Knowledge and Immortality

GA 69b — 23 February 1911, Basel

VII. Attachment, Giftedness and Education of the Human Being in the Light of Spiritual Science

Dear attendees! When spiritual science sets itself the task of penetrating into the spiritual world that lies behind our sensual world – the world that we perceive with our senses and can understand with the mind that is connected to our brain – then this spiritual science seeks to gain strength and confidence for human life from the spiritual world in which the origin of man itself lies. And in doing so, it seeks to benefit the individual through the knowledge of what lies in the very foundations of things.

We face the spiritual world in a completely different way when we do not seek the sources of spiritual life in general, not only for our knowledge, but when we are, so to speak, dealing with the redemption of the spirit, the real spirit behind material existence, and when it can become the task of this real spirit to help it, so to speak, to break through the physical-material. How often do we not stand before the developing human being, the human being whom we see as having to work the spirit out of the hidden depths of his being, so to speak, from early childhood, the spirit that takes more and more possession of the physical limbs and the spiritual-soul abilities that are bound to the outer instrument of the body. When we as educators are dealing with this real spirit, which rests in the mystery of the human being itself and which is to be brought out, we are dealing with a still higher sense of seeking the spirit than with mere knowledge, which we seek, so to speak, as a satisfaction for the longing of our soul.

Now today the spiritual researcher is in a special position when he wants to observe the developing human being – this developing human being who gradually reveals his talents and abilities and demands that we devote ourselves to him educationally. The spiritual researcher is in a special position when faced with the developing human being because he must immediately point out one of the great facts of spiritual science with regard to this real life of the spirit, which today by no means enjoys the special favor of the educated world. This fact should be apparent to the attentive observer of life when he sees how, from the first moment of human existence, the spiritual rests, as it were, in the deep layers of the human being, how it then, from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, that he must literally see this working out in the ever-more-detailed physiognomy, gestures, movements of the individual limbs and abilities that lie deeper within the human being. We see what is working its way from hidden depths to the surface in the growing human being, and we must ask ourselves: where do we find the origin of these predispositions, these abilities that are slowly emerging? And in regard to this search, the man of today is by no means inclined to approach the facts to which spiritual research must point. We have referred to this fact in various ways. Today it is to be used only as a basis for our actual consideration. On a higher level, this fact is a repetition of another fact that has not been known for very long in the development of mankind.

I have often pointed out – oh, human memory is generally very short in this regard – that in the 17th century not only laymen but also learned naturalists were convinced that matter, mud for example, could develop animals, fish and the like out of itself, without a germ of life having been placed in this mud – out of itself. It was a tremendous turning point for science when in the 17th century – just think, only in the 17th century! – the great naturalist Francesco Redi first put forward the proposition that opened up new, worldwide vistas for scientific knowledge: Living things can only come from living things. If you believe, he said, that living creatures can arise from river mud, then you have not examined it closely enough, otherwise you would have found that the source of life lies in the germ and that this germ only draws matter to itself in order to emerge. It is often the case with truths, as it was with Francesco Redi. He only narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno, because he too was considered a heretic. Today we can go from the most radical Haeckelians to Haeckel's opponents: within certain limits, the sentence “Living things can only come from living things” is recognized everywhere. It is taken for granted. That is the fate of great truths. First they are considered heresies, then, after some time, taken for granted. People then cannot understand how anyone could ever have believed otherwise.

The task of spiritual science today is to advocate this principle at a higher level. It is an inaccurate observation to say that what struggles into existence in the developing human being as something mysterious and expresses itself more and more distinctly in gestures and facial features comes merely from the inherited traits of the father and mother and so on. If one proceeds scientifically, this cannot be explained from these inherited traits any more than the emergence of the earthworm from the matter of the river mud can be assumed without an earthworm germ. Today, spiritual science shows that for human life, what comes into existence as the core of a human being through birth must be traced back to another, a completely soul-like existence, in which its spiritual and soul germ lies. And just as the earthworm germ draws upon external physical substance to increase in size, so too, in the human being, this spiritual-soul germ draws upon the qualities and powers of the parents and ancestors to develop with their help.

We must trace back the spiritual-soul to the spiritual-soul. We must trace the soul that exists in man back to a soul germ, just as we must trace the spiritual that develops in man back to a spiritual germ. And by accepting this, it leads us to the fact of repeated earthly lives, which today not only annoys so many people, but is felt by many people as a dream or a fantasy, as something quite abominable. The doctrine of repeated earthly lives tells us that the life we are now living, in which our abilities and qualities unfold, is a repetition of earlier earthly lives and the basis of later lives. The stages of life in which we are enveloped in the physical body are interchanged with other forms of existence, in order to bring into the spiritual life what we have taken in during the present life, what we have gone through in the school of life life, and then, after this has happened, to enter again into a new physical existence, in which a germ of life again draws from the substance what it needs in terms of qualities and abilities in order to live itself into a body.

We can therefore say: We look spiritually when we see the human being emerging from the mysterious foundations of his existence, to a spiritual-soul core of being that unfolds according to his previous life and develops in the present existence by drawing on the inherited characteristics of father and mother and their ancestors. This is another truth that will slowly become part of human education. Today, of course, they no longer burn heretics, but people still say that those who claim such things know nothing about exact science, whereas spiritual science is based on the most exact science of all. They are branded as heretics in the way that heretics are branded today. But the truth of reincarnation will become established and accepted, and will no longer be questioned by people capable of judgment, but will be taken for granted.

Thus, we must look back from what appears in a child as developing abilities to what a person has acquired in previous lives on earth and expresses in this life. If we consider present-day science, we must say that a certain lack of clarity prevails everywhere, in all fields. Science believes it need only point to what comes from the father and mother, from grandparents and so on, and is happy if it can show that the qualities that are expressed here or there were also present in this or that way in the father or grandfather.

Let us look at the whole situation of what crystallizes out of the center of the human being, brought over from a previous existence; let us look at the relationship of this core to the inherited traits. When we consider everything that the human being brings into existence in terms of qualities and talents, we can see two factually related facts in the human soul. The first is what occurs in a person in terms of both mental qualities and abilities – the majority of mental qualities and abilities are independent of each other in some respect, so that one does not depend on the other. This is shown by the simple fact that someone can be very musical and yet have no aptitude for mathematics or any other field of science. An ability can shine in our soul without our being able to say that other abilities are present with it. In this respect, the individual abilities are independent of each other. But the same is also the case with regard to the [mental] qualities. A person can have a certain pride alongside other quite pleasant qualities of the soul. And again, pride is not dependent on the other qualities. That is one thing when we want to take a look at the human soul.

The second fact is that the abilities and qualities that a person has in his soul are held together by a certain center that we call the ego and that they are either in harmony or disharmony with each other. All the abilities and qualities that work together through the ego are, to a certain extent, independent of each other and work together through the fact that each person has a special core of being. If we keep to these two facts, we can, with healthy observation of life, get a clear view of how the qualities and abilities of parents and ancestors are inherited by children and descendants. The individual qualities and abilities really do appear to come from the ancestors to the descendants. On the one hand, it shows us that if a boy is haughty, he has inherited this haughtiness from his mother; another is musical, we find the same disposition in his father or in his mother. But the way in which he processes the qualities, how he relates them, we see clearly depends on his own core of being. And the more closely we examine this human life, the more the nature of this dependence becomes apparent. We can best understand this if we say: the individual qualities – pride, humility, compassionate heart and so on – are inherited by the human being from his ancestors, including the talents, but the way in which he combines them in his soul leads back to his earlier existence, to his spiritual and soul essence with all that has been achieved by his soul in his earlier existence. We can then see much more clearly how the conditions are when we observe this peculiar way of working with the inherited traits. I should also mention that the laws of heredity are laws that cannot be investigated by spiritual science in the same way as physical and chemical laws can. Therefore, I ask you to bear in mind that it is not an objection to a law of spiritual science if it is said: Yes, if you look into life, it shows that heredity does not happen in the way it has been said here. But we must take the laws as physical laws are taken. For example, physics teaches that the path traversed by a thrown stone represents a parabola; the stone falls in a parabola. But the resistance of the air causes the path of the thrown stone not to be an exact parabola. If someone comes and says that the path of the thrown stone does not form a parabola, that is not correct. The physical law is valid, and we only have the possibility of arriving at an understanding of the stone's trajectory by accepting a general law. And if someone says, “Yes, but the stone flies to the side, a gust of wind has blown it away,” the presence of the wind does not contradict the physical law as such. In this sense, the laws of spiritual science are to be taken; they can be modified by the circumstances, but they still apply in such a way that we can only understand the processes through these laws if we know them. Let us now consider the human being in terms of his characteristics, by dividing the human soul itself into two areas, which can clearly be distinguished from one another in human life. Wherever you look in human life, you will find clear distinctions everywhere. One area can be described as the area of interests that a person has, where their attention, sympathy and antipathy, their affects, drives and passions are directed. This area of the nature of will and affect is one area. The other is the area that can be called the intellectual, the rational, that is, the way in which a person forms ideas, whether he is rich or poor in concepts and images, whether these are flexible, whether a person can form symbols or whether he is unimaginative, whether he has the intellectual elements for one area or the other. These two areas should initially be distinguished in the developing human being. With the same precision with which we gain physical laws through healthy observation of life, we can find laws for these two areas that reveal the connection between the ancestors and the descendants.

We see that everything concerning the sphere of interests, affections, sympathy and antipathy, passions, that is, the instinctive direction of man, can always be traced back only to paternal inheritance, whereas that which concerns the formation of the elements of intellect, of the rational, can be traced back to maternal inheritance. Such laws result from a faithful observation of life. Of course, it is not possible to go into the hundreds of cases that could easily be cited from a healthy observation of life. It can only be pointed out that life everywhere confirms that we get the intellectual and imaginative side from our mother's side, and the spirited element, the interest in whether we are lively or casual or apathetic, comes more from our father's side.

I cannot go into general confirmatory considerations at this point, but can only illustrate what has been said with examples. One great example needs to be mentioned: Goethe, who characterized himself so beautifully in the words:

From my father I have the stature,
the serious conduct of life,
from my mother the cheerful disposition
and the desire to tell stories.

We can find this in hundreds of cases when we observe world history or life. And because a faithful observation of life confirms these words everywhere, they make life appear so full of light.

But we still approach the subject far too abstractly when we look at life only in general terms. I said that in general the intellectual element can be traced back to inheritance from the mother's side. But it is not that simple. Instead, the qualities that are inherited undergo a transformation by metamorphosing. Spiritual science is still not fully recognized today, otherwise people would already be able to see how much it can benefit the natural sciences. It is instructive enough to observe how one natural force is transformed into another, for example heat into electricity, but spiritual science transfers this way of observing to other areas as well, and it will say that, for example, in the field of inheritance, one can only get to the bottom of it if one considers the transformation of characteristics.

And here it can be seen how maternal and paternal qualities enter into relationships when they are passed on to the children. We see how maternal qualities, when they are passed on, tend to pass over to the sons. If we look at the soul qualities in the mother, we can say: These soul qualities tend to pass over to the sons, but they tend to change in the process. What is basic [in soul terms] in the mother, she may not be able to develop into particular abilities because she lacks the organs. After all, you need the appropriate predispositions to do so. While the mother has to remain within the narrowest circle with her soul stirrings, we see how, in the sons, the mother's predispositions, as it were, shoot into the physical realm one step further, so that the same predispositions arise again in the son. And the son then shows us in his abilities, through which he can work in the world, what was predisposed in the soul of the mother. The mother has it as a soul disposition; the son has it in such a way that he can let it flow into the physical organs in order to carry it out into the world, in order to bring it to the world in the form of achievements. We see the soul qualities of the mother transformed in the sons right down to the physical level.

So we have the sentence: the soul qualities of the mother have the tendency to move into the physical organs of the sons and to confront us in turn in the soul forces bound to these organs. It only takes a healthy look at life and at the general development of humanity to find this confirmed. We can look to Goethe again, or to other personalities, for example, Hebbel. This peculiar natural dramatist Hebbel, who was never able to communicate with his father, had a great poetic gift; he shows us this gift in such a way that he had the simple primitive ability for it from his mother, who was just a simple bricklayer's wife. We can follow this in his diary entries. And this gift is manifested in him in such a way that the spiritual nature of the mother has been transformed into an organ system, descended into the physical system of the son, where it manifests itself in this way.

The remarkable thing, however, is that faithful observation of life reveals the opposite tendency in the paternal qualities, which have become more integrated into the physical, which rest more in the whole personality, including the physical predispositions. The qualities of the father tend to ascend by one degree in the daughter and to appear in the soul of the daughter as transformed into spiritual-soul qualities. Thus, something that is sober and pedantic in the father appears lovable in the daughter's soul.

I would like to give a brief example of how this relationship manifested itself in Goethe. One can point out that in fact the old Frau Rat Goethe had the art of storytelling in her soul; she had all the mobility, the imaginative gift, and we see how this particular type of gift was expressed in her circle of friends. We see how this type of gift was highly developed in the son, to the point of becoming a basic predisposition, so that it led to world-shaking facts. On the other hand, we see the father, the old Goethe. Anyone who, like me, has spent more than thirty years studying Goethe and everything related to him will not be misunderstood in a superficial way when he characterizes him as saying: “From my father I have the stature, the serious conduct of life.” The son takes over this character foundation from his father without transformation.

The old Goethe is a thoroughly sober, alert, honest man, even great within certain limits, but a man who, I might say, by the very way he comes across as a personality, cannot get along in life, cannot achieve anything worthwhile; he cannot get a proper position in the Frankfurt Council, he stops halfway. His character affects even his physical abilities. Let us now imagine this translated into the soul: how would it confront us in the soul - this stopping halfway, this never-ending? It would be possible for it to appear in the soul in such a way that it has the need on the one hand to join others, but never wants to make up its mind and repeatedly shies away from a decision. Here we have, as soul qualities, what we encounter as intellectual sobriety in the character of Goethe. But we can also have sobriety before us in its sentimental, soul-like transformation. It is easy to find where the outer qualities of the old Goethe live on in the soul: in Goethe's sister Cornelia, who, however, died young. In her, we see the entire soul qualities as a transformation of the qualities of the old Goethe. And now we also understand why Goethe, who received the external qualities from his father but what really mattered to him, what his greatness was based on, from his mother, could not really get along with his father, how the two repelled each other. In his sister, however, these qualities – transformed into kindness, passion and slight vanity – had such an effect that she became a dear companion for him, in whom the [qualities of the father], transformed into the soul, stood beside him. The whole way in which Goethe's life in his parents' house presents itself to us shows how precisely the abilities tied to active organ systems pass from father to daughter.

One could also point out that not only the father, but the entire paternal ancestry comes into consideration, and likewise on the other side the maternal. We see how Goethe repeats the sunny imagination and mystical character of his maternal ancestors – transformed into higher gifts. And in the nature of his sister, whom Goethe esteemed so highly and of whom he had to say that she lacked faith, hope and love, for she was a problematic nature who also withered away early, we see the paternal ancestry. But here we must think of these qualities, which were active in the sister, as having been transformed from the physical into the soul. We know, of course, that one of Goethe's uncles turned out to be a good-for-nothing. He was such a person that one must say of him that he had no head for anything and therefore could achieve nothing. We see the entire dilettantishness of this ancestry, which only in Goethe's father attained a certain greatness, transposed into the soul in the problematic nature of Goethe's sister.

If one wanted to, one could find mothers throughout history who transfer what they have in their souls into the physical traits of their sons. That is why mothers are so often depicted, so that we may understand the sons. Thus, in the fourth book of Maccabees, the mother of the seven sons who were killed is depicted precisely in her peculiar state of mind, which in the sons manifests itself as a stage-lowered, physical predisposition. In order to appreciate this fact, one must proceed according to laws, just as one would when investigating the dynamic force of a gust of wind. And here it can often be shown that the aptitude of a son, with all its intimacy, can be traced back to the nature of the soul struggles of the mother. Perhaps there are few cases as interesting as the relationship that the soul of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's mother had - through her character, through her sad fate - to the whole way of her son's poetry. And when we consider how closely Conrad Ferdinand Meyer was bound to his mother's personality, we see in the wonderfully noble, unassuming religiosity, in the delicate way of facing life, and in the full comprehension of tragic situations, what remained of the mother's soul.

In this way one could cite hundreds of great minds in history and intellectual life and of people we know in our ordinary daily lives and everywhere one would find this law confirmed. One can therefore say that what one is as a father tends to appear in the soul of the daughter and what one is as a mother in the disposition of the sons. A light spreads over numerous life circumstances when we survey this law; and much becomes understandable to us about the connection and the motives of different people.

What does spiritual research tell us about inheritance? It tells us that it would be a mistake to look only for inherited traits in a person. Rather, we have to go back, alongside all inherited characteristics, to the central spiritual-soul core of the human being, which comes from previous lives and integrates and incorporates the characteristics it finds, just as the earthworm germ integrates the external substance, absorbs this substance and enlarges itself according to its own nature. Thus we see in the human core of being that which is drawn in, as if by magnetic forces, into a family where the qualities in the father and other ancestors are suitable for this soul core, so that through the appropriate blending of these qualities and their transformation, the soul can express what its own inner being is. A soul that has acquired the ability in past lives, let us say, to achieve something poetic, for which it needs the gift of imagination, is attracted to a mother who has the gift of storytelling - the gift of thinking in images and, with a slight mobility of soul, transforming these images. But when this ability is passed down from mother to son, there is a tendency to carry these qualities down into the physical, and the spiritual and soul core must blend what it finds in the way of predispositions. The father's character traits are carried up into the soul, into the souls of the daughters, where they are transformed, but when they appear directly in the sons, they are not transformed.

We have to look at more complicated relationships if we want to explain the connection between how the actual human core being is attracted to the qualities of certain persons who then become its parents, and how this core being then mixes and harmonizes these qualities so that it can live out its own essence in them. Spiritual science, however, not only sees what is mixed and transformed from the qualities and dispositions of the ancestors, but it also directs our attention to the spiritual essence that we see coming into existence and must trace back to earlier forms of existence in which it has acquired what enables it to mix the qualities and dispositions that it can receive in the line of inheritance.

Now one could say that spiritual science is extremely easy to refute; one need only apply the most trivial concepts and it can be refuted with the greatest of ease. In an afterword to the small pamphlet “Theosophy and Christianity”, I myself pointed out how easy it is to refute certain presentations of Theosophy if one is determined to start from the prejudices of the present day. The examples given there could easily be multiplied. Regarding what are regarded as hereditary traits, Theosophy must point out the human individuality. It must say: The healthy human mind has the same interest in each individual human individuality, in each spiritual-soul essence of the human being, as it has in the animal in the species, in an animal species. We show the same interest in every single human being as we do, for example, in the lion species. We are as interested in human individuality as we are in animal species. You only have to misunderstand this sentence, or, if it is written, not read it properly, to refute it with tremendous ease.

Someone may object: But what do these spiritual researchers claim? They seem to be unaware that you can just as easily write the biography of a dog or a cat with all their individual characteristics as you can of a human being; you can also list all the differences between the individual animals. It is extremely easy to cite such a thing against spiritual science. But it has never been claimed that this is not possible with spiritual science. I myself was in a school class where a teacher tried to write the biography of a steel spring. You can transfer everything. But one thing can be said: the interest we show for an individual cat and so on is not the same interest as the one we show for a fellow human being. The interest we take in an individual of a species of animal can even be greater than the interest we have for an individual human being. But it is a different interest, not the same; it arises from different psychological roots. Spiritual science requires that the concepts be clearly defined. If someone does not do this, then they can put forward the kind of refutations that can be found on the street. We are dealing with a spiritual-soul core in the human being, and spiritual science does not merely trace this back to the parents and their ancestors, but says: He draws the qualities of these parents to himself, just as the earthworm germ draws the substance it needs for its growth. Now one can ask of spiritual science: Is there something that proves, and that from the human course of life, that such a spiritual-soul core of being actually exists? From the observation of the individual human life, it will be difficult to distinguish between what is nature of the cover and what is the core of the being. Regarding the individual human being, we take the view that the interaction of the covers and the core of the being unfolds gradually. We cannot easily distinguish this in the individual human being, but if we look at a larger, broader basis, at the human being in general, we see that people are very different from one another in terms of their development. Let us assume that this information from spiritual science is correct. Then, for example, there is a core of being in a person that goes back to a life in which this person acquired a strong individuality. Such an essential core will have a lot of trouble overcoming the resistance that the inherited traits present to it. It will have a lot of trouble developing these traits in such a way that they correspond to its spiritual abilities. It takes a long time for a strong essential core to integrate and develop the abilities that come from heredity. On the other hand, a spiritual core that has not yet acquired many abilities of its own will easily blend in with the characteristics of heredity.

This means that people who are stronger individuals, who have a strong inner core and who come from a previous life with a wealth of inner substance, are only slowly able to overcome the resistance that comes from heredity. And here we recall the fact that great minds are not so-called child prodigies, but that teachers often mistake them for the opposite. We only have to think of Alexander von Humboldt, who was considered stupid in his youth. His essential core simply took a long time to bring out the abilities resting within him. A rich core of being had come over to him, and it had a long time to do before it had reworked the characteristics of heredity according to the content of his soul. But through this soul content, which has long worked on the characteristics of heredity, something is also achieved that can achieve great things in humanity. On the other hand, we see souls that, so to speak, bring little with them from previous lives. They will quickly find their way into their new shells and will easily develop the characteristics of heredity. These are the prodigies who seem to be the most talented in the first years of life, but then very soon cease to be so.

Let us assume that the spiritual core of the being has to work its way through what is offered to it from the outside. It only takes a clear, correct observation of life to recognize that physical characteristics in particular are based on heredity. We can see the form of inheritance in the fingerprints. On the other hand, that which is seated as a germ in the soul will be all the less explainable by overcoming the inherited traits through external means, the more the qualities in question have their seat in the interior of the soul. This is why that which belongs to the subjective realm of the soul, the talents for music, mathematics, and so on, appear in the earliest years, as the numerous cases of child prodigies prove. On the other hand, talents that require more inheritance to be overcome will emerge later. In short, everything that comes to us in the course of a proper observation of life proves that a core essence of the human being emerges from all that seeks to envelop us as inherited traits. If we observe people carefully, we can see how the greatest individualities very slowly overcome the resistance of the outer human will. We do not want to focus on these facts today, but they can be seen among the greatest individuals.

I would like to remind you once again of Goethe. If we really understand his greatness, we can see in him how he stands before us as an old Goethe at the full height of life, at the height of art and wisdom; we can see that he has used his whole life to carve out his individuality against the opposing forces. And only the short-sighted could say [about Goethe's late works] that Goethe has grown old. Today, when judging great personalities, we can observe the tendency to exaggerate them in relation to their youth and to belittle them in relation to old age. We can even hear it said that the works of old age are old, dull things, and that those of youth are fresh. A book is being published today in which the true poets, the true individualities, are presented to readers from their youthful works.

People do not really consider that it is perhaps only through their own peculiarity that they are able to understand youth better. They would do better to go along with the individuality in question and not assume that the individuality has become duller in old age. This has already happened to Goethe during his lifetime. People have read the first part of his “Faust” and said: There is bubbling youthfulness in it; but what Goethe wrote in his old age is such that one must be lenient with the aging. But anyone who looks at what Goethe presents with this understanding will say: There, in the first part of “Faust,” Goethe's full individuality has not yet emerged; we see how he is still working his way through, and we see how this strong individuality, which educates itself throughout its entire life, works its way through the resistance of its covers. This is why Goethe says of the critics of his “Faust”:

There they praise Faust,
And what else
In my writings roars,
In their favor;
The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much;
The scum thinks,
One would no longer be!

Anyone who is familiar with the development of human nature knows that the stronger the individuality is, the longer it takes to work through.

We can already see a difference between what is the innermost core of our being, the origin of which we have to look for somewhere else, and what is the outer shell that joins this core of our being. We see this difference particularly when we look at the relationship between parents and children. Throughout life, the human being is in a kind of development. This development is an ascending and a descending one. The former includes the time up to the thirtieth, fortieth, fiftieth year, when the core of our being works from within, so that what we go through in pain and suffering becomes life experience and expresses itself in our physicality, in our expressions and gestures. In these stages of life we always see the inner core of the being working on the outer shells and finally shaping them plastically, so that we can speak of the fact that, in an ascending line, the human being becomes more and more similar to his inner core. If we look at a person in their fortieth year and consider the physiognomy that they have been working on for forty years, we can say that the outer appearance is more similar to the inner being than it was in the twentieth year, when it was still inside, still a mere ability, and striving out from the inside out. Thus, in the physical body, a person is more similar to himself in later life than in earlier life. He is more similar to himself in the fortieth year than in the twentieth. This explains an important fact of life, which in turn appears important for many external facts. What is this fact, and why is there such a difference [between the different ages]?

For the observer of life, there is a difference between children of younger parents and those born later in marriage. Only those who are not observers of life do not notice this difference. The core of a child's being, who has moved into a young couple, will find little resistance in its shells because the parents have not yet worked much into their physicality. The individuality will be able to work more into their shells; they do not yet find such a plastic expression of the qualities in them that reproduce themselves in the line of inheritance. Therefore, we can say that children conceived by young parents are better able to shape the whole person from their own individuality. Children born later in a marriage are those whose own core of being is weaker and are therefore drawn to very specific traits that father or mother have imprinted. Thus we see that children born later generally bear more of their father and mother than those born earlier, because the qualities that go into inheritance have already become pronounced in the parents' bodies. We see how the work of the parents on themselves shows in different ways in the children. Strong individualities, which are less similar to the parents, are the children born of the dawn of a young marriage. Less strong individualities, which are more similar to the parents, are those born to older couples.

Spiritual science throws light on such facts in the same way that natural science throws light on natural facts. And if we have this law, we have the means to educate people in a way that is practical for life. Then we acquire a very specific attitude. Anyone who, as a teacher of children, acquires this attitude flowing from spiritual science always says to himself: You must look at what has come into existence through birth and is working its way out more and more like a sacred puzzle to be solved; it is something that comes from previous lives. To do this, you have to look at the ancestry, where the characteristics come from. From this there arises for the educational eye that harmony of will and ability, that sense of responsibility towards the developing human being as a sacred riddle to be solved. When we absorb such wisdom, which places us in this way with the pupil, then that seriousness is imprinted in us, which - without theorizing - finds the educational tact to really solve the riddle in each particular case. In each individual case, we have to act in accordance with this sense of tact in order to properly inspire the mind. We then take leave of the popular phrases of pedagogy.

Which phrase can be heard more often today than that: You have to educate the individuality of the human being. You must educate individually, not in a stereotyped way, and you must not do anything that would contradict the individuality. But anyone who truly observes life wonders: what exactly is individual education? This word remains a mere phrase as long as one does not know how the core of a being relates to what surrounds it. That is why what is said about individual education is just empty words. In most cases, we are unable to do much with them. We have to educate in the way that the demands of practical life arise. We have to realize that we cannot get by with these empty words, but that we have to say: we have to educate from what is assessed. Above all, we are called upon to give the human being what makes him a useful member of human society. He must be able to do what is demanded within certain circles of people, what his time and circumstances demand of him. The phrase of individuality must not shake this demand. Those who see how spiritual science understands the connection between the human being and the whole world are not at all powerless in the face of life's demands. It may be necessary, for example, that a son who has this or that quality takes this or that position in life; family circumstances demand it. Anyone who really looks into the laws of things knows that people are not so one-sided that it can be said that they are only useful for this or that. They can be made useful if not only one side is developed. People are more versatile than is usually assumed. And anyone who really looks through the combination of inherited traits to the spiritual and psychological core of the being is able to connect the various extraordinarily instructive processes with what presents itself as a real process to the spiritual researcher. If one seeks what the individuality of the pupil is, then the practical demands of life make it necessary to look at individuality differently than it is usually viewed in a stereotyped way. It must be said that anyone who allows themselves to be inspired by spiritual-scientific knowledge will, as if flowing into their entire attitude, acquire a fine sense of tact and not only a sense of responsibility, but also all the skills they need to do the right thing at the appropriate moment. It is quite remarkable that whenever you make such assumptions, you always know what to do at the right moment. To give an example: A child [was given to me to educate] who was denied all talents because he had developed in a strange way up to the age of eleven, so that one could say: “Nothing will come of this rascal; he has not even learned to read and write properly!” When this child was entrusted to me and I began to have a certain influence over him, I could say: “All this is only deceptive appearance.” The only difficulty was to break through the outer shell in order to reveal the inner core of the child's being. The core of the being had to be uncovered. Twenty years have passed since that time, and it has been shown that it was as I said. In a short time it was possible to help the spiritual core of the being to break through and to prove what has been said here.

Thus, the study of the developing human being shows how necessary it is not to remain with the outer, physical body alone, but to look through to the spiritual, which is everywhere behind the sensual and which we can see if we acquire the ability to do so. It is important for our knowledge in this direction as well if we can acquire concepts and ideas such as those found in spiritual science.

It is important for our practical lives that we believe in the spirit and seek it behind physical matter; this becomes clear to us when we stand before the developing human being and have to solve the real puzzle in education of how the spirit pours into physical matter. Spiritual science is there not only to talk about the three concepts of body, soul and spirit in a theoretical way, but to fertilize practical life in such a way that a direct result can be achieved through proper education.

When we look at the human being in this way, then, by participating in his development through education, the human soul is imbued with the high truth of the human being's mission in his earthly existence. Then we feel something of the fact that, although we human beings are fully immersed in the physical-sensual world, we are called upon to bring into this physical-sensual world that which we can draw from the spirit. From this realization, we can say: We are surrounded by physical and sensory phenomena; but behind them stands the active spirit. In the developing human being, we encounter the physical human being in indeterminate talents and indeterminate physiognomy, but at the same time we encounter the spirit, which has to struggle through physical matter and which we have to help to come into existence in the physical world from an enigmatic state. Wherever we look at our practical life's work, man is called upon to impress spirit on matter. The words in which we may summarize today's reflection are true everywhere. The spirit struggling for existence also shows us the truth that can be said with these words:

It presses to the human sense
From the depths of the world, full of mystery
The material abundance.
It flows into human souls
From the heights of the world, full of content
The spirit's clarifying light.
They meet in the human heart
To a wisdom-filled reality.