VI. A Lecture for Public School Teachers

Thus, we must recognize the connections between two capacities of the human soul. Modern psychology cannot see this because it is not permeated by spiritual science. If we can look objectively at that important moment that I have described as occurring around nine years of age, we will see, on the one hand, that something important happens that is connected with the feeling capacity, the feeling life of the child. People look inwardly. Quite different feeling nuances occur. In a certain sense, the inner life of the soul becomes more independent from external nature in its feeling nuances. On the other hand, something else occurs that we can see only through a truly intimate observation of the soul. Namely, we learn because we still have what we might call an organically developed memory. Jean Paul noticed this and expressed it brilliantly when he said that we certainly learn more in the first three years of our life than in three years at the university. This is so because memory still works organically. We certainly learn more for living. However, around the age of nine a particular relationship forms between the life of feeling and the life of memory that plays more into conscious life.