Course: The First Three Years of the Child
Walking, Speaking, ThinkingLesson 5Introduction
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 5
Please study chapter 4 (The Unfolding of the Three Highest Senses) 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's focus is on the three highest senses. Familiarize yourself with the Anthroposophical idea of the 12 senses. Use other resources as needed. Describe the 12 senses. 4. Research and describe how the lower senses (movement, life, balance and touch) relate to the higher senses (hearing, word, thought and ego). Research and describe games for the pre-school/kindergarten that address healthy development of the lower senses. 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 4: The Unfolding of the Three Highest Senses
The senses of speech and thought
When we approach the question of how the human spirit unfolds in the course of early childhood with real courage, a special problem strikes us at once. We meet one of those great questions that appear repeatedly as hurdles for the thinker's courage to take in a high jump.
This problem is the every new miracle that comes to pass at the beginning of the child's second year: The spoken word is not only heard, but also grasped as a sign and its meaning understood. This understanding occurs long before the child has developed the power of thinking Thus, an intellectual activity is performed before the development of the faculties necessary for it. This is a miracle that impresses everyone except the psychologist who is lacking in philosophical training. Yet, one of the most difficult questions of child psychology is how it is truly possible that words can be grasped and their meaning understood even in earliest childhood. In his fundamental investigations of the development of speech in the child, W. Stern has drawn our attention to a most important rule, which he formulated in the following way:
From the innumerable words that the child continually hears, his mind makes an unconscious selection by discarding most and retaining only a few. This selection is twofold. The majority of rejected words are beyond understanding, and of these a smaller number have been rejected as 'beyond speech.' The retardation of what can be said with what can be understood is a peculiarity that continues even in adult years... but nowhere is the difference as striking as in the first months of speech. (1)
Stern points to that threshold erected between hearing and understanding the spoken word. In the course of the first year the child hears a great number of words and sentences, but does not yet comprehend them as independent parts, because they are still embedded in the 'experience landscapes of which I have spoken in the second chapter of this book. Only at the end of the first and at the beginning of the second year does the word appear as symbol and as bearer of meaning in the child's realm of consciousness.
These first words, or better, syllabic complexes, are not yet true words with sense and meaning, but are only the expression of something that the child wants to indicate. The syllabic sequences are mostly still onomatopoeic designations like 'splash-splash' for bathing, 'bow-wow for dog, 'yum-yum' for eating, etc. The child associates experienced values of feeling with them. When he says, 'Tick-tock, he may point to the clock, though without having grasped that he is saying the name of the object. As long as the period of one-word sentences and syllabic complexes lasts, that is, until about the middle of the second year, something spoken is only expression or interpretation, such as pointing to an object or an event.
Nevertheless, we should pay close attention to what appears here because it is a kind of preparatory step toward true word understanding. The spoken word is distinguished from all other forms of sound production and is felt and noticed as speech. Tone and sound have become differentiated. This is the first threshold, which leads to a further understanding of the spoken word. The crossing of the second threshold will begin when the child proceeds from the period of saying to that of naming.
When, at about eighteen months, the joy of asking for the names of things, and then of pronouncing and using these names himself awakens for the child, the understanding of words begins and speech first assumes its rights. These fundamental differentiations have already been pointed out by Husserl and later by Scheler. Scheler's efforts have been especially helpful toward achieving clarity in this field:
Between expression and speech the phenomenological findings show an absolute abyss.... Already the existence of a tone, sound or noise complex as 'sound' - and though it be only 'one sound' outside in the passage, 'one sound' in the woods - requires that I perceive in this complex something more than its sense content that is 'expressed' in it, that is proclaimed aloud' in it. A 'sound, therefore, is already something quite different from tone, noise or a so-called association of such a complex with an imagined object. But the sound still tarries in the sphere of pure expression ... a whole world separates even the most primitive word from mere expression. The entirely new thing that appears in the word is the fact that it does not, like the expression, merely point back to an experience, but in its primary function it points outward to an object in the world. The word 'means' something that has nothing to do either with its sound-body, or with the experience of feelings, thoughts and ideas that it may express besides. The word appears to us as the fulfillment of a demand made by the object itself. It appears in the understanding as a simple rather than a complex whole, which only the reflective analysis of the philologist or psychologist may later differentiate into the sound and the sense aspect (the 'word body' and 'word sense'). (2)
I quote Scheler's statements at length because they go to the roots of a differentiation and separation to which Rudolf Steiner drew attention repeatedly and which in the future will become of fundamental importance for an understanding of the human being. It is significant that Scheler chooses his essay, On the Idea of Man, in which to come to grips with the problem of understanding and speaking.
Later, Binswanger tried to approach these problems from the standpoint of the neurologist and psychiatrist. He opens his essay, On the Problem of Speaking and Thinking, with the following statement:
A homogenous phenomenon is the basis of the problem of speech and thought, from the simple, meaningful spoken or written word to speech proper, which in agreement with Husserl, we wish to call the sense-enlivened or sense-full expression. If we analyze this phenomenon, an undertaking that belongs to phenomenology, we can differentiate first the articulated complex of sounded or written, physical signs; second, the psychic experiences in which man lends sense or meaning to these signs - the sense-giving and intentional actions; third, the ideal, logical sense or the meaning itself through which the expression points to an object or 'means' it. (3)
Though much in this formulation is incorrect and generalized, the reference to the three realms, physical, psychic and logical, clearly expresses the fact that speech must be understood only as a unity, as the synthesis of bodily, soul and spiritual relations. But as a result of this, to grasp and comprehend what is spoken must also be threefold. Whether I read what is written, or hear what is spoken, or whether I grasp signs and gestures, it is never an action of body and soul alone. If it were only that, no understanding through speech could ever come about.
The miracle already mentioned in which the first understanding of the heard word begins to dawn in the small child, presupposes that the spiritual part of the childlike human being is precisely what is involved in the process of comprehending, and that even in earliest infancy a threshold of understanding is crossed that creates a real word from a sound formation.
Otherwise, how should it be possible that the small child, seemingly without the slightest difficulty, begins to understand the word as a sound gesture and directly grasps its hidden sense? A spiritual deed is the basis of such an event. Scheler and Husserl tried to point to this but in spite of the keenest observation of the phenomena in question they were not able to solve this riddle. Rudolf Steiner, however, reached a comprehensive answer to this problem by laying the foundation of a new theory of the senses. As early as 1909 he described how the understanding of the spoken word should not be counted among the acts of cognition but among the sense activities. He showed how even to hear a spoken word is more than merely hearing and that a special sense underlies this faculty. He called this a speech or word sense and the understanding of the spoken word, the concept or thought sense. In the first descriptions of his theory of the senses he says:
So we come to a ninth sense. We discover it when we ponder on the fact that in man there resides in truth a faculty of perception that does not rest on judgment but is nevertheless present within it. It is what we perceive when we enter into communication with our fellow men through speech. A true sense, the speech sense, underlies what is conveyed to us through speech ... The child learns speech before it learns to judge. (4)
And further on:
By means of the concept sense, man is able while perceiving the concept, which does not clothe itself in the spoken sound, to understand it. In order that we may be able to form a judgment we must have concepts. If the soul is to be active, it must first be able to perceive the concept. To do so, it requires the concept sense, which is just as much a sense in itself as either the sense of smell or the sense of taste.
Here a fundamentally new thought directs our previously existing views on the development of the human spirit along entirely unaccustomed paths. Not only a great number of existing problems can be solved with this, (For example, all the problems of the riddle of aphasia can be gradually brought nearer to a solution through these ideas, and from this starting point the burning questions of the disturbances of reading and writing in childhood can be met with real understanding.) but at the same time, new questions emerge that hitherto have hardly come into the light of our attention and awareness. In his book, Riddles of the Soul, Steiner discussed in detail Franz Brentano's psychology and then added a special chapter, The True Basis of Intentional Relation. In it he develops important aspects of his theory of the senses. The following paragraph is particularly significant to our present considerations:
One believes, for example, that it would be sufficient, when hearing the words of another person to speak only of sense to the extent that it comes into question through hearing alone, leaving everything else to be ascribed to a non-sensuous inner activity. But this is not so. In the hearing of words and their understanding as thoughts, a threefold activity is involved. Every member of this threefold activity must be considered by itself for a truly scientific comprehension to be established. 'Hearing is an activity, but 'hearing by itself is as little a 'taking in of words (Vernehmen) as 'touching is a 'seeing. Just as it is relevant to distinguish between the sense of 'touch' and that of 'sight, so also is it relevant to distinguish between that of 'hearing, and that of 'taking in words, and the further sense of 'grasping thoughts. It leads to a faulty psychology and theory of knowledge, if one does not sharply distinguish between the 'grasping of thoughts' and the activity of thinking without recognizing the sense character of the former. One makes this mistake only because the organs for 'taking in words' and for 'grasping thoughts' are not externally as perceptible as the ear for 'hearing. In reality, organs exist for these two perceptual activities just as the ear exists for ‘hearing.’ (5)
In this description Steiner brings into correct focus what we have described above in regard to Binswanger's exposition. What is shown there as a physical sign, as psychic experience and as logical sense, is basically a sense experience occurring in three differentiated sense realms. The physical sign is transmitted by the ear as the word that is heard, or by the eye as the word that is read. The psychic experience is the 'taking in of the word, and the logical sense, the 'grasping of the thought. How challenging are Rudolf Steiner's formulations to psychology and philosophy. They represent an entirely new phase in the history of the psychology and philosophy of speech and many critical investigations will have to be made to do justice to this tremendous impulse. Above all, the physiology of the senses will have to find a new orientation and entirely transform the views on the spiritual development of the child. The remaining sections of this chapter are meant to be a first attempt in this direction.
The development of the word sense and thought sense
There can hardly be any doubt that the word sense (comprehension of the spoken word) and the thought sense (comprehension of concepts) both develop in the child during the first two years, if his development takes a fairly normal course. At the end of the first year the child already begins to use one-word sentences with understanding and to comprehend some of the words addressed to him. At the end of the second year, when he begins to say two- or three-word sentences, he already knows a large number of words, recognizes their sense and meaning and can use them accordingly. The word as formation and sign has become his permanent possession. He has made the first roots of language his own, but has been able to achieve this only because the senses of speech and thought have awakened in him.
To gain some understanding of these two senses it will be necessary to study their development in connection with that of the child's speech. The unfolding of language in the child must be intimately connected with the acquisition of these two senses because it is obvious that the newborn child possesses neither word nor thought sense. Both certainly are present as predispositions, but the development of speech is needed to turn them into faculties.
In the second chapter of this book we pointed out that the first year is of the greatest importance for the formation of speech. We said that the development of speech begins with the first cry and after that the baby soon starts to utter a great variety of sounds. He cries and crows, gurgles and coos, and at the end of the first month most mothers have learned to 'understand’ the various sounds and noises. For example, Valentine, an accurate observer, writes,
At the end of the first month I could distinguish three types of sounds. First, the cry of hunger, which was restless and sharp, increased each time and after the last strong outbreak suddenly ceased. Second, the cry of pain, which was a much stronger and more lasting cry. Third, a satisfied contented gurgling, which was different in its sound formation in the three children observed. (6)
The cry in this instance is nothing but a statement. It is an expression of well-being or misery and as yet has hardly any reference to the speaking environment as such. This relationship, however, is already being established in the second or third month. About this Valentine writes, 'When father or mother chatted to the baby, humming was returned in reply. That happened with Y. on the twenty-second, with B. on the thirty-second and with A. on the forty-ninth day for the first time. Thus speech development was even at this time connected with social relationships. Valentine mentions that some observers put the beginning of this 'responding on the part of the baby later, especially when the children did not come under observation in their family milieu. But most found that it began around the middle or end of the second month.
Here we witness how the baby reacts with understanding upon being addressed for the first time. He answers the speech of another person with his own utterance. He responds and indicates that in his imitation he uses the same organ as his example. In this we can see a first understanding for the act of speaking.
In the course of the third month the sounds and tones that the child utters become quite diversified and consist of recognizable consonants as well as vowels. Again Valentine says, 'By this stage of three months it became quite evident from the number of sounds made by these children, which we could never have pronounced, that the speech of the child was largely independent of the words he heard.' This is a further and most important conclusion because it shows that the hearing at this infantile age does not yet work together with the activities of the larynx and other speech organs. The child hears with his ears, and independently of this he makes utterances with his larynx and the other developing speech organs. The 'intentional relations' between these two activities have not yet developed and only another person can make the baby's speech organs respond when he addresses him directly.
From about the fourth month on, however, the infant begins to imitate sounds and noises he has heard and, once he has achieved them, to make them his own by continued exercise. Now the time begins when during waking hours children babble continually and keep repeating certain sounds and sound complexes. Around the sixth month, this 'conscious imitation of sounds he has heard becomes a daily event. The infant has now reached the stage when ear and speech organs can work as a functional whole. This is an important step, and a prattling comprehension of the sounds of his native language begins.
Valentine describes a most striking phenomenon that he observed in his own children and that thousands of other fathers and mothers may also have observed without noticing. He points out that the sounds imitated at will are always spoken only in a whisper. He says, 'These deliberate imitations, however, were strikingly different from the spontaneous and the deferred imitative speaking. They were whispered.’ (7) This behaviour occurs at about the eighth month.
Preyer also describes whispering by his child in whom it occurred in the tenth or eleventh months. He says, 'When I spoke, the child, observing my lips attentively, often made the attempt to speak after me. Usually some different sound came forth, however, or there was merely a soundless movement of the lips. (8) This description makes it clear why only whispering or silent lip movements occur. The child looks at the movements of the grown-up's mouth and imitates the movement but not the sounds. He can indeed prattle aloud unconsciously and unconsciously imitate the sounded tones of speech. Conscious repetition, however, occurs at first only in the interaction of his observation of mouth movements, that is, the interaction between his eyes and his motor impulses.
Toward the end of the first year a significant new step is taken in development. Preyer, in describing it, points out that the child not only reacts to tones, noises and sounds at this time, but may also turn in the direction of the speaker when his name is called. At every new sound that he has not yet heard he is astonished and shows this by opening his eyes and mouth wide. By frequently repeating the words, 'Shake hands, and simultaneously holding out his hand, Preyer even induced his child to comply with this request. The beginning of word memory was thereby established.
Most other observers are in agreement with these conclusions that toward the end of the first year a few words are understood and the movements corresponding to them are executed. Thus, Valentine's child Y. was able to look at the floor when hearing the word, ‘kitty,’ in order to search for it, and at the word, 'birdie,’ to look at the wall where birds were depicted on the wallpaper. He also understood the words, 'bottle,' 'mouth, ‘bye-bye,’ and a few others and performed characteristic gestures relative to them.
W. Stern relates the following of his child, Eva, when twelve and thirteen months old.
We are continually astounded and can scarcely keep up with her development. It is hardly credible at her age. One day she will grasp the meaning of a word a little, the next, a little more, the following day she will understand it entirely. All at once we noticed that the child understood perfectly what we said. (9)
Similarly, Preyer remarks,
The most important progress consists in the awakened understanding of spoken words. The ability to learn has emerged almost overnight. Suddenly, it did not require constant repetition of the question, 'how tall is the child?' at the same time lifting her arms in order to get her to make the movement each time she heard, 'how tall, or 'all,' or even, 'a.' (10)
When we try to interpret these details of the child's speech development during the first year with regard to the word sense as well as the thought sense, we can note a steady development. At first, the sound utterances of the child are entirely spontaneous and only an expression of the experience of his own existence. In the second month, the child responds by humming when spoken to. He becomes dimly aware of the movements of his own mouth. This is a sense perception that belongs in the realm of motor sensations and is concentrated in the region of the mouth.
In the third month the variety of sounds and tones that the child can produce spontaneously is extended, and from the fourth month on he begins to imitate definite sounds that he has heard. This ability is more firmly established in the course of the following months, with no new fundamental acquisition being added until the seventh or eighth months. About this time the child begins to imitate at will the words and sounds spoken to him. This imitation primarily involves the interaction of eyes and lips, and is related to the lip reading of the deaf and dumb, which has its origin here. This process, therefore, takes place softly or quite voicelessly. A combination of the sense of sight with motor sensation, which produces movement of the mouth, is also present, bringing about a further development of consciousness in the region of the lips and mouth. Thus, another step is taken in the development of the ability to respond.
Toward the end of the first year, beginning at about the ninth month, a kind of intuitive comprehension of the word as designation arises. Many authors speak of this as a 'word understanding,' but that is by no means the case. As shown above, all these 'understood words are clothed in gestures that imitate repeated sound structures. These sound structures are certainly remembered but not yet understood. Memory alone enables the child to experience a sound structure as a speech symbol and to connect it with the respective gestures, sensations and objects. When little Eva Stern at thirteen months used the word, 'doll, for her doll and all pictures of children, it was a recognition of definitely established connections. These were by no means identifications for her that revealed a 'name' through word or sound structure. It was rather a case in which the child was able to remember and recognize definite, self-chosen sound formations and words. One should not fall into the error of considering this accomplishment to be a form of the cognitive process. It is a simple recognition and not an understanding of the word and its meaning. Nevertheless, it is a new achievement of great importance to the further development of speech.
Anyone familiar with the teaching and education of deaf children knows that one of the greatest and often insurmountable difficulties is to awaken in the deaf and dumb their sleeping word memory. They learn relatively soon to hear and differentiate tones and sounds but the difficulties experienced in 'marking,' 'be-thinking,' and 'recollecting' words represent one of the greatest obstacles to the acquisition of somewhat normal colloquial speech. The hearing child achieves these abilities 'suddenly' and 'overnight.' But this happens only at that time when the child has acquired his upright position. Word and sound memory awaken only after the development of uprightness.
While the word is consciously separated for the first time, it is sorted out in a twofold way. On the one hand, the word is lifted out of the realm of other sounds and noises and remembered independently. On the other hand, however, it is drawn away from the motor sphere and treated as an independent world. All these observations demonstrate that in the course of the first year the child gradually learns to experience word and sound formations, and then comes to know them at the beginning of the second year as self-contained entities. At the time when he raises himself from gravity, the word also emerges from the motor organism and from the other sounds with which it was formerly intermingled. The liberations of two activities have occurred simultaneously. The child has learned to stand upright on the earth, and, when the child begins to speak, the word rises up like a lark into the free and breathing air.
When, together with the acquisition of the upright position, the word also gains its independence, the word sense is born. With its separation from the other motor and sensory regions, the word, although not yet recognized in its independent form as thought, is received like a sense perception. The faculty of word memory is indeed already the result of the developed word sense. Here, at the beginning of the second year, stands the cradle of the word sense. Rudolf Steiner expresses it in the following words. 'Because sound sensation precedes the forming of judgment, the child learns to feel the meaning of the sounds of words before he reaches the use of judgment. At the hand of speech the child learns to judge.' (11)
Now, from direct experience communicated to him by the speech sense, the child knows that a word is different from any other sound that reaches him through hearing. The word is born as an independent entity and is laid into the cradle of the word sense.
The child occupies the next six months practicing the use of the newly acquired sense of word or speech. He does not learn many additional new words and sound structures, but rather makes his own what has suddenly been achieved. Therefore, remarkably few new words are acquired during this period.
At this time, too, the acquisition and development of a special faculty occurs. This is important because it points to the awakened sense of speech. Valentine writes,
I have already mentioned that in B. and Y. only two examples of true gesture language appeared before the end of the first year. It is well-known that the deaf and dumb develop an extensive language of gestures to compensate for the absence of a language of sound. An experienced teacher of deaf and dumb children told me that lip reading and attempts to speak are delayed in deaf children if gestures are allowed to continue. There are also records of children who continued gesture language because of slowness in acquiring speech ... Among the Dionne quintuplets gestures were remarkably expressive and fairly common, and these children were actually retarded in speech. (12)
Valentine then gives many examples of how, after the completion of the first year, Sound and gesture language can vicariously replace each other.
The following words of Rudolf Steiner should be considered in this context:
We must also take into account that audible tone is not alone in revealing to us an inwardness such as that present in tone of speech. In the end, gestures, mimicry, and facial expressions also lead us to something simple and direct that must be included, along with the content of any audible tone, in the domain of the sense of word. (13)
This is a confirmation of the fact that true gestures begin to appear as gesture language only after the birth of the sense of speech. (What exists today as Gestalt Psychology, frequently quite misunderstood, has its roots here in the sense of speech. This, however, can be discussed only in a much wider setting.)
All onomatopoeic sounds that the child begins to use are not really words but sound gestures, repeated in imitation of sound he has heard, especially in imitation of words spoken to him. The memory of sound becomes more fixed and is combined with perceptions from other sensory realms, especially that of the eye. Picture books can now be read because the child takes the greatest delight in connecting their illustrations with the words belonging to them. The word, it is true, is not yet understood, but it is remembered; it has become perception and idea. Because the word sense has developed as sense activity, it has begun to perceive the word and to transform this perception into an idea.
When in the second half of the second year the child enters the first age of questioning and makes such startling progress in the second stage of speech development, when he begins to ask the names of things and beings and acquires the new words as quickly as possible by simple repetition, it seems as if true thought action might be appearing in the child. Thus, W. Stern writes:
The occurrence just described must undoubtedly be considered as a mental act of the child in the real sense of the word. The insight into the relation between sign and import that the child gains here is something fundamentally different from simply dealing with perceptions and their associations. The demand that some name must belong to every object, whatever its nature, may be considered as a real - perhaps the child's first - general thought. (14)
Stern, however, though he comes from the school of Brentano and Husserl, falls victim to one of those fatal confusions that lead to incomprehension of the independently active thought sense. It is impossible to expect from a two-year-old child a 'general' act of thinking, and to imagine that he logically comprehends that everything has a name. Though the child later becomes aware of this fact, it is due not to an act of cognition but to one of perception when the word sense is joined by the thought sense. Rudolf Steiner says, 'Indeed, there also exists a direct and immediate perception for that which is revealed in a concept, so that we must speak of a sense of concept. What we can experience within our own soul as a concept, we can also receive as revealed from an external being. (15)
It is this that begins to be unveiled in the two-year-old child. The words become gates and windows for looking into the world of ideas, and he can perceive these ideas even if he cannot yet think them.
Stern also points out that with 'naming', the third root of speech tendency, the 'intentional' one as he calls it, begins to work. But these intentional relations are acts that occur between the different sense regions. They are not soul processes belonging to the region of thought. When seen from another side, it becomes even clearer that we are concerned here with an awakening - one could almost say, the first dawning of the thought sense. In the second part of these investigations we dealt briefly with the so-called 'change of meaning of words in this phase of development. We drew attention to the fact that these are by no means chance designations but that children draw the contours of a comprehensive concept as an idea much more ingeniously than grown-ups are able to do. Valentine (16) gives some relevant examples of fundamental importance, to each of which I have added the necessary comments:
E.W. uses at fifteen months the word, 'door,' for doors, garden gates and water taps.' Here we have a grasp of things that can be 'opened. This is a much wider concept than the single words would indicate by themselves. The idea of 'opening is represented by the word, door.'
B. at nineteen months first calls a sparrow, 'dickie,' and then all birds, later still all flies, spiders and bits of fluff floating in the air. Again we have a comprehensive idea, 'flying,' and the name 'dickie' is given to everything that flies or has the potentiality of flying.
B. at twenty months first says, 'go(ne)' when objects disappear or food is finished. He says it again when he has had enough food and pushes the rest away.' The passive use of 'go' becomes an active one produced at will. The meaning has not changed at all; it was well-defined from the beginning, but always broad and general.
Another child (17) at seventeen months uses the word 'eijebapp, (for eisenbahn, railway), which until then was a designation only for his toy railway, and for some dogs lined up in a row. Here we can easily discover the identity of form impressions and their naming with the same word. But we cannot call this deeds of thinking, but identifications that show the 'idea of a word to have been grasped, but grasped as form, as perception. On the other hand, there are also many instances where the comprehension of the idea of a word has been too narrow, when a child, for instance, applies the word 'armchair' only to one definite type of chair, but does not recognize those of unfamiliar form.
Many more examples could be given but the principle presented here shows that at about eighteen months the child begins to develop his thought sense in addition to the already perfected sense of speech. This sense activity starts rather abruptly and suddenly because the thought sense is awakened at the moment when the names of things have become experience. It might also be said that at the moment the thought sense awakens in the child all things receive a name. In this way, by becoming bearers of names, words assume their meaning. The further development of the thought sense occurs in a slightly different form from that of the sense of speech, which grows firmer and stronger because no new words were acquired. In the case of the thought sense, however, a rapid acquisition of new words occurs making it possible to grasp as comprehensively as possible the images of ideas in all their manifoldness.
These images of ideas can be conceived by the child either more broadly or more narrowly than in their later correspondence to fully developed speech. They are, however, in no way arbitrary. They only differ in dimension, which is directly related to the child's breadth or narrowness, that is, with the breadth of his soul existence, which expands beyond his true being, and with the narrowness of his earthly bodily existence in which he is a little child. This continues its expression right into the awakening and handling of the thought sense.
One of the most moving examples of the awakening of the thought sense can be seen in the way the seven-year-old Helen Keller suddenly grasped an understanding of words. Her teacher, Miss Sullivan, reports:
We went out to the pump house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled 'w-a-t-e-r' into Helen's free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came over her face. She spelled 'w-a-t-e-r' several times. Then she dropped to the ground, asking for the name of the earth and that of the pump and trellis. Suddenly turning around, she asked for iny name. I spelled, 'teacher.' At this moment the nurse came to the pump house with Helen's little sister. Helen spelled, 'baby,' and pointed to the nurse. This was the first time she used a word spelled out as means of communication by herself. On the way back to the house she was in great excitement and learned the name of every object she touched so that she had added some thirty new words to her vocabulary within a few hours. Some of them were, 'door,' 'open,' 'shut,' 'give,' 'go, and ‘come.’ (18)
The next morning Miss Sullivan added a postscript to the letter she had written the previous evening. It read,
Helen got up this morning like a radiant fairy. She flew from one object to another, asked for the names of everything and, full of joy, kissed me. Last night when she went to bed, quite on her own she snuggled into my arms and kissed me for the first time. I thought my heart would break, so full of joy was it.
Here we must bear in mind that for weeks previous the teacher of this deaf-blind child had inscribed the names of things into her hand in sign language. The child could repeat them, but she could not grasp or perceive them. They were signs without meaning. Her speech sense existed as gesture sense. Suddenly, however, as if by revelation, her thought sense awakened and from that moment - that world moment - on her spirit being was at home on earth. (19) She could, like Adam, call things by their names. A new light transfigured her face because the light of the spirit had awakened in her and radiated from her.
A similar joy, which is not so immediate because it does not awake so suddenly, also illuminates the two-year-old child. He is accepted here on earth as a human being through the fact that he can comprehend the names of things. He has become an Adam.
The physical organ of the sense of speech
Now that we have described the unfolding of the senses of speech and of thought in the light of speech development, we can take a further step toward an understanding of these phenomena.
It is indeed new and somewhat startling to have to accept the fact that everything hitherto regarded as a complicated act of thinking is reduced to a simple sense experience. Thus, a small child does not think about the meaning of the words he acquires but perceives it through his senses. This may be difficult to accept because the words, 'sentient' or 'sense experience, are so narrowly bound up with our habitual way of thinking about then. For us, 'sense, or 'sentient, is everything connected with those experiences that we have in the outer world, where we see and hear, smell and taste the qualities of the things we perceive.
We also have sensations of pain, hunger and thirst, and we dimly experience our equilibrium in space and the position of our limbs relative to each other. These are sense experiences that we continually receive. With them our sensation of life and existence is most intimately connected. These sense perceptions, however, are experiences that, although vague and dull and not entering directly the field of consciousness, are nevertheless significant. For the loss of equilibrium or a disturbance in feeling the position of our limbs, or also diminished sensation of pain can lead to the most serious impairment of our existence. They are at least symptoms of deep-seated illness. These sense experiences of our body and soul conditions, to which we must add our feelings of well-being or discomfort, belong to the sphere of sense processes.
Even for the latter we can still accept the word 'sentient in its general characterization. Our body is only part of the 'outer World and we can experience it as such by means of a special group of senses. We not only see it partly from outside and hear it speak and sing, but we feel its condition quite directly in pleasure and pain, in being well or unwell, and we know this to be so not only for ourselves but for everyone.
How is something supposed to become the content of our senses that lies beyond the 'sense' world and reveals itself only as thought? It is still possible to retain some of the 'sense' character of the perception in the word sense, since this represents only a kind of widened sense of hearing. What is revealed in hearing as a single sound or tone becomes, in the homogeneous perception of a sound, complex in the word sense.
In the sound of a vowel or consonant many single sounds are joined that the word sense (or sense of speech) comprehends as a whole, as a homogeneous form. Just as through the sense of hearing we can grasp a melody from single tones, so through the medium of the sense of speech we can perceive a word or succession of words from the joining of single sounds.
After this has happened, another sphere is opened and through the word we are supposed to sense and perceive the meaning it expresses. Everything that precedes this process in the field of perception is of a different character, since a thing or a being tastes, smells, has colour and form, utters tones and sounds - all of which are qualities of its existence. Even the name it bears still belongs to it and is part of its character and existence. The idea, the concept that is it, itself, however, is not a part or a portion, but much more than that. It is something indivisible, the 'ens' itself. It can well bear different names, it can be called, 'dog,' but it can also be called, canis, chien, or, Hund. It can have many such names, just as it can have an infinite number of attributes. But 'the' dog, the dog-hood is contained in each name, in each attribute so that it is a uniform whole in all its differentiation. Is this indivisibleness, however, this being, which, when it is we, ourselves, we designate with the word, 'I, supposed to be given to us as perception, so that not only qualities but even the bearer of these qualities is supposed to become our immediate experience?
Yet how should an understanding be possible between men if this immediate experience did not exist? Can it be imagined that thinking can be measured in any other way except by the perception of concepts and ideas? The prevailing view that from our manifold experiences we gain the necessary concepts through gradual abstraction cannot be upheld. We can only begin to comprehend the miracle of word understanding in the child, if in our consistent investigation of the spheres of the senses we also include those that bring to our experience not only the qualities of the things but their ‘ens’ itself.
When this is understood, a further, weighty problem confronts us that results from the question, If for every sense process hitherto known, an organ can be found in the body, where do the senses of speech and thought have their physical organization? Nothing is known about this even though there is no part of our body that has not been thoroughly investigated anatomically down to the last detail. Since it is a case of Sense processes, however, we must ask about the sense organs pertaining to them. Only after these have been found, examined and investigated, can the senses of speech and thought reveal themselves as 'comprehensible' entities.
In his Riddles of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner outlined the nature of the senses of speech and thought and added the following remarks:
It leads to a faulty psychology and theory of knowledge if one does not sharply distinguish between the 'grasping of thoughts' and the activity of thinking, and fails to recognize the sense character of the former. One makes this mistake because the organ for 'taking in words (vernehmen) and that for 'grasping thoughts are not externally as perceptible as the ear for 'hearing. In truth, there exist organs for these two perceptive activities just as the ear exists for hearing.' (20)
The spiritual investigator, as we see, has no doubts about the existence of physical organs either for word sense or thought sense and these two functions can become really effective only through them. Is it at all possible to find these organs in the multitude of the morphological structures of the human body? So far no one in Science has even thought of these two senses, let alone tried to assign working organs to them. It could be, however, that the functions of certain well-known morphological structures have been misinterpreted and activities attributed to them that they do not really perform. In other words, special parts of our body could be the organs of our senses of thought and speech that have not yet been recognized as such because these senses themselves are still unknown.
If this surmise is true, it will not be a question of finding a 'new' organ because the human body has been completely investigated macroscopically as well as microscopically. What will be necessary is a new interpretation of the existing organ and tissue structures So that they appear in a new order and shape. Then a number of organs to which no common basic design has hitherto been attributed may be recognized that will form the physical organization we hope to find. Here we have reached an important point of departure to which we want to hold fast for the time being.
Looking back on our past considerations, we found that the unfolding of the sense of speech occurs exactly at the end of the first year, and the thought sense breaks through in the course of the second year. In these periods of development the child acquires an upright position, the ability to walk and the faculty of speech. Does the sense of speech appear at the end of the first year because it is intimately bound up with the acquisition of the ability to walk? Indeed, is it not conceivable that man's ability to walk upright is the prerequisite for the sense of speech? Could this perhaps be the reason why so many children who have difficulties in acquiring an upright position also find it so hard to acquire speech and speech understanding? Is this the reason why an intimate connection exists between man's motor activities and his sense of speech? Can only the acquisition of the ability to walk upright build the organ that then acts as the sense organ for the understanding of words?
A serious consideration of such questions can lead to the further deliberation that the acquisition of walking, as described in the first chapter of this book, is the product of man's gradually gaining control of his voluntary muscles by means of his self, his ego. In the course of the first year, this process builds up a distinct organ as part of our nervous system that is called the pyramidal system.’ It consists of groups of nerves that extend from the voluntary muscles of the limbs and the trunk into the spinal cord, where they come in contact with another group of nerves running up the spinal cord and terminating in definite locations in the cortical regions of the cerebrum. This whole complex of nerves, extending from the cortex via the spinal cord to the single muscles, is described as the pyramidal system. It is a highly complex and extensive organ, which constitutes an essential part of our nervous system.
Until quite recently, physiologists and neurologists were firmly convinced that this was a group of motor nerves that caused voluntary muscular movements. Of late, however, strong objections have been raised against this conception both in physiology and neurology. Clinical observations of the ill and the results of extensive brain operations have shown that these motor nerves function as such only under certain conditions. Movements that are experimentally induced through these nerves differ decidedly in form and character from normal movements, which are suppressed by artificial stimulation of the pyramidal system. (21) Modern neurology is thus faced with a riddle, which at present it hardly dares to admit, let alone to try to solve. This most human of all nerve groupings, Collectively called the pyramid path, is functionally unrecognized today. We know its pathological performance when it fails through injury or illness, but its normal function is veiled in darkness.
Thus we see in the pyramidal system a morphological entity, a group of nerves that apparently does not perform the function hitherto assigned to it. Though closely connected with voluntary movements, it certainly is not the cause of them. This morphological entity is formed during the first year of life, but once its formation is completed it seems to be no longer directly connected with the functional achievement of walking upright and the voluntary mobility associated with it. The nerve apparatus thus formed has taken an intimate part in the acquisition of the ability to walk upright, but when this is achieved, it begins to place itself at the disposal of new functions. This is a form of functional change that should be noted.
Rudolf Steiner gives a description in which he explains the nature and form of the physical organ of the sense of speech:
Insofar as we have the power to move and to put into action everything we have within ourselves as movement, when we move our hands, or nod our head, for example - insofar as we have these forces to set our body into motion, their lies within us as the basis for this faculty of movement a physical organism. And this is not the physical organism of life, but of the faculty of movement. (22)
Steiner means something quite specific here. He is not referring to movement that appears as voluntary motor activity, but to the physical organization through which mobility manifests itself. Is he not referring to the pyramidal system? This system, as we have seen, is not the cause of voluntary movements, yet they are executed in connection with it. Then Steiner adds:
This organism of the faculty of movement is at the same time the organ of perception for speech, for words that are addressed to us by others. We could not understand words if we did not have in us this physical apparatus for movement. It is really true that to the extent that the nerves go out from our central nervous system to all our organs of movement, we also find there the sense apparatus for words that are spoken to us. (23)
These words only confirm what I have tried to describe above because the nerves that 'go from our central nervous system to all our organs of movement are without doubt the nerves of the pyramidal system. We have, therefore, to seek the sense organ of the sense of speech in the pyramidal path and in the nerve structures belonging to it. Here is a thousandfold instrument whose strings are strung between the muscles and the brain and in their totality serve our understanding of speech.
This view has been confirmed by clinical research carried out by the director of the Neurological Clinic in Hamburg. K. Conrad made extensive investigations in the localization of certain speech disturbances in the brain. (24) He was able to show that these aphasic disturbances occur at the time when the cerebrum has been injured or destroyed in those parts known to be the regions in which the pyramidal system has its origin, and that these aphasic disturbances are mostly those that have to do with a partial or complete loss of speech understanding. Such patients are either unable to understand words addressed to them or they lose the faculty of speaking. The latter state is conditioned by the fact that the comprehension of word forms has been preserved only in part or not at all.
We have now gained a fundamental insight into the phenomenology of the sense of speech. We have recognized its intimate connection with the acquisition of the ability to walk upright and have described its physical organ, which is a purely nervous one consisting only of nerve tissue. The entire System of voluntary muscles is found at the ends of the nerves, and though it is held together by the pyramidal system, it is neither functionally activated nor moved by it. The pyramidal path has become the organ of the word sense through the fact that it belongs to the voluntary motor apparatus as a whole, yet does not move it. On the contrary, it rests quietly within itself. This is the change of function that has occurred here.
Rudolf Steiner describes this:
Suppose I make this movement (hand raised in defence) ... The capacity to make this movement, to the extent it comes out of my entire organism of movement, causes something quite specific because not even the smallest movement is localized in one part, but arises from the whole human organism for movement. By suppressing such a movement, I do what I need to enable me to understand a definite thing expressed in words by another man. I understand what he says not by performing this movement, but by suppressing it, by only stimulating the organism for movement in me - as far as the fingertips, so to say - and then holding it back, stopping it. By suppressing the movement, I comprehend what is spoken. (25)
Here we are given a foundation for an understanding of the function of the word sense. We are shown that it is the movement that is not executed, the gesture that does not express itself, that conveys the understanding of the word addressed to us. The non-accomplished intention, which eliminates itself in statu nascendi and keeps still instead of moving, is the basis of our word sense.
This occurrence can be compared with resonance. When I sing a certain sequence of tones into the piano, they echo back softly. This does not happen when the strings are in vibration, but only when they are at rest. In the same way the spoken word resounds in me when I suppress the movement of its gesture instead of executing it. This happens only through that organ called the pyramidal system, that complex bundle of countless nerves that acts like a damper or mute. It does not execute the voluntary movement but holds it back, thus becoming the instrument in which the spoken word finds its echo or resonance. Understanding the word is the result.
Now we also see why the threshold of the small child's understanding of speech is higher than that of speaking. This was indicated when the development of speech was described. At the end of the first year the child has learned, with the help of the pyramidal system he has developed, to suppress certain gesture movements, and thus has advanced to the understanding of words. He still has not learned speech itself, however, because the understanding of words, the acquisition of the word sense, is a necessary prerequisite for the formation of the motor activity of speaking, that is, the speech movement itself. As long as the child babbles, he has not developed a word sense. The gradual transformation of babbling into speaking occurs only after this development. This must be clearly seen, otherwise, we cannot fully understand the growth of the child's mind. The sense of speech is born through the acquisition of the ability to walk upright, and only through the birth of the sense of speech can speaking unfold.
Rudolf Steiner has often indicated that speaking is formed from the entire voluntary motor activity. In his lecture from which we have been quoting, he describes it in the following way:
On exploring the human being with the methods of spiritual science we find that the basis for understanding words is closely allied to the basis for speech … Speech arises out of the soul life, is enkindled in the soul life through the will. Without our willing it, without the development of a will impulse, naturally no spoken word can arise. If one observes the human being with spiritual scientific means, one sees that when he speaks there occurs in him a process similar to what occurs when he understands something spoken. But when the human being himself speaks, a much smaller portion of his organism, much less of his organism of movement or motor organism, is embraced. That means that the whole motor organism is concerned with the sense of speech, the word sense. The whole motor organism is at the same time the sense of speech. A part of it comes into prominence and is set in motion by the soul when we speak. This part of the motor organism has its chief organ in the larynx, and speech is the stimulation of movements in the larynx through impulses of will. What happens in the larynx through one's own speech is that will impulses emerge from the soul and set in motion the organ of movement concentrated in the system of the larynx, whereas for the perception of words our entire motor organism is the sense organ. (26)
Steiner here points to the fact that the 'motor organism, the resting part of which (the pyramidal system) we have recognized as the organ of the sense of speech, bears speech most intimately within it. The speech process, however, is concentrated in the speech organs, which arrange themselves around the larynx, and the muscles of tongue, cheeks, jaw and larynx are activated within the motor organism.
The physical organ of the sense of thought
Our considerations have reached the point at which we can say that in the course of the child's speech development, the thought sense unfolds. It happens during the second year and the relation of the formation of the thought sense to the acquisition of speech is similar to the relation of the formation of the word sense to the acquisition of the ability to walk upright. In our search for the organ of the thought sense can we conclude that the connection of this organ to the speech organs is similar to the intimate connection of the organ of the speech sense with motor ability? To arrive at an answer, we must examine the nerve supply of the larynx and its complicated muscular apparatus.
The muscles of the larynx present a kind of muscular system in miniature, and in their manifoldness and complexity of arrangement, they make possible all the finer movements necessary for the act of speaking. The muscles of the abdomen, chest, back and limbs are reduced in number and size in the larynx and they are also simplified and drawn together as if in a knot. Yet they render possible the endless variety of muscular combinations needed for the production of the singing and speaking voice in all its modulation. This motor system in miniature is Supplied by two major nerve branches that come from above and below. They penetrate the larynx in pairs on both its right and left sides where they branch out to connect with the muscles and other tissues.
Physiologists have lost their sense of wonder for the fact that these two nerve branches are stems of the vagus nerve, which is one of the twelve cranial nerves. The vagus is special among the cranial nerves because it alone belongs to the autonomic nervous system. This is the plexus that is spread out over the body and regulates the large organs, the blood vessels and the circulation of fluids through the tissues. Its function mainly controls those processes occurring in the subconscious. The excretions of the large glands, the heartbeat, the muscular movements of stomach and intestines, the tension of blood vessels are all governed by the autonomic nervous system. What goes on in this dim realm is regulated by the vagus nerve and is brought to our waking consciousness only when conditions of illness become known through pain, discomfort and sensations like hunger and thirst. It is from this nerve, which belongs to the vegetative layers of our existence, that branches pass to the larynx and regulate speech, one of the highest of human achievements.
This most extraordinary phenomenon demands our full attention. Speaking is an entirely voluntary, motor act and yet, in contrast to all other voluntary movements, it is not bound to the nerves of the pyramidal system. On the contrary, important as it is to human existence, through its nerve supply it belongs to the dull vegetative strata. This can be explained by the fact that the larynx is not part of the muscular apparatus but belongs to the respiratory system. To say this, however, only bridges the abyss produced by the problems of this form complex. The abyss itself remains unexplored. Yet, an understanding of this strange phenomenon should be sought.
In a beautiful essay Rudolf Treichler has shown that the totality of the autonomic nervous system is intimately connected with the sense of life and that one is even justified in speaking of this nervous system as the organ of perception for the sense of life. (27) We can, therefore, ascribe to the totality of our manifestations and processes of life the realm of the vegetative or autonomic system, from which certain sensations, such as hunger and thirst, comfort and discomfort and other bodily sensations reach the threshold of consciousness.
In the lecture mentioned above in which Rudolf Steiner tries to describe the organs of the three highest senses, he also devotes a passage to the organ of the sense of thought:
What is the organ of perception for the thoughts of another? Inasmuch as we are aware of life and animation within us, it is all that we are. If then, you reflect that you have life throughout your whole organism and that this life is a unity, then the living animation of the entire organism, to the extent it expresses its life in the physical, is the organ for the thoughts that come to us from outside ... If we were not endowed with life, we could not perceive the thoughts of another. I am not here speaking of the sense of life. We are not concerned with the inner perception of our own life because this belongs to the sense of life. But insofar as we bear life within us, everything in us that is the physical organism of that life forms the organ of perception for the thoughts directed toward us by another person. (28)
These indications of Rudolf Steiner clearly show that he saw the organ of the sense of thought in the region of 'activity and life' in us, in those regions that belong to the autonomic nervous system. Can we imagine that this weaving of constructive and destructive life processes is itself the organ of the sense of thought? Steiner makes a definite reservation here when he says, and even repeats, that he means life 'insofar as it expresses itself in the physical' or 'everything in us that is the physical organism of that life.' How should this be understood?
Thorough research has gradually led physiologists and neurologists to distinguish two different parts of the autonomic nervous system - a sympathetic and a parasympathetic region. Quite different functions, which are polar opposites, are attributed to them. The sympathetic system exerts a stimulating effect and the parasympathetic system a calming one. A host of theories and assumptions have been built upon these polar functions of the autonomic nervous system. Hess, who has spent his life with these questions, formulates it thus: 'The sympathetic system serves the unfolding of actual energy, the parasympathetic the restitution and preservation of potential productivity.' (29) Treichler characterizes this polarity in his essay in the following way: 'It should be mentioned that the parasympathetic system, which includes the vagus nerve, serves more the perception of form conditions, while the sympathetic system perceives and communicates the activities of the organs.' (30)
This is a formulation that shows the way to the solution of our problem. The formation of theories about the functions of the vegetative nervous system suffers today from a fatal error. Invariably, an active, motor effect is ascribed to these nerves and the fact that they are purely sensory, sensing organs is almost entirely overlooked. When Treichler assigns a sensitivity for the life activities of the organs to the sympathetic system, he may well have found the right interpretation of it. The sympathetic system is the organ of the sense of life. But what is meant by the perception of form conditions?
Rudolf Steiner has shown that around the seventh year the child experiences a decisive metamorphosis of his life forces. Until then they have been devoted almost exclusively to plastically formative activity in the organism, when they were forming the structure and shape of the organs and tissues. But at the time of the second dentition a part of these formative forces is set free and transformed into those forces needed by our thinking for its activity. What Treichler calls 'perception of form conditions' and associates with the vagus nerve, belongs to those plastically formative life forces that are later active as thought forces.
Can we not dare, on the basis of everything we have presented thus far, to assign to the vagus nerve with all its many branches passing through the whole living organism, the role of the organ of the sense of thought? This nerve is indeed the physical part, the part permanently retained in a material way, of all life processes performed in our organism. Just as the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system is the organ of the sense of life, so the parasympathetic part, which is connected with the brain via the vagus nerve, is the organ of the sense of thought.
Thus, light is thrown on the phenomenon that was the starting point of our deliberations. The muscles of the larynx, as voluntary organs, are supplied from two pairs of nerves branching off from the trunk of the vagus nerve. Now we come to understand why the sense of thought is formed along with the development of speech during the second year. After the child acquires the word sense, he becomes conscious of the surrounding sphere of language. Until then he perceived words and sentences merely as signs for sounds and noises, but now for the first time he begins to understand what is expressed in the spoken word. He also begins to imitate the words and sentences he perceives and to use his larynx for the activity of speaking. For it is not the nerve impulses that make use of the larynx as a speech organ, but the soul itself preparing to speak. Thereby, the speech organ and its muscles, as well as the corresponding nerves, are permeated by the attempts at sound formation continually being made by the child. The muscles gradually come under the domination of the speaking soul and the word images stream through the corresponding nerves into the whole autonomic nervous system. (The concept of the total autonomic nervous system as an anatomical physiological unity is today generally accepted. Stöhr, for example, writes: 'Results of anatomical investigations justify the assumption that the whole of the sympathetic system is a closed one, from which the outermost parts are sunk as independent little branches into the epithelial gland and muscle cells which they have to supply and form an inseparable physiological and anatomical unit or they complete their course as differently shaped sensitive terminals.’) There they merge with the life activities of the whole organism and imprint it with the characteristics of his native language. Man is deeply influenced in all his life processes by the effects of the language in whose sphere he grows up and lives. This comes about along the path we have just described.
The word forms that are counted among the life processes flow in and stream along the path of the nerves. They also work through the vagus nerve with all its ramifications and in this way transform it into an organ that can act as the physical apparatus for the activity of the sense of thought.
The formative forces active in the life processes are identical with those that have built up all living forms in the world. They work in nature as well as in man, and thus are part of the eternal ideas that form all life and being. When they meet with the forms of words and sounds, the way leading through the gate of the word is opened to the ideas themselves.
We have called the pyramidal system a musical instrument with many thousands of strings that enable us to perceive speech, and we can call the vagus nerve as the sum total of all that is active in us as life organisms. This realm is the sphere of the creative ideas that hold sway in the living organism, form-creating and form-destroying. We can look upon this life sphere as a mighty brain, not fixed in shape, but being formed ever anew in the stream of life and deeds. The twigs and branches of the vagus nerve rise from it, combine with each other, and converge like the twigs and branches in the crown of a tree to form the trunk. But here the trunk rises from below upward and plunges its roots into the other brain that is enclosed as a physical structure in the skull. The vagus nerve passes from the living interplay of the organs into the dead and rigidly formed brain. On this bridge between life and death the organ of the sense of thought is formed ever anew. The ideas and concepts brought to us through the words of other human beings meet in the vagus nerve the living formative forces that are active in the life organism of man. From this meeting arises the immediate cognition characteristic of all sense processes. It can enter the sphere of consciousness because the vagus nerve has such a close anatomical connection with the brain. Thus, the ideas contained in the word images can be recognized and experienced in our waking consciousness.
These phenomena now make possible a beginning for the understanding of the morphological manifestation that finds its expression in the nerve supply of the larynx. Here the parasympathetic nervous system, to the extent that the vagus nerve is Involved in it, is revealed as the sense organ of the sense of thought. (In this Section I have refrained quite intentionally from discussing the exposition given by H. E. Lauer in the fifth chapter of his fundamental book on the Twelve Senses of Man. There an attempt is also made to describe the physical organs of the 'higher’ senses. Such a discussion here would become needlessly long and would be of interest to only a limited number of the readers for whom this book is meant.)
The Ego Sense
The knowledge gained in the last section of this chapter can be summarized as follows:
1. In the course of the first year the child acquires the sense of speech in connection with the ability to walk upright.
2. The development of the sense of speech begins in the second year and opens the sphere of the word to the child.
3. The sense of thought is developed in the course of learning to speak.
With the awakening of the sense of thought in the third year, the child opens himself to the thoughts communicated to him through the words of other people. As a climax of this development, we discovered that the child could call himself by the term, L' He thereby crossed the threshold of the third year.
In a later presentation of his theory of the senses. Rudolf Steiner adds the ego sense to the senses of speech and of thought, and characterizes it in the following way: It is not a question here that one knows of one's own ego, but that one confronts another person whose ego becomes revealed. The ego sense perceives the ego of the other. That is the ego sense, not that one perceives one's own ego.’ (31)
An especially detailed description of how the ego sense functions was given by Rudolf Steiner at the occasion of the founding of the Waldorf School. There he said:
If you meet another person, the following occurs: For a short period you perceive a person, and he or she makes an impression upon you. That impression disturbs you inwardly; you feel that the person, a being comparable to yourself, makes an impression upon you like an attack. The result is that you 'defend' yourself inwardly, you resist this attack and become inwardly aggressive toward the person. In this aggression you become crippled, and the aggression ceases. Then the other person can again make an impression upon you, and after you thus have time to regain your aggressive strength, you carry out another act of aggression. This is the relationship that exists when one person meets another and perceives the other I - that is devotion to the other - inner resistance; sympathy-antipathy … However, there is still something else. As sympathy develops, you go to sleep in the other person; as antipathy develops, you wake up, and so forth. In the vibrations of meeting another person, there is a rapid alternation between waking and sleeping. We have to thank the organ of the I-sense that this can occur. This organ of I-sensing is so formed that it explores the I of another person, not wakefully but in its sleeping will, and then quickly delivers the results of this sleepy exploration to cognition, that is, to the nervous system. (32)
Here we see clearly the two-phase character of ego perception, which seems to function like a breathing process becomes inward. With this two-phase nature the period in the child's development can be indicated, at least in passing, during which the child begins to unfold his ego sense. During the first two years the child is primarily a being reacting 'sympathetically toward other people. Especially if he is not spoiled, the child is full of confidence toward other people and seldom feels discomfort toward strangers. An infant may often be hesitant when meeting others and may feel fear or anxiety toward strangers, but once he has overcome his shyness, he will throw himself into the other being, fully of sympathy. He 'sleeps' into the other one.
E. Köhler writes about her Annie at the age of two years and six months, Annie wants to be sociable. Children of different ages attract her attention. When she sees a child in the street, she stops, runs toward him, gives him her hand and wants to kiss him. Frightened mothers and nursemaids often pull their children away and look unkindly at Annie. She does not feel this mistrust.' (33) In the meeting with other egos this child is still entirely clothed in sympathy and does not confront them 'consciously,’ which means that she has not yet developed the alternation between sympathy and antipathy in the realm of the ego sense.
For this age there hardly exists any difference between man, animal and object. All things in the surrounding world are equal in action as well as in suffering. Thus, Annie can say that her toy rabbit will watch her eating, while the next day it will be the orange that lies on the table that will watch her. Children, therefore, have pity for things as well as people, and a broken biscuit can bring them as easily to tears as a mother who must lie in bed with a headache. I remember a little three-year-old melancholic who, when we all sat at table, suddenly broke into bitter tears. He gradually let us know that it was the chair standing so lonely and unused against the wall that caused him such great misery.
Such behaviour is not connected with the fact that the infant treats all things anthropomorphically, as superficial psychology would have it. It is rather the other way around, and everything is felt uniformly without life and soul. It, therefore, can be pitied, feared, mothered and embraced with sympathy. W. Hansen quite rightly says:
A separation between subject and object does not yet exist for the child in the sense that the subject has consciousness through the knowledge of the object from which he differs. From the fact that he applies names used for soul qualities such as thinking, being good, expecting, enjoying, etc., also to his animal, plant and material surroundings, we are justified in drawing only one conclusion: That the child does not yet separate these domains of the world from those of the ensouled human being, nor does he draw a line between different realms of existence. He thinks and reacts toward everything in the same way. (34)
This illustrates clearly that the ego sense has not yet developed in the infant. Otherwise, he could immediately differentiate between man and the other beings and things of his environment. The child embraces everything with a certain amount of sympathy, which means he sleeps into things and beings without being able to meet them in the recoil of the awakening antipathy. This process of waking up does not occur until about the time of the first period of defiance. Between the third and fourth years, the child begins to oppose the surrounding world for the first time, and to put his own will anti-pathetically over against his environment. Everything that until this point had been easy and possible without fuss, now comes about under difficulties and with arguments. The child wants to do everything himself- to dress and undress by himself, to decide independently how to play and often to do exactly the opposite of what grown-ups would like him to do. During this time, his first conflicts with his mother, brothers and sisters occur because the child becomes aware of his own independent being quite differently from before.
The significant meeting, about which we spoke in the third chapter, has taken place. The eternal individuality of the child was called the awakener of the sleeping thinking, and we said, at the moment when both behold each other and confront each other eye to eye, the consciousness of one's own ego awakens for the first time.' This process of becoming conscious is the cause of the first period of defiance.
Remplein describes this stage concretely. He says,
Behind the child's outer rejection of the play community stands an important development of the ego consciousness ... The ego centre, which hitherto had only registered all experiences without becoming conscious of itself, now becomes the object of experience. At the same time the symbiotic unity of child and world falls apart and a first separation occurs between ego and non-ego. This transition happens without deliberation or self-reflection. In action and in meeting the world the child becomes conscious of himself. (35)
This process makes it possible for the 'sympathetic' attitude of the child to become ambivalent and for the child to bring distinctly antipathetic features into the fabric of his experiences. It is not fear, anxiety, shame or repulsion of anything alien that puts him into opposition to his environment. It is rather the awakening consciousness of his self that leads him into an attitude of defiance. It is a truly positive phase of development that starts here and it should be valued as such by parents and teachers. The child wakes up to the consciousness of his own self and does not want to lose this awakening again. Therefore, he becomes defiant.
Along with meeting the other person with sympathy, the attitude of defiance enables the child to acquire rejection also because only in the continuous alternation between these two phases of the soul can the ego sense develop. This development, however, does not seem to progress as quickly and as directly as that of the senses of speech and thought. The ego sense needs a long period of development for its complete unfolding.
In the third chapter we pointed out the 'radical difference between walking and speaking on the one hand and thinking on the other. In a similar way there also exists a radical difference between the senses of speech and thought and the ego sense. Though awakening thinking is a necessary presupposition for the gradual development of the ego sense, this highest sense does not unfold along with the development of thinking in the same way that the senses of speech and thought were formed during the acquisition of the ability to walk upright and of speech. The development of thinking may certainly produce the awakening of the ego Consciousness, but this is not the ego sense. Only a being who has gained full consciousness of his own ego can as a Consequence of this develop an ego sense.
The acquisition of thought may well become the mirror of the ego in which the latter then begins to experience itself. This self-experience makes possible the antipathetic attitude essential for the forming of the ego sense. The meeting of two ego conscious beings results in those two phases, the sympathetic as well as the antipathetic impulses, which lead to an immediate experience of the other ego. Up to now, detailed observations in this field of child development hardly exist. One can, however, assume that in shape and appearance, the father is the most important stimulator for the development of the ego Sense. He becomes a symbol of the surrounding world that confronts the child, not protecting like the mother, but demanding.
The formation of the ego sense is not completed until the ninth year. It is consolidated at this threshold of the child's development and Rudolf Steiner has called particular attention to it. He describes this time of transformation in the following way:
In the ninth year the child experiences what is really a complete transformation in his soul, indicating a significant change in his bodily-physical experience. From then on, the child begins to experience himself as separate from his surroundings. He learns to distinguish between world and self. When we are able to observe rightly, we must say that before this revolution in human consciousness, the world and self flow more or less together. From the ninth year (this is of course meant approximately) man distinguishes between himself and the world. This must be thoroughly taken into account in the teaching material and educational life that we bring to the child from the ninth year on. It will be well, up to this time, not to confuse the child with a description or characterization of things that are separated from man or can be regarded separately from man. You see, if we tell the child fables or fairy tales, we speak about animals or perhaps plants in the same way as we speak of people. Animals and plants are personified, and quite rightly, because the child does not yet distinguish between self and world, because everywhere in the world the child sees something that he experiences in himself. (36)
With the ninth year this experience changes radically. The formation of the ego sense is completed and the child learns through the experience of this sense to differentiate between man and the other beings of nature. The age of fairy tales and legends comes to an end. Parents and teachers are observed critically and the ego begins to measure itself against other egos. The awakening into the sphere of personality has set in. What began with the first age of defiance has now reached its conclusion.
On two occasions Rudolf Steiner spoke about the sense organ underlying the ego sense. One passage reads as follows: The organ for perceiving the I spreads over the entire human being and consists of a very subtle substance. For that reason, people do not speak of an organ for perceiving another person’s self or ego. (37)
In the second passage he speaks much more extensively about this sense organ.
Ego perception has its own organ, just like the perception of sight or sound. Only, while this organ has its starting point in the head, it is formed by all the rest of the body as well insofar as that body depends on the head. The whole man, understood as an organ of perception, and as he is sensibly-physically constructed, is really an organ of perception for the ego of another. One might also say that, insofar as it has the whole man dependent on it and rays its faculty of ego perception throughout the entire man, the organ of perception for the ego of another is the head. Man at rest, man as a stationary human form with the head as its centre, is the perceptive organ for the ego of another man. Thus the organ of perception for the ego is the largest perceptive organ we have, and we ourselves as a physical human being are this organ. (38)
Little can be added to such a description because it is manifest that the entire human body, insofar as that body depends on the head, is the organ of perception for the ego sense. Until about the ninth year, however, the child grows directly through the forces of the head. During infancy the head is still overly large in comparison with the rest of the body and this disproportion is harmonized only gradually, especially between the third and ninth years. The limbs stretch, the trunk of the body grows larger and the head lags behind in growth. As a result, the particularly well-formed body structure arises that children have around the ninth year. From infant form through the first 'change of form' occurring between the seventh and eighth years, that 'shape before puberty,’ which in its architecture shows such perfect harmony, has come about.
The attainment of this shape of the body really depends on the head, whose growth stands in closest connection with the function of two inner secretory glands of the brain, the pineal gland or epiphysis, and the pituitary gland or hypophysis. The working together of these two glands regulates the forces of growth and form in such a way that they lead to a harmonious or disharmonious development of the body. The equilibrium between epiphysis and hypophysis results in the harmonious shape of the nine-year-old child. Before this time the activity of the epiphysis predominates, later that of the hypophysis. The development of this perfect bodily form, which is corrupted only later in puberty, coincides with the attainment of the ego sense. During this stage man has reached the highest level of his physical development. He has become the true image of man who has also unfolded the highest sense, the ego sense. In a certain sense, this is also the beginning of a descent because, during pre-puberty and maturity, the body and limbs become earthbound and lose that touch for the other world that they still retained until about the ninth year. The growing human being falls prey to the earth, becomes heavy, burdened and worried about his path of destiny.
He has, however, gained the ego sense, and this he is allowed to keep and carry with him as a lifelong gift from this time onward. The senses of speech and thought likewise remain with him as gifts through which he can approach the spirit of all existence. Through the sense of speech all treasures of the word are opened. Through the sense of thought the wisdom of all past and present creation is unveiled. Through the sense of ego he can recognize the other man as his brother. Thus, childhood has endowed him with a possession never to be lost.
Walking, speaking and thinking have made him a man. They have raised him from a creature to a being who can recognize himself. The senses of speech, thought and ego on the other hand help him to approach the spirit depths of all existence. They open paths into higher worlds that lie beyond the world of the senses. In those three highest senses the sphere of the senses begins to abolish itself and points the way to its own overcoming. This is a sacrifice because it leads to annihilation. Further on, a resurrection is waiting. The sense world will break asunder and a spirit world will open up beyond.
Getrost, das Leben schreitet Our life with courage ending
Zum ew'gen Leben hin; Eternal life draws near,
Von inn’rer Glut geweitet With inner glow expanding
Verklärt sich unser Sinn. Transfigured sense grows clear.
Die Sternwelt wird zerfliessen The star world now is flowing
Zum goldnen Lebenswein, As living golden wine,
Wir werden sie geniessen Its joys on us bestowing,
Und lichte Sterne sein. (39) Ourselves as stars shall shine.
(Novalis)
Notes
When we approach the question of how the human spirit unfolds in the course of early childhood with real courage, a special problem strikes us at once. We meet one of those great questions that appear repeatedly as hurdles for the thinker's courage to take in a high jump.
This problem is the every new miracle that comes to pass at the beginning of the child's second year: The spoken word is not only heard, but also grasped as a sign and its meaning understood. This understanding occurs long before the child has developed the power of thinking Thus, an intellectual activity is performed before the development of the faculties necessary for it. This is a miracle that impresses everyone except the psychologist who is lacking in philosophical training. Yet, one of the most difficult questions of child psychology is how it is truly possible that words can be grasped and their meaning understood even in earliest childhood. In his fundamental investigations of the development of speech in the child, W. Stern has drawn our attention to a most important rule, which he formulated in the following way:
From the innumerable words that the child continually hears, his mind makes an unconscious selection by discarding most and retaining only a few. This selection is twofold. The majority of rejected words are beyond understanding, and of these a smaller number have been rejected as 'beyond speech.' The retardation of what can be said with what can be understood is a peculiarity that continues even in adult years... but nowhere is the difference as striking as in the first months of speech. (1)
Stern points to that threshold erected between hearing and understanding the spoken word. In the course of the first year the child hears a great number of words and sentences, but does not yet comprehend them as independent parts, because they are still embedded in the 'experience landscapes of which I have spoken in the second chapter of this book. Only at the end of the first and at the beginning of the second year does the word appear as symbol and as bearer of meaning in the child's realm of consciousness.
These first words, or better, syllabic complexes, are not yet true words with sense and meaning, but are only the expression of something that the child wants to indicate. The syllabic sequences are mostly still onomatopoeic designations like 'splash-splash' for bathing, 'bow-wow for dog, 'yum-yum' for eating, etc. The child associates experienced values of feeling with them. When he says, 'Tick-tock, he may point to the clock, though without having grasped that he is saying the name of the object. As long as the period of one-word sentences and syllabic complexes lasts, that is, until about the middle of the second year, something spoken is only expression or interpretation, such as pointing to an object or an event.
Nevertheless, we should pay close attention to what appears here because it is a kind of preparatory step toward true word understanding. The spoken word is distinguished from all other forms of sound production and is felt and noticed as speech. Tone and sound have become differentiated. This is the first threshold, which leads to a further understanding of the spoken word. The crossing of the second threshold will begin when the child proceeds from the period of saying to that of naming.
When, at about eighteen months, the joy of asking for the names of things, and then of pronouncing and using these names himself awakens for the child, the understanding of words begins and speech first assumes its rights. These fundamental differentiations have already been pointed out by Husserl and later by Scheler. Scheler's efforts have been especially helpful toward achieving clarity in this field:
Between expression and speech the phenomenological findings show an absolute abyss.... Already the existence of a tone, sound or noise complex as 'sound' - and though it be only 'one sound' outside in the passage, 'one sound' in the woods - requires that I perceive in this complex something more than its sense content that is 'expressed' in it, that is proclaimed aloud' in it. A 'sound, therefore, is already something quite different from tone, noise or a so-called association of such a complex with an imagined object. But the sound still tarries in the sphere of pure expression ... a whole world separates even the most primitive word from mere expression. The entirely new thing that appears in the word is the fact that it does not, like the expression, merely point back to an experience, but in its primary function it points outward to an object in the world. The word 'means' something that has nothing to do either with its sound-body, or with the experience of feelings, thoughts and ideas that it may express besides. The word appears to us as the fulfillment of a demand made by the object itself. It appears in the understanding as a simple rather than a complex whole, which only the reflective analysis of the philologist or psychologist may later differentiate into the sound and the sense aspect (the 'word body' and 'word sense'). (2)
I quote Scheler's statements at length because they go to the roots of a differentiation and separation to which Rudolf Steiner drew attention repeatedly and which in the future will become of fundamental importance for an understanding of the human being. It is significant that Scheler chooses his essay, On the Idea of Man, in which to come to grips with the problem of understanding and speaking.
Later, Binswanger tried to approach these problems from the standpoint of the neurologist and psychiatrist. He opens his essay, On the Problem of Speaking and Thinking, with the following statement:
A homogenous phenomenon is the basis of the problem of speech and thought, from the simple, meaningful spoken or written word to speech proper, which in agreement with Husserl, we wish to call the sense-enlivened or sense-full expression. If we analyze this phenomenon, an undertaking that belongs to phenomenology, we can differentiate first the articulated complex of sounded or written, physical signs; second, the psychic experiences in which man lends sense or meaning to these signs - the sense-giving and intentional actions; third, the ideal, logical sense or the meaning itself through which the expression points to an object or 'means' it. (3)
Though much in this formulation is incorrect and generalized, the reference to the three realms, physical, psychic and logical, clearly expresses the fact that speech must be understood only as a unity, as the synthesis of bodily, soul and spiritual relations. But as a result of this, to grasp and comprehend what is spoken must also be threefold. Whether I read what is written, or hear what is spoken, or whether I grasp signs and gestures, it is never an action of body and soul alone. If it were only that, no understanding through speech could ever come about.
The miracle already mentioned in which the first understanding of the heard word begins to dawn in the small child, presupposes that the spiritual part of the childlike human being is precisely what is involved in the process of comprehending, and that even in earliest infancy a threshold of understanding is crossed that creates a real word from a sound formation.
Otherwise, how should it be possible that the small child, seemingly without the slightest difficulty, begins to understand the word as a sound gesture and directly grasps its hidden sense? A spiritual deed is the basis of such an event. Scheler and Husserl tried to point to this but in spite of the keenest observation of the phenomena in question they were not able to solve this riddle. Rudolf Steiner, however, reached a comprehensive answer to this problem by laying the foundation of a new theory of the senses. As early as 1909 he described how the understanding of the spoken word should not be counted among the acts of cognition but among the sense activities. He showed how even to hear a spoken word is more than merely hearing and that a special sense underlies this faculty. He called this a speech or word sense and the understanding of the spoken word, the concept or thought sense. In the first descriptions of his theory of the senses he says:
So we come to a ninth sense. We discover it when we ponder on the fact that in man there resides in truth a faculty of perception that does not rest on judgment but is nevertheless present within it. It is what we perceive when we enter into communication with our fellow men through speech. A true sense, the speech sense, underlies what is conveyed to us through speech ... The child learns speech before it learns to judge. (4)
And further on:
By means of the concept sense, man is able while perceiving the concept, which does not clothe itself in the spoken sound, to understand it. In order that we may be able to form a judgment we must have concepts. If the soul is to be active, it must first be able to perceive the concept. To do so, it requires the concept sense, which is just as much a sense in itself as either the sense of smell or the sense of taste.
Here a fundamentally new thought directs our previously existing views on the development of the human spirit along entirely unaccustomed paths. Not only a great number of existing problems can be solved with this, (For example, all the problems of the riddle of aphasia can be gradually brought nearer to a solution through these ideas, and from this starting point the burning questions of the disturbances of reading and writing in childhood can be met with real understanding.) but at the same time, new questions emerge that hitherto have hardly come into the light of our attention and awareness. In his book, Riddles of the Soul, Steiner discussed in detail Franz Brentano's psychology and then added a special chapter, The True Basis of Intentional Relation. In it he develops important aspects of his theory of the senses. The following paragraph is particularly significant to our present considerations:
One believes, for example, that it would be sufficient, when hearing the words of another person to speak only of sense to the extent that it comes into question through hearing alone, leaving everything else to be ascribed to a non-sensuous inner activity. But this is not so. In the hearing of words and their understanding as thoughts, a threefold activity is involved. Every member of this threefold activity must be considered by itself for a truly scientific comprehension to be established. 'Hearing is an activity, but 'hearing by itself is as little a 'taking in of words (Vernehmen) as 'touching is a 'seeing. Just as it is relevant to distinguish between the sense of 'touch' and that of 'sight, so also is it relevant to distinguish between that of 'hearing, and that of 'taking in words, and the further sense of 'grasping thoughts. It leads to a faulty psychology and theory of knowledge, if one does not sharply distinguish between the 'grasping of thoughts' and the activity of thinking without recognizing the sense character of the former. One makes this mistake only because the organs for 'taking in words' and for 'grasping thoughts' are not externally as perceptible as the ear for 'hearing. In reality, organs exist for these two perceptual activities just as the ear exists for ‘hearing.’ (5)
In this description Steiner brings into correct focus what we have described above in regard to Binswanger's exposition. What is shown there as a physical sign, as psychic experience and as logical sense, is basically a sense experience occurring in three differentiated sense realms. The physical sign is transmitted by the ear as the word that is heard, or by the eye as the word that is read. The psychic experience is the 'taking in of the word, and the logical sense, the 'grasping of the thought. How challenging are Rudolf Steiner's formulations to psychology and philosophy. They represent an entirely new phase in the history of the psychology and philosophy of speech and many critical investigations will have to be made to do justice to this tremendous impulse. Above all, the physiology of the senses will have to find a new orientation and entirely transform the views on the spiritual development of the child. The remaining sections of this chapter are meant to be a first attempt in this direction.
The development of the word sense and thought sense
There can hardly be any doubt that the word sense (comprehension of the spoken word) and the thought sense (comprehension of concepts) both develop in the child during the first two years, if his development takes a fairly normal course. At the end of the first year the child already begins to use one-word sentences with understanding and to comprehend some of the words addressed to him. At the end of the second year, when he begins to say two- or three-word sentences, he already knows a large number of words, recognizes their sense and meaning and can use them accordingly. The word as formation and sign has become his permanent possession. He has made the first roots of language his own, but has been able to achieve this only because the senses of speech and thought have awakened in him.
To gain some understanding of these two senses it will be necessary to study their development in connection with that of the child's speech. The unfolding of language in the child must be intimately connected with the acquisition of these two senses because it is obvious that the newborn child possesses neither word nor thought sense. Both certainly are present as predispositions, but the development of speech is needed to turn them into faculties.
In the second chapter of this book we pointed out that the first year is of the greatest importance for the formation of speech. We said that the development of speech begins with the first cry and after that the baby soon starts to utter a great variety of sounds. He cries and crows, gurgles and coos, and at the end of the first month most mothers have learned to 'understand’ the various sounds and noises. For example, Valentine, an accurate observer, writes,
At the end of the first month I could distinguish three types of sounds. First, the cry of hunger, which was restless and sharp, increased each time and after the last strong outbreak suddenly ceased. Second, the cry of pain, which was a much stronger and more lasting cry. Third, a satisfied contented gurgling, which was different in its sound formation in the three children observed. (6)
The cry in this instance is nothing but a statement. It is an expression of well-being or misery and as yet has hardly any reference to the speaking environment as such. This relationship, however, is already being established in the second or third month. About this Valentine writes, 'When father or mother chatted to the baby, humming was returned in reply. That happened with Y. on the twenty-second, with B. on the thirty-second and with A. on the forty-ninth day for the first time. Thus speech development was even at this time connected with social relationships. Valentine mentions that some observers put the beginning of this 'responding on the part of the baby later, especially when the children did not come under observation in their family milieu. But most found that it began around the middle or end of the second month.
Here we witness how the baby reacts with understanding upon being addressed for the first time. He answers the speech of another person with his own utterance. He responds and indicates that in his imitation he uses the same organ as his example. In this we can see a first understanding for the act of speaking.
In the course of the third month the sounds and tones that the child utters become quite diversified and consist of recognizable consonants as well as vowels. Again Valentine says, 'By this stage of three months it became quite evident from the number of sounds made by these children, which we could never have pronounced, that the speech of the child was largely independent of the words he heard.' This is a further and most important conclusion because it shows that the hearing at this infantile age does not yet work together with the activities of the larynx and other speech organs. The child hears with his ears, and independently of this he makes utterances with his larynx and the other developing speech organs. The 'intentional relations' between these two activities have not yet developed and only another person can make the baby's speech organs respond when he addresses him directly.
From about the fourth month on, however, the infant begins to imitate sounds and noises he has heard and, once he has achieved them, to make them his own by continued exercise. Now the time begins when during waking hours children babble continually and keep repeating certain sounds and sound complexes. Around the sixth month, this 'conscious imitation of sounds he has heard becomes a daily event. The infant has now reached the stage when ear and speech organs can work as a functional whole. This is an important step, and a prattling comprehension of the sounds of his native language begins.
Valentine describes a most striking phenomenon that he observed in his own children and that thousands of other fathers and mothers may also have observed without noticing. He points out that the sounds imitated at will are always spoken only in a whisper. He says, 'These deliberate imitations, however, were strikingly different from the spontaneous and the deferred imitative speaking. They were whispered.’ (7) This behaviour occurs at about the eighth month.
Preyer also describes whispering by his child in whom it occurred in the tenth or eleventh months. He says, 'When I spoke, the child, observing my lips attentively, often made the attempt to speak after me. Usually some different sound came forth, however, or there was merely a soundless movement of the lips. (8) This description makes it clear why only whispering or silent lip movements occur. The child looks at the movements of the grown-up's mouth and imitates the movement but not the sounds. He can indeed prattle aloud unconsciously and unconsciously imitate the sounded tones of speech. Conscious repetition, however, occurs at first only in the interaction of his observation of mouth movements, that is, the interaction between his eyes and his motor impulses.
Toward the end of the first year a significant new step is taken in development. Preyer, in describing it, points out that the child not only reacts to tones, noises and sounds at this time, but may also turn in the direction of the speaker when his name is called. At every new sound that he has not yet heard he is astonished and shows this by opening his eyes and mouth wide. By frequently repeating the words, 'Shake hands, and simultaneously holding out his hand, Preyer even induced his child to comply with this request. The beginning of word memory was thereby established.
Most other observers are in agreement with these conclusions that toward the end of the first year a few words are understood and the movements corresponding to them are executed. Thus, Valentine's child Y. was able to look at the floor when hearing the word, ‘kitty,’ in order to search for it, and at the word, 'birdie,’ to look at the wall where birds were depicted on the wallpaper. He also understood the words, 'bottle,' 'mouth, ‘bye-bye,’ and a few others and performed characteristic gestures relative to them.
W. Stern relates the following of his child, Eva, when twelve and thirteen months old.
We are continually astounded and can scarcely keep up with her development. It is hardly credible at her age. One day she will grasp the meaning of a word a little, the next, a little more, the following day she will understand it entirely. All at once we noticed that the child understood perfectly what we said. (9)
Similarly, Preyer remarks,
The most important progress consists in the awakened understanding of spoken words. The ability to learn has emerged almost overnight. Suddenly, it did not require constant repetition of the question, 'how tall is the child?' at the same time lifting her arms in order to get her to make the movement each time she heard, 'how tall, or 'all,' or even, 'a.' (10)
When we try to interpret these details of the child's speech development during the first year with regard to the word sense as well as the thought sense, we can note a steady development. At first, the sound utterances of the child are entirely spontaneous and only an expression of the experience of his own existence. In the second month, the child responds by humming when spoken to. He becomes dimly aware of the movements of his own mouth. This is a sense perception that belongs in the realm of motor sensations and is concentrated in the region of the mouth.
In the third month the variety of sounds and tones that the child can produce spontaneously is extended, and from the fourth month on he begins to imitate definite sounds that he has heard. This ability is more firmly established in the course of the following months, with no new fundamental acquisition being added until the seventh or eighth months. About this time the child begins to imitate at will the words and sounds spoken to him. This imitation primarily involves the interaction of eyes and lips, and is related to the lip reading of the deaf and dumb, which has its origin here. This process, therefore, takes place softly or quite voicelessly. A combination of the sense of sight with motor sensation, which produces movement of the mouth, is also present, bringing about a further development of consciousness in the region of the lips and mouth. Thus, another step is taken in the development of the ability to respond.
Toward the end of the first year, beginning at about the ninth month, a kind of intuitive comprehension of the word as designation arises. Many authors speak of this as a 'word understanding,' but that is by no means the case. As shown above, all these 'understood words are clothed in gestures that imitate repeated sound structures. These sound structures are certainly remembered but not yet understood. Memory alone enables the child to experience a sound structure as a speech symbol and to connect it with the respective gestures, sensations and objects. When little Eva Stern at thirteen months used the word, 'doll, for her doll and all pictures of children, it was a recognition of definitely established connections. These were by no means identifications for her that revealed a 'name' through word or sound structure. It was rather a case in which the child was able to remember and recognize definite, self-chosen sound formations and words. One should not fall into the error of considering this accomplishment to be a form of the cognitive process. It is a simple recognition and not an understanding of the word and its meaning. Nevertheless, it is a new achievement of great importance to the further development of speech.
Anyone familiar with the teaching and education of deaf children knows that one of the greatest and often insurmountable difficulties is to awaken in the deaf and dumb their sleeping word memory. They learn relatively soon to hear and differentiate tones and sounds but the difficulties experienced in 'marking,' 'be-thinking,' and 'recollecting' words represent one of the greatest obstacles to the acquisition of somewhat normal colloquial speech. The hearing child achieves these abilities 'suddenly' and 'overnight.' But this happens only at that time when the child has acquired his upright position. Word and sound memory awaken only after the development of uprightness.
While the word is consciously separated for the first time, it is sorted out in a twofold way. On the one hand, the word is lifted out of the realm of other sounds and noises and remembered independently. On the other hand, however, it is drawn away from the motor sphere and treated as an independent world. All these observations demonstrate that in the course of the first year the child gradually learns to experience word and sound formations, and then comes to know them at the beginning of the second year as self-contained entities. At the time when he raises himself from gravity, the word also emerges from the motor organism and from the other sounds with which it was formerly intermingled. The liberations of two activities have occurred simultaneously. The child has learned to stand upright on the earth, and, when the child begins to speak, the word rises up like a lark into the free and breathing air.
When, together with the acquisition of the upright position, the word also gains its independence, the word sense is born. With its separation from the other motor and sensory regions, the word, although not yet recognized in its independent form as thought, is received like a sense perception. The faculty of word memory is indeed already the result of the developed word sense. Here, at the beginning of the second year, stands the cradle of the word sense. Rudolf Steiner expresses it in the following words. 'Because sound sensation precedes the forming of judgment, the child learns to feel the meaning of the sounds of words before he reaches the use of judgment. At the hand of speech the child learns to judge.' (11)
Now, from direct experience communicated to him by the speech sense, the child knows that a word is different from any other sound that reaches him through hearing. The word is born as an independent entity and is laid into the cradle of the word sense.
The child occupies the next six months practicing the use of the newly acquired sense of word or speech. He does not learn many additional new words and sound structures, but rather makes his own what has suddenly been achieved. Therefore, remarkably few new words are acquired during this period.
At this time, too, the acquisition and development of a special faculty occurs. This is important because it points to the awakened sense of speech. Valentine writes,
I have already mentioned that in B. and Y. only two examples of true gesture language appeared before the end of the first year. It is well-known that the deaf and dumb develop an extensive language of gestures to compensate for the absence of a language of sound. An experienced teacher of deaf and dumb children told me that lip reading and attempts to speak are delayed in deaf children if gestures are allowed to continue. There are also records of children who continued gesture language because of slowness in acquiring speech ... Among the Dionne quintuplets gestures were remarkably expressive and fairly common, and these children were actually retarded in speech. (12)
Valentine then gives many examples of how, after the completion of the first year, Sound and gesture language can vicariously replace each other.
The following words of Rudolf Steiner should be considered in this context:
We must also take into account that audible tone is not alone in revealing to us an inwardness such as that present in tone of speech. In the end, gestures, mimicry, and facial expressions also lead us to something simple and direct that must be included, along with the content of any audible tone, in the domain of the sense of word. (13)
This is a confirmation of the fact that true gestures begin to appear as gesture language only after the birth of the sense of speech. (What exists today as Gestalt Psychology, frequently quite misunderstood, has its roots here in the sense of speech. This, however, can be discussed only in a much wider setting.)
All onomatopoeic sounds that the child begins to use are not really words but sound gestures, repeated in imitation of sound he has heard, especially in imitation of words spoken to him. The memory of sound becomes more fixed and is combined with perceptions from other sensory realms, especially that of the eye. Picture books can now be read because the child takes the greatest delight in connecting their illustrations with the words belonging to them. The word, it is true, is not yet understood, but it is remembered; it has become perception and idea. Because the word sense has developed as sense activity, it has begun to perceive the word and to transform this perception into an idea.
When in the second half of the second year the child enters the first age of questioning and makes such startling progress in the second stage of speech development, when he begins to ask the names of things and beings and acquires the new words as quickly as possible by simple repetition, it seems as if true thought action might be appearing in the child. Thus, W. Stern writes:
The occurrence just described must undoubtedly be considered as a mental act of the child in the real sense of the word. The insight into the relation between sign and import that the child gains here is something fundamentally different from simply dealing with perceptions and their associations. The demand that some name must belong to every object, whatever its nature, may be considered as a real - perhaps the child's first - general thought. (14)
Stern, however, though he comes from the school of Brentano and Husserl, falls victim to one of those fatal confusions that lead to incomprehension of the independently active thought sense. It is impossible to expect from a two-year-old child a 'general' act of thinking, and to imagine that he logically comprehends that everything has a name. Though the child later becomes aware of this fact, it is due not to an act of cognition but to one of perception when the word sense is joined by the thought sense. Rudolf Steiner says, 'Indeed, there also exists a direct and immediate perception for that which is revealed in a concept, so that we must speak of a sense of concept. What we can experience within our own soul as a concept, we can also receive as revealed from an external being. (15)
It is this that begins to be unveiled in the two-year-old child. The words become gates and windows for looking into the world of ideas, and he can perceive these ideas even if he cannot yet think them.
Stern also points out that with 'naming', the third root of speech tendency, the 'intentional' one as he calls it, begins to work. But these intentional relations are acts that occur between the different sense regions. They are not soul processes belonging to the region of thought. When seen from another side, it becomes even clearer that we are concerned here with an awakening - one could almost say, the first dawning of the thought sense. In the second part of these investigations we dealt briefly with the so-called 'change of meaning of words in this phase of development. We drew attention to the fact that these are by no means chance designations but that children draw the contours of a comprehensive concept as an idea much more ingeniously than grown-ups are able to do. Valentine (16) gives some relevant examples of fundamental importance, to each of which I have added the necessary comments:
E.W. uses at fifteen months the word, 'door,' for doors, garden gates and water taps.' Here we have a grasp of things that can be 'opened. This is a much wider concept than the single words would indicate by themselves. The idea of 'opening is represented by the word, door.'
B. at nineteen months first calls a sparrow, 'dickie,' and then all birds, later still all flies, spiders and bits of fluff floating in the air. Again we have a comprehensive idea, 'flying,' and the name 'dickie' is given to everything that flies or has the potentiality of flying.
B. at twenty months first says, 'go(ne)' when objects disappear or food is finished. He says it again when he has had enough food and pushes the rest away.' The passive use of 'go' becomes an active one produced at will. The meaning has not changed at all; it was well-defined from the beginning, but always broad and general.
Another child (17) at seventeen months uses the word 'eijebapp, (for eisenbahn, railway), which until then was a designation only for his toy railway, and for some dogs lined up in a row. Here we can easily discover the identity of form impressions and their naming with the same word. But we cannot call this deeds of thinking, but identifications that show the 'idea of a word to have been grasped, but grasped as form, as perception. On the other hand, there are also many instances where the comprehension of the idea of a word has been too narrow, when a child, for instance, applies the word 'armchair' only to one definite type of chair, but does not recognize those of unfamiliar form.
Many more examples could be given but the principle presented here shows that at about eighteen months the child begins to develop his thought sense in addition to the already perfected sense of speech. This sense activity starts rather abruptly and suddenly because the thought sense is awakened at the moment when the names of things have become experience. It might also be said that at the moment the thought sense awakens in the child all things receive a name. In this way, by becoming bearers of names, words assume their meaning. The further development of the thought sense occurs in a slightly different form from that of the sense of speech, which grows firmer and stronger because no new words were acquired. In the case of the thought sense, however, a rapid acquisition of new words occurs making it possible to grasp as comprehensively as possible the images of ideas in all their manifoldness.
These images of ideas can be conceived by the child either more broadly or more narrowly than in their later correspondence to fully developed speech. They are, however, in no way arbitrary. They only differ in dimension, which is directly related to the child's breadth or narrowness, that is, with the breadth of his soul existence, which expands beyond his true being, and with the narrowness of his earthly bodily existence in which he is a little child. This continues its expression right into the awakening and handling of the thought sense.
One of the most moving examples of the awakening of the thought sense can be seen in the way the seven-year-old Helen Keller suddenly grasped an understanding of words. Her teacher, Miss Sullivan, reports:
We went out to the pump house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled 'w-a-t-e-r' into Helen's free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came over her face. She spelled 'w-a-t-e-r' several times. Then she dropped to the ground, asking for the name of the earth and that of the pump and trellis. Suddenly turning around, she asked for iny name. I spelled, 'teacher.' At this moment the nurse came to the pump house with Helen's little sister. Helen spelled, 'baby,' and pointed to the nurse. This was the first time she used a word spelled out as means of communication by herself. On the way back to the house she was in great excitement and learned the name of every object she touched so that she had added some thirty new words to her vocabulary within a few hours. Some of them were, 'door,' 'open,' 'shut,' 'give,' 'go, and ‘come.’ (18)
The next morning Miss Sullivan added a postscript to the letter she had written the previous evening. It read,
Helen got up this morning like a radiant fairy. She flew from one object to another, asked for the names of everything and, full of joy, kissed me. Last night when she went to bed, quite on her own she snuggled into my arms and kissed me for the first time. I thought my heart would break, so full of joy was it.
Here we must bear in mind that for weeks previous the teacher of this deaf-blind child had inscribed the names of things into her hand in sign language. The child could repeat them, but she could not grasp or perceive them. They were signs without meaning. Her speech sense existed as gesture sense. Suddenly, however, as if by revelation, her thought sense awakened and from that moment - that world moment - on her spirit being was at home on earth. (19) She could, like Adam, call things by their names. A new light transfigured her face because the light of the spirit had awakened in her and radiated from her.
A similar joy, which is not so immediate because it does not awake so suddenly, also illuminates the two-year-old child. He is accepted here on earth as a human being through the fact that he can comprehend the names of things. He has become an Adam.
The physical organ of the sense of speech
Now that we have described the unfolding of the senses of speech and of thought in the light of speech development, we can take a further step toward an understanding of these phenomena.
It is indeed new and somewhat startling to have to accept the fact that everything hitherto regarded as a complicated act of thinking is reduced to a simple sense experience. Thus, a small child does not think about the meaning of the words he acquires but perceives it through his senses. This may be difficult to accept because the words, 'sentient' or 'sense experience, are so narrowly bound up with our habitual way of thinking about then. For us, 'sense, or 'sentient, is everything connected with those experiences that we have in the outer world, where we see and hear, smell and taste the qualities of the things we perceive.
We also have sensations of pain, hunger and thirst, and we dimly experience our equilibrium in space and the position of our limbs relative to each other. These are sense experiences that we continually receive. With them our sensation of life and existence is most intimately connected. These sense perceptions, however, are experiences that, although vague and dull and not entering directly the field of consciousness, are nevertheless significant. For the loss of equilibrium or a disturbance in feeling the position of our limbs, or also diminished sensation of pain can lead to the most serious impairment of our existence. They are at least symptoms of deep-seated illness. These sense experiences of our body and soul conditions, to which we must add our feelings of well-being or discomfort, belong to the sphere of sense processes.
Even for the latter we can still accept the word 'sentient in its general characterization. Our body is only part of the 'outer World and we can experience it as such by means of a special group of senses. We not only see it partly from outside and hear it speak and sing, but we feel its condition quite directly in pleasure and pain, in being well or unwell, and we know this to be so not only for ourselves but for everyone.
How is something supposed to become the content of our senses that lies beyond the 'sense' world and reveals itself only as thought? It is still possible to retain some of the 'sense' character of the perception in the word sense, since this represents only a kind of widened sense of hearing. What is revealed in hearing as a single sound or tone becomes, in the homogeneous perception of a sound, complex in the word sense.
In the sound of a vowel or consonant many single sounds are joined that the word sense (or sense of speech) comprehends as a whole, as a homogeneous form. Just as through the sense of hearing we can grasp a melody from single tones, so through the medium of the sense of speech we can perceive a word or succession of words from the joining of single sounds.
After this has happened, another sphere is opened and through the word we are supposed to sense and perceive the meaning it expresses. Everything that precedes this process in the field of perception is of a different character, since a thing or a being tastes, smells, has colour and form, utters tones and sounds - all of which are qualities of its existence. Even the name it bears still belongs to it and is part of its character and existence. The idea, the concept that is it, itself, however, is not a part or a portion, but much more than that. It is something indivisible, the 'ens' itself. It can well bear different names, it can be called, 'dog,' but it can also be called, canis, chien, or, Hund. It can have many such names, just as it can have an infinite number of attributes. But 'the' dog, the dog-hood is contained in each name, in each attribute so that it is a uniform whole in all its differentiation. Is this indivisibleness, however, this being, which, when it is we, ourselves, we designate with the word, 'I, supposed to be given to us as perception, so that not only qualities but even the bearer of these qualities is supposed to become our immediate experience?
Yet how should an understanding be possible between men if this immediate experience did not exist? Can it be imagined that thinking can be measured in any other way except by the perception of concepts and ideas? The prevailing view that from our manifold experiences we gain the necessary concepts through gradual abstraction cannot be upheld. We can only begin to comprehend the miracle of word understanding in the child, if in our consistent investigation of the spheres of the senses we also include those that bring to our experience not only the qualities of the things but their ‘ens’ itself.
When this is understood, a further, weighty problem confronts us that results from the question, If for every sense process hitherto known, an organ can be found in the body, where do the senses of speech and thought have their physical organization? Nothing is known about this even though there is no part of our body that has not been thoroughly investigated anatomically down to the last detail. Since it is a case of Sense processes, however, we must ask about the sense organs pertaining to them. Only after these have been found, examined and investigated, can the senses of speech and thought reveal themselves as 'comprehensible' entities.
In his Riddles of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner outlined the nature of the senses of speech and thought and added the following remarks:
It leads to a faulty psychology and theory of knowledge if one does not sharply distinguish between the 'grasping of thoughts' and the activity of thinking, and fails to recognize the sense character of the former. One makes this mistake because the organ for 'taking in words (vernehmen) and that for 'grasping thoughts are not externally as perceptible as the ear for 'hearing. In truth, there exist organs for these two perceptive activities just as the ear exists for hearing.' (20)
The spiritual investigator, as we see, has no doubts about the existence of physical organs either for word sense or thought sense and these two functions can become really effective only through them. Is it at all possible to find these organs in the multitude of the morphological structures of the human body? So far no one in Science has even thought of these two senses, let alone tried to assign working organs to them. It could be, however, that the functions of certain well-known morphological structures have been misinterpreted and activities attributed to them that they do not really perform. In other words, special parts of our body could be the organs of our senses of thought and speech that have not yet been recognized as such because these senses themselves are still unknown.
If this surmise is true, it will not be a question of finding a 'new' organ because the human body has been completely investigated macroscopically as well as microscopically. What will be necessary is a new interpretation of the existing organ and tissue structures So that they appear in a new order and shape. Then a number of organs to which no common basic design has hitherto been attributed may be recognized that will form the physical organization we hope to find. Here we have reached an important point of departure to which we want to hold fast for the time being.
Looking back on our past considerations, we found that the unfolding of the sense of speech occurs exactly at the end of the first year, and the thought sense breaks through in the course of the second year. In these periods of development the child acquires an upright position, the ability to walk and the faculty of speech. Does the sense of speech appear at the end of the first year because it is intimately bound up with the acquisition of the ability to walk? Indeed, is it not conceivable that man's ability to walk upright is the prerequisite for the sense of speech? Could this perhaps be the reason why so many children who have difficulties in acquiring an upright position also find it so hard to acquire speech and speech understanding? Is this the reason why an intimate connection exists between man's motor activities and his sense of speech? Can only the acquisition of the ability to walk upright build the organ that then acts as the sense organ for the understanding of words?
A serious consideration of such questions can lead to the further deliberation that the acquisition of walking, as described in the first chapter of this book, is the product of man's gradually gaining control of his voluntary muscles by means of his self, his ego. In the course of the first year, this process builds up a distinct organ as part of our nervous system that is called the pyramidal system.’ It consists of groups of nerves that extend from the voluntary muscles of the limbs and the trunk into the spinal cord, where they come in contact with another group of nerves running up the spinal cord and terminating in definite locations in the cortical regions of the cerebrum. This whole complex of nerves, extending from the cortex via the spinal cord to the single muscles, is described as the pyramidal system. It is a highly complex and extensive organ, which constitutes an essential part of our nervous system.
Until quite recently, physiologists and neurologists were firmly convinced that this was a group of motor nerves that caused voluntary muscular movements. Of late, however, strong objections have been raised against this conception both in physiology and neurology. Clinical observations of the ill and the results of extensive brain operations have shown that these motor nerves function as such only under certain conditions. Movements that are experimentally induced through these nerves differ decidedly in form and character from normal movements, which are suppressed by artificial stimulation of the pyramidal system. (21) Modern neurology is thus faced with a riddle, which at present it hardly dares to admit, let alone to try to solve. This most human of all nerve groupings, Collectively called the pyramid path, is functionally unrecognized today. We know its pathological performance when it fails through injury or illness, but its normal function is veiled in darkness.
Thus we see in the pyramidal system a morphological entity, a group of nerves that apparently does not perform the function hitherto assigned to it. Though closely connected with voluntary movements, it certainly is not the cause of them. This morphological entity is formed during the first year of life, but once its formation is completed it seems to be no longer directly connected with the functional achievement of walking upright and the voluntary mobility associated with it. The nerve apparatus thus formed has taken an intimate part in the acquisition of the ability to walk upright, but when this is achieved, it begins to place itself at the disposal of new functions. This is a form of functional change that should be noted.
Rudolf Steiner gives a description in which he explains the nature and form of the physical organ of the sense of speech:
Insofar as we have the power to move and to put into action everything we have within ourselves as movement, when we move our hands, or nod our head, for example - insofar as we have these forces to set our body into motion, their lies within us as the basis for this faculty of movement a physical organism. And this is not the physical organism of life, but of the faculty of movement. (22)
Steiner means something quite specific here. He is not referring to movement that appears as voluntary motor activity, but to the physical organization through which mobility manifests itself. Is he not referring to the pyramidal system? This system, as we have seen, is not the cause of voluntary movements, yet they are executed in connection with it. Then Steiner adds:
This organism of the faculty of movement is at the same time the organ of perception for speech, for words that are addressed to us by others. We could not understand words if we did not have in us this physical apparatus for movement. It is really true that to the extent that the nerves go out from our central nervous system to all our organs of movement, we also find there the sense apparatus for words that are spoken to us. (23)
These words only confirm what I have tried to describe above because the nerves that 'go from our central nervous system to all our organs of movement are without doubt the nerves of the pyramidal system. We have, therefore, to seek the sense organ of the sense of speech in the pyramidal path and in the nerve structures belonging to it. Here is a thousandfold instrument whose strings are strung between the muscles and the brain and in their totality serve our understanding of speech.
This view has been confirmed by clinical research carried out by the director of the Neurological Clinic in Hamburg. K. Conrad made extensive investigations in the localization of certain speech disturbances in the brain. (24) He was able to show that these aphasic disturbances occur at the time when the cerebrum has been injured or destroyed in those parts known to be the regions in which the pyramidal system has its origin, and that these aphasic disturbances are mostly those that have to do with a partial or complete loss of speech understanding. Such patients are either unable to understand words addressed to them or they lose the faculty of speaking. The latter state is conditioned by the fact that the comprehension of word forms has been preserved only in part or not at all.
We have now gained a fundamental insight into the phenomenology of the sense of speech. We have recognized its intimate connection with the acquisition of the ability to walk upright and have described its physical organ, which is a purely nervous one consisting only of nerve tissue. The entire System of voluntary muscles is found at the ends of the nerves, and though it is held together by the pyramidal system, it is neither functionally activated nor moved by it. The pyramidal path has become the organ of the word sense through the fact that it belongs to the voluntary motor apparatus as a whole, yet does not move it. On the contrary, it rests quietly within itself. This is the change of function that has occurred here.
Rudolf Steiner describes this:
Suppose I make this movement (hand raised in defence) ... The capacity to make this movement, to the extent it comes out of my entire organism of movement, causes something quite specific because not even the smallest movement is localized in one part, but arises from the whole human organism for movement. By suppressing such a movement, I do what I need to enable me to understand a definite thing expressed in words by another man. I understand what he says not by performing this movement, but by suppressing it, by only stimulating the organism for movement in me - as far as the fingertips, so to say - and then holding it back, stopping it. By suppressing the movement, I comprehend what is spoken. (25)
Here we are given a foundation for an understanding of the function of the word sense. We are shown that it is the movement that is not executed, the gesture that does not express itself, that conveys the understanding of the word addressed to us. The non-accomplished intention, which eliminates itself in statu nascendi and keeps still instead of moving, is the basis of our word sense.
This occurrence can be compared with resonance. When I sing a certain sequence of tones into the piano, they echo back softly. This does not happen when the strings are in vibration, but only when they are at rest. In the same way the spoken word resounds in me when I suppress the movement of its gesture instead of executing it. This happens only through that organ called the pyramidal system, that complex bundle of countless nerves that acts like a damper or mute. It does not execute the voluntary movement but holds it back, thus becoming the instrument in which the spoken word finds its echo or resonance. Understanding the word is the result.
Now we also see why the threshold of the small child's understanding of speech is higher than that of speaking. This was indicated when the development of speech was described. At the end of the first year the child has learned, with the help of the pyramidal system he has developed, to suppress certain gesture movements, and thus has advanced to the understanding of words. He still has not learned speech itself, however, because the understanding of words, the acquisition of the word sense, is a necessary prerequisite for the formation of the motor activity of speaking, that is, the speech movement itself. As long as the child babbles, he has not developed a word sense. The gradual transformation of babbling into speaking occurs only after this development. This must be clearly seen, otherwise, we cannot fully understand the growth of the child's mind. The sense of speech is born through the acquisition of the ability to walk upright, and only through the birth of the sense of speech can speaking unfold.
Rudolf Steiner has often indicated that speaking is formed from the entire voluntary motor activity. In his lecture from which we have been quoting, he describes it in the following way:
On exploring the human being with the methods of spiritual science we find that the basis for understanding words is closely allied to the basis for speech … Speech arises out of the soul life, is enkindled in the soul life through the will. Without our willing it, without the development of a will impulse, naturally no spoken word can arise. If one observes the human being with spiritual scientific means, one sees that when he speaks there occurs in him a process similar to what occurs when he understands something spoken. But when the human being himself speaks, a much smaller portion of his organism, much less of his organism of movement or motor organism, is embraced. That means that the whole motor organism is concerned with the sense of speech, the word sense. The whole motor organism is at the same time the sense of speech. A part of it comes into prominence and is set in motion by the soul when we speak. This part of the motor organism has its chief organ in the larynx, and speech is the stimulation of movements in the larynx through impulses of will. What happens in the larynx through one's own speech is that will impulses emerge from the soul and set in motion the organ of movement concentrated in the system of the larynx, whereas for the perception of words our entire motor organism is the sense organ. (26)
Steiner here points to the fact that the 'motor organism, the resting part of which (the pyramidal system) we have recognized as the organ of the sense of speech, bears speech most intimately within it. The speech process, however, is concentrated in the speech organs, which arrange themselves around the larynx, and the muscles of tongue, cheeks, jaw and larynx are activated within the motor organism.
The physical organ of the sense of thought
Our considerations have reached the point at which we can say that in the course of the child's speech development, the thought sense unfolds. It happens during the second year and the relation of the formation of the thought sense to the acquisition of speech is similar to the relation of the formation of the word sense to the acquisition of the ability to walk upright. In our search for the organ of the thought sense can we conclude that the connection of this organ to the speech organs is similar to the intimate connection of the organ of the speech sense with motor ability? To arrive at an answer, we must examine the nerve supply of the larynx and its complicated muscular apparatus.
The muscles of the larynx present a kind of muscular system in miniature, and in their manifoldness and complexity of arrangement, they make possible all the finer movements necessary for the act of speaking. The muscles of the abdomen, chest, back and limbs are reduced in number and size in the larynx and they are also simplified and drawn together as if in a knot. Yet they render possible the endless variety of muscular combinations needed for the production of the singing and speaking voice in all its modulation. This motor system in miniature is Supplied by two major nerve branches that come from above and below. They penetrate the larynx in pairs on both its right and left sides where they branch out to connect with the muscles and other tissues.
Physiologists have lost their sense of wonder for the fact that these two nerve branches are stems of the vagus nerve, which is one of the twelve cranial nerves. The vagus is special among the cranial nerves because it alone belongs to the autonomic nervous system. This is the plexus that is spread out over the body and regulates the large organs, the blood vessels and the circulation of fluids through the tissues. Its function mainly controls those processes occurring in the subconscious. The excretions of the large glands, the heartbeat, the muscular movements of stomach and intestines, the tension of blood vessels are all governed by the autonomic nervous system. What goes on in this dim realm is regulated by the vagus nerve and is brought to our waking consciousness only when conditions of illness become known through pain, discomfort and sensations like hunger and thirst. It is from this nerve, which belongs to the vegetative layers of our existence, that branches pass to the larynx and regulate speech, one of the highest of human achievements.
This most extraordinary phenomenon demands our full attention. Speaking is an entirely voluntary, motor act and yet, in contrast to all other voluntary movements, it is not bound to the nerves of the pyramidal system. On the contrary, important as it is to human existence, through its nerve supply it belongs to the dull vegetative strata. This can be explained by the fact that the larynx is not part of the muscular apparatus but belongs to the respiratory system. To say this, however, only bridges the abyss produced by the problems of this form complex. The abyss itself remains unexplored. Yet, an understanding of this strange phenomenon should be sought.
In a beautiful essay Rudolf Treichler has shown that the totality of the autonomic nervous system is intimately connected with the sense of life and that one is even justified in speaking of this nervous system as the organ of perception for the sense of life. (27) We can, therefore, ascribe to the totality of our manifestations and processes of life the realm of the vegetative or autonomic system, from which certain sensations, such as hunger and thirst, comfort and discomfort and other bodily sensations reach the threshold of consciousness.
In the lecture mentioned above in which Rudolf Steiner tries to describe the organs of the three highest senses, he also devotes a passage to the organ of the sense of thought:
What is the organ of perception for the thoughts of another? Inasmuch as we are aware of life and animation within us, it is all that we are. If then, you reflect that you have life throughout your whole organism and that this life is a unity, then the living animation of the entire organism, to the extent it expresses its life in the physical, is the organ for the thoughts that come to us from outside ... If we were not endowed with life, we could not perceive the thoughts of another. I am not here speaking of the sense of life. We are not concerned with the inner perception of our own life because this belongs to the sense of life. But insofar as we bear life within us, everything in us that is the physical organism of that life forms the organ of perception for the thoughts directed toward us by another person. (28)
These indications of Rudolf Steiner clearly show that he saw the organ of the sense of thought in the region of 'activity and life' in us, in those regions that belong to the autonomic nervous system. Can we imagine that this weaving of constructive and destructive life processes is itself the organ of the sense of thought? Steiner makes a definite reservation here when he says, and even repeats, that he means life 'insofar as it expresses itself in the physical' or 'everything in us that is the physical organism of that life.' How should this be understood?
Thorough research has gradually led physiologists and neurologists to distinguish two different parts of the autonomic nervous system - a sympathetic and a parasympathetic region. Quite different functions, which are polar opposites, are attributed to them. The sympathetic system exerts a stimulating effect and the parasympathetic system a calming one. A host of theories and assumptions have been built upon these polar functions of the autonomic nervous system. Hess, who has spent his life with these questions, formulates it thus: 'The sympathetic system serves the unfolding of actual energy, the parasympathetic the restitution and preservation of potential productivity.' (29) Treichler characterizes this polarity in his essay in the following way: 'It should be mentioned that the parasympathetic system, which includes the vagus nerve, serves more the perception of form conditions, while the sympathetic system perceives and communicates the activities of the organs.' (30)
This is a formulation that shows the way to the solution of our problem. The formation of theories about the functions of the vegetative nervous system suffers today from a fatal error. Invariably, an active, motor effect is ascribed to these nerves and the fact that they are purely sensory, sensing organs is almost entirely overlooked. When Treichler assigns a sensitivity for the life activities of the organs to the sympathetic system, he may well have found the right interpretation of it. The sympathetic system is the organ of the sense of life. But what is meant by the perception of form conditions?
Rudolf Steiner has shown that around the seventh year the child experiences a decisive metamorphosis of his life forces. Until then they have been devoted almost exclusively to plastically formative activity in the organism, when they were forming the structure and shape of the organs and tissues. But at the time of the second dentition a part of these formative forces is set free and transformed into those forces needed by our thinking for its activity. What Treichler calls 'perception of form conditions' and associates with the vagus nerve, belongs to those plastically formative life forces that are later active as thought forces.
Can we not dare, on the basis of everything we have presented thus far, to assign to the vagus nerve with all its many branches passing through the whole living organism, the role of the organ of the sense of thought? This nerve is indeed the physical part, the part permanently retained in a material way, of all life processes performed in our organism. Just as the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system is the organ of the sense of life, so the parasympathetic part, which is connected with the brain via the vagus nerve, is the organ of the sense of thought.
Thus, light is thrown on the phenomenon that was the starting point of our deliberations. The muscles of the larynx, as voluntary organs, are supplied from two pairs of nerves branching off from the trunk of the vagus nerve. Now we come to understand why the sense of thought is formed along with the development of speech during the second year. After the child acquires the word sense, he becomes conscious of the surrounding sphere of language. Until then he perceived words and sentences merely as signs for sounds and noises, but now for the first time he begins to understand what is expressed in the spoken word. He also begins to imitate the words and sentences he perceives and to use his larynx for the activity of speaking. For it is not the nerve impulses that make use of the larynx as a speech organ, but the soul itself preparing to speak. Thereby, the speech organ and its muscles, as well as the corresponding nerves, are permeated by the attempts at sound formation continually being made by the child. The muscles gradually come under the domination of the speaking soul and the word images stream through the corresponding nerves into the whole autonomic nervous system. (The concept of the total autonomic nervous system as an anatomical physiological unity is today generally accepted. Stöhr, for example, writes: 'Results of anatomical investigations justify the assumption that the whole of the sympathetic system is a closed one, from which the outermost parts are sunk as independent little branches into the epithelial gland and muscle cells which they have to supply and form an inseparable physiological and anatomical unit or they complete their course as differently shaped sensitive terminals.’) There they merge with the life activities of the whole organism and imprint it with the characteristics of his native language. Man is deeply influenced in all his life processes by the effects of the language in whose sphere he grows up and lives. This comes about along the path we have just described.
The word forms that are counted among the life processes flow in and stream along the path of the nerves. They also work through the vagus nerve with all its ramifications and in this way transform it into an organ that can act as the physical apparatus for the activity of the sense of thought.
The formative forces active in the life processes are identical with those that have built up all living forms in the world. They work in nature as well as in man, and thus are part of the eternal ideas that form all life and being. When they meet with the forms of words and sounds, the way leading through the gate of the word is opened to the ideas themselves.
We have called the pyramidal system a musical instrument with many thousands of strings that enable us to perceive speech, and we can call the vagus nerve as the sum total of all that is active in us as life organisms. This realm is the sphere of the creative ideas that hold sway in the living organism, form-creating and form-destroying. We can look upon this life sphere as a mighty brain, not fixed in shape, but being formed ever anew in the stream of life and deeds. The twigs and branches of the vagus nerve rise from it, combine with each other, and converge like the twigs and branches in the crown of a tree to form the trunk. But here the trunk rises from below upward and plunges its roots into the other brain that is enclosed as a physical structure in the skull. The vagus nerve passes from the living interplay of the organs into the dead and rigidly formed brain. On this bridge between life and death the organ of the sense of thought is formed ever anew. The ideas and concepts brought to us through the words of other human beings meet in the vagus nerve the living formative forces that are active in the life organism of man. From this meeting arises the immediate cognition characteristic of all sense processes. It can enter the sphere of consciousness because the vagus nerve has such a close anatomical connection with the brain. Thus, the ideas contained in the word images can be recognized and experienced in our waking consciousness.
These phenomena now make possible a beginning for the understanding of the morphological manifestation that finds its expression in the nerve supply of the larynx. Here the parasympathetic nervous system, to the extent that the vagus nerve is Involved in it, is revealed as the sense organ of the sense of thought. (In this Section I have refrained quite intentionally from discussing the exposition given by H. E. Lauer in the fifth chapter of his fundamental book on the Twelve Senses of Man. There an attempt is also made to describe the physical organs of the 'higher’ senses. Such a discussion here would become needlessly long and would be of interest to only a limited number of the readers for whom this book is meant.)
The Ego Sense
The knowledge gained in the last section of this chapter can be summarized as follows:
1. In the course of the first year the child acquires the sense of speech in connection with the ability to walk upright.
2. The development of the sense of speech begins in the second year and opens the sphere of the word to the child.
3. The sense of thought is developed in the course of learning to speak.
With the awakening of the sense of thought in the third year, the child opens himself to the thoughts communicated to him through the words of other people. As a climax of this development, we discovered that the child could call himself by the term, L' He thereby crossed the threshold of the third year.
In a later presentation of his theory of the senses. Rudolf Steiner adds the ego sense to the senses of speech and of thought, and characterizes it in the following way: It is not a question here that one knows of one's own ego, but that one confronts another person whose ego becomes revealed. The ego sense perceives the ego of the other. That is the ego sense, not that one perceives one's own ego.’ (31)
An especially detailed description of how the ego sense functions was given by Rudolf Steiner at the occasion of the founding of the Waldorf School. There he said:
If you meet another person, the following occurs: For a short period you perceive a person, and he or she makes an impression upon you. That impression disturbs you inwardly; you feel that the person, a being comparable to yourself, makes an impression upon you like an attack. The result is that you 'defend' yourself inwardly, you resist this attack and become inwardly aggressive toward the person. In this aggression you become crippled, and the aggression ceases. Then the other person can again make an impression upon you, and after you thus have time to regain your aggressive strength, you carry out another act of aggression. This is the relationship that exists when one person meets another and perceives the other I - that is devotion to the other - inner resistance; sympathy-antipathy … However, there is still something else. As sympathy develops, you go to sleep in the other person; as antipathy develops, you wake up, and so forth. In the vibrations of meeting another person, there is a rapid alternation between waking and sleeping. We have to thank the organ of the I-sense that this can occur. This organ of I-sensing is so formed that it explores the I of another person, not wakefully but in its sleeping will, and then quickly delivers the results of this sleepy exploration to cognition, that is, to the nervous system. (32)
Here we see clearly the two-phase character of ego perception, which seems to function like a breathing process becomes inward. With this two-phase nature the period in the child's development can be indicated, at least in passing, during which the child begins to unfold his ego sense. During the first two years the child is primarily a being reacting 'sympathetically toward other people. Especially if he is not spoiled, the child is full of confidence toward other people and seldom feels discomfort toward strangers. An infant may often be hesitant when meeting others and may feel fear or anxiety toward strangers, but once he has overcome his shyness, he will throw himself into the other being, fully of sympathy. He 'sleeps' into the other one.
E. Köhler writes about her Annie at the age of two years and six months, Annie wants to be sociable. Children of different ages attract her attention. When she sees a child in the street, she stops, runs toward him, gives him her hand and wants to kiss him. Frightened mothers and nursemaids often pull their children away and look unkindly at Annie. She does not feel this mistrust.' (33) In the meeting with other egos this child is still entirely clothed in sympathy and does not confront them 'consciously,’ which means that she has not yet developed the alternation between sympathy and antipathy in the realm of the ego sense.
For this age there hardly exists any difference between man, animal and object. All things in the surrounding world are equal in action as well as in suffering. Thus, Annie can say that her toy rabbit will watch her eating, while the next day it will be the orange that lies on the table that will watch her. Children, therefore, have pity for things as well as people, and a broken biscuit can bring them as easily to tears as a mother who must lie in bed with a headache. I remember a little three-year-old melancholic who, when we all sat at table, suddenly broke into bitter tears. He gradually let us know that it was the chair standing so lonely and unused against the wall that caused him such great misery.
Such behaviour is not connected with the fact that the infant treats all things anthropomorphically, as superficial psychology would have it. It is rather the other way around, and everything is felt uniformly without life and soul. It, therefore, can be pitied, feared, mothered and embraced with sympathy. W. Hansen quite rightly says:
A separation between subject and object does not yet exist for the child in the sense that the subject has consciousness through the knowledge of the object from which he differs. From the fact that he applies names used for soul qualities such as thinking, being good, expecting, enjoying, etc., also to his animal, plant and material surroundings, we are justified in drawing only one conclusion: That the child does not yet separate these domains of the world from those of the ensouled human being, nor does he draw a line between different realms of existence. He thinks and reacts toward everything in the same way. (34)
This illustrates clearly that the ego sense has not yet developed in the infant. Otherwise, he could immediately differentiate between man and the other beings and things of his environment. The child embraces everything with a certain amount of sympathy, which means he sleeps into things and beings without being able to meet them in the recoil of the awakening antipathy. This process of waking up does not occur until about the time of the first period of defiance. Between the third and fourth years, the child begins to oppose the surrounding world for the first time, and to put his own will anti-pathetically over against his environment. Everything that until this point had been easy and possible without fuss, now comes about under difficulties and with arguments. The child wants to do everything himself- to dress and undress by himself, to decide independently how to play and often to do exactly the opposite of what grown-ups would like him to do. During this time, his first conflicts with his mother, brothers and sisters occur because the child becomes aware of his own independent being quite differently from before.
The significant meeting, about which we spoke in the third chapter, has taken place. The eternal individuality of the child was called the awakener of the sleeping thinking, and we said, at the moment when both behold each other and confront each other eye to eye, the consciousness of one's own ego awakens for the first time.' This process of becoming conscious is the cause of the first period of defiance.
Remplein describes this stage concretely. He says,
Behind the child's outer rejection of the play community stands an important development of the ego consciousness ... The ego centre, which hitherto had only registered all experiences without becoming conscious of itself, now becomes the object of experience. At the same time the symbiotic unity of child and world falls apart and a first separation occurs between ego and non-ego. This transition happens without deliberation or self-reflection. In action and in meeting the world the child becomes conscious of himself. (35)
This process makes it possible for the 'sympathetic' attitude of the child to become ambivalent and for the child to bring distinctly antipathetic features into the fabric of his experiences. It is not fear, anxiety, shame or repulsion of anything alien that puts him into opposition to his environment. It is rather the awakening consciousness of his self that leads him into an attitude of defiance. It is a truly positive phase of development that starts here and it should be valued as such by parents and teachers. The child wakes up to the consciousness of his own self and does not want to lose this awakening again. Therefore, he becomes defiant.
Along with meeting the other person with sympathy, the attitude of defiance enables the child to acquire rejection also because only in the continuous alternation between these two phases of the soul can the ego sense develop. This development, however, does not seem to progress as quickly and as directly as that of the senses of speech and thought. The ego sense needs a long period of development for its complete unfolding.
In the third chapter we pointed out the 'radical difference between walking and speaking on the one hand and thinking on the other. In a similar way there also exists a radical difference between the senses of speech and thought and the ego sense. Though awakening thinking is a necessary presupposition for the gradual development of the ego sense, this highest sense does not unfold along with the development of thinking in the same way that the senses of speech and thought were formed during the acquisition of the ability to walk upright and of speech. The development of thinking may certainly produce the awakening of the ego Consciousness, but this is not the ego sense. Only a being who has gained full consciousness of his own ego can as a Consequence of this develop an ego sense.
The acquisition of thought may well become the mirror of the ego in which the latter then begins to experience itself. This self-experience makes possible the antipathetic attitude essential for the forming of the ego sense. The meeting of two ego conscious beings results in those two phases, the sympathetic as well as the antipathetic impulses, which lead to an immediate experience of the other ego. Up to now, detailed observations in this field of child development hardly exist. One can, however, assume that in shape and appearance, the father is the most important stimulator for the development of the ego Sense. He becomes a symbol of the surrounding world that confronts the child, not protecting like the mother, but demanding.
The formation of the ego sense is not completed until the ninth year. It is consolidated at this threshold of the child's development and Rudolf Steiner has called particular attention to it. He describes this time of transformation in the following way:
In the ninth year the child experiences what is really a complete transformation in his soul, indicating a significant change in his bodily-physical experience. From then on, the child begins to experience himself as separate from his surroundings. He learns to distinguish between world and self. When we are able to observe rightly, we must say that before this revolution in human consciousness, the world and self flow more or less together. From the ninth year (this is of course meant approximately) man distinguishes between himself and the world. This must be thoroughly taken into account in the teaching material and educational life that we bring to the child from the ninth year on. It will be well, up to this time, not to confuse the child with a description or characterization of things that are separated from man or can be regarded separately from man. You see, if we tell the child fables or fairy tales, we speak about animals or perhaps plants in the same way as we speak of people. Animals and plants are personified, and quite rightly, because the child does not yet distinguish between self and world, because everywhere in the world the child sees something that he experiences in himself. (36)
With the ninth year this experience changes radically. The formation of the ego sense is completed and the child learns through the experience of this sense to differentiate between man and the other beings of nature. The age of fairy tales and legends comes to an end. Parents and teachers are observed critically and the ego begins to measure itself against other egos. The awakening into the sphere of personality has set in. What began with the first age of defiance has now reached its conclusion.
On two occasions Rudolf Steiner spoke about the sense organ underlying the ego sense. One passage reads as follows: The organ for perceiving the I spreads over the entire human being and consists of a very subtle substance. For that reason, people do not speak of an organ for perceiving another person’s self or ego. (37)
In the second passage he speaks much more extensively about this sense organ.
Ego perception has its own organ, just like the perception of sight or sound. Only, while this organ has its starting point in the head, it is formed by all the rest of the body as well insofar as that body depends on the head. The whole man, understood as an organ of perception, and as he is sensibly-physically constructed, is really an organ of perception for the ego of another. One might also say that, insofar as it has the whole man dependent on it and rays its faculty of ego perception throughout the entire man, the organ of perception for the ego of another is the head. Man at rest, man as a stationary human form with the head as its centre, is the perceptive organ for the ego of another man. Thus the organ of perception for the ego is the largest perceptive organ we have, and we ourselves as a physical human being are this organ. (38)
Little can be added to such a description because it is manifest that the entire human body, insofar as that body depends on the head, is the organ of perception for the ego sense. Until about the ninth year, however, the child grows directly through the forces of the head. During infancy the head is still overly large in comparison with the rest of the body and this disproportion is harmonized only gradually, especially between the third and ninth years. The limbs stretch, the trunk of the body grows larger and the head lags behind in growth. As a result, the particularly well-formed body structure arises that children have around the ninth year. From infant form through the first 'change of form' occurring between the seventh and eighth years, that 'shape before puberty,’ which in its architecture shows such perfect harmony, has come about.
The attainment of this shape of the body really depends on the head, whose growth stands in closest connection with the function of two inner secretory glands of the brain, the pineal gland or epiphysis, and the pituitary gland or hypophysis. The working together of these two glands regulates the forces of growth and form in such a way that they lead to a harmonious or disharmonious development of the body. The equilibrium between epiphysis and hypophysis results in the harmonious shape of the nine-year-old child. Before this time the activity of the epiphysis predominates, later that of the hypophysis. The development of this perfect bodily form, which is corrupted only later in puberty, coincides with the attainment of the ego sense. During this stage man has reached the highest level of his physical development. He has become the true image of man who has also unfolded the highest sense, the ego sense. In a certain sense, this is also the beginning of a descent because, during pre-puberty and maturity, the body and limbs become earthbound and lose that touch for the other world that they still retained until about the ninth year. The growing human being falls prey to the earth, becomes heavy, burdened and worried about his path of destiny.
He has, however, gained the ego sense, and this he is allowed to keep and carry with him as a lifelong gift from this time onward. The senses of speech and thought likewise remain with him as gifts through which he can approach the spirit of all existence. Through the sense of speech all treasures of the word are opened. Through the sense of thought the wisdom of all past and present creation is unveiled. Through the sense of ego he can recognize the other man as his brother. Thus, childhood has endowed him with a possession never to be lost.
Walking, speaking and thinking have made him a man. They have raised him from a creature to a being who can recognize himself. The senses of speech, thought and ego on the other hand help him to approach the spirit depths of all existence. They open paths into higher worlds that lie beyond the world of the senses. In those three highest senses the sphere of the senses begins to abolish itself and points the way to its own overcoming. This is a sacrifice because it leads to annihilation. Further on, a resurrection is waiting. The sense world will break asunder and a spirit world will open up beyond.
Getrost, das Leben schreitet Our life with courage ending
Zum ew'gen Leben hin; Eternal life draws near,
Von inn’rer Glut geweitet With inner glow expanding
Verklärt sich unser Sinn. Transfigured sense grows clear.
Die Sternwelt wird zerfliessen The star world now is flowing
Zum goldnen Lebenswein, As living golden wine,
Wir werden sie geniessen Its joys on us bestowing,
Und lichte Sterne sein. (39) Ourselves as stars shall shine.
(Novalis)
Notes
- W. Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 147.
- Scheler, Abhandlungen und Aufsätze, Vol. 1, p. 329ff.
- Binswanger, Ausgewählte Vórträge und Aufsätze, Vol. 2. p. 308.
- Steiner, The Wisdom of Man, lecture of October 23, 1909.
- Steiner, Von Seelenrätseln.
- Valentine, The Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 393.
- Valentine, The Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 399.
- Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 306.
- Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 146.
- Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 308.
- Steiner, Anthroposophie, Ein Fragment, p. 93.
- Valentine, The Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 414.
- Steiner, Anthroposophie, Ein Fragment, p. 94.
- Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 165.
- Steiner, Anthroposophie, Ein Fragment, p. 94.
- Valentine, The Psychology of Early Childhood, p. 420.
- Quoted from Kainz, Psychologie der Sprache, Vol. 2, p. 52.
- Quoted from Schmitt, "Helen Keller und die Sprache.'
- See also K. König, Die Geistgestalt Helen Kellers.'
- Steiner, Von Seelenrätseln, p. 225.
- See also the detailed expositions by the author, “Der Motorische Nerv wird entthront.' and “Die Nerventätigkeit.”
- Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe, lecture of Sep. 2, 1916.
- Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe, lecture of Sep. 2, 1916.
- Conrad, "New Problems of Aphasia.”
- Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe, lecture of Sep. 2, 1916.
- Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe, lecture of Sep. 2, 1916.
- Treichler, “Von der Welt des Lebenssinnes.”
- Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe, lecture of Sep. 2, 1916. 29.
- Quoted from Kroetz, Allgemeine Physiologie der autonomen nervoesen Correlationen.'
- Treichler, “Von der Welt des Lebenssinnes.”
- Steiner, Weltwesen und Ichheit, June 20, 1916.
- Steiner, Foundations of Human Experience, lecture of Aug. 29, 1919, p. 140.
- E. Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes, p. 110.
- Hansen, Die Entwicklung des kindlichen Weltbildes, p. 211.
- Remplein, Die seelische Entwicklung in der Kindheit und Reifezeit, p. 145.
- Steiner, The Renewal of Education, lecture of April 3, 1920.
- Steiner, Foundations of Human Experience, lecture of Aug. 29, 1919, p. 139.
- Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe, lecture of Sep. 2, 1916.
- Novalis, Hymns to the Night.
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