Course WC1 1
Human Development
Introduction
The online Waldorf Certificate Studies Program Course Human Development is based on the study and work with lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1919.
These Lectures were given as a preparation for their task to the teachers of the original Waldorf School in Stuttgart, the first School to be founded on the work of Rudolf Steiner in 1919. They are not, however, only concerned with education; they contain Steiner's fundamental views on the psychology of man. Steiner's psychology differs from all other psychologies in that it takes account not only of the forces playing into man from the past, but also of future states of consciousness and being, which will not be realized till the far distant future, but which are already affecting his character and density. All new things have to find their unique vocabulary and the reader will find some unfamiliar terms in these lectures. But as Steiner's picture of the human being unfolds itself they will gradually assume shape and meaning. It is in the balancing out of the past with the future that man escapes determinism and finds his true nature as a free being. In this lies the importance of these lectures. All students of psychology, and not only teachers, will find in them new light on the absorbing riddle of the human being. Course Outline
Human Development
Lesson 1: Foreword/Lectures I, II, III Lesson 2: Lectures IV, V, VI Lesson 3: Lectures VII, VIII, IX Lesson 4: Lectures X, XI, XII Lesson 5: Lectures XIII, XIV Lesson 6: Final Paper |
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Tasks and Assignments for Lesson WC1 1 4
Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.
1. Summarize the content of the three lectures in your own words.
2. Lecture 10: As teachers we must understand the human being as a micro-cosmos. Please elaborate.
3. Lecture11: "Teacher can only educate part of child." What is meant with this statement. Give practical examples.
4. Lecture 12: How do the human organs, health and illness relate to education and the development of the child and the human being?
Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.
1. Summarize the content of the three lectures in your own words.
2. Lecture 10: As teachers we must understand the human being as a micro-cosmos. Please elaborate.
3. Lecture11: "Teacher can only educate part of child." What is meant with this statement. Give practical examples.
4. Lecture 12: How do the human organs, health and illness relate to education and the development of the child and the human being?
Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.
Study Material for Lesson WC1 1 4
"Study of Man" by Rudolf Steiner (Lectures X, XI, XII)
Lecture X
We have spoken of the nature of man from the point of view of the soul and spirit. We have at least thrown some light on these two aspects. We shall have to supplement the knowledge thus gained by uniting the point of view of the body with that of the spirit and of the soul so that we may get a complete survey of man, and may be able to pass on from this to an understanding of his external bodily nature also.
First we will recall — what must have struck us from various aspects — that the human being has different forms in the three members of his nature. We have pointed out that the head is essentially round; that the true nature of the bodily head is given in this spherical form. Next we pointed out how the chest part of man is a fragment of a sphere. Thus if we draw it diagrammatically we give the form of a sphere to the head, and a moon form to the breast — realizing clearly that in this moon form a part of a sphere, a fragment of a sphere is contained. We must consequently, allow that the moon form of the chest can be completed. You will only rightly understand this central member of man's nature, the breast-form, when you regard it, too, as a sphere but as a sphere of which only one part, a moon, is visible, and the other part invisible.
From this it is perhaps apparent that in ancient times, when men had a greater capacity for seeing forms, they were not wrong in speaking of the sun as corresponding to the head, and of the moon as corresponding to the breast form. And just as when the moon is not full we see it only as a fragment of a sphere, so too we really only see in the breast form a fragment of the middle system of man. From this you can understand that the head form of man is a comparatively complete, self-enclosed thing. The head form reveals, physically, that it is a thing enclosed in itself. It is, so to speak, just what it appears. The head form is the one that conceals least of itself.
The breast part of the human being, on the other hand, conceals very much of itself. It leaves part of itself invisible. It is very important for a knowledge of man's nature to realize that a large part of the breast portion is invisible. We can say that the breast portion of man shows its bodily nature in one direction, that is, towards the back; but towards the front it passes over into the soul element. The head is altogether body; the breast portion of man is body towards the back, soul towards the front. Thus it is only in that we have our head resting on our shoulders that we carry about a real body. We consist of body and soul in so far as we separate out our breast from the visible part of the breast system and allow it to be worked upon and permeated by the soul.
Into these two members of the human being, head and breast (more obviously of course in the breast portion), the limbs are inserted. The third principle is the limb man. How can we understand the limb man? We can only understand this third member when we realize that certain parts of the spherical form remain visible, as with the breast portion, only in this case they are different parts. In the breast system a part of the periphery remains. In the limb system it is more an inner part consisting of the radii of a sphere that remains over; so that the inner parts of the sphere are inset as limbs.
We never arrive at the truth — as I have often said to you on other occasions — if we only analyze things and divide them, into parts. We must always interweave one thing with another; for this is the nature of living things. We can say: we have the limb man, which consists of the limbs. But the head also has its limbs. If you look carefully at the skull you find, for example, that attached to the skull are the bones of the upper and lower jaws. They are properly attached like limbs. Thus the skull, too, has its limbs: the upper and lower jaws which are joined to it. Only in the skull the limbs are stunted. In the other parts of man they have developed to their proper size, but in the skull they are stunted and are only a kind of bone structure. There is yet another difference:
We have spoken of the nature of man from the point of view of the soul and spirit. We have at least thrown some light on these two aspects. We shall have to supplement the knowledge thus gained by uniting the point of view of the body with that of the spirit and of the soul so that we may get a complete survey of man, and may be able to pass on from this to an understanding of his external bodily nature also.
First we will recall — what must have struck us from various aspects — that the human being has different forms in the three members of his nature. We have pointed out that the head is essentially round; that the true nature of the bodily head is given in this spherical form. Next we pointed out how the chest part of man is a fragment of a sphere. Thus if we draw it diagrammatically we give the form of a sphere to the head, and a moon form to the breast — realizing clearly that in this moon form a part of a sphere, a fragment of a sphere is contained. We must consequently, allow that the moon form of the chest can be completed. You will only rightly understand this central member of man's nature, the breast-form, when you regard it, too, as a sphere but as a sphere of which only one part, a moon, is visible, and the other part invisible.
From this it is perhaps apparent that in ancient times, when men had a greater capacity for seeing forms, they were not wrong in speaking of the sun as corresponding to the head, and of the moon as corresponding to the breast form. And just as when the moon is not full we see it only as a fragment of a sphere, so too we really only see in the breast form a fragment of the middle system of man. From this you can understand that the head form of man is a comparatively complete, self-enclosed thing. The head form reveals, physically, that it is a thing enclosed in itself. It is, so to speak, just what it appears. The head form is the one that conceals least of itself.
The breast part of the human being, on the other hand, conceals very much of itself. It leaves part of itself invisible. It is very important for a knowledge of man's nature to realize that a large part of the breast portion is invisible. We can say that the breast portion of man shows its bodily nature in one direction, that is, towards the back; but towards the front it passes over into the soul element. The head is altogether body; the breast portion of man is body towards the back, soul towards the front. Thus it is only in that we have our head resting on our shoulders that we carry about a real body. We consist of body and soul in so far as we separate out our breast from the visible part of the breast system and allow it to be worked upon and permeated by the soul.
Into these two members of the human being, head and breast (more obviously of course in the breast portion), the limbs are inserted. The third principle is the limb man. How can we understand the limb man? We can only understand this third member when we realize that certain parts of the spherical form remain visible, as with the breast portion, only in this case they are different parts. In the breast system a part of the periphery remains. In the limb system it is more an inner part consisting of the radii of a sphere that remains over; so that the inner parts of the sphere are inset as limbs.
We never arrive at the truth — as I have often said to you on other occasions — if we only analyze things and divide them, into parts. We must always interweave one thing with another; for this is the nature of living things. We can say: we have the limb man, which consists of the limbs. But the head also has its limbs. If you look carefully at the skull you find, for example, that attached to the skull are the bones of the upper and lower jaws. They are properly attached like limbs. Thus the skull, too, has its limbs: the upper and lower jaws which are joined to it. Only in the skull the limbs are stunted. In the other parts of man they have developed to their proper size, but in the skull they are stunted and are only a kind of bone structure. There is yet another difference:
If you observe the limbs of the skull, that is, the upper and lower jaws, you will see that the essential thing in them is that the bone should perform its function. If you examine the limbs which are attached to our whole body, namely, when you consider the limb man proper, you find the essential fact is that they are surrounded by muscles and blood vessels. In a certain way the bones of our arms and legs, hands and feet are only inserted into our muscle and blood system. But in the upper and lower jaws — the limbs of the head — the muscles and blood vessels have shrunken. What does this mean? Muscles and blood are the organic instrument of the will, as we have already heard. Hence it is arms and legs, hands and feet that are principally developed for the will. Blood and muscles, which pre-eminently serve the will, are withdrawn, in a measure, from the limbs of the head, because what has to be developed in them is what tends to intellect, to thinking-cognition. If, then, you want to study how the will reveals itself in the outer bodily forms of the world, you must study the arms and legs, hands and feet. If you want to study how the intelligence of the world is revealed, then you must study the head, or rather the skull, as skeleton; you must see how the upper and lower jaws are attached to the head, and you must examine other parts of the head which are of a limb nature. You can regard all outer forms as revelations of what is within. And indeed you can only understand the outer forms when you look upon them as revelation of what is within.
I have always found that for most men there is a great difficulty in understanding the connection between the tubular bones of the arms and the legs and the shell-like bones of the head. Here it is particularly good for the teacher to master a conception remote from common life. And this brings us to a very, very difficult chapter, to the hardest, perhaps, of all the conceptions we have to gain in these educational lectures.
You know that Goethe was the first to turn his attention to the vertebral theory of the skull, as it is termed. What is meant by this? It means the application of the idea of metamorphosis to man and to his form. When we consider the human spinal column we perceive that one vertebra lies above another. We can take out the single vertebra, with its projections through which the spinal cord passes. Now Goethe was the first to observe (in a sheep skull, in Venice) how all head bones are transformed vertebrae. Imagine some organs puffed out and others indrawn — then you get the shell-like head bones out of the vertebral forms. This made a great impression on Goethe. It drove him to a conclusion of profound importance, namely: that the skull is a transformed, a more highly developed spinal column.
It is comparatively easy to see that the skull bones arise out of the vertebrae of the spine through transformation, through metamorphosis. It is very much harder, very difficult indeed, to see the limb bones — even the limbs of the head, the upper and lower jaws — as a metamorphosis, a transforming of the vertebral bones, or of the head bones (Goethe attempted to do this, but in an external way). Now why is this so difficult? The reason is that a tubular bone, wherever it may be, is indeed also a metamorphosis, a remodeling of a head bone, but a remodeling of a quite special nature. It is comparatively easy to think of a spinal vertebra metamorphosed into a head bone when you think of some parts of it being enlarged and some diminished. But you cannot so easily get the shell-shaped head bones out of the tubular bones of the arms and legs. To do this you have to adopt a certain procedure. You have to deal with the tubular bone of the arm or the leg as you do with a glove or stocking when you turn it inside out to put it on. Now it is comparatively easy to imagine what a glove or a stocking looks like turned inside out. But a tubular bone is not equal in all its parts; it is not so thin as to have the same form inside and out. The inside and outside are differently formed. If your stocking were of malleable material and you could give it an artistic form with all sorts of projections and indentations, and if you then turned it inside out you would no longer have the same form outside as that which would now be inside. And it is like this with the tubular bone. You must turn the inside outwards and the outside inwards and then you get the form of the head bone. Thus human limbs are not merely head bones metamorphosed, they are even more, head bones turned inside out. How does this come about? It is because the head has its center somewhere within. It has its center centrically, if I may put it so. Not so the breast. Its center does not lie within the sphere. The breast has its center very far away. (In the drawing this is only partially indicated because it would be too large if the whole were shown.) Thus the breast has its center far away. Now where is the center of the limb system? This brings us to the second difficulty. The limb system has its center in the whole circumference. The center of the limb system is a sphere; namely, the opposite of a point, the surface of a sphere. The center is really everywhere; hence you can turn in every direction and radii ray in from all sides. They unite themselves with you.
What is in the head takes its rise in the head. What passes through the limbs unites itself within you. This is why I had to say in the other lectures that you must think of the limbs as inserted into the rest of our body. We are really a whole world, only what wants to enter into us from outside condenses at its end and becomes visible. A very minute portion of what we are becomes visible in our limbs. So that the limbs themselves are physical body, but the physical limbs are only the minutest atom of what is really in the limb system of man. Body, soul and spirit are in the limb system of man. The body is only indicated in the limbs, But in the limbs there is also a soul part; and there is within them, too, the spirit part which embraces the whole world.
Now we could also make another drawing of the human being. It could be said that man is, firstly a gigantic sphere which embraces the whole world: then a smaller sphere: and then a smallest sphere. Only the smallest sphere would be completely visible. The somewhat larger sphere would be partially visible. The largest sphere is only visible here at the end of it, where it rays in: the rest is invisible. Thus is the human form wrought by the whole world.
I have always found that for most men there is a great difficulty in understanding the connection between the tubular bones of the arms and the legs and the shell-like bones of the head. Here it is particularly good for the teacher to master a conception remote from common life. And this brings us to a very, very difficult chapter, to the hardest, perhaps, of all the conceptions we have to gain in these educational lectures.
You know that Goethe was the first to turn his attention to the vertebral theory of the skull, as it is termed. What is meant by this? It means the application of the idea of metamorphosis to man and to his form. When we consider the human spinal column we perceive that one vertebra lies above another. We can take out the single vertebra, with its projections through which the spinal cord passes. Now Goethe was the first to observe (in a sheep skull, in Venice) how all head bones are transformed vertebrae. Imagine some organs puffed out and others indrawn — then you get the shell-like head bones out of the vertebral forms. This made a great impression on Goethe. It drove him to a conclusion of profound importance, namely: that the skull is a transformed, a more highly developed spinal column.
It is comparatively easy to see that the skull bones arise out of the vertebrae of the spine through transformation, through metamorphosis. It is very much harder, very difficult indeed, to see the limb bones — even the limbs of the head, the upper and lower jaws — as a metamorphosis, a transforming of the vertebral bones, or of the head bones (Goethe attempted to do this, but in an external way). Now why is this so difficult? The reason is that a tubular bone, wherever it may be, is indeed also a metamorphosis, a remodeling of a head bone, but a remodeling of a quite special nature. It is comparatively easy to think of a spinal vertebra metamorphosed into a head bone when you think of some parts of it being enlarged and some diminished. But you cannot so easily get the shell-shaped head bones out of the tubular bones of the arms and legs. To do this you have to adopt a certain procedure. You have to deal with the tubular bone of the arm or the leg as you do with a glove or stocking when you turn it inside out to put it on. Now it is comparatively easy to imagine what a glove or a stocking looks like turned inside out. But a tubular bone is not equal in all its parts; it is not so thin as to have the same form inside and out. The inside and outside are differently formed. If your stocking were of malleable material and you could give it an artistic form with all sorts of projections and indentations, and if you then turned it inside out you would no longer have the same form outside as that which would now be inside. And it is like this with the tubular bone. You must turn the inside outwards and the outside inwards and then you get the form of the head bone. Thus human limbs are not merely head bones metamorphosed, they are even more, head bones turned inside out. How does this come about? It is because the head has its center somewhere within. It has its center centrically, if I may put it so. Not so the breast. Its center does not lie within the sphere. The breast has its center very far away. (In the drawing this is only partially indicated because it would be too large if the whole were shown.) Thus the breast has its center far away. Now where is the center of the limb system? This brings us to the second difficulty. The limb system has its center in the whole circumference. The center of the limb system is a sphere; namely, the opposite of a point, the surface of a sphere. The center is really everywhere; hence you can turn in every direction and radii ray in from all sides. They unite themselves with you.
What is in the head takes its rise in the head. What passes through the limbs unites itself within you. This is why I had to say in the other lectures that you must think of the limbs as inserted into the rest of our body. We are really a whole world, only what wants to enter into us from outside condenses at its end and becomes visible. A very minute portion of what we are becomes visible in our limbs. So that the limbs themselves are physical body, but the physical limbs are only the minutest atom of what is really in the limb system of man. Body, soul and spirit are in the limb system of man. The body is only indicated in the limbs, But in the limbs there is also a soul part; and there is within them, too, the spirit part which embraces the whole world.
Now we could also make another drawing of the human being. It could be said that man is, firstly a gigantic sphere which embraces the whole world: then a smaller sphere: and then a smallest sphere. Only the smallest sphere would be completely visible. The somewhat larger sphere would be partially visible. The largest sphere is only visible here at the end of it, where it rays in: the rest is invisible. Thus is the human form wrought by the whole world.
And again, in the middle system, the breast system, we have the union of the head system and the limb system. When you consider the spine with the ribs attached to it you will see that it tries to close up in front. At the back the whole is enclosed; in front an attempt only is made, it does not quite succeed. The nearer the ribs are to the head the more they succeed in making the enclosure, but the further down they are the more they fail. The last ribs do not meet because here the force which comes into the limbs from the outside is working against them.
Now the Greeks still had a very clear consciousness of this connection of the human being with the macrocosm. And the Egyptians knew of it also, but in a somewhat abstract way. Hence, when you look at Egyptian or, indeed, any sculpture of antiquity you can see that this thought of the cosmos is expressed. You can only understand the works of the ancients if you know that their work was an expression of their belief: they saw the head as a small sphere, a heavenly body in miniature; and the limbs as part of a great heavenly body which presses its radii into the human form. The Greeks had a beautiful, harmonious and perfect conception of this, hence they were good sculptors. No sculptor of human form can be a master in his art to-day unless he is conscious of this connection of man with the universe. Lacking this he will only make a clumsy copy of the forms of nature.
You will know from what I have said to you that the limbs are more inclined towards the world, the head more to the individual man. To what then will the limbs especially incline? They will incline towards the world, to that world in which man moves and in which he is continually changing his position. They will be related to the movement of the world. Please understand this quite clearly: the limbs are related to the movement of the world.
In that we move about the world and perform actions we are limb men. Now what kind of task has the head with respect to the movement of the world? It rests on the shoulders, as I told you when speaking in another connection. And further, it has the task of bringing the movement of the world continuously to rest within itself. Place yourself with your spirit inside your own head; you can get a picture of how you are then placed by thinking of yourself, for a time, as sitting in a railway train; the train is moving forwards, but you are quietly sitting in it. In the same way your soul sits in your head, which quietly allows itself to be carried forwards by the limbs, and brings the movement to rest inwardly. If you have room you may even lie down in the railway carriage, you can rest — though this rest is really a deception, for you are rushing in the train (in a sleeper perhaps) across the earth. Nevertheless you have the sensation of rest. Thus the head brings to rest in you what the limbs perform in the world by way of movement. And the breast system stands betwixt them. It mediates between the movement of the outer world and what the head brings into rest.
Now, as men, our purpose is to imitate, to absorb the movement of the world into ourselves through our limbs. What do we do then? We dance. This is true dancing. Other dancing is only fragmentary dancing. All true dancing has arisen from imitating in the limbs the movement carried out by the planets, by other heavenly bodies or by the earth itself.
But now, what part do our head and breast play in this dancing, this imitation of cosmic movement in the movement of our limbs? The movements we perform in the world are stemmed or stopped, as it were, in the head and in the breast. The movements cannot continue through the breast into the head, for the head, lazy fellow, rests on the shoulders and does not let the movements reach the soul. The soul must participate in the movements while at rest, because the head rests on the shoulders. What then does the soul do? It begins to reflect from within itself the dancing movements of the limbs. When the limbs execute irregular movements the soul begins to mumble; when the limbs perform regular movements it begins to whisper: when the limbs carry out the harmonious cosmic movements of the universe, it even begins to sing. Thus the outward dancing movement is changed into song and into music within.
The physiology of the senses will never succeed in understanding sensation unless it can accept man as a cosmic being. It will always say that vibrations of the air are outside and that man perceives sounds within: how the vibrations of the air are connected with the sounds it is impossible to know. This is what you find in books on physiology and psychology — in one of them it comes at the end, in the other at the beginning, that is the only difference.
Now why is this? It comes about because those who practice psychology and physiology do not know that a man's external movements are brought to rest in the soul, and through this begin to pass over into tones. The same is also true with regard to all other sense impressions. As the organs of the head do not take part in the outer movements, they ray these outer movements back into the breast, and make them into sounds and into the other sense impressions. Here lies the origin of sensation. Here, moreover, lies the connection between the arts. The poetic, the musical arts, arise out of the plastic, the architectural arts: for what the plastic and architectural arts are without, the musical arts are within. A reflecting back of the world from within outwards — such is the nature of the musical arts. Thus does man stand amidst the universe. You experience color as movement come to rest. You do not perceive the movement externally — just as when lying down in a train you may have the illusion of being at rest. You let the train move on its outward course. Similarly you let your body participate in the outer world in fine movements of the limbs of which you are unaware, while you perceive colors and tones inwardly. This you owe to the circumstance that you let your head, in its physical form, be carried at rest by your limb system.
I said that what I had to speak to you about to-day was indeed a difficult matter. It is particularly difficult because in this age nothing whatever is done to facilitate our understanding of these things. Care is taken that the accepted culture of our time should leave man in ignorance of such things as I have described to you to-day. What is it that comes about through our present-day education? Well, a man cannot altogether know what a stocking or a glove is like unless he turns it inside out, for otherwise he never knows the part which touches his skin. He only knows the part turned outwards. Similarly, as the result of present culture man only knows what is turned outwards. He has concepts for one half of man only; he will never understand the limbs. For the limbs have been turned inside out by the spirit.
Another way of describing our subject would be as follows: if we consider man in all his fullness, as we meet him in the world and consider him in the first place as limb man he reveals spirit, soul and body. If we consider him as breast man he reveals soul and body. If we consider him as head man he reveals body alone. The large sphere (see drawing): spirit, body, soul. The smaller sphere: body and soul. And the smallest sphere: body only.
At the council of A.D. 869 the bishops of the Catholic Church forbade humanity to know anything about the large sphere. At that time they declared it a dogma of the Catholic Church that the middle sphere and the smallest sphere alone had existence, that man consists of body and soul only, spiritual characteristics being merely a quality of the soul. One part of the soul, it was held, was of a spiritual nature. Since the year A.D. 869 for Western culture derived from Catholicism there has been no spirit. But when relationship to the spirit was abolished the relationship of man to the world was abolished also. Man has been more and more driven in upon his egotism. Hence religion itself has become more and more egotistic. And to-day we live in an age when once again, if I may say so, from a spiritual observation we must learn man's relationship to the spirit, and through it to the world.
Who is actually to blame for the materialism of natural science? It is the Roman Catholic Church which is chiefly to blame for our scientific materialism, because at the council of Constantinople in A.D. 869 it abolished the Spirit. What actually came about at that time? Consider the human head. Its development in the course of natural evolution shows to-day that it is the oldest of man's principles. The head is evolved immediately from the higher animals, and, further back again, from the lower animals. With respect to our head we are descended from the animal world. There is no denying it — the head is only a further evolved animal. If we look for the ancestry of our head we go back to the lower animals. Our breast was not joined to the head until later; it is not so animal as the head. We only received the breast in a later age. And the organs we human beings received last of all are the limbs.
These are the most human of all. They are not remodeled from animal organs, they are added later. The animal organs were formed independently from out of the cosmos and given over to the animal, and the human organs were later formed independently and united with the breast. The Catholic Church concealed the knowledge of man's relationship to the universe from him: that is to say, it concealed from him the knowledge of the true nature of his limbs; and in so doing it handed on to succeeding generations an incomplete knowledge of the breast and a complete knowledge only of the head, of the skull. Thus, materialism made the discovery that the skull is descended from the animals: and now it claims that the whole human being is descended from the animals, whereas actually the breast organs and the limb organization were only added later. By hiding from man the nature of his limbs, and hence this relation with the world, the Catholic Church caused the later materialistic age to apply to the whole human being what only holds good for the head. The Catholic Church is really the creator of materialism in this domain of the doctrine of evolution. It is the duty of the present-day teacher of youth to know these things. For he should take an interest in all that has happened in the world. And he should know the true grounds of the things which have happened in the world.
We have tried to-day to see clearly how it is that our age has become materialistic, taking our start from something quite different, from the spherical form, the moon form and the radial form of the limbs. That is to say, we began with something seemingly quite remote in order to make clear to ourselves a tremendous fact in the history of civilization. But a teacher above all, if he is to do anything with the human being, must be in a position to grasp the fundamentals of civilization. These are essential to him if he is to educate rightly out of the depths of his own nature through his unconscious and subconscious relations with the child. For then he will have due regard for the structure of man; above all he will perceive in it relationships to the macrocosm. How different is the outlook which sees the human form merely as the development of some little animal or other, a more highly developed animal body. Nowadays, for the most part, though some teachers may not admit it, the teacher meets the child with the distinct idea that he is a little animal and that he has to develop this little animal just a little further than Nature has done hitherto. He will feel differently if he says to himself: here is a man, and he has connections with the whole universe; and what I do with every growing child, the way I work with him, has significance for the whole universe. We are together in the classroom: in each child is situated a center for the whole world, for the macrocosm. This classroom is a center — indeed many centers — for the macrocosm. Think what it means when this is felt in a living way. How the idea of the universe and its connections with the child passes into a feeling which hallows all the varied aspects of our educational work. Without such feeling about man and the universe we shall not learn to teach earnestly and truly. The moment we have such feelings they pass over to the children by underground ways.
In another connection I said how it must always fill us with wonder when we see how wires go into the earth to copper plates and how the earth carries the electricity further without wires. If you go into the school with egotistic feelings you need all kinds of wires — words — in order to make yourself understood by the children. If you have great feelings for the universe which arise from ideas such as we have discussed to-day, then an underground current will pass between you and the child. Then you will be one with the children. Herein lies something of the mysterious relationship between you and the children as a whole. Pedagogy in the true sense must be built on feelings such as this. Pedagogy must not be a science, it must be an art. And where is the art which can be learned without dwelling constantly in the feelings? But the feelings in which we must live in order to practice that great art of life, the art of education, are only kindled by contemplation of the great universe and its relationships with man.
Lecture XI
In yesterday's lecture I treated of the bodily nature of man from the standpoint of spirit and of soul, and if you understand this survey you will readily be able to fit into it all that you need to know of the body's structure and growth. Thus, before we pass on in the remaining lectures to a description of the human body, we will throw further light on the subject from the side of soul and spirit.
You have realized that man is a threefold being, head-man, trunk man and limb man; and you saw how each of the three parts has a different relationship to the world of soul and spirit.
First let us consider the head formation of man. Yesterday we said that the head is mainly body; the chest is body and soul; and the limb man body, soul and spirit. But of course it is not an exhaustive description of the head to say that it is principally body. In actual truth things are not sharply divided from one another. Therefore we may equally well say that the head is also soul and spirit, but in a different manner from that of chest and limbs. Even at birth the head is principally body. That is to say the soul and spirit of the head have set their seal on the bodily form. The head (the first thing to evolve in the embryo) is a manifestation of what is essentially human, of the human soul and spirit. What relation has the bodily head to the soul and spirit? Because the head has reached something like completion in its bodily aspect, having evolved in former epochs through the necessary stages from animal to man, it is therefore capable of fullest physical development. The manner of the soul's relation to the head is this: at birth and throughout its earliest years the child's soul is dreaming in the head; while his spirit in the head is asleep.
Thus we find body, soul and spirit related to each other in the human head in a remarkable way. In our head nature we have a very highly developed body, a dreaming soul — truly a dreaming soul — and a spirit that is still asleep. Now we must see how we can bring this into harmony with the whole development of man. The characteristic feature of this development up to the change of teeth is that man is an imitative being. He imitates everything that he sees going on around him. He is able to do this owing to the fact that his head spirit is asleep. Hence in his head spirit he can dwell outside the head body. He can remain in the environment. For man's spirit and soul are outside his body in sleep. The child in spirit and soul, in his sleeping spirit and dreaming soul, is outside his head; he is with those who are around him. Because of this the child is an imitative being. Because of this, love goes forth from the dreaming soul towards his environment, particularly love towards his parents. Now when the child changes his teeth, and the second ones appear, this is an actual indication that the head development has reached its final stage. Even though the head as body is born complete yet it goes through a final stage of its development during the first seven years of life. The last stage culminates in the change of teeth.
What is it that is thus brought to an end? It is the molding of the form. Man has now poured into his body all the hardening elements, all that gives him form. When we see the second teeth appear we can say that the first stage in man's intercourse with the world has come to an end. He has accomplished the formation of his body, its molding and configuration. But whilst the head is occupied during this time in giving man his form and figure, something different is happening in the chest system.
For things are essentially different in the chest. From the very beginning, from birth, the chest is an organism both of body and soul. It is not solely body, as is the head, it is body and soul; but its spirit is still dreaming and outside of itself. When we observe a child in his early years, we see clearly that the chest organs, as contrasted with the head organs, are much more awake and more living. It would be quite wrong to look upon the human being as a chaotic conglomeration of parts.
With the limbs it is different again. Here from the first moment of life spirit, soul and body are intimately connected; they all flow into one another. Moreover it is here that the child is first fully awake, as those who have to bring up these lively, kicking little creatures in their babyhood very well know. Everything is awake, but absolutely unformed. This is the great secret of man: when he is born his head spirit is already very highly developed, but asleep. His head soul, when he is born, is very highly developed, but it only dreams. The spirit and soul have yet gradually to awaken. The limb man is indeed fully awake at birth, but unformed, undeveloped.
All we have really to do is to develop the limb man and part of the chest man. For after that it is the task of the limb man and chest man to awaken the head-man. Here we come to the true function of teaching and education. You have to develop the limb man and part of the chest man, and then let this limb man and part of the chest man awaken the other part of the chest man and the head-man. From this you will see that the child brings something of great consequence to meet you. He meets you with a perfected spirit and relatively perfected soul, which he has brought through birth. All you have to do is to develop that part of his spirit which is not yet perfect, and that part of his soul which is as yet still less perfect.
If this were not so, real education and teaching would be utterly impossible. For suppose we had to teach and educate the whole of the spirit which man brings into the world only in germ, then our stature as teachers would require to be equal to whatever the human beings in our care might become. If this were so you might as well give up teaching at once, for you could only educate people equal in brilliance and ability to yourselves. But you must of course be ready to educate people who, in some ways, are much more clever and brilliant than you are. This is only possible if in education we have to touch only one part of man, for we can educate this one part even if we are not as clever, as brilliant, perhaps not even as good, as the child potentially is. The thing we can accomplish best in our teaching is the education of the will, and part of the education of the feeling life. For we can bring what we educate through the will — that is through the limbs — and through the heart, that is through part of the chest man — to the stage of perfection we have reached ourselves. And just as a man servant (or even an alarm clock) can be trained to awaken a much cleverer man than himself, so a person much inferior in cleverness, or even in goodness, can educate someone who has greater possibilities than he. We must of course realize that we do not need to be equal to the developing human being in intellectual capacity; but as, once again, it is a question of the development of the will it is for the attainment of goodness that we must strive to the uttermost. Our pupil may become better than we are, but he will very probably not do so unless in addition to the education we give him he gets another education from the world or from other people.
I have shown you in these lectures that there lives a certain genius in language. The genius of language is truly gifted; it is cleverer than we are. We can learn a great deal from the articulation of language and the way its spirit dwells within it.
But genius is to be found in other parts of our environment as well as in language. Let us consider what we have now discovered: that the human being enters the world with a sleeping spirit and a dreaming soul, as far as his head is concerned; that hence it is necessary right from the beginning, from birth onwards, to educate him through his will, for we can only approach his sleeping head spirit by working upon his will. But if we could not approach his head spirit in some way we should inevitably have a great gap in human development. Man would be born — his head spirit would be asleep. We could not make the little child who lies kicking his legs do gymnastics, for instance, or Eurythmy. It wouldn't do. Nor can we give him a musical training as long as he can only kick his legs or yell. Neither can we bring art to him as yet. We find, as yet, no distinct bridge from the will to the sleeping spirit of the child. Later on, when we have managed to approach the child's will, we can work upon his sleeping spirit simply through the very first words we say for him to repeat.
Here we have a direct access to the will. For now what we release in the vocal organs through these first words will penetrate the sleeping head spirit as an activity of will, and will arouse it. But in the earlier years we have no direct bridge. No stream passes over from the limbs — where the will, the spirit, is awake — to the sleeping spirit of the head. Another mediator is needed here. We human educators have nothing at our disposal.
But now comes something, apart from us, which is both genius and spirit. Language indeed has its genius, but in the very earliest babyhood we cannot appeal to the spirit of language at all. But Nature has her own genius, her own spirit. If it were not so we human beings would perish, because a discontinuous education in babyhood would create a breach in our development. Here the genius of Nature intervenes and creates something which can build this bridge. Out of the limb system it produces a substance which partakes of the limb nature, as it is bound up with its development, and has something of that nature in it. This substance is milk. In woman the production of milk is connected with the upper limbs, with the arms. The milk producing organs can be said to be a continuation of the limbs, inwards. Both in the animal and human kingdoms milk is the only substance which has an inner connection with the limbs, which is, as it were, born of the limbs, and hence retains the power of the limbs within it. And as we give the child milk it works upon the sleeping spirit and awakens it — the only substance, essentially, which can do this. Here the spirit that dwells in all matter asserts itself in its rightful place. Milk bears its own spirit within it, and this spirit has the task of awakening the sleeping spirit of the child. This is no mere picture, it is a profound scientific truth that the genius in Nature, which creates the substance milk from out of secret depths, is the awakener of the human spirit in the child. We must learn to penetrate into these deep and secret relationships in the world, for only then shall we understand the wonderful laws that hold sway in the universe. Only then do we come to see what horrible ignoramuses we are when we theorize about matter as though it were some uniform mass that could be divided into atoms and molecules. Indeed it is no such thing. Matter is of such a nature, rather, that when milk, which is an integral part of it, is produced it has the inner need to awaken the sleeping human spirit. As in human beings and in animals we can speak of an inner need, namely of the force that lies at the basis of will, so can we speak of a “need” in matter generally. And if we want fully to comprehend the nature of milk we must say: when milk is produced it seeks to be the awakener of the child's human spirit. Thus everything we see around us springs to life if we regard it aright. Nor do we ever lose the relationship between man and what is in the world outside.
Thus, it is the genius of Nature herself which cares for the early years of human development. And when we educate and develop the child we are, in a certain sense, taking over the work of this genius. Through our words and actions, which the child copies, we begin to work upon the child through his will, and in so doing we continue the activity which we have left to the genius of Nature to carry out; for Nature has made use of the adult merely as a means to the process of nourishing the child with milk. From this you will perceive that Nature educates naturally; for her nourishment by milk is the first medium of education. Nature educates in a natural way. But we, as human beings, working to educate the child through language and through our actions, begin to educate in the realm of soul. For this reason it is so important to be conscious in our teaching and education that we cannot really undertake much with the head. At birth the head brings with it what it is destined to become in the world. We can awaken what is in the child, but we cannot implant a content into him.
Here we must indeed be clear that it is only certain definite things that can be brought into the physical earth existence through birth. The spiritual world has no concern with things which have come into civilization only through external convention. For instance, the child naturally does not bring with him our conventional methods of reading and writing — I have shown this before in other connections. The spirits do not write, neither do they read. They do not read out of books, nor do they write with pens. It is only an invention of spiritualists that spirits use human language and can write. Language and writing as we know them are conventions of our civilization. They belong to life on earth. And only when we bring this conventional reading and writing to the child, not by way of his head alone, but by way of his chest and limb systems too, can we really do him any good.
Now, of course, when the child is seven years old, he has not merely been lying in his cradle all the time, he has achieved something, he has been helping himself forward by imitating grown-up people, and he has seen to it that his head spirit is in some respects awake; then we can, of course, take advantage of this awakening to introduce reading and writing to him in a conventional way. But as soon as we do this we have a damaging effect upon the head spirit. This is why I told you that in good teaching reading and writing must only be given by way of art. The first elements of drawing, painting and music must precede it. For these work upon the limbs and chest man, and only indirectly on the head. But in time they awaken what is within the head-man. They do not misuse the head nature as we misuse it when we teach children the conventional reading and writing of to-day in a merely intellectual manner. If we first let the child draw, and then develop the written forms from its drawings, we shall be educating through the limb man up to the head-man. When, for instance, we make an “F” on the board for the children, and let them look at it and follow its form with their hands, we are then working through perception directly upon the intellect. That is the wrong way round. The right way is, as far as possible, to awaken the intellect through the will. We can only do this by passing over to intellectual education by way of artistic education. Thus, even in these early years when the child is first given into our charge, we must teach him reading and writing in an artistic way.
You must bear in mind that the child you are teaching and educating has something else to do besides what you do with him. He has all manner of things to do which only indirectly belong to your sphere of work. The child has to grow. Yes, he must grow, and while educating him you should realize that he must grow rightly. What does this mean? It means that you must not by your teaching, by your education, disturb the child's growth. You must not effect a disturbance of his growth; rather your teaching and education should only be such as is compatible with the child's growth. What I am now saying is of special significance for the primary school period. For just as up to the change of teeth there takes place the building up of forms from the head, so during the primary school period — from the change of teeth to adolescence — there takes place life-development, growth and all that goes with it. This belongs to the primary school period. This life-development which proceeds from the chest, only reaches completion with the onset of adolescence, Thus during the primary school period you have chiefly to do with the chest man. You cannot teach rightly unless you know that, while you are teaching and educating the child, he is growing and evolving through his chest organization. Thus you are called upon to be the comrade of Nature, for Nature is developing the child through his chest organization, through breathing, nourishment, movement, and the like. And you must become a good comrade to Nature's development. But how can you be this if you are ignorant of natural development? How can you teach if you do not know by what means you can work through the soul to retard or accelerate growth? It is within your power, to a certain extent, so to affect the healthy growth of the child, by way of the soul, that he shoots up, lanky and lean — a thing which could have bad results. Similarly it is within your power, to a certain extent, to check the child's growth in an unhealthy way, so that he will remain short and stumpy. You have this power, of course, only to a certain extent — but you have it. Thus you must have insight into the conditions of human growth. You must have this insight from the point of view of the soul and also of the body.
Now how can we gain an understanding of the growth forces from the point of view of the soul? For this we must turn to a better kind of psychology than that current to-day. This better psychology tells us that all that accelerates the growing forces of the human being, or makes him shoot up too rapidly, is related to a certain aspect of memory formation. Now, if we over-stimulate the memory, we cause the human being, within certain limits, to grow tall and thin. And if we over-stimulate his imagination and fantasy we retard his growth. Memory and imaginative fantasy have a certain secret relation to the forces of life development in man. And we must acquire the power of perceiving such a relation. For example the teacher should be able to do as follows: At the beginning of the school year he must pass his pupils through his mind in a comprehensive review; this is particularly important for those turning points of the ninth and twelfth year which I have described to you. (see Practical Course for Teachers) He must, then, hold a review, so to speak, of the bodily development of his children, and he must notice what they look like. And then at the end of the school year, or of some definite period, he must pass them once more in review and see what changes have taken place. And the result of these two reviews must be that he knows if some child or other has not grown as much as he should during that time; or perhaps another has shot up too much. Then the teacher must ask himself: How can I get the right balance between imagination and memory in the next school year, or period, so that I can counteract this irregularity?
This is why it is so important to keep the children right through their school life; why it is such a mad arrangement to pass the children on to another teacher every year. And, to look at the matter the other way round, at the beginning of the school year, or of the periods of development (seventh, ninth, twelfth year) the teacher gets to know his pupils. He gets to know those who are typically children of imagination, who transform everything in their minds, and those on the other hand who are typically children of memory, who easily notice and remember things. The teacher must get to know all this. And he does so by twice passing the children in review, as I have explained. But he must come to know whether a child threatens to grow too quickly or too slowly, not only by watching the outward physical growth, but also by means of the powers of imagination and memory themselves; for the child would be in danger of growing too fast if he had too good a memory, and too slowly if he had too much imagination. It is not enough to acknowledge the connection between body and soul in catchwords and phrases, we must be able to observe in the growing human being the working together of body, soul and spirit. Imaginative children grow differently from children endowed with a good memory.
The psychologists of to-day look upon everything as a finished product. Memory exists, and a description of it is given in the psychological book. Imagination exists; it, too, is described. But in the world of reality all things are in mutual relation to one another. And we can only come to know these mutual relations if we adjust ourselves and adapt our understanding to them. That is, we must use our power of understanding not in strict definition of everything, but in exercising mobility, so that the child can himself transform what he has acquired — transform it inwardly, in thought.
You see how the spiritual-soul element leads over of itself into the bodily element. So much so that we can say: through bodily influences, through milk, the genius of nature educates the child in his earliest years. From the change of teeth onwards it is we who educate the child by nurturing him in art in the way that is proper to him at this period. And as the end of the primary school age approaches there is another change. More and more there appear flashes of what is to come in later years, namely, the power of independent judgment, a feeling of personality, the independent impulse of will. We must meet all this by so arranging our curriculum as to make a right use of all that has to be contained in it.
Lecture XII
When we consider the human body, we must relate it to the physical sense-world that surrounds it and maintains it, for there is a constant interplay between the physical body and the world, through which it is sustained. When we look out into the physical sense-world around us, we perceive mineral beings, plant beings, animal beings. Our physical body is related to the beings of the minerals, plants and animals. But the peculiar nature of this relationship is not immediately evident to superficial observation; we must penetrate deeply into the character of the kingdoms of nature if we are to understand this relationship.
When we regard the human being as physical body, what we first perceive is his solid bony frame and his muscles. When we penetrate further into him we perceive the circulation of the blood with the organs which belong to it. We perceive the breathing, we perceive the processes of nourishment. We see how, the organs are built up out of the most varied vascular forms — as they are called in natural science. We perceive brain and nerves, the sense organs. We have now to co-ordinate these various organs of the human being and their functions with the external world.
Let us begin with that part of the human being which at first appears to be the most perfect (we have already seen how the matter really stands), let us begin with the brain and nervous system which is closely linked with the sense organs. This part of the human organization shows the longest earthly evolution behind it, so that it has passed beyond the form which the animal world has developed. Man has passed through the animal world, as it were, in relation to this, his head system, and he has gone beyond the animal system to the real human system — which indeed is most clearly expressed in the formation of the head.
Now we spoke yesterday of how far the formation of the head takes part in individual human evolution, how far the shape, the form of the human body proceeds from the forces which are to be found in the head. And we saw how the work of the head reaches a kind of conclusion with the change of teeth towards the seventh year. We should make clear to ourselves what really happens through the interplay between the human head, the chest organs and the limb organs. We should answer the question: what does the head really do in carrying out its work in connection with the chest-trunk system and the limb-system? It is continually forming, shaping. Our life really consists in this, that in the first seven years an intense forming force streams from the head right down into the physical form; and the head continues its aid by preserving the form, by ensouling it, by spiritualising it.
The head is involved in shaping the human form. But does the head build up our truly human shape? No, indeed it does not. You must learn to accept the view that your head is constantly trying, in secret, to make something different out of you from what you are. There are times when the head would like to shape you so that you would look like a wolf; at other times it would like to shape you so that you would look like a lamb. Then again, so that you would look like a serpent; it would like to make you into a serpent, a dragon.
All the shapes which your head really designs in you, you find spread out in nature, in the different animal forms. If you look at the animal kingdom you can say to yourself: that am I; but when the head produces the wolf form, for instance, my trunk system and my limb system constantly do me the favour of changing this wolf form into the human form. They are perpetually within themselves overcoming the animal element. They so master it as to prevent it attaining complete existence within them, they metamorphose it, they transform it. Thus the human being has a relationship to the animal world around him through the head system. But it is such that he is continually carried beyond the animal world in the creation of his body. What, then, really remains in you? You can look at a human being. Imagine that you have a man before you: you can make this interesting observation. You can say: there is the man. There is his head, and in the head a wolf is actually stirring, but it does not develop into a wolf; it is immediately dissolved by the trunk and the limbs. In the head a lamb is actually stirring; it is dissolved by the trunk and the limbs.
The animal forms are continually moving supersensibly in the human being, and are being dissolved. What would happen if there were a supersensible photographer who could retain this process, who could preserve this process on a photographic plate, or on a series of photographic plates? What should we see on these plates? We should then see the thoughts of man. These thoughts of the human being are indeed a supersensible correlate to that which does not come to expression in the sense-world. This continual metamorphosis out of the animal, streaming down from the head, is not expressed in the senses, but it works in man supersensibly as the process of thought. In reality this is present as a supersensible process. Your head is not merely the lazy-bones on your shoulders, it is that which would really like to maintain you in animality. It gives you the forms of the whole animal kingdom; it would like animal kingdoms continually to arise. But by means of your trunk and your limbs you prevent a whole animal kingdom from arising through you in the course of your life: you transform this animal kingdom into your thoughts. Such is our relationship to the animal kingdom. We allow this animal kingdom to arise supersensibly within us, and then we do not allow it to come to sensible reality, but hold it back in the supersensible. The trunk and the limbs do not allow these evolving animal forms to enter their sphere. If the head has too strong an inclination to produce something of this animal nature, the remaining organism struggles against accepting it, and then the head has to resort to migraine or to some similar head complaint in order to exterminate it again.
The trunk system is also related to our environment — not in this case, to the animal world but to the whole range of the plant kingdom. There is a mysterious connection between the trunk system of man, the chest system, and the plant world. The most important processes in the circulation of the blood, also in breathing and nourishment, all take place in the chest or trunk system. All these processes are in active interchange with what takes place outside in the physical sense-world of the plants, but in a very special way.
Let us first take the breathing. What does a man do in breathing? You know that he takes in oxygen, and through his life processes he changes oxygen into carbon dioxide by connecting it with carbon. Carbon is in the organism from the transformed foodstuffs. This carbon takes up the oxygen, and carbon dioxide gas arises through the union of the oxygen with the carbon. Now when man has the carbon dioxide within him it would be a splendid opportunity for him not to let it out, but to keep it there. And if he could free the carbon again from the oxygen, what would happen? Let us say that a man breathes in oxygen through his life processes, and allows it to form carbon dioxide by uniting with carbon; if now he were in a position to separate off the oxygen again within, and to work upon the carbon, what would then arise in the man? The plant world. The whole vegetable kingdom would suddenly grow up in man. It really could grow there.
For if you consider a plant, what does it do? Of course it does not breathe in oxygen in the same regular way as man, but it assimilates carbon dioxide. By day the plant is bent on getting carbon dioxide, it gives up oxygen. It would be bad if it did not do this; for then neither we nor the animals would have it. But the plant retains carbon, and out of this it forms starch and sugar and everything else it consists of. From this it builds up its whole organism. The plant world arises by building itself up from carbon which plants in their process of assimilation separate off from the carbon dioxide. When you look at the plant world, it is metamorphosed carbon, which is separated off by the process of assimilation, and this process corresponds to the human process of breathing. The plants also breathe to a certain extent, but it is different from the breathing process in man. The plant does breathe a little, especially in the night, but to say that plants can really breathe shows a superficial observation, and is like saying: “Here is a razor, I will cut meat with it.” The process of breathing in plants is different from the process of breathing in men and in animals, just as the razor is different from the table knife. The human process of breathing corresponds in the plants to the reverse process, that of assimilation.
From this you will understand that if you continued in yourself the process by which carbon dioxide has arisen, that is, if the oxygen could be given up again and the carbon dioxide could be transformed into carbon, as is done by nature in the world around you, then you could let the whole vegetable world grow up in you. You would have the materials for this within yourself and you could bring it about that you would suddenly blossom forth as plant world. You would disappear and the whole plant world would arise. This capacity of producing a plant world is indeed inherent in man, but he does not allow it to come to this point. His chest system has a strong inclination continually to produce the plant world. Head and limbs do not allow this to happen, they defend themselves against it. And so man drives out the carbon dioxide, and does not allow the plant kingdom to arise within himself. He allows the plant kingdom to arise out of the carbon dioxide in the outside world.
This is a remarkable interplay between the trunk-chest system and the sense physical world around us; for outside there is the kingdom of the vegetables, and the human being is continually having to prevent the process of vegetation from arising within him; if it does arise he must immediately send it out again so that he may not become a plant. Thus, in so far as the chest-trunk system is concerned, man is able to create the counter kingdom to the plant world. If you conceive the plant kingdom as positive, then man produces the negative of the plant kingdom. He produces, as it were, reversed plant kingdom.
What happens when the plant kingdom begins to behave badly in him, and head and limbs have not the power to nip it in the bud, to drive it out? Then the man becomes ill. The internal illnesses which come from the trunk system are ultimately due to this, that a man is too weak to check the plant-like growth as soon as it begins to arise within him. The moment there arises in us even a vestige of plant-like nature, the moment we fail to ensure that the plant kingdom which endeavors to grow in us shall be cast out to form its kingdom outside us — in that moment we become ill. And thus the essential nature of disease must be sought in this tendency towards plant growth in man. Naturally it is not true plants that grow, for after all the human interior is not a very pleasant surrounding for a lily. But through a weakening of the other systems of the trunk there can result a tendency towards the growth of the plant kingdom, and then man becomes ill.
Thus if we look at the whole plant world of man's environment we must say to ourselves: in a certain sense the plant kingdom presents pictures of all our illnesses. It is the wonderful secret in man's relationship to surrounding nature that not only (as we have shown on other occasions) do the plants represent pictures of his development up to adolescence, but in the plants around him, especially in so far as these plants are fruit bearing, he can see the pictures of his illnesses. This is a thing we may perhaps not like to hear, because it is natural to love the plant world aesthetically; and, when the plant unfolds in the world outside, this aesthetic attitude is justified. But the moment the plant seeks to unfold within man, the moment vegetation sets up within him, then what works outside in the many-colored beautiful plant kingdom, works in man as the cause of illness. Medicine will become a science when it is able to show how each individual illness corresponds with some form in the plant world. Actually it is true that when man breathes out carbonic acid gas, he is, for the sake of his own existence, constantly breathing out the whole of the plant world which wants to arise in him. Hence it need not seem strange to you that when the plant begins to extend — beyond its ordinary plant nature, and produces poisons, these poisons are bound up with the processes of man's health and sickness. At the same time all this is bound up with the normal process of nourishment.
Indeed, nourishment, like the process of breathing, takes place in the chest-trunk system, at least in its initial stages, and must be considered in exactly the same way as breathing. In the processes of nourishment man also takes in substances from the world around him, but he does not leave them as they are; he changes them. He changes them with the help of the oxygen which he breathes in. As man transforms the substances taken up in nourishment, they combine with oxygen. This appears as a process of combustion, and it looks as though the human being were constantly burning within. This moreover is what natural science frequently says, that a process of combustion is going on in the human being. But it is not true. What takes place in the human being is no true process of combustion, but is a process of combustion (notice this carefully) — it is a process of combustion which lacks both beginning and end. It is merely the middle stage of the process of combustion; it lacks the beginning and end of it. The beginning and the end of the process of combustion must never take place in the human body, only the intervening part. It is destructive to the human being if the first stages of the process of combustion, such as take place in the forming of fruit, are carried on in the human organism; for instance when a man eats unripe fruit. The human being cannot carry out this initial process similar to combustion. The human being cannot endure this in himself, it makes him ill. And if he can eat a great deal of unripe fruit, like strong country people for instance, then he must be very closely related to the nature around him, for otherwise he would not be able to digest unripe apples and pears as he can the fruit which has been ripened by the sun. Thus it is only the middle process which he can carry out. In the processes of digestion the human being can only take part in the middle stage of all the combustion processes. Again, if the process is carried to its conclusion, to where, in the outer world, the ripe fruit would rot, the human being can have no part in it. Thus he cannot take part in the end stage either. He must excrete the food stuffs before this stage is reached. It is actually the case that the human being does not carry on the processes of nature as they take place around him, but he only goes through the middle part; within himself he cannot fulfill the beginning or the end.
Now we will look at something most remarkable. Consider breathing. It is the opposite to everything which takes place in the plant world around us. It is in a certain way the anti-plant kingdom. The breathing of man is the anti-plant kingdom, and it is inwardly connected with the process of nourishment which is the middle stage of the combustion process of the outer world. You see, there are two processes in our bodily chest-trunk system; this anti-plant process, which takes place through the breathing, is always at work in connection with the central portion of the other external processes. These two are constantly interrelated in their work. Here, you see, body and soul are combined. That which takes place through the breathing unites with the remaining nature processes, which however, as they take place in man, represent only the middle portion of Nature's processes. And this means that the soul life, which is the anti-plant process, unites with the humanized bodily life, namely the middle portion of the processes of Nature. Science may well search for a long time for the mutual relationship between body and soul unless it seeks it in the mysterious connection between the breath, which has become soul, and the middle part of the processes of Nature, which has become body. These processes of Nature neither arise nor decay in man. They take their rise outside him and only after he has excreted them should they decompose. Man unites himself in body with a central part only of the processes of Nature; and in the breathing processes he fills these Nature processes with soul.
Here there arises that delicate inter-weaving of processes to which the medicine and the hygiene of the future will have to devote very special attention. The hygiene of the future will have to ask: how are the different degrees of warmth interrelated in the world outside? How does warmth act when passing from a cooler place to a warmer, and vice versa? There are warmth processes at work in the external world; how does such a warmth process act in the human organism when this organism is placed into it? Man finds an interplay of air and water in the external process of vegetation. He will have to study how that works on the human being when he is placed in it, and so forth.
With regard to things of this kind the medicine of to-day has only made the very smallest beginning, scarcely even a beginning. When there is an illness the medicine of to-day sets the greatest value on finding the bacilli, the kind of bacteria which causes the illness. Then, when it has found that, it is satisfied. But it is much more important to know how it comes about that, at a particular moment of a man's life, he is prone to develop some suggestion of a vegetative process, so that the bacilli scent a comfortable place of sojourn. The important thing is to keep our bodily constitution in such a condition that it is not an agreeable hostelry for all vegetable pests; if we do this, these gentlemen will not be able to bring about too great a devastation in us.
Now there remains the question: in considering the human being physically in his relation to the outer world, what part do the bony skeleton and muscles really play in the human life process as a whole?
We now come to something which, in the science of today, is hardly regarded at all; but it is absolutely essential that you should grasp it if you want to understand the human being. Please notice what happens when you bend your arm. Through the contraction of the muscle which bends your forearm you are bringing into play a machine-like process. Imagine that it simply comes about in the following way. First of all, you have a position where upper and lower arm (or two corresponding laths or poles) lie in one and the same direction (drawing a).
Now the Greeks still had a very clear consciousness of this connection of the human being with the macrocosm. And the Egyptians knew of it also, but in a somewhat abstract way. Hence, when you look at Egyptian or, indeed, any sculpture of antiquity you can see that this thought of the cosmos is expressed. You can only understand the works of the ancients if you know that their work was an expression of their belief: they saw the head as a small sphere, a heavenly body in miniature; and the limbs as part of a great heavenly body which presses its radii into the human form. The Greeks had a beautiful, harmonious and perfect conception of this, hence they were good sculptors. No sculptor of human form can be a master in his art to-day unless he is conscious of this connection of man with the universe. Lacking this he will only make a clumsy copy of the forms of nature.
You will know from what I have said to you that the limbs are more inclined towards the world, the head more to the individual man. To what then will the limbs especially incline? They will incline towards the world, to that world in which man moves and in which he is continually changing his position. They will be related to the movement of the world. Please understand this quite clearly: the limbs are related to the movement of the world.
In that we move about the world and perform actions we are limb men. Now what kind of task has the head with respect to the movement of the world? It rests on the shoulders, as I told you when speaking in another connection. And further, it has the task of bringing the movement of the world continuously to rest within itself. Place yourself with your spirit inside your own head; you can get a picture of how you are then placed by thinking of yourself, for a time, as sitting in a railway train; the train is moving forwards, but you are quietly sitting in it. In the same way your soul sits in your head, which quietly allows itself to be carried forwards by the limbs, and brings the movement to rest inwardly. If you have room you may even lie down in the railway carriage, you can rest — though this rest is really a deception, for you are rushing in the train (in a sleeper perhaps) across the earth. Nevertheless you have the sensation of rest. Thus the head brings to rest in you what the limbs perform in the world by way of movement. And the breast system stands betwixt them. It mediates between the movement of the outer world and what the head brings into rest.
Now, as men, our purpose is to imitate, to absorb the movement of the world into ourselves through our limbs. What do we do then? We dance. This is true dancing. Other dancing is only fragmentary dancing. All true dancing has arisen from imitating in the limbs the movement carried out by the planets, by other heavenly bodies or by the earth itself.
But now, what part do our head and breast play in this dancing, this imitation of cosmic movement in the movement of our limbs? The movements we perform in the world are stemmed or stopped, as it were, in the head and in the breast. The movements cannot continue through the breast into the head, for the head, lazy fellow, rests on the shoulders and does not let the movements reach the soul. The soul must participate in the movements while at rest, because the head rests on the shoulders. What then does the soul do? It begins to reflect from within itself the dancing movements of the limbs. When the limbs execute irregular movements the soul begins to mumble; when the limbs perform regular movements it begins to whisper: when the limbs carry out the harmonious cosmic movements of the universe, it even begins to sing. Thus the outward dancing movement is changed into song and into music within.
The physiology of the senses will never succeed in understanding sensation unless it can accept man as a cosmic being. It will always say that vibrations of the air are outside and that man perceives sounds within: how the vibrations of the air are connected with the sounds it is impossible to know. This is what you find in books on physiology and psychology — in one of them it comes at the end, in the other at the beginning, that is the only difference.
Now why is this? It comes about because those who practice psychology and physiology do not know that a man's external movements are brought to rest in the soul, and through this begin to pass over into tones. The same is also true with regard to all other sense impressions. As the organs of the head do not take part in the outer movements, they ray these outer movements back into the breast, and make them into sounds and into the other sense impressions. Here lies the origin of sensation. Here, moreover, lies the connection between the arts. The poetic, the musical arts, arise out of the plastic, the architectural arts: for what the plastic and architectural arts are without, the musical arts are within. A reflecting back of the world from within outwards — such is the nature of the musical arts. Thus does man stand amidst the universe. You experience color as movement come to rest. You do not perceive the movement externally — just as when lying down in a train you may have the illusion of being at rest. You let the train move on its outward course. Similarly you let your body participate in the outer world in fine movements of the limbs of which you are unaware, while you perceive colors and tones inwardly. This you owe to the circumstance that you let your head, in its physical form, be carried at rest by your limb system.
I said that what I had to speak to you about to-day was indeed a difficult matter. It is particularly difficult because in this age nothing whatever is done to facilitate our understanding of these things. Care is taken that the accepted culture of our time should leave man in ignorance of such things as I have described to you to-day. What is it that comes about through our present-day education? Well, a man cannot altogether know what a stocking or a glove is like unless he turns it inside out, for otherwise he never knows the part which touches his skin. He only knows the part turned outwards. Similarly, as the result of present culture man only knows what is turned outwards. He has concepts for one half of man only; he will never understand the limbs. For the limbs have been turned inside out by the spirit.
Another way of describing our subject would be as follows: if we consider man in all his fullness, as we meet him in the world and consider him in the first place as limb man he reveals spirit, soul and body. If we consider him as breast man he reveals soul and body. If we consider him as head man he reveals body alone. The large sphere (see drawing): spirit, body, soul. The smaller sphere: body and soul. And the smallest sphere: body only.
At the council of A.D. 869 the bishops of the Catholic Church forbade humanity to know anything about the large sphere. At that time they declared it a dogma of the Catholic Church that the middle sphere and the smallest sphere alone had existence, that man consists of body and soul only, spiritual characteristics being merely a quality of the soul. One part of the soul, it was held, was of a spiritual nature. Since the year A.D. 869 for Western culture derived from Catholicism there has been no spirit. But when relationship to the spirit was abolished the relationship of man to the world was abolished also. Man has been more and more driven in upon his egotism. Hence religion itself has become more and more egotistic. And to-day we live in an age when once again, if I may say so, from a spiritual observation we must learn man's relationship to the spirit, and through it to the world.
Who is actually to blame for the materialism of natural science? It is the Roman Catholic Church which is chiefly to blame for our scientific materialism, because at the council of Constantinople in A.D. 869 it abolished the Spirit. What actually came about at that time? Consider the human head. Its development in the course of natural evolution shows to-day that it is the oldest of man's principles. The head is evolved immediately from the higher animals, and, further back again, from the lower animals. With respect to our head we are descended from the animal world. There is no denying it — the head is only a further evolved animal. If we look for the ancestry of our head we go back to the lower animals. Our breast was not joined to the head until later; it is not so animal as the head. We only received the breast in a later age. And the organs we human beings received last of all are the limbs.
These are the most human of all. They are not remodeled from animal organs, they are added later. The animal organs were formed independently from out of the cosmos and given over to the animal, and the human organs were later formed independently and united with the breast. The Catholic Church concealed the knowledge of man's relationship to the universe from him: that is to say, it concealed from him the knowledge of the true nature of his limbs; and in so doing it handed on to succeeding generations an incomplete knowledge of the breast and a complete knowledge only of the head, of the skull. Thus, materialism made the discovery that the skull is descended from the animals: and now it claims that the whole human being is descended from the animals, whereas actually the breast organs and the limb organization were only added later. By hiding from man the nature of his limbs, and hence this relation with the world, the Catholic Church caused the later materialistic age to apply to the whole human being what only holds good for the head. The Catholic Church is really the creator of materialism in this domain of the doctrine of evolution. It is the duty of the present-day teacher of youth to know these things. For he should take an interest in all that has happened in the world. And he should know the true grounds of the things which have happened in the world.
We have tried to-day to see clearly how it is that our age has become materialistic, taking our start from something quite different, from the spherical form, the moon form and the radial form of the limbs. That is to say, we began with something seemingly quite remote in order to make clear to ourselves a tremendous fact in the history of civilization. But a teacher above all, if he is to do anything with the human being, must be in a position to grasp the fundamentals of civilization. These are essential to him if he is to educate rightly out of the depths of his own nature through his unconscious and subconscious relations with the child. For then he will have due regard for the structure of man; above all he will perceive in it relationships to the macrocosm. How different is the outlook which sees the human form merely as the development of some little animal or other, a more highly developed animal body. Nowadays, for the most part, though some teachers may not admit it, the teacher meets the child with the distinct idea that he is a little animal and that he has to develop this little animal just a little further than Nature has done hitherto. He will feel differently if he says to himself: here is a man, and he has connections with the whole universe; and what I do with every growing child, the way I work with him, has significance for the whole universe. We are together in the classroom: in each child is situated a center for the whole world, for the macrocosm. This classroom is a center — indeed many centers — for the macrocosm. Think what it means when this is felt in a living way. How the idea of the universe and its connections with the child passes into a feeling which hallows all the varied aspects of our educational work. Without such feeling about man and the universe we shall not learn to teach earnestly and truly. The moment we have such feelings they pass over to the children by underground ways.
In another connection I said how it must always fill us with wonder when we see how wires go into the earth to copper plates and how the earth carries the electricity further without wires. If you go into the school with egotistic feelings you need all kinds of wires — words — in order to make yourself understood by the children. If you have great feelings for the universe which arise from ideas such as we have discussed to-day, then an underground current will pass between you and the child. Then you will be one with the children. Herein lies something of the mysterious relationship between you and the children as a whole. Pedagogy in the true sense must be built on feelings such as this. Pedagogy must not be a science, it must be an art. And where is the art which can be learned without dwelling constantly in the feelings? But the feelings in which we must live in order to practice that great art of life, the art of education, are only kindled by contemplation of the great universe and its relationships with man.
Lecture XI
In yesterday's lecture I treated of the bodily nature of man from the standpoint of spirit and of soul, and if you understand this survey you will readily be able to fit into it all that you need to know of the body's structure and growth. Thus, before we pass on in the remaining lectures to a description of the human body, we will throw further light on the subject from the side of soul and spirit.
You have realized that man is a threefold being, head-man, trunk man and limb man; and you saw how each of the three parts has a different relationship to the world of soul and spirit.
First let us consider the head formation of man. Yesterday we said that the head is mainly body; the chest is body and soul; and the limb man body, soul and spirit. But of course it is not an exhaustive description of the head to say that it is principally body. In actual truth things are not sharply divided from one another. Therefore we may equally well say that the head is also soul and spirit, but in a different manner from that of chest and limbs. Even at birth the head is principally body. That is to say the soul and spirit of the head have set their seal on the bodily form. The head (the first thing to evolve in the embryo) is a manifestation of what is essentially human, of the human soul and spirit. What relation has the bodily head to the soul and spirit? Because the head has reached something like completion in its bodily aspect, having evolved in former epochs through the necessary stages from animal to man, it is therefore capable of fullest physical development. The manner of the soul's relation to the head is this: at birth and throughout its earliest years the child's soul is dreaming in the head; while his spirit in the head is asleep.
Thus we find body, soul and spirit related to each other in the human head in a remarkable way. In our head nature we have a very highly developed body, a dreaming soul — truly a dreaming soul — and a spirit that is still asleep. Now we must see how we can bring this into harmony with the whole development of man. The characteristic feature of this development up to the change of teeth is that man is an imitative being. He imitates everything that he sees going on around him. He is able to do this owing to the fact that his head spirit is asleep. Hence in his head spirit he can dwell outside the head body. He can remain in the environment. For man's spirit and soul are outside his body in sleep. The child in spirit and soul, in his sleeping spirit and dreaming soul, is outside his head; he is with those who are around him. Because of this the child is an imitative being. Because of this, love goes forth from the dreaming soul towards his environment, particularly love towards his parents. Now when the child changes his teeth, and the second ones appear, this is an actual indication that the head development has reached its final stage. Even though the head as body is born complete yet it goes through a final stage of its development during the first seven years of life. The last stage culminates in the change of teeth.
What is it that is thus brought to an end? It is the molding of the form. Man has now poured into his body all the hardening elements, all that gives him form. When we see the second teeth appear we can say that the first stage in man's intercourse with the world has come to an end. He has accomplished the formation of his body, its molding and configuration. But whilst the head is occupied during this time in giving man his form and figure, something different is happening in the chest system.
For things are essentially different in the chest. From the very beginning, from birth, the chest is an organism both of body and soul. It is not solely body, as is the head, it is body and soul; but its spirit is still dreaming and outside of itself. When we observe a child in his early years, we see clearly that the chest organs, as contrasted with the head organs, are much more awake and more living. It would be quite wrong to look upon the human being as a chaotic conglomeration of parts.
With the limbs it is different again. Here from the first moment of life spirit, soul and body are intimately connected; they all flow into one another. Moreover it is here that the child is first fully awake, as those who have to bring up these lively, kicking little creatures in their babyhood very well know. Everything is awake, but absolutely unformed. This is the great secret of man: when he is born his head spirit is already very highly developed, but asleep. His head soul, when he is born, is very highly developed, but it only dreams. The spirit and soul have yet gradually to awaken. The limb man is indeed fully awake at birth, but unformed, undeveloped.
All we have really to do is to develop the limb man and part of the chest man. For after that it is the task of the limb man and chest man to awaken the head-man. Here we come to the true function of teaching and education. You have to develop the limb man and part of the chest man, and then let this limb man and part of the chest man awaken the other part of the chest man and the head-man. From this you will see that the child brings something of great consequence to meet you. He meets you with a perfected spirit and relatively perfected soul, which he has brought through birth. All you have to do is to develop that part of his spirit which is not yet perfect, and that part of his soul which is as yet still less perfect.
If this were not so, real education and teaching would be utterly impossible. For suppose we had to teach and educate the whole of the spirit which man brings into the world only in germ, then our stature as teachers would require to be equal to whatever the human beings in our care might become. If this were so you might as well give up teaching at once, for you could only educate people equal in brilliance and ability to yourselves. But you must of course be ready to educate people who, in some ways, are much more clever and brilliant than you are. This is only possible if in education we have to touch only one part of man, for we can educate this one part even if we are not as clever, as brilliant, perhaps not even as good, as the child potentially is. The thing we can accomplish best in our teaching is the education of the will, and part of the education of the feeling life. For we can bring what we educate through the will — that is through the limbs — and through the heart, that is through part of the chest man — to the stage of perfection we have reached ourselves. And just as a man servant (or even an alarm clock) can be trained to awaken a much cleverer man than himself, so a person much inferior in cleverness, or even in goodness, can educate someone who has greater possibilities than he. We must of course realize that we do not need to be equal to the developing human being in intellectual capacity; but as, once again, it is a question of the development of the will it is for the attainment of goodness that we must strive to the uttermost. Our pupil may become better than we are, but he will very probably not do so unless in addition to the education we give him he gets another education from the world or from other people.
I have shown you in these lectures that there lives a certain genius in language. The genius of language is truly gifted; it is cleverer than we are. We can learn a great deal from the articulation of language and the way its spirit dwells within it.
But genius is to be found in other parts of our environment as well as in language. Let us consider what we have now discovered: that the human being enters the world with a sleeping spirit and a dreaming soul, as far as his head is concerned; that hence it is necessary right from the beginning, from birth onwards, to educate him through his will, for we can only approach his sleeping head spirit by working upon his will. But if we could not approach his head spirit in some way we should inevitably have a great gap in human development. Man would be born — his head spirit would be asleep. We could not make the little child who lies kicking his legs do gymnastics, for instance, or Eurythmy. It wouldn't do. Nor can we give him a musical training as long as he can only kick his legs or yell. Neither can we bring art to him as yet. We find, as yet, no distinct bridge from the will to the sleeping spirit of the child. Later on, when we have managed to approach the child's will, we can work upon his sleeping spirit simply through the very first words we say for him to repeat.
Here we have a direct access to the will. For now what we release in the vocal organs through these first words will penetrate the sleeping head spirit as an activity of will, and will arouse it. But in the earlier years we have no direct bridge. No stream passes over from the limbs — where the will, the spirit, is awake — to the sleeping spirit of the head. Another mediator is needed here. We human educators have nothing at our disposal.
But now comes something, apart from us, which is both genius and spirit. Language indeed has its genius, but in the very earliest babyhood we cannot appeal to the spirit of language at all. But Nature has her own genius, her own spirit. If it were not so we human beings would perish, because a discontinuous education in babyhood would create a breach in our development. Here the genius of Nature intervenes and creates something which can build this bridge. Out of the limb system it produces a substance which partakes of the limb nature, as it is bound up with its development, and has something of that nature in it. This substance is milk. In woman the production of milk is connected with the upper limbs, with the arms. The milk producing organs can be said to be a continuation of the limbs, inwards. Both in the animal and human kingdoms milk is the only substance which has an inner connection with the limbs, which is, as it were, born of the limbs, and hence retains the power of the limbs within it. And as we give the child milk it works upon the sleeping spirit and awakens it — the only substance, essentially, which can do this. Here the spirit that dwells in all matter asserts itself in its rightful place. Milk bears its own spirit within it, and this spirit has the task of awakening the sleeping spirit of the child. This is no mere picture, it is a profound scientific truth that the genius in Nature, which creates the substance milk from out of secret depths, is the awakener of the human spirit in the child. We must learn to penetrate into these deep and secret relationships in the world, for only then shall we understand the wonderful laws that hold sway in the universe. Only then do we come to see what horrible ignoramuses we are when we theorize about matter as though it were some uniform mass that could be divided into atoms and molecules. Indeed it is no such thing. Matter is of such a nature, rather, that when milk, which is an integral part of it, is produced it has the inner need to awaken the sleeping human spirit. As in human beings and in animals we can speak of an inner need, namely of the force that lies at the basis of will, so can we speak of a “need” in matter generally. And if we want fully to comprehend the nature of milk we must say: when milk is produced it seeks to be the awakener of the child's human spirit. Thus everything we see around us springs to life if we regard it aright. Nor do we ever lose the relationship between man and what is in the world outside.
Thus, it is the genius of Nature herself which cares for the early years of human development. And when we educate and develop the child we are, in a certain sense, taking over the work of this genius. Through our words and actions, which the child copies, we begin to work upon the child through his will, and in so doing we continue the activity which we have left to the genius of Nature to carry out; for Nature has made use of the adult merely as a means to the process of nourishing the child with milk. From this you will perceive that Nature educates naturally; for her nourishment by milk is the first medium of education. Nature educates in a natural way. But we, as human beings, working to educate the child through language and through our actions, begin to educate in the realm of soul. For this reason it is so important to be conscious in our teaching and education that we cannot really undertake much with the head. At birth the head brings with it what it is destined to become in the world. We can awaken what is in the child, but we cannot implant a content into him.
Here we must indeed be clear that it is only certain definite things that can be brought into the physical earth existence through birth. The spiritual world has no concern with things which have come into civilization only through external convention. For instance, the child naturally does not bring with him our conventional methods of reading and writing — I have shown this before in other connections. The spirits do not write, neither do they read. They do not read out of books, nor do they write with pens. It is only an invention of spiritualists that spirits use human language and can write. Language and writing as we know them are conventions of our civilization. They belong to life on earth. And only when we bring this conventional reading and writing to the child, not by way of his head alone, but by way of his chest and limb systems too, can we really do him any good.
Now, of course, when the child is seven years old, he has not merely been lying in his cradle all the time, he has achieved something, he has been helping himself forward by imitating grown-up people, and he has seen to it that his head spirit is in some respects awake; then we can, of course, take advantage of this awakening to introduce reading and writing to him in a conventional way. But as soon as we do this we have a damaging effect upon the head spirit. This is why I told you that in good teaching reading and writing must only be given by way of art. The first elements of drawing, painting and music must precede it. For these work upon the limbs and chest man, and only indirectly on the head. But in time they awaken what is within the head-man. They do not misuse the head nature as we misuse it when we teach children the conventional reading and writing of to-day in a merely intellectual manner. If we first let the child draw, and then develop the written forms from its drawings, we shall be educating through the limb man up to the head-man. When, for instance, we make an “F” on the board for the children, and let them look at it and follow its form with their hands, we are then working through perception directly upon the intellect. That is the wrong way round. The right way is, as far as possible, to awaken the intellect through the will. We can only do this by passing over to intellectual education by way of artistic education. Thus, even in these early years when the child is first given into our charge, we must teach him reading and writing in an artistic way.
You must bear in mind that the child you are teaching and educating has something else to do besides what you do with him. He has all manner of things to do which only indirectly belong to your sphere of work. The child has to grow. Yes, he must grow, and while educating him you should realize that he must grow rightly. What does this mean? It means that you must not by your teaching, by your education, disturb the child's growth. You must not effect a disturbance of his growth; rather your teaching and education should only be such as is compatible with the child's growth. What I am now saying is of special significance for the primary school period. For just as up to the change of teeth there takes place the building up of forms from the head, so during the primary school period — from the change of teeth to adolescence — there takes place life-development, growth and all that goes with it. This belongs to the primary school period. This life-development which proceeds from the chest, only reaches completion with the onset of adolescence, Thus during the primary school period you have chiefly to do with the chest man. You cannot teach rightly unless you know that, while you are teaching and educating the child, he is growing and evolving through his chest organization. Thus you are called upon to be the comrade of Nature, for Nature is developing the child through his chest organization, through breathing, nourishment, movement, and the like. And you must become a good comrade to Nature's development. But how can you be this if you are ignorant of natural development? How can you teach if you do not know by what means you can work through the soul to retard or accelerate growth? It is within your power, to a certain extent, so to affect the healthy growth of the child, by way of the soul, that he shoots up, lanky and lean — a thing which could have bad results. Similarly it is within your power, to a certain extent, to check the child's growth in an unhealthy way, so that he will remain short and stumpy. You have this power, of course, only to a certain extent — but you have it. Thus you must have insight into the conditions of human growth. You must have this insight from the point of view of the soul and also of the body.
Now how can we gain an understanding of the growth forces from the point of view of the soul? For this we must turn to a better kind of psychology than that current to-day. This better psychology tells us that all that accelerates the growing forces of the human being, or makes him shoot up too rapidly, is related to a certain aspect of memory formation. Now, if we over-stimulate the memory, we cause the human being, within certain limits, to grow tall and thin. And if we over-stimulate his imagination and fantasy we retard his growth. Memory and imaginative fantasy have a certain secret relation to the forces of life development in man. And we must acquire the power of perceiving such a relation. For example the teacher should be able to do as follows: At the beginning of the school year he must pass his pupils through his mind in a comprehensive review; this is particularly important for those turning points of the ninth and twelfth year which I have described to you. (see Practical Course for Teachers) He must, then, hold a review, so to speak, of the bodily development of his children, and he must notice what they look like. And then at the end of the school year, or of some definite period, he must pass them once more in review and see what changes have taken place. And the result of these two reviews must be that he knows if some child or other has not grown as much as he should during that time; or perhaps another has shot up too much. Then the teacher must ask himself: How can I get the right balance between imagination and memory in the next school year, or period, so that I can counteract this irregularity?
This is why it is so important to keep the children right through their school life; why it is such a mad arrangement to pass the children on to another teacher every year. And, to look at the matter the other way round, at the beginning of the school year, or of the periods of development (seventh, ninth, twelfth year) the teacher gets to know his pupils. He gets to know those who are typically children of imagination, who transform everything in their minds, and those on the other hand who are typically children of memory, who easily notice and remember things. The teacher must get to know all this. And he does so by twice passing the children in review, as I have explained. But he must come to know whether a child threatens to grow too quickly or too slowly, not only by watching the outward physical growth, but also by means of the powers of imagination and memory themselves; for the child would be in danger of growing too fast if he had too good a memory, and too slowly if he had too much imagination. It is not enough to acknowledge the connection between body and soul in catchwords and phrases, we must be able to observe in the growing human being the working together of body, soul and spirit. Imaginative children grow differently from children endowed with a good memory.
The psychologists of to-day look upon everything as a finished product. Memory exists, and a description of it is given in the psychological book. Imagination exists; it, too, is described. But in the world of reality all things are in mutual relation to one another. And we can only come to know these mutual relations if we adjust ourselves and adapt our understanding to them. That is, we must use our power of understanding not in strict definition of everything, but in exercising mobility, so that the child can himself transform what he has acquired — transform it inwardly, in thought.
You see how the spiritual-soul element leads over of itself into the bodily element. So much so that we can say: through bodily influences, through milk, the genius of nature educates the child in his earliest years. From the change of teeth onwards it is we who educate the child by nurturing him in art in the way that is proper to him at this period. And as the end of the primary school age approaches there is another change. More and more there appear flashes of what is to come in later years, namely, the power of independent judgment, a feeling of personality, the independent impulse of will. We must meet all this by so arranging our curriculum as to make a right use of all that has to be contained in it.
Lecture XII
When we consider the human body, we must relate it to the physical sense-world that surrounds it and maintains it, for there is a constant interplay between the physical body and the world, through which it is sustained. When we look out into the physical sense-world around us, we perceive mineral beings, plant beings, animal beings. Our physical body is related to the beings of the minerals, plants and animals. But the peculiar nature of this relationship is not immediately evident to superficial observation; we must penetrate deeply into the character of the kingdoms of nature if we are to understand this relationship.
When we regard the human being as physical body, what we first perceive is his solid bony frame and his muscles. When we penetrate further into him we perceive the circulation of the blood with the organs which belong to it. We perceive the breathing, we perceive the processes of nourishment. We see how, the organs are built up out of the most varied vascular forms — as they are called in natural science. We perceive brain and nerves, the sense organs. We have now to co-ordinate these various organs of the human being and their functions with the external world.
Let us begin with that part of the human being which at first appears to be the most perfect (we have already seen how the matter really stands), let us begin with the brain and nervous system which is closely linked with the sense organs. This part of the human organization shows the longest earthly evolution behind it, so that it has passed beyond the form which the animal world has developed. Man has passed through the animal world, as it were, in relation to this, his head system, and he has gone beyond the animal system to the real human system — which indeed is most clearly expressed in the formation of the head.
Now we spoke yesterday of how far the formation of the head takes part in individual human evolution, how far the shape, the form of the human body proceeds from the forces which are to be found in the head. And we saw how the work of the head reaches a kind of conclusion with the change of teeth towards the seventh year. We should make clear to ourselves what really happens through the interplay between the human head, the chest organs and the limb organs. We should answer the question: what does the head really do in carrying out its work in connection with the chest-trunk system and the limb-system? It is continually forming, shaping. Our life really consists in this, that in the first seven years an intense forming force streams from the head right down into the physical form; and the head continues its aid by preserving the form, by ensouling it, by spiritualising it.
The head is involved in shaping the human form. But does the head build up our truly human shape? No, indeed it does not. You must learn to accept the view that your head is constantly trying, in secret, to make something different out of you from what you are. There are times when the head would like to shape you so that you would look like a wolf; at other times it would like to shape you so that you would look like a lamb. Then again, so that you would look like a serpent; it would like to make you into a serpent, a dragon.
All the shapes which your head really designs in you, you find spread out in nature, in the different animal forms. If you look at the animal kingdom you can say to yourself: that am I; but when the head produces the wolf form, for instance, my trunk system and my limb system constantly do me the favour of changing this wolf form into the human form. They are perpetually within themselves overcoming the animal element. They so master it as to prevent it attaining complete existence within them, they metamorphose it, they transform it. Thus the human being has a relationship to the animal world around him through the head system. But it is such that he is continually carried beyond the animal world in the creation of his body. What, then, really remains in you? You can look at a human being. Imagine that you have a man before you: you can make this interesting observation. You can say: there is the man. There is his head, and in the head a wolf is actually stirring, but it does not develop into a wolf; it is immediately dissolved by the trunk and the limbs. In the head a lamb is actually stirring; it is dissolved by the trunk and the limbs.
The animal forms are continually moving supersensibly in the human being, and are being dissolved. What would happen if there were a supersensible photographer who could retain this process, who could preserve this process on a photographic plate, or on a series of photographic plates? What should we see on these plates? We should then see the thoughts of man. These thoughts of the human being are indeed a supersensible correlate to that which does not come to expression in the sense-world. This continual metamorphosis out of the animal, streaming down from the head, is not expressed in the senses, but it works in man supersensibly as the process of thought. In reality this is present as a supersensible process. Your head is not merely the lazy-bones on your shoulders, it is that which would really like to maintain you in animality. It gives you the forms of the whole animal kingdom; it would like animal kingdoms continually to arise. But by means of your trunk and your limbs you prevent a whole animal kingdom from arising through you in the course of your life: you transform this animal kingdom into your thoughts. Such is our relationship to the animal kingdom. We allow this animal kingdom to arise supersensibly within us, and then we do not allow it to come to sensible reality, but hold it back in the supersensible. The trunk and the limbs do not allow these evolving animal forms to enter their sphere. If the head has too strong an inclination to produce something of this animal nature, the remaining organism struggles against accepting it, and then the head has to resort to migraine or to some similar head complaint in order to exterminate it again.
The trunk system is also related to our environment — not in this case, to the animal world but to the whole range of the plant kingdom. There is a mysterious connection between the trunk system of man, the chest system, and the plant world. The most important processes in the circulation of the blood, also in breathing and nourishment, all take place in the chest or trunk system. All these processes are in active interchange with what takes place outside in the physical sense-world of the plants, but in a very special way.
Let us first take the breathing. What does a man do in breathing? You know that he takes in oxygen, and through his life processes he changes oxygen into carbon dioxide by connecting it with carbon. Carbon is in the organism from the transformed foodstuffs. This carbon takes up the oxygen, and carbon dioxide gas arises through the union of the oxygen with the carbon. Now when man has the carbon dioxide within him it would be a splendid opportunity for him not to let it out, but to keep it there. And if he could free the carbon again from the oxygen, what would happen? Let us say that a man breathes in oxygen through his life processes, and allows it to form carbon dioxide by uniting with carbon; if now he were in a position to separate off the oxygen again within, and to work upon the carbon, what would then arise in the man? The plant world. The whole vegetable kingdom would suddenly grow up in man. It really could grow there.
For if you consider a plant, what does it do? Of course it does not breathe in oxygen in the same regular way as man, but it assimilates carbon dioxide. By day the plant is bent on getting carbon dioxide, it gives up oxygen. It would be bad if it did not do this; for then neither we nor the animals would have it. But the plant retains carbon, and out of this it forms starch and sugar and everything else it consists of. From this it builds up its whole organism. The plant world arises by building itself up from carbon which plants in their process of assimilation separate off from the carbon dioxide. When you look at the plant world, it is metamorphosed carbon, which is separated off by the process of assimilation, and this process corresponds to the human process of breathing. The plants also breathe to a certain extent, but it is different from the breathing process in man. The plant does breathe a little, especially in the night, but to say that plants can really breathe shows a superficial observation, and is like saying: “Here is a razor, I will cut meat with it.” The process of breathing in plants is different from the process of breathing in men and in animals, just as the razor is different from the table knife. The human process of breathing corresponds in the plants to the reverse process, that of assimilation.
From this you will understand that if you continued in yourself the process by which carbon dioxide has arisen, that is, if the oxygen could be given up again and the carbon dioxide could be transformed into carbon, as is done by nature in the world around you, then you could let the whole vegetable world grow up in you. You would have the materials for this within yourself and you could bring it about that you would suddenly blossom forth as plant world. You would disappear and the whole plant world would arise. This capacity of producing a plant world is indeed inherent in man, but he does not allow it to come to this point. His chest system has a strong inclination continually to produce the plant world. Head and limbs do not allow this to happen, they defend themselves against it. And so man drives out the carbon dioxide, and does not allow the plant kingdom to arise within himself. He allows the plant kingdom to arise out of the carbon dioxide in the outside world.
This is a remarkable interplay between the trunk-chest system and the sense physical world around us; for outside there is the kingdom of the vegetables, and the human being is continually having to prevent the process of vegetation from arising within him; if it does arise he must immediately send it out again so that he may not become a plant. Thus, in so far as the chest-trunk system is concerned, man is able to create the counter kingdom to the plant world. If you conceive the plant kingdom as positive, then man produces the negative of the plant kingdom. He produces, as it were, reversed plant kingdom.
What happens when the plant kingdom begins to behave badly in him, and head and limbs have not the power to nip it in the bud, to drive it out? Then the man becomes ill. The internal illnesses which come from the trunk system are ultimately due to this, that a man is too weak to check the plant-like growth as soon as it begins to arise within him. The moment there arises in us even a vestige of plant-like nature, the moment we fail to ensure that the plant kingdom which endeavors to grow in us shall be cast out to form its kingdom outside us — in that moment we become ill. And thus the essential nature of disease must be sought in this tendency towards plant growth in man. Naturally it is not true plants that grow, for after all the human interior is not a very pleasant surrounding for a lily. But through a weakening of the other systems of the trunk there can result a tendency towards the growth of the plant kingdom, and then man becomes ill.
Thus if we look at the whole plant world of man's environment we must say to ourselves: in a certain sense the plant kingdom presents pictures of all our illnesses. It is the wonderful secret in man's relationship to surrounding nature that not only (as we have shown on other occasions) do the plants represent pictures of his development up to adolescence, but in the plants around him, especially in so far as these plants are fruit bearing, he can see the pictures of his illnesses. This is a thing we may perhaps not like to hear, because it is natural to love the plant world aesthetically; and, when the plant unfolds in the world outside, this aesthetic attitude is justified. But the moment the plant seeks to unfold within man, the moment vegetation sets up within him, then what works outside in the many-colored beautiful plant kingdom, works in man as the cause of illness. Medicine will become a science when it is able to show how each individual illness corresponds with some form in the plant world. Actually it is true that when man breathes out carbonic acid gas, he is, for the sake of his own existence, constantly breathing out the whole of the plant world which wants to arise in him. Hence it need not seem strange to you that when the plant begins to extend — beyond its ordinary plant nature, and produces poisons, these poisons are bound up with the processes of man's health and sickness. At the same time all this is bound up with the normal process of nourishment.
Indeed, nourishment, like the process of breathing, takes place in the chest-trunk system, at least in its initial stages, and must be considered in exactly the same way as breathing. In the processes of nourishment man also takes in substances from the world around him, but he does not leave them as they are; he changes them. He changes them with the help of the oxygen which he breathes in. As man transforms the substances taken up in nourishment, they combine with oxygen. This appears as a process of combustion, and it looks as though the human being were constantly burning within. This moreover is what natural science frequently says, that a process of combustion is going on in the human being. But it is not true. What takes place in the human being is no true process of combustion, but is a process of combustion (notice this carefully) — it is a process of combustion which lacks both beginning and end. It is merely the middle stage of the process of combustion; it lacks the beginning and end of it. The beginning and the end of the process of combustion must never take place in the human body, only the intervening part. It is destructive to the human being if the first stages of the process of combustion, such as take place in the forming of fruit, are carried on in the human organism; for instance when a man eats unripe fruit. The human being cannot carry out this initial process similar to combustion. The human being cannot endure this in himself, it makes him ill. And if he can eat a great deal of unripe fruit, like strong country people for instance, then he must be very closely related to the nature around him, for otherwise he would not be able to digest unripe apples and pears as he can the fruit which has been ripened by the sun. Thus it is only the middle process which he can carry out. In the processes of digestion the human being can only take part in the middle stage of all the combustion processes. Again, if the process is carried to its conclusion, to where, in the outer world, the ripe fruit would rot, the human being can have no part in it. Thus he cannot take part in the end stage either. He must excrete the food stuffs before this stage is reached. It is actually the case that the human being does not carry on the processes of nature as they take place around him, but he only goes through the middle part; within himself he cannot fulfill the beginning or the end.
Now we will look at something most remarkable. Consider breathing. It is the opposite to everything which takes place in the plant world around us. It is in a certain way the anti-plant kingdom. The breathing of man is the anti-plant kingdom, and it is inwardly connected with the process of nourishment which is the middle stage of the combustion process of the outer world. You see, there are two processes in our bodily chest-trunk system; this anti-plant process, which takes place through the breathing, is always at work in connection with the central portion of the other external processes. These two are constantly interrelated in their work. Here, you see, body and soul are combined. That which takes place through the breathing unites with the remaining nature processes, which however, as they take place in man, represent only the middle portion of Nature's processes. And this means that the soul life, which is the anti-plant process, unites with the humanized bodily life, namely the middle portion of the processes of Nature. Science may well search for a long time for the mutual relationship between body and soul unless it seeks it in the mysterious connection between the breath, which has become soul, and the middle part of the processes of Nature, which has become body. These processes of Nature neither arise nor decay in man. They take their rise outside him and only after he has excreted them should they decompose. Man unites himself in body with a central part only of the processes of Nature; and in the breathing processes he fills these Nature processes with soul.
Here there arises that delicate inter-weaving of processes to which the medicine and the hygiene of the future will have to devote very special attention. The hygiene of the future will have to ask: how are the different degrees of warmth interrelated in the world outside? How does warmth act when passing from a cooler place to a warmer, and vice versa? There are warmth processes at work in the external world; how does such a warmth process act in the human organism when this organism is placed into it? Man finds an interplay of air and water in the external process of vegetation. He will have to study how that works on the human being when he is placed in it, and so forth.
With regard to things of this kind the medicine of to-day has only made the very smallest beginning, scarcely even a beginning. When there is an illness the medicine of to-day sets the greatest value on finding the bacilli, the kind of bacteria which causes the illness. Then, when it has found that, it is satisfied. But it is much more important to know how it comes about that, at a particular moment of a man's life, he is prone to develop some suggestion of a vegetative process, so that the bacilli scent a comfortable place of sojourn. The important thing is to keep our bodily constitution in such a condition that it is not an agreeable hostelry for all vegetable pests; if we do this, these gentlemen will not be able to bring about too great a devastation in us.
Now there remains the question: in considering the human being physically in his relation to the outer world, what part do the bony skeleton and muscles really play in the human life process as a whole?
We now come to something which, in the science of today, is hardly regarded at all; but it is absolutely essential that you should grasp it if you want to understand the human being. Please notice what happens when you bend your arm. Through the contraction of the muscle which bends your forearm you are bringing into play a machine-like process. Imagine that it simply comes about in the following way. First of all, you have a position where upper and lower arm (or two corresponding laths or poles) lie in one and the same direction (drawing a).
Then this position (drawing b) represents the bent arm.
Suppose now you stretch a band (c) and then begin to roll it up. This lath here would carry out the movement indicated by the arrow in the drawing. It is a thoroughly machine-like movement. You also carry out mechanical movements of this kind when you bend your knee and when you walk. For in walking the whole mechanism of your body is brought into continuous movement, and forces are continuously at work. They are pre-eminently forces of leverage, but forces are actually at work. Imagine to yourselves that by some kind of photographic trick you could arrange that, when a man was walking, all the forces and nothing of the man, should be photographed; I mean the forces which he applies to raise his knee, to put it down again, to bring the other leg in front.
Nothing of the man would be photographed except the forces. If in the photograph you could see these forces developing, it would be a photograph of a shadow, and even in walking itself you would have a whole series of shadows. You make a great mistake if you believe that you live with your ego in your muscles and flesh. Even when you are awake you do not live with your ego in your muscles and flesh, you live with your ego principally in the shadow which you photograph in this way, in the forces used by your body when it moves. Grotesque though it may sound, when you sit down and press your back against the back of the chair, you live with your ego in the force which is developed in this pressure.
When you stand up you live in the force with which your feet press the ground. You live continually in forces. It is not in the least true that we live with our ego in our visible body. We live with our ego in forces. We only carry our visible body about with us; drag it along with us during our physical earth life until death. Even in the waking condition we live only in a force body. And what does this force body really do? It continually sets itself a peculiar task.
It is true, is it not, that when you are eating you take in all kinds of mineral substances? Even if you do not make your soup very salty, the salt is nevertheless in the food, and you are taking in mineral substance. It is necessary that you should take in mineral substance. What do you do with it? Your head cannot do much with it. Neither can your trunk-chest system. But your limb system prevents these mineral substances from taking on their own crystal forms in you. If you did not develop the forces of your limb system, then when you ate salt you would become a salt crystal. Your limb system, your skeleton and your muscular system have a constant tendency to work against the mineral formation of the earth, that is, to dissolve the minerals. The forces which dissolve the minerals in the human being come from the limb system. If a morbid disturbance goes beyond the merely vegetable process, that is, if the body has the tendency not only to allow plant life to appear, but also the process of mineral crystallization, then a more severe, a more destructive form of illness is set up; for instance, diabetes. Then the body is not able to apply the force of the limbs which it receives from the universe to dissolve the mineral. In reality it should be constantly dissolving the mineral. If to-day men cannot master those forms of illness which arise from unhealthy mineralization in the human body, it is largely because we cannot adequately apply the antidote which we must find in connection with the sense organs, the brain, the nerve fibers, etc. In order to overcome gout, diabetes and similar illnesses, we ought to be able to use in some form the apparent substances (* German: Scheinstoge) call them apparent substances advisedly — we ought to use this decaying matter, which is in the sense organs, in the brain and nerves. What is really healing for humanity in this sphere will only be reached when the relationship between man and nature has been thoroughly investigated from the point of view which I have given you to-day.
The human body is only to be explained when we know the processes that take place in it: when we know that the human being must dissolve within him the mineral, must reverse within him the plant kingdom, must raise above him, that is, must spiritualize the animal kingdom. And all that a teacher ought to know about the evolution of the body has — as its foundation — what I have placed before you here in these anthropological, anthroposophical considerations.
Nothing of the man would be photographed except the forces. If in the photograph you could see these forces developing, it would be a photograph of a shadow, and even in walking itself you would have a whole series of shadows. You make a great mistake if you believe that you live with your ego in your muscles and flesh. Even when you are awake you do not live with your ego in your muscles and flesh, you live with your ego principally in the shadow which you photograph in this way, in the forces used by your body when it moves. Grotesque though it may sound, when you sit down and press your back against the back of the chair, you live with your ego in the force which is developed in this pressure.
When you stand up you live in the force with which your feet press the ground. You live continually in forces. It is not in the least true that we live with our ego in our visible body. We live with our ego in forces. We only carry our visible body about with us; drag it along with us during our physical earth life until death. Even in the waking condition we live only in a force body. And what does this force body really do? It continually sets itself a peculiar task.
It is true, is it not, that when you are eating you take in all kinds of mineral substances? Even if you do not make your soup very salty, the salt is nevertheless in the food, and you are taking in mineral substance. It is necessary that you should take in mineral substance. What do you do with it? Your head cannot do much with it. Neither can your trunk-chest system. But your limb system prevents these mineral substances from taking on their own crystal forms in you. If you did not develop the forces of your limb system, then when you ate salt you would become a salt crystal. Your limb system, your skeleton and your muscular system have a constant tendency to work against the mineral formation of the earth, that is, to dissolve the minerals. The forces which dissolve the minerals in the human being come from the limb system. If a morbid disturbance goes beyond the merely vegetable process, that is, if the body has the tendency not only to allow plant life to appear, but also the process of mineral crystallization, then a more severe, a more destructive form of illness is set up; for instance, diabetes. Then the body is not able to apply the force of the limbs which it receives from the universe to dissolve the mineral. In reality it should be constantly dissolving the mineral. If to-day men cannot master those forms of illness which arise from unhealthy mineralization in the human body, it is largely because we cannot adequately apply the antidote which we must find in connection with the sense organs, the brain, the nerve fibers, etc. In order to overcome gout, diabetes and similar illnesses, we ought to be able to use in some form the apparent substances (* German: Scheinstoge) call them apparent substances advisedly — we ought to use this decaying matter, which is in the sense organs, in the brain and nerves. What is really healing for humanity in this sphere will only be reached when the relationship between man and nature has been thoroughly investigated from the point of view which I have given you to-day.
The human body is only to be explained when we know the processes that take place in it: when we know that the human being must dissolve within him the mineral, must reverse within him the plant kingdom, must raise above him, that is, must spiritualize the animal kingdom. And all that a teacher ought to know about the evolution of the body has — as its foundation — what I have placed before you here in these anthropological, anthroposophical considerations.