Awakening to Community
GA 257
22 February 1923, Dornach
Lecture V
Today I want to point once again to an ideal associated with the Goetheanum, which we have just had the great misfortune of losing. My purpose in referring to it again is to make sure that correct thinking prevails on the score of a step about to be taken in Stuttgart in the next few days, a step in the direction of making a new life in the Anthroposophical Society. Whatever anthroposophy brings forth must be built on a solid foundation of enthusiasm, and we can create the right enthusiasm only by keeping oriented to that ideal that every anthroposophical heart should be cherishing and that is great enough to unite all the Society's members in its warmth.
It cannot be denied that enthusiasm for this ideal of anthroposophical cooperation has dwindled somewhat during the three successive phases of anthroposophical development, though the ideal itself remains. As we stand grieving beside the ruins of the building that brought that anthroposophical ideal to eloquent external expression, it becomes the more important that we join forces in the right common feeling toward it. Shared feeling will lead to shared thoughts and beget a strength much needed in view of the constantly increasing enmity that confronts us. Therefore, instead of continuing to discuss matters that have been the focus of my lectures of the past several weeks, you will perhaps allow me to recall an outstanding memory that has a connection with the Goetheanum and is well-suited to restoring the kind of relationships between members that we need in the Anthroposophical Society. For to hold common ideals enkindles the love that every single anthroposophist should be feeling for his fellow members and that can be relied on to dissipate any hard feelings that members of the Society could be harboring against any others, even if only in their thoughts about them.
You may remember that when we started the first High School course at the Goetheanum, I gave a short introductory talk stressing the fact that what people were accomplishing there represented a new kind of striving whereby art, science and religion were to be united in a truly universal sense.
What was being striven for at the Goetheanum, what its forms and colors were meant to convey, was an ideal, a scientific, artistic and religious ideal. It should be the more deeply graven on our hearts now that it can no longer speak to us through outer forms and colors. That will perhaps be brought about if we continue to do as we have been doing these past few weeks in regard to other subjects under study and enquire how earlier periods of human evolution went about pursuing a scientific, artistic and religious ideal.
If we look back at the tremendous, lofty spiritual life of the ancient Orient, we come to a time when the spiritual content of everything revered by these Oriental peoples was immediate revelation to them—a time when they had no doubt whatsoever that the things their senses perceived were mere tracings in matter of divine realities that had been revealed to a visionary capacity none the less real to them for its dreamlike quality.
That way of beholding, instinctive though it was, was at one time such that people in certain specific states of consciousness could perceive spiritual beings in the universe in all their immediate reality, just as with their bodily senses they perceived things and creatures of the three natural kingdoms. The Oriental of an older time was just as convinced by immediate perception of the existence of the divine-spiritual beings connected with the human race as he was of the existence of his fellow men.
This was the source of his inner religious certainty, which differed in no way from his certainty concerning things in nature round about him. He saw his god, and could therefore believe in his existence just as firmly as he believed in the existence of a stone, a plant, clouds or rivers. What modern science dubs animism, picturing the ancients relying on poetic fantasy to endow nature with a living spiritual element, is an invention of childish dilettantism. The fact is that people beheld spiritual beings in the same way they beheld the world of nature and the senses.
This was, as I said, the source of the certainty in their religious life. But it was equally the source they drew on for artistic creation. The spiritual appeared to them in concrete form. They were familiar with the shapes and colors assumed by spiritual elements. They could bring their perception of the spiritual to material expression. They took such building materials as were available, the materials of sculpture and of the other arts, and applied such techniques as they had to express what was spiritually revealed to them.
The reverence they felt in inner soul relationships to their gods was the content of their religious life. When they imprinted on matter what they had beheld in the spirit, that was felt to be their art. But the techniques and the physical materials at their disposal for expressing what they thus beheld fell far short of their actual visions.
We come upon a period in the evolution of the ancient Orient when the divine-spiritual—or, as Goethe called it, the sensible-super-sensible—that man beheld was exceedingly lofty and gloriously beautiful. People's feelings and fantasy were powerfully stirred by their perception of it. But because techniques for dealing with material media were still so rudimentary, artistic creations of the period were but primitive symbolical or allegorical expressions of the far greater beauty human beings perceived with spiritual eyes. An artist of those ancient times describing his work with the feeling-nuance we have today would have said, “What the spirit reveals to me is beautiful, but I can bring only a weak reflection of it to expression in my clay or wood or other media.”
Artists in those days were people who beheld the spiritual in all its beauty and passed on their vision in sense perceptible form to others who could not behold it for themselves. These latter were convinced that when an artist embodied what he saw spiritually in his symbolical or allegorical forms, these forms enabled them, too, to find their way into the world beyond the earth, a world that a person had to enter to experience his full dignity as a human being.
This relationship to the divine-spiritual was so immediate, so real, so concrete that people felt that the thoughts they had were a gift of the gods, who were as present to them as their fellow men. They expressed it thus, “When I talk with human beings, we speak words that sound on the air. When I talk with the gods, they tell me thoughts that I hear only inside me. Words expressed in sounds are human words. Words expressed in thoughts are communications from the gods.”
When human beings had thoughts, they did not believe them to be products of their own soul activity. They believed that they were hearing thoughts whispered to them by divinities. When they perceived with their ears, they said they heard people. When they heard with their souls, when their perception was of thoughts, they said they heard spiritual beings. Knowledge that lived in idea form was thus communication from divine sources in the experiencing of ancient peoples, perception of the Logos as it spoke directly through the gods to men.
We can say, then, that men's beholding of the gods became the inner life of the religious ideal. Their symbolical-allegorical expression of divine forms through the various media was the life underlying the ideal of art. In their re-telling of what the gods had told them lived the ideal of science. These three ideals merged into one in ancient Oriental times, for they were at bottom one and the same.
In the first ideal, men looked up to divine revelation. Their whole soul life was completely suffused with religious feeling. Science and art were the two realms in which the gods shared mankind's life on earth. The artist engaged in creative activity felt that his god was guiding his hand, poets felt their utterance being formed by gods. “Sing to me, Muse, of the anger of the great Peleid, Achilles.” It was not the poet speaking; it was, he felt, the Muse speaking in him, and that was the fact. The abstract modern view, which attributes such statements to poetic license, is a grotesque piece of the childish nonsense so rampant today. Those who adopt it do not know how truly Goethe spoke when he said, “What you call the spirit of the times is just your own spirit with the times reflected in it.”
If we now turn our attention from the way the threefold ideal of religion, art and science lived in ancient Oriental man to consider how it was expressed by the Greeks and the Romans who were such a bare, prosaic copy of them, we find these three ideals in a further form of development. The divine-spiritual that had revealed itself to man from shining heights above was felt by the Greeks to be speaking directly through human beings. Religious life attached itself much more closely to the human, in the sense that a Greek not only experienced his inner life, but his very form, as god-permeated, god-suffused. He no longer looked up to shining heights above him; he looked at the marvellous shape of man. He no longer had the ancient Oriental's direct contemplation of divinity; his beholding was only a weak shadow of it. But anyone who can really enter into Greek poetry, art and philosophy perceives the basic feeling the Greek had, which led him to say that earthly man was more than just a composite of the material elements that his senses perceived in the external world; he saw in him a proof of the existence of divinity. This man of earth whom the Greek could not regard as of earthly origin was for him living proof that Zeus, that Athene ruled in spiritual worlds.
So we see the Greeks looking upon the human form and man's developing inner life as sublime proof of the gods' governance. They could picture their gods as human because they still had such a profound experience of the divine in man.
It was one thing for the Greek to picture his gods as human beings and quite another for modern man to conceive a divine man under the influence of a degraded anthropomorphism. For to the Greek, man was still a living proof of his divine origin. The Greeks felt that no such thing as man could exist if the world were not permeated through and through by the divine.
Religion played a vital part in conceiving man. A person was revered not for what he had made of himself, but just because he was a human being. It was not his everyday achievements or an ambitious earthly striving to excel that inspired reverence; it was what had come with him as his humanness into life on earth. The reverence accorded him enlarged to reverence for the divine-spiritual world.
The artistic ideal entertained by the Greeks was, on the one hand, a product of their feeling for the divine-spiritual element they embodied and to which their presence on earth testified. On the other hand, they had a strong sense—unknown to the ancient Oriental—of the laws governing the physical world of nature, the laws of consonance and dissonance, of volume, of the inertia or the supporting capacity of various earth materials. Where the Oriental handled his media awkwardly and was unable to go beyond a crudely symbolical-allegorical treatment of the spiritual reality that overwhelmed and overflowed him, so that the spiritual fact he was trying to give expression to in some work of art was always far more glorious and grand than the awkward representation of it, the Greek's striving was to embody all the fulness of his spiritual experience in the physical medium he had by this time learned to handle.
The Greeks never allowed a column to be any thicker than it had to be to carry the weight it was intended to support. They would not have permitted themselves to represent anything of a spiritual nature in the awkward manner characteristic of ancient Oriental art; the physical laws involved had to have been perfectly mastered. Spirit and matter had to be united in a balanced union. There is as much of spirit as of material lawfulness in a Greek temple, and a statue embodies as much of the spiritual element as the expressiveness of the material allows. Homer's verses flow in a way that directly manifests the flowing of divine speech in the human. The poet felt as he shaped his words that he had to let the laws of language itself be his guide to the achieving of perfect control over every aspect of his utterance. Nothing could be left in the awkward, stammering form typical of ancient Oriental hymns. It had to be expressed in a way that did full justice to the spirit. The goal, in other words, was so fully to master the physical laws inherent in the artistic medium employed that every last vestige of what the spirit had revealed was made manifest in sense perceptible form.
The Greeks' feeling that man was evidence of divine creation was matched by their feeling that works of art, like temples and statues, also had to bear witness to divine governance, though that was now conceived as acting through the agency of human fantasy. Looking at a temple, one could see that its builder had so mastered all the laws of his medium that every least detail of their application reflected what he had experienced in his intercourse with the gods.
The earliest Greek tragedies were plays in which the dramatis personae represented spiritual beings such as Apollo and Dionysos, with the chorus an echo of sorts, an echo of the divine that ruled in nature. Tragedies were intended to bring to expression through human beings as an adequate medium events transpiring in the spiritual world. But this was not conceived as in ancient Oriental times, when man had, as it were, to look up into a higher realm than that where the work of art stood. Instead, it was thought of as taking place on the level on which the tragedy was being enacted, making it possible to experience in every gesture, every word, every recitativ of the chorus how a spiritual element was pouring itself into sense perceptible forms beautifully adapted to it. This constituted the Greek ideal of art.
And the scientific ideal? The Greek no longer felt as livingly as the Oriental had that the gods were speaking to him in ideas and thoughts. He already had some inkling of the fact that effort was attached to thinking. But he still felt thoughts to be as real as sense perceptions, just as he felt earthly human beings with their human forms and inner life to be walking evidence of divinity. He perceived his thoughts in the same way that he perceived red or blue, C # or G, and he perceived them in the outer world in the same way that eyes and ears receive sense impressions. This meant that he no longer experienced the speaking of the Logos quite as concretely as the Oriental did. The Greeks did not compose Vedas, of which the Orientals had felt that the gods gave them the ideas they expressed. The Greek knew that he had to work out his thoughts, just as someone knows that he has to use his eyes and look about him if he wants to see the surrounding world. But he still knew that the thoughts he developed were divine thoughts impressed into nature. A thought was therefore earthly proof of the gods' speaking. Whereas the Oriental still heard that speaking, the Greek discerned the human quality of language, but saw in it direct earthly proof of the existence of divine speech.
To the Greeks, science was thus also like a divine gift, something obviously despatched to earth by the spirit, exactly as man with his divine outer form and inner experiencing had been sent here. So we see how the religious, artistic and scientific ideal changed in the course of humanity's evolution from the Oriental to the Greek culture.
In our epoch, which, as I have often explained, began in the first third of the fifteenth century, Western man's development has again reached a point where he is confronted with the necessity of bringing forth new forms of the venerable, sacred ideals of religion, art and science. This development was what I had in mind when we were launching the first High School course at the Goetheanum. I wanted to make it clear that the Goetheanum stood there because the inner laws of human evolution require that the religious, artistic and scientific ideals be clothed in magnificent new forms transcending even those of Greece.
That is why one feels so overwhelmed by grief as one's eye falls on ruins where a building should be standing and indicating in its every form and line and color the new shape that the three great ideals should be assuming as they emerge from the innermost soul of an evolving humanity. Grief and sorrow are the only emotions left to us as we contemplate the site that was meant to speak so eloquently of the renewal of man's three great ideals. Ruins occupy it, leaving us only one possibility, that of cherishing in our hearts everything we hoped to realize there. For while another building might conceivably be erected in its place, it would certainly not be the one we have lost. In other words, it will never again be possible for a building to express what the old Goetheanum expressed.
That is why everything the Goetheanum was intended to contribute to the three great ideals of the human race should be the more deeply graven on our hearts. In our day we cannot say with the clairvoyant Oriental of an older time that the divine-spiritual confronts us in all its shining immediacy as do the creatures of the sense world, or that the deeds of the gods are as present to our soul perception as any sense perceptible acts that may be performed in the external world in everyday living. But when we quicken our inquiry into man and nature with the living quality with which anthroposophical thinking and feeling endow such studies, we see the world for the cosmos, or the universe clothed in a different form than that in which the Greeks beheld it.
When a Greek made nature the object of his study or contemplated human beings moving about in the world of the senses, he had the feeling that where a spring welled up or a mountain thrust its cloud-crowned peak into the sky, when the sun came up in the rosy brilliance of the dawn or a rainbow spanned the heavens, there the spirit spoke in these phenomena. The Greeks beheld nature in a way that enabled them to feel the presence of the spirit in it. Their contemplation of nature really satisfied them; what they saw there satisfied every facet of their beings.
I have often emphasized how justifiably people speak of an advance in natural science, and anthroposophy is in a unique position to recognize the real significance of the scientific progress of recent centuries. I have often stressed this. Anthroposophy is far from wanting to denigrate or to criticize science and scientific inquiry; it honors all truly sincere study. In the course of recent centuries, my dear friends, people have indeed learned an enormous amount about nature. If one goes more deeply into what has been learned, the study of nature leads, as I have often stated from this platform, to insight into man's repeated earth lives, insight into the transformation of nature. One gets a preview of the future, when man will bring to new forms of life what his senses and his soul and spirit are experiencing in the present moment.
If one undertakes a suitably deeper study of nature, one's total outlook on it becomes different from that that the Greeks had. It might be said that they saw nature as a fully matured being from which the glory of the spiritual worlds shone out. Modern man is no longer able to look upon nature in this light. If we survey everything we have come to know and feel about nature's creations as a result of making use of our many excellent devices and instruments, we see nature rather as harboring seed forces, as bearing in its womb something that can come to maturity only in a distant future.
The Greek saw every plant as an organism that had already reached a perfect stage for the reason that the god of the species lived in each single specimen. Nowadays we regard plants as something that nature has to bring to still higher stages. Everywhere we look we see seed elements. Every phenomenon we encounter in this unfinished nature, so pregnant with future possibilities, causes us to feel that a divine element reigns over nature and must continue to do so to ensure its progressing from an embryonic to an eventually perfect stage.
We have learned to look much more precisely at nature. The Greek saw the bird where we see the egg. He saw the finished stage of things; we, their beginnings. The person who feels his whole heart and soul thrill to the seed aspects, the seed possibilities in nature, is the man who has the right outlook on it.
That is the other side of modern natural science. Anyone who starts looking through microscopes and telescopes with a religious attitude will find seed stages everywhere. The exactness characteristic of the modern way of studying nature allows us to see it as everywhere creative, everywhere hastening toward the future. That creates the new religious idea.
Of course, only a person with a feeling for the seed potentialities that each individual will live out in other, quite different earthly and cosmic lives to come can develop the religious ideal I am describing.
The Greeks saw in man the composite of everything there was in the cosmos of his own period. The ancient Orientals saw in man the composite of the whole cosmic past. Today, we sense seeds of the future in human beings. That gives the new religious ideal its modern coloring.
Now let us go on to consider the new ideal of art. What do we find when we subject nature and its forms to a deeper, life-attuned study, refusing to call a halt at externalities and abstract ideas? My dear friends, you saw what we find before your very eyes in the capitals of our Goetheanum pillars and in the architrave motifs that crowned them. None of this was the result of observing nature; it was the product of experiencing with it. Nature brings forth forms, but these could just as well be others. Nature is always challenging us to change, to metamorphose its forms. A person who merely observes nature from the outside copies its forms and falls into naturalism. A person who experiences nature, who doesn't just look at the shapes and colors of plants, who really has an inner experience of them, finds a different form slipping out of every plant and stone and animal for him to embody in his medium. The Greek method, which aimed at completely expressing the spirit through a masterly handling of the medium, is not our method. Our way is to enter so deeply into nature's forms that one can bring them to further, independent metamorphosis. We do not resort to the symbolical-allegorical Oriental treatment or strive for the Greek's technical mastery of a medium. Our method is so to handle every line and color in the work of art that it strives toward the divine. The Oriental employed symbolism and allegory to express the divine, which rayed out like an aura from his works, rayed out and welled over and submerged them, speaking much more eloquently than the forms did. We moderns must create works where in the form element speaks more eloquently than nature itself does, yet speaks in a manner so akin to it that every line and color becomes nature's prayer to the divine. In our coming to grips with nature we develop forms wherein nature itself worships divinity. We speak to nature in artistic terms.
In reality, every plant, every tree has the desire to look up in prayer to the divine. This can be seen in a plant's or a tree's physiognomy. But plants and trees do not dispose over a sufficient capacity to express this. It is there as a potential, however, and if we bring it out, if we embody in our architectural and sculptural media the inner life of trees and plants and clouds and stones as that life lives in their lines and colors, then nature speaks to the gods through our works of art. We discover the Logos in the world of nature. A higher nature than that surrounding us reveals itself in art, a higher nature that, in its own entirely natural way, releases the Logos to stream upward to divine-spiritual worlds.
In Oriental works of art the Logos streamed downward, finding only stammering expression in human media. Our art forms must be true speech forms, voicing what nature itself would say if it could live out its potential. That is the new artistic ideal that comes to stand beside the religious ideal that looks at nature from the standpoint of its seed endowment.
The third is our scientific ideal. That is no longer based on the feeling the Orientals had that thoughts are something whispered straight into human souls by gods. Nor can it have kinship with the Greek ideal, which felt thoughts to be inner witnesses to the divine. Nowadays we have to exert purely human forces, work in a purely human way, to develop thoughts. But once we have made the effort and achieved thoughts free of any taint of egotism, self-seeking, subjective emotionality or partisan spirit such as colors thoughts with prejudiced opinions, once we have exerted ourselves as human beings to experience thoughts in the form they themselves want to assume, we no longer regard ourselves as the creators and shapers of our thoughts, but merely as the inner scene of action where they live out their own nature. Then we feel the largeness of these sefless and unprejudiced thoughts that seem to be our own creations, and are surprised to find that they are worthy of depicting the divine; we discover afterwards that thoughts that take shape in our own hearts are worthy of depicting the divine. First, we discover the thought, and afterwards we find that the thought is nothing less than the Logos! While you were selflessly letting the thought form itself in you, your selflessness made it possible for a god to be the creator of that thought. Where the Oriental felt thought to be revelation and where the Greek found it proof of divine reality, we feel it to be living discovery: we have the thought, and afterwards it tells us that it was permitted to express divinity. That is our scientific ideal.
Here we stand, then, in the ongoing evolution of the human race, realizing what point we have reached in it. We know, as we look at the human head with the ears at the side, at the larynx and the distorted shoulder blades, that we must be able to do more than just contemplate them. If we succeed in transforming these shapes of nature, a single form emerges from a further development of the shoulder blades and a growing-together of the ears and larynx: a Luciferic form, composed of chest and head, wings, larynx and ears.
We reach the point of perceiving the artistic element in nature, the element that endows its forms with life, allowing a higher life of form to emerge than that found in nature itself.
But this also puts us in the position of being able to trace nature's own activity in the metamorphoses whereby it transforms the human being, and we are able to apply this same artistry in the pedagogical-didactic field. We bring this same creative artistry to pedagogical work with children, who are constantly changing. For we have learned it at hand of an art that we recognize to be the Logos-producing nature-beyond-nature. We learn it from springs that are more than springs, for they commune with the gods. We learn it from trees that are more than trees; for where the latter achieve only a stammering movement of their branches, the former disclose themselves to modern artistic fantasy in forms that point to the gods with gesturings of branch and crown. We learn it from the cosmos as we metamorphose its forms and re-shape them, as we tried to do in our Goetheanum. All these studies teach us how to work from day to day with children to help support the process that daily re-shapes, re-creates them. This enables us to bring artistry into the schooling of the human race, and the same holds true in other areas.
That is the light in which the three great ideals of humanity—the religious ideal, the artistic ideal, the scientific ideal—appear, re-enlivened, to the contemplating soul of the anthroposophist. The forms of the Goetheanum were intended to fill him with enthusiasm for experiencing these lofty ideals in their new aspect. Now we must quietly engrave them on our hearts. But they must be made a source of enthusiasm in us. As we acquire that enthusiasm and are lifted toward the divine in our experiencing of the three ideals, earth's highest ideal develops in us. The Gospel says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself, and God above all.” Another way of putting it is, “If one looks upon the divine in the light of the present day aspect of the three ideals, as a modern human being must, one learns to love the divine.” For one feels that one's humanness depends on devoting oneself with all the love at one's command to the three ideals. But then one feels oneself united with every other individual who is able to do likewise and offer up the same love. One learns to love the divine above all else, and, in loving God, to love one's neighbor as oneself. That keeps any hard feelings from developing.
That is what can unite and make a single entity of the separate members of the Society. That is the present need. We have had the experience of going through a phase in the Society in which anthroposophy was poured into separate channels, such as pedagogy and other practical concerns, into artistic activities, and so on. Now we need to pull together. We have first-rate Waldorf School teachers and other professionals. Everyone who is giving of his best at a special post needs to find a way to bring the sources of anthroposophical life to ever fresh flowing. That is what is needed now.
Since that is our need, since the leading anthroposophists need to prove their awareness of the present necessity of re-enlivening the Anthroposophical Society, we have arranged a meeting on these matters. It is to take place in Stuttgart in the next few days. Those who mean well by the Society should be cherishing the warmest hopes for what will come of that occasion. For only if the individuals present there can develop the right tone, a tone ringing with true, energetic enthusiasm for the three great love-engendering ideals, only if the energy and content of the words they speak guarantee this, can there be hope of the Anthroposophical Society achieving its goal. For what eventuates there will set the tone for the turn things will take in wider circles of the Society.
I will know, too, what my own course must be after seeing what comes of the Stuttgart conference. Great expectations hang on it. I ask all of you who cannot make the journey to Stuttgart to be with us in supporting thoughts. It is a momentous occasion that calls for participation and wholesomely based, energetic effort on behalf of the great ideals so essential to modern humanity. We are informed of them not by any arbitrary account set down by human hand, but in that script graven by the whole course of evolution, the whole import of man's earthly development, which declares itself to us every bit as plainly as does the sun to waking human beings.
Let us set about kindling this enthusiasm in our souls; then it will become deeds. And deeds are essential.
Fünfter Vortrag
Heute möchte ich auf dasjenige Ideal noch einmal hinweisen, das verbunden war mit dem Bau, den uns das Unglück entrissen hat. Ich möchte darauf hinweisen, damit auch hier das richtige Denken herrsche über das, was in den nächsten Tagen als, ich möchte sagen, ein erster Schritt zu einem neuen Leben in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft in Stuttgart unternommen werden soll. Denn was aus Anthroposophie hervorgehen soll, muß ja ruhen auf dem sicheren Fundamente menschlicher Begeisterung. Und diese menschliche Begeisterung, sie kann uns ja nur dadurch werden, daß wir hinschauen zu demjenigen Ideal, das in jedes Anthroposophen Brust sein sollte und das groß genug ist, um die Mitglieder der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft in Liebe zusammenzuhalten. Es ist ja nicht zu leugnen, daß zwar nicht dieses Ideal anthroposophischen Wirkens, wohl aber die Begeisterung für dieses Ideal in den drei aufeinanderfolgenden Epochen unserer anthroposophischen Entwickelung etwas hingeschwunden ist. Und jetzt, wo wir trauernd stehen vor der Ruine jenes Baues, durch den wir in einer äußerlich bemerkbaren Sprache über dieses Ideal uns ausdrücken konnten, jetzt ist es um so notwendiger, daß wir uns zusammenfinden in dem richtigen Fühlen gegenüber dem anthroposophischen Ideal, damit aus diesem Zusammenfühlen und dem daraus hervorgehenden Zusammendenken eine starke Kraft entstehen könne, die wir heute, namentlich angesichts der ja mit jeder Woche sich vergrößernden Gegnerschaft, gar sehr brauchen. Daher sei es mir eben in diesem Vortrage heute gestattet, nicht über die Fortsetzung — wenigstens nicht unmittelbar über die Fortsetzung — dessen zu sprechen, was ich in den letzten Vorträgen und nun schon seit Wochen hier vorgebracht habe, sondern ein wenig darzustellen, was sich vielleicht als eine der wichtigen Erinnerungen an unseren Bau knüpfen kann und was geeignet sein kann, jene Beziehungen wiederum zu knüpfen, welche notwendig sind zwischen den einzelnen Mitgliedern der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft. Denn in dem Zusammenfinden in dem gemeinsamen Ideal muß sich auch entzünden jene Liebe, welche jeder einzelne Anthroposoph dem andern entgegenbringen sollte und die ausschließen sollte, daß in irgend jemandem innerhalb der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft irgendeine Ranküne gegen den andern auch nur in Gedanken vorhanden sei.
Sie erinnern sich vielleicht, daß, als wir den ersten Hochschulkursus im Goetheanum eröffnen konnten, ich dazumal in einer kurzen Einleitungsrede betont habe, wie in einer neuen Art durch das, was durch Menschen im Goetheanum verwirklicht wird, ein wirklich weltgemäßes Zusammenwirken von Wissenschaft, Kunst und Religion erstrebt werden soll.
Was also im Goetheanum hätte erwachsen sollen,was hätte erwachsen sollen durch dieSprache seiner Formen und Farben, das war ein wissenschaftliches, das war ein künstlerisches, das war ein religiöses Ideal. Wir müssen heute das, was nicht mehr durch äußere Formen und Farben zu uns sprechen kann, in unsere Herzen um so tiefer eingraben. Und wir können es vielleicht,wenn wir in der Art,wie wir das für andere Betrachtungen in den letzten Wochen getan haben, einmal anfragen, wie in den aufeinanderfolgenden Epochen der Menschheitsentwickelung das wissenschaftliche, das künstlerische, das religiöse Ideal erstrebt worden ist.
Schauen wir zurück in das gewaltige, in das hehre orientalische Geistesleben, so stoßen wir auf einen bestimmten Zeitpunkt dieses alten orientalischen Geisteslebens, in dem gewissermaßen den orientalischen Völkern der geistige Inhalt der Werte in unmittelbarer Offenbarung sich darbot. Wir stoßen auf eine Zeit, wo die Menschen gar nicht daran zweifelten, daß das, was sie mit ihren Sinnen sehen können, bloß der spärliche äußere Abdruck ist desjenigen, was ihrem älteren, zwar traumhaften, aber deshalb doch für sie ganz wirklichem Schauen als Göttlich-Geistiges sich offenbarte.
Das Schauen, wenn auch instinktiv und triebhaft, war in der Menschheit einmal so, daß die Menschen in gewissen besonderen Zuständen ihres Bewußtseins die geistigen Wesen der Welt in unmittelbarer Wirklichkeit wahrnahmen, so wie sie durch den physischen Leib ihre Mitmenschen, wie sie durch die physische Körperlichkeit die Wesen der drei physischen Naturreiche wahrnahmen. Ebenso gewiß wie das Dasein eines Mitmenschen, ebenso gewiß war für den alten Orientalen aus der unmittelbaren Anschauung heraus das Dasein der göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten, die mit dem Menschen zusammenhängen.
Das gab ihm seine innere religiöse Gewißheit. Und diese innere religiöse Gewißheit war keine andere als die Gewißheit, die er besaß über die äußeren Naturdinge. Mit derselben Sicherheit, mit der er glauben konnte an das Dasein des Steines, der Pflanze, der Wolken und Flüsse, mit derselben Sicherheit konnte er an das Dasein seines Gottes glauben, denn er schaute diesen Gott. Und dasjenige, was in der neueren Wissenschaft etwa Animismus genannt wird, was die Sache so darlegt, als wenn in älterer Zeit die Menschen Dinge in die Natur hineingedichtet, durch ihre Phantasie Lebendig-Geistiges in sie hineinversetzt hätten, das ist eben kindisch, das ist eben dilettantische Wissenschaft von heute. In Wahrheit schauten die Menschen das Göttlich-Geistige, wie sie das Sinnlich-Natürliche schauten.
Daraus entsprang ihnen, wie ich schon sagte, die Gewißheit ihres religiösen Lebens, daraus aber entsprang ihnen auch das, was sie für ihre Kunst, für ihr künstlerisches Schaffen brauchten. Das GöttlichGeistige hatte für sie konkrete, unmittelbare Gestalt. Sie wußten, welche Formen dieses Göttlich-Geistige hat, sie wußten, in welchen Farben das Geistige erscheint. Sie konnten das, was ihnen im Geistigen erschien, durch die Mittel der Sinnenwelt, durch die Mittel der physischen Welt ausdrücken. Sie konnten die Baumaterialien nehmen, die ihnen zur Verfügung standen; die Mittel der Bildhauerei oder anderer Künste, sie konnten sie anwenden mit der Technik, deren sie fähig waren, und sie drückten dasjenige aus, was sich ihnen im Geiste offenbarte.
Wenn sie zur innerlichen Verehrung kamen, zu einem innerlich menschlichen Gemütsverhältnisse zu ihren göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten, so fühlten sie das als Religion. Wenn sie durch äußere Mittel, durch physische Mittel darstellten, was sie im Geiste erschauten, so empfanden sie das als ihre Kunst. Aber die Sache mit ihrer Kunst war so, daß alles, was sie machen konnten aus ihren Kunstmitteln, was sie als Technik hatten, was sie für das Physische an Materialien hatten, die sie verwenden konnten zum Ausdrucke dessen, was ihnen im Geiste vorschwebte: es war alles das gering gegenüber dem, was ihnen eben im Geiste vorschwebte.
Wir treffen einen Zeitpunkt in der alten orientalischen Entwickelung, wo dasjenige, was als Göttlich-Geistiges dem Menschen erschien, was, um den Goetheschen Ausdruck zu gebrauchen, in sinnlich-übersinnlicher Form erschien, von hehrer, glanzvoller Schönheit war und gewaltig auf das Gemüt, gewaltig auf die Phantasie wirkte, und weil man die Technik der äußeren Kunstmittel nicht meisterte, kam höchstens in einer unbeholfenen symbolisierenden oder allegorisierenden Form das zum Ausdruck, was viel schöner erschien im Geiste. So ein Künstler jener uralten Zeit hätte sagen können, wenn er in unserem Empfinden sein eigenes Kunstschaffen hätte zum Ausdruck bringen wollen: Schön ist das, was im Geiste erscheint, und nur ein schwacher Abglanz davon kann in dem gegeben werden, was ich aus dem Ton, was ich aus dem Holz, was ich aus andern künstlerischen Materialien heraus formen kann, um auszudrücken, was im Geiste erscheint.
Und ein Künstler war dann ein Mensch, der das Geistige in einer schönen Weise sah und es im sinnlichen Abbilde den andern Menschen zeigte, die es nicht unmittelbar schauen konnten, die aber überzeugt davon waren: Wenn ihnen der Künstler in seiner allegorisierend-symbolisierenden Form das von ihm im Geiste Erschaute hinstellte, so gelangten auch sie dazu, durch das Mittel dieses sinnlichen Ausdruckes den Eingang zu finden in eine Welt, die über der irdischen liegt, in eine Welt, in die sich der Mensch versetzen muß, wenn er das Gefühl seiner vollen Menschenwürde haben will. - Und dieses Verhältnis, diese Beziehung zu dem Göttlich-Geistigen, die war eine so unmittelbare, sie war, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, eine so reale, konkrete, daß die Menschen das Gefühl hatten, wenn sie dachten, wenn sie sich Gedanken bildeten, so hatten sie diese Gedanken von den Göttern, die sie ja schauten, die so da waren wie die andern Menschen. Und es sagten diese Leute einer alten Zeit: Wenn man mit Menschen spricht, so reden sie zu einem Worte, die in der Luft ertönen; wenn man zu den Göttern spricht, so sagen sie einem Gedanken, die nur im Innern der Menschen vernehmbar sind. Durch Laute ausdrückbare Worte sind Menschenworte, durch Gedanken ausdrückbare Worte sind Göttermitteilungen.
Und indem der Mensch seine Gedanken faßte, glaubte er nicht, daß er diese Gedanken innerlich mit seiner Seele bildete, sondern er glaubte zu hören, was ihm als Gedanken die göttlich-geistigen Wesen zuraunten. Hörte er mit seinem Ohre, so sagte er sich: Ich höre Menschen. - Hörte er mit seiner Seele, wo sich das Gehörte nur in Gedanken dar lebte, so sagte er: Ich höre göttlich-geistige Wesenheiten. - Und so war die Erkenntnis, die in Ideen lebte, für diese Menschen eines alten Zeitalters Göttermitteilung. Göttersprache war der unmittelbar von den Göttern zu den Menschen gesprochene Logos.
So daß man sagen kann: Im religiösen Ideal lebte sich das Schauen der Götter aus. Im künstlerischen Ideal lebten sich die Nachformungen des Göttlichen durch menschlicheMittel in symbolisierend-allegorischer Art aus. In dem wissenschaftlichen Ideal gab der Mensch die Sprache wieder, welche die Götter zu ihm sprachen. Das waren jene drei Ideale, die in eins zusammenflossen in der alten orientalischen Zeit, denn es waren im Grunde genommen diese drei Ideale ein Ideal.
Der Mensch schaute hin in diesem einen Ideal auf die göttliche Offenbarung. Religion breitete sich aus über das ganze menschliche Seelenleben. Wissenschaft und Kunst waren die zwei Mittel, durch die das Göttliche mit dem Menschen auf Erden zusammenlebte. Und der Künstler fühlte, indem er sein Kunstwerk schuf, daß der Gott seine Hand führte, oder der Dichter fühlte, daß der Gott seine Worte formte und prägte. «Singe, o Muse, vom Zorn mir des Peleiden Achilleus!» Nicht der Dichter spricht, die Muse spricht in dem Dichter. Und das war eine Wahrheit. Die abstrakte Auffassung, der man heute so etwas zuschreibt und dabei etwa sagt, es sei schon eine dichterische Verkleidung, gehört eben zu den grotesken Kindlichkeiten heutiger Anschauungen über solche Dinge, die gar nicht wissen, wie wahr der Goethesche Ausspruch ist: «Was Ihr so den Geist der Zeiten heißt, das ist im Grund der Herren eigener Geist, in dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.»
Und gehen wir von dieser orientalischen Dreiheit der Ideale des Menschen in Religion, Kunst und Wissenschaft herüber zu den Griechen, die.dann einen prosaisch dürftigen Nachklang in den Römern gefunden haben, so finden wir diese drei Ideale weitergebildet. Was vorher, ich möchte sagen, aus Lichtglanzhöhe als Göttlich-Geistiges den Menschen sich geoffenbart hatte, das empfand der Grieche durch den Menschen selbst sprechend. Das religiöse Leben hat sich im griechischen Dasein eng an den Menschen gebunden. Der Mensch in Griechenland fühlte dasjenige, was er selber war an Gestalt, an innerem Leben, gottdurchdrungen, gottdurchsetzt. Nicht mehr in Lichtglanzhöhen sah er hinein, sondern in den Wunderbau des Menschen selber. Er hatte somit nicht mehr jenes starke Schauen des Göttlich-Geistigen, was der Orientale hatte, sondern, ich möchte sagen, ein schwächeres Schattenbild des Himmlisch-Geistigen. Aber wer wirklich sich hineinversetzen kann in griechische Dichtung, in griechische Kunst, in griechische Philosophie, der kann wissen, für den Griechen war das doch eine Grundempfindung, durch die er sich sagte: Der Mensch, der hier auf der Erde wandelt, der nicht nur ein Zusammenfluß ist desjenigen, was Augen schauen in der äußeren Sinneswelt, der ist ein Zeuge für das Vorhandensein eines Göttlich-Geistigen. Und der Mensch, der hier auf der Erde wandelt, der nicht irdischen Ursprunges sein konnte für den Griechen, der ist unmittelbar ein Zeugnis für das Walten des Zeus, für das Walten der Athene in geistigen Welten.
Der Grieche hat in Menschengestalt und innerer menschlicher Lebensentwickelung das hehrste Zeugnis gesehen für das göttlich-geistige Walten in der Welt. Und so vermenschlichte der Grieche seine Götter, weil er den Menschen selber noch in seiner Göttlichkeit empfand.
Es ist etwas ganz anderes, wenn der Grieche seine Götter vermenschlicht, als wenn etwa der moderne Mensch in einem untergeordneten Anthropomorphismus seinen Gottmenschen vorstellt. Denn für den Griechen lebte eben noch in dem Menschen ein Zeugnis für das Göttliche. Der Grieche konnte sich noch sagen: Wäre nicht ein Göttliches, die Welt durchwebend und durchwallend, so könnte nicht der Mensch so vor mir stehen, wie er dasteht. - Die Religion war einbezogen in das Erfassen des Menschen. Der Mensch wurde in bezug auf dasjenige, was er sich nicht selber geben konnte, aber als was er dastand in der Welt, in entsprechender Weise verehrt. Nicht das alltägliche menschliche Tun, nicht das eitle menschliche Erdenstreben, aber das, was mit dem Menschen in das irdische Leben hereingestellt war, das wurde in entsprechender Weise verehrt. Und diese Verehrung, die man für das Menschenwesen hatte, die weitete sich aus zu der Verehrung der göttlich-geistigen Welt. Und das künstlerische Ideal war bei den Griechen so, daß der Grieche auf der einen Seite sein Göttlich-Geistiges empfand, bezeugt durch das Dasein des Menschen auf Erden, auf der andern Seite empfand er stark, wie es beim Orientalen noch nicht der Fall war, die Gesetze der sinnlich-physischen Natur, die Gesetze von Harmonie und Disharmonie, die Gesetze vom Maß, die Gesetze des Lastens und Tragens der Materialien. Und während der Orientale, ich möchte sagen, noch ungeschickt war in der Bewältigung des Materials, während er nur allegorisierend und symbolisierend ausdrücken konnte das ihn überflutende, überwuchernde Geistige, so daß das Geistige, das durch irgendein Sinnliches im Kunstwerke in der alten orientalischen Welt zum Ausdrucke kam, immer viel weiter, mächtiger, gewaltiger war, als was in der sinnlichen Form ungeschickt zum Ausdrucke kommen konnte, strebte der Grieche darnach, alles, was er im Geiste erfassen konnte, auch hineinzugießen in dasjenige, was er nun schon von der sinnlich-physischen Welt erkannte.
Bei ihm durfte die Säule nicht dicker sein, als sie sein mußte, um die Tragkraft zu entwickeln für das, was auf ihr lag. Es durfte nicht, wie bei der orientalischen Kunst, dasjenige, was sinnlicher Ausdruck für das Geistige war, in ungeschickter Weise die physisch-sinnlichen Gesetze darstellen, sondern es mußten die sinnlich-physischen Gesetze in ihrer Vollkommenheit ergriffen werden. Der Geist mußte sozusagen mit der physischen Sinnlichkeit eineEhe auf gleich und gleich eingehen. So viel Geist, so viel sinnlich-physische Gesetzmäßigkeit ist in einem griechischen Tempel, und so viel Ausdrucksfähigkeit des Materials als Geistigkeit durch dieses Material zur Offenbarung kommt, ist in einer griechischen Statue. Und so fließen die Verse des Homer, daß in dem Fluß der Menschensprache unmittelbar sich offenbart der Fluß der Göttersprache. Der Dichter fühlte, indem er seine Worte gestaltete, daß aus dem, was aus den Sprachgesetzen selber fließt, alles bewältigt werden muß, daß nichts ungeschickt bleiben darf, nichts stammelnd sein darf, wie es noch in der orientalischen Hymnuspoesie der Fall ist, sondern daß alles einen dem Geiste adäquaten Ausdruck finden muß: Völlige Bewältigung der physisch-sinnlichen Gesetze der Kunstmaterialien durch den Menschen, damit nichts mehr vom Geiste sich offenbart, was nicht in den sinnlichen Formen selbst erscheint.
So wie der Grieche dem Menschen gegenüber empfand, daß er ein Zeugnis ist des Göttlichen, so mußte auch das Kunstwerk des Tempels, das Kunstwerk der Statue ein unmittelbares Zeugnis sein für das Walten des Göttlichen, allerdings nunmehr aus der menschlichen Phantasie heraus. Man konnte es dem Tempel ansehen, daß derjenige, der ihn gebaut hat, alle Gesetze des sinnlich-physischen Materials bemeistert hat, damit er in jeder Äußerung dieses physisch-sinnlichen Materials hat wiedergeben können, was er im Verkehre mit den Göttern in sich, in seine menschliche Wesenheit hat einfließen lassen.
Und die ältesten Tragödien der Griechen, sie waren durchaus so, daß die dargestellten Wesen eigentlich Nachbildungen des Göttlichen, des Apollohaften, des Dionysoshaften waren und daß der Chor ringsherum eine Art Widerklang der Natur war, eine Art Echo des göttlich-geistigen Waltens. Mit Menschen als dem adäquaten Material wollte man in der Tragödie ausdrücken, was in den Götterwelten vor sich geht, aber so, daß nicht, wie bei dem Orientalen, man immer, ich möchte sagen, mit dem geistigen Auge hinaufsehen muß in eine höhere Region, als diejenige ist, in der sich das sinnliche Bild befindet, sondern daß man auf demselben Niveau bleiben kann, wo die Menschen die Tragödie darstellen, um in jeder Geste, in jedem Worte, in jedem Rezitativ des Chores etwas wahrzunehmen, worin Göttliches in einer ihm angemessenen sinnlichen Weise weiterflutete. Das war das künstlerische Ideal der Griechen.
Und das wissenschaftliche Ideal? Nicht mehr hat der Grieche in solcher Lebendigkeit empfunden wie der Orientale, daß in den Ideen, in den Gedanken Götter zu ihm sprachen. Er hat schon etwas von dem vernommen, daß der Mensch sich anstrengen muß, um sich Gedanken zu machen. Aber wie er den Menschen selbst, der auf Erden wandelte, in seiner Gestalt und in seinem inneren Leben als ein unmittelbar wandelndes Zeugnis des Göttlichen empfand, so empfand er den Gedanken so real wie eine Sinneswahrnehmung. Wie er das Rot oder das Blau oder das Cis oder das G unmittelbar wahrnahm, so nahm er seine Gedanken wahr, nahm sie wahr in der äußeren Welt, wie die Augen, die Ohren die Sinneswahrnehmungen empfangen. Dadurch wußte er zwar vom Logos nicht mehr in jener Konkretheit, in einer so konkreten Sprache, wie es der Orientale wußte; es schrieb der Grieche nicht mehr Veden, von denen der Orientale das Gefühl hatte, die Götter hätten sie ihm in die Gedanken hineingeführt. Der Grieche wußte, daß er seine Gedanken ausarbeiten muß, wie man weiß, daß man mit den Augen herumschauen muß, um den Umkreis sinnlich wahrzunehmen. Aber es wußte der Grieche doch noch, daß diese Gedanken, die er erarbeitete, die in die Natur gelegten göttlichen Gedanken sind. Und so war ihm der Gedanke das irdische Zeugnis für die göttliche Sprache. Während der Orientale die göttliche Sprache noch selber hörte, empfand der Grieche die Sprache schon als eine Menschensprache, aber er empfand sie als das unmittelbare Zeugnis der Göttersprache, wie sie ihm auf Erden eben bezeugt wird.
So war Wissenschaft für den Griechen etwas göttlich-geistig Eingegebenes, etwas, dem man noch ansehen konnte, daß es von dem Göttlich-Geistigen auf die Erde geschickt ist, wie der Mensch selbst in seiner Gestalt, in seinem inneren Erleben von den göttlichen Kräften auf die Erde gestellt wird. Wir sehen, wie sich das religiöse, das künstlerische, das wissenschaftliche Ideal im Laufe der Menschheitsentwikkelung von der uralt orientalischen Welt zu der griechischen Welt hin verändert hat.
Wir stehen nun wiederum an einem Punkte - und die Menschheitsentwickelung des zivilisierten Westens ist, wie ich Ihnen öfter ausgeführt habe, seit dem ersten Drittel des 15. Jahrhunderts an diesen Punkt herangekommen -, wo die Notwendigkeit an den Menschen herantritt, den uralt heiligen Idealen, dem religiösen, dem künstlerischen, dem Erkenntnisideal neue Gestalten zu geben. Das war es, was ich zum Ausdrucke bringen wollte, als wir den ersten Hochschulkurs in unserem Goetheanum eröffneten. Zum Ausdrucke bringen wollte ich, daß dieses Goetheanum dasteht, weil aus den inneren Gesetzen der menschlichen Entwickelung selber folgt, daß das religiöse, das künstlerische, das Erkenntnisideal neue Gestalten - selbst gegenüber den griechischen großartigen Gestalten - annehmen müsse.
Das ist es, was einen mit einer so furchtbaren Wehmut erfüllt, wenn man heute die Ruine sicht anstelle desjenigen, was in Form und Farbe, was in jeder Linienführung, in jeder Holzform zum Ausdruck bringen wollte, wie aus dem Innersten der menschheitlichen Seelenentwickelung die drei großen Ideale neu sich gestalten sollten. Mit Wehmut nur, mit tiefstem Schmerze kann man die Stätte schauen, die so hätte sprechen sollen von der Erneuerung der drei großen Ideale der Menschheit, und die heute in einer Ruine dasteht, so dasteht, daß wir nur im Herzen tragen können, was in diesen Bau hineingelegt worden ist. Denn, wenn es sich auch als eine Möglichkeit darstellen sollte, daß hier ein Bau wiederum aufgeführt würde: der alte Bau ganz gewiß nicht! Und in der Weise, wie durch den alten Bau gesprochen worden ist, wird eben nicht wiederum durch einen Bau gesprochen werden können.
Deshalb sollen wir um so tiefer in unsere Gemüter schreiben, was eigentlich durch diesen Bau für die drei großen Ideale der Menschheit gemeint war. Wir können heute nicht sagen, daß so wie dem instinktiven Hellsehen des Orientalen das Göttlich-Geistige anschaulich uns entgegenleuchtet wie eine äußere sinnliche Wesenheit oder daß die Göttertaten sich darstellen vor dem Seelenauge des Menschen, wie sich die sinnenfälligen Taten im Sinnlichen oder im alltäglichen Leben vor uns abspielen. Aber wenn wir diejenige Vertiefung in Natur- und Menschendasein in uns lebendig machen, die wir lebendig machen können durch anthroposophisches Denken und Fühlen, dann tritt uns die Welt, dann tritt uns der Kosmos, das Universum noch in einer andern Form entgegen, als sie dem Griechen entgegengetreten sind.
Wenn der Grieche seinen Blick in die Natur hinausgerichter hat, wenn er seinen Blick auf den äußerlich-physisch wandelnden Menschen gerichtet hat, dann hatte er gewissermaßen die Empfindung: Wenn hier der Quell fließt, sich der Berg erhebt, den die Wolke krönt, dort die Sonne aufgeht im Morgenröteglanz, sich der Regenbogen wölbt — durch das alles spricht das Göttlich-Geistige. Der Grieche hat von der Natur so viel gesehen, daß er in allem das Göttlich-Geistige empfindend hat erleben können. Aber seine Naturanschauung war eine solche, daß er in ihr befriedigt war, daß er gewissermaßen seine vollmenschliche Befriedigung fühlte an dem, was er von Natur sah.
Ich habe öfter hervorgehoben, daß man mit Recht von einem Fortschritt in der Naturerkenntnis spricht, und gerade Anthroposophie ist geeignet, die wahre Bedeutung des naturwissenschaftlichen Fortschrittes der letzten Jahrhunderte einzusehen. Ich habe das ja oft betont. Nicht irgendein laienhaftes Abkritisieren der Naturwissenschaft, der Naturanschauung, des Sich-Vertiefens in die Natur kann der Anthroposophie naheliegen, sondern allein ein wirkliches liebevolles Vertiefen. Ja, meine lieben Freunde, in bezug auf die Natur haben die Menschen in den letzten Jahrhunderten viel, viel gelernt. Und wenn man dasjenige, was gelernt worden ist, vertieft, so bekommt man aus einer Naturanschauung heraus — wie ich Ihnen gerade von dieser Stätte aus, hier von diesem Platze aus oftmals auseinandergesetzt habe — die Einsicht in des Menschen wiederholte Erdenleben, die Einsicht in die Umwandlung der Natur. Man bekommt einen perspektivischen Blick in Zukunftszeiten, wo der Mensch wieder beleben wird, was er durch seine Sinne und durch seine Seele und durch seinen Geist in der Gegenwart erlebt.
Und man bekommt durch eine richtige Vertiefung in die Natur eine andere Anschauung, eine andere Totalauffassung von der Natur, als der Grieche sie hatte. Man möchte sagen, der Grieche sah die Natur an wie ein ausgewachsenes Wesen, das ihm die Herrlichkeit der göttlich-geistigen Welt offenbarte. Der moderne Mensch kann nicht mehr so die Natur anschauen. Wenn wir überall auf das hinschauen, was wir heute von den Naturwesen empfinden können, mit all unseren vorzüglichen Instrumenten, mit all unseren vorzüglichen Werkzeugen, dann erscheint uns die Natur samt dem natürlichen Menschen als etwas, was keimhaft ist, was in seinem Schoße etwas trägt, das erst in der Zukunft sich entfalten kann.
Der Grieche sah jede Pflanze als etwas an, was unmittelbar so, wie es sich darlebt, ein vollkommenes Dasein hatte, weil der Gott der Pflanze in der einzelnen Pflanze lebt. Wir sehen die Pflanze an als etwas, aus dem in der Natur ein Höheres werden muß; wir sehen in allem, wo wir hinblicken, heute ein Keimhaftes. Und uns erscheint in dem, was wir heute nicht in der fertigen, sondern ich möchte sagen in der zukunftsschwangeren, zukunftsträchtigen Natur sehen, in alledem schauen wir etwas, demgegenüber wir beginnen uns zu sagen: Ein Göttliches waltet in der Natur und muß walten, weil es die keimhafte Natur zu einer einstmals vollkommenen Gestaltung bringen wird.
Wir haben genauer hinsehen gelernt auf die Natur. Wenn der Grieche den Vogel gesehen hat, sehen wir in der Natur das Ei. Während der Grieche das fertige Wesen gesehen hat, sehen wir überall die Anlagen. Und eine richtige Naturanschauung hat heute derjenige, der hingerissen werden kann mit seiner ganzen Seele, mit seinem ganzen Herzen, mit seinem ganzen Gemüte von der Keimhaftigkeit, von der Anlagehaftigkeit der Natur.
Das ist die andere Seite der heutigen Naturerkenntnis. Wenn man anfängt, religiös in das Mikroskop zu sehen, wenn man anfängt, religiös in das Teleskop zu sehen, so merkt man überall Keimzustände. Die Genauigkeit des Naturanschauens läßt uns die Natur im Embryonalzustand sehen, läßt uns die Natur sehen als überall schaffend, läßt uns die Natur sehen als überall der Zukunft zueilend. Das ergibt ein neues religiöses Ideal.
Dieses religiöse Ideal wird allerdings nur derjenige haben können, der auch in dem einzelnen Menschenleben erblickt —- wie wir das oftmals dargestellt haben hier an diesem Orte —, was ihm als keimhaft erscheint für künftige andersgeartete menschliche Erden- und Weltenleben.
Der Grieche hat gewissermaßen in dem Menschen den Zusammenfluß des ganzen Kosmos gesehen, aber des gegenwärtigen Kosmos. Der alte Orientale hat in dem Menschen den Zusammenfluß der ganzen kosmischen Vergangenheit gesehen. Wir fühlen in dem Menschen den Keim des Zukünftigen. Das gibt dem neuen religiösen Ideal seine Färbung.
Und gehen wir zu dem Künstlerischen über, dann finden wir, wenn wir heute uns in die Natur vertiefen und nicht stehenbleiben bei den toten Konturen, nicht stehenbleiben bei den abstrakten Ideen, sondern uns mit lebendiger Seele hineinvertiefen in die Formen der Natur ja, was finden wir dann? Meine lieben Freunde, Sie haben es gesehen an den Kapitälen, die ich geben konnte unseren Säulen, Sie haben es gesehen an den Architravmotiven, welche die Säulen krönten drüben: das entstand nicht durch Beobachtung der Natur, das entstand durch Miterleben mit der Natur. Die Natur bringt Formen hervor, die aber auch anders sein könnten; die Natur fordert uns überall auf, ihre Formen in andere zu wandeln, zu metamorphosieren. Wer Natur nur beobachtet, kopiert sie, verfällt in Naturalismus. Wer die Natur erlebt, wer die Linien der Pflanzen, die Farben der Pflanzen nicht bloß anschaut, sondern innerlich erlebt, für den schlüpft aus jeder Pflanze, aus jeder Gesteinsform, aus jeder Tierform eine andere heraus, die er dem Material einprägen kann. Man macht es nicht so wie der Grieche, der gewissermaßen in der Technik des Materials den Geist ganz ausdrücken wollte, man ringt mit den Formen der Natur und schafft aus den Formen der Natur selbständige Formen heraus, nicht in symbolisch-allegorischer Weise wie bei den Orientalen, auch nicht in solch adäquater Weise wie bei den Griechen, aber so, daß in der sinnlichen Offenbarung sich unmittelbar etwas ausdrückt, was in jeder Linie, was in jeder Farbe hinstrebt zu dem Göttlichen. Bei den Orientalen drückte sich gewissermaßen durch das Symbolum, durch das Allegorische das Göttliche aus, strahlte heraus wie eine Aura, wie eine Wolke, so daß das Göttlich-Geistige die Formen überquellte, die Formen überwucherte, daß es mehr sagte als die Formen. Wir modernen Menschen müssen Kunstwerke schaffen, bei denen die Form mehr sagt als die Natur sagt, aber ganz natürlich spricht, so daß jede einzelne Linie, jede einzelne Farbe wie ein Naturgebet wird zu dem Göttlichen, Wir ringen gewissermaßen der Natur diejenigen Formen ab, durch welche die Natur selber verehren kann das Göttliche, Wir sprechen gewissermaßen künstlerisch zur Natur.
Eigentlich möchte jede Pflanze, jeder Baum in einem Gebete aufblicken zu einem Göttlichen. Wir sehen es der Physiognomie des Baumes, der Physiognomie der Pflanze an. Aber die Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten der Pflanze, des Baumes, sind nicht groß genug. Sie liegen veranlagt in Baum und Pflanze. Holen wir heraus, was in Baum und Pflanze, in Wolke und Stein an Linienführung, an Farbe, an innerer Lebendigkeit lebt, prägen wir es dem Baumaterial, prägen wir es dem Bildhauermaterial ein, dann spricht durch unser Kunstwerk die Natur zu den Göttern. Wir entdecken den Logos in der Natur. Und uns erscheint in unserer Kunst eine höhere Natur als die Natur draußen, eine Natur, die nun ihrerseits auf ganz natürliche Weise den Logos hinaufströmen läßt zu der göttlich-geistigen Welt.
In den orientalischen Kunstwerken strömte der Logos herunter, und einen stammelnden Ausdruck nur fand er in dem menschlichen Kunstmaterial. Unsere Kunstformen müssen wirkliche Sprachformen sein, die diejenige Sprache sprechen, welche die Natur sprechen möchte, wenn sie an ihr Ziel kommen könnte. Das ist das künstlerische Ideal, jenes künstlerische Ideal, welches sich hinstellt neben das religiöse Ideal, welches die Natur in ihren Anlagen, in ihren Keimungen sieht.
Und das dritte ist unser wissenschaftliches Ideal, jenes Ideal, welches nicht mehr, wie beim Orientalen, den Gedanken als etwas empfindet, was unmittelbar der Gott in die Seele raunt. Unser modernes Gedanken- oder Ideenideal kann auch nicht mehr so wie der Grieche Gedanken empfinden als ein im Menschen entstehendes Zeugnis für das Göttliche; wir finden auf rein menschliche Weise, durch menschliche Arbeit den Gedanken, durch menschliche innere Seelenarbeit. Haben wir uns aber so zu den Gedanken aufgeschwungen, daß wir nichts von Egoismus, nichts von Selbstsucht, nichts von innerer Leidenschaftlichkeit, die eingenommen ist für das oder jenes, also nichts von menschlicher Parteinahme für das eine oder andere Urteil in den Gedanken einfließen lassen, haben wir uns als Mensch dazu aufgeschwungen, den Gedanken in derjenigen Form in uns zu erleben, die er selber annehmen will, dann fühlen wir uns nicht wie den Former, wie den Macher des Gedankens, sondern wie den innerlichen Seelenschauplatz, durch den der Gedanke in uns selber sich auslebt. Und dann empfinden wir das Große gegenüber den Gedanken, die wir selber uns gebildet haben, gegenüber den Ideen, die wir scheinbar selber in uns geschaffen haben, ohne Selbstsucht, ohne Parteinahme für das eine oder andere Urteil. Dann werden wir überrascht: die Ideen, die wir so gebildet haben, sind würdig, das Göttliche abzubilden. Wir entdecken hinterher, wie der in unserer eigenen Brust geformte Gedanke würdig ist, das Göttliche abzubilden. Wir entdecken zuerst den Gedanken und entdecken nachher: Der Gedanke ist ja der Logos! Während du selbstlos deinen Gedanken in dir sich selber formen lässest, hast du dir durch die Selbstlosigkeit die Möglichkeit geschaffen, daß der Gott der Schöpfer deines Gedankens war. - Was der Orientale als Offenbarung des Gedankens empfand, was der Grieche als Zeugnis empfand durch den Gedanken, das empfinden wir als eine lebendige Entdeckung: wir haben den Gedanken, und er kündigt sich uns hinterher als dasjenige an, was den Gott ausdrücken darf. Das ist unser wissenschaftliches Ideal.
Und so stehen wir in der Menschheitsentwickelung darinnen, erfassend den Zeitpunkt, in dem wir innerhalb der Menschheitsentwickelung leben, und wissen: Es muß uns gelingen, nicht bloß anzuschauen das menschliche Haupt mit den Ohren an der Seite, mit dem Kehlkopf, mit den verkrüppelten Schulterblättern, sondern es muß uns gelingen, indem wir die Form der Natur umbilden, daß aus dem Wachsen der Schulterblätter, aus dem Verweben des Kehlkopfes mit den Ohren, Eines entsteht aus Brust, Kopf, Flügel, Kehlkopf und Ohr, was uns als luziferische Gestalt erscheint.
Wir gelangen dazu, dasjenige Künstlerische in der Natur zu sehen, was in der Natur die Form leben läßt, so daß ein höheres Leben der Form herauskommt, als es in der Natur selber ist.
Dadurch aber sind wir auch imstande, die Natur noch da zu verfolgen, wo sie selber metamorphosierend den Menschen umgestaltet. Wir sind imstande, diese Kunst hineinzutragen in das pädagogisch-didaktische Feld. Da, wo das Kind jeden Tag ein anderes wird, da tragen wir in das pädagogische Arbeiten die künstlerische Schaffenskraft hinein, weil wir sie zunächst in der Kunst selber so ergriffen haben, daß wir in dieser Kunst sehen die über sich selber hinauswirkende, den Logos produzierende Natur. Wir lernen an der Quelle, die mehr wird als Quelle, die zu den Göttern spricht, wir lernen an dem Baum, der mehr ist als Baum, weil er durch seine Äste nur in Gebärden stammelt, während er in denjenigen Formen, die aufgehen vor der modernen künstlerischen Phantasie, mit seinen Ästengebärden, mit seinen Kronengebärden zu den Göttern hinaufweist, wir lernen an dem Kosmos, indem wir seine Formen metamorphosierend so umgestalten, wie sie umzugestalten versucht worden sind in unserem Goetheanum, wir lernen daran, wie wir von Tag zu Tag an dem Kinde mitzuwirken haben, um dasjenige umzuschaffen, was sich eben am Kinde von Tag zu Tag umschafft. Wir sind dadurch imstande, die Kunst in die Menschheitsbehandlung, in die Pädagogik hineinzutragen. Und so auf andern Gebieten.
So aufgefaßt, entstehen die drei neu belebten großen Ideale der Menschheit vor des Anthroposophen Seele: das religiöse Ideal, das künstlerische Ideal, das Erkenntnisideal. Durch die Formen des Goetheanum sollte sich der Anthroposoph begeistert fühlen zum Erleben dieser Neugestaltung der hehren großen Menschenideale. Das müssen wir jetzt still in unsere Seelen einschreiben. Aber wir müssen uns daraus Begeisterung holen. Und wenn wir uns Begeisterung holen für das, was uns in dieser Weise durch die drei Ideale zum Göttlich-Geistigen erhebt, dann wird uns das irdische höchste Ideal daraus. Wenn im Evangelium gesagt wird: Liebe deinen Nächsten als dich selbst und Gott über alles -, so muß auf der andern Seite gesagt werden: Wer das Göttlich-Geistige so ansieht, wie es im Sinne der drei in die Gegenwart hereinversetzten Ideale von dem modernen Menschen angesehen werden muß, der lernt das Göttlich-Geistige lieben, denn er fühlt, daß er nicht Mensch sein kann, wenn er sich nicht mit aller ihm nur möglichen Liebe hingibt an diese drei Ideale. Dann aber fühlt er sich mit denen, die diese Liebe in gleicher Weise nach oben schicken können, auch in gleicher Weise vereint. Er lernt das Göttlich-Geistige über alles lieben und dann seinen Nächsten als sich selbst, aus der Liebe zum Göttlichen. Und die Ranküne kommt nicht auf.
Das aber ist dasjenige, was die einzelnen Mitglieder der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft zu einem Ganzen zusammenhalten kann. Das brauchen wir in der Gegenwart. Wir haben es eben erlebt, daß wir die Phase durchgemacht haben in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, welche das Anthroposophische in einzelne Zweige des Lebens hat ausfließen lassen: in das Pädagogisch-Didaktische, in andere praktische Lebensformen, in das Künstlerische und so weiter. Wir brauchen heute einen Zusammenschluß. Wir haben ausgezeichnete Waldorf-Lehrer, ausgezeichnet Wirkende auf andern Gebieten. Wir brauchen heute bei allen denen, die auf ihren einzelnen Posten ihr Bestes geben, auch, daß sie nun den Weg finden, damit die Quellen des anthroposophischen Lebens selber neu fließen. Das brauchen wir heute.
Und weil wir es brauchen, weil wir brauchen, daß Zeugnis abgelegt werde durch die führenden anthroposophischen Persönlichkeiten für das Bewußtsein, daß gegenwärtig eine Neubelebung der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft notwendig ist, tritt diese Versammlung in Stuttgart in den nächsten Tagen zusammen, und man muß, wenn man es ehrlich meint mit der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, die denkbar größten Hoffnungen für dasjenige haben, was in diesen nächsten Tagen in Stuttgart geschieht. Denn nur dann, wenn diejenigen Persönlichkeiten, die dort auftreten werden, Töne finden werden für dies oder jenes, die herausklingen aus einer wahren, tatkräftigen Begeisterung für die drei großen Ideale, die zu gleicher Zeit in Liebe ausfließende Ideale sind, nur dann, wenn Garantie dafür vorhanden ist durch die Kraft und den Inhalt der Worte, die da gesprochen werden, kann gehofft werden, daß die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft ihr Ziel erreicht. Denn dasjenige, was da zutage tritt, wird eben dann in weiteren Kreisen ebenfalls zutage treten müssen.
Für mich selber wird es sich ergeben, was ich zu tun habe, je nachdem wie diese Stuttgarter Tagung ausfällt. Erwartungsvoll sieht man ihr entgegen. Sie bitte ich, insofern Sie vielleicht nicht hinfahren, mit kraftvollen Gedanken dabei zu sein. Denn es handelt sich um ein Dabeisein bei einem wichtigen Momente, um das tatkräftige Sich-Einsetzen auf einem gesunden Boden für die der heutigen Menschheit notwendigen großen Ideale, jene großen Ideale, von denen uns nicht eine menschliche Willkürschrift spricht, sondern diejenige Schrift, die aus der ganzen Entwickelung, aus dem Sinn der ganzen Entwickelung der Erdenmenschheit selber so klar zu uns spricht, wie die Tagessonne zu dem wachen Menschen spricht. Wollen wir in dieser Weise Begeisterung anfachen in unseren Seelen, dann wird Begeisterung zu Taten werden. Und Taten brauchen wir.
Fifth Lecture
Today I would like to refer once again to the ideal that was connected with the building that misfortune has taken from us. I would like to point this out so that here too the right thinking may prevail about what is to be undertaken in the next few days as, I would say, a first step toward a new life in the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart. For what is to emerge from anthroposophy must rest on the secure foundation of human enthusiasm. And this human enthusiasm can only come to us if we look to the ideal that should be in every anthroposophist's heart and that is great enough to hold the members of the Anthroposophical Society together in love. It cannot be denied that, although not this ideal of anthroposophical activity, the enthusiasm for this ideal has somewhat waned in the three successive epochs of our anthroposophical development. And now, as we stand mourning before the ruins of that building through which we were able to express ourselves in an outwardly noticeable language about this ideal, it is all the more necessary that we come together in the right feeling toward the anthroposophical ideal, so that from this coming together in feeling and the resulting coming together in thinking, a strong force may arise, which we very much need today, especially in view of the opposition that is growing with each passing week. Therefore, allow me in this lecture today not to speak about the continuation — at least not directly about the continuation — of what I have presented in recent lectures and now for weeks here, but to describe a little what may be one of the important memories of our building and what may be suitable for reestablishing those relationships that are necessary between the individual members of the Anthroposophical Society. For in coming together in a common ideal, that love must also be kindled which every individual anthroposophist should have for the other and which should exclude the possibility that anyone within the Anthroposophical Society should harbor any resentment toward another, even in thought.
You may remember that when we opened the first university course at the Goetheanum, I emphasized in a short introductory speech how, in a new way, through what is being realized by people at the Goetheanum, a truly global cooperation between science, art, and religion should be strived for.
What should have grown at the Goetheanum, what should have grown through the language of its forms and colors, was a scientific, artistic, and religious ideal. Today, we must engrave all the more deeply in our hearts that which can no longer speak to us through external forms and colors. And we may be able to do so if we ask ourselves, as we have done for other considerations in recent weeks, how the scientific, artistic, and religious ideals have been pursued in the successive epochs of human development.
If we look back at the powerful, sublime spiritual life of the East, we come across a certain point in time in this ancient Eastern spiritual life when, in a sense, the spiritual content of values was presented to the Eastern peoples in direct revelation. We encounter a time when people did not doubt that what they could see with their senses was merely the sparse outer imprint of what was revealed to them as divine-spiritual in their older, dreamlike, but nevertheless very real vision.
This vision, though instinctive and impulsive, was once so prevalent in humanity that in certain special states of consciousness, people perceived the spiritual beings of the world in immediate reality, just as they perceived their fellow human beings through their physical bodies and the beings of the three physical kingdoms of nature through their physical physicality. Just as certain as the existence of a fellow human being was the existence of the divine-spiritual beings connected with human beings, as perceived by the ancient Orientals through their immediate observation.
This gave them their inner religious certainty. And this inner religious certainty was no different from the certainty they possessed about external natural things. With the same certainty with which they could believe in the existence of stones, plants, clouds, and rivers, they could believe in the existence of their God, for they saw this God. And what is called animism in modern science, which presents the matter as if in earlier times people had imagined things into nature, had transferred living spirits into it through their imagination, is precisely childish, it is precisely the dilettantish science of today. In truth, people saw the divine spirit just as they saw the sensual natural world.
From this arose, as I have already said, the certainty of their religious life, but from this also arose what they needed for their art, for their artistic creation. The divine-spiritual had a concrete, immediate form for them. They knew what forms this divine-spiritual had, they knew in what colors the spiritual appeared. They were able to express what appeared to them in the spiritual realm through the means of the sensory world, through the means of the physical world. They could take the building materials that were available to them; the means of sculpture or other arts; they could apply them with the techniques they were capable of, and they expressed what was revealed to them in the spirit.
When they came to inner worship, to an inner human relationship with their divine-spiritual beings, they felt this as religion. When they represented what they saw in the spirit through external means, through physical means, they felt this as their art. But the thing about their art was that everything they could do with their artistic means, everything they had in terms of technique, everything they had in terms of physical materials they could use to express what they had in mind: it was all insignificant compared to what they had in mind.
We come to a point in ancient Oriental development where what appeared to human beings as divine-spiritual, what, to use Goethe's expression, appeared in a sensual-supersensual form, was of sublime, resplendent beauty and had a powerful effect on the mind, powerful effect on the imagination. And because the techniques of external artistic means had not yet been mastered, what appeared much more beautiful in the spirit was expressed at most in a clumsy symbolic or allegorical form. An artist of that ancient time might have said, if he had wanted to express his own artistic creation in our terms: Beauty is what appears in the spirit, and only a faint reflection of it can be given in what I can form from clay, from wood, from other artistic materials, in order to express what appears in the spirit.
And an artist was then a person who saw the spiritual in a beautiful way and showed it in a sensual image to other people who could not see it directly, but who were convinced of it: When the artist presented them with what he had seen in his mind in allegorical and symbolic form, they too were able to find their way, through this sensual expression, into a world that lies above the earthly world, into a world into which human beings must transport themselves if they want to feel their full human dignity. And this relationship, this connection to the divine-spiritual, was so immediate, it was, if I may say so, so real, so concrete, that people felt that when they thought, when they formed thoughts, they had these thoughts from the gods, whom they saw, who were there just like other people. And the people of ancient times said: When you speak to people, they speak to you with words that sound in the air; when you speak to the gods, they speak to you with thoughts that can only be heard within human beings. Words that can be expressed through sounds are human words; words that can be expressed through thoughts are messages from the gods.
And when humans formed their thoughts, they did not believe that they formed these thoughts internally with their souls, but believed that they heard what the divine-spiritual beings whispered to them as thoughts. When they heard with their ears, they said to themselves: I hear humans. When they heard with their souls, where what they heard only came to life in thoughts, they said: I hear divine spiritual beings. And so the knowledge that lived in ideas was, for these people of an ancient age, communication from the gods. The language of the gods was the Logos spoken directly from the gods to the people.
So that one can say: In the religious ideal, the vision of the gods was lived out. In the artistic ideal, the imitations of the divine were lived out through human means in a symbolic-allegorical way. In the scientific ideal, man reproduced the language that the gods spoke to him. These were the three ideals that merged into one in ancient Oriental times, for basically these three ideals were one ideal.
In this one ideal, man looked upon divine revelation. Religion spread throughout the entire human soul. Science and art were the two means through which the divine coexisted with man on earth. And the artist felt, as he created his work of art, that God was guiding his hand, or the poet felt that God was forming and shaping his words. “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles!” It is not the poet who speaks, but the Muse speaking through the poet. And that was the truth. The abstract view that today attributes such things to poetic disguise is one of the grotesque childishnesses of contemporary views on such matters, which do not realize how true Goethe's statement is: “What you call the spirit of the times is in fact the spirit of the masters themselves, in which the times are reflected.”
And if we move from this Oriental trinity of human ideals in religion, art, and science to the Greeks, who then found a prosaically meager echo in the Romans, we find these three ideals further developed. What had previously, I would say, revealed itself to human beings from the heights of light as something divine and spiritual, the Greeks perceived as speaking through human beings themselves. Religious life in Greek existence was closely bound to human beings. People in Greece felt that what they themselves were in form and inner life was permeated and imbued with God. They no longer looked up to heights of light, but into the miraculous structure of human beings themselves. They no longer had the strong vision of the divine-spiritual that the Orientals had, but, I would say, a weaker shadow image of the heavenly-spiritual. But anyone who can truly immerse themselves in Greek poetry, Greek art, Greek philosophy, can know that for the Greeks this was a fundamental feeling, through which they said to themselves: the human being who walks here on earth, who is not only a confluence of what the eyes see in the outer sensory world, is a witness to the existence of the divine-spiritual. And the human being who walks here on earth, who could not be of earthly origin for the Greeks, is immediate testimony to the reign of Zeus, to the reign of Athena in spiritual worlds.
The Greeks saw in human form and inner human life development the most sublime testimony to the divine-spiritual reign in the world. And so the Greeks humanized their gods because they still perceived human beings themselves in their divinity.
It is quite different when the Greeks humanized their gods than when, for example, modern humans imagine their god-men in a subordinate anthropomorphism. For the Greeks, evidence of the divine still lived in human beings. The Greeks could still say to themselves: if there were not something divine interwoven and permeating the world, human beings could not stand before me as they do. Religion was included in the understanding of human beings. Human beings were revered in a corresponding manner in relation to what they could not give themselves, but as what they stood for in the world. Not everyday human activity, not vain human earthly striving, but that which was brought into earthly life with man was revered in a corresponding manner. And this reverence for the human being expanded to reverence for the divine-spiritual world. And the artistic ideal among the Greeks was such that, on the one hand, the Greek felt his divine-spiritual nature, attested to by the existence of man on earth, and on the other hand, he felt strongly, as was not yet the case with the Oriental, the laws of sensory-physical nature, the laws of harmony and disharmony, the laws of measure, the laws of loading and carrying materials. And while the Oriental, I might say, was still clumsy in his handling of materials, while he could only express the spiritual that flooded and overgrew him in allegorical and symbolic terms, so that the spiritual, which found expression in the ancient Oriental world through some sensual element in the work of art, was always much more more powerful, more mighty than what could be clumsily expressed in sensual form, the Greek strove to pour everything he could grasp in spirit into what he already recognized from the sensual-physical world.
For him, the column could not be thicker than it needed to be in order to develop the load-bearing capacity for what rested on it. Unlike in Oriental art, the sensual expression of the spiritual could not clumsily represent the physical-sensual laws; rather, the sensual-physical laws had to be grasped in their perfection. The spirit had to enter into a marriage of equals, so to speak, with physical sensuality. There is as much spirit and as much sensual-physical lawfulness in a Greek temple as there is expressiveness of the material as spirituality revealed through this material in a Greek statue. And so the verses of Homer flow in such a way that the flow of the language of the gods is directly revealed in the flow of human language. In shaping his words, the poet felt that everything must be mastered from what flows from the laws of language itself, that nothing must remain clumsy, nothing must be stammering, as is still the case in Oriental hymn poetry, but that everything must find an expression adequate to the spirit: Complete mastery of the physical and sensual laws of artistic materials by human beings, so that nothing of the spirit is revealed that does not appear in the sensual forms themselves.
Just as the Greeks felt that human beings were a testimony to the divine, so too the artwork of the temple, the artwork of the statue, had to be a direct testimony to the reign of the divine, albeit now arising from the human imagination. One could see from the temple that the person who built it had mastered all the laws of sensual-physical material, so that in every expression of this physical-sensual material he was able to reproduce what he had allowed to flow into himself, into his human essence, in his communication with the gods.
And the oldest tragedies of the Greeks were such that the beings depicted were actually replicas of the divine, of the Apollonian, of the Dionysian, and that the chorus around them was a kind of echo of nature, a kind of echo of divine-spiritual activity. With humans as the appropriate material, the aim was to express in tragedy what goes on in the worlds of the gods, but in such a way that, unlike in the East, one does not always I would like to say, with the spiritual eye into a higher region than that in which the sensual image is located, but so that one can remain on the same level where humans portray the tragedy in order to perceive in every gesture, in every word, in every recitative of the chorus something in which the divine continued to flow in a sensual manner appropriate to it. That was the artistic ideal of the Greeks.
And the scientific ideal? The Greeks no longer felt as vividly as the Orientals that gods spoke to them in ideas and thoughts. They had already sensed something of the fact that human beings must make an effort to think. But just as they perceived human beings themselves, who walked on earth, in their form and inner life as an immediate, walking testimony to the divine, so they perceived thoughts as real as sensory perceptions. Just as he perceived red or blue or C sharp or G immediately, so he perceived his thoughts, perceived them in the outer world, just as the eyes and ears receive sensory perceptions. As a result, he no longer knew about the Logos in such concrete terms, in such concrete language, as the Oriental knew; the Greek no longer wrote Vedas, which the Oriental felt the gods had put into his mind. The Greeks knew that they had to work out their thoughts, just as one knows that one has to look around with one's eyes in order to perceive one's surroundings with the senses. But the Greeks still knew that these thoughts they worked out were the divine thoughts laid down in nature. And so, for them, thought was the earthly testimony to the divine language. While the Orientals still heard the divine language themselves, the Greeks already perceived language as a human language, but they perceived it as the immediate testimony of the language of the gods, as it is testified to them on earth.
Thus, for the Greeks, science was something divinely inspired, something that could still be seen as having been sent to earth by the divine spirit, just as man himself, in his form and inner experience, is placed on earth by divine forces. We see how the religious, artistic, and scientific ideals changed in the course of human development from the ancient Oriental world to the Greek world.
We now stand once again at a point — and the development of civilization in the West has, as I have often explained to you, been approaching this point since the first third of the 15th century — where it is necessary for human beings to give new form to the ancient sacred ideals, the religious, artistic, and cognitive ideals. That was what I wanted to express when we opened the first university course at our Goetheanum. I wanted to express that this Goetheanum stands there because it follows from the inner laws of human development itself that the religious, artistic, and cognitive ideals must take on new forms — even in comparison to the magnificent Greek forms.
That is what fills one with such terrible melancholy when one sees the ruins today in place of what was intended to be expressed in form and color, in every line, in every shape of wood, how the three great ideals were to be newly formed from the innermost depths of human soul development. It is with melancholy, with deepest sorrow, that one can look upon the site that should have spoken of the renewal of the three great ideals of humanity, and which today stands in ruins, so that we can only carry in our hearts what was placed in this building. For even if it were possible for a building to be erected here again, it would certainly not be the old building! And in the way that the old building spoke, it will not be possible for a new building to speak again.
That is why we should engrave even more deeply in our minds what this building actually meant for the three great ideals of humanity. Today we cannot say that, as in the instinctive clairvoyance of the Orientals, the divine-spiritual shines out to us as a visible, external, sensory being, or that the deeds of the gods appear before the soul's eye of man, just as the deeds of the senses play out before us in sensory or everyday life. But when we bring to life within ourselves that deepening of our understanding of nature and human existence that we can achieve through anthroposophical thinking and feeling, then the world, the cosmos, the universe, appears to us in a different form than it did to the Greeks.
When the Greeks directed their gaze out into nature, when they directed their gaze at the outwardly and physically changing human being, they had, in a sense, the feeling: When the spring flows here, when the mountain rises, crowned by the cloud, when the sun rises there in the glow of dawn, when the rainbow arches overhead — through all this speaks the divine-spiritual. The Greeks saw so much of nature that they were able to experience the divine spirit in everything. But their view of nature was such that they were satisfied with it, that they felt, in a sense, their full human satisfaction in what they saw of nature.
I have often emphasized that it is right to speak of progress in the knowledge of nature, and anthroposophy is particularly suited to understanding the true significance of the scientific progress of the last centuries. I have often emphasized this. Anthroposophy is not concerned with any kind of amateurish criticism of natural science, of the view of nature, or of delving into nature, but only with a truly loving immersion. Yes, my dear friends, in relation to nature, people have learned a great deal in recent centuries. And if one deepens what has been learned, one gains insight from a view of nature — as I have often discussed with you from this very place — into the repeated earthly lives of human beings, into the transformation of nature. One gains a perspective view into future times, when human beings will revive what they experience in the present through their senses, their soul, and their spirit.
And through a proper deepening of one's understanding of nature, one gains a different view, a different overall conception of nature than the Greeks had. One might say that the Greeks saw nature as a fully grown being that revealed to them the glory of the divine-spiritual world. Modern humans can no longer view nature in this way. When we look at what we can perceive of natural beings today, with all our sophisticated instruments and tools, nature and natural humans appear to us as something that is embryonic, carrying something within its womb that can only unfold in the future.
The Greeks saw every plant as something that had a perfect existence just as it lived, because the god of the plant lived in the individual plant. We see the plant as something that must become something higher in nature; today, we see something embryonic in everything we look at. And in what we see today, not in finished nature, but, I would say, in nature pregnant with the future, full of promise for the future, in all this we see something in relation to which we begin to say to ourselves: something divine reigns in nature and must reign, because it will bring germinal nature to a once perfect form.
We have learned to look more closely at nature. When the Greeks saw the bird, we see the egg in nature. While the Greeks saw the finished creature, we see the potential everywhere. And today, a true view of nature is held by those who can be enraptured with their whole soul, with their whole heart, with their whole mind by the germinal nature, by the potential of nature.
This is the other side of today's understanding of nature. When you begin to look religiously into the microscope, when you begin to look religiously into the telescope, you notice germinal states everywhere. The accuracy of observing nature allows us to see nature in its embryonic state, allows us to see nature as creative everywhere, allows us to see nature as rushing toward the future everywhere. This results in a new religious ideal.
However, only those who also see in the individual human life — as we have often described here in this place — what appears to them as the seed of future human life on earth and in the world of a different kind will be able to have this religious ideal.
The Greeks saw in human beings, as it were, the confluence of the entire cosmos, but of the present cosmos. The ancient Orientals saw in human beings the confluence of the entire cosmic past. We feel in human beings the seed of the future. This gives the new religious ideal its coloration.
And if we turn to art, what do we find when we immerse ourselves in nature today and do not stop at dead contours, do not stop at abstract ideas, but immerse ourselves with a living soul in the forms of nature? My dear friends, you have seen it in the capitals I was able to give our columns, you have seen it in the architrave motifs that crowned the columns over there: this did not come about through observation of nature, it came about through experiencing nature. Nature produces forms that could also be different; nature challenges us everywhere to transform its forms into others, to metamorphose them. Those who merely observe nature copy it and fall into naturalism. Those who experience nature, who do not merely look at the lines and colors of plants, but experience them inwardly, will see a different form emerge from every plant, every rock formation, every animal form, which they can then imprint on the material. One does not do it like the Greeks, who wanted to express the spirit completely in the technique of the material, but one wrestles with the forms of nature and creates independent forms from the forms of nature, not in a symbolic-allegorical way as with the Orientals, nor in such an adequate way as with the Greeks, but in such a way that something is immediately expressed in the sensual revelation, something that strives toward the divine in every line, in every color. In Oriental art, the divine was expressed, as it were, through symbols and allegories, radiating like an aura, like a cloud, so that the divine spirit overflowed the forms, overgrew the forms, saying more than the forms themselves. We modern people must create works of art in which form says more than nature says, but speaks quite naturally, so that every single line, every single color becomes like a natural prayer to the divine. We wrest from nature, as it were, those forms through which nature itself can worship the divine. We speak, as it were, artistically to nature.
Actually, every plant, every tree wants to look up to the divine in prayer. We see it in the physiognomy of the tree, the physiognomy of the plant. But the expressive possibilities of the plant, of the tree, are not great enough. They are inherent in trees and plants. If we bring out what lives in trees and plants, in clouds and stones, in terms of lines, color, and inner vitality, if we imprint it on the building material, if we imprint it on the sculpting material, then nature speaks to the gods through our artwork. We discover the Logos in nature. And in our art, a higher nature than the nature outside appears to us, a nature that now, in turn, allows the Logos to flow up to the divine-spiritual world in a completely natural way.
In Oriental works of art, the Logos flowed down, and it found only a stammering expression in the human artistic material. Our art forms must be real forms of language that speak the language nature would speak if it could reach its goal. That is the artistic ideal, the artistic ideal that stands alongside the religious ideal, which sees nature in its predispositions, in its germinations.
And the third is our scientific ideal, that ideal which no longer, as with the Orientals, perceives thought as something that God whispers directly into the soul. Our modern ideal of thought or ideas can no longer perceive thought as the Greeks did, as a testimony to the divine arising in human beings; we find thought in a purely human way, through human work, through human inner soul work. But if we have elevated ourselves to thoughts in such a way that we allow nothing of egoism, nothing of selfishness, nothing of inner passion, which is taken up with this or that, that is, nothing of human partiality for one judgment or another, then we have elevated ourselves as human beings to experience the thought within ourselves in the form that it itself wants to take. Then we do not feel like the shaper, the creator of the thought, but like the inner soul arena through which the thought lives itself out within us. And then we feel the greatness of the thoughts we have formed ourselves, of the ideas we seem to have created within ourselves, without selfishness, without partiality for one judgment or another. Then we are surprised: the ideas we have formed in this way are worthy of representing the divine. We discover afterwards how the thought formed in our own breast is worthy of representing the divine. We first discover the thought and then discover: the thought is indeed the Logos! While you selflessly allow your thoughts to form within you, your selflessness has created the possibility that God was the creator of your thoughts. What the Orientals perceived as a revelation of thought, what the Greeks perceived as testimony through thought, we perceive as a living discovery: we have the thought, and it subsequently reveals itself to us as that which may express God. That is our scientific ideal.
And so we stand within human development, grasping the moment in which we live within human development, and know: We must succeed not only in looking at the human head with its ears on the side, with its larynx, with its crippled shoulder blades, but we must succeed, by transforming the form of nature, in creating from the growth of the shoulder blades, from the interweaving of the larynx with the ears, a unity of chest, head, wings, larynx, and ear, which appears to us as a Luciferic figure.
We come to see that which is artistic in nature, that which allows form to live in nature, so that a higher life of form emerges than is found in nature itself.
This also enables us to follow nature where it itself metamorphoses and transforms human beings. We are able to carry this art into the field of education and teaching. Where the child becomes a different person every day, we bring artistic creativity into our educational work, because we have first been so moved by art itself that we see in this art nature producing the Logos, which transcends itself. We learn from the source that becomes more than a source, that speaks to the gods; we learn from the tree that is more than a tree, because it stammers only in gestures through its branches, while in those forms that arise before the modern artistic imagination, it points to the gods with its branch gestures, with its crown gestures; we learn from the cosmos by metamorphosing its forms in the way they have been attempted to be transformed in our Goetheanum; we learn from it how we must work with the child day by day to transform what is being transformed in the child day by day. This enables us to bring art into the treatment of humanity, into pedagogy. And so on in other areas.
Understood in this way, the three newly revitalized great ideals of humanity arise before the soul of the anthroposophist: the religious ideal, the artistic ideal, the ideal of knowledge. Through the forms of the Goetheanum, the anthroposophist should feel inspired to experience this new formation of the noble, great human ideals. We must now quietly inscribe this in our souls. But we must draw enthusiasm from this. And when we draw enthusiasm for what elevates us in this way to the divine-spiritual through the three ideals, then this becomes our highest earthly ideal. When the Gospel says, “Love your neighbor as yourself and God above all,” then on the other hand it must be said: Whoever views the divine-spiritual as it must be viewed by modern man in the sense of the three ideals brought into the present learns to love the divine-spiritual, for he feels that he cannot be human unless he devotes himself to these three ideals with all the love he can muster. But then they also feel united in the same way with those who can send this love upward in the same way. They learn to love the divine-spiritual above all else and then their neighbor as themselves, out of love for the divine. And resentment does not arise.
But this is what can hold the individual members of the Anthroposophical Society together as a whole. We need this in the present. We have just experienced a phase in the Anthroposophical Society in which anthroposophy has flowed into individual branches of life: into education and teaching, into other practical forms of life, into the arts, and so on. Today we need unity. We have excellent Waldorf teachers and people who are doing excellent work in other fields. Today we need all those who are doing their best in their individual positions to find a way to allow the sources of anthroposophical life itself to flow anew. That is what we need today.
And because we need it, because we need the leading anthroposophical personalities to bear witness to the awareness that a revival of the Anthroposophical Society is currently necessary, this assembly is coming together in Stuttgart over the next few days, and if one is sincere about the Anthroposophical Society, one must have the greatest possible hopes for what will happen in Stuttgart over the next few days. For only if the personalities who will appear there find tones for this or that which resonate with a true, energetic enthusiasm for the three great ideals, which are at the same time ideals flowing out of love, only if there is a guarantee for this through the power and content of the words that are spoken there, can we hope that the Anthroposophical Society will achieve its goal. For what comes to light there will then also have to come to light in wider circles.
For myself, what I have to do will depend on the outcome of this Stuttgart conference. We look forward to it with anticipation. I ask you, if you are unable to attend, to be there in spirit with your powerful thoughts. For it is a matter of being present at an important moment, of actively committing oneself on a healthy foundation to the great ideals necessary for humanity today, those great ideals that are not spoken of in some arbitrary human writing, but in the writing that speaks to us so clearly from the whole development, from the meaning of the whole development of humanity itself, as clearly as the sun speaks to the waking human being. If we want to kindle enthusiasm in our souls in this way, then enthusiasm will turn into action. And we need action.