The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3First of all, I would like to apologize for being unable to talk to you in your native language. Since this is not possible, I will speak in German, which will then be translated for you.

The methods of the Waldorf school, which I have been asked to speak about, owe their existence to the merging of two streams in cultural and spiritual life. The school was founded in Germany during the restless and disturbed times following the war, when efforts were made to create new conditions in the social realm. It all began with the ideas of the industrialist Emil Molt, who wished to begin a school for the children of the employees in his factory. This school was to offer an education that would enable the students to grow eventually into adults, well equipped to participate in social life as rational and full human beings, based on the idea that social change should not be at the mercy of political agitators. This constituted the primary element at first; the other came later.

Emil Molt had been a long-standing member of the anthroposophical movement, which is trying to reintroduce spiritual knowledge into the social life of the present times, a spiritual knowledge equally well grounded in the realities of human truths as the natural sciences, which have reached outstanding prominence and made great achievements during the last few centuries. Mister Molt asked me, in my capacity as the leader of the anthroposophical movement, to introduce pedagogical and practical methods into this new Waldorf school.

The school’s approach is not the product of the current movements for educational reform; it is based instead on a pedagogy drawing on deep concrete knowledge of the human being.

Over the course of our civilization we have gradually lost true knowledge of the human being. We turn our eyes increasingly to external nature and see only the physical and natural foundation of the human being. Certainly, this natural physical foundation must not be considered unimportant in the field of education; nevertheless, the human being consists of body, soul, and spirit, and a real knowledge of the human being can be achieved only when spirit, soul, and body are recognized equally.

The principles of Waldorf pedagogy do not depend in any way on local conditions, because this pedagogy is based on a knowledge of the human being, including that of the growing human being, the child. From this point of view it is immaterial whether one thinks of rural or city schools, of boarding schools or of day schools. Because Waldorf schools are based strictly on pedagogical and pragmatic principles, they can meet and adapt to any possible external social conditions.

Furthermore, the Waldorf school is a school for all types of children. Although at first it was opened for the children of Mister Molt’s factory, today, children from all social classes and backgrounds have been accepted there, because pedagogical and practical impulses based on real knowledge of the human being are universally human; they are international in character and relevant for all classes and races of humanity.

Here I do not want to give a detailed account of the Waldorf curriculum—there is too little time for that. In general, the school is built not so much on a fixed program as on direct daily practice and immediate contact with the children according to their character, therefore, I can give only brief indications of the main principles that underlie the Waldorf school, and I must ask you to keep this in mind.

To know the human being means, above all, to have more than the usual knowledge about how the human being’s life goes through different life stages. Although educational theories have generally considered these stages more or less, in Waldorf pedagogy they are considered in full.

In this context I must emphasize that around the child’s seventh year—at the change of teeth—a complete transformation takes place, a complete metamorphosis in the life of the child. When the second teeth begin to appear, the child becomes an altogether different being. Where does this transformation originate? With the arrival of the seventh year, the forces that had been the forces for physical growth, working in the child’s breathing and blood circulation and building the organism in its nutritive and growth activity, are now released. While leaving a remainder behind to carry on with this organic task, these forces themselves go through an important transformation as they enter the child’s metamorphosing soul life.

Recently, many psychological studies have examined how the soul works into the child’s physical organism. A proper science of the spirit does not float around in a mystical fog, but observes life and the world with clear perception, based on direct experience. Thus, spiritual science does not pose abstract questions about how soul and body are related, but asks instead through direct experience, while observing life itself, as clearly as external scientific experiments are observed.

One finds, therefore, that between birth and the change of teeth, the child’s soul forces manifest as organic forces working in the child’s physical body. These same forces, in a somewhat emancipated form, manifest purely in the soul realm (the child’s thinking and memory) in the following period between the change of teeth and puberty. The teacher’s first prerequisite, which has to become thoroughly integrated into attitude and character, is to sharpen the perception of the metamorphosis in human life that takes place around the age of seven and, further, to be conscious of the immense metamorphosis that occurs at puberty, at fourteen or fifteen.

If the growing child is approached with this viewpoint, one fact looms very large in one’s knowledge—that, until the age of seven, every child is a universal sense organ that relates as an organism to the surroundings, just as the eyes or ears relate as sense organs to the external world. Each sense organ can receive impressions from its surroundings and reflect them pictorially. Until the seventh year, the child inwardly pulsates with intense elemental forces. Impressions are received from the surroundings as if the child’s whole being were one large sense organ. The child is entirely an imitating being.

When studying the child, one finds that, until the seventh year, the physical organization is directly affected by external impressions, and later on this relationship is spiritualized and transformed into a religious relationship. We understand the child up to the change of teeth only when we perceive the forces and impulses that, based on the physical and soul organization, turn the child entirely into homo religiosus. Consequently it is incumbent on those who live close to the young child to act according to this particular situation. When we are in the presence of a young child, we have to act only in ways that may be safely imitated. For example, if a child is suspected of stealing, facts may be discovered that I can illustrate with a particular case: Parents once approached me in a state of agitation to tell me that their young boy had stolen. I immediately told them that one would have to investigate properly whether this was really the case. What had the boy done? He had spent money which he had taken from his mother’s cupboard. He had bought sweets with it and shared them with other children. He had even performed a sociable deed in the process! Every day he had seen his mother taking money from a certain place before she went shopping. He could see only what was right in his mother’s action, and so he imitated her. The child simply imitated his mother and was not a thief.

We must make sure that the child can safely imitate whatever happens in the surroundings. This includes—and this is important—sentiments and feelings, even one’s thoughts. The best educators of children under the age of seven do not just outwardly act in a way that is all right for the child to imitate—they do not even allow themselves any emotions or feelings, not even thoughts, other than what the child may imitate without being harmed.

One has to be able to observe properly how the entire process of education affects the child from the spiritual point of view. During the first seven years of life, everything that happens around the child affects the physical organization of that child. We must be able to perceive the effects of people’s activity in front of children. Let’s imagine, for example, that someone is prone to outbursts of a violent temper. Consequently, a child near that person is frequently subjected to the actions of a violent temperament and experiences shocks caused by an aggressive nature. These shocks affect not only the soul of the child, but also the breathing and blood circulation, as well as the vascular system.

If one knows human nature completely and observes not just particular ages but the entire course of life from birth to death, one also knows that anything that affects the vascular system, the blood circulation, and the intimate processes of breathing through physical and spiritual causes and impressions coming from the external world, will manifest in a person’s organization until the fortieth and fiftieth year of life. A child who is tossed about by confusing impressions will suffer from an unreliable coordination of breathing and blood circulation. We are not necessarily talking about obvious medical problems, but of subtle effects in the blood circulatory system, which must be recognized by those who wish to educate children.

The seventh year brings the change of teeth, which represents the end of a chapter, since we change our teeth only once in a lifetime. The forces that led to the second dentition are now liberated for later life, and now enter the mind and soul of the human being; for during the time of elementary schooling, the forces that had previously been involved in plastically shaping the child’s organism can now be seen working musically, so to speak, in the organism until puberty. Until the age of seven, the head organization works on the rest of the human organism. The human head is the great sculptor that forms the vascular system and the blood circulation, and so on. From the ages of seven to fifteen, the rhythmic system in the widest sense becomes the leading system of the human organism. If we can give rhythm and measure to this rhythmic system in our lessons and in our way of teaching—measure in the musical sense—as well as of giving a general musical element through the way we conduct our teaching in all lessons, then we meet the essential demands of human nature at this stage of life.

Education from the change of teeth until puberty should appeal primarily to the artistic aspect in children. An artistic element definitely pervades the Waldorf curriculum from the students’ seventh to fourteenth years. Children are guided pictorially in every respect. Thus, the letters of the alphabet are not taught abstractly. There is no human relationship to the abstract symbols that have become letters in our civilization. Written symbols are abstractions to children. We allow the letters to evolve from pictures. At first, we let our young students paint and draw, and only then do we evolve the forms of the letters from the drawings and paintings that flowed directly from their human nature. Only after the child’s whole organism—body, soul, and spirit—has become fully immersed in writing, through an artistic activity, only then do we go over to another activity, one involving only a part of the human being. Only then do we go to reading, because reading does not involve the complete human being, but only a part, whereas writing is evolved from the entire human organization. If one proceeds this way, one has treated the human individual according to the realities of body, soul, and spirit. If one’s teaching is arranged so that the artistic element can flow through the children, so that in whatever the teachers do they become artists in their work, something rather remarkable can be observed.

As you know, much thought has gone into the question of avoiding exhaustion in students during lessons. Diagrams have been constructed to show which mental or physical activities tire students most. In Waldorf schools, on the other hand, we appeal to the particular human system that never tires at all. The human being tires in the head through thinking, and also gets tired when doing physical work—when using will forces in performing limb movements. But the rhythmic system, with its breathing and heart system (the basis of every artistic activity) always works, whether one is asleep or awake, whether tired or fresh, because the rhythmic system has a particular way of working from birth until death. The healthiest educational system, therefore, appeals to the human rhythmic system, which never tires.

You can see, therefore, that all teaching, all education, in order to be faithful to a fundamental knowledge of the human being, must be based on the rhythmic system, must appeal to the students’ rhythmic forces. By bringing flexibility and music into all teaching, always beginning with the pictorial, rhythmical, melodious, and a generally musical element, one may notice something rather surprising—that, as the child progresses as a result of artistic activities, a powerful need is expressed in relation to what was developed through this pictorial and musical understanding of the world. It becomes evident that this artistic approach is too rich for permanent inner satisfaction. Soon—by the age of ten or eleven—students feel the need for a more direct approach and for simplification, because the artistic realm becomes too rich for their continued inner enjoyment. The desire for simplification becomes a natural and elementary need in the students.

Only when this process begins, has the right moment arrived for making the transition from an artistic approach to a more intellectual one. Only after the child has been allowed to experience artistic wealth is it possible to introduce the relative poverty of the intellectual element without the risk of disturbing the child’s physical and soul development. This is why we extract the intellectual from the artistic qualities. On the other hand, if one lets the children perform artistic movements, if one has them move their limbs musically, as in eurythmy (which is being performed here in Ilkley), if one encourages a sculptural, formative activity in the child, as well as musical movements that take hold of the entire body, then a remarkable hunger makes itself felt in the child—a spiritual, soulful, and bodily hunger. At this stage the child’s whole organization demands specific physical exercises, a specific physical hygiene, because a physical hygiene is healthy for the development of the human organism only when a mysterious kind of hunger is felt for the kinds of movements performed in gymnastics. In other words, the students’ feeling of a need for intellectual pursuit and for will activities arises from artistic development.

As a result of this, we have education that does not aim to develop only a particular part of human nature, but aims to develop the whole human being. We are given the possibility, for example, to train the child’s memory for the benefit of the physical organization. In this context, I would like to say something that sounds paradoxical today, but will be fully accepted by physiology in the future: Everything that works spiritually in the child affects the physical organization at the same time, and even enters the corporeality, the physical organism itself. For example, we might see people today who, around their fiftieth year, begin to suffer from metabolic diseases, such as rheumatism. If, as educators, we do not limit our observations of students only to the age of childhood, but recognize that childhood is like a seedbed for all of life to come—like the seed in the life of the plant—then one also recognizes that, when we strain the child’s powers of memory, the effect will bear right through the organism, so that in the forties or fifties metabolic illnesses will appear that the physical organization can no longer correct.

When I suggest these interconnections, you may believe me that in the Waldorf school we make every effort to ensure that the soul and spiritual aspect will have a beneficial effect on the student’s physical constitution. Every lesson is looked at from the hygienic viewpoint because we can see how spirit continues to affect the human organism. Because our pedagogy and our methods rest on our insight into the human being, we are in a position to create our curriculum and our educational goals for the various ages from direct observation of the growing child. We take up only what the child reveals as necessary. Our pedagogy is completely based on applied knowledge of the human being.

This approach makes us confident that our education is accomplished not just from the perspective of childhood, but also from the viewpoint of the entire earthly life of any child in our care. There are people who, for example, believe that one should teach a child only what can be understood through the child’s own observation; now, from a different perspective, this may be a valid opinion, but those who make such a statement ignore the value that the following situation has for life.

Between the age of seven and puberty it is most beneficial for students if their attitude toward the teacher results from a natural authority. Just as, until the age of seven, the ruling principle is imitation, so also between seven and fourteen the ruling principle is the teacher’s authority. At this stage, much of what is as still beyond the student’s comprehension is accepted in the soul simply through trust in the teacher’s authority, through a respect and an attitude of love toward the teacher. This kind of love is one of the most important educational factors.

It is important to know that, at the age of thirty or forty, one may remember something that one had accepted at the age of eight or nine on the strength of a beloved teacher’s authority. Now, as it rises up to the surface again in the soul, it permeates one’s adult consciousness. Through one’s powers, which have matured in the meantime, one begins to understand what was accepted at the age of eight or nine based merely on a beloved teacher’s authority. When such a thing happens, it is a source of human rejuvenation. It really revitalizes the entire human being in later life if, after decades, one eventually understands what one had accepted previously through a natural feeling of authority. This is another example of the need to consider the entire vista of human life and not only what is perceptible in a one-sided way in the present condition.

I would like to give another example from a moral perspective. If a child’s inherent religious feelings are nourished during religious education—feelings that live naturally in every child—the following observation can be made: Are there not people who, having reached a certain age, merely by their presence create a mood of blessing in those around them? We have all experienced how such a person enters a gathering. It is not the words of wisdom such people may speak that radiate this effect of blessing; their presence, tone of voice, and gestures are enough to create a mood of blessing in those around them. Such persons can teach us when we look back to their childhood days, at how they achieved this ability to bring grace and blessing to those around them. In childhood they respected a loved authority with almost religious veneration. No one in old age can be a blessing who has not learned in childhood to look up in loving veneration to a revered person of authority. I would like to express this symbolically in this way: If one wishes to be able in later life to lift one’s hands in blessing, one must have learned to fold them in prayer during childhood. Symbolically, the folded hands of prayer during childhood lead to the blessing hands of old age.

At all times and everywhere we must consider the whole human being. During childhood we plant the seeds for an inner religious sense of morality and for an adulthood strong enough to meet life’s demands. This can be done when one tries to build a pedagogy from full knowledge of the human being, knowledge that is the result of observation, from birth to the grave. Striving toward educational renewal has become prominent and intensive in our time because the greatest social question is really a question of education.

I have spoken only briefly here about the deep inner attitude that, permeated with a universal love for humanity, glows throughout Waldorf pedagogy. Therefore, however weak and imperfect our attempts may be, we nevertheless cherish the hope that an education based on a fuller knowledge of the human being can, at the same time, be an education for all of humanity in the best sense. To work at school through observation of human life may be the best way also to work toward the good of life everywhere. This will certainly be the fundamental question inherent in most of the striving for educational reform in our time.

The fact that we have both boys and girls at the Waldorf school seems to serve two purposes. One is to shape the teaching according to the needs of the whole human being, since with either boys or girls alone, education always tends to become one-sided. The other is to work toward the kind of human interrelationship required especially by today’s society, in which women have either gained their place in society or are trying to obtain it. The Waldorf art of education, therefore, deals with modern social struggles. Much that would remain remote from one gender or the other can thus be developed because boys and girls are educated together.

These lectures have shown that we attach great importance to the development of children’s whole being—in spirit, soul, and body, and not just spirit and soul. This is why we engage the children in physical activity—especially activities that enable them to go into life with understanding. During the handwork lessons in the Waldorf school, you find boys and girls sitting together, all knitting and crocheting. This is absolutely natural, which is proved by the fact that the boys learn to knit and even darn socks with some pleasure. It never occurs to them that such work is inappropriate for men. We do not include such things just so the boys know how to do them, but for the sake of a general understanding of life. One of the main faults of present social conditions is that people have so little understanding of what others do. We must really stop isolating ourselves as individuals and groups and face one another with complete understanding. The main purpose of this kind of handwork is to teach practical skill in many different areas.

Though it may seem inconceivable, in my opinion no one can be a real philosopher who is unable to darn socks or mend one’s clothes when needed. How can you have any intelligent concept of grand cosmic mysteries if you cannot even care for your own footwear? Can we really hope to enter cosmic mysteries, in a truly human sense, if we are incapable of dealing with the things right next to us? I realize that this may seem improbable, but I do believe that philosophers should have some understanding of how boots and such are made; otherwise, we simply adopt abstractions. This is an extreme example, perhaps, but I wanted to show that education must include both an ascent to the highest spiritual levels and descent into physical education and treatment.

From this kind of handwork, children can be guided to an ability to do manual work with intelligence and understanding. At the right age, which is relatively early, our children make their own toys and playthings. You have probably seen some on display here. They carve toys from wood, and thus we bring an element of art into their play. To lead play gradually into the creation of artistic forms, and then to the practical work, as just described, is completely in keeping with the needs of human nature. It is absorbing to find that the children’s artistic sculptural activity turns naturally into making toys. Again, we lead from art as such into art as an aspect of industry. Children are shown how to make simple implements for use in the house, and at the same time learn to use saws, knives, and other cabinetmaking and carpentry tools. In addition to their regular lessons, both boys and girls love to be in our workshops, at work with a knife or a saw or other tools, and they are delighted when they succeed in making something useful. Thus, we stimulate all their instincts for the practical side of life. On the one hand, we develop a sense for practicality, and on the other, for the arts.

It is interesting to observe children when they learn something about the human organism—for example, the sculptural formation of skeleton or muscle formation. If they are given an artistic concept of the structure and functions of the human body, they begin to express, in a sculptural way, their ideas of the shape of some limb, not in a strict sense of imitation, but freely and creatively. Our children are allowed great freedom, even in their practical work, and they are allowed to follow their own sense of discovery. Their souls create wonderful forms once they learn to observe certain things in people or in animals with a truly artistic feeling for nature.

We teach this way, so that whatever children know, they know it with their whole being. Our culture is calculated to make us know everything with our heads. Facts rest in the head as though sitting on a couch; they rest in the head as though in bed; they are asleep, “meaning” only one thing or another. We carry them around, stored up in so many little compartments, which we otherwise prefer to leave alone. In the Waldorf school, the children do not merely “have an idea” in their heads; they feel the idea, since it flows into their whole life of feeling. Their souls live in the sense of the idea, which is not merely a concept but becomes a shaped form. The whole complex of ideas eventually becomes the human form, and finally passes into their volition. Children learn to transform what they think into action. When this happens, we do not find thoughts arising in any one part of the human being, with the will in another part nourished only by instinct. Such a person is really like a wasp. There are wasps that have a head, then a long stalk, and below this the rest of the body. Outwardly, it symbolizes not the modern human physical nature, but the nature of soul and spirit. One has a head, then a long stalk, and one’s volition is an appendage to this. From the spiritual point of view, people today present a strange appearance—the head dangles in the air not knowing what to make of its own ideas.

This can be rectified by continually helping children to permeate their faculties of knowledge with feeling and volition. Modern systems of education have known for a long time that teaching has veered into one-sided intellectualism, that the head dangles in the air, and that a beginning must be made on the other side to develop practical skill and dexterity. But this does not really unite the two elements. Such a union is impossible unless knowledge of itself goes into practical skill, which is also permeated with the quality of thinking and inner understanding of the soul and spiritual participation.

Based on these principles, we can bridge the gap to moral and religious education. I already spoke of this and need only add that everything depends on giving all teaching and gymnastics in a form that makes children experience their physical nature as a revelation of spirit pouring willingly and creatively into their bodies. Children must never feel a separation between spirit and body. The moral and religious elements thus truly come to life in their feelings. The important thing to keep in mind is that, between the change of teeth and puberty, we must never indoctrinate morality and religion into children dogmatically, but by working on their feeling and perception according to this period of life. Children must learn to delight in goodness and to loathe evil, to love goodness and hate wickedness. In history lessons, the great historical figures and the impulses of various eras can be presented so that moral and religious sympathies and antipathies develop in the children. Thus we achieve something of supreme importance.

After puberty, around fifteen or sixteen, a change takes place in the children’s inner nature, leading them from dependence on authority to their own sense of freedom and, hence, to the faculty of independent discernment and understanding. This must claim our closest attention in teaching. If we have awakened in children, before puberty, a feeling for good and evil and for what is divine or not, these feelings will arise from their own inner being afterward. Their understanding, intellect, insight, and power of discernment remain uninfluenced, and they form independent judgments out of their own being. If we begin by telling children that they should do this or not do that, it stays with them throughout their life, and they will always think that such things are right or wrong. Convention will color everything. But those who have been educated properly will not stand within convention but use their own judgment, even regarding morality and religion, and this will develop naturally if it has not been engaged prematurely.

In a Waldorf school, children of fourteen or fifteen are allowed to find their own feet in life. We treat them as equals. They develop discernment, but look back to the authority that we represented and retain the affection they had for us when we were their teachers. Their power of discernment has not been limited if we have worked on their life of feeling properly. Therefore, once children reach fourteen or fifteen, we leave their soul nature and spirit free and, in the higher classes, appeal to their power of discernment and understanding. Such freedom in life cannot be achieved if we instill morality and religion in a dogmatic, canonical fashion. We must have worked solely on the children’s powers of feeling and perception at the right age—between the change of teeth and puberty. The main thing is to enable young adults to find their place in the world with real confidence in their own powers of discernment. Thus, they will sense their real humanity, because their education has been completely human. Those who been unfortunate enough to have lost a leg or an arm are conscious of the damage. Children of fourteen or fifteen who have been educated according to modern methods begin to be aware of a sense of injury if they are not permeated with the qualities of moral judgment and religious feeling. Something seems to be missing in their being. There is no better heritage in the moral and religious sense than to raise children to regard the elements of morality and religion as an integral part of their being, so that they feel fully human because they are permeated with morality and warmed by religious feelings.

This can be achieved only when we work, at the proper age, only on the life of feeling and perception, and do not prematurely give the children intellectual concepts of religion and morality. If we do this before twelve to fourteen, we bring them up to be skeptics—men and women who later develop skepticism instead of healthy insight into the dogmas instilled in them—and not just skepticism in their thinking (the least important), but in feeling, which injures their feeling life. And, finally, there will be skepticism of volition, which brings moral error with it. The point is that our children will become skeptics if we present moral and religious ideals to them dogmatically; such ideals should come to them only through the life of feeling. Then, at the right age, they will awaken their own free religious and moral sense, which becomes part of their very being. They feel that only this can make them fully human. The real aim at Waldorf schools is to raise free human beings who can direct their own lives.

The Waldorf school is an organism complete and whole in itself. If one does not think of it this way, many of its educational principles may be misunderstood. People may think, for example, that if they visit the school two or three times and see what is done on those days, this is enough; they have seen how we teach. Of course, this is not the situation. People will see nothing of any significance in this way. What they see is like a fragment of a picture, from which they then form an opinion of the whole. Suppose you take a fragment of some great picture and show it to someone. How can you form an opinion of the whole from a fragment? The essential feature of Waldorf education is that every activity has its place in the school as a whole. People can understand a Waldorf school much better by studying the principles, its structure, and the living connection between the eighth class and the fourth class, for instance, or between the first and the tenth, instead of looking at an isolated fragment of the teaching. The organization of the school is conceived so that each activity has its place and time and fits into the whole. Individual subjects of instruction are introduced into the school from this perspective.

Here is a brief example how, in principle, eurythmy is given a place in the whole work. It is no good setting out to discover things that may then be introduced into the school activities. It is, as a rule, a wrong principle to invent things that are “good” for children—as happened too often in the Fröbel kindergarten system—and then make them an essential part of education. Nothing should be introduced artificially to the school; everything should arise from life itself. Eurythmy was introduced to the Waldorf school not because we thought that children need gymnastic exercises, and thus set out to invent something. No, indeed! Eurythmy did not arise initially as an educational component at all. It came about around 1912 as the result of certain connections of destiny, but mainly as an art, not as an educational measure. We cannot understand eurythmy as applied in education if we think of it as a “educational” eurythmy, as opposed to eurythmy as an art. Consequently, I would have thought it better to give the eurythmy performances as an art here first, since that would have shown the underlying concept. Because eurythmy is an art, it is part of life, and this part of life has been put into a form that is suitable for educational purposes. Nobody can understand the eurythmy performed by children unless they realize what it will one day become as an art—and what it already is, perhaps more than many people think.

The Waldorf school began in 1919, and, because we found that eurythmy could be applied to educating children, we introduced it at the school. But this is secondary. This connection should be realized in everything else if we would understand the Waldorf school in relation to life. Teachers should have a free, unbiased view of life and be able to educate children for life. The more intimately teachers are connected with the life around them, the better it is for the school. Narrow-minded teachers who know nothing of life except the school itself can do little to develop the full humanity of their students. It is not a matter of a special method of teaching painting, for instance; if we want them to learn to paint, the principles of teaching should be drawn from the living art of painting, not from methods that have been invented especially for the purpose of education. The element of true art must be introduced into schools, not an intellectual substitute. And eurythmy makes it possible to again infuse art into human culture.

In addresses given before eurythmy performances, I explained the sense in which eurythmy is visible speech, expressed in movement. I just want to add something here about these figures, since this will further explain the relationship between eurythmy and art. The idea for the figures originally came from Miss Maryon, but they have been made in forms that I think correct according to the principles of eurythmy. Here (showing a figure), you have a picture of the sound “s.” The figure does in a sense represent a human being, but those who think in terms of today’s conventional notions of a beautiful human form will not find much beauty in this figure. They will see nothing of what would seem beautiful in someone they met in the street. When making such figures, we may also have an eye for beauty of the human form, but the purpose is to represent the expression of eurythmy—the human being in movement. And so, in these figures, we have ignored anything that does not belong to the essence and form of movement itself, the feeling corresponding to a particular movement, and penetrating the basic character expressed by and coloring the movement. When you sing, you take into your whole organism—in a physical sense—the elements that move the soul. The movement occurs entirely within the bounds of the skin and remains invisible, flowing fully into the tone one hears.

The figure you see here (another figure) expresses music in movement. The soul’s feeling is released from the human being, becomes spatial movement, and the artistic element is expressed as movement. We see what we otherwise only hear. Thus, these figures are intended only to suggest what a human being becomes while performing eurythmy, completely apart from any natural attributes. Each movement is indicated by the shape of the carving, and the wood is painted with a fundamental color. We have written on the back of these figures the Steiner’s sketch for a eurythmy figure “s” names of the colors that correspond to the movements themselves and to the feeling inherent in the movements. The way eurythmists on a stage manipulate their veils becomes a continuation of the movement. Once eurythmists have learned to do this with skill, the veil will float freely, be withdrawn, caught up, or given a certain form at the right moment. The movement performed by the limbs is behind the feeling that is also expressed by manipulating the veil; the feeling is expressed in the floating veil. If a eurythmist has true feeling for the movement of arms or legs, the quality will naturally pass into the manipulation of the veil, and the feeling that should accompany movement in the veil will be felt.

When this movement (pointing to the figure) is being performed, the eurythmist must be able to sense that the arm is stretched out lightly in this direction, as though hovering in the air with no inner tension. In the other arm, a eurythmist must feel as though summoning all of one’s muscular force and packing it tightly into the arm. One arm (the right) is held lightly upward; the left arm is tense, and the muscles almost throb. This is how the movement is given character, and this character makes an impression on the spectators. They can feel what the eurythmist is doing.

Now, when the people look at these figures, they may ask, where is the face and where the back of the head. But this has nothing to do with eurythmy. You will occasionally find those who are enthusiastic about the pretty face of a eurythmist, but I can assure you that this is not part of eurythmy. The face on this figure, which looks like it is turned to the left, is in fact facing you, and the color is used to emphasize the fact that the eurythmist should feel “eurythmic force” diffused lightly over the right side of the head, while the left side of the head is tense, imbued with inner strength. It is as though the head becomes asymmetrical—relaxed, as if “fluffed out,” on the one side, and taut on the other.

The movements receive their true character in this way. The figures here express what should become visible in eurythmy. The same principles hold true of all artistic work. One should be able to look away from the substance, content, or prose, and enter the artistic element. A beautiful face on a eurythmist really corresponds to the prose quality. The eurythmist expresses the real beauty in eurythmy when the right side of the head is lightly diffused with eurythmic forces and the left side tense. So we can conceive that a plain face may be beautiful in the sense of eurythmy, and a beautiful face ugly.

In eurythmy, then, we have elements that are true of every art form, as all artists will agree. A great artist is not merely one who can paint a beautiful young face in a pleasing way. A true artist must be able to paint an old, wizened, wrinkled face in such a way that it becomes artistically beautiful. This must underlie all art.

I wanted to add these remarks about the eurythmy you have seen performed here. Let me just say that we introduced eurythmy into our Waldorf school because it affords such a wonderful contrast to ordinary gymnastics. As mentioned, physical exercises are carried out adequately in a Waldorf school, but regarding ordinary physical gymnastics, we elaborate them in such a way that, with every exercise, the children are first given a sense of spatial directions, which are, of course, fundamental. The children feel the directions of space, and then their arms follow it. In their gymnastics, they surrender to space. This is the only healthy basis for gymnastic exercises. Space is conditioned in all directions. To an ordinary, abstract concept of space, there are three directions, which we cannot distinguish. They are present only in geometry. In fact, however, the head is above, the legs below, and this gives us above and below. Then we have right and left. We live in this direction of space when we stretch out our arms. The point is not to find some “absolute direction.” Of course, we can turn this way or that. Then we have a forward and backward direction, front and back. All other directions of space are oriented in relation to these. If we understand space in this way, we can discover truly healthy movements for gymnastics, in which a person surrenders to the laws of space.

In eurythmy, the nature of a movement is determined by the human organism, and we can ask what the soul experiences in one movement or another. This is the principle behind the eurythmy movements for various sounds. What happens as one’s forces flow into the limbs? In ordinary gymnastic exercises, we lend ourselves to space; in eurythmy we move in a way that expresses our being, according to the laws of our organism. The essence of eurythmy is to allow the inner to be expressed outwardly as movement. The essence of gymnastics is to fill the outer with the human being, so that one unites with the outer world.

To educate the whole human being, we can thus derive gymnastics from the polar opposite of eurythmy, in which the movements arise entirely from one’s inner being. In any case, however, even when applied to education, the element of eurythmy itself must be derived from a true grasp of its artistic principles.

In my opinion, the best gymnastic teachers have learned from art. The impulses behind the gymnastics of Greek schools and the Olympic Games were derived from art. And if the consequences of what I have said are fully realized, and all schoolwork is based primarily upon the element of art, we will also apply what I have described through the example of eurythmy to other areas of life and activity. We will not try to invent something for teaching, but imbue the school with real life. And then, out of the school, life will grow within society.

I have said that a school should be an organization in which each individual feature is an integral part of the whole. The threads of all the various activities necessary to the whole life of the Waldorf school are drawn together in the frequent teachers’ meetings. Over the year, I myself am present at the majority of these meetings. They are not held merely to prepare school reports, discuss administrative details, or talk about the punishments to be used when rules are broken. These meetings are really a living “higher education,” since the college of teachers is a kind of permanent training academy. This is because the teachers’ every practical experience in school becomes part of their own education. Teachers will always find something new for themselves and for the college of teachers if they educate themselves through their teaching, gaining a profound psychological insight into the practical side of education on the one hand, and on the other insights into the children’s qualities, characters, and temperaments. All the experiences and knowledge acquired from the teaching are pooled at these meetings. Thus, in spirit and soul, the college of teachers becomes a whole, in which each member knows what the others are doing, what experience has taught them, and what progress they have made as the result of their work in the classroom with the children. In effect, the college of teachers becomes a central organ from which the whole life of practical teaching flows, helping teachers to maintain their freshness and vitality. Perhaps the best effect of all is that the meetings enable teachers to maintain their inner vitality, instead of growing old in soul and spirit. It must be the teacher’s constant aim to maintain a youthful freshness of soul and spirit, but this cannot be done unless real life flows through a central organ, just as human blood flows into and out of the heart. This is concentrated as a system of soul and spirit forces in the life that teachers work for in their meetings at the Waldorf school. Those meetings are held each week, and, as I said, sometimes I am present.

Now I want to mention something that seems trivial, but is important. As I said, we have boys and girls together in our classes. It naturally happens that, in some classes, girls are in the majority, in others the boys, and there are others in which the numbers are equal. A rationalist may visit these classes and spout all sorts of intellectual opinions, which nevertheless usually fail to hit the nail on the head regarding real life. If we teach in a class in which girls are in the majority, matters are not at all the same as in those classes where the number of boys and girls is the same, or where boys are in the majority. The classes are not given their individual character according to what the boys and girls do together—perhaps also the silly things they do together—but by intangible elements that wholly escape external, intellectual observation. Very interesting things come to light when we study this intangible life in the class. Of course, the teachers must not enter their classes and, stepping back with folded arms, “study” their students. If teachers bring enough vitality and devotion to their work, then, by simply taking the students with them in the right way in sleep, they wake up the next morning with significant discoveries about the previous day’s events at school; they become aware of this process in a fairly short time, and all that should happen in this way will come about natually.

The very center and essence of the school are the teachers’ meetings; likewise, at the periphery, the parents’ evenings at the Waldorf school are extremely important. At least once a month—or regularly, anyway—we try to arrange evenings when the children’s parents can gather and meet with the teachers, so that a link can be established with the children’s home life. We think that the parents’ understanding of their children’s education is very important. Because we do not make up programs or schedules for our teaching but take it from life itself, we cannot adopt an attitude that claims to do the right thing, based on a schedule devised by some intelligent authority. We must come to sense what is right through our living interaction with the parents who sent their children to us. The echoes of these parents’ evenings touch the teachers and give them what they need to maintain their own inner vitality.

Living beings do not live merely within their skin; nor do human beings exist only within the space of their skin. We always have a certain amount of air within us, and before we breathed in, it was outside and belonged to the atmosphere. And it is soon breathed out again. A living being belongs to the whole as a member of the universe, and our existence is unthinkable apart from it. And human beings are not isolated units in society, but integral members of it. We cannot live unless we are related to society just as intimately as our physical organism is related to the air and water that surrounds it. And, in this sense, it requires little to show how much depends on the school.

To illustrate such things, I generally try to use examples from ordinary life instead of something made up. Two days ago I entered a room here and observed a report from the Sunday school teachers. The first sentence refers to a speech at the yearly meeting of the Sunday School Union, given by a chairperson, an eminent man. He said that the Sunday schools had gradually isolated themselves from other religions in the world—that, in general, there is too little knowledge of religions. I read this on the bulletin board in the next room, and it is an important indication of what society needs for its inner vitalization today. I might as easily find the same sentiments elsewhere or in some leaflet handed out in the street. Everything tells the same story—that men and women today are not brought up with a broad view of life.

A broad view of life is essential to the Waldorf teachers, however, and they must communicate this to their students, so that education leads to broad interests in life. Everyone is so enclosed and confined today. Just consider professional training, which causes people to become almost ashamed of knowing anything beyond the pigeonhole of their own profession. We are always told to seek out experts or specialists, but the most important thing is to be bighearted. People should be able to participate with their hearts and souls in culture and society as a whole. This is what we attempt through the principles of education. First we imbue our teachers—in a Waldorf school, the first thing has been to educate the teachers—and then the students through the teachers. The students are our great hope and goal; our purpose in every measure we adopt is that our students will carry its fruits into life in the right way.

That, my dear friends, is the attitude behind the art of education I have been describing. It is based fully on this principle. Our educational measures must arise from the human being, so that children develop fully in body, soul, and spirit, and as adults find their place in life, having grown, in body, soul, and spirit, within a religious, ethical, artistic, and intellectual life that enabled them to develop the virtues best suited to a life with other human beings. Essentially, every educational ideal must be based on this principle, and I am indeed grateful to those who made it possible for me to speak here on the subject. I am sure you realized now that, although the principles of Waldorf education arose in one country, there is no question of any nationalism; rather, it is a matter of internationalism in the best sense, because it is a matter of the universal human. Our aim is to educate human beings with broad, rich interests—not men and women who belong to a particular class, nation, or profession. So I think you will agree that, although this art of education emanates from one country, it is permissible to speak of it in other lands, too.

It is an even greater pleasure to discover that, in connection with the subject of these lectures, a committee was formed to establish a school and bring Waldorf education to this country in a truly practical way. When such schools are established today, we must create model schools as patterns, and this applies to Waldorf schools. This impulse cannot be truly fruitful until its principles are recognized by the broadest possible public opinion.

I recall that, in my early youth, I once saw in the comics a joke about architectural plans. (I mentioned something of the sort yesterday.) It said that one should not go to an architect, who would make all kinds of drawings and detailed calculations and then work to assemble the materials artistically. Rather, one should go to an ordinary mason who simply lays one brick upon another. This attitude still dominates the educational world. People tend to regard an architect’s work as abstract, and they would like to see bricks laid upon bricks, with no concern about the principles behind the whole structure.

In any case, I am sincerely grateful to find such wonderful understanding and interest among you who have attended these lectures. First, let me thank Miss Beverley and her helpers; then our Waldorf teachers and other friends who have worked so hard and with such deep understanding; and also those who have added an artistic element to our conference. I am indeed grateful to all those whose interest and sincerity have brought this conference into being, which I hope will bear fruit through the new committee. As this interest spreads, we will be better able to serve the true principles of education. Your living cooperation demonstrates the fact that you have this at heart. I have given these lectures not only from the intellect, but also from a profound interest in the principles of true education.

And thus I would like to close these lectures with a parting greeting to you all.

I have already expressed my gratitude to the committee, to Miss Beverley, and to all of you who have devoted the past two weeks to studying our subject. Rest assured that a warm sense of gratitude will remain with me as a pleasant memory of this lecture course. Now, I just want to add a few words to the perspectives expressed in the lectures. Most of you are familiar with the relationship between Waldorf educational principles and spiritual science as it exists in the anthroposophic movement, and perhaps as we close this conference you will allow me to say a few words on this subject.

People today still have an erroneous view of the anthroposophic movement, perhaps because one of my wishes—however impractical—cannot be fulfilled. It is true that the Waldorf movement grew out of the anthroposophic movement, but it is equally true that I would truly prefer to give a different name to that movement every week. I realize that it would be terribly confusing, but I would very much like to do this, because names actually do a great deal of harm today. The confusion this would create in people’s minds is obvious—if letterheads were changed each week, and people were to receive a letter printed with the previous week’s name, “since superseded.” Nevertheless, it would be very good for the anthroposophic movement if it had no permanent name, because most people today are concerned only with names and never get to the subject itself.

People can turn to a Greek lexicon and, in their own language, invent words to express anthroposophy, and thus invent an idea of what spiritual science is and judge us accordingly. People form an opinion about us according to their idea of the name, thus avoiding the trouble of looking into the substance of spiritual science.

The book table at the door of this hall has disappeared, but I assure you that I shuddered every day as I arrived and saw the mass of literature there. I would be happy if there were less of it, but people must study spiritual science, of course—there is that. One cannot look only a name, and this is why it would be such a good thing if we were spared the need to have one. Obviously, that would not work, but in a lecture course about applying spiritual science to life, I think it shows how far we are from any sectarianism or any desire to fill people’s heads with dogma. The only goal of spiritual science is to acquire knowledge of the essence of cosmic truths. And if there is any wish to participate constructively in evolution, it is essential to truly understand the world’s events.

It is sad that there is so little inclination to look into the course of world events today, but this is in fact the purpose of spiritual science. This, too, is why we can speak of special areas such as education without beginning with a scheduled program or the like. In establishing the Waldorf school, we saw that it is not a matter of introducing the rigid dogma that spiritual science is believed to represent; rather, we never introduce anything of spiritual science as it is intended for adults. We realized that spiritual science must live within us as a power that leads to a fresh understanding of human nature and an unbiased observation of the world, which in turn leads to free activity.

Not long ago, I read an extraordinary criticism; it was very antagonistic. There are many such criticisms, and I have no wish to discuss them in detail. This particular critic said that I seem to make efforts to be unbiased—but the words implied a serious criticism. I would have thought it was a common duty today—especially in spiritual matters—to work toward open-minded knowledge, but apparently it can be a matter for severe reproach. Nevertheless, I think that the subject of education in particular can lead to ready understanding between the Continent and England, and when I see what your attitude has been toward these lectures, I consider it as a very good sign. When trying to describe our time, people like to use the abstract phrase, “We are living in an age of transition.” Of course, every age is an age of transition—always from one period to the next. The point is, however, what is it that is in transition? At the present time, all kinds of signs indicate that we are indeed caught up in the process of a grand transition.

Perhaps the best way to explain this is to lead your thoughts back to the stage of spiritual evolution reached in England during the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, those who claimed to be cultured spoke French. English consisted of dialects that did not enter the general culture of the people, and the language of science was Latin. If, for example, we want to study the general nature of education in England during the fourteenth century, around 1364, we can do so from Higden’s Polychronycon, which was published at the time. Written in Latin, the book makes it clear that the medium of culture was Latin. When that book was written, the language of culture was Latin, but schools were being established in which the national language was finding its way into education (and this was also true of other countries in Europe). Schools were established in Winchester and Oxford, in which the national tongue was already in use. In the late fourteenth century, we find the important transition from Latin—an international language—to the national tongue.

Similar transitions occurred earlier or later in other regions of the civilized world, and this phenomenon has great significance. Insofar as England is concerned, we can place it in the late fourteenth century. When Higden wrote his book in 1364, he was able to tell us that the Latin tongue was still the universal medium for education. When a certain Trevisa translated it into English in 1385, we are told that English had been introduced into schools. Thus, we see the transition from the international language of Latin, which cultured people all over the world used to discuss matters of education, to the age when national language rises above the level of dialect to become, for various peoples, the medium for education. This is a significant transition.

According to the anthroposophic view, we can describe it as a transition from the age of the intellectual soul, in which people felt more connected to the universe, to that of the spiritual soul, in which human beings are to become aware of their free inner power of resolve and action. This transition is the essence of modern civilization; this alone could institute the great cosmic process in which we are still immersed today.

The effects of this emerging national language did not enter human souls and hearts immediately. Initially, in England, too, the Renaissance movement, or “Humanist” movement, began to flow north from the south. In its early days, the Humanist movement indeed aspired to the qualities of the spiritual soul, but never reached the point of real understanding. Thus, it was established that, to be truly human, one must absorb the humanist, classical culture. This struggle for human freedom and the exercise of inner, spiritual activity has continued for centuries, right up to our own day. But increasingly, the needs of civilized humanity become obvious.

In the age before this urge toward spiritual soul, language itself gave rise to the element of internationalism, making it possible for the cultured people of every country to work with one another. Language was the international element. We can place the actual transition in the second half of the fourteenth century, when this language could no longer serve as a medium for international understanding. There was an urge within human beings to develop spiritual activity from depths of their own being, and they resorted to national language, which made it increasingly necessary to understand at a level higher than that of language or speech.

We need spirituality that no longer arises from mere language, but issues more directly from the soul. A true realization of spiritual science that connects history with the present time shows that its purpose is to find, throughout the world, an international medium of understanding, through which people can find their way to one another—one that transcends the level of language.

All interaction between human beings is incorporated by the faculty of speech into sounds communicated through the air. In speech, our being is truly active in the material world. If we understand one another at a level beyond speech by means of deeper elements in the soul—through thoughts carried by feeling and warmed by the heart—then we have an international medium of understanding, but we need heart for it to come into being. We must find the path to human spirit at a level beyond speech. The search for a language of thought—and everything related to philosophy, education, religion, and art—is the purpose of the anthroposophic movement during the present period of history.

Ordinary speech lives and moves through the medium of air and exists in the material world. The language that spiritual science looks for will move through the pure element of light passing from soul to soul and heart to heart—and this is not just a figure of speech. Modern civilization will need such a medium of understanding, not just for the matters of high culture, but also for everyday life. Before this can be realized, of course, many different kinds of conferences will be held, but during recent times, the fruitfulness of such congresses for healing human beings has not been very apparent. The anthroposophic movement would like to intercede for a true healing of humankind, which can arise only through mutual understanding. Because of this, we try to understand our own age within the context of history, so that we can become human in the true sense—human beings with a fully aware soul, as was true of another stage of evolution, when Latin was the medium of international understanding. The function once served by Latin must now be taken up by universal human ideas, through which we can find our way to other people all over the earth.

Anything that lives in the world requires soul and spirit as well as a physical body. In the very truest sense, spiritual science would be the soul and spirit of the “body” as it has entered our global civilization as the world economy and the other worldly activities. Spiritual science does not disdain or avoid the most practical areas of life; it would gladly infuse them with the only element that can lead to real progress in human evolution.

I am so infinitely grateful that you wish to understand how, in this sense, our educational attempts are based on the anthroposophic movement as a true expression of the present stage of evolution. I am grateful, too, for your interest in the illuminations and shades of meaning I have tried to introduce, in addition to speaking of the historical significance of the aims of this art of education. And I especially thank you for your cordial feelings toward a course of lectures given with the object of describing the goals of Waldorf education toward the progress of civilization as it confronts today’s needs.

I have tried to describe how Waldorf education points to the deepest needs of humankind in the present age, and, as I say, your sympathetic understanding will indeed remain in my heart and soul as a very good memory of this course.

The Chair was taken by Miss Margaret McMillan, who gave a stirring address, and Dr. Steiner followed on.

My first words must be a reply to the kind greeting given by Miss Beverley to Frau Doctor Steiner and myself, and I can assure you that we deeply appreciate the invitation to give this course of lectures. I shall try to show what Anthroposophy has to say on the subject of education and to describe the attempt already made in the Waldorf School at Stuttgart to apply the educational principles arising out of Anthroposophy. It is a pleasure to come to the North of England to speak on a subject which I consider so important, and it gives me all the greater joy to think that I am speaking not only to those who have actually arranged this course but to many who are listening for the first time to lectures on education in the light of Anthroposophy. I hope, therefore, that more lies behind this Conference than the resolve of those who organized it, for I think it may be taken as evidence that our previous activities are bearing fruit in current world-strivings.

English friends of Anthroposophy were with us at a Conference held at Christmas, last year, when the Goetheanum (at Dornach, Switzerland)—since taken from us by fire—was still standing. The Conference was brought about by Mrs. Mackenzie, the author of a fine book on the educational principles laid down by Hegel, and the sympathetic appreciation expressed there justifies the hope that it is not, after all, so very difficult to find understanding that transcends the limits of nationality. What I myself said about education at the Conference did not, of course, emanate from the more intellectualistic philosophy of Hegel, but from Anthroposophy, the nature of which is wholly spiritual. And indeed Mrs. Mackenzie, too, has seen how, while fully reckoning with Hegel, something yet more fruitful for education can be drawn where intellectuality is led over into the spiritual forces of Anthroposophy.

Then I was able to speak of our educational principles and their practical application a second time last year, in the ancient university of Oxford. And perhaps I am justified in thinking that those lectures, which dealt with the relation of education to social life, may have induced a number of English educationists to visit our Waldorf School at Stuttgart. It was a great joy to welcome them there, and we were delighted to hear that they were impressed with our work and were following it with interest. During the visit the idea of holding this Summer Course on education seems to have arisen. Its roots, therefore, may be said to lie in previous activities and this very fact gives one the right confidence and courage as we embark on the lectures. Courage and confidence are necessary when one has to speak of matters so unfamiliar to the spiritual life of to-day and in face of such strong opposition. More especially are they necessary when one attempts to explain principles that seek to approach, in a creative sense, the greatest artistic achievement of the Cosmos—man himself.

Those who visited us this year at Stuttgart will have realized how essentially Waldorf School education gets to grips with the deepest fibres of modern life. The educational methods applied there can really no longer be described by the word ‘Pedagogy’ a treasured word which the Greeks learnt from Plato and the Platonists who had devoted themselves so sincerely to all educational questions. Pedagogy is, indeed, no longer an apt term to-day, for it is an a priori expression of the one-sidedness of its ideals, and those who visited the Waldorf School will have realized this from the first. It is not, of course, unusual to-day to find boys and girls educated together, in the same classes and taught in the same way, and I merely mention this to show you that in this respect, too, the methods of the Waldorf School are in line with recent developments.

What does the word ‘Pedagogy’ suggest? The ‘Pedagogue’ is a teacher of boys. This shows us at once that in ancient Greece education was very one-sided. One half of humanity was excluded from serious education. To the Greek, the boy alone was man and the girl must stay in the background when it was a question of serious education. The pedagogue was a teacher of boys, concerned only with that sex.

In our time, the presence of girl-pupils in the schools is no longer unusual, although indeed it involved a radical change from customs by no means very ancient. Another feature at the Waldorf School is that in the teaching staff no distinction of sex is made—none, at least, until we come to the very highest classes. Having as our aim a system of education in accord with the needs of the present day, we had first of all to modify much that was included in the old term ‘Pedagogy.’ So far I have only mentioned one of its limitations, but speaking in the broadest sense it must be admitted that for some time now there has been no real knowledge of man in regard to education and teaching. Indeed, many one-sided views have been held in the educational world, not only that of the separation of the sexes.

Can it truly be said that a man could develop in the fullest sense of the term when educated according to the old principles? Certainly not! To-day we must first seek understanding of the human being in his pure, undifferentiated essence. The Waldorf School was founded with this aim in view. The first idea was the education of children whose parents were working in the Waldorf-Astoria Factory, and as the Director was a member of the Anthroposophical Society, he asked me to supervise the undertaking. I myself could only give the principles of education on the basis of Anthroposophy. And so, in the first place, the Waldorf School arose as a general school for the workers' children. It was only ‘anthroposophical’ in the sense that the man who started it happened to be an Anthroposophist. Here then, we have an educational institution arising on a social basis, seeking to found the whole spirit and method of its teaching upon Anthroposophy. It was not a question of founding an ‘anthroposophical’ school. On the contrary, we hold that because Anthroposophy can at all times efface itself, it is able to institute a school on universal-human principles instead of upon the basis of social rank, philosophical conceptions of any other specialised line of thought.

This may well have occurred to those who visited the Waldorf School and it may also have led to the invitation to give these present lectures. And in this introductory lecture, when I am not yet speaking of education, let me cordially thank all those who have arranged this Summer Course. I would also thank them for having arranged performances of Eurhythmy which has already become an integral part of Anthroposophy. At the very beginning let me express this hope: A Summer Course has brought us together. We have assembled in a beautiful spot in the North of England, far away from the busy life of the winter months. You have given up your time of summer recreation to listen to subjects that will play an important part in the life of the future and the time must come when the spirit uniting us now for a fortnight during the summer holidays will inspire all our winter work. I cannot adequately express my gratitude for the fact that you have dedicated your holidays to the study of ideas for the good of the future. Just as sincerely as I thank you for this now, so do I trust that the spirit of our Summer Course may be carried on into the winter months—for only so can this Course bear real fruit.

I should like to proceed from what Miss McMillan said so impressively yesterday in words that bore witness to the great need of our time for moral impulses to be sought after if the progress of civilization is to be advanced through Education.

When we admit the great need that exists to-day for moral and spiritual impulses in educational methods and allow the significance of such impulses to work deeply in our hearts, we are led to the most fundamental problems in modern spiritual life—problems connected with the forms assumed by our culture and civilization in the course of human history. We are living in an age when certain spheres of culture, though standing in a measure side by side, are yet separated from one another. In the first place we have all that man can learn of the world through knowledge—communicated, for the most part, by the intellect alone. Then there is the sphere of art, where man tries to give expression to profound inner experiences, imitating with his human powers, a divine creative activity. Again we have the religious strivings of man, wherein he seeks to unite his own existence with the life of the universe. Lastly, we try to bring forth from our inner being impulses which place us as moral beings in the civilized life of the world. In effect we confront these four branches of culture: knowledge, art, religion, morality. But the course of human evolution has brought it about that these four branches are developing separately and we no longer realize their common origin. It is of no value to criticize these conditions; rather should we learn to understand the necessities of human progress.

To-day, therefore, we will remind ourselves of the beginnings of civilization. There was an ancient period in human evolution when science, art, religion and the moral life were one. It was an age when the intellect had not yet developed its present abstract nature and when man could solve the riddles of existence by a kind of picture-consciousness. Mighty pictures stood there before his soul—pictures which in the traditional forms of myth and saga have since come down to us. Originally they proceeded from actual experience and a knowledge of the spiritual content of the universe. There was indeed an age when in this direct, inner life of imaginative vision man could perceive the spiritual foundations of the world of sense. And what his instinctive imagination thus gleaned from the universe, he made substantial, using earthly matter and evolving architecture, sculpture, painting, music and other arts. He embodied with rapture the fruits of his knowledge in outer material forms. With his human faculties man copied divine creation, giving visible form to all that had first flowed into him as science and knowledge. In short, his art mirrored before the senses all that his forces of knowledge had first assimilated. In weakened form we find this faculty once again in Goethe, when out of inner conviction he spoke these significant words: “Beauty is a manifestation of the secret laws of Nature, without which they would remain for ever hidden.” And again: “He before whom Nature begins to unveil her mysteries is conscious of an irresistible yearning for art—Nature's worthiest expression.”

Such a conception shows that man is fundamentally predisposed to view both science and art as two aspects of one and the same truth. This he could do in primeval ages, when knowledge brought him inner satisfaction as it arose in the forms of ideas before his soul and when the beauty that enchanted him could be made visible to his senses in the arts—for experiences such as these were the essence of earlier civilizations.

What is our position to-day? As a result of all that intellectual abstractions have brought in their train we build up scientific systems of knowledge from which, as far as possible, art is eliminated. It is really almost a crime to introduce the faintest suggestion of art into science, and anyone who is found guilty of this in a scientific book is at once condemned as a dilettante. Our knowledge claims to be strictly dispassionate and objective; art is said to have nothing in common with objectivity and is purely arbitrary. A deep abyss thus opens between knowledge and art, and man no longer finds any means of crossing it. When he applies the science that is valued because of its freedom from art, he is led indeed to a marvellous knowledge of Nature—but of Nature devoid of life. The wonderful achievements of science are fully acknowledged by us, yet science is dumb before the mystery of man. Look where you will in science to-day, you will find wonderful answers to the problems of outer Nature, but no answers to the riddle of man. The laws of science cannot grasp him. Why is this? Heretical as it sounds to modern ears, this is the reason. The moment we draw near to the human being with the laws of Nature, we must pass over into the realm of art. A heresy indeed, for people will certainly say: “That is no longer science. If you try to understand the human being by the artistic sense, you are not following the laws of observation and strict logic to which you must always adhere.” However emphatically it may be held that this approach to man is unscientific because it makes use of the artistic sense—man is none the less an artistic creation of Nature. All kinds of arguments may be advanced to the effect that this way of artistic understanding is thoroughly unscientific, but the fact remains that man cannot be grasped by purely scientific modes of cognition. And so—in spite of all our science—we come to a halt before the human being. Only if we are sufficiently unbiased can we realize that scientific intellectuality must here be allowed to pass over into the domain of art. Science itself must become art if we would approach the secrets of man's being.

Now if we follow this path with all our inner forces of soul, not only observing in an outwardly artistic sense, but taking the true path, we can allow scientific intellectuality to flow over into what I have described as ‘Imaginative Knowledge’ in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. This ‘Imaginative Knowledge’—to-day an object of such suspicion and opposition—is indeed possible when the kind of thinking that otherwise gives itself up passively, and increasingly so, to the outer world is roused to a living and positive activity. The difficulty of speaking of these things to-day is not that one is either criticizing or upholding scientific habits of thought which are peculiar to our age; rather does the difficulty consist in the fact that fundamentally one must touch upon matters which concern the very roots of our present civilization. There is an increasing tendency to-day to give oneself up to the mere, observation of outer events, to allow thoughts passively to follow their succession, avoiding all conscious inner activity.

This state of things began with the demand for material proofs of spiritual matters. Take the case of a lecture on spiritual subjects. Visible evidence is out of the question, because words are the only available media—one cannot summon the invisible by some magical process. All that can be done is to stimulate and assume that the audience will inwardly energize their thinking into following the indications given by the words. Yet nowadays it will frequently happen that many of the listeners—I do not, of course, refer to those who are sitting in this hall—begin to yawn, because they imagine that thinking ought to be passive, and then they fall asleep because they are not following the subject actively. People like everything to be demonstrated to the eye, illustrated by means of lantern-slides or the like, for then it is not necessary to think at all. Indeed, they cannot think. That was the beginning, and it has gone still further. In a performance of “Hamlet,” for instance, one must follow the plot, and also the spoken word, in order to understand it. But to-day the drama is deserted for the cinema, where one need not exert oneself in any way; the pictures roll off the machine and can be watched quite inertly. And so man's inner activity of thought has gradually waned. But it is precisely this which must be retained. Yet when once the nature of this inner activity is understood, it will be realized that thinking is not merely a matter of stimulus from outside, but a force living in the very being of man.

The kind of thinking current in our modern civilization is only one aspect of this force of thought. If we inwardly observe it, from the outer side as it were, it is revealed as the force that builds up the human being from childhood. Before this can be understood, an inner, plastic force that transforms abstract thought into pictures must come into play. Then, after the necessary efforts have been made, we reach the stage I have Called in my book, the beginning of meditation. At this point we not only begin to lead mere cleverness over into art, but thought is raised into Imagination. We stand in a world of Imagination, knowing that it is not a creation of our own fancy, but an actual, objective world. We are fully conscious that although we do not as yet possess this objective world itself in Imagination, we have indeed a true picture of it. And now the point is to realize that we must get beyond the picture.

Strenuous efforts are necessary if we would master this inner creative thinking that does not merely contain pictures of fantasy, but pictures bearing their own reality within them. Then, however, we must next be able to eliminate the whole of this creative activity and thus accomplish an inwardly moral act. For this indeed constitutes an act of inner morality: when all the efforts described in my book to reach this active thinking in pictures have been made, when all the forces of soul have been applied and the powers of Self strained to their very utmost, we then must be able to eliminate all we have thus attained. In his own being man must have developed the highest fruits of this thinking that has been raised to the level of meditation and then be capable of selflessness. He must be able to eliminate all that has been thus acquired. For to have nothing is not the same as to have gained nothing. If he has made every effort to strengthen the Self by his own will so that finally his consciousness can be emptied-a spiritual world surges into his consciousness and being and he realizes that spiritual forces of cognition are needed for knowledge of the spiritual world. Active picture-thinking may be called Imagination. When the spiritual world pours into the consciousness that has in turn been emptied by dint of tremendous effort, man is approaching the mode of mode of knowledge known as true Inspiration. Having experienced Imagination, we may through an inner denial of self come to comprehend the spiritual world lying behind the two veils of outer Nature and of man.

I will now endeavour to show you how from this point we are led over to the spiritual life of religion.

Let me draw your attention to the following.—Inasmuch as Anthroposophy strives for true Imagination, it leads not only to knowledge or to art that in itself is of the nature of a picture, but to the spiritual reality contained in the picture. Anthroposophy bridges the gulf between knowledge and art in such a way that at a higher level, suited to modern life and the present age, the unity of science and art which humanity has abandoned can enter civilization once again. This unity must be re-attained, for the schism between science and art has disrupted the very being of man. To pass from the state of disruption to unity and inner harmony—it is for this above all that modern man must strive.

Thus far I have spoken of the harmony between science and art. I will now develop the subject further, in connection with religion and morality.

Knowledge that thus draws the creative activity of the universe into itself can flow directly into art, and this same path from knowledge to art can be extended and continued. It was so continued through the powers of the old imaginative knowledge of which I have spoken, which also found the way, without any intervening cleft, into the life of religion. He who applied himself to this kind of knowledge—primitive and instinctive though it was in early humanity—was aware that he acquired it by no external perceptions, for in his thinking and knowing he sensed divine life within him, he felt that spiritual powers were at work in his own creative activity enabling him to raise to greater holiness all that had been impressed into the particular medium of his art. The power born in his soul as he embodied the Divine-Spiritual in outer material substance could then extend into acts wherein he was fully conscious that he, as man, was expressing the will of divine ordnance. He felt himself pervaded by divine creative power, and as the path was found through the fashioning of material substance, art became—by way of ritual—a form of divine worship. Artistic creation was sanctified in the divine office. Art became ritual—the glorification of the Divine—and through the medium of material substance offered sacrifice to the Divine Being in ceremonial and ritual. And as man thus bridged the gulf between Art and Religion there arose a religion in full harmony with knowledge and with art. Albeit primitive and instinctive, this knowledge was none the less a true picture, and as such it could lead human deeds to become, in the acts of ritual, a direct portrayal of the Divine.

In this way the transition from art to religion was made possible. Is it still possible with our present-day mode of knowledge? The ancient clairvoyant perception had revealed to man the spiritual in every creature and process of Nature, and by surrender and devotion to the spirit within the nature-processes, the spiritual laws of the Cosmos passed over and were embodied in ritual and cult.

How do we “know” the world to-day? Once more, to describe is better than criticism, for as the following lectures will show, the development of our present mode of knowledge was a necessity in the history of mankind. To-day I am merely placing certain suggestive thoughts before you. We have gradually lost our spiritual insight into the being and processes of Nature. We take pride in eliminating the spirit in our observation of Nature and finally reach such hypothetical conceptions as attribute the origin of our planet to the movements of a primeval nebula. Mechanical stirrings in this nebula are said to be the origin of all the kingdoms of Nature, even so far as man. And according to these same laws—which govern our whole “objective” mode of thinking, this earth must finally end through a so-called extinction of warmth. All ideas achieved by man, having proceeded from a kind of Fata Morgana, will disappear, until at the end there will remain only the tomb of earthly existence.

If the truth of this line of thought be recognized by science and men are honest and brave enough to face its inevitable consequences, they cannot but admit that all religious and moral life is also a Fata Morgana and must so remain! Yet the human being cannot endure this thought, and so must hold fast to the remnants of olden times, when religion and morality still lived in harmony with knowledge and with art. Religion and morality to-day are not direct creations of man's innermost being. They rest on tradition, and are a heritage from ages when the instinctive life of man was filled with revelation, when God—and the moral world in Him—were alike manifest. Our strivings for knowledge to-day can reveal neither God nor a moral world. Science comes to the end of the animal species and man is cast out. Honest inner thinking can find no bridge over the gulf fixed between knowledge and the religious life.

All true religions have sprung from Inspiration. True, the early form of Inspiration was not so conscious as that to which we must now attain, yet it was there instinctively, and rightly do the religions trace their origin back to it. Such faiths as will no longer recognize living inspiration and revelation from the spirit in the immediate present have to be content with tradition. But such faiths lack all inner vitality, all direct motive-power of religious life. This motive-power and vitality must be re-won, for only so can our social organism be healed.

I have shown how man must regain a knowledge that passes by way of art to Imagination, and thence to Inspiration. If he re-acquires all that flows down from the inspirations of a spiritual world into human consciousness, true religion will once again appear. And then intellectual discussion about the nature of Christ will cease, for through Inspiration it will be known in truth that the Christ was the human bearer of a Divine Being Who had descended from spiritual worlds into earthly existence. Without super-sensible knowledge there can be no understanding of the Christ. If Christianity is again to be deeply rooted in humanity, the path to super-sensible knowledge must be rediscovered. Inspiration must again impart a truly religious life to mankind in order that knowledge—derived no longer merely from the observation of natural laws—may find no abyss dividing it alike from art and religion. Knowledge, art, religion—these three will be in harmony.

Primeval man was convinced of the presence of God in human deeds when he made his˃ art a divine office and when a consciousness of the fire glowing in his heart as Divine Will pervaded the acts of ritual. And when the path from outer objective knowledge to Inspiration is found once again, true religion will flow from Inspiration and modern man will be permeated—as was primeval man—with a God-given morality. In those ancient days man felt: “If I have my divine office, if I share in divine worship, my whole inner being is enriched; God lives not only in the temple but in the whole of my life.”

To make the presence of God imminent in the world—this is true morality. Nature cannot lead man to morality. Only that which lifts him above Nature, filling him with the Divine-Spiritual—this alone can lead man to morality. Through the Intuition which comes to him when he finds his way to the spirit, he can fill his innermost being with a morality that is at once human and divine. The attainment of Inspiration thus rebuilds the bridge once existing instinctively in human civilization between religion and morality. As knowledge leads upwards through art to the heights of super-sensible life, so, through religious worship, spiritual heights are brought down to earthly existence, and we can permeate it with pure, deep-rooted morality—a morality that is an act of conscious experience. Thus will man himself become the individual expression of a moral activity that is an inner motive power. Morality will be a creation of the individual himself, and the last abyss between religion and morality will be bridged. The intuition pervading primitive man as he enacted his ritual will be re-created in a new form, and a morality truly corresponding with modern conditions will arise from the religious life of our day. We need this for the renewal of our civilization. We need it in order that what to-day is mere heritage, mere tradition may spring again into life. This pure, primordial impulse is necessary for our complicated social life that is threatening to spread chaos through the world. We need a harmony between knowledge, art, religion, and morality. The earth-born knowledge which has given us our science of to-day must take on a new form and lead us through Inspiration and the arts to a realization of the super-sensible in the life of religion. Then we shall indeed be able to bring down the super-sensible to the earth again, to experience it in religious life and to transform it into will in social existence. Only when we see the social question as one of morality and religion can we really grapple with it, and this we cannot do until the moral and religious life arises from spiritual knowledge. The revival of spiritual knowledge will enable man to accomplish what he needs—a link between later phases of evolution and its pure, instinctive origin. Then he will know what is needed for the healing of humanity—harmony between science, art, religion, and morality.

That the subject of education is exercising the mind and soul of all men at the present day is not to be questioned. It is everywhere apparent. If, then, an art of education is advocated here which is derived directly from spiritual life and spiritual perception, it is its inner nature rather than the urgency of its outward appeal which differentiates it from the reforms generally demanded to-day.

There is a general feeling nowadays that the conditions of civilization are in rapid transition, and that for the sake of the organization of our social life we must pay heed to the many new changes and developments of modern times. Already there is a feeling—a feeling which only a short time ago was rarely present—that the child of to-day is a very different being from the child of a recent past, and that it is much more difficult nowadays for age to come to an understanding with youth than was the case in earlier times.

The art of education, however, of which I have here to speak, is concerned rather with the inner development of human civilization. It is concerned with what has changed the souls of men in the course of ages, with the evolution through which, in the course of hundreds, nay even thousands of years, these souls have passed. The attempt will be made to explore the means by which, in this particular age, we may reach the being of man as it lives in the child. It is generally admitted that the successive periods of time in Nature can be differentiated. We need only think of the way in which man takes these differentiations into account in daily life. Take the example nearest to hand—the day. Our relation to the processes of Nature is quite different in the morning, at noon, and at night, and we should think it absurd to ignore the course of the day. We should also think it absurd not to pay due heed to the development revealed in human life itself—to ignore, for instance, the fact that an old man's needs are different from those of a child. In the case of Nature we respect this fact of development. But man has not yet accustomed himself to respect the fact of the general evolution of humanity. We do not take account of the fact that centuries ago there lived a humanity very different from the humanity of the Middle Ages or of the present time. We must learn to know the nature of the inner forces of human beings if our treatment of children at the present time is to be practical and not merely theoretical. We must investigate from within those forces which hold sway in this present day.

The principles of Waldorf School education—as it may be called—are, therefore, in no sense revolutionary. In Waldorf School education there is full recognition of all that is great and worthy of esteem in the really brilliant achievements of all countries during the nineteenth century. There is no desire to cast everything aside and imagine that the only possible thing is something radically new. The aim is rather to investigate the inner forces now ruling in the nature of man in order to be able to take them into account in the sphere of education, and thereby to find a true place in social life for the human being in body, soul and spirit. For—as we shall see in the course of these lectures—education has always been a concern of social life, and still is so at the present time. It must be a social concern in the future as well. In education, therefore, there must be an understanding of the social demands of any given epoch. To begin with, I want to describe to you in three stages the development of the nature of education in Western civilization. The best way will be to consider the educational ideals of the different epochs—the ideals striven for by those who desired to rise to the highest stage of human existence, to the stage from which they could render the most useful service to their fellow-men. It will be well in such a study to go back to the earliest of those past ages which we feel to survive as a cultural influence even at the present time. Nobody, to-day, will dispute the still living influence of the Greek civilization in all human aims and aspirations, and the question, “In what way did the Greek seek to raise the human being to a certain stage of perfection?” must be of fundamental significance to the educationalist. We must also consider the progress of subsequent epochs in respect of the perfecting of the education and instruction of the human being.

Let us see, to begin with—and indeed, we shall have to study this question in detail—what was the Greek ideal for the teacher, that is to say, for the man who desired to develop to the highest stage of humanity not only for his own sake, but for the sake of his being able to guide others along their path. What was the Greek ideal of education? The Greek ideal of education was the Gymnast, that is to say, one who had completely Harmonized his bodily nature and, to the extent that was thought necessary in those days, all the qualities of his soul and spirit. A man able to bring the divine beauty of the world to expression in the beauty of his own body, able to bring the divine beauty of the world into bodily expression in the child, in the boy—this was the Gymnast, the man by whom Greek civilization was up-borne.

It is easy, from a kind of modern superiority, to look down upon the Gymnast's manner of education, based as it was on the bodily nature of man. But there is a total misunderstanding of what was meant in Greece by the word Gymnast. If, nevertheless, we do still admire Greek civilization and culture to-day, if we still regard it as the ideal of highest development to be permeated with Greek culture, we shall do well to remember while we do this, that the Greek himself was not primarily concerned with the development of so-called “spirituality” in the human being. He was only concerned to develop the human body in such a way that as a result of the harmony of its parts and its modes of activity the body itself should come to be a manifestation of divine beauty. The Greek expected of the body just what we expect of the plant; that it will of itself unfold into blossom under the influence of sunlight and warmth if the root has received the proper kind of treatment. And in our devotion to Greek culture to-day we must not forget that the bearer of this culture was the Gymnast, one who had not taken the third step first, so to speak, but the first step first: the harmonization of the bodily nature of man. All the beauty, all the greatness, all the perfection of Greek culture was not directly “sought,” but was looked for as the natural growth of the beautiful, harmonious, powerful body, a result of the inner nature and activity of earthly man. Our understanding of Greek civilization, especially of Greek education, will be one-sided unless our admiration for the spiritual greatness of Greece is linked with the knowledge that the Gymnast was the ideal of Greek education.

Then, as we follow the continuous development of humanity, we see that a most significant break occurs, in the transition from Greek to Roman culture. In Roman civilization we have, to begin with, the emergence of that cultivation of abstractions which later led to the separation of spirit, soul, and body, and placed too a special emphasis on this threefold division. We can see how the principle of beauty in Greek “gymnastic” education was indeed imitated in Roman culture, but how, nevertheless, the education of body and soul fell into two separate spheres. The Roman still set great store by the training of the body, but little by little and almost imperceptibly this fell into a secondary place. The attention was directed to something that was considered more important in human nature—to the element of soul. The training which in Greece was bound up with the ideal of the Gymnast, gradually changed, in Roman culture, into a training of the soul qualities.

This is developed throughout the Middle Ages, an epoch when the qualities of soul were considered to be of a higher order than those of the body. And from this “Romanized” human nature, as we may call it, there arises another ideal of education. Early in the Middle Ages there appears an educational ideal for the men of highest development which was a fruit of Roman civilization. It was in its essence a culture of the soul—of the soul in so far as this reveals itself outwardly in man.

The Gymnast was gradually superseded by another type of human being. To-day we no longer have any strong, historical consciousness of this change, but those who study the Middle Ages intimately will realize that it actually took place. The ideal of education was no longer the Gymnast, but the Rhetorician, one whose main training was the training of speech, that is to say, of something that is essentially a quality of soul. How the human being can work through speech, as a Rhetorician—this was an outcome of Roman culture carried over into the first period of the Middle Ages. It represents the reaction from an education adapted purely to the body to an education more particularly of the soul, one which ^carries on the training of the body as a secondary activity. And because the Middle Ages made use of the Rhetorician for spreading the spiritual life as it was cultivated in the monastic schools and elsewhere in medieval education, it came about, though the name was not always used, that the Rhetorician assumed in the sphere of education the place which had once been held by the Greek Gymnast. Thus, in reviewing the ideals which have been regarded as the highest expression of man, we see how humanity advances from the educational ideal of Gymnast to that of the Rhetorician.

Now this had its effect upon the methods of education. The education of children was brought into line with what was held to be human perfection. And one who has the gift of historical observation will perceive that even the usages of our modern education, the manner in which language and speech are taught to children, are a heritage from the practice of the Middle Ages which had the Rhetorician as educational ideal.

Then, in the course of the Middle Ages, came the great swing over to the intellectual, with all the honour and respect which it paid to the things of the intellect. A new educational ideal of human development arose, an ideal which represents exactly the opposite of the Greek ideal. It was an ideal which gave the highest place to the intellectual and spiritual development of man. He who knows something—the Knower—now became the ideal. Whereas throughout the whole of the Middle ages he who could do something, do something with the powers of his soul, who could convince others, remained the ideal of education, now the knower becomes the ideal. We have only to look at the earliest University Institutions, at the University of Paris in the Middle Ages, to realize that the ideal there is not the knower, but the doer, the man who can convince most through speech, who is the most skilful in argument, the master of Dialectic—of the word which now takes on the colour of thought. We still find the Rhetorician as the ideal of education, though the Rhetorician himself is tinged with the hue of thought.

And now with this new civilization another ideal arises for evolving man, an ideal which is again reflected in the education of the child. Our own education of children, even in this age of materialism, has remained under the influence of this ideal right down to the present time. Now for the first time there arises the ideal of the Doctor, the Professor. The Doctor becomes the ideal for the perfect human being.

Thus we see the three stages in human education: the Gymnast, the Rhetorician, the Doctor. The Gymnast is one who can handle the whole human organism from what he regards as its divine manifestation in the world, in the Cosmos. The Rhetorician only knows how to handle the soul-nature in so far as it manifests in the bodily nature. The Gymnast trains the body, and through it, the soul and spirit, to the heights of Greek civilization. The Rhetorician is concerned with the soul, and attains his crown and his glory as the orator of the things of the soul, as the Church orator. And lastly, we see how skill as such ceases to be valued. The man who only knows, the man, that is, who no longer handles the soul-nature in its bodily-working, but only that which reigns invisibly in the inner being, the man who only knows now stands as the ideal of the highest stage of education. This, however, reflects itself into the most elementary principles of education. For it was the Gymnasts in Greece who also educated the children. It was the Rhetoricians, later on, who educated the children. Finally, in more modern times and in the time of the rise of materialism in civilization as a whole, it was the Doctor who educated the children. Thus bodily, gymnastic education develops into rhetorical, soul-education, and this in turn develops into “doctorial” education. Our modern education is the outcome of the “doctorial” ideal. And those who seek, in the very deepest principles of modern education for those things which really ought to be understood, must carefully observe what has been introduced as a result of this doctorial ideal.

Side by side with this, however, a new ideal has emerged into greater and greater prominence in the modern age. It is the ideal of the “universal human.” Men had eyes and ears only for what belonged by right to the Doctor, and the longing arose to educate once again the whole human being, to add to the doctorial education, which was even being crammed into the tiny child (for the Doctors wrote the text books, thought out the methods of teaching), to add to this the education of the “universal human.” And to-day, those who judge from a fundamental, elementary feeling for human nature, want to have their say in educational matters.

Thus for inner reasons the problem of education to-day has become a problem of the times. We must bear this inner process of human evolution in mind if we would understand the present age, for a true development of education must tend to nothing less than a superseding of this “Doctor” principle. If I were briefly to summarize one particular aspect of the aim of Waldorf School education, I should say, to-day, of course merely in a preliminary sense, that it is a question of turning this “doctorial” education into an education of man as a whole.

***

Now we cannot understand the essential nature of the education which had its rise in Greek civilization and has continued in its further development on into our own times, unless we look at the course of human evolution from the days of Greek civilization to our own in the right light. Greek civilization was really a continuation, an offshoot, as it were, of Oriental civilization. All that had developed in the evolution of humanity for thousands of years in Asia, in the East, found its final expression in a very special way in Greek education. Not till then did there come an important break in evolution: the transition to Roman culture. Roman culture is the source of all that later flowed into the whole of Western civilization, even so far as to America.

Hence it is impossible to understand the essential nature of Greek education unless we have a true conception of the whole character of Oriental development. To one who stood by the cradle of the civilization out of which proceeded the Vedas and the wonderful Vedanta it would have seemed the purest nonsense to imagine that the highest development of human nature is to be attained by sitting with books in front of one in order to get through examinations. And it would have seemed the purest nonsense to imagine that anyone could become a perfected human being after having literally maltreated (for “trained” is not the word) for years if the man be industrious, for months if he be lazy, an indefinite something that goes by the name of the “human spirit” in order then to be questioned by someone as to how much he knows. We do not understand the development of human civilization unless we sometimes pause to consider how the ideal of one epoch appears to the eyes of another. For what steps were taken by a man of the ancient East who desired to acquire the sublime culture offered to his people in the age preceding that of the inspiration behind the Vedas? What he practised was fundamentally a kind of bodily culture. And he hoped, as the result of a special cult of the body, one-sided though this would appear to-day, to attain to the crowning glory of human life, to the loftiest spirituality, if this lay within his destiny. Hence an exceedingly delicate culture of the body was the method adopted in the highest education of the ancient East, not the reading of books and the maltreatment of an abstract “spirit.” I will give you an example of this refined bodily culture. It consisted in a definite and rigorously systematic regulation of the breathing. When man breathes—as indeed he must do in order to provide himself with the proper supply of oxygen from minute to minute—the process is an unconscious one. He carries out the whole breathing process unconsciously. The ancient oriental made this breathing process, which is fundamentally a bodily function, into something which was carried out with consciousness. He drew in his breath in accordance with a definite law; held it back and breathed it out again according to a definite law. The whole process was conditioned by the body. The legs and arms must be held in certain positions, that is to say, the path of the breath through the physical organism when it reached the knee, for instance, must proceed in the horizontal direction. And so the ancient Oriental who was seeking to reach the stage of human perfection sat with legs crossed beneath him. The man who wished to experience the revelation of the spirit in himself must achieve it as the result of a training of the body, a training directed in particular to the air-processes in the human being, but centred, nevertheless, in the bodily nature.

Now what lies at the basis of this kind of training and education? The flower and fruit of a plant live within the root and if the root receives proper care, both flower and fruit develop under the light and warmth of the sun. In the same way, the soul and sprit live in the bodily nature of man, in the body that is created by God. If a man then takes hold of the roots in the body, knowing that Divinity lives within them, develops these bodily roots in the right way and then gives himself up to the life that is freely unfolding, the soul and spirit within the roots develop as do the inner forces of the plant that pour out of the root and unfold under the light and warmth of the sun.

Any abstract development of spirit would have seemed to the Oriental just as if we were to shut off all our plants from the sunlight, put them into a cellar and then make them grow under electric light, possibly because we did not consider the free light of the sun good enough for them. The fact that the Oriental only looked to the bodily nature was deeply rooted in his whole conception of humanity. This bodily development afterwards, of course, became one-sided, had already become so by the time of Jewish culture, but the very one-sidedness shows us that the universal view was: body, soul, and spirit are one. Here, on earth, between birth and death, the soul and spirit must be sought for in the body.

This aspect of ancient oriental spiritual culture may possibly cause some astonishment but when we study the true course of human evolution we shall find that the very loftiest achievements of civilization were attained in times when man was still able to behold the soul and spirit wholly within the body. This was a development of the very greatest significance for the essential nature of human civilization. Now why was the Oriental, for it must be remembered that his whole concern was a quest for the spirit, why was the Oriental justified in striving for the spirit by methods that were really based upon the bodily nature of man? He was justified because his philosophy did not merely open his eyes to the earthly but also to the super-sensible. And he knew: To regard the soul and spirit here on earth as being complete, is to see them (forgive this rather trivial analogy but in the sense of oriental wisdom it is absolutely correct) in the form of a ‘plucked hen,’ not a hen with feathers and therefore not a complete hen. The idea we have of the soul and spirit would have seemed to the Oriental analogous to a hen with its feathers plucked, for he knew the soul and spirit, he knew the reality of what we seek in other worlds. He had a concrete super-sensible perception of it. He was justified in seeking for the material, bodily revelation of man because his fundamental conviction was that in other worlds, the plucked hen, the naked soul, is endowed with spiritual feathers when it reaches its proper dwelling-place.

Thus it was the very spiritual nature of his conception of the world that prompted the Oriental, in considering the earthly evolution of the human being, to bear in mind before all else that within the body when man is born, when he comes forth as a purely physical being, there is soul and spirit. Soul and spirit sleep in the physical body of the little child in a most wonderful way. For the Oriental knew that when this Physis is handled in the truly spiritual way, soul and spirit will proceed from it. This was the keynote of the education, even of the Sage, in the East. It was a conviction which passed over into Greek culture, for Greek culture is an offshoot of oriental civilization. And now we understand why it was that the Greeks, who brought the conviction of the East to its most objective expression, adopted, even in the case of the young, their own particular kind of training of the human being. It was the result of oriental influence. The particular attention paid to the bodily nature in Greek civilization is simply due to the fact that the Greek was the result of colonization from The East and from Egypt, whence his whole mode of existence was derived.

When we look at the Greek palæstra where the Gymnasts worked, we must see in their activities a continuation of the development which the East, from a profoundly spiritual conception of the world, strove for in the man who was to reach the highest ideal of human perfection on earth. The Oriental would never have considered a one-sided development of soul or spirit to be the ideal of human perfection. The learning and instruction that has become the ideal of later times, would have seemed to him a deadening of that which the Gods had given to man for his life on earth. And, fundamentally, this was still the conception of the Greek.

It is a strange experience to realize how the spiritual culture of Greece, which we to-day think of as so sublime, was regarded in those times by non-Greek peoples. An historic anecdote, handed down by tradition, tells us that a barbarian prince once went to Greece, visited the places where education was being carried on and had a conversation with one of the most famous Gymnasts. The barbarian prince said: “I cannot understand these insane practices of yours! First you rub the young men with oil, the symbol of peace, then you strew sand over them, just as if they were being prepared for some ceremony specially connected with peace, and then they begin to hurl themselves about as if they were mad, seizing hold of and jumping at each other. One throws the other down or punches his chin so vigorously that his shoulders have to be well shaken to prevent him from suffocating. I simply do not understand such a display and it can be of no conceivable use to the human being.” This was what the barbarian prince said to the Greek. Nevertheless, the spiritual glory of Greece was derived from what the barbarian prince thought to be so much barbarism. And just as the Greek Gymnast had only ridicule for the barbarian who did not understand how the body must be trained in order to make the spirit manifest, so would a Greek, if he could rise again and see our customary methods of teaching and education (which really date from earlier times) laugh within himself at the barbarian that has developed since the days of Greece and that speaks of an abstract soul and spirit. The Greek in his turn would say: “This is analogous to a plucked hen. You have taken away man's feathers from him!” The Greek would have thought it barbaric that the boys should not wrestle and fall upon one another in the manner described. Yet the barbarian prince could see no meaning or purpose in Greek education. Thus by studying the course of human development and observing what was held to be of value in other epochs, we may acquire a foundation upon which we can also come to a right valuation of things in our own time.

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Let us now turn our attention to those places where the Greek Gymnast educated and taught the youths who were entrusted to him in the seventh year of life. What we find there naturally differs essentially from the kind of national educational ideal, for instance, that held sway in the nineteenth century. In this connection, what I shall say does not merely hold good for this or that particular nation, but for all civilized nations. What we behold when we turn our attention to one of these places in Greece where the young were educated from the seventh year of life onwards, can, if it is rightly permeated with modern impulses, afford us a true basis for understanding what is necessary for education and instruction to-day. The youths were trained—and the word ‘trained’ is here always used in its very highest sense—on the one hand in Orchestric and on the other in Palæstric. Orchestric, to the outer eye, was entirely a bodily exercise, a kind of concerted dance, but arranged in a very special way. It was a dance with a most complicated form. The boys learned to move in a definite form in accordance with measure, beat, rhythm, and above all in accordance with a certain plastic-musical principle. The boy, moving in this choral dance, felt a kind of inner soul-warmth pouring through all his limbs and co-ordinating them. This experience was simultaneously expressed in the form of a very beautiful musical dance before the eyes of the spectators. The whole thing was a revelation of the beauty of the Godhead and at the same time an experience of this beauty in the inner being of man. All that was experienced through this orchestric was felt and sensed inwardly, and thus it was transformed from a physical, bodily process into something that expressed itself outwardly, inspiring the hand to play the zither, inspiring speech and word to become song. To understand song and the playing of the zither in ancient Greece we must see them as the crown of the choral dance. Out of what he experienced from the dance, man was inspired to set the strings in movement so that he might hear the sound and the tone arising from the choral dance. From his own movement he experienced something that poured into his word, and his words became song.

Gymnastic and musical development, this was the form taken by education in the Greek palæstra. But the musical and soul qualities thus acquired were born from the outer bodily movements of the dances performed in the palæstra. And if to-day one penetrates with direct perception to the meaning of these ordered movements in a Greek palæstra—which the barbarian prince could not understand—one finds that all the forms of movement, all the movements of the individual human being, were most wonderfully arranged, so wonderfully indeed that the further effect was not only the musical element that I have already described, but something else. When we study the measures and the rhythms that were concealed in orchestric, in the choral dance, we find that nothing could have a more healing, health-giving effect upon the breathing system and the blood circulation of man than these bodily exercises which were carried out in the Greek choral dances. If the question were put: How can the human being be made to breathe in the most beneficial way? What is the best way to stimulate the movement of the blood by the breath?—the answer would have been that the boy must move, must carry out dance-like movements from his seventh year onwards. Then—as they said in those times—he opens up his systems of breathing and blood circulation not to forces of decadence but to those of healing. The aim of all this orchestric was to enable the systems of breathing and blood circulation in the human being to express themselves in the most perfect way. For the conviction was that when the blood circulation is functioning properly it works right down to the very finger tips, and then instinctively the human being will strike the strings of the zither or the strings of the lute in the right way. This was, as it were, the crown of the process of blood circulation. The whole rhythmic system of the human being was made skilful in the right way through the choral dance.

As a result of this, one might hope for a musical, spiritual quality to develop in the playing, for it was known that when the individual being carries out the corresponding movements with his limbs in the choral dance, the breathing system is so inspired that it quite naturally functions in a spiritual way. And the final consequence is that the breath will overflow into what the human being expresses outwardly through the larynx and its related organs. It was known that the healing effects of the choral dance on the breathing system would enkindle song. And thus the crowning climax, zither-playing and song, was drawn from the healthy organism trained in the right way through the choral dance. And so the physical nature, the soul and the spirit were looked upon as an inner unity, an inner totality in earthly man. And this was the whole spirit of Greek education.

And now let us look at what was developed in palæstric—which gave its name to the places of education in Greece because it was the common property, so to speak, of the educated people. What was it, we ask, that was studied in those forms, in which, for instance, wrestling was evolved? And we see that the whole system existed for the purpose of unfolding two qualities in the human being. The will, stimulated by bodily movement, grew strong and forceful in two directions. All movement and all palæstric in wrestling was intended to bring suppleness, skill and purposeful agility into the limbs of the wrestler. Man's whole system of movement was to be harmonized in such a way that the separate parts should work together truly and that for any particular mood of his soul he should be able to make the appropriate movements with skill, controlling his limbs from within. The moulding and rounding of the movements into harmony with the purposes of life—this was one side of palæstric. The other side was the radial of the movement, as it were, where force must flow into the movement. Skill on the one side, force on the other. The power to hold out against and overcome the forces working in opposition and to go through the world with inner strength—this was one aspect. Skill, proficiency, and harmonization of the different parts of the organism, in short the development of power to be able freely to radiate and express his own being everywhere in the world—this was the other side.

It was held that when the human being thus harmonized his system of movement through palæstric, he entered into a true relationship with the Cosmos. The arms, legs and the breathing as developed by palæstric were then given over to the activities of the human being in the world, for it was known that when the arm is rightly developed through palæstric it links itself with the stream of cosmic forces which in turn flow to the human brain and then, from out of the Cosmos, great Ideas are revealed to man. Just as music was not considered to depend upon a specifically musical training but was expected as the result of the development of the blood circulation and breathing—and indeed did not express itself in most cases until about the age of twenty—so mathematics and philosophy were expected to be a result of the bodily culture in palæstric. It was known that geometry is inspired in the human being by a right use of the arms.

To-day people do not learn of these things from history, for they have been entirely forgotten. What I have told you is, nevertheless, the truth, and it justifies the Greeks in having placed the Gymnasts at the head of their educational institutions. For the Gymnast succeeded in bringing about the spiritual development of the Greeks by giving them freedom. He did not cram their brains or try to make them into walking encyclopaedias but assisted the trained organs of the human being to find their true relationship to the Cosmos, and in this way man became receptive to the spiritual world. The Greek Gymnast was as convinced as the man of the ancient East of the truth of the spiritual world, only in Greece, of course, this realization expressed itself in a later form.

What I have really done to-day by giving an introductory description of an ancient method of education, is to put a question before you. And I have done so because we must probe very deeply if we are to discover the true principles of education in our time. It is absolutely necessary to enter into these depths of human evolution in order to discover, in these depths, the right way to formulate the questions which will help us to solve the problem of our own education and methods of instruction. To-day, therefore, I wanted to place before you one aspect of the subject we are considering. In a wider sense, the lectures are intended to give a more detailed answer, an answer suited to the requirements of the present age, to the question which has been raised to-day and will be developed tomorrow.

Our mode of study, therefore, must be the outcome of a true understanding of the great problem of education raised by the evolutionary course of humanity and we must then pass on to the answers that may be given by a knowledge of the nature and constitution of the human being at the present time.