As “imitation” and “example” are the magic words for the training of children in their early years, so for the years now in question the corresponding words are “hero-worship” and “authority.” Natural and not forced authority must supply the immediate spiritual standpoint, with the help of which the youth forms for himself conscience, habits and inclinations, brings his temperament into regulated paths, and wins his own outlook on this world. The beautiful words of the poet: “Everyone must choose his own hero, in whose steps he may find the way to Olympus,” are of special value with regard to this epoch of life.
Veneration and reverence are powers that assist the etheric body to grow in the right way. And he to whom it is impossible, during this period, to look up to anyone with unlimited reverence, will have to suffer on that account for the rest of his life. When this veneration is missing, the vital forces of the etheric body are checked. Picture to yourself the following in its effect on the youthful disposition: a boy of eight years of age is told of a person highly esteemed. All that he hears about him fills him with holy awe. The day draws near on which he is to see this honored person for the first time. A profound reverence overcomes him when he hears the bell-ring at the door, behind which the object of his veneration is to become visible. The beautiful feelings which are produced by such an experience, belong to the lasting acquisitions of life. And that man is fortunate, who not only during the happy moments of life, but continuously, is able to look up to his teachers and instructors as to his natural authorities.
To these living authorities, to these embodiments of moral and intellectual power, must be added the authorities perceived of the spirit. The grand examples of history, the tales of model men and women, must fix the conscience and the intellectual tendency—and not abstract moral truths, which can only do their right work, when, at the age of puberty, the astral body is freed from its astral covering.
One ought especially to guide the teaching of history into courses determined by such points of view. Before the time of the second teeth, the stories, fairy tales, etc., which are told to the child, can only have for their aim, joy, recreation, and pleasure.
After this time it will be necessary to use forethought concerning the matter that is to be related, so that pictures of life, such as he can beneficially emulate, may be set before the soul of the young person. It must not be overlooked that bad habits can be ousted by pictures correspondingly repulsive. Warnings against such bad habits and tendencies are at best of little avail, but if one were to let the living picture of a bad man affect the youthful imagination, explaining the result to which the tendency in question leads, one would do much toward its extermination.
One thing to bear always in mind is, that it is not abstract representations that influence the developing etheric body, but living pictures in their spiritual clearness, and, of course, these latter must be applied with the utmost tact, for otherwise the opposite to what is desired will be the result. In the matter of stories it is always a question of the way in which they are told. The verbal narration of a tale can therefore not be successfully replaced by a reading of it.
During the time between the second teeth and puberty, the spiritually pictorial, or, as one might also call it, the symbolical representation, ought to be considered in yet another way. It is necessary that the young person should learn to know the secrets of nature, the laws of life, as far as possible through symbols and not by the means of dry and intellectual ideas. Allegories about the spiritual relation of things ought so to reach the soul that the law and order of existence underlying the allegories is rather perceived and divined, than grasped by the means of intellectual ideas. The saying that “all things transient are only symbols” ought to form an all-important motto for the education during this period. It is very important for a person to receive the secrets of nature in allegories before they appear to his soul in the form of natural laws, etc. An example will make this clear. Supposing one wished to speak to a young person of the immortality of the soul, of its going forth from the body, one might as an instance make the comparison of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. As the butterfly comes forth from the chrysalis, so the soul comes forth from the shell of the body after death. No one who has not previously received them by means of some such image, will adequately grasp the right facts in the abstract ideas. For by such a simile one speaks not only to the intellect, but also to the sensations and feelings, to the whole soul. The youth having gone through all this, approaches the matter in quite a different attitude of mind when it is given to him later in intellectual conceptions. Indeed the man who cannot first approach the riddle of existence with this feeling is much to be pitied. It is necessary that the teacher should have similes at his disposal for all natural laws and secrets of the world.
In this matter it is quite clear what an enriching effect occult science must have upon practical life. Any one constructing from a materialistic and intellectual mode of representation, similes for himself and then propounding them to young people, will usually make but little impression upon them. For such a person ought first to puzzle out the similes himself with all his mental capacities. Those similes which one has not first applied for oneself, do not have a convincing effect on those to whom they are imparted. When one talks to somebody in parables, then he is not only influenced by what one says or shows, but there passes a fine spiritual stream from the speaker to the hearer. Unless the speaker himself has an ardent feeling of belief in his similes, he will make no impression on the one to whom he gives them. In order to create a right influence, one must believe in one’s similes oneself as if in realities; and that can only be done when one possesses the mystical tendency, and when the similes themselves are born of occult science. The real occultist does not need to worry about the above-mentioned simile of the soul going forth from the body, because for him it is a truth. To him the butterfly evolving from the chrysalis represents the same experience on a lower stage of nature’s existence as the going forth of the soul from the body at a higher stage development. He believes in it with all his might, and this belief flows forth as if in invisible streams from the speaker to the listener, and inspires conviction. Direct life-streams then flow forth from teacher to pupil. But for this end it is necessary for the teacher to draw from the full source of occult science; it is necessary that his word and all that goes forth from him, should be clothed with feeling, warmth and glowing emotion from the true occult view of life. For this reveals a magnificent perspective of the whole subject of education. Once the latter allows itself to be enriched from the life source of occult science, it will itself become permeated with a profound vitality. It will give up groping in the dark, so common in this particular domain of thought. All educational methods, all educational sciences, that do not continually receive a supply of fresh sap from such roots, are dried up and dead. For all world-secrets occult science has fitting similes, similes not rising from the mind of man but drawn from the essence of things, having been laid down as a basis by the forces of the world at their creation. Occult science must therefore be the basis for any system of education.
A power of the soul to which particular attention ought to be given at this period of development is that of memory. For the cultivation of the memory is connected with the transformation of the etheric body. This has its effect in the fact that precisely during the time between the coming of the second teeth and that of puberty it becomes free, so that this is also the period in which the further development of the memory should be looked after from outside. The memory will be permanently of less value to the person in question than it might have been, if at this period what is necessary to it is neglected. That which has thus been neglected cannot afterwards be retrieved.