28. Temperaments in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d/1909-01-09/p029 ·1909-01-09 · English High

Record: mixed sources. This volume draws on more than one kind of record (transcripts, notes, documents). Check the volume's own front matter before weighing a single passage. Evidence: «Vorträge aus den Jahren 1905 bis 1909 in Form von ausführlichen Mitschriften, Zuhörernotizen und Zeitungsreferaten» (Lectures from the years 1905 to 1909 in the form of detailed transcripts, listeners' notes and newspaper reports). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68d). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

We must not be tempted to underestimate the value of temperament because it is a one-sided quality. We must be clear that temperament leads to one-sidedness, that the most radical thing about the melancholic temperament is madness, about the phlegmatic temperament, imbecility; about the sanguine temperament, insanity; and about the choleric temperament, all those outbursts of pathological human nature that go as far as raving madness and so on. Temperament brings about much beautiful diversity because opposites attract; however, the idolization of the one-sidedness of temperament very easily causes harm between birth and death. It is important for the educator to be able to say: What do you do, for example, with a sanguine child? One must try to learn from the knowledge of the whole essence of the sanguine temperament how to behave. If we are to speak of the education of the child in relation to other aspects, then it is also necessary to speak individually of temperament in the education of the child.

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Cite: GA 68d/1909-01-09/p029 · edition English