Course: The First Three Years of the Child
Walking, Speaking, ThinkingLesson 2Introduction
This course is based on the work of Karl König, MD, and covers the developmental phases of early childhood with a focus on the first three years and the unfolding of the child's ability to walk, learn to speak, and the awakening of thinking based on the prior acquirement of speaking.
Rudolf Steiner called them the spiritual gifts: walking, speaking, and thinking. These gifts make it possible for the human being to ultimately become what he or she is, a unique being endowed with cognition and the quest for one's own self. These gifts form the foundation for the development of the three highest human senses, the sense of speech, the sense of thought and the sense of ego. It is only when these senses are recognized to be the result of the development of walking, speaking and thinking that a true understanding of the awakening of the human being's spirit during the first three years of life can be gained. |
Course Outline
Lesson 1: Introduction
Lesson 2: Acquisition of the Ability to Walk Upright Lesson 3: Learning One's Native Language Lesson 4: The Awakening of Thinking Lesson 5: The Unfolding of the Three Highest Senses Lesson 6: Reflection and Final Paper 
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Karl König - A Short BiographyDr. Karl König was born on the 25th of September 1902 in Vienna, Austria and died on the 27th of March 1966 in Überlingen at the Lake of Constance in Germany. Early in his life he developed a strong relationship to the values of Christianity and to questions regarding the issues of social life.
Karl König studied zoology, biology and medicine in Vienna. During this time he struggled with questions regarding the evolution of life. It was the encounter with Goethe's work on natural science, Goethe's approach and methods, that gave him the direction for finding answers. He published the results of his first research about the effects of homeopathic substances during the time as an assistant at the Vienna Institute for Embryology. |
Dr. Karl König and unknown child
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Soon König got to know followers of Rudolf Steiner, and during the first encounter with Ita Wegman she asked him to work as an assistant at the "Klinisch-therapeutische Institut" in Arlesheim in Switzerland. The co-founder of the institute was Rudolf Steiner. It was also in Arlesheim where he started to give numerous lectures and courses, rich in content and covering a great variety of topics. As we can read in his 'Autobiographic Fragment' the roots of his deep inner connection and relationship to children with special needs are to be found here in Arlesheim. A lecturing journey to Silesia lead to the marriage with Tilla (Maasberg) and his deep connection with the social and religious impulses of the "Herrnhut" brotherhood where she originated. Because of his Jewish descent he had to give up his work as general practitioner and in the institute of Pilgramshain, which he had just founded with Albrecht Strohschein and which was one of the first curative educational centers based on Anthroposophy. Also the "School for Social Work", founded by Emil Bock and himself in Eisenach in 1932, could not be continued. In 1936 he fled via Prague back to Vienna where he restarted his medical practice. Already in 1938 he was as successful with his work as in Silesia. During this period he lead an anthroposophical study group with young people, many of them Jewish. Together with this group he soon had to flee again. They reached Scotland by different ways. The old "Camphill" estate, a former hiding place of the last knights of the "Order of the Temple" became the place of origin for a community based on curative education, which then developed during the postwar years as the "Camphill Movement" and over time spread to many countries all over the world. For Karl König the foundation of such a community was an attempt to realize suggestions Rudolf Steiner had made for for social life based on insights into spiritual reality. For König it was an endeavor to take up anew the true and deeper tasks that had been hindered by the destruction of Central Europe. In 1966 Karl König died in Überlingen near to the communities he had founded at the Lake of Constance. Tireless work and effort to help children, adolescents and adults with special needs in practical, therapeutic and educational life, through publications, talks and seminars, had become more and more the central content of his life.
Karl König's Meeting with Ita WegmannIn the year 1927, a number of biographical paths cross in a significant way. Karl König, who had graduated as a medical doctor in April that year, had wished to visit Arlesheim and meet Ita Wegman. But Ita Wegman was not encouraging as there were already other visiting doctors at the Clinic. Help came from an unexpected quarter. Rudolf Steiner’s sister, Leopoldine, died in Horn, north-west of Vienna, on 1 November 1927. Ita Wegman traveled to the funeral, and Karl König was asked to be one of those who met
her. That was why he stood on the platform
of a railway station in Vienna and
waited for the train.
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) had two
younger siblings, Leopoldine (1864–
1927) and Gustav (1866–1941). Gustav
was born deaf and needed care throughout
his life. Leopoldine became a seamstress,
living with her parents until they
died, then looking after her brother until
she herself began to loose her sight.
Leopoldine Steiner’s funeral was
held on 3 November 1927. Ita Wegman
traveled by train from Arlesheim to Vienna.
She will have heard of the death
shortly after Leopoldine Steiner died
but it is unlikely that she would have
traveled so far already the same day.
Karl König writes that Ita Wegman
arrived late in the evening in Vienna,
which rules out her traveling on the
day of the funeral. So it is most probable
that Karl König met Ita Wegman
for the first time on Wednesday
2 November 1927.
That Ita Wegman really did attend
Leopoldine Steiner’s funeral is confirmed
by an anecdote illustrating
her concern for Gustav Steiner that
day:
Doctor Ita Wegman attended Poldi’s
[Leopoldine’s] funeral in the rôle
of member of the Vorstand at the
Goetheanum. Mrs Wegman wished
that Mrs Karner would ‘straight afterwards
do something joyful with
the bereaved Gustav.’ Mrs Karner
took him to visit places of his childhood:
Pottschach and Neudörfl (in
Burgenland) which pleased Gustav
greatly. (Wolfgang Vögele: Von
Wien nach Zürich p. 15). A few days after their first meeting
Ita Wegman and Karl König had a
conversation: I felt quite at ease when I sat opposite
her and she asked me a few questions
about my life and work, and then
suggested that I join her Clinic in Arlesheim.
(HM-W p. 65)
Karl König was astonished that she suggested
he come to Arlesheim a few weeks
later. Despite his protests—he wished to
finish his clinical year in Vienna—they
agreed to her suggestion. Destiny spoke
very strongly, because Karl König arrived
in Arlesheim on the same day as
Mathilde (‘Tilla’) Elisabeth Maasberg.
They stayed at the same house, became
friends and married one and a half years
later, on 5 May 1929.
In February 1943 a conference was
held in Camphill to mark the moon node
from when Rudolf Steiner had held the
‘Curative course’, Tilla König told how
Pilgramshain was created and of her
meeting with Karl König. Here from the
notes of her lecture:
In November I went to Arlesheim
(19.11.1927). I had to look for a little
room because we had no money. In the
same house and on the same day Dr. K.
came from Vienna.
Peter Selg, in his excellent book Ita Wegman
and Karl König, Letters and Documents
bases his dating of Karl König’s arrival
in Arlesheim on what König himself
wrote, which was November 7, 1927:
Whether Karl König was mistaken
about the date of his start at the Arlesheim
clinic when writing later is not
known.
As Karl König’s diary from the year 1927
no longer exists, we have to rely on other
sources and live with the unclarity. But
the available evidence does suggest a later
date than 7 November for Karl König’s arrival in Arlesheim. Circumstances
seem to indicate that Tilla had noted
the correct date. Assuming that König
met Ita Wegman on that 3rd November,
then the 19th would have been ‘a few
weeks later,’ which is the expression he
used himself. And just on this same day
as Karl König and Tilla Maasberg most
probably met, Saturday 19 November
1927, the Act of Consecration of Man for
one who has died was held in Vienna for
Leopoldine Steiner. The day after, Sunday
20 November 1927 was the first ordinary
celebration of the Act of Consecration of
Man and a week later, on Sunday 27 November
1927, the Christian Community
congregation was inaugurated in Vienna
with the first official celebration of the
Act of Consecration of Man.
Eight days after Tilla Maasberg, and
most probably Karl König, arrived in Arlesheim,
was the first Advent Sunday, 27
November 1927, and the Advent Garden
was held in the Sonnenhof in Arlesheim.
Karl König experienced the Advent Garden
for the first time, and thereby found his life’s task. This well-known description
is to be found in the biography by
Hans Müller-Wiedemann (p.68):
It was a profoundly moving sight for
me to see how each individual child
endeavoured to carry out this task with
joy and earnestness. There stood the
large candle! The small candles fixed to
the apples, symbols of the Fall, were to
be lit at this light of Christmas tidings!
And suddenly I knew: ‘Yes, this is my
future task!’ So to awaken the spiritual
light inherent in each one of these children
that it will lead them to their true
humanity—that is what I want to do!’
Leopoldine Steiner had lived a quiet life
as a seamstress. In a special way she was
the good spirit whose death gave the opportunity
for Karl König and Ita Wegman
to meet, so being instrumental in
the process that led to the founding of
Camphill. But it is also important to note
that the first of the three inaugural celebrations
of the Act of Consecration of
Man was celebrated for her when The
Christian Community started its work in
Vienna and thereby she was also, in an
inner way, involved in this event.
References: Hans Müller-Wiedemann: Karl König—A Central-European Biography of the Twentieth Century. Translated by Simon Blaxford-de Lange, Camphill Books 1996. Peter Selg, Ita Wegman and Karl König. Letters and Documents. Floris Books 2008. Das Werden einer Christengemeinschaft. Zum 70-jährigen Bestehen der Christengemeinschaft in Österreich. Wien 1997. Von Wien nach Zürich, Erinnerungen von Gertrud Schmied-Hamburger, zusammengestellt von Wolfgang G. Vögele. Birkenblatt Sonderheft 2012 (Alters- und Pflegeheim Birkenrain, Bellariastrasse 21, 8002 Zürich) 
Karl König, MD
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Child Development and Developmental TheoriesWhat we know about child development is rooted in developmental theories. Over the years, psychologists and other scientists have developed a variety of theories to explain observations and discoveries about child development. Below please find an attempt at summarizing some of them below.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Freud believed that the way parents dealt with their child’s basic sexual and aggressive desires would determine how the child’s personality developed. Freud also thought that all babies were born with instinctive selfish urges which he labeled the “Id”. As a child experienced that not all his or her whims were met, he or she developed a more realistic appreciation of what is realistic and possible, which Freud called the “Ego”. Over time, Freud believed, babies learn values or morals, which he called the “Super-Ego”. The Super Ego, he thought, then worked with the Ego to control the selfish urges of the Id. Erik Erikson (1902-1994) Erikson believed that personality develops in a series of stages. In each stage, Erikson believed children experience conflicts that affect development. He believed these conflicts are based on either developing a psychological quality, or failing to develop that quality. During these times, the potential for success and development is high, but so is the potential for failure. Below are Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages that occur during childhood and adolescence, and a brief summary for each:
Jean Piaget (1896-1990) Piaget believed that early cognitive development occurs through a process where actions prompt thought processes, which influence the actions the next time around. He talked about Schemas which describe both the mental and physical actions involved in interpreting and understanding the world. New information acquired through an experience is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas. He believed cognitive development follows a fixed process of four stages that are the same for all children, though they may arrive at each stage sooner or later than their peers. His first stage is Sensori-Motor (0 – 2 years); in this stage, the child is learning about the world around him through his senses. This is the stage, Piaget said, where infants learn about object permanence, that a person or object still exists, even if the infant cannot see it. The second stage is the Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years); in this stage, the child sees his world as if it revolved around, and for, him. Piaget’s third stage is the Concrete Operational Stage (7 – 11 years); though not yet able to think in the abstract, children in this stage are starting to mentally solve problems, develop concepts such as numbers, and are getting better at understanding and following rules. Piaget’s final stage is the Formal Operations Stage (11 years and up); in this stage, the child is able to think, not just in terms of the concrete, but also in the abstract. He is now able to hypothesize and see his world as it could be, not just as it is. Piaget tells us that children learn differently than adults because they do not yet have the experiences and interactions needed to interpret information. Especially as infants, children are constantly gathering information though their senses. They learn about their world by watching, grasping, mouthing and listening. They learn to avoid danger for example, not by reading a caution sign, but by experiencing ‘hot’ or falling from a the chair they just climbed up on. But, it is not just activities and sensory experiences that help children to develop; they also learn through interactions with adults and their peers. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) Urie Bronfenbrenner developed the Ecological Systems theory to explain how a child’s environment influences a child’s development. In his model, there is a hierarchy of influence levels. He puts the child, who comes with his own temperament and conditions, in the middle, or Micro System. The nuclear family, or Meso System, has the greatest influence on a child’s emotional development since, hopefully, his first attachment is to his mother or other primary caregiver. The community a child lives in and the school(s) he attends, the Exo System, also have a substantial amount of influence on his social emotional development; in particular, the early childhood program he attends, and the relationships he establishes with his teacher or provider. Bronfenbrenner’s Macros System, or society, which includes culture, government and public policies, comes next. The final system, the Chrono System includes transitions such as moving, changing schools, divorce and other life changes that can effect a child’s social emotional development. Arnold Gesell (1880 – 1961) By studying thousands of children over many years, Gesell came up with “milestones of development” – stages by which normal children typically accomplish different tasks. These are still used today. Gesell’s most notable achievement was his contribution to the “normative” approach to studying children. In this approach, psychologists observed large numbers of children of various ages and determined the typical age, or “norms,” for which most children achieved various developmental milestones. B.F.Skinner (1904 – 1990) Skinner coined the term operant conditioning and believed children’s behavior and learning can be shaped by providing rewards and punishment. Alfred Bandura (1925 – ) Bandura believed that children can learn new information and behaviors by watching, or observing, other people. This was referred to as the social learning theory. Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) Vygotsky believed in the sociocultural theory – that children learn actively and through hands-on experiences, and that parents and caregivers and peers have a role in a child’s development. Children, he said, learn best when new information is scaffolded for them. He called the area of cognitive development, from where a child starts out to where he could get to with scaffolding, the Zone of Proximal Development. John Bowlby (1907 – 1990) John Bowbly is thought to be the first to introduce the attachment theory. He believed that early relationships with caregivers play a major role in child development, and continue to influence social relationships throughout life. If an infant’s parent or caregiver is consistently dependable, the child will develop an attachment, or bond, with his or her parent or caregiver, and will feel secure enough to explore the world around him. |
Tasks and Assignments for The First Three Years Lesson 2
Please study chapter 1 (Acquisition of the Ability to Walk Upright) of The First Three Years of the Child by Karl König. (See below). Once you feel you are sufficiently acquainted with the study material please complete the following:
1. Create a summary of the chapter in your own words. 2. Comment on the study material. 3. In chapter 1 part 5 König gives a description of the stages involved in learning to walk upright. What are these stages? Do these stages concur with your own observations of the developing child and its learning to walk? 4. Create several drawings (pencil and paper) that show children learning to walk according to the stages described by König. Submit the completed assignment via the submission form or via email. 
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The First Three Years of the Child
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Chapter 1: Acquisition of the Ability to Walk Upright
The processes of movement
The faculty of walking upright is part of the phenomenon of the whole human organization's faculty of movement, and it is quite one-sided to assume that we use mainly our legs and feet for walking. The entire bodily apparatus of movement is used for walking and the arms are engaged as much as the legs. The muscles of the back and chest are as intimately involved as are those that move the eyeballs.
It is necessary to recognize that the whole human being is engaged in every movement he makes because the movement of one part of his body presupposes the state of rest of the other parts that are not actively engaged in this movement. During waking hours from morning until night, the resting condition of some parts of the body is never a passive but always an active function. This points to an archetypal phenomenon of all movement. If one part of the bodily apparatus of movement is in motion, then the remaining part is engaged in such a way that through an active state of rest the mobility of the other part is made possible.
When I bend my arm, then I must, in order to make this flexion possible, not only actively relax the extensors of the arm in question, but all other muscles must form an active abutment to counterbalance this flexion. Thus, it is always the whole motor apparatus that takes part in every movement and helps in its performance.
The involvement of the whole bodily apparatus of movement can be experienced directly when, for example, a toe is hindered in its ability to move freely through an injury. Immediately the function of the whole foot is arrested and the movement of the leg is changed, all of which leads indirectly to a different use of the remaining motor system. How often do pains gradually occur in the muscles of the neck and spine when a foot cannot be used properly for walking, and how often can a change in the rhythm of breathing be observed when a leg must be kept quiet for a long time. These are simple examples, but they clearly show what appears as a first and fundamental phenomenon in the realm of movement. It can be formulated as follows:
1. The entire bodily apparatus of movement is a functional unity. Its elements never move as independent members but each movement occurs in the realm of the bodily motor system.
2. Therefore, the parts in motion show merely an apparent independence in contrast to those at rest. The resting parts, however, participate as actively in the process of movement as the parts in motion, even if this is not immediately evident.
Recognition of the bodily motor organization as a functional unity has been prevented by the dominance of the concept of localization of the control of movement in the central nervous system. This is the result of the analytical method of scientific thinking of the nineteenth century and in our time would best be overcome. As little as single letters alone give meaning to the word, or single words the sentence, just as little does a series of single muscles move a limb of the body. The pattern of a movement uses muscles singly and in groups and so the movement is made apparent. Just as, when an opinion is stated, use is made of the sentence, which in turn takes its form from spoken words, so does gesture fall into single patterns of movement that call on groups of muscles to execute what the gesture demands.
When I feel repulsion, various patterns of movement are at the disposal of this feeling. These patterns select specific groups of muscles from the whole motor apparatus and execute a movement with them in which the whole apparatus participates. Desire and repulsion, sympathy and antipathy, anger and anxiety, fear and courage, all have their corresponding forms of movement. More refined feelings and sensations such as listening and devotion, joy and pain, weeping and laughing also have gesture patterns at their disposal and service. When man learns to write or weave, to carve, paint, hammer or forge, he has himself acquired movement patterns that are thus his own creation. These are not given to him as part of his heritage as a created being.
The most fundamental of these acquired forms of movement, a gesture permeating the whole of human life, is the ability to walk upright. In standing erect man raises himself to a position that continually demands that he come to terms with the earth's gravity. The four-legged animal is in a greater state of equilibrium with gravity, but man must learn to stay uninterruptedly erect. He must not only rest freely in his uprightness, but also be able to move unburdened.
How does he acquire this faculty that demands his constant personal involvement?
The development of human walking
The child's ability to move does not begin after birth but already exists during fetal development. From the end of the second month of pregnancy onward, movements of the fetus can be detected, and in the course of the fifth month they become so strong that the mother can perceive them.
After birth, the child possesses a general mobility from which certain specific forms of movement stand out. Soon after birth, for example, he can perform perfect sucking movements when the breast is offered. He can also, from the time of his birth, control his breathing. Repulsion brought about by fear causes movement, and completely aimless and uncoordinated kicking movements as expressions of well-being are distributed over the whole body. Stern describes these movements as spontaneous and points out that they occur in a dissociated fashion. ‘Many newborn infants’, he writes, ‘can move each eye independently of the other. One may turn up, the other out, or one may remain stationary while the other looks down.' (1)
Stern calls attention in particular to eye movements because their coordination takes place remarkably quickly. 'It is true,' he continues, 'that this period of dissociated eye movements passes quickly, sometimes even at the moment of birth, so that such children appear to have been born with coordinated eye movements.'
Controlled eye movements thus stand out from the general chaos of kicking movements even during the first days of life. This is the beginning, however, of the process of movement that will be completed at the end of the first year when the child has learned to walk. In learning to walk he acquires his first mastery over space. But the acquisition of this faculty proceeds according to a definitely ordered sequence that starts at the head and neck and gradually extends downward to the chest, arms, back, and finally to the legs and feet. Generally speaking, the child learns to master movements of the head and neck during the first three months after birth. During the second quarter, he controls lifting his arms and hands. These movements can be distinguished from the general kicking, so he can now be called, a little grasper. In this way, by the end of this period he has learned to sit freely. In the third quarter the child discovers his legs and begins to practice standing. During the last quarter he carries his ability to stand over into his first free steps and experiences his feet as organs touching the ground. The first conquest of space has thus been completed.
The developmental process of movement, therefore, is shifted from the head down over the chest and legs into the feet, following a course through the body from above downwards. It becomes evident when we ask the meaning of this that it directly conditions the erect body posture. The head is the first member to withdraw from chaotic movement. Chest and arms are pulled along after it, and finally the legs and feet extricate themselves. This process seems to be patterned after that of actual birth. Just as in birth the head is the first part of the body to emerge and is gradually followed by the rest of the body, so here, out of the womb of dissociated movements, coordinated movement is born and oriented step by step toward standing and walking. At the end of the first year the process of the birth of movement is completed.
With this achievement the head is directed upward and the feet touch the earth. The head acquires a position of rest, a fact to which Rudolf Steiner has drawn attention time and again, and is suspended lightly upon the shoulders, becoming the resting point around which the movement of the limbs can take place.
The fundamental investigations of Magnus and de Kleijn (2) on the attitudinal and positional reflexes have shown the central position taken by the neck and head muscles in early development. The head takes an independent position of rest in order to make possible a free and harmonious mobility of the limbs. This applies especially to the ability to walk. When a human being can keep his head upright and still, he has also learned to walk. As long as an individual's head is restless and wobbly in the totality of movement, normal walking cannot be attained.
After the first year the child also learns to free his arms from the action of walking and to use them independently. This happens because the head gradually becomes fixed and consolidated in its position of rest and is able to confront the free play of the limbs independently. The head, therefore, is a centre resting within the movements of the body.
What has been said here can be summed up as follows. A child learns to walk in stages and gives birth to his motility from the head downwards out of the chaos of early movement. As a result, the head attains a position of rest as opposed to the free mobility of the limbs. Once an upright position has been achieved, the limbs must constantly come to terms with the gravitational forces of space because man, as an upright being, must be able to assume a freely mobile position of equilibrium rather than one that is fixed.
Separation of self and world
It has been pointed out that coordination of eye movements is achieved immediately after birth when the child acquires the first rudiments of what later becomes his ability to look and the actions connected with it. The eyes learn to turn to definite points in the outside world.
When we consider that in coordinating eye movements the first fixed point in the relationship between the soul and its surroundings is established, the fundamental importance of seeing as a human act becomes still more evident. It is by means of our eyes that we try to establish a conscious relationship with our surroundings even during the first days of our earthly life. This is not to say that the child can already perceive, but he begins to explore the surrounding world as it is gradually revealed by the 'touch' of his gaze. In this way a first dull sensation of the there in contrast to the self comes about. In the course of the first year the dull feeling will slowly brighten and gradually lead to the contrast between the sensation of his own body and that of the surrounding world, but the outside and inside, the there and the here, will still be completely interwoven. Adalbert Stifter has expressed this period of development in his autobiographical fragment as follows.
Far back in the empty void, something like rapture and delight entered my being, mightily grasping it as if to destroy. I can compare it to nothing else in my later life. What I remember was glory, turmoil; it was below. This must have occurred very early in my childhood because it seems to me as if a dark nothingness, high and broad, lay around about it. Then there was something else that passed gently and soothingly through my inner being, which I can now characterize as sound. I swam in something that fanned me. I swam to and fro and it became softer and softer within me until I became as if drunk. Then there was nothing more. These demi-islands of remembrance lie in the veiled ocean of the past, fairylike and legendary, like the primeval memories of a people. (3)
Gradually the child's dull consciousness, which consists of merging sense perceptions and feelings, is lit up as the world becomes differentiated from his body. The process of differentiation, however, starts with the child's looking about. As his gaze gradually becomes fixed, the individual forms of the environment can be gropingly touched and grasped. Around the focus of looking, the head emerges as a structure belonging to the self. The baby learns to lift his head and to use it as an organ of orientation, turning it to where light, color, sound or smell come to meet him.
As time goes on, the child's eyes catch sight more often of his little hands and fingers playing and moving in front of them. When not only his eyes, but also his hands begin to grasp objects, holding and dropping them again, then the trunk, including arms and hands, stands out as a whole against the world. At this time the child has acquired the faculty of sitting freely and in doing so, he has already achieved a good deal. His head is suspended above his body and can be freely turned. His eyes begin to extend their gaze further into space while his hands grasp closer things and bring them to his mouth, etc. His hands now can also grasp the edge of the cradle. They can hold on to it, and he can pull his body up.
Then the great moment occurs when, at about the end of the ninth month, the child pulls himself up by himself into an upright position for the first time. A decisive step has been taken in the separation of world and body. The surrounding world has separated itself from the child and it confronts the selfhood, which now comprehends the world as something alien. The new self, however, begins to move within this separated world by crawling, sliding and pushing. Every day and every hour new impressions appear, always quickly forgotten and always freshly conquered. The many new experiences demand to be seized, grasped, beheld and touched. Thus, the circle of forms coming into shape enters into action for the first time. The senses ask for mobility, and movement in turn conquers new sense experiences. At this time, this process is quite obvious.
At last the child, now in an upright position, can take his first uncertain steps. The pride of the parents often cannot be compared with the child's joy in what he has achieved. The world, no longer strange and uncanny, turns into something that can be conquered by a freely moving being. By achieving his first step as an upright being the child has also taken his first step away from being a creature to becoming a creator. Stern expresses it as follows:
So, towards the end of the first year, the spadework in the mastery of actual space is mainly accomplished. The child can grasp the spatial features of things - their position, distance, shape and size - and he accommodates himself to them. He distinguishes far and near, great and small, round and angular, above and below, before and behind - in short, he has roughly a perception of space, which certainly is still capable of many misconceptions and will need in years to come to be refined, made clearer and developed, but not enriched with any intrinsically new features. (4)
Space perception comes about at the end of the first year only because the child can experience the above and below by the development of his ability to stand erect. He has experienced what is near and far through his movements, the round and angular via his touch, and various positions in space via his gaze. But all this happens only because the process of separation between self and world had been completed. The child does not learn to walk by learning to bring certain muscular movements under control. He begins to control movements through a waking of consciousness that gradually brings the body to stand out from its environment as a separate self. The delivery of the body from the intimate embrace of its mothering environment leads to the ability to walk erect. Walking erect is not a simple process of movement that makes locomotion possible. Learning to walk reveals a process of developing consciousness that leads to the perception of the environment as something outside. The process begins with looking, continues in grasping and culminates in walking. The awakening consciousness that enables the child to comprehend his own self at the end of the first year moves from the gaze of the eye over the grasp of the hands to the step of the feet.
The inner meaning of walking can only be understood when we see it in its entirety. We can walk upright because it is possible for us to develop from creatures woven into the world fabric to individual beings confronting the world.
Inherited and acquired movements
As a result of important investigations, Portmann has pointed out that the first year of human life is of special significance in that the development that takes place in humans during this period occurs in other mammals within the uterus. Setting this first year apart from the later periods of the child's development, he calls it the 'extra-uterine spring season.' He says, 'The newborn child can be called a "secondary" nestling because, considering the extent of his development, he is really a fledgling without, however, having acquired a fledgling's free mobility.' (5) The extent of man's development at birth indicates his special position in the realm of the living. Portmann somehow divines these inherent evolutionary problems.
Portmann also quotes Stirnimann's investigations, which must be considered in relation to the findings mentioned earlier concerning the positional and attitudinal reflexes of the child. These are known to be spontaneous activities of the newborn child that occur in response to certain circumstances of stress. Thus, the child shows that it is possible for him to stand, crawl and walk during the first months. These incipient faculties, however, are lost by the fifth month, thereby making it possible for him to achieve proper crawling, standing and walking from the ninth month on.
To be prepared to stand, one must possess the ability to place his limbs in the standing position. To demonstrate this in the newborn child different parts of the body surface or the eyes must be stimulated. Held upright, for example, even the newborn child tends to stretch his legs when the soles of his feet come in contact with a firm surface. He does not yet show any clear readiness to stand, however, but is only capable of performing the action when his legs have been brought into the proper position. During the second quarter of the year, a readiness to stand occurs when the upper part of the child's foot is touched. When, for example, he is held upright so that the upper part of his foot touches the lower edge of a table-top, he will bend first one leg and then the other. Then, putting the sole of his foot on the table, he will straighten his leg out and will finally stand with both feet on the table.
It is possible to induce reflex walking movements in all normal, healthy newborn babies. To demonstrate this, the child is held around the waist with both hands, and is stood upright on a firm base. Certain supporting reactions in the legs result. If his body is now tilted slightly forward, he will make proper walking movements and take steps if he is moved in keeping with them. He will have a tendency to cross his legs, but nevertheless steps of about four inches each will be taken. In the course of further development, around the end of the first six months, these walking movements recede into the background and so cannot be said to represent an immediate preparatory step to true walking.
J. Bauer has described something similar as a crawling phenomenon. If one puts a small baby belly down on a table and supports the soles of his feet with his hands, the baby begins to crawl by pushing himself away from the supporting hands. The arms are lifted and placed forward one after the other, and in this way the child can be made to crawl across the table. According to Bauer, the crawling phenomenon occurs only in the first four months and then only when the child lies on its belly.
In these quotations is characterized the three most important achievements of spontaneous movement in the child that occur before he acquires the ability to stand and walk upright. It is of the utmost significance to the proper course of later development that these movements appear during the first months after birth and then disappear, thus making possible their reappearance later in a completely new metamorphosis as crawling, standing and walking.
Without referring to the particular investigations mentioned above, O. Storch has reported two forms of movement that he calls 'inherited and acquired motor movements' (Erbmotorik und Erwerbsmotorik).(6) Although in the case of the child one can hardly speak of inherited motor actions being manifested during the first months, congenital movements must nonetheless be differentiated from those acquired by learning, of which walking is the most important.
The findings of Förster and C. and O. Vogt (7) are also relevant. They state that premature and occasionally also fully mature babies show movements that may be described as typically athetotic. 'The movements can be described as follows. The arms are bent at the elbows at right angles, the lower arms turned strongly out so that the palms face outward, while the wrists are stretched or even over-stretched against the lower arms. Simultaneously, these babies play a strange game of stretching, bending and spreading their fingers and toes out by stretching or over stretching them all at once or one after the other.'
In the course of the first months these choreatic-athetotic movements pass over into general kicking, which in turn is gradually overcome so that by the end of the first year walking has been learned.
Athetotic children, however, who because of certain brain injuries do not learn to walk or do so only with difficulty, show symptoms that clearly and unequivocally point to the forms of movement just described. A child with the characteristic symptoms of Little's disease shows the same pes equinus position and the tendency to cross his legs when trying to walk. Thus, in these children, the movements of early childhood described above continue into later life and present the symptomatology of grave motor disturbances. Such abnormalities cannot be overcome because walking as an acquired motor activity cannot redeem the persisting inherited movements.
Children who cannot develop the reflexes of position and attitude show the crawling phenomena described above. This group, whose disturbances belong to the forms of cerebellar ataxis, remain crawlers throughout life because they cannot acquire the ability to walk upright owing to the failure of their sense of equilibrium.
The so-called athetotics retain the forms of movement associated with premature birth and these then lead to serious disturbances of posture and movement. Here, above all, the directed and ordered movements are disturbed, but the ability to walk upright can be acquired gradually by quite a few children in this group.
In athetotic children the range of motor disturbances is not a pathological condition that arises anew. These disturbances are rather the physiological remnants of the behavior patterns of early childhood. The inability to learn to walk upright is common to all of these children because of the retention of early movement patterns that later assume disproportionate dimensions. What has been described earlier in this chapter as the birth of walking out of the chaos of general movement cannot be accomplished by them.
A retardation is also shown in the general attitude of these child patients. The lighting up of consciousness that follows the differentiation between self and world, or between body and environment, while walking is being learned, does not take place. The athetotic child can hardly master his feelings and suffers from an erratic, unruly occurrence of laughing and weeping that is beyond his control.
The spastic child suffering from Little's disease is so completely given over to his sense impressions that he cannot control them, or at best does so only with difficulty. A slight noise makes him wince and a strong light intensifies his muscle spasms. This makes any development in space almost impossible for these children, based as it must be on the experience of 'there' and 'here.'
The behavior of those children who cannot attain positional and attitudinal reflexes also shows that they cannot retain sense impressions. The development of memory occurs only involuntarily, and they are hardly able consciously to call up memories at the right occasion.
From these brief indications it can be seen how fundamentally important walking is for the soul-development of man. If walking fails to develop, then the control of feelings and moods is missing, the conscious use of the faculty of memory is lacking, and separation of self and world is not achieved.
If we did not learn to walk, further development of the conscious unfolding of the specific human faculties in the course of childhood would not be possible. The way leading to school is in reality open only to those children who can go walking upright. For the others, measures of curative education can compensate for what they have had to forego in the development of the first year even though learning to walk, as an act of grace, could not become manifest in them.
If, in an understanding of the uprightness of man, one does not include the observations touched upon here, then the following remark of Portmann can be readily understood. 'The true meaning of the slow development of the completely upright position of the body, and the bodily structure basic to this position, can still hardly be grasped.' Only he, however, cannot grasp it who looks at man's ability to walk upright as simple locomotion and lacks the courage to admit the fundamental difference that exists between the upright position of man and that of the higher animals. Endowed as they are with a horizontally oriented spine, the animals remain part of the world. They are overwhelmed by sense impressions and the abyss between self and world does not open. In them the head is not carried above the spine as if floating, but remains incompletely differentiated as a continuation, not yet a separate creation, at the anterior end of the body. Memory pictures, therefore, can only be retained, but not recalled. Pleasure and displeasure, greed and disgust, constantly changing, flood the inner experiences. The upright posture alone causes the abyss to open between self and world, and this leads to the further acquisition of speech and thought.
The ability to stand, the reflex walking movements, crawling and the athetotic movements of premature births differ fundamentally from the new phenomenon of walking. They must disappear in the course of the first year to make walking possible. Whether these archetypal movements are called inherited or congenital or whether they are attributed to activities of certain nerve centers of the cerebrum or cerebellum, is not as important as to recognize the entirely new impulse brought forth in the acquisition of walking.
From the development of looking and grasping on to the acquisition of walking, a new power unfolds, opposing all biological processes. This force first takes hold of the eyes, bring the axes of sight into line, and thus makes possible the fixation of the gaze. It directs the arms and hands of the body toward purposeful movements, and the hands learn to grasp, to fold and to hold each other. Finally, the soles of the feet touch the ground. From the heels to the toes they enter the field of gravity - something that does not happen with any animal - and the head is lifted, reaching into the light. In this picture of the upright position is presented the polarity of light and gravity.
Thus a new element enters that must be realized as the member of the human being that can be attributed only to the human being and to no other creature on earth. Rudolf Steiner calls this entity, 'I.' Through his 'I' every human being can receive the gift of grace of walking. When it appears in the form of uprightness, all other forms of movement recede and disappear. It is as if the shepherd enters among the herd, and the herd then grows quiet and restful, gathering around him.
In this way, all other forms of movement arrange themselves around the power of uprightness, which, in the moment it appears, brings order and guidance with it.
The year and the stages of learning to walk upright
Now that we have attempted to approach those phenomena connected with the acquisition of the upright walk in a special way, a strange conformity to law is revealed during this period that should be mentioned. It can hardly be mere chance that it takes approximately a year to learn to walk and that development that is premature or retarded is expressed symptomatically as a disturbance in the unfolding of the child's being. To learn to walk takes the same amount of time as that required by the earth to circle the sun, which suggests that this sun-earth rhythm is inscribed in this human faculty.
Rudolf Steiner has pointed out that man acquires his uprightness here on earth as something entirely new. 'It is significant', he says, 'that man should have to work upon himself in order to make a being that can walk erect out of one that cannot walk at all. It is man who gives himself his vertical stance and his equilibrium in space.' (8) This earthly acquisition of the ability to walk is placed in the cosmic time relationship between sun and earth.
A study of the gradual progress of this year of learning to walk can be expressed as a calendar that has been worked out by a number of observers and shows approximately the following stages:
If one reads this calendar of the first year not only as a schema showing the 'intelligence' of the growing baby, but also tries to live through what happens, then these twelve months become the true course of a year in which the acquired faculties stand out individually like festivals.
Rudolf Steiner has said that in earlier epochs of human evolution birth always took place during Christmas time. (9) This remained so up to the third millennium BC, especially among the North Germanic tribes. Births only gradually began to spread out over the whole year. Thus it was formerly true that children first saw the light of the world at a definite time of the year. Gradually, in the course of the further development of mankind, this link with nature was abolished.
Accordingly, learning to walk in former times was accomplished in the year between one Christmas and the next and, as if into the milestones of incarnations that remained from this, the various festivals were inscribed. These were celebrated first as pre-Christian and later as Christian festivals. While the following correspondences cannot be 'explained' in the ordinary sense, it is left to the individual to try to experience the connections resulting from them.
It may be significant that the baby smiles for the first time and can lift his head from the horizontal just at the time when the festival of the presentation in the temple, Candlemas, is celebrated.
At Easter, the baby learns to hold up his head and shoulders while on his belly; he raises himself so to speak above the water. He reaches for objects, answers a look with a smile and touches things. His arms are freed.
Around Whitsun, he can grasp an object he sees and thus coordinates his hands and eyes. He can turn from a back to a side position, freeing himself from the base on which he lies.
At St John's tide the child sits up. Now the sun stands at the highest point of the heavens, and as a human being, the child holds his head freely above his horizontal shoulders.
At Michaelmas he sits up by himself and learns to kneel and to standby supporting himself.
At the beginning of Advent, the child puts himself freely into space, and by Christmas he can take his first, hesitant steps. Now a creature is on his way to becoming a creator.
These hints have been given to help those who seek a new understanding of man, not to open the gates to mystic speculation. We should practice such thoughts and cultivate the feelings arising from them especially when watching children to whom the ability to walk has been denied. Then a new power to help will call forth the will and bring help where help is otherwise denied. In every child who learns to walk today these words are at work: 'Arise! Take up thy bed and walk!' It is the sun power that raises the earthly body of man so he can walk erect over the earth.
Notes
The faculty of walking upright is part of the phenomenon of the whole human organization's faculty of movement, and it is quite one-sided to assume that we use mainly our legs and feet for walking. The entire bodily apparatus of movement is used for walking and the arms are engaged as much as the legs. The muscles of the back and chest are as intimately involved as are those that move the eyeballs.
It is necessary to recognize that the whole human being is engaged in every movement he makes because the movement of one part of his body presupposes the state of rest of the other parts that are not actively engaged in this movement. During waking hours from morning until night, the resting condition of some parts of the body is never a passive but always an active function. This points to an archetypal phenomenon of all movement. If one part of the bodily apparatus of movement is in motion, then the remaining part is engaged in such a way that through an active state of rest the mobility of the other part is made possible.
When I bend my arm, then I must, in order to make this flexion possible, not only actively relax the extensors of the arm in question, but all other muscles must form an active abutment to counterbalance this flexion. Thus, it is always the whole motor apparatus that takes part in every movement and helps in its performance.
The involvement of the whole bodily apparatus of movement can be experienced directly when, for example, a toe is hindered in its ability to move freely through an injury. Immediately the function of the whole foot is arrested and the movement of the leg is changed, all of which leads indirectly to a different use of the remaining motor system. How often do pains gradually occur in the muscles of the neck and spine when a foot cannot be used properly for walking, and how often can a change in the rhythm of breathing be observed when a leg must be kept quiet for a long time. These are simple examples, but they clearly show what appears as a first and fundamental phenomenon in the realm of movement. It can be formulated as follows:
1. The entire bodily apparatus of movement is a functional unity. Its elements never move as independent members but each movement occurs in the realm of the bodily motor system.
2. Therefore, the parts in motion show merely an apparent independence in contrast to those at rest. The resting parts, however, participate as actively in the process of movement as the parts in motion, even if this is not immediately evident.
Recognition of the bodily motor organization as a functional unity has been prevented by the dominance of the concept of localization of the control of movement in the central nervous system. This is the result of the analytical method of scientific thinking of the nineteenth century and in our time would best be overcome. As little as single letters alone give meaning to the word, or single words the sentence, just as little does a series of single muscles move a limb of the body. The pattern of a movement uses muscles singly and in groups and so the movement is made apparent. Just as, when an opinion is stated, use is made of the sentence, which in turn takes its form from spoken words, so does gesture fall into single patterns of movement that call on groups of muscles to execute what the gesture demands.
When I feel repulsion, various patterns of movement are at the disposal of this feeling. These patterns select specific groups of muscles from the whole motor apparatus and execute a movement with them in which the whole apparatus participates. Desire and repulsion, sympathy and antipathy, anger and anxiety, fear and courage, all have their corresponding forms of movement. More refined feelings and sensations such as listening and devotion, joy and pain, weeping and laughing also have gesture patterns at their disposal and service. When man learns to write or weave, to carve, paint, hammer or forge, he has himself acquired movement patterns that are thus his own creation. These are not given to him as part of his heritage as a created being.
The most fundamental of these acquired forms of movement, a gesture permeating the whole of human life, is the ability to walk upright. In standing erect man raises himself to a position that continually demands that he come to terms with the earth's gravity. The four-legged animal is in a greater state of equilibrium with gravity, but man must learn to stay uninterruptedly erect. He must not only rest freely in his uprightness, but also be able to move unburdened.
How does he acquire this faculty that demands his constant personal involvement?
The development of human walking
The child's ability to move does not begin after birth but already exists during fetal development. From the end of the second month of pregnancy onward, movements of the fetus can be detected, and in the course of the fifth month they become so strong that the mother can perceive them.
After birth, the child possesses a general mobility from which certain specific forms of movement stand out. Soon after birth, for example, he can perform perfect sucking movements when the breast is offered. He can also, from the time of his birth, control his breathing. Repulsion brought about by fear causes movement, and completely aimless and uncoordinated kicking movements as expressions of well-being are distributed over the whole body. Stern describes these movements as spontaneous and points out that they occur in a dissociated fashion. ‘Many newborn infants’, he writes, ‘can move each eye independently of the other. One may turn up, the other out, or one may remain stationary while the other looks down.' (1)
Stern calls attention in particular to eye movements because their coordination takes place remarkably quickly. 'It is true,' he continues, 'that this period of dissociated eye movements passes quickly, sometimes even at the moment of birth, so that such children appear to have been born with coordinated eye movements.'
Controlled eye movements thus stand out from the general chaos of kicking movements even during the first days of life. This is the beginning, however, of the process of movement that will be completed at the end of the first year when the child has learned to walk. In learning to walk he acquires his first mastery over space. But the acquisition of this faculty proceeds according to a definitely ordered sequence that starts at the head and neck and gradually extends downward to the chest, arms, back, and finally to the legs and feet. Generally speaking, the child learns to master movements of the head and neck during the first three months after birth. During the second quarter, he controls lifting his arms and hands. These movements can be distinguished from the general kicking, so he can now be called, a little grasper. In this way, by the end of this period he has learned to sit freely. In the third quarter the child discovers his legs and begins to practice standing. During the last quarter he carries his ability to stand over into his first free steps and experiences his feet as organs touching the ground. The first conquest of space has thus been completed.
The developmental process of movement, therefore, is shifted from the head down over the chest and legs into the feet, following a course through the body from above downwards. It becomes evident when we ask the meaning of this that it directly conditions the erect body posture. The head is the first member to withdraw from chaotic movement. Chest and arms are pulled along after it, and finally the legs and feet extricate themselves. This process seems to be patterned after that of actual birth. Just as in birth the head is the first part of the body to emerge and is gradually followed by the rest of the body, so here, out of the womb of dissociated movements, coordinated movement is born and oriented step by step toward standing and walking. At the end of the first year the process of the birth of movement is completed.
With this achievement the head is directed upward and the feet touch the earth. The head acquires a position of rest, a fact to which Rudolf Steiner has drawn attention time and again, and is suspended lightly upon the shoulders, becoming the resting point around which the movement of the limbs can take place.
The fundamental investigations of Magnus and de Kleijn (2) on the attitudinal and positional reflexes have shown the central position taken by the neck and head muscles in early development. The head takes an independent position of rest in order to make possible a free and harmonious mobility of the limbs. This applies especially to the ability to walk. When a human being can keep his head upright and still, he has also learned to walk. As long as an individual's head is restless and wobbly in the totality of movement, normal walking cannot be attained.
After the first year the child also learns to free his arms from the action of walking and to use them independently. This happens because the head gradually becomes fixed and consolidated in its position of rest and is able to confront the free play of the limbs independently. The head, therefore, is a centre resting within the movements of the body.
What has been said here can be summed up as follows. A child learns to walk in stages and gives birth to his motility from the head downwards out of the chaos of early movement. As a result, the head attains a position of rest as opposed to the free mobility of the limbs. Once an upright position has been achieved, the limbs must constantly come to terms with the gravitational forces of space because man, as an upright being, must be able to assume a freely mobile position of equilibrium rather than one that is fixed.
Separation of self and world
It has been pointed out that coordination of eye movements is achieved immediately after birth when the child acquires the first rudiments of what later becomes his ability to look and the actions connected with it. The eyes learn to turn to definite points in the outside world.
When we consider that in coordinating eye movements the first fixed point in the relationship between the soul and its surroundings is established, the fundamental importance of seeing as a human act becomes still more evident. It is by means of our eyes that we try to establish a conscious relationship with our surroundings even during the first days of our earthly life. This is not to say that the child can already perceive, but he begins to explore the surrounding world as it is gradually revealed by the 'touch' of his gaze. In this way a first dull sensation of the there in contrast to the self comes about. In the course of the first year the dull feeling will slowly brighten and gradually lead to the contrast between the sensation of his own body and that of the surrounding world, but the outside and inside, the there and the here, will still be completely interwoven. Adalbert Stifter has expressed this period of development in his autobiographical fragment as follows.
Far back in the empty void, something like rapture and delight entered my being, mightily grasping it as if to destroy. I can compare it to nothing else in my later life. What I remember was glory, turmoil; it was below. This must have occurred very early in my childhood because it seems to me as if a dark nothingness, high and broad, lay around about it. Then there was something else that passed gently and soothingly through my inner being, which I can now characterize as sound. I swam in something that fanned me. I swam to and fro and it became softer and softer within me until I became as if drunk. Then there was nothing more. These demi-islands of remembrance lie in the veiled ocean of the past, fairylike and legendary, like the primeval memories of a people. (3)
Gradually the child's dull consciousness, which consists of merging sense perceptions and feelings, is lit up as the world becomes differentiated from his body. The process of differentiation, however, starts with the child's looking about. As his gaze gradually becomes fixed, the individual forms of the environment can be gropingly touched and grasped. Around the focus of looking, the head emerges as a structure belonging to the self. The baby learns to lift his head and to use it as an organ of orientation, turning it to where light, color, sound or smell come to meet him.
As time goes on, the child's eyes catch sight more often of his little hands and fingers playing and moving in front of them. When not only his eyes, but also his hands begin to grasp objects, holding and dropping them again, then the trunk, including arms and hands, stands out as a whole against the world. At this time the child has acquired the faculty of sitting freely and in doing so, he has already achieved a good deal. His head is suspended above his body and can be freely turned. His eyes begin to extend their gaze further into space while his hands grasp closer things and bring them to his mouth, etc. His hands now can also grasp the edge of the cradle. They can hold on to it, and he can pull his body up.
Then the great moment occurs when, at about the end of the ninth month, the child pulls himself up by himself into an upright position for the first time. A decisive step has been taken in the separation of world and body. The surrounding world has separated itself from the child and it confronts the selfhood, which now comprehends the world as something alien. The new self, however, begins to move within this separated world by crawling, sliding and pushing. Every day and every hour new impressions appear, always quickly forgotten and always freshly conquered. The many new experiences demand to be seized, grasped, beheld and touched. Thus, the circle of forms coming into shape enters into action for the first time. The senses ask for mobility, and movement in turn conquers new sense experiences. At this time, this process is quite obvious.
At last the child, now in an upright position, can take his first uncertain steps. The pride of the parents often cannot be compared with the child's joy in what he has achieved. The world, no longer strange and uncanny, turns into something that can be conquered by a freely moving being. By achieving his first step as an upright being the child has also taken his first step away from being a creature to becoming a creator. Stern expresses it as follows:
So, towards the end of the first year, the spadework in the mastery of actual space is mainly accomplished. The child can grasp the spatial features of things - their position, distance, shape and size - and he accommodates himself to them. He distinguishes far and near, great and small, round and angular, above and below, before and behind - in short, he has roughly a perception of space, which certainly is still capable of many misconceptions and will need in years to come to be refined, made clearer and developed, but not enriched with any intrinsically new features. (4)
Space perception comes about at the end of the first year only because the child can experience the above and below by the development of his ability to stand erect. He has experienced what is near and far through his movements, the round and angular via his touch, and various positions in space via his gaze. But all this happens only because the process of separation between self and world had been completed. The child does not learn to walk by learning to bring certain muscular movements under control. He begins to control movements through a waking of consciousness that gradually brings the body to stand out from its environment as a separate self. The delivery of the body from the intimate embrace of its mothering environment leads to the ability to walk erect. Walking erect is not a simple process of movement that makes locomotion possible. Learning to walk reveals a process of developing consciousness that leads to the perception of the environment as something outside. The process begins with looking, continues in grasping and culminates in walking. The awakening consciousness that enables the child to comprehend his own self at the end of the first year moves from the gaze of the eye over the grasp of the hands to the step of the feet.
The inner meaning of walking can only be understood when we see it in its entirety. We can walk upright because it is possible for us to develop from creatures woven into the world fabric to individual beings confronting the world.
Inherited and acquired movements
As a result of important investigations, Portmann has pointed out that the first year of human life is of special significance in that the development that takes place in humans during this period occurs in other mammals within the uterus. Setting this first year apart from the later periods of the child's development, he calls it the 'extra-uterine spring season.' He says, 'The newborn child can be called a "secondary" nestling because, considering the extent of his development, he is really a fledgling without, however, having acquired a fledgling's free mobility.' (5) The extent of man's development at birth indicates his special position in the realm of the living. Portmann somehow divines these inherent evolutionary problems.
Portmann also quotes Stirnimann's investigations, which must be considered in relation to the findings mentioned earlier concerning the positional and attitudinal reflexes of the child. These are known to be spontaneous activities of the newborn child that occur in response to certain circumstances of stress. Thus, the child shows that it is possible for him to stand, crawl and walk during the first months. These incipient faculties, however, are lost by the fifth month, thereby making it possible for him to achieve proper crawling, standing and walking from the ninth month on.
To be prepared to stand, one must possess the ability to place his limbs in the standing position. To demonstrate this in the newborn child different parts of the body surface or the eyes must be stimulated. Held upright, for example, even the newborn child tends to stretch his legs when the soles of his feet come in contact with a firm surface. He does not yet show any clear readiness to stand, however, but is only capable of performing the action when his legs have been brought into the proper position. During the second quarter of the year, a readiness to stand occurs when the upper part of the child's foot is touched. When, for example, he is held upright so that the upper part of his foot touches the lower edge of a table-top, he will bend first one leg and then the other. Then, putting the sole of his foot on the table, he will straighten his leg out and will finally stand with both feet on the table.
It is possible to induce reflex walking movements in all normal, healthy newborn babies. To demonstrate this, the child is held around the waist with both hands, and is stood upright on a firm base. Certain supporting reactions in the legs result. If his body is now tilted slightly forward, he will make proper walking movements and take steps if he is moved in keeping with them. He will have a tendency to cross his legs, but nevertheless steps of about four inches each will be taken. In the course of further development, around the end of the first six months, these walking movements recede into the background and so cannot be said to represent an immediate preparatory step to true walking.
J. Bauer has described something similar as a crawling phenomenon. If one puts a small baby belly down on a table and supports the soles of his feet with his hands, the baby begins to crawl by pushing himself away from the supporting hands. The arms are lifted and placed forward one after the other, and in this way the child can be made to crawl across the table. According to Bauer, the crawling phenomenon occurs only in the first four months and then only when the child lies on its belly.
In these quotations is characterized the three most important achievements of spontaneous movement in the child that occur before he acquires the ability to stand and walk upright. It is of the utmost significance to the proper course of later development that these movements appear during the first months after birth and then disappear, thus making possible their reappearance later in a completely new metamorphosis as crawling, standing and walking.
Without referring to the particular investigations mentioned above, O. Storch has reported two forms of movement that he calls 'inherited and acquired motor movements' (Erbmotorik und Erwerbsmotorik).(6) Although in the case of the child one can hardly speak of inherited motor actions being manifested during the first months, congenital movements must nonetheless be differentiated from those acquired by learning, of which walking is the most important.
The findings of Förster and C. and O. Vogt (7) are also relevant. They state that premature and occasionally also fully mature babies show movements that may be described as typically athetotic. 'The movements can be described as follows. The arms are bent at the elbows at right angles, the lower arms turned strongly out so that the palms face outward, while the wrists are stretched or even over-stretched against the lower arms. Simultaneously, these babies play a strange game of stretching, bending and spreading their fingers and toes out by stretching or over stretching them all at once or one after the other.'
In the course of the first months these choreatic-athetotic movements pass over into general kicking, which in turn is gradually overcome so that by the end of the first year walking has been learned.
Athetotic children, however, who because of certain brain injuries do not learn to walk or do so only with difficulty, show symptoms that clearly and unequivocally point to the forms of movement just described. A child with the characteristic symptoms of Little's disease shows the same pes equinus position and the tendency to cross his legs when trying to walk. Thus, in these children, the movements of early childhood described above continue into later life and present the symptomatology of grave motor disturbances. Such abnormalities cannot be overcome because walking as an acquired motor activity cannot redeem the persisting inherited movements.
Children who cannot develop the reflexes of position and attitude show the crawling phenomena described above. This group, whose disturbances belong to the forms of cerebellar ataxis, remain crawlers throughout life because they cannot acquire the ability to walk upright owing to the failure of their sense of equilibrium.
The so-called athetotics retain the forms of movement associated with premature birth and these then lead to serious disturbances of posture and movement. Here, above all, the directed and ordered movements are disturbed, but the ability to walk upright can be acquired gradually by quite a few children in this group.
In athetotic children the range of motor disturbances is not a pathological condition that arises anew. These disturbances are rather the physiological remnants of the behavior patterns of early childhood. The inability to learn to walk upright is common to all of these children because of the retention of early movement patterns that later assume disproportionate dimensions. What has been described earlier in this chapter as the birth of walking out of the chaos of general movement cannot be accomplished by them.
A retardation is also shown in the general attitude of these child patients. The lighting up of consciousness that follows the differentiation between self and world, or between body and environment, while walking is being learned, does not take place. The athetotic child can hardly master his feelings and suffers from an erratic, unruly occurrence of laughing and weeping that is beyond his control.
The spastic child suffering from Little's disease is so completely given over to his sense impressions that he cannot control them, or at best does so only with difficulty. A slight noise makes him wince and a strong light intensifies his muscle spasms. This makes any development in space almost impossible for these children, based as it must be on the experience of 'there' and 'here.'
The behavior of those children who cannot attain positional and attitudinal reflexes also shows that they cannot retain sense impressions. The development of memory occurs only involuntarily, and they are hardly able consciously to call up memories at the right occasion.
From these brief indications it can be seen how fundamentally important walking is for the soul-development of man. If walking fails to develop, then the control of feelings and moods is missing, the conscious use of the faculty of memory is lacking, and separation of self and world is not achieved.
If we did not learn to walk, further development of the conscious unfolding of the specific human faculties in the course of childhood would not be possible. The way leading to school is in reality open only to those children who can go walking upright. For the others, measures of curative education can compensate for what they have had to forego in the development of the first year even though learning to walk, as an act of grace, could not become manifest in them.
If, in an understanding of the uprightness of man, one does not include the observations touched upon here, then the following remark of Portmann can be readily understood. 'The true meaning of the slow development of the completely upright position of the body, and the bodily structure basic to this position, can still hardly be grasped.' Only he, however, cannot grasp it who looks at man's ability to walk upright as simple locomotion and lacks the courage to admit the fundamental difference that exists between the upright position of man and that of the higher animals. Endowed as they are with a horizontally oriented spine, the animals remain part of the world. They are overwhelmed by sense impressions and the abyss between self and world does not open. In them the head is not carried above the spine as if floating, but remains incompletely differentiated as a continuation, not yet a separate creation, at the anterior end of the body. Memory pictures, therefore, can only be retained, but not recalled. Pleasure and displeasure, greed and disgust, constantly changing, flood the inner experiences. The upright posture alone causes the abyss to open between self and world, and this leads to the further acquisition of speech and thought.
The ability to stand, the reflex walking movements, crawling and the athetotic movements of premature births differ fundamentally from the new phenomenon of walking. They must disappear in the course of the first year to make walking possible. Whether these archetypal movements are called inherited or congenital or whether they are attributed to activities of certain nerve centers of the cerebrum or cerebellum, is not as important as to recognize the entirely new impulse brought forth in the acquisition of walking.
From the development of looking and grasping on to the acquisition of walking, a new power unfolds, opposing all biological processes. This force first takes hold of the eyes, bring the axes of sight into line, and thus makes possible the fixation of the gaze. It directs the arms and hands of the body toward purposeful movements, and the hands learn to grasp, to fold and to hold each other. Finally, the soles of the feet touch the ground. From the heels to the toes they enter the field of gravity - something that does not happen with any animal - and the head is lifted, reaching into the light. In this picture of the upright position is presented the polarity of light and gravity.
Thus a new element enters that must be realized as the member of the human being that can be attributed only to the human being and to no other creature on earth. Rudolf Steiner calls this entity, 'I.' Through his 'I' every human being can receive the gift of grace of walking. When it appears in the form of uprightness, all other forms of movement recede and disappear. It is as if the shepherd enters among the herd, and the herd then grows quiet and restful, gathering around him.
In this way, all other forms of movement arrange themselves around the power of uprightness, which, in the moment it appears, brings order and guidance with it.
The year and the stages of learning to walk upright
Now that we have attempted to approach those phenomena connected with the acquisition of the upright walk in a special way, a strange conformity to law is revealed during this period that should be mentioned. It can hardly be mere chance that it takes approximately a year to learn to walk and that development that is premature or retarded is expressed symptomatically as a disturbance in the unfolding of the child's being. To learn to walk takes the same amount of time as that required by the earth to circle the sun, which suggests that this sun-earth rhythm is inscribed in this human faculty.
Rudolf Steiner has pointed out that man acquires his uprightness here on earth as something entirely new. 'It is significant', he says, 'that man should have to work upon himself in order to make a being that can walk erect out of one that cannot walk at all. It is man who gives himself his vertical stance and his equilibrium in space.' (8) This earthly acquisition of the ability to walk is placed in the cosmic time relationship between sun and earth.
A study of the gradual progress of this year of learning to walk can be expressed as a calendar that has been worked out by a number of observers and shows approximately the following stages:
- 1st month: The child's eyes begin to fix their gaze.
- 2nd month: Even when lying belly-down, the child begins to hold his head upright.
- 3rd month: When placed belly-down, the child can lift his shoulders together with his head, and keep them elevated for a time.
- 4th month: When placed belly-down, he can support himself on the palms of his hands. He grasps a new situation with active gaze. He begins to reach for objects that he has found by touch. In the act of grasping he can bring both hands together without using his fingers.
- 5th month: While lying on his back, he can lift his head and shoulders. He has learned to turn from his back onto his side, and he is also able to grasp with his hands objects he has seen.
- 6th month: The child is able to sit up with support. He can bring a movable object into contact with a resting one. He can, for example, beat rhythmically with a spoon upon a table.
- 7th month: The child begins to move away from a position of rest. He tries to get desired objects and to reach them by changing his position.
- 8th month: He now sits independently and begins to crawl.
- 9th month: The child learns to raise himself to a sitting position without support. He learns to kneel and begins to stand with support.
- 10th month: He is able to throw things.
- 11th month: The child can raise himself and stand by holding on to something.
- 12th month: He can stand freely and with a little help and support take his first steps.
If one reads this calendar of the first year not only as a schema showing the 'intelligence' of the growing baby, but also tries to live through what happens, then these twelve months become the true course of a year in which the acquired faculties stand out individually like festivals.
Rudolf Steiner has said that in earlier epochs of human evolution birth always took place during Christmas time. (9) This remained so up to the third millennium BC, especially among the North Germanic tribes. Births only gradually began to spread out over the whole year. Thus it was formerly true that children first saw the light of the world at a definite time of the year. Gradually, in the course of the further development of mankind, this link with nature was abolished.
Accordingly, learning to walk in former times was accomplished in the year between one Christmas and the next and, as if into the milestones of incarnations that remained from this, the various festivals were inscribed. These were celebrated first as pre-Christian and later as Christian festivals. While the following correspondences cannot be 'explained' in the ordinary sense, it is left to the individual to try to experience the connections resulting from them.
It may be significant that the baby smiles for the first time and can lift his head from the horizontal just at the time when the festival of the presentation in the temple, Candlemas, is celebrated.
At Easter, the baby learns to hold up his head and shoulders while on his belly; he raises himself so to speak above the water. He reaches for objects, answers a look with a smile and touches things. His arms are freed.
Around Whitsun, he can grasp an object he sees and thus coordinates his hands and eyes. He can turn from a back to a side position, freeing himself from the base on which he lies.
At St John's tide the child sits up. Now the sun stands at the highest point of the heavens, and as a human being, the child holds his head freely above his horizontal shoulders.
At Michaelmas he sits up by himself and learns to kneel and to standby supporting himself.
At the beginning of Advent, the child puts himself freely into space, and by Christmas he can take his first, hesitant steps. Now a creature is on his way to becoming a creator.
These hints have been given to help those who seek a new understanding of man, not to open the gates to mystic speculation. We should practice such thoughts and cultivate the feelings arising from them especially when watching children to whom the ability to walk has been denied. Then a new power to help will call forth the will and bring help where help is otherwise denied. In every child who learns to walk today these words are at work: 'Arise! Take up thy bed and walk!' It is the sun power that raises the earthly body of man so he can walk erect over the earth.
Notes
- Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 69.
- Magnus & de Kleijn, Körperstellung, Gleichgewicht und Bewegung
- Stifter, Betrachtungen und Bilder
- Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 124.
- Portmann, Biologische Fragmente.
- Storch, Die Sonderstellung des Menschen.
- Portmann, Biologische Fragmente, p. 72.
- Steiner, Spiritual Guidance.
- Steiner, Karma of Untruthfulness, lecture of Dec. 21, 1916.
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