An Age of Expectation

For the occultist, it is immediately clear that a materialistic culture creates a terrible discrepancy between what is innate in the human being and what the head and heart often have to learn. I am not criticizing, but merely pointing out a fact. There is actually nothing more unnatural in the world today than that children growing up have to learn what they have to learn from about the sixth or seventh year. I am not saying that they should not learn it, because of course they have to learn; this is brought about by external social necessity. But for the souls it is often as if one wanted to bring about a natural development of the human body by breaking the hands and legs of children in their sixth or seventh year. That is roughly what happens when children are forced to learn letters, because for human beings, learning to read and write are the most unnatural activities there are. They have to be forced to do it, even though the art of reading and writing is in the greatest disharmony with what the soul wants. It is a sad sight to behold, but it is a necessity; it is no use closing one's mind to it. But teaching children to read and write at this age would be pretty much the most sensible thing to do. Even if they were instructed to make figures out of simple street dirt, that would be much more sensible. There is only one thing we can do: we can try to let the atrophied etheric body - for it atrophies under today's necessities - move in the eurythmic movements of the physical body, which the gods want. This is what eurythmy should offer in a pedagogical sense.