Image of the Human Being: The human  being in its essence is a being of Spirit, soul,  and body. Childhood and adolescence, from  birth to age 21, are the periods during which  the Spirit/soul gradually takes hold of the  physical instrument that is our body. The Self  is the irreducible spiritual individuality within  each one of us which continues its human  journey through successive incarnations. 

There are four thoughts woven together in  the first Core Principle: 

1. The human being is a being of Spirit, soul, and body. 
2. The process of incarnating the Spirit and  soul into the body takes approximately 21  years. 
3. The essential Self is an irreducible spiritual  principle.
4. The Self incarnates repeatedly and in  human form.

Let us review these thoughts in order. 

1. Rudolf Steiner’s basic introduction to  the nature of the human being is found in  the first chapter of his foundational book  Theosophy. The threefold (body, soul, spirit)  principle is presented and then elaborated  upon considerably. Briefly, and using Steiner’s  own example, when we look at a flower in the  meadow, there are three aspects to consider:

   Our bodily senses give us the stimuli necessary  for the flower to enter our consciousness; our  spirit allows us to recognize the flower as, for  example, a daisy, which means recognizing a  lawfulness that would remain even when the  physical specimen is no longer before us; our  soul forms a relationship between our subject  and the flower in question.

   The following exercise can help make  the threefold human being more readily  comprehensible: 
   Place a manufactured object such a pencil or a paper clip before you. Describe its  appearance in detail (size, color, shape, smell,  and any other pertinent sensory attribute). This  description originates with what Steiner calls  the bodily aspect of the human being.
   Next, describe your personal response  to this object: like or dislike, attraction  or repulsion, and so forth. This response  originates in what Steiner calls the soul.
   Finally, try to articulate the concept of the  object. In manufactured objects the concept is  nearly identical with the function. A paper clip  is meant to clip papers together, for example,  and the clipping is more or less the thought or  intention that brought it into being. You can try  to follow as best you can the series of steps that  led from the functional intention through the  manufacturing process to the presence of the  object before you. This thought process, which  is not observable through the senses, originates  in what Steiner calls the spirit. Only the spirit  can perceive the spiritual, hidden aspects of the  world around us. 

2. The process of incarnating (literally  “entering the flesh”) takes 21 years on average.  In her discussion of the second Core Principle, process in detail. A good source for this idea is  Steiner’s book The Education of the Child in the  Light of Spiritual Science.

   From a pedagogical perspective, one of the  most succinct articulations of the relationship  between spirit and soul, on the one hand,  and the body, on the other, can be found in  the first lecture of Study of Man. This lecture  cannot be recommended highly enough for  anyone who wants the quintessence of Waldorf  education brought in an astonishingly concise  formulation. Steiner presents in few words a  whole cosmic drama in which the individuality  of the child comes into the world and needs the  teacher’s help in order to learn how to function  properly in the flesh, so to speak. 

3. An essential idea in Steiner’s presentation  of human nature is that the spiritual core of the  human being is not a reducible epiphenomenon  of matter, but rather that it predates and  also survives physical existence. This notion  is presented in detail in the second chapter of  Theosophy and throughout many of Steiner’s  writings. (We elected to capitalize Spirit in the  first Core Principle in order to emphasize its  eternal aspect.) In the first lecture of Study of  Man Steiner emphasizes that the existence of  the spirit before birth is just as crucial an aspect  of the human condition as the much more  commonly held idea of immortality as referring  only to life after death.
4. Further regarding the human beings  journey through successive incarnations: In  anthroposophy a human being was, is, and will be a human being. In other traditions, the  various kingdoms of nature are considered  interchangeable for purposes of reincarnation.  Steiner considered this view erroneous, and  in the chapter on reincarnation mentioned  earlier (in the book Theosophy), he explains  that repeated earth lives can be thought of in  a similar manner to waking up one morning  with the results of the previous day’s actions  and plans. Just as it would not make sense  to wake up as a sparrow tomorrow morning,  so it would not be true to consider a human  being as having been either a blade of grass or  a grasshopper during a previous life on earth.  Precisely because we are beings capable of new  beginnings, new creations, we must live with  the consequences of our actions and inactions  (and even, according to Steiner, our thoughts  and feelings) over time, both from day to day  and from one life to the next. 

Now that the four basic thoughts of the  first Core Principle have been introduced, let  us consider them in more detail. For Rudolf  Steiner, the human being stands uniquely  positioned between the spiritual world and  the physical world. Human beings are the only  earthly beings with the capacity to originate, to  create new beginnings out of spiritual insights,  and the only spiritual beings with the physical  tools to work right into earthly substance.  

To put it succinctly: Chimps can’t write  poetry; angels can’t plant corn. There is no  way to account for human spiritual activity  from a purely material-causality perspective:  It makes no sense to say, for instance, of the  work of William Shakespeare that on Sunday  night the weather was bad, but the stew his  wife made for dinner was very good and his  daughter slept well, and so therefore The Bard  woke up the next day and wrote Hamlet’s  famous soliloquy. One can investigate the  material and emotional events preceding the  creation of a great work of art, but one cannot  say that those circumstances caused the art to  be created. Something surprising and uniquely  individual transpires in every new creation,  something that points to a level of existence  at which every human being is a complete  species unto him or her self. We can predict  with relative certainty what a weather pattern  or a particular diet will do to my dog, but we  cannot predict what painting my wife will  create because of the weather outside and the  meal she just ate. To the extent that we eat, breathe, walk, and so on, we are a species like  other mammal species; to the extent that we  create new beginnings, we are each a species  unto ourselves. Even persons who are not  particularly creative create something new in  the form of their biography, and this makes  them unique in a way that no animal ever is.  

At the opposite end of the body-spirit  polarity, human beings are uniquely able  among spiritual beings to work directly into  material existence. We can conceive an idea,  e.g. building a new school somewhere, and  then go about realizing that idea in the physical  world. In the example of Hamlet’s soliloquy,  Shakespeare could take pen to paper and bring  the words he conceived into a form accessible  to other people. Other spiritual beings require  the assistance of human beings if their  intentions are to be made manifest on earth. 

The soul in Steiner’s tripartite image of  the human being occupies a middle ground  between spirit and body. I can see the daisy with my physical senses (by means of my  body) and learn to recognize more and more  what makes it a daisy (by what we have  termed spirit), but the soul forms a personal  relationship of liking or disliking, caring about  or choosing to ignore that which I encounter.  If the sensory aspect constitutes the fleeting  materialization of the daisy, and the concept “daisy” is the eternal, universal thought, the  relationship my soul forms with the daisy  makes for a uniquely personal relationship  between the daisy and me. It tells something  about me, rather than about the daisy. 

For Steiner, every human being is a spirit  living temporarily in a physical body, and the  soul is the mediator between the two. The  soul gathers impressions of the physical world  through the bodily senses and brings those  impressions for the spirit to gain knowledge  and wisdom, and then it brings the impulses of  the spirit into manifestation on earth through  the activation of the will. The twenty-one-year  period at the beginning of life is, according  to Steiner, the time it takes for the spirit to reach earth maturity to the point of being fully  capable of leading its own life. In many states  this age used to be the voting age, and in many  it is still a marker for various aspects of adult  consent. In my state, New Jersey, we recognize  the momentous completion of the twenty-one year maturation process by allowing the young  person to get drunk legally. Welcome to the  world of responsible decision making, as it were. Waldorf education is not the only pedagogical approach that begins with a view  of the human being. It is, in fact, important to  realize that every educational system begins  with such a view, whether explicitly or not. 

This view would cover such questions as the  essential nature of being human (e.g. the result  of a series of cellular and molecular accidents; a being created by God on the sixth of seven  days, and so forth). The pedagogy would then  consider the development from childhood to  adulthood and what a successful human being,  and therefore a successful educational process, “looks like”.

If you believe that a human being  is a complicated animal, that the animal is  finally only compounded of material particles,  that childhood is merely a stage of being a  small adult, that success is measurable through  some yardstick extrinsic to the individual (e.g. economic or academic achievement), then  you will also design an educational system  that aims to achieve goals that are measured  outside of the individual that is being educated.  In similar fashion, if you believe that all human  beings are born in sin, that the goal of life is  to avoid hell and join God and the saints in  Heaven, and that the Church is the only door  to the rightful path, then you will design a  schooling that will bring the young person into  the folds of the Mother Church, and this will  then guide the choice of content and methods.  I mention this since looking back on one’s  education and discerning its philosophical  underpinnings can be an enlightening exercise. 

If, in contrast, you hold the view that the  essential nature of every student is an eternal,  spiritual individuality that has to fashion its own journey in freedom, then your pedagogy  will endeavor to support that spiritual element  in developing and achieving its own aims. The skills and capacities that you will strive to  nurture within the student will not be ends in  themselves, nor will they be preparations for  predetermined later stages, but rather vehicles  for the student’s “I” to find its way in the  world. The idea that education is an attempt  to reconnect a human being with his or her  own goals, and that these goals are uniquely  individual, finding their place in a context of  relationships and activity, this idea would  then rightfully become a crucial principle of  your pedagogy. It is neatly summed in the oft quoted edict: “Our highest endeavor must be  to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and meaning to  their lives.” 

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References 

Rudolf Steiner. The Education of the Child in the Light of  Spiritual Science (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1965).

Theosophy (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic  Press, 1994). 

Study of Man (Forest Row, UK: Rudolf Steiner  Press, 2007). 

Endnote 

1 From the foreword by Marie Steiner to Rudolf Steiner’s Ilkley lecture cycle, published in English as A Modern  Art of Education (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972),  p.23.