Lecture XVII

A second stage in the life of the human being is puberty; in the male sex it is marked by the change of voice, in the female by changes in the body that spread over the whole organism, not focusing on one organ as clearly as does man's change of voice. In both sexes the changes fall somewhere around the fourteenth year. Once again, this is an essential change in the organism. What is really happening there? What is different after puberty? The whole life of will of the human being is quite changed! Try to compare a nineteen year-old with a thirteen-year-old, directing your attention to the concrete life of will. The whole life of will becomes quite different; otherwise feelings of love could not enter the life of will. Again, a transformation in the soul life! When through spiritual science we investigate what is going on, we come to the following: We increasingly grow together with the outer world, especially in the time between the change of teeth and puberty; we grasp more and more of this outer world; our will becomes more and more oriented and we learn to bring it into harmony with the things and events of the external world. When one really studies the whole complex confronting us here, one finds that during this time the human being acquires for himself the will element, not from within, but through contact with the outer world. It was out of deep intuition that Goethe said, “A talent is formed in the stillness, a character in the stream of life.”[^2]