III. Understanding the Human Being: A Foundation for Education

The general view has moved more and more toward looking at this process in a one-sided, abstract way, as simply a process within the soul. People ask, what becomes of our thoughts once we take them into our soul? What have they become, once they are taken in and returned to us as memory? How does this process take place? We cannot study this process if we have not first looked into the relationship between the spirit-soul and the physical body in some detail. There are some so-called idealists who might say spiritual science is basically materialistic, since it is always referring to physical organs. To believe that, however, would be an enormous error. Spiritual science recognizes the great effects of the soul on the formation of the organs. It sees the soul as having a greater influence than simply working on abstractions, and in fact sees the soul as actually having the power to form the organs. Spiritual science primarily seeks to understand the soul during childhood, when the spirit-soul continues to work upon the formation of the organs after birth.