IV. The Connection of the Spirit with Bodily Organs

This metamorphosis, the whole way in which feeling withdraws itself from the organs of speech, is of extraordinary significance. And as teachers and educationalists it is our task, a task that really inspires one's innermost being, gradually to release speech from the bodily constitution. How wonderful in a child of seven are the natural, spontaneous movements of the lips which come from organic activity! When the seven-year-old child utters the labial sounds, it is quite different from the way in which the child of fourteen or fifteen utters them. When the seven-year-old child utters the labial sounds, it is an organic activity; the circulation of the blood and of the fluids into the lips is entirely involuntary. When the child reaches his twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth years, this organic activity is transferred into the organism proper and the soul activity of feeling has to emerge and to move the lips voluntarily, in order that the element of feeling in speech may come to expression.