Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

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Language Arts Compendium
ever, gives human nature something that emanates from the cosmic
formative activity working down from the spheres, just as earthly
gravity works up from the central point of the Earth. And cosmic
music, working from the periphery, is also a part of this. Just as the
shaping activity works from above, and physical activity works from
below through gravity, so cosmic music works in the movements of
the starry constellations at the periphery.
The principle that really gives humanity to the human being was
divined in ancient times when words were spoken—words such as
“In the primal beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and a God was the Word.” That Cosmic Word, Cosmic Speech, is
the principle that also permeates the human being, and that being
becomes the I-being. In order to educate, we must acquire knowledge
of the human being from knowledge of the cosmos, and learn
to shape it artistically. [The Essentials of Education, pp. 46-50.]
10. The Sense of Speech
The next sense we have to consider is separate from the I-sense and all
the other senses. I call it the sense of thought. The sense of thought
is not a sense for perceiving our own thoughts, but for perceiving
the thoughts of other people. Psychologists have developed grotesque
ideas about it. As a whole, people are so impressed by the connection
between speech and thinking that they believe we apprehend thoughts
with speech. That is ridiculous, since through your sense of thought
you can perceive thoughts in gestures just as you can perceive them in
speech. Speech only transmits thoughts. You must perceive thoughts
through your sense of thought. When we have finally created all the
sounds of speech as movement forms in eurythmy, then someone
would need only to perform them eurhythmically and out of these
movements you could read the thoughts just as you can hear them
through speech. In short, the sense of thought is something different
from what is active in the sense of speech. There we have the specific
sense of speech.
Now you can see the deeper meaning of our relationship to
the world. If we did not have twelve senses, we would look at our
surroundings like idiots and could not experience inner judgment.