to group the details correctly. But then one can see the big picture and draw important principles from it. One is forced to look not only at the individual, but also at the whole. Then, however, one must look for harmony between the individual, single nature and the general human nature. By going back to the past, you can draw a certain sympathy. You will find it very difficult to reconcile the child's selfishness with the demands of the environment, but when you go back to past experiences, you will see how the child responds to them. The educator must reconcile the earlier with the later. He must see to it that what the individual human being must harmonize with the demands of all humanity happens by drawing on the past. You educate all the better the more you draw on the child's earlier experiences.
So you have to gather together these things that are good for raising children. In particular, it is a wrong to leave pronounced talents undeveloped and thus put the child in constant conflict with the environment. All these are causes of illness. Suppressed talents and interests creep into the human soul and can later manifest as mental illnesses. We commit a sin against human health when we leave a person's talents undeveloped and his interests unused. And we also do wrong when we fail to take into account the need for adaptation to the environment. If we do not do this, then what arises as a contradiction between the child's soul and the demands of life seems to be pushed back into the soul and is felt as a deep dissatisfaction in life. And for all people who go through life and always complain: I have such a difficult time in my soul - then the soul's judge must say: Yes, there are interests that should have been legitimately cultivated, there are talents that should have been developed, and that has been missed. And that is why the person cannot cope with putting themselves into life and is unsatisfied.
One could easily say: What you are talking about is based on more intimate properties of the soul that can be discovered within the intelligence and the direction of the will. But these are precisely the most important things for the educator; they are the core of the soul and where he can do the most harm. Why? The interests and talents we cultivate initially lead to a certain agility of judgment, and at thirty years of age it is dexterity of the fingers and hands. If someone is thirty years old and handles something clumsily, it leads back to the time of about his seventh year, when he has not yet learned the agility of thought. And the apathy that sets in when we do not develop the interests that shows up as a casual attitude in all practical tasks. Above all, it must be noted that it is precisely the individual essence of the child that is expressed in these qualities.
The humanities scholar will recommend that the child be kept busy, but in such a way that it happens through play. Why does the child play, and why should he play? I will mention something from later life. You know a phenomenon in life, fatigue. Where does fatigue come from? You will often get the answer that it shows up in the evening when the muscles are worn out. Is it true that muscles can come into a state of fatigue by their own nature? If that were so, then the muscles that move your heart would have to be resting from fatigue. It is not in the nature of the muscle to get tired. The muscle does what it is supposed to do; it does not get tired. The heart muscle remains unaffected by external activity. Fatigue only occurs when you ask your muscle to do something that relates to the outside world, that is connected with a conscious action. We can say that a mismatch between our muscles and the demands of the outside world causes fatigue. This is true: fatigue comes from the internal organization not matching the outside world. It shows that there is a certain contradiction between the outside world and the internal organization.
I only want to draw attention to one thing: we must be clear that the human process of culture cannot proceed only according to the implanted laws, so that it only corresponds to the inner [physical] organization. The essence of the human soul life is not directed towards the preservation of the species, but towards the development of the soul-spiritual. Two currents are expressed here: progress [of the soul-spiritual] and that which is inner [bodily] organization. It is written in the eternal laws of existence that man must sacrifice purely organic laws to spiritual laws. He who sees through these things will not complain about it. But he will find it understandable that, on the other hand, a balance is necessary. We must be prepared for life in a healthy way, so that we can grasp external things with our hands and think about external things with our brains. A balance must be created, and this will only be achieved if we are able, at certain times, to cultivate an activity that is not directed towards the outside world, but is content with the activity itself.
When it comes to play, our inner nature follows what is required here. We do our child the greatest favor when we shape the play individually, and in doing so we strengthen our inner being. If you shape the play in a stereotyped way, you can see the consequences. Today, people want to fit everything into a template; they do not even want to admit that clothing should be tailored to suit the individual. It is the basic trait of contemporary culture that even those people who are the worst Nietzschean followers [i.e. the worst individualists] will still eat together at a “table d'hôte”. We must not allow this to influence our education, especially not in play. We have to organize play in such a way that we individualize, that we pay careful attention to the talents and interests of this or that child, otherwise we are committing a sin.
This can lead us to the realization that it is necessary for us as practical educators to believe in the spiritual in the child and not in the muscles, which are supposed to have the strength to counteract their wear and tear. The soul should be left to its own devices in play, and the material should not interfere, so that the child can be free from the “tiresome” influence of the outside world. If we do not believe in an inner soul-being that liberates itself, then we cannot educate practically. But if we approach the subject in a truly practical way, we can see something else of significance; we can also recognize that it is necessary to be free from the coarse material laws of the outer world in childhood. The earlier these laws impinge upon the child, the more they take hold, and this does not allow free activity in play. Childhood needs truths that do not slavishly adhere to what is in the outside world; it needs truths that it can embrace with heart and soul. That is why fairy tales and myths should be given to the child's soul; in this way, inner truths liberate the soul. Mankind used to do this out of a sure instinct, and in our time it will be necessary to take more account of this.
Now one may ask: how does an educator acquire these special talents? It is not really that difficult, because what I have already mentioned is actually the main thing that belongs to the educator, and in a very comprehensive way: the holy awe for what wants to break free as the individual core of the human being. If we have a sense of awe for that which has been preparing itself for millennia and in whose development we must assist, then a sense of responsibility arises that blesses us, that is, it has a certain quality: it makes us “genius” in our education. The educator often has no idea why he is doing the right thing. The child itself tells him what it needs. What is necessary in the educator's profession is love, which is characterized by the fact that we learn to love the blossoming of the child's abilities; and we will see what love can do in the spirit. In the outer life, love may often be blind. When love is directed towards the inner becoming, it opens the soul, for behind this love there is always a mighty faith – the faith that truly enables us to view life in the right sense and that shows us the human being as standing in a world of spiritual life as well as of sensory life, and that we have to establish the connection between them. In the child we see the spirit descending, the marriage of the spirit with the body. And when we see in the child how the spirit unites with the body, then our educational activity can become an expression of what we can call the actual belief in life, which may be expressed in the words:
It surges to the human mind
From the depths of the world, full of mystery
The rich abundance of matter,
It flows from the heights of the world
Into the depths of the soul, full of content
The spirit's clarifying light.
They find each other in the human heart
To form a reality full of wisdom.