IV. The Art of Education Consists of Bringing Into Balance the Physical and Spiritual Nature of the Developing Human Being

Latterly more stress has been laid on the fact that that which has hitherto worked in the body, organised the body, emancipates itself from the body with the change of teeth, frees itself from the body to work on as intelligence. Thus we can describe this process from one aspect. However, one can also do it the way it was done in earlier days when the whole subject was brought to man's understanding from a different point of view and it was said: with the change of teeth man's etheric body is being born; the physical body is born at birth, the etheric body round about the seventh year. So what seen from one side we can call the birth of the etheric body, seen from another side is the emancipation of intelligence from the physical body. It is only a two-sided description of one and the same fact. Indeed, we gain a true understanding only if we bring two such aspects to a synthesis. In spiritual science nothing can be characterised without approaching a fact from different sides and then combining the different aspects to one comprehensive view. To have any spiritual content fully contained in one single characterisation is just as impossible as it is to give a whole melody in a single tone. You must characterise it from different sides. This is what people who understood something of these matters in bygone times called harmonious listening ( zusammenhoren), that is to hear the various explanations in harmony with one another.