An intellectual and materialistic way of thinking is liable to bring about many mistakes in this direction. A system of education arising from this way of thinking is easily prejudiced against that which is acquired merely by the memory. It will not tire at times of directing itself with the greatest ardor against the mere training of the memory, and rather makes use of the most ingenious methods that the young person may not mechanically absorb what he does not really understand. An opinion merely intellectual and materialistic is so easily persuaded that there is no means of penetrating into things except by abstract ideas; it is only with difficulty that thinkers of this kind come to the conclusion that the other subjective powers are at least just as necessary to the comprehension of things, as the intellect itself. It is not merely a figure of speech to say that one can understand just as well with the feelings, the emotions, the mind, as with the intellect. Ideas are only one of the means by which to understand the things of this world, and only to materialists do they appear the only means. There are, of course, many people who do not imagine that they are materialists, but who nevertheless consider an intellectual conception to be the only means of comprehension. Such men profess perhaps to hold an idealistic, perhaps even a spiritual conception of the world and life. But the attitude of their souls toward both is materialistic. For the intellect is, as a matter of fact, the soul’s instrument for the comprehension of material things.
And here, concerning the deeper foundations of the understanding, let us quote from that excellent educational book, by Jean Paul already mentioned—a work containing generally golden ideas concerning education and deserving of much more consideration than at present it receives. It is of much more value to the guardian than many of the writings on these lines that enjoy the highest repute. The passage under consideration runs thus:
“Do not be afraid of unintelligibility, even if it be of whole sentences; your look and the manner of your expression, added to the eager desire to understand, elucidates the one half, and with this, and in due time, the other half also. For with children, as with the Chinese and with men of the world, the manner of pronunciation is half the language. Bear in mind, that they understand their language as well as we understand Greek or any other foreign tongue before learning to speak it. Trust to the deciphering of time and to association. A child of five years of age understands indeed the words “yet,” “truly,” “on the contrary,” “of course”; but for a definition of them one must go not to the child, but to the father! The little word “but” reveals a small philosopher. If the eight-year-old child with his growing power of speech is understood by a child of three, why should you then confine your language to his babbling? Always speak several years in advance (for in books genius speaks to us centuries in advance); with the child of a year, speak as if it were two, with the child of two as if it were six, for the difference of growth may diminish in inverse proportion to the years. Generally speaking, all learning is apt to be too much ascribed to the credit of the teacher—therefore the teacher ought to bear in mind that the child possesses half his world, namely, the spiritual (such as his moral and metaphysical ideas), already complete and taught within himself, and that therefore a language composed only of concrete images can never impart spiritual ideas, but can only light them up. The joy and assurance used in speaking to children ought to be given as if the assurance and joy came from themselves. We can learn speech from them, just as we teach them by means of speech; by means of bold and yet correct word-painting, such as for instance I have heard spoken by children of three and four years of age: ‘leg-fish’ for otter; ‘pig-iron’ for the fork used in eating bacon; ‘the air-mouse’ (unquestionably superior to our word ‘bat’) and so on.”
It is true that this passage refers to the understanding (before the intellectual comprehension) as exercised in another sphere than that of which we are now speaking, but for this also, the words of Jean Paul have an important meaning. Just as the child receives into his soul’s organism the construction of speech, without making use of the laws of grammatical structure with intellectual comprehension, so too, for the cultivation of his memory, the youth ought to learn things of which he will not until later acquire an actual understanding. That which has been acquired in this period of life, at first in a purely mechanical way, is best put into ideas, afterwards, just as one learns more easily the rules of a language when one can already speak it. All the talk of work learned by rote and not understood is nothing more than a materialistic prejudice. For instance, the youth needs only to acquire by a few examples the most necessary rules of multiplication, for which the fingers are far better suited than an abacus, and then to learn fully, by rote, the multiplication table. If one so proceeds, one takes into account the nature of the growing child. But a mistake may be made with regard to this, if, during the time that the memory is forming itself, too much is demanded of the intellect. The intellect being a power of the soul, and only born at the time of puberty, ought not to receive an outward influence before this period. Until the time of puberty, the youth should assimilate into the memory treasures over which mankind has meditated; later on it is time to permeate with ideas that which has been impressed upon his memory. A man ought therefore not to retain merely what he has understood, but he ought now to understand the things that he knows; that is to say, the things of which he has already taken possession by means of the memory, just as the child does, when learning to speak. This applies to a wider sphere. At first, assimilation of historical events by mere rote, then comprehension of the same by means of ideas. At first, a good impression upon the memory of geographical data, then an understanding of the relationship of each thing with the rest, etc. In certain respects all comprehension through ideas should be done by means of the stored treasures of the memory. The more the youth already knows through the memory before he comes to comprehension, the better it is. It is hardly necessary to explain that all this applies only to the period, of which we are speaking, and not to any later period. If one learns a subject in later life, either by going over it again, or in any other way, the opposite process to that here described might be correct and desirable, although even then a great deal depends upon the particular spiritual nature of the student. But at the time of life of which we have already spoken the spirit must not be parched by being overcrowded with intellectual ideas.
It is also true that teaching by mere sense-objects, if carried too far, is the result of a materialistic view of life. At this age every idea must be spiritualised. One ought not, for instance, to be satisfied with merely producing a sense-impression of a plant, a grain of seed, or a blossom. Everything should seem as an allegory of the spiritual. A grain of seed is, in truth, not merely what it appears to the eye. Invisibly the whole new plant inhabits it, and that such a thing is more than what the sense perceives, must be absolutely realised with the perception, the imagination, and the feelings. The mysterious presence of latent existence must really be felt. Nor can it be objected that such a proceeding would weaken the perception of pure sense; on the contrary, by a persistent adherence to sense perceptions alone, Truth itself would be the loser. For the complete reality of a thing exists in Spirit and in Matter, and accurate observations can be no less carefully carried out if one brings to the study not only the physical senses, but also the spiritual faculties. If people could only perceive, as the Occultist is able to, how both body and soul are spoiled by mere object-teaching, they would not then lay so much stress upon it. Of what value is it from the highest point of view, if young people are shown all kinds of physical experiments in the mineral, vegetable and animal worlds, if with such a study one does not suggest the application of the sense allegory to the feeling of spiritual mystery? Certainly a materialistic mind will not be able to make anything of what has here been said, and of that the Occultist is only too conscious. Yet it is also clear to him that a really practical method of education can never proceed from the materialistic mind. So practical does such a mind imagine itself, and yet so unpractical is it in reality, when it is a matter of considering life vitally. Opposed to the true reality, materialistic opinions seem only fantastic, while to the materialist, the interpretations of occult science must, of necessity, appear equally fantastic. Doubtless, too, there will remain many obstacles which must be overcome before the fundamental teachings of occult science, arising from life itself, will permeate the art of education. But that is to be expected, for at present these truths are strange to many; nevertheless, if they be really the truth, they will incorporate themselves into all culture.
Only through the sure conviction that they are the only educational means by which to work upon young people, can the teacher always find the right way to deal correctly with each individual case. Thus, he must know how the individual powers of the soul —such as thinking, feeling and willing—ought to be treated, and how their development may react upon the etheric body; while this itself, between the period when the second teeth appear and that of puberty, can be perfectly moulded by outside influences.
The foundations for the development of a healthy and powerful will can be laid by the right management, during the first seven years, of those fundamental principles of education which have already been considered. For such a will must have for its support the fully developed form of the physical body. From the period of the second teething it begins to be a matter of making the etheric body, which is now developing, supply those powers to the physical body by which it can solidify its form and make itself firm. That which makes the most vivid impression upon the etheric body also reacts most forcibly upon the strengthening of the physical. And the strongest impulses are evoked in the etheric body through those perceptions and ideas by which a person feels and experiences his own relation to the everlasting Universe, that is to say, through religious experiences. The will, and along with it, the character, of a person will never develop healthily if he cannot experience at this epoch of life, profound religious impulses. The result of the uniform organisation of the will is that the person feels himself to be an organic fragment of the whole world. If the person does not feel himself to be indissolubly connected with a Supreme Spirit, then must the will and character remain unstable, discordant and unhealthy.
The emotional nature is developed in the right direction by means of the allegories and sense-pictures already described, and especially by all which, whether from history or from other sources, presents to us the figures of persons with character. An absorption in the mysteries and beauties of Nature is also of importance in the upbuilding of the emotional world. And here it is particularly well to consider the culture of the sense of beauty, and the awakening of the feeling for what is artistic. Music should supply that rhythm to the etheric body which then enables it to perceive in everything the rhythm otherwise concealed. A young person will be deprived of much in all his after life, who does not receive at this period the benefit of cultivating the musical sense. To him in whom this sense is altogether lacking, a certain aspect of the Universe must remain hidden. Nor should, however, the other arts be, by any means neglected. The awakening of the sense for architectural form, as also for plastic shape, for line, design and harmony of color—not one of these ought to be omitted in the plan of education. So simply, perhaps, might all this be done, under special circumstances, that the objection that circumstances allow of no development at all in this direction can never be valid. One can do much with the simplest means, if the right sense in this direction prevails in the teacher himself. The joy of life, the love for existence, the strength to work—all these arise for the whole being, out of the cultivation of the sense of beauty and art. And the relations of man to man—how ennobled and how beautiful will they become through this sense! The moral sense, which will, at this period, be developed by pictures of life and by standard authorities, will also gain a certain stability if, through the sense of beauty, the good is recognized as beautiful and the bad as ugly.
Thought in its own shape, as an inner life of distilled ideas, must, at the period in question, be kept in the background. It must develop spontaneously, as it were, uninfluenced from without, while the soul is nourished by means of similes and pictures representing life and the mysteries of nature. Thus, in the midst of the other experiences of the soul between the seventh year and the time of puberty, thought must grow and the faculty for judgment be matured, so that after a successful puberty the person becomes capable of forming his own opinions concerning the matters of life and knowledge, with complete independence. Indeed, the less one works directly upon the critical faculty, and the more one works indirectly through the development of the other spiritual powers, the better will it be for the whole after-life of the person concerned.
Occult science lays down the principles, not only for the spiritual side of education, but also for the purely physical. Thus, to give a characteristic example, let us consider gymnastics and children’s games. Just as love and joy must permeate the environment during the first years of childhood, so too the growing etheric body must be taught really to experience from bodily exercise a feeling of its own expansion, of its ever increasing strength. For instance gymnastic exercises ought to be so carried out that with every movement, with every step, the feeling rises in the inner self of the boy or girl: “I feel increasing power within me.” And this feeling should manifest itself within as a healthy delight, as a sensation of pleasure. For the devising of gymnastic exercises, in this sense, it is of course necessary to possess more than a merely intellectual knowledge of the human body, anatomically and physiologically. It is necessary to possess a close intuitive and sympathetic knowledge of the relation of joy and comfort to the postures and movements of the human body. The formulator of such exercises ought himself to experience how one movement or posture of the limbs will produce a pleasant and comfortable sensation, but another a loss of strength, and so forth. A belief that gymnastics and bodily exercises can be cultivated in this direction is one that can only be supplied to the educator by occult science, or, above all, by a mind sympathetic to such thought. One does not even require the power of vision in the spiritual worlds, but only the inclination to apply to life what has been given out by occultism. If, especially in such practical departments as this of education, occult knowledge were applied, then all the useless talk of how this knowledge has yet to be proved would straightway cease. For to him who should rightly apply it, this knowledge would itself be a proof through the whole of life by making him healthy and strong. By such means he would perceive, through and through, that it is true in actual practice, and this he would find a better proof than any manner of “logical” and so-called “scientific” reasons. One can best know spiritual truths by their fruits, and not through a pretended proof, however scientific, for such could hardly be anything more than a logical skirmishing.