Rudolf Steiner - Deeper Insights into Education

Schmidt Number: S-5454

On-line since: 31st March, 2017

Gymnast, Rhetorician, Professor: A Living Synthesis

The impressions I have gathered here in the school have prompted me to use the short time I
can be with you to say something that emerges directly out of these impressions. After all, the
fruitfulness of our activity in an institution like the Waldorf School depends, as does indeed
the art of education as a whole, on the ability of the teachers to develop the attitude that will
enable them to carry through their work with assurance and be active in the right way. On this
occasion, therefore, I would like to speak in particular about the teachers themselves. I would
like to preface what I have to say with some brief remarks I made recently in a course for
teachers in England, [Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education, London, Rudolf Steiner
Press, 1972 (14 lectures given in Ilkley, England, August 5-17, 1923).] though from a
somewhat different point of view. I then shall add a few things that will enable you, if you let
them work in the right way on your souls, to develop this right attitude increasingly. The
question of attitude, or mood of soul, is very much connected with the art of education. You
may possess an admirable mastery of the principles of teaching; you may be able to work
them out with intelligence and feeling; but what we are trying to do will fall on fertile soil
only if the general attitude that we take with us into the school can be made into a harmonious
whole.

Man is a threefold being not only from the many points of view we often have discussed
but also from those that lie a little closer to the earthly than do the higher, spiritual viewpoints.
This threefoldness reveals itself quite specifically if we focus on the way in which the human
being has developed his educational activity. We need not go back very far; indeed, if we went
back to very ancient times our view would have to alter somewhat. We have only to go back to
the Greek era in human evolution to a period that still stirs the minds of those in our Western
civilization. At that period we find that the educator was really the gymnast, intent above all
upon molding his pupil into maturity through his outer, physical, bodily nature. However, we
shall not properly understand the Greek gymnasts, especially the earlier ones, unless we
realize that they were quite as much concerned with the development of the soul and spirit as
of the body. It is true that the Greeks laid stress on bodily exercises, which were all formed in
an artistic sense, as the means of bringing their pupils to maturity. What is so little realized
nowadays, however, is that these bodily exercises, whether dance movements or some other
rhythmical or gymnastic movements, were devised in such a way that through the unfolding
and expression of rhythm, measure, and the like, spiritual beings were able to draw near,
beings who lived in the movements, in the rhythm and measure in which the pupil was
trained. While the pupil was doing something with his arms and legs, a spiritual influence
passed from the limb system, including the metabolic system, into the rhythmic and the nerve-
sense systems; in this way the whole human being was developed. One therefore should not
say that in Greece primary importance was attached to the cultivation of gymnastics, for this
gives the impression that they were cultivated then as they are nowadays, that is, mostly in an
entirely outward and physical way. In fact, with the Greeks gymnastics also included the

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education of soul and spirit. The Greek educator was a gymnast; he educated the body, and
along with the body the soul and spirit, because he had the capacity, as if by magic, to draw
down the world of soul and spirit into bodily movements. The more ancient Greek gymnasts
were perfectly conscious of this. They had no desire to educate human beings in an abstract,
intellectual way or to teach their pupils in the way we do today. We speak exclusively to the
head, even if we do not intend to do so. The Greeks brought their pupils into movement; they
brought them into movement that was in harmony with the dynamic of the spiritual and
physical cosmos.

In following the course of human evolution, we find that among the Romans the art of
cultivating the soul and the spirit by way of the bodily nature had been forgotten. They
approached the soul directly, and education took place especially through the medium of
speech, the faculty lying nearest to the soul element in ordinary life. Roman education did, in
fact, draw forth from speech that which was to form their pupils; the educator thus ceased to
be a gymnast and became a rhetorician. Beauty of speech was from Roman times onward the
essential element in education and actually remained so throughout the Middle Ages. Beauty
of speech — in the forming of words and in the consciousness that the word is being
sculpturally and musically formed — has its effect on the whole human being. The most
important principles of education were derived from this consciousness. The Greek had gone
right back to the bodily foundation of the human being, from there drawing everything into
the realm of soul and spirit. The Roman concerned himself with the middle part of man, with
the sublimated expression of the rhythmic system, with the musical speech of poetry. He
trusted that if speech were handled properly, this musical and sculptural-painterly speech
would work downward to the bodily and upward to the spiritual. In this form of education
also, intellectual training played no part, but rather special importance was attached to
speaking.

Then, from the fifteenth century onward, the rhetorician as educator was gradually
superseded by the professor [Doktor]. [The German Doktor does not in this context refer to a
medical doctor but to a scholar with a doctoral degree.] Even teachers who have passed
through only a training college nowadays are in this sense really “professors.” Hitherto, there
was some justification for this; if indeed the ideal of the professor was not held in the way it
once was by a teacher pf gymnastics whom I knew well. He felt extremely uncomfortable on
any gymnastic apparatus but loved to get up on a platform and hold forth theoretically about
gymnastics. His pupils sat crouched and bent on their benches and listened to the gymnastics
lectures. This sort of thing could not have happened in any other institution, but in this
training college he could get up and lecture like this once a week. He felt quite learned he felt,
in fact, like a real professor. The principle that the basis of education lies not in the rhythmic
system but in the head, in the nerve-sense system, became more and more prominent as
humanity evolved from the fifteenth century into the modern age. Hence it is not so easy today
for teachers in the Waldorf School to adhere to the principle that they should have no desire to
realize this ideal of the learned professor. I do not mean this outwardly but inwardly. It is not
easy, because it is a normal part of the consciousness of modern humanity to believe that
something is gained by becoming “learned.” In our civilization, however, a healthy condition
will be achieved only when we realize that to be “learned” in this sense is actually harmful
and, far from adding anything to a human being, it takes something away from him. Though I
am always delighted when someone nods intelligent assent to the sort of thing about which I
have been speaking, I am also a little uncomfortable about the nodding, because people take
the matter much too lightly. There is little inclination inwardly to lay aside the doctorate, even
if one does not have it oneself, even if one only carries the attitude in one's general

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consciousness. Furthermore, the trend that has caused the earlier gymnast and rhetorician to be
superseded by the professor is so much part and parcel of modern civilization that it cannot
easily be eradicated. It is in education, of course, that we notice most clearly the unfortunate
effects upon a person who has gone through a doctoral training; yet that which has put the
professor into a leading position in education has been necessary for the entire development of
intellectualism in modern culture.

We have reached a point at which we must cultivate the synthesis of these three elements
of the human being, for this division into gymnast, rhetorician, and professor is yet another
example of the threefoldness of human nature, and it is above all in the realm of education that
this synthesis should be achieved. If we could manage things ideally, the teacher should
cultivate gymnastics in the noblest sense, rhetoric in the noblest sense — with all that was
associated with it in ancient times — and also the professorial element in the noblest sense.
Then these three elements should be integrated into a whole. I almost shudder at having to
describe so dryly what you must know in this regard and must receive in your hearts' minds
[die Gesinnung], because I am afraid that it may again get distorted, as happens with so much
that must be said. It must not be distorted. The teacher should simply realize that for his own
art of education he needs a synthesis of the spiritualized gymnast, of the ensouled rhetorician,
and thirdly of the living, evolving spiritual element [das Geistige], not the dead and abstract
spiritual element.

The whole faculty of the school ought to work together to assimilate these things, to
develop gymnastics in the noblest sense and also what we have in eurythmy. If you really
succeed in penetrating eurythmy inwardly, you will experience for yourselves that there is an
active element of soul and spirit in every eurythmic movement. Every eurythmic movement
calls forth an element of soul from the deepest foundations of the human being, and every
gymnastic movement, if rightly executed, calls forth in the human being a spiritual
atmosphere into which the spiritual element can penetrate livingly and not in a dead, abstract
way.

The rhetorical element, in the noblest sense of the word, still has a particular significance
for the teacher today. No educator, in whatever sphere of education he may be engaged,
should fail to do his utmost to have his own speaking approach as closely as possible the ideal
of an artistic speaking. The need for cultivating speech as such should always be kept in mind.
This is something that has vanished so completely from man's consciousness that in this age
of intellectualism professors of rhetoric are appointed at universities mainly out of an old
habit. Curtius was professor of rhetoric at Berlin University, but he was not allowed to lecture
on the subject, because lectures on the art of speech were felt to be superfluous at a place of
higher education. He therefore had to discharge his duty in other ways than by lecturing about
rhetoric, though in his official appointment he still bore the title of professor of rhetoric. This
shows how we have ceased to attach any real value to the art of speech; this is connected with
our ever-increasing disregard for the artistic element as such. Today we usually think because
we do not know what else to do, and that is why we have so few real thoughts. The thoughts
produced in the style of our modern thinking are the worst possible. The best are those that
rise up out of an individual's humanness while he is engaged in some kind of action. Those
thoughts are good that evolve out of beautifully formulated speech, when, out of such
beautifully formulated speaking, thoughts rebound in us. Then something from the archangel
lives in our thinking through the speaking, and it is far more significant that we be able to
listen to this speaking than that we develop prosaic human thinking, however cleverly we
might do so. This can be achieved, however, only if we, especially those engaged in

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education, clearly realize how remote modern thinking is from reality, from the world. We
have, of course, produced a splendid science, but the sad thing is that this science knows
nothing really and that, as a result of its knowing nothing, it is driving the very life out of
human culture and civilization. We need not turn into revolutionaries for this reason or go
about shouting such things indiscriminately in the world; what we need is to work in the
school out of this consciousness.

Not only has thinking gradually become more and more abstract, but so has everything
relating to the content of the human soul. At most man is still aware that his highest soul
faculties originate in sudden flashes [einfällen], and he is especially proud when something
occurs to him [einfällt] in this way. Since man experiences what may be the most valuable
element in his soul as severed from the universe, he becomes inwardly barren and lifeless,
alienated from reality. Our musicians compose music, they write melodies and harmonies,
because these happen to> occur to them. Certainly one might think it quite a good thing if
such things occur to someone frequently ini the realm of music; but why do they occur to
him? Why should some melody suddenly occur to him out of nothingness? There appears to
be neither human nor cosmic reason that a melody should occur suddenly to an individual who
was born in and lives in this or that time or place. Why? There is meaning in it only when one
has a connection with the cosmos in experiencing a melody, when one experiences the
connection with the cosmos in experiencing a melody. One need not sail away into
symbolism, but the connection with the cosmos must be experienced. The melody must really
be “spoken” into us by the spirit of the world; then it has meaning and does something to
promote progress in the world.

A great deal of Ahrimanic influence can be found in the world today. Indeed, the evolution
of the world would be impossible without it. One of the worst instances of the Ahrimanic,
however, is the fact that in order to become a qualified professor a thesis has to be written;
there is no real connection between writing a thesis and becoming a professor. The only
connection is purely external, Ahrimanized. Such things are taken seriously in our civilization
today, however, and force their way into education, because educational institutions exert their
influence from above downward, and the whole mode of their organization is totally unsound.
Merely to say this sort of thing gets us nowhere, except to make us unpopular and create
enemies for ourselves. In working here, however, we should be fully awake to the fact that we
are called to work out of different premises.

Nowadays, for example, in lectures on the physiology of nutrition, we would be told that
potatoes —carbohydrates — contain so much carbon, so much oxygen, and so on; that protein
contains so and so much carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen; fats so and so much nitrogen,
and so on; that the various “salts” man consumes are composed of what nowadays are called
the chemical elements; and finally that the amounts of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so forth,
that man needs can be calculated. The modern theory of nutrition is arrived at in this way. It is
exactly as though someone wanting to know how a watch comes into existence were first to
ascertain how gold is produced up to the moment when it is delivered to the watchmaker or
how the glass for the watch is produced, and so on, with other parts of the watch. Such a
person insists on getting to know the parts but never on knowing what the watchmaker does
with them. In all eternity he will never really know anything about the watch. He may be well
informed about the glass, the hands, the materials of which the watch is made, but he knows
nothing about the watch itself. The same sort of thing is true if, regarding human nutrition, a
person limits himself to the knowledge that the fats are constituted of such and such chemical
elements, the carbohydrates of others, and so forth. We begin to know something about

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nutrition only if we can enter in a living way into the fact that what we eat in a potato, for
example, is related to the root. If we eat something related to the root it is quite different from
consuming in flour something that is related to the seed as in rye, corn, or wheat. What really
matters is not how much carbohydrate there is in a potato or a kernel of corn. Rather, if I
prepare a foodstuff from seeds, from corn, this foodstuff has to be digested in the area of the
human being that extends to the lymph vessels and reaches the nerve-sense system in a
condition in which it can provide the foundation for thinking. When I eat a potato, which is
related to the root, it is not the human digestive tract or the lymphatic system that reduces the
potato to a state where it can be assimilated by the human body. No, here the midbrain is
required, and when we eat potatoes the task of digestion is imposed upon the midbrain. When
we eat a different kind of food this burden is not present. If we eat potatoes in excess, we
impose upon the midbrain the task of the primary digestion; that is to say, we undermine the
real function of the midbrain in relation to the nerve-sense system, which is to permeate
thoughts with feeling [Gemüt]. We thus thrust our thinking into the forebrain, where it
becomes intellectual and to some extent actually animal-like.

The essential point is not whether a potato, or cabbage, or corn, is composed of such and
such a percentage of carbohydrates. For a true physiology of nutrition all that is irrelevant.
What we really need to know is how these things actually work within the human being. If we
wish to develop a living grasp of what man needs today, we have the task of freeing ourselves
from all these things that can never give us a true knowledge of man. The way we talk about
nature nowadays not only is misleading: it leads us straight into emptiness of thought,
emptiness of feeling.

Now you are all aware that there is a well-known process in the human being by means of
which carbon combines with oxygen so that carbon dioxide is produced, that is, the mixture of
carbon and oxygen that we exhale. You will often hear this process talked about as if it were a
sort of inner burning, the same sort of thing as when a candle burns. There, too, carbon
combines with oxygen, but to talk in this way is about as intelligent as to ask why the human
being needs two lungs; we might just as well put two stones into him, two inorganic objects. If
we mentally transfer into the human being the outer process of burning, we think in the same
way as we would if we viewed the lungs as two stones. The burning that takes place outwardly
in connection with oxygen is a dead burning, an inorganic burning. What takes place in the
human being is a living burning, permeated with soul. Any process that takes place outside in
nature changes when it occurs in the human being; in the human being it is permeated with
soul; it is spiritual. What carbon together with oxygen does within the human organism bears
the same relation to what happens outside as the living lungs bear to two stones. It is more
important to guide one's whole life of feeling in this direction than to ponder over these things;
then in all realms of the life of soul one would come to a direct experience of nature that could
truly guide one from nature to the human being. Nowadays people remain with nature outside
and do not at all reach the human being.

You will discover that if you speak to children with this kind of feeling and attitude
[Gesinnung], they will understand the most difficult things as they need to be understood in
their particular age. If you rely on the accursed textbooks that are so popular, the children
really understand nothing; you torment the children, bore them, call forth their scorn. What
you must do is to create a relationship to the world in yourselves that is both living and true to
reality. That, above all, is what the teacher needs. I would like to emphasize strongly at the
beginning that the teacher should strive continually to bring to life in himself what in the
course of civilization has become dead. One of the chief tasks in Waldorf education is to bring

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life to knowledge and to feel a kind of repugnance for the way in which things are presented
nowadays in so-called scientific textbooks. After having conquered this stage of repugnance,
we should be able to develop what in reality lives in ourselves and that passes over to the
children in a living way. We must begin at this point with ourselves and then look at nature
itself in this way. A good deal of courage is needed, because much of what is true is regarded
nowadays as sheer madness. Everything possible should be done to develop this courage.

Think of a butterfly. It lays an egg, the caterpillar crawls out and spins its cocoon,
becoming a chrysalis, and finally the butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. These things are
described in the textbooks, but how? Without any consciousness whatever of the wonderful
mystery that really lies here. The butterfly lays an egg, but it is essential that this egg be laid at
the proper time of year and that it be receptive to everything that works as the earthy, as the
solid or solid-fluid quality in nature. The most essential thing for the development of the egg
is the “salty” element. Then comes the time when in addition to the earthy element, the fluid,
and with the fluid the etheric, takes over. The fluid element, which becomes permeated with
the etheric, passes over into the development of the caterpillar that crawls out of the egg.
When we have the egg, we think primarily of the earth with the physical element. When we
have the caterpillar that crawls out of the egg we see its shape. What crawls out is a being
actually permeated with the etheric, fluid-watery element, and that is what makes the
caterpillar into a caterpillar.

Now the caterpillar must develop its being in the air; the most important thing now for the
caterpillar is that it come in contact with the light, so that it actually lives in the light-
permeated air but at the same time expresses an inner relationship to the astral and, with this
relationship to astrality, absorbs light. It is essential for the caterpillar to be exposed through
its sensory system to the rays of the sun, to the radiating sun with its light. Next you see in the
caterpillar what can be perceived in its most extreme form when you lie in bed with the lights
still burning, and moths fly toward the light. There you have the apparently inexplicable urge
of the moth to sacrifice itself. We shall hear why. The moth dashes into the light and is burnt
up. Caterpillars have the same urge regarding the radiating light, but they are organized in
such a way that they cannot hurl themselves into the sun. The moth can hurl itself into the
light. The caterpillar has the same urge to give itself up to the light but cannot do so, for the
sun is a long way off. The caterpillar develops this urge, goes out of itself, passes into the
radiating light, gives itself up, spinning physical material out of its own body into the rays of
the sun. The caterpillar sacrifices itself to the rays of the sun; it desires to destroy itself, but all
destruction is birth. It spins its sheath during the day in the direction of the sun's rays and,
when it rests at night, what has been spun hardens, so that these threads are spun rhythmically,
day and night. These threads that the caterpillar spins are materialized, spun light.

Out of the threads that the light has formed, that it has materialized, the caterpillar spins its
chrysalis, it passes wholly into the light. The light itself is the cause of the spinning of the
chrysalis. The caterpillar cannot hurl itself into the light but gives itself up to it, creating the
chamber in which the light is enclosed. The chrysalis is created from above downward in
accordance with the laws of form of the primal wisdom. The butterfly is formed after the
caterpillar has prepared the secluded chamber for the light. There you have the whole process
from the egg to the brilliantly colored butterfly, which is born out of the light, as all colors are
born out of the light. The whole process is born out of the cosmos.

If the process that we see extended into a fourfoldness — egg, caterpillar, chrysalis,
butterfly — is in any way condensed, then the whole is changed. When the process occurs

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inwardly within the animal element, what remains is a being created out of the light. You see,
the only way in which we can really get to the essence of the matter is to picture [vorstellen]
the process artistically. It is impossible to picture this process whereby the butterfly forms
itself from the chrysalis and is born out of the light unless we picture it artistically. If you
picture the process in accordance with reality, you will find yourselves in a world of
wonderful artistry. Just try for yourselves, and see how you receive an entirely different
consciousness if you know something in this way. It is a consciousness entirely different from
what you experience if you know something in the modern, outer way, which really gives no
knowledge at all. Every detail becomes interesting if you allow yourselves, with soul and
body, to grow together with the cosmos in its work of artistic creation.

Again, look at a tadpole with its resemblance to a fish; it breathes with gills and has a fish-
like tail to swim with. The creature lives wholly in the watery element, the watery-earthly
element. Then the tadpole develops into a frog. What happens? The blood vessels leading into
the gills wither away, and the whole blood system is rounded off inwardly. Through this
rounding off, the lung arises. The veins leading to the fishlike tail also wither away, but others
elongate into legs so that the frog can hop about on land. This wonderful transformation of a
system of blood vessels that at first feeds the gills and tail, this extraordinarily artistic
transformation into lungs and limbs, is a truly marvelous process. How is it brought about?
The first system of blood vessels, which feeds the gills and tail, is produced by the earthly-
watery element; the second is produced by the watery-airy element that is permeated
glitteringly with light.

You can learn to understand how the elements work together, but work together in an
artistic way. If you reach this sort of understanding of the world of nature, you simply cannot
help feeling as if you possessed the creative powers within yourselves. You cannot possibly be
like most people nowadays when they study modern science. They are really not fully human.
They just sit with their heads unhappily in their hands and strain their brains; study exhausts
them. This is all unnatural; it is really nonsensical. It is just as if eating were to make us tired
— but that happens only when we eat too much. Surely it is impossible to be wearied by
anything that is so intimately bound up with man as this living-together of nature, spirit, and
soul. Yet I have known many people who have been keen students, have written books, but
who suffered from anæmia of the brain. It is really the same sort of thing as when a person
suffers from anæmia in some other part of the organism. No one can suffer from anæmia of
the brain who sees things in the way I have described it, in their true relation to reality. This is
something that brings us to life inwardly, which is what we need above all else in our work as
teachers. We must relate ourselves directly to life, and anything we are going to introduce in
our teaching in school should sustain and uphold us inwardly, should truly enliven us. It is for
this reason that no true teaching can ever be boring. How could it be? One might as well
expect children to find eating and drinking boring, which usually does not happen unless a
child is ill. If our teaching is boring there must be something wrong with it, and we ought to
ask ourselves in every case (unless we are dealing with a really psychopathic child) what it is
that is lacking in us when our teaching bores the children.

These are things that really matter, and we must realize, my dear friends, that we should
neglect no single opportunity of quickening the inner life of soul and spirit. Otherwise we
cannot teach. However erudite we may be, we cannot be good teachers. This is connected with
what I described as our task to bring about the synthesis of what in successive stages of world
evolution was separate: the gymnast, the rhetorician, and the professor. It is especially
necessary today that we not allow the last relics that still live in the genius of our language,

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which can have an effect upon our whole human nature, to vanish, but that we try to bring a
musical, sculptural-painterly quality into speech, so that what comes to expression in speech
may again work back upon us. We therefore should make it one of the primary demands on
ourselves never to speak in a slovenly way in the school but really to form and mold our
speech so that as teachers our speech has something artistic about it. This may require some
exertion, but it is of enormous significance. If it is achieved, there may flow out from the
school an impulse for a revival, a renewal of civilization through the synthesis of gymnast,
rhetorician, and professor. We must overcome the professorial quality — the learned
knowledge, intellectual knowledge — which at the present time is the most disastrous of the
three in all education. We can achieve something with children only by being human beings,
not merely by being able to think.

This is the introduction I wished to give you today. I will add something in later talks
about matters that fundamentally concern the teacher himself, for the educational problem is
in many ways a problem of those who are actually teachers.

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Deeper Insights into Education
Schmidt Number: S-5457

On-line since: 31st March, 2017

II

Forces Leading to Health and Illness in Education

I have tried to show you that by permeating our knowledge with anthroposophy it is possible
to unfold a vital life of soul. We need this vital soul life if we wish to have the strength for our
teaching and education. I would like to speak to you now about something that is pre-
eminently a goal to be striven for in education, namely, that through a particular orientation in
educational activity, inner forces can be gathered in order to fire the heart in an educational
sense.

Today I wish to speak about the following question: with what forces are we really
working when we work educationally? Actually, this question cannot be answered in any
definite sense by the culture of today. We can say, of course, that the outer life within which
human beings stand, making it possible for them to earn a living, requires them to have
capacities that they cannot have yet as children. We must impart such capacities to them. The
behavior proper for adults is also, perhaps, something that the child cannot acquire by himself;
it must be imparted to him through education. But the answer to the question — why do we
actually educate? — remains something rather superficial in modern culture, because the adult
today does not really see anything of great value in what he became through the teaching and
education he received. He does not look back with any particularly deep gratitude to what he
has become through his education. Ask yourself in your own heart whether this gratitude is
always alive in you. In individual cases, of course, it may be present on reflection, but on the
whole we do not think with deep gratitude about our own education, because the human soul
[Gemüt] does not have a full realization of what education actually means, nor which forces in
human nature are quickened by it. That is why it is so difficult nowadays to arouse in people
enthusiasm for education. All our methods, all our ingenious, formed, outer methods of
education, are of little value in this respect. Answers to the question —how can this or that be
achieved? — are of little use. What is of the greatest importance, however, is for a person to
have enthusiasm in his work and to be able to develop this enthusiasm to the full if he is to be
a true teacher. This enthusiasm is infectious, and it alone can work miracles in education. The
child eagerly responds to enthusiasm, and, when there is no response on his part, it usually
indicates a lack of this enthusiasm in the teacher.

As a kind of obvious secret, let me say that although a great deal has been said about
enthusiasm here, when I go through the classes in the school I see a kind of depression, a kind
of heaviness in the teachers. The lessons are really conducted with a certain heaviness. This
heaviness must be eliminated. Actually, it may also express itself in artificial enthusiasm.
Artificial enthusiasm can achieve nothing at all. The only enthusiasm capable of achieving
anything is that kindled by our own living interest in the subjects with which we must deal in
the classroom. Now, it is essential for you to realize that as teachers we need to develop a
consciousness of our own. It is necessary for us to work at cultivating this consciousness. This
work to develop our own consciousness is certainly made infinitely more difficult by the fact

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that in the higher grades we must take into account the impossible demands made upon our
children from outside in preparation for graduation. This lies like a leaden burden upon the
teaching in the higher grades. Nevertheless, it is essential not to lose sight of our own goal,
and therefore we must work to develop this consciousness, the Waldorf teacher's
consciousness, if I may so express it. This is only possible, however, when in the field of
education we come to an actual experience of the spiritual. Such an experience of the spiritual
is difficult to attain for modern humanity, and this fact must be faced and understood. We must
realize that we really need something quite specific, something that is hardly present
anywhere else in the world, if we are to be capable of mastering the task of the Waldorf
school. In all humility, without any trace of pride or arrogance, we must become conscious of
this, but conscious of it inwardly, deep in our hearts, not merely by talking about it; within our
hearts we must be able to become conscious of it. This is possible, however, only if we have a
clear understanding of what humanity has lost in this respect, has lost just in the last three or
four centuries. It is this that we must find again.

What has been lost is the realization that when the human being enters the world out of his
pre-earthly existence he is, compared with the actual forces of the being of man, a being who
needs to be healed. This bond of education with the healing of man has been lost from sight.
During a certain period of the Middle Ages, certainly, it was believed that the human being, as
man on earth, was ill and that his health had to be restored; that the human being as he was on
the earth actually stood below his proper level and that something real had to be done in order
to make man truly man. This is often understood merely in a formal sense. It is said that the
human being must evolve, must be brought to a higher level, but this is meant abstractly, not
concretely. It will be interpreted concretely only when the activity of education is actually
brought into connection with the activity of healing. In healing a sick person, one knows that
something has actually been achieved: if the sick person has been made healthy, he has been
raised to a higher level, to the level of the normal human being. In ancient times, those who
knew the world mysteries regarded birth as synonymous with an illness, because, in fact,
when the human being is born he falls in a certain sense below his proper level and is not the
being he was in pre-earthly existence. In comparison with the higher human nature, it is really
something abnormal for the human being to bear within him constituents of his body, to have
to bear a certain heaviness. It would not be considered particularly intelligent today to say
that, in comparison with the higher nature of man, it is of the nature of illness to have to
struggle continually until death with the physical forces of the body. Without such radical
conceptions, however, we cannot approach the reality of what education means. Education
must have something of the process of healing. In order to make this clear, let me offer the
following.

The human being really lives within four complexes of forces. In one he is active when he
walks, moves his legs with a pendulum swing, or when he uses his legs in order to dance or
make other movements. This movement, taking place in the outer, physical world of space,
can also be pictured as bringing about changes of location in space. Similarly, other
possibilities of human movement, of the arms, hands, head, eye muscles, and so forth, can be
designated as changes in location of an ordinary inanimate body, that is to say, if we leave out
of account the inner activity of the human being. This is one complex of forces within which
the human being lives and is active.

The second is unfolded when man begins to work upon the physical substances that he
absorbs into himself; in the widest sense this includes everything that belongs to the activity of
nourishment. Whereas the limbs of man are the mediators of what man has in common with

10
beings that change their physical location, there is another activity that man needs in order to
continue the activity connected with the outer substances that man absorbs as nourishment. If
you put a piece of sugar into your mouth, it dissolves. This is a continuation of what sugar is
in the outer world. Sugar is hard and white. You dissolve it, and it becomes liquid, viscous,
and then undergoes further changes. The chemist speaks of chemical changes, but that is not
relevant here. The sugar continually changes. It is worked upon and absorbed into the whole
organism. There you have a second kind of activity. This continues right into the rhythmic
system, and then the rhythmic system takes over the activity of the digestive system. What
happens in this second kind of activity of man, however, is very different from the human
activity of moving the limbs or of moving the whole human body in the outer world. The
activity of nourishment is quite different from the activity exercised when we move outwardly
or, let us say, lift a weight. This activity of nourishment cannot proceed at all without the
intervention, at every point of this activity, of the astral nature of the human being. The astral
nature of the human being must permeate each individual part of this activity, of nourishment.
In the activity that I have described as the activity of walking, grasping, and so on, we are
dealing essentially with the same forces man makes use of that we can also verify physically.
What really happens in these movements is that the etheric organism is set in motion and
through its mediation arises a leverage movement that we can see in an act of grasping or
walking. If we focus on the activity of walking or grasping, we need only consider that which
we have in the physical world as it is inserted within the working of the etheric; then we have
what happens in man. We never have this, however, if we consider the activity of
nourishment. This can arise only if the astral body takes hold of processes that otherwise we
have in the test tube. There astral forces above all must be at work, and a fact that is
considered nary at all is that in this process physical forces no longer play a part. This is
exceedingly interesting, because it is generally believed that in nourishment, for example,
physical forces are at work. As soon as the human being no longer exists in relation to the
outer world, the physical forces cease to have their raison d'etre; they are no longer active, no
longer have any effect. In the activity of nourishment, the physical substances are worked
upon by the astral and etheric. The physical effect of a piece of sulfur or salt outside the body
has no significance within the body. Only the astral nature of a substance is seized hold of by
the astral, and then the etheric-astral is the really active factor in nourishment.

Going further, we come to the activities taking place in the rhythmic nature of man, in the
blood rhythm, in the breathing rhythm. In their inner constitution these activities are similar to
the forces at work in the system of nourishment. They are the result of cooperation between
the etheric and the astral, but in the activity of digestion the astral is in a certain respect
weaker than the etheric, and in the rhythmic activity the astral becomes stronger than the
etheric. In the rhythmic system the etheric withdraws more into the background (though
actually only the etheric that is within the human being). The etheric outside the human being
begins to take part again in the activity that is exercised in the rhythmic system of man, so that
actually with the activity of breathing one has the force of man's inner etheric body, the force
of the outer ether of the world, and the astral activity of man.

Now, picture to yourselves what is really going on when the human being breathes. The
physical activity of carbon, oxygen, etc., is completely suppressed, but the combined working
of the etheric outside, the etheric within, and the astral is a most important factor. This plays a
great part. These are the forces, however, that we must know in any substance if we wish to
speak of the healing effect of that substance. We cannot discover the extent to which a
substance is a remedy if we do not know how that substance, when introduced into the body,
is laid hold of by these three systems of forces. The whole of therapy depends upon

11
knowledge of these three forces in connection with the substances used. Knowledge of the
healing influence in the outer and inner etheric and in the astral is what constitutes therapy in
the real sense. What does it mean when antimony, for example, is used as a remedy? It simply
means that some form of antimony is introduced into the body; it is laid hold of in a certain
way by the inner etheric forces, by the outer etheric forces that enter by way of the breathing,
and by the astral forces in the human being. We realize the extent to which antimony is a
remedy when we understand the effect of these three systems of forces on a substance within
the human organism. [Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman, Fundamentals of Therapy, London,
Rudolf Steiner Press, 1967.]

In ascending to the rhythmic activity, therefore, we come to recognize a much more

Now the strange thing is this. Whereas the doctor brings into operation the therapeutic
forces in the unconscious, in the rhythmic system of the blood circulation or the breathing, as
teachers we must bring the next higher stage into operation: that which is connected with the
activity in the nerves, in the senses. This is the next metamorphosis of the remedy. What we
do as teachers, is really to work in such a way on the physical human being that the substances
that are taken up are subjected to the etheric activity and to the outer physical activity —
namely, to perception, whenever something is perceived — and to the inner physical activity,
that is to say, to the inner changes of location brought about mechanically through the human
being moving himself. Whereas in the remedy are contained the outer and inner etheric and
the astral, in education are contained outer physical forces (as in gymnastics) and inner
physical forces. When the human being bows his head, a change takes place in his entire
dynamic system; the center of gravity shifts a little, and so forth. In the workings of light upon
the eye we have recognized outer physical forces in their greatest delicacy and refinement.
Moreover, outer physical forces are operating when pressure is made on an organ of touch. We
therefore have etheric activity, outer physical forces, and inner physical forces, that is to say,
physical changes in the nervous system, destruction in the nervous system. These are true
physical processes that are actually present only in the nervous system of the human being. It
is with these three systems that we are essentially dealing as a teacher with the child. This is
the higher metamorphosis of what is done in healing.

What kinds of activity are present in the human being? There are the movements of
walking, grasping, the movement of the limbs, outer changes of location, the activity in the
process of nourishment, the rhythmic activity — which is through and through a healing
activity — and the perceiving activity if we regard it from outside. Regarded from within,
educational activity is entirely a perceiving activity.

This will now give you deeper insight into the nature of man. You will be able to say to
yourselves that, since factors are active in the rhythmic system that are healing factors, there is
a doctor [Arzt] continually present in the human being. In fact, the whole rhythmic system is a
doctor. The function of a doctor is to heal something, however, and if healing is needed there
must be illness. If that is so, walking, grasping, digesting must be continual processes of
illness, and breathing and blood circulation a continual healing. This is indeed the case. In
modern science, however, where discrimination is lacking, it is not realized that the human
being is continually becoming ill. Eating and drinking, especially, are processes that

12
continually create illness. We cannot avoid continually injuring our health through eating and
drinking. Eating and drinking to excess merely injure us more seriously, but we are always
injuring ourselves to a slight degree. The rhythmic system, however, is continually healing
this illness. Human life on the earth is a continual process of becoming ill and a continual
healing. This process of becoming ill brings about a genuinely physical illness. What the
human being does in intercourse with the outer world, the consequences of walking, grasping,
and the like, is a more intense but less noticeable process of becoming ill. We must counter it
through a higher process of healing, through a process of education, which is a metamorphosis
of the healing process.

The forces inherent in education are metamorphoses of therapeutic forces: they are
therapeutic forces transformed. The goal of all our educational thinking must be to transform
this thinking so as to rise fruitfully from the level of physical thinking to spiritual thinking. In
physical thinking we have two categories which, in our academic age, give rise to a barren
enthusiasm that has such a terrible influence. We have only two concepts: right-wrong, true-
false. To discover whether something is “true” or “false” is the highest ideal of those whose
entire lives are given up to the world of academia. In the concepts “true” and “false,” however,
there is so little reality. They are something formal, established by mere logic, which actually
does nothing but combine and separate. The concepts of “true” and “false” are dreadfully
barren, prosaic, and formal. The moment we rise to the truths of the spiritual world we can no
longer speak of “true” and “false,” for in the spiritual world that would be as nonsensical as
saying that to drink such and such a quantity of wine every day is “false.” The expression
“false” here is out of place. One says something real regarding this only by saying that such a
thing gives rise to illness. Correct or incorrect are outer, formal concepts, even regarding the
physical. Pertaining to the spiritual world, the concepts of “true” and “false” should be
discarded altogether. As soon as we reach the spiritual world we must substitute “healthy” and
“ill” for “true” and “false.” If someone said about a lecture such as the one I gave here
yesterday evening, that is “right,” it would mean nothing at all. In the physical world things
can be “right”; in the spiritual world nothing is “wrong” or “right.” There, things are reality.
After all, is a hunchback “true” or “false”? In such a case we cannot speak of right or wrong.
A drawing may be false or correct, but not a plant; a plant however, can be healthy or
diseased. In the spiritual world things are either healthy or ill, fruitful or unfruitful. In what
one does there must be reality. If someone considers that a lecture such as I gave yesterday is
healthy or health-bringing, that is to the point. If he simply considers it “right,” he merely
shows that he cannot rise to the level where reality lies. It is a question of health or illness
when we are dealing with spiritual truths, and it is precisely this that we must learn in
connection with education. We must learn to regard things in their educational application as
either healthy or unhealthy, injurious to health. This is of particular significance if one wishes
to engender a true consciousness of oneself as a teacher. It may be said that engendering this
consciousness begins with passing from the “true” and “false” of logic, to the reality of
“healthy” or “ill.” Then we come quite close to understanding the principle of healing. This
can be developed in concrete detail but we must also let ourselves be stimulated by a
comprehensive knowledge of man, a knowledge of man in relation to the world around him.

In describing the breathing process, for example, according to modern science, no

It is said that the air consists of oxygen and nitrogen, leaving aside for the moment the
other constituents. Man inhales oxygen along with a certain amount of nitrogen. He then
exhales oxygen combined with carbon, and also nitrogen. The percentages are measured, and

13
it is then believed that the essentials of the process have been described. Little account is
taken, however, of the essentially human factor. This begins to dawn upon us when we
consider the following. There is a definite percentage of nitrogen in the air that is good for
breathing, and also a definite percentage of oxygen. Suppose a man comes to a region where
the air is poor in nitrogen, containing less than the normal percentage. If the person breathes in
this nitrogen-poor air, this air gradually becomes richer in nitrogen through his breathing. He
exhales from his body nitrogen that he would not otherwise exhale in order to augment the
nitrogen content of the air in his environment. I do not know whether any account is taken of
this in physiology today. I have often pointed out that the human being living in air that is
poor in nitrogen corrects this lack; he prefers to take nitrogen from his own organic
substances, depriving them of it in order to augment the nitrogen content of the outside air. He
does the same with respect to the normal content of oxygen in the air. The human being is so
intimately related to his environment that the moment the environment is not as it ought to be,
he corrects it, improves upon it. We thus may say that the human being is constituted in such a
way that he needs nitrogen and oxygen not only for himself; it is even more necessary for him
to have nitrogen and oxygen in certain percentages in his environment than within his own
organism. The environment of a human being is more important for this subconscious forces
than the make-up of his own body. The incredibly interesting fact is that through his instincts
the human being has a far greater interest in his environment than in the make-up of his own
body. This is something that can be proved by experiment, provided the experiments are
arranged intelligently. It is only a question of arranging experiments in this realm. If our
research institutes would only tackle such problems, what a vast amount there would be for
them to do! The problems are there and are of tremendous importance. They are terribly
important for education, too, for it is only now that we can ask why the human being needs an
environment containing a particular amount of nitrogen and a particular amount of oxygen.
We know that in the inner activity of nourishment or general growth, all kinds of combinations
of substances are formed in the human being, revealing themselves in a definite way when
man becomes a corpse. It is only in this dead form, however, that these things are investigated
by science today.

Now the strange thing is that in the sphere of the human being that encompasses part of
the rhythmic activity and part of the metabolic-limb activity, there: is a tendency for an
activity to unfold between carbon and nitrogen. In the sphere that extends from the rhythmic
upward to the nerve-sense activity, there is a tendency to unfold an activity between carbon
and oxygen. It is truly interesting, if one observes a soul-constitution not worn out by dry
scholarship, to see sparkling soda water, where the carbon dioxide appears in the liquid as the
result of the interplay of carbon and oxygen. If one observes these bubbles one has directly
and imaginatively a view of what goes on in the course of the rhythmic breathing activity
from the lung system toward the head. The bubbling effervescence in sparkling water is a
picture of what, in a fine and delicate way, plays upward toward the human head. Looking at a
spring of sparkling water, we can say that this activity of the rising carbon dioxide is really
similar, only in a coarser form, to a continual, inward activity within the human being that
rises from the lungs to the head. In the head, something must continually be stimulated by a
delicate, intimate sparkling-water activity; otherwise, the human being becomes stupid or dull.
If we neglect to bring this effervescence of sparkling water to the head of a human being, then
the carbon within him suddenly shows an inclination for hydrogen instead of oxygen. This
rises up to the brain and produces “marsh gas,” such as is found in subterranean vaults, and
then the human being becomes dull, drowsy, musty.

To begin with, these things confront us as inner — one would like to say — physical

14
activities, but they are not really physical, for the production of marsh gas or carbon dioxide
becomes in this case an inner spiritual life. We are not being led into materialism here but into
the delicate weaving of the spiritual in matter.

Now if, in teaching languages, for example, we make the child learn too much vocabulary,
if we make him memorize through an unconscious mechanization, this process can lead to the
development of marsh gas in the head. If we bring as many living pictures as possible to the
child, the effect is such that the breathing system lets the carbon dioxide effervesce toward the
head. We therefore play a part, in fact, in something that makes either for health or illness.
This shows us how as teachers we must demand a higher metamorphosis of the forces of
healing. To be able to perceive these hidden relationships in the human organism kindles
enthusiasm in the highest degree. We realize for the first time that the head is a remarkable
vault that can be filled with either marsh gas or carbon dioxide. We feel we are standing
before the deeper well-springs of existence.

In the next lecture, we shall study another activity, with which this activity must be
brought into balance. This can happen, however, only when there is on the one hand the right
kind of teaching in the musical sphere and, on the other, the right kind of teaching in lessons
that are based upon outer perception [Anschauung] and not upon the musical sphere. Thus,
our teaching takes shape, and our interest is aroused in the human being before us. To this
something else must be added: the feeling of responsibility. The consciousness of a Waldorf
teacher should be imbued with the realization that makes him say in all humility: people are
let loose into the educational world today as if the totally blind were sent out to paint in color.
Few know what is really taking place in education. It is no wonder that a blind man has no
particular enthusiasm for painting in color; no wonder there is no real enthusiasm for
education in the world! The moment we enter into education in the way described, however,
the whole art of our education will provide the stimulus for this enthusiasm, and we shall feel
that we are in touch with the well-springs of the world, and find the true feeling of
responsibility. We realize that we can bring either health or illness. This enthusiasm on the one
hand and a feeling of responsibility on the other: both must arise in us.

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Deeper Insights into Education
Schmidt Number: S-5458

On-line since: 31st March, 2017

III

A Comprehensive Knowledge of Man as the Source of Imagination in the Teacher

What I wish to offer you in these lectures is intended essentially as an impulse toward the
inner enrichment of the teacher's profession. In continuation of what I said this afternoon, I
would like to add the following. You see, we must bring our knowledge of the human being to
the point where we really can know in detail what is going on in the human being in his
ordinary activity in the world. I have shown you that the first form of activity we perceive in
the human being is the one in which he moves his limbs. Now we must pose the question:
what actually moves his limbs? What force is at work when a man walks or does something
with his arms? What is it? Now, the materialistic view will simply be that it is man himself,
and, thinking about man in this way, that it is a piece of the cosmos consisting of blood, bones,
and so on, described as man, that moves the limbs! This is the true initiator of action!
Fundamentally, there is no sense in putting it like that, since man himself is the object in
movement, is that which is moved. If we ask who is the actual subject, who is moving the arm
or the leg, then we arrive at something spiritual, certainly not material. We are forced to say to
ourselves that it is the spiritual itself that must bring physical forces, forces that usually we
designate as physical, into action. Our leg must be moved by something spiritual just as, for
example, we say that a piece of wood is moved by us from one place to another.

Here, however, we come to something remarkable that generally receives little attention,
because a great illusion prevails regarding it. Our human movement is really a magical effect,
because in it something is set in motion by the spirit. Our movement as a human being is in
truth a magical effect, and our view of man is entirely incorrect if we do not associate the
magical element with the movements he makes. The will — that is to say, something purely
spiritual — must intervene in physical activity; these are in truth magical effects. When you
walk, an inner magician, something essential, is working within you. How does this happen?
The fact that we are physical human beings, made up of bones, blood, and so forth, does not
make us into moving human beings; at best it is able to make us inert beings, beings who lie
permanently in bed. If we are to be able to move, the will must be directly active. Materialistic
science simplifies things by theorizing about the motor nerves and the like. That is nonsense.
In actual fact we have in human movement a magical effect, a direct intervention of the spirit
into the bodily movements. How is this possible? This will become clear in the following.

I pointed out to you this afternoon that as the life process in man passes from the rhythmic
system to the metabolic-limb system, what comes out of carbon has an affinity for what comes
out of nitrogen, and there arises a continual tendency in the human being to create
combinations of carbon and nitrogen. This tendency exists, and we shall never become clear
about the digestive process itself, and especially the excretory process, if this tendency toward
the combination of carbon and nitrogen is not kept in mind. This tendency finally leads to the
formation of cyanic acid. As a matter of fact, there exists from above downward in the human
being a continual tendency to produce cyanic acid, or at any rate, cyanides. There is really no

16
commonly accepted expression for what happens here.

What happens only goes so far as just to reach the point of coming into being, and then it
is immediately arrested by the secretions, particularly of the gall bladder. Thus, downward in
the human being, there is this continual tendency to create cyanide combinations that are
arrested in their status nascendi by gall secretions. To create cyanide combinations in man,
however, means to destroy him; the speediest method of destroying the human form [Gestalt]
is to permeate it with cyanide. This tendency exists particularly in the direction of the
metabolic-limb system; the human organism continually wants to create cyanide
combinations, which are in turn immediately broken up. At this moment between the coming
into being and the immediate dissolution of the cyanide compounds, the will lays hold of the
muscular system. In the paralyzing of this process lies the possibility for the will to take hold
so that man can move. From above downward there is always a tendency in the human being
to destroy organic substance through a kind of poisoning. This is continually on the point of
beginning, and we would not be able to move, we could never achieve any freeing of the will,
if this continual tendency to destroy ourselves were not present. Thus, to express it in a
grotesque way, from above downward we have this continual tendency to make ourselves into
ghosts and thereby to move by magical means. We must not limit our gaze to the physical
body with the movements of man but must turn to his will, to the calling forth of spatial
movements by purely magical means.

You see, therefore, every time the human being brings himself into movement, he is faced
with the responsibility of intervening in the processes that are the actual processes of illness
and death. On the other hand, we have the task of knowing that this process of illness is
opposed by the health-bringing process, of which I spoke this afternoon. For everything that
occurs in the processes in lower man there is a corresponding process above. Carbon has the
tendency to form nitrogen compounds downward but upward it has the tendency to form
oxygen compounds. Early alchemists called carbon “The Stone of the Wise,” which is nothing
other than carbon fully understood. Upward it has the tendency to form oxygen compounds,
acids or oxides. These stimulate the thoughts, and whenever we vitally occupy a child we
stimulate the formation of carbon compounds and therewith the activity of thinking.
Whenever we guide a child into some form of action while he is thinking, we call forth a state
of balance between the formation of carbonic and cyanic acids. In human life everything
actually depends upon symmetry being produced between these two things.

If a human being is occupied only with intellectual work, the process of the formation of
carbonic acid is too strongly stimulated in him; the upper organism is saturated with carbonic
acid. Now a proper, intelligently conducted musical education counteracts this excessive
formation of the carbonic acid and enables the human being to bring again some activity, inner
activity at least, into the carbonic acid process. By arranging a schedule so that the teaching of
music, for example, is interspersed among the other subjects, we actually penetrate directly
into the processes of illness and health in the human organism. I am not telling you these
things today simply for the sake of the subject matter, although I believe they are among the
most interesting things that could be found in physiology, for it is only in this way that we can
see clearly into the living activity of the substances and forces within the being of man.
Processes of illness and health are continually taking place in the human organism, and
everything a person does or is guided to do has its effect upon these processes. From this
knowledge must be created a feeling of responsibility and a true consciousness of one's
purpose as teacher. We must realize, in all humility, the importance of our profession, that we
help to orient what are in the most eminent sense cosmic processes. In fact, as teachers we are

17
coworkers in the actual guidance of the world. It is the particular value of these things for our
whole life of feeling [Gemüt] and for consciousness that I wish to stress today.

By fully penetrating this, every one of our actions will take on extraordinary importance.
Think how often I have said that a person will completely misapprehend the whole of human
evolution if he persists in trivial pictorial instructions [Anschauungsunterricht] and never
attempts to introduce to a child more than he can already understand; he fails to realize that a
great deal of what is taught a child in his eighth or ninth year will be accepted only if the child
feels himself in the presence of a beloved teacher, confronted by an obvious authority. The
teacher should represent to the child the whole world of truth, beauty, and goodness. What the
teacher takes to be beautiful or true or good should be so for the pupil. This obvious authority,
during the period between the change of teeth and puberty, must be the basis of all the
teaching. A child does not always understand the things that he accepts under the influence of
this authority but accepts them because he loves the teacher. What he has accepted will then
emerge in later life, say in his thirty-fifth year, and signify an essential enlivening of the whole
inner being of man. Anyone who says that one should merely teach children trivial mental
conceptions has no real insight into human nature, nor does he know what a vital force it is
when in his thirty-fifth year a person can call up something he once accepted simply through
love for his teacher. Now you can see the inner significance of what I have been saying. The
process in man that is the equilibrium between the carbon and the cyanide processes is
essentially supported, made essentially more vital by the fact that something of this condition
remains deeply embedded in human nature in the same way that something that we may have
accepted in love in our eighth or ninth year remains hidden and is understood only decades
later. What occurs between receptivity and understanding, what lies directly in the soul in the
process of balance between the lower and upper man, together with the corresponding action
of carbon, has enormous influence.

Of course, you cannot apply these things in detail in your methods of teaching, but you
can go into the classroom supported by this knowledge of man and apply one aspect or
another in various realms of your teaching; if one has acquired this knowledge, a definite
result will follow. One can distinguish between those who have knowledge that is inwardly
mobile or inwardly immobile. One who simply knows how diamonds, graphite, and coal
appear in nature outside the human being, and goes no further than that, will not teach in a
very lively way. If one knows, however, that the carbon in coal, in graphite, and so on, also
lives within man as a substance metamorphosed; that on the one side it acts only in death-
bringing compounds and on the other only in compounds of resurrection; if one speaks not
only of the metamorphoses of carbon, which in the various stages of the earth's evolution
produced diamond, coal, and graphite; if one realizes that there are different kinds of
metamorphosis of carbon in man, which can become inwardly alive, can be spiritualized, can
mediate between death and life; if one understands this, one has in this understanding an
immediate source of inspiration. If you can understand this, you will find the right method of
teaching in school; it is essential for the right method to occur to you; you should not stand in
the classroom with such a sour look that anyone can tell from your expression that you stand
before the children in a morose, surly mood. Such a mood is impossible if you possess an
inwardly mobile, creative knowledge. Then, in all humility, you will realize the importance of
the work, and this will reveal itself even in your facial expression while teaching. Your
expression is then naturally illuminated by the etheric and astral and unites with that which is
outer form to create a whole.

The face of a teacher has three main nuances of expression, with any number of

18
intermediate stages. There is the face with which he meets ordinary people, when he forgets
that he is a teacher and simply engages in natural conversation; there is the face he has when
he has finished his lesson and leaves the classroom; and there is the face he has in the
classroom. We may often be ashamed of human nature when we see the difference in the face
of a teacher when he is going into his classroom and when he leaves it. These things are
connected with the whole consciousness of the teacher. Perhaps it may comfort you a little if I
say that every face becomes twice as beautiful under the influence of an active, vital
knowledge than it is otherwise, but the knowledge must do its work, the knowledge must live,
and the faces of the teachers should always be alive, inwardly expressive, especially when the
lessons are actually being given. In what I am telling you, the important thing is not that you
should know these things but that they should work on your life of feeling [Gemüt],
strengthening you, giving you the vigor to spiritualize your profession.

Teachers ought to be conscious, especially nowadays, of their great social task, and they
should ponder a great deal about this task. The teacher, above all others, should be deeply
permeated by awareness of the great needs of modern civilization.

I will give you an example of what is needed in order to adopt the right attitude in our
civilization today. You have all heard of Mahatma Gandhi who, since the war, or really since
1914, has set a movement going for the liberation of India from English rule. Gandhi's
activities began first in South Africa with the aim of helping the Indians who were living there
under appalling conditions and for whose emancipation he did a great deal before 1914. Then
he went to India itself and instituted a movement for liberation in the life there. I shall speak
today only of what took place when the final verdict was passed on Mahatma Gandhi and omit
the court proceedings leading up to it. I would like to speak only of the last act in the drama,
as it were, between him and his judge. Gandhi had been accused of stirring up the Indian
people against British rule in order to make India independent. Being a lawyer, he conducted
his own defense and had not the slightest doubt that he would have to be condemned. In his
speech — I cannot quote the actual words — he spoke more or less to the following effect,
“My Lords, I beg of you to condemn me in accordance with the full strength of the law. I am
perfectly aware that in the eyes of British law in India my crime is the gravest one imaginable.
I do not plead any mitigating circumstances; I beg of you to condemn me with the full strength
of the law. I affirm, moreover, that my condemnation is required not only in obedience to the
principles of outer justice but to the principles of expediency of the British Government. For if
I were to be acquitted I should feel it incumbent upon me to continue to propagate the
movement, and millions of Indians would join it. My acquittal would lead to results that I
regard as my duty.”

The contents of this speech are very characteristic of that which lives and weaves in our
time. Gandhi says that he must of necessity be condemned and declares that it is his duty to
continue the activity for which he is to be condemned. The judge replied, “Mahatma Gandhi,
you have rendered my task of sentencing you immeasurably easier, because you have made it
clear that I must of necessity condemn you. It is obvious that you have transgressed against
British law, but you and all those present here will realize how hard it will be for me to
sentence you. It is clear that a large portion of the Indian people looks upon you as a saint, as
one who has taken up his task in obedience to the highest duties devolving upon humanity.
The judgment I shall pass on you will be looked upon by the majority of the Indian people as
the condemnation of a human being who has devoted himself to the highest service of
humanity. Clearly, however, British law must in all severity be put into effect against you. You
would regard it as your duty, if you were acquitted, to continue tomorrow what you were

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doing yesterday. We on our side have to regard it as our most solemn duty to make that
impossible. I condemn you in the full consciousness that my sentence will in turn be
condemned by millions. I condemn you while admiring your actions, but condemn you I
must.” Gandhi's sentence was six years at hard labor.

You could hardly find a more striking example of what is characteristic of our times. We
have two levels of actuality before us. Below is the level of truth, the level where the accused
declares that if he is acquitted, it will be his solemn duty to continue what he must define as
criminal in face of outer law. On the level of truth, also, we have the judge's statement that he
admires the one whom, out of duty to his Government, he sentences to six years' hard labor.
Above, at the level of facts, you have what the accused in this case, because he is a great soul,
defined as crime: the crime that is his duty and that he would at once continue were he to be
acquitted. Whereas on the one level you have the admiration of the judge for a great human
being, on the other you have the passing of judgment and its outer justification. You have
truths below, facts above, which have nothing to do with one another. They touch on one
another at only one point, at the point where they confront each other in statement and
counter-statement.

Here, my dear friends, you have a most striking example of the fact that nowadays we
have a level of truth and a level of untruth. The level of untruth, however, is in public events,
and at no point are the two levels in touch with each other. We must keep this clearly in mind,
because it is intimately bound up with the whole life of spirit of our times. An example as
striking as this reveals things that occur everywhere but are usually less obvious and startling.
We must achieve first, however, a real consciousness of what has come to pass in the present
in order to put truth in the place of what is happening in the present. We simply must find the
true path. Naturally, it is not a matter of overturning everything or of engaging in false
radicalism, which leads only to destruction, but of seeing what one can do. We have to find the
way to a clear insight and then work in the area where our efforts can be most fruitful.

The most fruitful sphere of activity of all is that of education. There, even if education is
controlled by dictatorial rules and standards, the teacher can let what he gains from a true
feeling for his profession flow into the lessons he gives. He must, however, have a knowledge
of man that will imbue life and spirit into what is otherwise dead knowledge, and, on the other
hand, have an enthusiasm arising from a really free and open-minded conception of what life
actually is today. You must be clear that in outer life you are at the level above, but as a
teacher confronting children it is possible to maintain the level below. It is not by practicing an
educational method based on clichés, but by acquiring real enthusiasm for your profession, the
consciousness of your profession, that you can emancipate yourselves from the constraints in
educational activity and be inspired by the majesty contained in a true knowledge of man. It is
sometimes a very bitter experience to speak to anthroposophists, for example, and be
compelled to say things that — though not in the bad sense- turn upside down what people
have learned and then to find that no attention is paid to what has been said. If you grasped the
full weight of what I said in the lecture yesterday [Rudolf Steiner, “The Michael Inspiration,
Spiritual Milestones in the Course of the Year,” The Festivals and Their Meaning, London,
Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981.] about meteoric iron, for instance, you might well be astonished at
the indifference with which such a matter is received. I can understand this in the case of
people who have not learned anything but in the case of those who are conversant with the
scientific concepts about iron, it is incomprehensible. But the world is like that today.

That is not, however, how the world should be in the head and especially in the heart of

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the teacher and educator. He must be filled with the consciousness that all the knowledge
acquired through modern science is dead knowledge, out of which we must create something
living, and the only sort of knowledge that we can use in school arises from this enthusiasm. If
you are permeated on the one side with the enthusiasm kindled by such a knowledge of man,
and, on the other, with the consciousness of the necessity to put truth in place of the lies that
are accepted today — you can find no more impressive example than the legal case I just
described to you — if you realize this necessity with your whole being and know that it is the
teacher's task to find the right direction through recognition of this necessity, and of the
appalling crudities inherent in what appears to be truth in public life today, then something
happens within the human being that colors every sphere. You will become a different kind of
eurythmy teacher, a different kind of art teacher, a different kind of mathematics teacher. In
every sphere you will become different if you are permeated in the real sense by this
consciousness. Everything is established by this enthusiasm. This is not the time to talk about
the niceties of this or that method. We must bring life into the world, which through its dead
intellectualism is faced with the danger of falling still further into death.

Basically, we have fallen out of the habit of being inwardly incensed by things as they are.
If you merely pull a long face, however, about things that ought to be rejected in our
civilization, you certainly will not be able to educate. That is why it is so necessary from time
to time to speak of things in such a way that they can really take hold of our feeling [Gemüt].
If you go away from these lectures with nothing more than the feeling that there has to be a
change in the spiritual factors governing the world today, then you will have grasped my aim
in giving them.

The dragon takes on the most diverse forms; he takes on every possible form. Those that
arise from human emotions are harmful enough but not nearly as harmful as the form the
dragon acquires from the dead and deadening knowledge prevailing today. There the dragon
becomes especially horrible. One might almost say that the correct symbol for institutions of
higher education today would be a thick black pall hung somewhere on the wall of every
lecture room. Then one would realize that behind it there is something that must not be shown,
because to do so would throw a strange light on what goes on in these lecture rooms! Behind
the black pall there should be a picture of Michael's battle with the dragon, the battle with
deadening intellectualism. What I have said today shows you how the struggle between
Michael and the dragon should live in teachers. What I wanted to present to you is this: we
must come to be aware of this battle of Michael as a reality to us in order to celebrate
Michaelmas in the right way. No one is more called to play a part in inaugurating the Michael
festival in the right way than the teacher. The teacher should unite himself with Michael in a
particularly close way, for to live in these times means simply to crawl into the dragon and
further the old intellectual operation. To live in the truth means to unite oneself with Michael.
We must unite ourselves with Michael whenever we enter the classroom; only through this can
we bring with us the necessary strength. Verily, Michael is strong! If we understand Michael's
struggle with the dragon in a particular sphere, we are working for the healing of humanity in
the future. If I had been asked to give these lectures a title, I would have had to say: Michael's
Struggle with the Dragon, presented for the teachers at the Waldorf School. One should not
speak about the possibility of celebrating a Michael festival now but rather give thought to
introducing into the most diverse spheres of life the kind of consciousness with which a
Michael festival could be connected. If you can make these things come alive in your hearts,
to permeate your souls with them; if you can bring this consciousness with you into the
classroom and sustain it there in complete tranquility, without any element of agitation or
high-sounding phrases; if you can let yourselves be inspired to unpretentious action through

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what can be kindled in your consciousness by surrender to these necessities, then you will
enter into the alliance with Michael, as is essential for the teacher and educator.

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