III. Understanding the Human Being: A Foundation for Education

We can often learn much from language itself. Ancient peoples, who still had a kind of primal, instinctive knowledge, did not always consider things as abstractly as we do. Take, for instance, hypochondria, which in Greek means “below the cartilage of the breast bone,” an anomaly of the soul that has its origins in the human abdomen, which is indicated in the word itself. In the English language, which in comparison to the languages of Central Europe is still at an early stage of development, the word spleen, as an emotional state, has something to do with the soul. However, spleen also refers to an organ, and for good reason, since the spleen of the soul has much to do with the spleen organ. Such things are nearly all lost. Materialism has nearly lost an understanding of the physical organs, particularly those of the human being. How can we work with a human being if we are not in a position to understand what the human being is physically? We must first understand that the human being is built up piece by piece out of the spirit-soul, so that there is nothing physical that is not a revelation of the spirit-soul.