Sophia Institute online Waldorf Certificate Studies Program

HELP

Course: The First Three Years of the Child

Walking, Speaking, Thinking

Lesson 4

Introduction

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 Biography

Dr. 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

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 Wegmann

In 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)

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Karl König, MD

Child Development and Developmental Theories

What 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:

1. Social, emotional development begins with the first of Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages, Trust vs. Mistrust. An infant develops trust when he experiences his needs being met in a consistent, nurturing relationship with a primary caregiver. In a secure relationship, an infant can form attachments.
   
2. Erikson’s second Psychosocial Stage, Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt, says that toddlers strive to be autonomous. We can help them to get there by supporting them when they struggle and being there for them, but not always doing for them. Toddlers also need to be able to make simple choices that allow them to decide things for themselves and build self esteem and confidence.
   
3. In his third Psychological Stage, Erikson says that preschoolers begin to assert their power and control over the world through directing play and other social interaction, allowing them to feel capable and able to lead others.
   
4. Erikson’s fourth Psychological Stage occurs between ages 5 and 11. At this age, children develop self confidence by interacting with their peers and through encouragement and praise by parents and teachers.
   
5. The fifth Psychological Stage, Identity vs. Confusion, suggests that encouraging adolescents to explore their independence strengthens their sense of self and their ability to be self-sufficient and gives them the feeling of being in control of their own world.
   

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 4

Please study chapter 3 (The Awakening of Thinking) 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. König states that the development of speech is a prerequisite for thinking. Discuss this statement and also comment on how the different languages and their structure influences (or not) the child's and ultimately the adult's way of thinking.
4. Research and describe games, songs, verses and activities for pre-school and kindergarten that help with the development of thinking based on language use. For instance:

Brave and true
Will I be
Each kind word
Sets me free
Each kind deed
Makes me strong
I will fight for the right
I will conquer the wrong

Submit the completed assignment via the submission form or via email.

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​The First Three Years of the Child
Walking, Speaking, Thinking
​by Karl König

Introduction

During the first three years of his earthly existence man acquires those faculties that enable him to become a human being. In the course of the first year he learns to walk, during the second he acquires speech, and during the third, he experiences the awakening of thought. He is born as a helpless infant and only by acquiring these three faculties of walking, speaking and thinking does he grow into a being who can name himself, gain free mobility and, with the help of speech, come into conscious communication with his fellow men in the surrounding world. A kind of threefold miracle happens because here is revealed more than instinct, more than adaptation, more than the unfolding of inherited faculties.

The acquisition of the three fundamental human faculties is an act of grace that is bestowed on every human being. It is also a process of extraordinary complexity. Only a closer study of these phenomena reveals how manifold and varied are the ways in which the whole human being is woven into this developmental process.

The following deliberations try to follow the traces on the path that leads to learning to walk, speak and think. A concluding chapter is concerned with how the interaction of these three fundamental soul faculties work into one another and are connected with the three highest senses: the senses of speech, thought and self or ego.

​Chapter 3: The Awakening of Thinking

Prerequisites for the awakening of thinking

The third year, which we shall now take into consideration, is of decisive importance for the further development of the child. In the first year he detached himself from the world by the acquisition of the ability to walk upright, and learned to distinguish between the experience of the surrounding world and his own existence. In the second year, through the birth of speech, the things of the surrounding world were named and the manifoldness of speaking, especially in saying and naming, for the first time brought order into the bewildering diversity of life experience. The outer as well as the inner world could now be threaded somehow on the string of words and primitive sentences and could be used for his adornment like the colourful little chains that the child produced at this time. The small child looked at himself with greatest pleasure in the mirror of his own word power and wore the speech he had acquired like a festive garment. This garment was a house that offered shelter and gave security. Whenever the garment had a hole, when a word or sentence construction was missing or not altogether successful, disappointment pierced the child's soul. Indeed, it may even have led to despair.

In the third year, the time lasting from the extended acquisition of speech to the appearance of the first period of defiance, an entirely new event occurs - thinking begins to awaken. This happens in quite special moments, often lifted out of everyday life, during which the child begins to become conscious of himself as personality. These moments may appear only seldom and grow more frequent and decisive only in later years. During the third year, however, they begin to be seen. Then the child becomes a being who observes himself and the world no longer as a child but as a person conscious of his own self.

Many conditions are necessary for this awakening to occur. Some of these are more important than others, but a diversity of these acquired prerequisites is necessary. I shall mention only the most essential ones that will occupy us further. Firstly, the elaboration of speech must be considered because children begin to learn the correct formation of sentences only at the end of the second year when the word as such becomes a phenomenon that livingly changes and transforms itself. Comparison of adjectives, declension of nouns, and tenses of verbs are gradually achieved. In this way the experience of time and space is multiplied and recognition of the things themselves is considerably broadened.

Secondly, the acquisition of memory is an indispensable basis for the awakening of thinking. To this belongs the gradual formation of memories from vague recognition to voluntary reproduction of memory ideas.

A third requirement is play. Here the free activity of the small child as expressed in every new form of play, in the imitation of the world of grown-ups, and in the enlivening of his own fantasy is of fundamental importance. How else would a child be able to recognize himself as a person if he did not repeat, imitate, and, as a non-ego, put in front of himself everything he sees happening around him? The true meaning of all play is that the child creates the world in play in such a way that he himself does not take part in his creation because he is the creator. As such he can withdraw from what he has created.

A fourth requirement is the gradual comprehension of an idea of time encompassing first the future and later the past. There must also be a gradually developing comprehension of space where one cannot only walk and run, but where individual things are kept such as toys in the toy-chest and clothes in the closet. Houses and lanes, fields and paths with their trees and shrubs also become well-known sights. Another thing to consider in understanding certain attitudes of the child is that the smaller the child the larger he experiences himself in relation to the world of space.

Finally, we must take note of how percepts are gradually grasped and transformed into ideas, a process intimately connected with the formation of memory, which will be mentioned later.

With all these single soul functions, which in the course of his third year the child not only acquires but also develops and connects with each other, we have some notion of the complexity of these developments. What we call the 'awakening of thinking' can only arise in this manifoldness and working together. Speech and ideas, memory and play, the comprehension of space and time are like a circle of kind women who bend over the cradle in which a sleeping child is on the point of waking up. Each of the women makes a helping gesture and calls an encouraging word to the child, who is the 'thinking about which we shall speak.’ Thus, the process of awakening comes about.

We must next try to describe what this awakening thinking is not and what it is. Only after we have reached an understanding on this point can something be said in clarification of the third year in the life of a child.


What human thinking is not, and what it is

First, we must clear away the nonsense of the views that began with Köhler's Investigation of Anthropoid Apes. (1) These views were introduced into child psychology by Karl Bühler (2) and have since spread from his work like a malignant growth - for example, Remplein (3). I refer to Köhler's well-known and instructive experiments on a number of anthropoid apes. Here he tried to show that the results he obtained were primitive achievements of intelligence. For instance, some of the chimpanzees, after unsuccessful attempts, were able to reach fruit that was hung from the ceiling, by piling boxes on top of each other. In another experiment the 'more intelligent' of the animals learned to put together previously prepared sticks so as to reach fruit lying outside their cage. Several other ingenious methods were used by Köhler to arrive at these so-called achievements of intelligence.

Bühler, as an experimental psychologist, was lured by these experiments into subjecting children eight to sixteen months of age to similar situations. For instance, he put a pane of glass between the hands of a child and a biscuit the child wanted in order to test how and when the child would summon the 'intelligence' to reach around the glass for the delicacy. But the child usually failed him. In another experiment, a piece of bread attached to a thread was put in front of the child in such a way that he could reach the thread but not the bread. The child was then supposed to pull the food toward him by means of the thread. The results of these experiments caused Bihler to say in all seriousness, 'Indeed, there is a phase in the life of a child that one might well designate the chimpanzee age. In the case of this particular child it was about the tenth, eleventh or twelfth month.'

A person can accept or reject this as he pleases. The idea, however, that a ten-month-old child, in the environment of his home, hardly yet able to move, should be compared with grown-up chimpanzees in their cages is possible only with the kind of thinking prevalent at the beginning of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the word intelligence is thoroughly abused here. This animal behaviour - and that is what was meant here - is by no means an achievement of thinking. When placing one box on top of the other, or putting sticks together, the chimpanzees are not intellectually putting two and two together, but their desire for the fruit dictates the movements of their limbs in such a way that they use the objects lying about to satisfy this desire.

It would be an accomplishment of real intelligence only if a chimpanzee would break a branch from a tree and prepare it to use as a fetching stick. Or, again, if he could make a box out of boards by using smaller and harder pieces of wood as nails and a stone as a hammer in order then to put the box to a use thought out in advance. But nothing of the kind happens in Köhler's experiments in which well-prepared objects are so placed that instinct and desire can make use of them. What happens is nothing more than the bringing together of parts, perceived by the senses, into meaningful order through the power of desire. Nothing like this is meant when we speak here of the awakening of thinking.

W. Stern once called 'intelligence' that faculty which adjusts itself to new demands by orderly disposition of the means of thought. (4) Stern speaks of means of thought that are the basis of an intelligent achievement. These, however, are present neither in the chimpanzee nor in the one-year old child, as Köhler or Bühler try to understand them.

The foundations necessary for the awakening of thinking are laid only as speech begins to develop in the child. Speech is like a plough that works the field of the soul so that the seed of future thought achievement can be laid into the open furrows. Even seemingly sensible utterances of the child cannot be interpreted as thought achievement. If, for instance, he begins to name things and then not only recognizes but also designates them upon seeing them repeatedly, this is by no means an act of thought but only of memory within the framework of speech.

Also, when the child begins to identify what he has drawn, painted or otherwise copied, for example, a picture of a cat with the actual object and then calls it by its correct name, even this behaviour cannot be ascribed to the acquisition of thought. While certainly complex, this is almost entirely an act of memory as a function of recognition.

It has already been mentioned that memory, like speech, is necessary for the preparation of thinking. The seeds that are sown into the furrows of the field of speech are those pictures and names, ideas and sensations that memory retains for the small child. It is the result of the power of memory that the acquisition of these pictures does not continually dissolve and vanish. Memory alone preserves in the child's soul the names of things in their connection with the arising imagery. Out of these seeds grow the first few green blades of true thinking in the course of the third year.

What do we call this thinking? In his third year, for example, a child has great difficulties in acquiring an idea of space or time. He can ask, 'Is today tomorrow?' or, 'Is yesterday today? W. Stern tells how one of his children said, 'When we travel home, it is today. Or again, 'We want to pack today and travel yesterday. Something here endeavors to bring into a correct order yesterday, today and tomorrow so that something that exists, though not perceptible, touchable or audible, still receives its rightful place. The child already knows in his feeling that there is a 'has been' and a 'to come.' That lives in him as a dim feeling. That today may become tomorrow's yesterday, however, emerges only gradually as thought structure from the experience of manifold world happenings. It is these invisible, but thinkable structures inscribed into the experienced reality that the child begins to grasp.

If, one day, he begins to ponder during a meal and says, 'Daddy spoon, Mummy spoon, Auntie spoon, Bobby spoon, all spoon!' he has truly made the tremendous discovery that there are objects of the same order. He has come to know that not every single thing has its own name but a number of the same things have a common name, that all spoons are called 'spoon' and that everybody - Daddy, Mummy, Auntie and child - possesses a spoon. The great moment has come when thinking begins to awaken to a conscious function. The first acts of thinking do not occur before this time, but after this they continue to increase as the child grows older, until at school age they become regular, daily activities.

We should not, as still happens today, mistake purposeful soul activities that will lead to ordered actions for true acts of thinking. Even the unconscious accomplishes many of the actions it quite reasonably strives for. Animals often show in their behaviour unimaginably clear and concrete reasoning. Indeed, reasonable behaviour is evident in the way bees build their combs, ants prepare their food, wasps safeguard the future of their brood. Hundreds of such examples could be given. This kind of reasoning, however, works out of the organic realm and does not comprehend itself. As active intelligence it only uses organisms as tools.

In contrast, the thinking of the child, when it awakens in the third year, is reasoning that comprehends and becomes conscious of itself. That power lying hidden in all things, which orders, works and shapes, now arises in the human head as body-free activity and grows into awakening thought. This event occurs for the first time in the course of the third year. It will occupy us in detail in later sections of this chapter. First, however, the prerequisites that lead to the activity of thinking must be studied.


Speech as the first prerequisite for thought

After the child has learned 'saying and naming’ in the course of his second year and has tried to express himself in somewhat wooden sentence fragments, the whole realm of speech begins to quicken in the third year. As we have already mentioned, we can actually experience how the helpless jointed doll of the first attempts at sentences is gradually permeated with life and soul, stretches and expands and soon begins to walk and to hop.

What the child now acquires is the living incorporation of what he later has to learn intellectually as grammar. Especially the morphology of words and the art of forming sentences, or syntax, begin to awaken in him. Language gives birth to itself in all its perfect grandeur and beauty. Now declination, conjugation and comparison are learned, not, however, in the way they will be learned later, but in such a way that, through the imitation and agility of the child, the words themselves unfold their own life. The endless possibilities of description for everything offered the child by the variety of his experiences thus arise. Merely in the fact that he begins to use nouns, verbs and adjectives, the world opens up to him as being in existence (noun), is constantly active in doing and suffering (verb), and is also subject to judgment and description by others (adjective). Thus nouns, verb and adjective form the archetypal picture not only of all sentence formation, but of all manner of manifestations of earth existence.

With the beginning of the declension of nouns (this book was originally written in German where nouns have four cases and one of three genders) comes the child's first sensations for the way things and beings appear and are related to each other: In the nominative still isolated, limited and related to itself; in the genitive describing ownership, membership, partnership; in the dative referring to the quality, the place, the time and grasping the thing or being as object; in the accusative describing more the quantity, representing the spatial expanse and the length of time. (5)

The differentiation between singular and plural, and between masculine, feminine and neuter begins to emerge. Something like the theory of categories as they were first discovered and described by Aristotle becomes alive in the speaking child. In speaking, the child repeats on the level of the word all relations of things and beings of the surrounding world. When even the verb with its conjugations gradually becomes the child’s property — as transitive, intransitive or reflexive, indicating whether it is a case of general activity (to blossom, to think, to fall) or relating to a person or thing - then a feeling for the manifoldness of all that happens arises in the child. When through conjunctions the activity of the event is so described that it can be represented according to person, number, time, manner and condition, the application of this theory of categories is extended almost without limit.

The child begins to speak about the past and future and thus concepts of time are evolved that lead later to a past perfect and imperfect or conditional, and to a picture of the conditional. Lastly, the growing human being learns to define himself more and more as a subject acting in the present.

In the adjective the child learns to point to single characteristics and to ascribe to a thing consisting of many relations and qualities, one definite characteristic that he singles out. These single indications are also discovered in other things and compared with the quality comprehended first. In this way comparison is gradually developed. That this does not come about easily is demonstrated by the study of the child, Annie, (6) who, when shown the drawings of three towers of unequal size at the age of two and a half years, said that one of them was large, the other small and the middle one thick. The comprehension of a comparable ratio of size did not yet exist. For some time this comparison seemed to Annie the only possible one because the comprehension of the comparison of three similar things was only formed toward the end of the third year.

An endless number of examples could be cited to demonstrate gradual maturing in the comprehension of a living grammar. The child is also much more mobile than the adult in declension and conjugation and uses words with an overflow of formative power. He will not say, 'The sheep’, but, 'The sheeps,’ not, 'The feet,’ but, 'The foots,’ in order to mark the difference between singular and plural in the form of the word.

But these are all only a preparation for thinking, not yet the act of thinking itself. They are the numberless furrows and figures that the plough of speech imprints into the field of the soul. Rudolf Steiner once pointed out the fundamental difference between thought and speech when he said, 'Human thinking takes place to a large extent consciously. Speech is not conscious to the same degree. A person needs little self-consciousness to realize that he does not speak with the same degree of consciousness with which he thinks. (7) In this half-consciousness, which does not lie as deep as dream-consciousness, but unfolds in the region between dreaming and waking, the child learns to speak.

When a child produces new designations for things he cannot yet name, when he produces names that are either entirely new creations or combinations or transformation of otherwise known words, it is not the child's thinking, but rather the innate formative force of language that performs this and expresses itself through the child. When, therefore, Annie was asked the name of her clown (Punch), she first said, Rinka, then Rinkus, then Pasta. She produced a kind of word salad in her joy of creating new words. E. Köhler had observed correctly when she added, 'I believe Annie would be able when in full swing, to improvise another half dozen new words.’ (8) The same child called skimmed milk, 'water-milk, a rubble heap, dirt mountain, a mortar, sugar rammer, or sugar stamper,’ and the railway conductor, ‘Mr Railway Station,’ explaining, 'the man in the train... who pinches the cards.' But this is not the case of an explanation of a thought like nature, but a description and combination of sense and speech experience.

These examples show the tremendous plastic power that lives in the child's language. This calls to mind an indication of Rudolf Steiner:
 
Man would not have spoken at that time (before the Fall) as he does today, for speech had not as yet been differentiated into languages. This differentiation came about because speech had become somewhat fixed. ... There was no such thing as a fixed language in that far-off time of which we are speaking, but each object, each impression, was instantly responded to by a gesture, a tone gesture from within man. By means of speech man entered completely into any being that approached him from without. Speech in its later development was but a degenerate earthly result, the fallen remnant of that original, light-filled language … (9)

A trace of this originally intended state reappears in the child's ever recurring new word creations.

Through the totality of grammar the fallen remnant of language carries within it as image the reasoning of the whole universe. Of this Steiner speaks at length and shows how living forces of reason permeate single words, so that the French word, 'courage,' for instance, combines the words, 'coeur' and 'rage' and thus points to the life and enthusiasm radiating from the heart. That is how reason would describe the word, 'courage.' 'These are not just inventions,’ said Steiner. 'They are real events that truly happened. Thus are words formed.' (10)

We now come to the first understanding of that mighty foundation that the world of speech gives to the child for the development of his thinking. In the realm of speech as a whole there lives an all-wielding reason in which the child takes part when he speaks. He cannot yet think alone and independently, but in speaking, he practices the rules of reason, for grammar is the logic of language, a universal logic that later will be raised to the individual logic of the thinking person.


Memory

The second sphere into which the child has to grow in the third year is the realm of remembrance and memory. In the course of the third year the development of the faculty of memory receives a decisive impetus and assumes its rightful place. At the end of the third year memory has been so far perfected that it has become a fundamental part of the experience of consciousness. From this time on the thread of memories develops and Soon becomes a continuum for daily experiences.

Though this development of memory is of great importance for the awakening of thought, these two soul activities are fundamentally different. The development of memory in the small child poses many problems. In basic outline, however, the development of memory is open to study nowadays, especially on the basis of what Rudolf Steiner has to say. He once described how, in the development of human history a threefold transformation of the faculty of memory has taken place. In primeval times of Atlantean development it began with the formation of a localized memory.

If, in that time of which I have spoken, one were to enter the region inhabited by people who were still conscious of their head, chest, heart and limbs, one would see on every hand small pegs placed in the earth and marked with a sign, or here and there a sign made upon a wall. Such memorials were to be found scattered over all inhabited regions. Wherever anything happened, a man would set up some kind of memorial, and when he came back to the place, would relive the event in the memorial he had made. (11)

This localized memory was followed by rhythmical memory.

Man felt a need to reproduce within himself what he heard in such a way that rhythm was formed. If his experience of a cow, for instance, suggested, 'moo,’ he did not simply call her, 'moo,’ but 'moo-moo,’ and perhaps in ancient times, 'moo-moo-moo.' That is to say his perception was as it were piled up to produce a rhythm.

Rudolf Steiner calls the third form of memory, 'time memory.’

What is quite matter of fact for us in the wretched abstractness of modern man first appeared then - a time memory, in which we produce something as a picture and no longer have the experience of having had to recall something that was to be brought up again by awakening it in rhythmic repetition and in unconscious or semiconscious activity. (12)

At the transition from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean cultural epoch around the year 8000 BC, the change from localized to rhythmical memory took place. When the high cultures of Asia Minor were succeeded by that of Greece, at about the time of the Trojan War and the laying of the foundation stone of Europe, rhythmical memory changed into picture memories.

It is quite obvious that localized memory is established through our limbs by erecting markers in our surroundings. Our hands build primitive and simple memorials. Rhythmical memory utilizes the element of speech and song. Finally, picture or time memory pertains to the head. Accordingly, these three forms of memory ascent and wander from the movement of the limbs up to the resting head via the motor activity of speech.

It is significant that there still exist in German language words exactly indicating these memory forms. There is the word, merken (to remember), which we still have in marke, markierung, markstein (mark, marking, landmark). I mark something in the sense of 'mark my word' by making a remark about it to myself or finding a landmark outside for it. The second word is besinnen, which comes from sinnen (to meditate, ponder, think, to be minded). The sound already contains a rhythmical element, which may turn from the inward sinnen to the outward singing. Songs and sagas, those rhythmically recited epics calling up in the listener the rhythmical memory, belong here. From the Bhagavad Gita to the Songs of Homer and the Nibelungenlied, they formed and fashioned rhythmical memory. The third word is erinnern (re-member, re-collect). What was laid into the innermost soul now re-ascends as er-innerung (re-collection).(13) This is the form of memory that prevails today and that we all know.

Thus we can draw up the following table to indicate the totality of memory.

Memory

First step: Localized remembering = 'marking.'
Second step: Rhythmic remembering = 'be-thinking.'
Third step: Picture remembering = 'recollecting.'

These stages of memory are strikingly featured in the development of the small child's memory. Karl Bühler has an inkling of this when he says,

It is a fact that what we differentiate abstractly as a path from below upward through steps or phases, the child passes through in the development of his memory activity in all reality. This means that we can discover first vague impressions of familiarity ... then the experiences of more definite recognition and finally complete memories ordered according to space, time and logic. (14)

Bühler describes indistinctly what appears clearly in the threefoldness of memory as outlined by Rudolf Steiner.

During his first year the child is filled almost entirely with a localized memory. He experiences the impressions of familiarity, described by Bühler, when his mother's face appears again and again, when his little sister bends over the side of the crib, when light and darkness approach him alternately. Here 'landmarks' appear from outside and vaguely fashion the basis of 'marking’ (merken).

In the second year when speech develops, rhythmic memory begins to be formed. Newly learned words are now said over and over again to exhaustion, and new forms of movement are continually repeated. A picture book is repeatedly brought out and looked at as the acquired sounds are uttered. During this second year the child seems possessed by rhythm and everything he does is repeated. Moreover, the localized memory expands. Certain places are sought out with pleasure, others avoided with trepidation because certain memories are connected with them. At the same time the beginnings of the third form of memory appear.

These first traces of memory ideas (Erinnerungsvorstellungen), even if only fleeting, appear from the second year onward. Around the middle of the second year, however, memories of longer duration also begin to emerge. Here the twenty-four hour period has a preferential position (in the order of periodicity).

Thus it is described by Stern (15) who is justified in pointing to the periodicity because the picture memories are still shadows over against the lively experiences of the rhythmic memories.

When a two-year-old child demands that the same thing should happen every day at the same time, or that a fairy tale must be repeated with the same expressions and accents of feeling, it is indicative of the rhythmic memory that governs this age.

Toward the end of the third year memory ideas become more frequent and insert themselves widely into the totality of memories. The ability to 'mark' (merkfȁhigkeit) and 'be-think’ (besinnung) are gradually overpowered by the third form of memory.

The child now learns to remember what has been imparted by means of speech and he becomes receptive to teaching and admonition. These acquisitions are already the result of the awakened thinking. More will be said about this later.

At this time the child acquires the first picture of his past, because the power of reflection begins to unfold in his soul. W. Stern describes it in an impressive way:

We have already had to emphasize in several places the slight acquaintance between the little child and his past. It is true that he owes all his knowledge and his capabilities to his past and its after-effects, but he is not yet able to look back to it. In the mist that hides the child's past from his consciousness, faint, indistinct and fleeting points of light appear here and there. They grow more plain, more varied and frequent with increasing years and later combine in somewhat greater numbers ... Many years pass, however, before these separate parts unite and form a whole, giving the child a connected picture … (16)

In this way, toward the end of the third year, the memory frame for the experience of personality is formed. The child, whose past gradually begins to emerge, is far enough along to gain an idea of his personality. This is at first only a dull sensation, but in contrast to the situation of the smaller child, it exists. Closed forms of his existence light up in him only in his recognition of things and situations, or in the rhythmic repetition of actions including speaking.

Thus the acquisition of memory becomes one of the most important prerequisites for the child's experience of his own person.


Fantasy and play

In connection with the appearance of picture memory, which is in effect a result of the forming of ideas, fantasy, another soul power, grows in the child. Rudolf Steiner has shown the polarity that exists between memory and fantasy or imagination. He says, Just as pictorial thinking is based upon antipathy, willing is based upon sympathy. If sympathy is strong enough, as when thoughts become memory through antipathy, then imagination is created through sympathy. (17) Presented schematically these connections can be seen more distinctly:

Knowledge Will
Antipathy Sympathy
Memory Fantasy

W. Stern, at the beginning of his chapter on play and fantasy indicated the significance of fantasy when he wrote, 'Where shall we begin and where end? The material available is nowhere so overwhelming as in the consideration of fantasy and play.’ (18) Fantasy is one of the strongest characteristics of infancy, but it also has a special position that is not always clearly recognized. One is too readily inclined to derive the power of fantasy from the child's ordinary life of ideas. Even Stern does not get beyond this prejudice. He says, ‘The concrete image of the fantasy-percept is not, however, the direct production of outer impressions, but the result of inner working. The percept (Vorstellung) is experienced independently and enjoyed as his own creation.’ (In the context of this book, the translators would have chosen the word, idea, instead of percept.)

One does not attain a true view of those forces underlying fantasy with this interpretation because fantasy takes hold of any kind of material, movements as well as ideas, for activating itself. Any of these materials is the plastic substance used by fantasy. When the child grasps a stick and makes out of it a horse, a hat, an arrow and then a doll in quick succession, what he has done has little to do with the stick itself. Or if he takes an idea and with its help makes himself a soldier, a father or a conductor, this action also has little in common with the idea. Fantasy seizes anything it can get hold of. Only by recognizing the intimate interweaving between play and fantasy can we do justice to fantasy because fantasy without play, and play without fantasy are almost unthinkable. Even when the child begins to make up stories at bedtime, this, too, is play, a play of fantasy with the ideas of memory.

Here we have two pairs of contrasts that we must consider. Just as fantasy is bound up with playing, so does memory work in close union with speaking. The faculty of memory is most intimately connected with the faculty of naming because one truly remembers only what is to be named. The memory picture in turn is developed with the name. Play, on the other hand, enlivens fantasy; conversely, fantasy kindles and diversifies play.

When Stern says, (19) ‘Fantasy is never able to create out of nothing. Its elements must always have their foundation in real experiences,’ one has to reply that in reality it seems to be exactly the other way around. Real experiences have their sources only in the child's fantasy. After all, the child can grasp his environment only as interpretation of his fantasy, and existence gains its true meaning and becomes experience in this way alone. Fantasy is the continuous joy that the child experiences on his waking to the earthly world. His inclination toward all things and beings, his joyful urge to take everything in, to connect things with each other, to mix, to enhance is fantasy, and its expression is play.

Memory on the other hand is the result of the child's painful collision with the world. The experience of the surrounding world as something alien, something veiled and impenetrable, gives the child the power of memory. In memory he can abstract the world, a process similar to what happens in the formation of words, and the world thereby becomes property, albeit a painful and abstract property.

When we see a foal jump in the meadow, we directly experience the fanciful (fantasy-filled) play of the animal. It is pleased with itself in the joy of existence, in the happiness of being part of the world. Its power of fantasy makes it skip and gallop, neigh and shake, and what is so charmingly revealed here for such a short span of time in the animals, becomes apparent in the child over many years and in manifold ways. The continuous joy of existence and uniting ever anew with the world around, this dawning and all-embracing sympathy is the origin of all fantasy.

Like all play, fantasy, too, has its well-spring in motor activity. The small child takes his fantasy from movement and mobility, from his ceaseless need for lively activity. When he moves his arms, each movement becomes a corresponding picture. When he runs or skips, jumps or climbs, immediately and naturally each of these forms of movement is embedded in a story that often begins or ends in fragments, begins without ending, and ends without having begun. But that is the fascination of all play, that there is no beginning and no ending, and yet all is happening.

Only later, when movement is performed without a picture behind it, when movement is done for movement's sake, when it has become purpose in itself, will the abstraction of sport have been attained.

When, toward the end of the second year, motor activity has freed itself, fantasy begins to arise and gradually takes form in the course of the third year. From then on it is preserved during most of childhood and is forced down into the subconscious only at pre puberty by thinking that forms ideas, and memories that advance with ever-increasing strength into the foreground.

One of the first to do justice to fantasy was Ernst Feuchtersleben. He devoted a whole chapter to it in his Dialektik der Seele, where he said, 'Fantasy is the breadwinner, the prime mover of all single members of the spiritual organism. Without it all ideas stagnate, however great their number. Concepts remain rigid and dead, sensations raw and sensuous ... ‘ One can say fantasy is in us before we ourselves are, and it remains until we have gone. These words point to the all-embracing power of fantasy, which beyond childhood comes into the foreground of the soul only when it is withdrawn from waking consciousness and is enwrapped in the dreams of narcotic confusion of memory and thought.

So we see in the third year a period during which the child makes a threefold acquisition. With the powers of his head he gradually comes into possession of memory in the form of ideas. With his middle organization he gains quickening speech, learns to form sentences and begins to hold real conversations; talking is acquired. Finally, fantasy, born out of his limb system, comes to full blossom in the child. This threefold acquisition is the necessary preparatory step for the beginning of the activity of thinking proper in its first tender form. The highest gift bestowed upon the growing human being - his cognition, his ability to know - is developed in the soul realm of remembering, speaking and fantasy. In this process of the awakening of thought he becomes conscious of himself and the word 'I' as self-designation, is formed at the same time. 'I think’ becomes at first a rare experience whose recurrence gradually increases.


The earliest achievements in thinking

E. Köhler describes Annie's first attempts at thinking at the age of two years and six months in the following way:

When there is something that Annie does not fully understand, she ponders, stands quietly and puts her hands behind her back; her eyes grow large and gaze into the distance; her mouth contracts a little and she is silent; after this exertion she gets a little tired; the expression vanishes; nature arranges for relaxation. (20)

Awakening thought reveals itself here in its outer gesture. The child withdraws from the world of sense impressions and overcomes her impulse to move, assuming a position similar to that of listening. She begins to listen to her awakening thoughts.

These first, softly sounding thoughts contain the dawn of an understanding for the fact that the world of things and beings show mysterious relationships, that here and there, at different places the same thing can happen and that tomorrow and today similar events can take place; that definite objects perform functions appropriate to them and that every human being stands in similar connections to other human beings.

Thus, Annie had learned in her second year to call her father, Daddy, and all other men, Uncle. Before that, all men had been Daddy, her Daddy. But at the end of the third year when she saw a young man leading a dog, she said, 'Look, the dog goes for a walk with his Daddy. She had grasped the connection of child and father, and this is shown soon afterward when she called an uncle with whose son she was playing, 'The other Daddy.'

At about the same time Annie plays a question game with her father. In answer to the question, 'Who makes the dress?' he says, 'The dressmaker.' Annie perseveres and then asks, 'Who makes the apron?' At the same moment she remembers that the apron she is wearing was sewn by her mother. The father, who knows nothing of this, answers, 'The dressmaker.' Annie, however, interrupts and says, 'No, Mummy. Mummy is a dressmaker.' With this the child has discovered an activity that is not only that of the dressmaker, but also that of her mother. The identification of an activity has resulted and her world has become richer by a new connection.

Such identifications start in the course of the third year and are at first simple, becoming more complicated and manifold later on. The same Annie at the age of two years and five months was given a doll named Tony. One day her Aunt drew a picture of Tony on a piece of paper. The child got quite excited because she recognized the identity and yet sensed that the drawing was something different from the object itself. After she had then found and brought Tony to her aunt, she was asked about the meaning of the drawing. She explained, 'A dolly ... like that! The moment this is grasped, the tension dissolves. Objects and images are recognized!

By means of speech a child finds his first access to another thought achievement, which along with identification is of greatest importance: The relationship expressed by 'when ... then,' 'because, or 'for'; the fact that one thing happens when or because another thing happens. The first primitive formation of subordinate clauses helps the child to take a big step forward. Stern calls this the fourth speech stage and says:

Like inflexion, hypotaxis (the subordination of one sentence to another) is a form of speech completely wanting in many languages that can express the dependency relationship of thoughts only by putting sentences side by side (parataxis). The child of a European civilization passes this stage in about two and a half years and proves that he has grasped not only the logical connection of thoughts but also their value relationship as represented in principal and subordinate clauses. (21)

Little Hilde Stern could already manage the following formulation of sentences at the end of the third year. 'That moves that way today because it is broken'; 'You won't get a sandwich because you are naughty'; 'Must take the beds away so I can get out; Dolly disturbed me so I couldn't sleep.' Innumerable relations of space, time, causes and essentialities are grasped here. What, at the beginning of the third year, still lay in dusky twilight and began to brighten only through single points of light, is plunged into clear light. It has become apparent that the things of the world are connected with each other through manifold relations. The categories of Aristotle are revealed to the child as a basis for his thought achievements.

In the child's third year it is really as if the sun of thinking were to appear above the horizon and brightly illuminate the relations that have been formed between all his experiences. The child enters the awakening day of his developing life. Not only objects, but also activities and attributes are included in these relations. Thus Annie, who is a city child and sees canned peas in a shop, comprehends the connection, peas grow in cans, and beans grow in glass, because she has seen the latter at home preserved in glass jars. Where else should they grow? Four weeks later (at two years and seven months) she is shown a picture of flowers in a meadow and says, 'Little flowers in the meadow ... grow there!'

E. Köhler, full of the impressions gained from observing Annie, writes,

With the collection of concepts, indeed, in the very midst of the labor of collecting, productive thinking grows from now on through its own law that must determine from within the spiritual development. Threads weave to and fro, everything is related, levelled, separated, discarded, wherever necessary. Judgments lie quite open within reach, even where formulations in speech cannot yet follow. (22)

Thinking even overtakes speech. It runs ahead of it and speech formulations themselves already come partly under the power of the child's own thoughts. It is no longer speech alone that utters the words, but the child's thought experience begins to make use of speech. Movement and speech, which so far have followed rather autocratically their own laws, come under the rulership of contemplation and judgment. Step by step thought becomes king of the soul, whose functions bow down under its light-filled majesty.

That is also the radical difference that exists between walking and speaking, on the one hand, and thinking on the other. Walking and speaking are learned; they unfold step by step and give the child sureness of movement in space and of behaviour in the world of things and beings. Walking enables him to dominate space, and speaking to possess the named world around him. Thinking on the other hand, as power of the soul, does not use a manifest bodily tool. It uses neither the limbs, nor the speech organs; it appears like a light, which must have been in existence though it was not visible before. If we should assume it to be created anew in each child, we would be like those who imagine the sun to be a star newly created every morning.

Thinking fills the being of the child from the beginning. It is in existence and at work, but has no possibility as yet to show itself. It dwells in the distant depths of the child's existence, which in the first two years is occupied with the proximity of the body, its sense perceptions, its sensations and feelings. A thorny hedge, behind which thinking is still asleep in the castle of the head, grows out of the manifoldness of these first experiences. It can only occasionally, but sometimes even in earliest babyhood, wake up and appear almost tangibly, though making no utterance. That happens when the dream sleep existence of early childhood is interrupted by a painful illness. Then the eyes of the baby wake up and become the deeply serious messengers of his individuality. I, myself, have often been able to observe this. A mother whose child was operated on at the age of six months, described it once to me as follows. 'She is quiet and peaceful, still serious, but really removed beyond her age - yet entirely human. The baby has almost receded into the background. One must observe this only with respect and love.' Once illness has passed, the infant re-emerges and thinking withdraws until it appears in the course of the third year and begins to perform its activities with the help of speech, memory and fantasy.

Like the sleeping beauty it is then kissed awake by its prince. This is a phenomenon that occurs in every child during the third year and that belongs to the most mysterious events in the realm of the human soul. The individuality of the growing child breaks through the thorny hedge of his daily experiences and awakens his slumbering thinking. In that moment when they behold one another face to face, the consciousness of the individual ego first awakens. This special instant, of which some grown-ups still have a memory, is a turning point in human life. From this moment on an unbroken memory thread exists that carries the continuity of the ego-consciousness. Even if much of it is forgotten in later years, a dim feeling of the unity of one's own person extending back to this point in time remains. Behind it early childhood lies veiled in darkness.

In his autobiography the publisher and writer, Karl Rauch, describes this special moment in a captivating way:

I have a distinct early memory picture of a spring day. I may have been three years old, a child among children. The sun was shining, it was late morning. Some cousins were with us on a visit. It must have been one of the many children's birthdays in the family. We were romping about among the flower beds and then ran over a wide piece of ground that was waiting to be dug, right across the garden to a ditch in which the first green grasses and herbs were sprouting, while in between the brownish pink pestilence wort grew exuberantly. I still know distinctly how I was running, clearly see my older sister running in front of me as the leader of the whole host of children who raced ahead, and I feel quite consciously when I look back today, of how I suddenly stopped running, looking behind me and recognized again at some distance behind me the dozen or so other children, all racing and running. Just as I turned forward again in the direction of my sister and the ditch, it came over me, that first consciousness, breaking through as clear as spirit, of my own self with this thought flashing up, 'I am I, I - there in front my sister, there behind the others, but here I, myself, I.' And then the race went on. I reached my sister, grabbed her quickly by the arm while running and overtook her. Immediately afterwards all was again submerged, engulfed by the turmoil of the throng of children at play … (23)

Immediately, suddenly and unforeseen this flash of recognition hit the child's soul in the midst of a wild game and from then on the consciousness of his own personality remained.

Moriz Carriére described the same phenomenon in the following way.

That I differentiate myself from the world, confronted the external things and grasped myself as self, occurred later (after the second year); I stood in the yard on the street; I could still today show the spot. I was a little surprised at this event, or rather at this deed. (24)

Jean Paul has described this moment perhaps most beautifully.

Never will I forget the phenomenon, never told to anybody, when I stood at the birth of the consciousness of myself, of which I can tell place and time. One morning I stood as a very young child at the front door and looked left toward a pile of firewood when suddenly the inner vision, 'I am an I,' struck down in front of me like a flash of lightning from heaven and radiantly remained ever since. There, my I had seen itself for the first time and forever. Deceptions of memory can here hardly be thought of, as no tale of strangers could be mixed up with what happened nowhere else but behind the veils of the holiest of holies of the human soul, the newness of which has given permanence to such everyday circumstances. (25)

The poet fully comprehends and recognizes this event that occurs in the holiest of holies of the human soul, where the bride of cognition is awakened by the king's son of the individuality. From this moment onward both are united like brother and sister and so remain until death.

At the awakening of thinking something becomes apparent that is not so obvious in the case of walking and speaking, namely, that all three faculties have metamorphosed out of pre-earthly activities in order to appear in the child in an earthly garment. Rudolf Steiner gave concrete indications of this. During embryonic life these three high human faculties are forming a chrysalis in order to emerge step by step after birth. Prior to conception, during prenatal life, walking, speaking and thinking were three spiritual faculties given to man in his spiritual existence.

The sleeping thinking awakens at the call of the personality that finds itself. Whoever remembers this moment sees in full detail the circumstances then prevailing. Everything down to the last detail is remembered because the impression is so strong and lasting that no part of it can be forgotten.

From now on, even the child will speak of himself with full consciousness as 'I' because he feels that this word is no longer a name but 'the name of names.' Everything that has a name has also somewhere an I. Man, however, can know this and express this knowledge; he names himself no longer as a thing or a being, but as that innermost part of all being and existence, which in his awakening thinking he has learned to comprehend as 'I.'


The first defiance and birth of the lower ego

Toward the end of the third year when walking, speaking and thinking have been acquired in their fundamental structures, the first phase of childhood development closes and something entirely new takes its place. The child grows into the first age of defiance. Busemann characterizes it as a phase of excitation because feeling and will, working together as an effect, step into the foreground and determine the behaviour of the child. (26)

The ego feeling also increases and with it defence and rejection, in the form of defiance, repeatedly break though. Suddenly the child no longer wants to be led. He withdraws his hand from that of the grown-up and stomps off alone. He wants to dress and undress by himself and often refuses to join in play with other children, becoming for a time a 'lone wolf.' Conflicts with the surrounding world pile up and parents and educators without insight and understanding exercise authority and punishment where help and example, gentle guidance and intuitive forgiveness would be the only right attitude. E. Köhler, from her experience with Annie, aptly describes this:

The child is something new to herself. What is feeling and willing in her is something new to her, from which thinking has not yet gained any distance. Thus, a tremendous contest goes on within her. Once the breakthrough of feeling and willing is over and the almost undifferentiated affect-volition of early childhood has been replaced by the more highly developed feeling and willing, then thinking can free itself from its bondage. If at an earlier stage the child has paved the way toward objectivizing the world, he now continues this objectivization by confronting the world with the 'I' as something fully recognized, endowed with its own feeling and willing. It can be called, 'person.' The author does not think she is wrong in regarding this time of crisis as the hour when the higher 'I' is born. (27)

However justified this whole description may be, the conclusion arrived at certainly seems unjustified. This time of crisis mentioned here is not the occasion of the 'I' or ego's birth, but the result of it. The ego is born in the awakening thinking, and the result of this even is the age of defiance that now follows. Neither is it the hour of the birth of the higher ego, but rather the death of it. What now comes to light is the lower ego, which will accompany man through the whole of his earthly life.

Rudolf Steiner has characterized this moment in the light of spiritual science. He says:

Clairvoyants, who can trace the spiritual processes involved because they have undergone spiritual training, discover that something tremendously significant happens at the moment when we achieve I-consciousness, that is, at the moment of our earliest memory. They can see that, during the early years of childhood, an aura hovers about us like a wonderful human-superhuman power, This aura, which is actually our higher part, extends everywhere into the spiritual world. But at the earliest moment we can remember, this aura penetrates more deeply into our inner being. We can experience ourselves as a coherent I from this point on because what had previously been connected to the higher worlds then entered the I. Thereafter, our consciousness establishes its own relationship to the outer world. (28)

This is an exact description of the spiritual process that lies hidden behind the events of the period of defiance. The first great phase of childhood comes to an end, and will and impulse awaken at the birth of the lower ego.

We must gradually learn to see this phase of the first three years of childhood in a new light, not like Bühler and his successors who consider the child more or less as an animal that gradually grows out of the 'chimpanzee age' and has overtaken the 'whole phylogenetic animal evolution' by his third year.

Remplein, describing this phase, says,

In the first phase those impulses and instincts of the body predominate that serve the mere preservation of life, but then they are joined by the impulses furthering the unfolding of the body-soul organism.... This determination by instinct is the predominant characteristic of this whole stage. (29)

If that were the case, the child would learn neither to walk nor to speak and think because these achievements in no way arise from the instinctual nature of the infant. There is no other period in man's life on earth as free from affect or instinct as that of the first three years. The child is an objective rather than a subjective being. Though he rests entirely in himself, develops connections with the surrounding world only slowly, and gradually becomes a personality, he is hardly conscious of himself and therefore not selfish. He is a small world existing in himself, which may expect from the world around everything which seems pleasant and acceptable to him. Where, however, do we find demands or even self-determination in the small child? He accepts what is given and by necessity relinquishes what is withdrawn from him. Rudolf Steiner says:

In childhood, a dream world still seems to hover about us. We work on ourselves with a wisdom that is not in us, a wisdom that is more powerful and comprehensive than all the conscious wisdom we acquire later. This higher wisdom ... is obscured and exchanged for consciousness ... Something from this world of the spirit) still flows into our aura during childhood. As individuals we are then directly subject to the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which we belong. When we are children up to the moment of our earliest memory - the spiritual forces from this world flow into us, enabling us to develop our particular relationship to gravity. At the same time, the same forces also form our larynx and shape our brain into living organs for the expression of thought, feeling, and will. (30)

We meet here with those powers of wisdom that give the child the faculties of walking, speaking and thinking. In walking he comes to terms not only with the forces of gravity, by Overcoming them, but through this act he separates himself as an individual being from the world of which he was formerly still a part. In speaking, the child not only learns soul communication with other human beings but takes possession of things and beings in a new way so that they belong to him once more. Finally, in thinking he once more acquires on a higher level what he had achieved in learning to walk. He lifts himself anew out of the world, but he is now more firm and consolidated. Like a shepherd he mingles again with the herd, which consists of the names of all things spread out around him. He has regained them by giving them names, but now he, himself, must not remain only a name. He enters the innermost being of the name by knowing how to name himself beyond his name. This is called, 'I,’ and man thereby recognizes himself as part of the World-Ego, which as logos, was the origin of all creation.

It was for this reason that Rudolf Steiner said of this time of the first three years,

Most meaningfully, therefore, the I-being of Christ is expressed in the words: 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!’ The higher spiritual forces form our organism in childhood - though we are not conscious of this - so that our body becomes the expression of the way, the truth and the life. Similarly, the human spirit gradually becomes the conscious bearer of the way, the truth and the life by permeating itself with Christ. (31)




Notes

1. W. Köhler, The Mentality of Apes. 
2. Bühler, The Mental Development of the Child. 
3. Remplein, Die seelische Entwicklung in der Kindheit und Reifezeit. 
4. As quoted by Remplein, Die seelische Entwicklung in der Kindheit und Reifezeit. 
5. I have based my descriptions on the account in Homeyer, Von der Sprache zu den Sprachen. 
6. E. Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes. 
7. Steiner, The Realm of Language, lecture of July 17, 1915. 
8. E. Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes. 
9. Steiner, Building Stones, lecture of April 12, 1917. 
10. Steiner, Die Wissenschaft vom Werden des Menschen, lecture of Sep. 2, 1918. 
11. Steiner, World History in the Light of Anthroposophy, lecture of Dec. 24, 1923. 
12. Steiner, World History in the Light of Anthroposophy, lecture of Dec. 24, 1923. 
13. Stern in his Psychology of Early Childhood gives an explanation of marking and be-thinking different from the above. It would lead us too far afield if we went into details here. 
14. Bühler, The Mental Development of the Child, p. 314. 
15. Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 207. 
16. Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 240. 
17. Steiner, Foundations of Human Experience, lecture of Aug. 22, 1919, p. 55. 
18. Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 276. 
19. Stern, Psychology of Early Childlhood. 
20. E. Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes, p. 67. 
21. Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 170.
22. E. Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes, p. 67. 
23. Rauch, Der Schatten des Vaters. 
24. Reichard, Die Früherinnerung. 
25. Reichard, Die Früherinnerung. 
26. Busemann, ‘Erregungsphasen der Jugend.' 
27. E. Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes, p. 232. 
28. Steiner, Spiritual Guidance, p. 8. 
29. Remplein, Die seelische Entwicklung in der Kindheit und Reifezeit, p.143. 
30. Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, p. 9. 
31. Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, p. 18f.

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