The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
1914
When the World War had brought about a condition of chaos, Rudolf Steiner said in 1919, in a lecture entitled A Characterization of the Present Time, with respect to the causes of the catastrophe of 1914:
“Fundamentally viewed, how helpless the great mass of humanity stands in the presence of this eruption of world events! Here the most earnest question must arise: Indeed, what is at the bottom of all this? uSomething lies at the bottom of it which is extraordinarily difficult to grasp, particularly for our age permeated through and through with a materialistic attitude of mind: the fact that precisely since the time when the waves of the materialistic world view had risen very high the most powerful spiritual force that has ever sought to enter into human life has been seeking to enter the life of humanity. This is the characteristic of our time: the Spirit, the spiritual world, since the beginning of the last third of the nineteenth century, desires with all its power to make itself manifest to human beings. But they have gradually reached a point in their evolution where they are willing to use nothing except their physical body as an instrument for taking in anything in the world. Because of the attitude of mind growing out of the materialistic world view, they have even become accustomed to represent theoretically that the physical brain is the instrument for thinking, even for feeling, and even for willing. They have convinced themselves that the physical body is the instrument for all spiritual life. They have not been without reason in convincing themselves of this. They had a good reason for it: that is, that in the course of human evolution humanity has gradually come to the point of being able to make use only of the physical body; that it has really gradually come to a pass where only the physical body could be used as an instrument for spiritual activity. And thus we stand today at the immeasurably important conjuncture in human evolution where, on the one hand, the spiritual world desires as if in a storm to become manifest and where, on the other hand, man must find the power to work his way upward out of his condition of being most completely enmeshed in the material up to a new reception of spiritual revelations.
“Humanity is subjected today to the most intense testing of its power: the testing of its power to work its way in freedom to the Spirit, which comes of itself to meet humanity if man does not shut himself off from this Spirit. But the time has passed in which the Spirit can become manifest to the human being in all sorts of subconscious and unconscious processes. The time has come when man must receive the light of the Spirit in free inner activity; and all the confusion and all the lack of clarity comes from the fact that human beings must today receive something which they really do not yet wish to receive: a completely new understanding of things.
“Into this terrible catastrophe of the World War, filled with horror, the old thinking has come to manifestation, the old way of surveying world events; and the immeasurably significant storm signals of this World War catastrophe signify nothing else than an indication: 'Seek to transform your thinking, seek to look upon the world in a different way!' For the old way must always lead only into chaos and entanglement! This fact must at last be seen into: that the leading personalities of the year 1914 had come to a point where nothing more could be achieved by the old understanding. It was for this reason that they led humanity into disaster. Man must today inscribe this fact deeply into his soul; otherwise he will not form the strong, the powerful decision really to meet the Spirit and its life out of his own free inner being.
“The lamentable fact in the immediate present is that we see how everywhere things come to manifestation which cannot be understood by means of the previous conceptions of life and of the world. But people still cling to these old world views and views of life and will not, will not come to new ways of viewing things. The Anthroposophical world view desired to prepare humanity for achieving these new ways of viewing the world. It had fundamentally no other real opponent, this Anthroposophical world view, than indolence alone, the inertia of the inner man who cannot arouse himself to meet with the innermost forces of his soul the inrushing—precisely in our times so mightily inrushing—tidal wave of the Spirit...・
“And the catastrophe of present-day humanity has come about through the fact that the disinclination of the will to receive the spiritual has been driven to a climax. Never has an event come about from such external causes as this World War catastrophe. And for this reason also it has become the most terrible. Out of this man should learn that he has been driven into this catastrophe by his earlier thinking, feeling, and willing, and that he will not again escape from it, although it may take on other forms, unless he undertakes the inner transformation, the inner metamorphosis of his soul with courageous decisiveness."
It was a result of the spiritual vision of the existing world situation that, in the beginning of the year 1914, after completing a cycle of lectures on Christ and the Spiritual Worlds Rudolf Steiner spoke on January 15 on the precise opposite in essence of these spiritual influences, on Evil in the Light of the Knowledge of Spirit. Whereas the words of Christ, “I am the ‘I am’” summon man so to recognize and to strengthen the forces of the ego being that he can penetrate as a free, ego-conscious being into the spiritual realms of the Hierarchies above him, yet during recent centuries man has directed his ego-force only below, to the mastery of the realms of nature existing below him. Thus in the world view of materialism and in its results the ego-force has been degraded into egoism, to a self-seeking mastery in the realm of matter. The capacity of ego-consciousness, neither good nor bad in itself, gives to man the freedom of choice of strengthening this capacity and thus entering into the spiritual worlds, or directing it below, to degenerate into egoism; and this development below has been the starting point for all destruction imaginable. Rudolf Steiner, never merely theorizing or moralizing, pointed out the forces which, according to the manner in which man himself employs them, may lead to redemption or destruction:
“Evil has entered into life and is in the world for the reason that the human being permitted his higher nature—not that destined for the earthly— to become submerged in the physical-corporeal, which cannot in itself be evil, and there develops those characteristics which belong, not in this sphere but in the spiritual. Human beings can be evil because they are permitted to be spiritual beings, and as such must develop characteristics which become evil when they are applied within the physical-sensible life ...
“Those are mistaken who believe that, because the soul is involved in a material existence, the impulse to evil can be ascribed to matter. No; evil arises precisely through the spiritual characteristics and potentialities of activity belonging to the human being. Where would the wisdom of the world order be if it limited the human being to the development of good alone in the world of the senses and not also of evil, if through this restriction the world order should necessarily take away the power of advancing in the spiritual world? Because of the fact that man is a spiritual being who has to pass through his evolution in the physical world, he is like a pendulum that can swing in two opposite directions. The one swing is the fulfillment of his spiritual law, his perfecting, which consists in becoming a free being. The other swing is that he can bring something spiritual into the physical world which does not belong there, and thus bring about the morally evil, which then also becomes external evil, just as spiritual Beings standing at a higher level than the human being were able to bring the evil to realization through the fact that they brought into the forms and structures of the sense world what ought to belong only to the spiritual world ...
“For characteristics are evil only in that they are applied in the sense world selfishly, not for the benefit of humanity. Applied in the right place, they immediately pass through a metamorphosis and are good forces. One is led deeply into the mysteries of human existence when one rises to the knowledge that man becomes evil by applying in the wrong place that with which he is endowed in order to become a free being; and that the evil, what is bad, exists because he uses the forces with which he is endowed in a realm for which they are not suited."
Man has received the forces of the ego for his free inner development, which lifts him above the unfree realms of nature, which develop only according to external laws. "Evolution, which for all other living beings is a law, is for the human being a duty^ But, instead of directing this force, which presses forward like all other forces toward action, upward toward the spiritual, he concentrated it one-sidedly downward toward domination in the realm of nature; and egoism, nourished to excess by materialism, placed the gift of invention in the service of destruction, the capacity for disclosing the riches of nature in the battle for possession. He shut himself off from the ideas which have developed and guide the spiritual cosmos, and wrong thinking became victorious in the fury of a four-year war of destruction.
During January 20-23 Rudolf Steiner spoke again on this polarity, under the title The Human and the Cosmic Thought. In contrast with the materialistic conception of history, that thinking is the product of the bodily existence, history for Rudolf Steiner is the result of thinking as a spiritual faculty in man, which penetrates into his bodily sphere but leaves him free to become receptive to the primal spiritual source. The form of history in the future will be determined by the degree to which the human being finds his way back to "cosmic thoughts/5 the spiritual guidance of the Creative Powers.
At the end of January occurred a General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society and the Building Association. The General Meeting was opened by Frl. von Sivers. At her suggestion, Dr. Steiner was chosen to preside over it. He brought into memory those who in the preceding year had passed through the portal of death, with whom the Society still felt itself united. He read telegraphic greetings from many countries, announcing the most earnest participation by members and Groups there in the steps to be taken for shaping the life of the Society. He called attention also to certain symptoms of opposition which must be taken into account. He illustrated by means of examples the fact that, in the last analysis, fear of the spiritual, nourished by materialism, is always the cause of such denial or opposition to the spiritual as this is made the very center of Anthroposophy.
In the discussion of the inner work of the Society he drew a distinction between "Groups" and "Working Groups." The latter should devote themselves especially to active study and working out of Anthroposophical contents of knowledge and practical impulses. Frl. von Sivers expressed the hope that in the year 1915 the Dornach building would be finished. In the discussion of the membership fees, emphasis was laid upon the fact that the presentation of the Mystery Dramas as well as the construction of this building had to depend entirely upon contributions obtained through the initiative of friends.
As an example for similar occurrences in General Meetings of the Society, it may be well to mention here how Dr. Steiner declined to express any judgment when pressed by a member to give his opinion regarding publications and opinions of this member. We quote only the essential words:
“that I have the perfect right sometimes also to remain silent in regard to something! I do not know whether any one doubts that I have this right. If there should be doubt that I am justified also in remaining silent about one thing or another, I should consider this as the worst form of tyranny?”
He often spoke against this tyranny of individuals—the demand that problems presented by them be discussed immediately and dealt with by the leadership of the Society, whereas he left many things to the course of destiny, the temperament of the person concerned, or to general understanding. Any one who has experienced such things knows that he would allow debates to roll on for hours without taking part, and only at the end of the meeting, or even after a long lapse of time, would make a suggestion when tempers had grown calm for an objective solution of the problem. Just as he always respected the freedom of the members of the Society, he represented the freedom of its leadership as a fundamental prerequisite for all fruitful united effort.
On the third day of the General Meeting, he gave a lecture on The Pseudo-Science of the Present Time. He took occasion to point out the falsity of arguments of the opponents but also of over-zealous adherents, and to point out the false way in which his own works were used, either without recognition of the source from which ideas were taken or in a manner to misrepresent them. He emphasized the heavy burden added to his work through the necessity for such conflict, the compulsion to correct and to defend.
Gratifying progress in the erection of the Dornach building was reported on January 19 at a meeting of the Building Association. Rudolf Steiner gave further explanations regarding the relation with the building itself of a group of residences for members of the Society who intended to live in Dornach, in order to work there permanently. For in the autumn of the year 1913 a very active life and work had begun in Dornach, where many fellow workers—primarily artists, painters, sculptors—out of various countries had come together at Dornach or were about to do so, to carry out the practical work in these fields on the Goetheanum building.
At the end of January he returned to Dornach. Together with his work on the building, he spoke in Basel on January 27 and March 13 on Spiritual Science in Its Relation to Religious and Social Currents of the Present Time.
In February and March he made a number of tours in Germany, aiding in the development of the work in the Groups and continuing the public lectures of the winter in the Berlin Architektenhaus. Special mention should be made of a lecture on March 19 which now brought before the public a description of Life between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being. At the beginning of this lecture, Rudolf Steiner himself said: "Within this series of lectures the present theme is certainly the most venturesome." But the large group of those attending these public lectures had already been introduced into spiritual science to a sufficient degree to be able to follow with understanding this presentation of the stages of existence between death and rebirth. In Munich, in a lecture of March 29, he dealt again in detail with the theme of the beginning of the year, The Origin of the Bad and the Evil in the Light of Spiritual Science. The next day he described for the members the three preparatory stages of the Mystery of Golgotha in the history of the cosmos and of man, and reported on the plans and the work being done in connection with the Dornach building.
On March 31, 1914, the poet Christian Morgenstern, the great friend and pupil of Rudolf Steiner, died in Meran, Italy. In the wonderful biography of the poet written by Michael Bauer the following are the concluding words:
“It was 4.30 in the morning. The sun was just rising. Goethe spoke once of how fortunate it must be to die at sunrise, and to convince yourself still through your inner and your outer senses that nature is eternally productive, divine in its innermost being, true to type and not in subjection to aging.
“Rudolf Steiner saw this death at the same time from the distance in the spirit and said in regard to it: 'There cannot be any death more beautiful....’
“The earthly sheath of Christian Morgenstern was taken to Basel. On April 4, 1914, the cremation occurred there.
“Rudolf Steiner spoke the words of commemoration in the presence of a great company attending the funeral. His friends had come ・..also relatives and a great number of Dornach people. Rudolf Steiner said later that he had himself been able to give the funeral address only because of a special combination in destiny.
“‘This soul’—so he declared Purely bears testimony to the victory of the spirit over everything corporeal.'
“The funeral um of Christian Morgenstern is at the Goetheanum, in Dornach bei Basel."
The work of Christian Morgenstem, with its great profundity, its brilliant humor, its unique inner goodness and humanness, is so well known that we may confine ourselves in this connection to the mention of points of contact between these two great personalities. Regarding the significance of the life and work of Rudolf Steiner for humanity and for every individual human being, Christian Morgenstern wrote:
“In Rudolf Steiner a figure has appeared among us which signifies something new for the development of the human soul. In a certain sense, he brings to an end the history of philosophy, which embraces a long-cultivated purely esoteric thinking, and he establishes the spiritual science of man as a cosmic being: Anthroposophy. In the presence of his researches even the most completely independent person must reflect anew and revise. In any case, through him a human being who had in his own way come to an end found himself placed once more at the beginning of things."
Christian Morgenstern wrote that he owed his first acquaintance with Rudolf Steiner
“to the public lectures of Rudolf Steiner himself in the Berlin Architekenhaus, January 1909—after the first of which (on Tolstoy and Carnegie) I knew at once that I would attend the entire cycle, to consist of seven lectures. The last lecture came by chance on May 6.” [Morgenstern's birthday]
And his biographer adds to this:
“The manner in which the lecturer characterized the contrast between the Russian ascetic and the American philanthropist, and knew how to integrate this into the totality of humanity, must have made a deep impression upon Morgenstern, who had always been deeply impressed by the one-sided greatness of Tolstoy and yet repelled by him. From this lecture and the next one on The Mystery of the Human Temperaments, it became evident that Rudolf Steiner was in the very midst of the reality of life. These lectures were to manifest, indeed, this spirit livingly active in the midst of phenomena. They united in themselves a spiritual world view with the intimate observation of the reality near at hand."
The human love coming only out of the sphere of the soul, as in the case of Tolstoy, or out of the external sphere, as in the case of Carnegie, could not satisfy a person such as Christian Morgenstern, with whom the love of humanity originated in the purely spiritual. The fulfillment of his craving through a spiritual science rooted in knowledge of the Spirit and in a survey of the times could be found only in Rudolf Steiner. Shortly after the first contact with Anthroposophy, Christian Morgenstern wrote, therefore, in his book Stufen {Gradations} the sentence, “All mysteries lie completely unveiled before us. Only we gradate ourselves against them, from the stone up to the seer. There are no mysteries in themselves; there are only uninitiated of all grades.”
After that turn in destiny of the year 1909, Christian Morgenstern set out with all the intensity of his being to climb these stages of spiritual knowledge. On May 25, 1909, he wrote from Christiania where he attended a cycle of lectures, in a letter about his experience of the personality of Rudolf Steiner and what this meant for him: uHe is a leader of humanity. Just think—to meet such a rare personality once in life, and still more: to be permitted as a mature person freely and lovingly to follow him!" A further account of the united way of life of the two persons will be found in the biography mentioned above. Regarding Morgenstern's love for humanity and the dedication of his life and destiny to the leader of humanity chosen by him, this biography says:
“Christian Morgenstern's life coincides with the period of freedom of the German empire. He was born in 1871 when preparations were being made for the signing of the treaty of peace, and died a few months before the outbreak of the World War...
“In order to serve the cause of peace, he presented a resolution to the Nobel Prize Committee in 1912, in which he designated Rudolf Steiner as one of the greatest fosterers of world peace—saying: 8As a matter of fact, if any one is working today for the drawing together of human beings into a brotherly relation, it is this man, who through his personality alone unifies in the noblest spiritual endeavor members of the most various nationalities. And more still, more permanently still than he could ever do through his personality, through the form and the content of what for more than ten years he has tirelessly disseminated, nurtured, and developed as a treasure of teaching. Of this treasure of teaching very much can already be taken from his books. The real activity of Rudolf Steiner, creative in the loftiest meaning of humanity, will only be unveiled by the historian who will be called upon to write the story of this lofty life. Then will it be realized with the utmost astonishment what has happened and is happening in quietude for the human being as such and what irreplaceable platform and support have been given to him through the lifework of this spirit while this century has been rushing farther and farther into the terrible deserts of materialism.’”
Only a few months before the outbreak of the World War, on April 4, 1914, Rudolf Steiner delivered the funeral address at the cremation of Christian Morgenstern in Basel. Today the funeral urns of the two great personalities stand side by side in the crypt of the Goetheanum in Dornach. Christian Morgenstern bequeathed his testament to humanity in his work We Found a Path, which he dedicated to Rudolf Steiner:
Just as a man on dreary days forgets the sun,
But it continues shining ceaselessly,
So may one thee on dreary days forget,
To be again and evermore again
Astonished, even blinded, to discover
How inexhaustibly and evermore
Thy sun-like spirit
Irradiates us darkling wanderers.
After reading the Helsingfors cycle of Rudolf Steiner, Christian Morgenstern wrote:
To beauty leads thy work;
For beauty streams
At last through every revelation
Given to us.
From all the painful-human
Aloft to ever higher harmonies
Releasest thou the dizzy human feeling,
Till it, united
With all the symphony
Of God's Announcers stretching beyond vision
And His own never comprehended glory,
Soars also in the light of love
Of blessedness...
From beauty comes
To beauty leads
Thy work.
By April 13 1914, the Dornach building had reached the point at which the festival of the roofing could be celebrated. In the summer of 1913 there stood on the Dornach hill only one private residence, the House Brodbeck, on the ground floor of which Rudolf Steiner at first took up his residence. There he created as a work of art the model for the first Goetheanum building. This model was set up in a room at the right of the entrance, as the point of departure for the great work on the building, and the diligent creative activity of hundreds of persons. The first things to be constructed in the summer of 1913 were the entering roadways. Construction work on the building was first in the hands of the architect Dr. Schmid-Curtius, who transferred the direction in the spring of 1914 to a group of architects, of whom Ernst Aisenpreis and Hermann Ranzenberger were in constant connection with the work. The carrying through of the work of construction then remained continuously till the end in the hands of the architect Ernst Aisenpreis—who years later supervised the erection of the second Goetheanum building. In the further course of the undertaking, the architect Albert von Baravalle also worked in the group just mentioned. We shall later speak of the artists. It must be left to technical specialists to explain what completely new problems had to be solved in this construction, both architecturally and technically, in erecting such a tremendous building, of 65,000 cubic meters in inner dimensions, under two intersecting domes, and, with the exception of the foundation structure of stone, built entirely out of the living material of various kinds of wood. This unique work aroused the interest of numerous architects from various parts of the world, who came to Dornach not only out of Middle Europe but also from East and West. In Frau Marie Steiner's foreword to Rudolf Steiners lectures Ways to a New Style in Architecture appears the following passage about such professional visitors:
“This intersecting of the two unequal domes aroused the astonished admiration of architects and engineers. This was a mathematical problem which they would not have taken upon themselves. A well known architect from California, who had been responsible for many public buildings there, could not give sufficient expression to his admiring recognition: 'The person who solved this problem is a mathematical genius of the first rank. The one who has done this is a master of mathematics, a sovereign ruler over our profession. Here we architects must learn. The person who has erected this captures the heights because he is master of the depths.’ "
An English architect, Montague Wheeler, wrote in the London "Times" of November 19, 1925:
“Any one who has read the books of the late Rudolf Steiner or attended his lectures in London, Oxford, and other cities, will presumably associate him with philosophy, education, and his own special science, Anthroposophy; but very few probably know him as an architect.
“Nevertheless the personality who erected a structure large enough to accommodate an audience of one thousand persons, arched over by intersecting domes of which the higher was of a diameter somewhat greater than that of the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, deserves the most serious consideration by all who practice the art of architecture. This structure borrowed nothing from traditional styles. Its creator did not seek to give a reproduction of what has been contributed by the temples of ancient Greece to the art of modem Europe, nor were the forms of the Gothic of the Middle Ages drawn upon and adapted. It was in no respect planned on a drawing board. It was conceived and sketched as architecture ought always to be sketched—that is, in three dimensions; and for this reason it must be seen in three dimensions in order to be understood . . . As a bold step toward the presentation of a new architecture^ it is unlikely to have any rivals in the history of this art.”
Many similar quotations might here be included out of many lands. They also recognized in Rudolf Steiner the great architect of extraordinary achievement. The cooperating architects, who erected this building on the basis of their competence in contemporary technique and that of the spiritual schooling of Rudolf Steiner, were engaged during this work in a new land both in technique and also in artistic form; and it required the courage of human beings desiring to bring the spiritual to realization in the physical to venture upon this task. After the completion of the roadways, the so-called "Schreinerei” (an enormous workshop containing various machine tools) was erected, a wooden structure intended for use only during the period of construction on the building, but which has lasted for decades and, we shall see, has been used for lectures and artistic programs. The "Schreinerei" still stands in the neighborhood of the second building. At that time it was only the hall for machinery, the place for piling enormous accumulations of lumber, and the workshop for artisans, numbering between 150 and 200. In the period between the autumn of 1913 and the end of March 1914, the outer structure of the building had advanced to such a point that by April 1 the two domes were enclosed and the roofing festival could be celebrated. A few months later, in July 1914, the domes had already been covered with the Norwegian slate, sparkling brilliantly in the sun which wove the building like a living being into the changing light reflections of the atmosphere.
In this first period of construction, there were already numerous artists at work, beginning with the carving of the mighty wooden columns, the architraves and capitals. For the study of this realm of artistic forms we must refer to special literature. As we have said, painters and sculptors had gathered here from many countries to work together. In thinking of this development, we find Goethe's words in Faust taking concrete form:
That the great work be brought to end,
Suffices one mind for a thousand hands.
Rudolf Steiner worked untiringly with the artists, inspiring, counseling, correcting, supplementing, and most of all taking part himself in the carving and painting with the artists who were bringing his building model to realization. He had moved on April 1 to “House Hansi” on Zielweg, and transferred his artistic work to a studio attached to the "Schreinerei.” He began there also modeling the statue of "The Representative of Humanity/5 the Christ, intended to be set up in the middle of the building, and now to be seen in the new Goetheanum building.
From early morning till late in the evening, he was at the building place. There the work of all those occupied in the task was concentrated upon carrying out the inexhaustible stimulation which he gave to every one of them. The spiritual greatness, human goodness, and practical ability of Rudolf Steiner imparted the harmony of a common spiritual and artistic direction to all these persons, so varied in their previous development, so individually endowed as are all artists, often holding diverse views, and with the usual human attributes and passions as well as capacities. The individual was preserved and yet the artistic end result was as if it had come out of a single mold. Note the vivid description of one collaborator, Frau A. Turgenieff-Bugajeff, of this first period in the erection of the building:
“joyfully sounded forth to us from the distance the hammer blows out of 0e network of scaffolding which indicated the outlines of the future building on the hill. The person probably most frequently met on this hill covered with mud was Dr. Steiner. Wearing a working smock and high boots, he hurried from one workshop to another, a model or a sketchbook in his hand; he stopped one on the way with a friendly word or a handshake... In the concrete basement from which the planks had already been removed, workers glued the beautiful wood into colossal blocks. Greenish-bright hornbeam, goldenly shimmering ash, reddish cherry, then warmly brown oak and elm and again the brighter colors of maple and birch. Each wood had its own smell; each felt different under the hand. It was the beginning of March when the carving—-at first on the capitals in this room—had to be taken in hand. Dr. Steiner himself began this work. We gathered in a circle around him. Standing high up on two boxes with chisel and mallet in hand, he slowly struck one chip after another from the massive wood, which indicated in its general outlines the motif of a capital. He was completely absorbed in his work: as if he studied inwardly the movements of his hands, as if he would listen to something whispered out of the wood. And so it went on hour after hour, restfully, uninterruptedly. One was already weary from standing; went away; came back... He continued to work. And gradually the mass of wood was pealed away from a plastic form...
“The next day all plunged into the work. Every one received chisel and mallet—but how hard and obstinate the wood was! After half an hour, the hands were utterly sore, and without visible result—it looked as if a mouse had been gnawing at the wood. And still Dr. Steiner had worked yesterday for the first time so many hours and accomplished so much!...
“In the rooms of the Schreinerei a sculptress was the ruler for the time being. Dressed in a short kazak and in high boots, and with a long wooden lance in her hand, she held command over a group of Italian workers.
"One was thus left again to one's own experiences, and it took time before the hands learned to substitute rhythm for force, to make the wood compliant, and most of all until one found the way into the model room in order to study its motif and to measure ...
“A few items of advice from Dr. Steiner to those carving: cIn the left hand: the feeling—feel the form with the chisel; in the right: the strength. What matters in this is the united work of the two ・・.Study the surfaces of blossoms: they are the best plastic artists.・・・ But for this reason one cannot plastically reproduce any blossoms.・・・ Your whole feeling must be given consciously to the movement of the surfaces. They must become ensouled. Soul must be in the surfaces. How will the edge between two surfaces come about? That you must not determine beforehand—you must await it with curiosity . . . Why do you wish symmetrical form? Your nose also is not symmetrical. Just look at the whirl of your hair ..・ But in this way inner life comes to expression!’
"Thus did he pass from one group to another, encouraging, jesting; yet more and more anxious appeared the expression of the eyes. Much work remained to be done—the carving of the outer wall, motifs over the windows portals...”
Then from the report of the same collaborator a few months later:
“Still in a crude condition, uncompleted, yet at last the architraves were placed above the columns, and above these the inner dome was arched, and the place was freed from scafFolding. And thus we stood together with Dr. Steiner for the first time inside the Goetheanum. What we had labored at for many months as single fragments we suddenly saw before us blended into a whole, as a space that had never before been there. An impression which will remain forever inextinguishable, overwhelming in spite of all that was unfinished and defective. And there were plenty of defects.
“And thus we listened to Dr. Steiner's praise and blame—praise which awoke a profound sense of shame in the heart, blame which sounded so hearty and humorous, so encouraging. We listened to him ・・・ But just as important was it to look. The expression of his face, his gestures, the movement of his whole body rendered visible and supplemented what had not been expressed. The umbrella helped in the tracing of the movement of the form; and, when it became more complicated, the soft felts hat, being bent and twisted, had to clarify a plastic curve.”
Nothing here was undertaken theoretically; but everything made clear through living example and concrete material.
During this practical work, the collaborators were constantly being guided further spiritually. In the evenings people sat in the Schreinerei on joiners' benches and piles of wood, while Rudolf Steiner in the midst of this world of work spoke about the spiritual content of Anthroposophy. During the autumn months, the South Hall of the building had advanced to such a stage that the first Eurythmy courses could be given there, previously taught in a hotel in the village, with study evenings conducted in the Kober home. The administrative office of the building was in a provisional structure. Artists, collaborators, and visitors took their meak in a ucantine55 of extremely primitive character. Scarcely any of the houses now surrounding the building then existed, and the two approaching roads were of the simplest country character. We shall report later about the lectures, given amid machines and piles of lumber in the Schreinerei.
After the roofing festival of the beginning of April, Rudolf Steiner left again on lecture tours—first to Vienna for a cycle between April 9 and 14 on Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and New Birth. One lecture of this cycle was dedicated to the memory of Christian Morgenstern, whereas the others led into the depths of the being of man and the expanses of existence after death. Recent experiences and events of the near future led Rudolf Steiner to admonish his listeners with ever increasing intensity about their earthly tasks. He also described how the human being is faced before birth by the temptation to avoid the earthly life:
“Each time, before we enter into an incarnation on earth, we are faced by the temptation to remain in the spiritual world, to enter into the Spirit and to move forward there with that which we already possess, with that which has already been rendered divine, and to sacrifice what the human being on earth as man can still become on the way toward the far distant religious ideal of the divine spiritual world. There comes about thus the temptation to be irreligious as to the spirit land."
But the rightly conceived religiousness of the human being demands that he not remain in the spiritual world, but return to the earth and devote himself with utter intensity from birth till death to the tasks of the earth, since only in this way can he unite together in a strengthened ego-consciousness the world of the spirit and the earthly world. The last lectures gave an insight into the creative forces of God the Father, the work of God the Son, Christ, even in the twentieth century, and the supreme duty of keeping oneself open to the influence of the Holy Spirit. For the coming difficult time, he gave to those present an expression of wisdom to take on the way: "Ex Deo nascimur, in Christo morimur, per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus." He ended the lecture based upon this knowledge with the warning and sustaining words:
“Human beings would always remain asleep with respect to the spiritual through the mere vision of the senses and the intellect bound to the brain. But there will shine into this human sleep, which would more and more in future befall the human being with its darkness,—into this sleep the Spirit will always shine in the human being even during his physical existence. In the midst of the dying spiritual life, in the midst of the spiritual life dying because of the mere sense vision and the realm of the intellect, human souls will be awakened even on the physical plane, even in the physical existence, by the Holy Spirit. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.”
He renewed this call to awake also in Prague, speaking on April 16 and 17 under the titles: How Does the Human Soul Find Its True Nature? and The Necessity for Spiritual Science. The following lectures in Berlin also press the same questions upon his listeners: How Is an Understanding of the Spiritual Achieved? and Spiritual Science as a Treasure of Life. How deeply Rudolf Steiner was moved by the death of the poet and friend Christian Morgenstern is indicated by the fact that, wherever he spoke in the coming months in Austrian and German cities, he always addressed a special meeting in memory of the poet. That the dead continue to work from the spiritual world at the common task was for him a real experience clairvoyantly perceived. The lectures of May 8-10 were on the theme: The Quickening Influence of the Spiritual World, in the Physical.
He journeyed during these months to France and Scandinavia, speaking between May 25 and 27 in Paris on Clairvoyance and the Supersensible Worlds; Clairvoyance, Reason, and Science; and Progress in the Knowledge of the Christ. From Paris he visited that most famous center of esoteric Christianity in the history of France, Chartres, with its sublime cathedral. In the memoirs of Edouard Schuré we find the following description:
“Here I call to mind a similar situation which showed me the spiritual researcher Rudolf Steiner in the same way. It was when we were in the Cathedral of Chartres a short time before the war. We had stood for a long time in the right aisle of the church. He had remained rather quiet. Then, as we were going out, he related to me wonderful things about John, about the Gospel of St. John, and went back suddenly to Plato and Aristotle. I could not escape the impression as if he had met these figures again in the church. These and similar impressions remain unforgettably with me, and they have since that time again and again admonished me to return to my own path, which from that moment on has been quite clearly that of the Christian inspiration.”
Many important persons have experienced a decisive change in their course of destiny while lingering with Rudolf Steiner in historical places.
He himself had probably during those moments in the Cathedral of Chartres received and intensified impressions and experiences which he shut up at first in his innermost being, in order to reveal them a decade later to us in his lectures on the flourishing School of Chartres in the Middle Ages and its historical mission.
In the midst of these journeys he returned from time to time to Dornach to direct the progress of the work on the building. On June 7 he delivered there the first of the lectures already mentioned on the Artistic Form Motif of the Acanthus Leaf in Architecture. The first words of this first lecture in the Schreinerei were:
“My dear friends:
“A thought which may often come to us in connection with this building is the thought of responsibility borne by us with respect to the values given with sacrificial willingness by our friends for use in erecting the building. Those who have become aware of how great an amount these values have really gradually reached will understand that, in response to such sacrificial willingness, there must really be the right equivalent: a strong feeling of responsibility to see that what is expected from this building shall actually be brought to pass. Now, every one who has cast his glance—by no means at the whole. which cannot be surveyed, but only at each separate detail—will see clearly that this building represents divergencies from everything really which has been approved as one or another architectural style in the previous evolution of humanity. Such an undertaking as this can be justified obviously only through the fact that what is aimed at shall be approximately achieved. In comparison with what might be desired, that which it will be possible for us to complete will be only a small—perhaps we might say a tiny—beginning. And yet it may be that in this beginning the line may be seen according to which a spiritual transformation of the style element in art must be achieved in the later future of humanity."
Rudolf Steiner now gave a survey over the primal sources of architectural creation in the past epochs of culture, and threw light upon the fact that the first of these primal motifs did not arise out of a static thinking or mere technical construction, but out of an inner experience of the living and organic processes at work in the macrocosm and the microcosm. He explained how these inner dynamic experiences brought the human being into relation with the great cosmic metamorphoses, with the relation of terrestrial influences to solar influences, the wisdom-filled dynamics of the spheres of the earth and the planets. He explained how all of this took on concrete form in the primal motifs in architecture, in a mirroring in the work-world of the spiritual creative forces; all of which, however, had been lost to the merely materialistic thinking of the past century.
In the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, the Word is revealed as a forming Principle, as the creative force in the coming into existence of the cosmos. An architectural art drawing upon the sources of esoteric Christianity must in our time again manifest the real spiritual forces; and words spoken in such a space must be in harmony with the organically molded forms of a building created out of the same spirit.
In this first lecture in the Dornach Schreinerei, under the conditions already described, Rudolf Steiner said about the building to be erected:
“If there is the will to lay hold in connection with our building of that which lives in the Spirit, and possesses the power to imprint itself upon what surrounds us as a shell in our building,—if this shall be seen in what is brought to expression around us in the external shell, what we intend will then be understood. For there will be seen in the forms which will surround us, if I may so express it, as artistic imprinted forms, the reproduction of what is to be done, spoken, brought about in living words within our building. A living word it is—our building is!”
On June 17 he dedicated the Glass Studio, a special small building with a double dome, in which now the artistic glass windows for the building were engraved. This was done according to a new artistic and technical procedure given by Rudolf Steiner for the first time for such a purpose. Loyal to his service in connection with the work of Goethe, he took as his point of departure the fundamental conceptions in the Goethe theory of color, in which is recognized the genesis of color as coming out of a conflict between two polarically opposite forces of light and darkness. The action of the realm of colors in space came to a uniquely intense and living expression through these glass windows, cut in graded nuances of various colors, through which the in-streaming sunlight, illuminating the inner space, called forth an endlessly manifold interaction of colors. Tremendous sheets of glass provided for the windows, approximately 16 feet high, were colored not only on the surface, according to the usual practice, but through and through, which was achieved only after numerous dealings with various glass makers in Europe. And, in order to beautify these colored sheets of glass with picture motifs, resort was not had to the method of simply painting on the surface. On the basis of instructions given by Rudolf Steiner, a new technical procedure was worked out. A motor-driven rotating plane was used to engrave the pictures into the glass. Through the deeper or shallower cutting into the colored glass, its translucency for light took on gradations, thus showing lighter or darker nuances of color, so that the picture thus produced represented the result of the interaction of bright, dark, and color. This new process was later adapted in workshops elsewhere, in some cases without the mention of Rudolf Steiner as its inventor, although easily to be traced clearly to this source. The first experiments in the Dornach Glass Studio demanded of those carrying them out great artistic and technical ability. In this connection must be mentioned especially T. Rychter, W. Siedlecka, and A. TurgeniefF-Bugajeff. The last mentioned carved also the colored glass windows, approximately 23 to 25 feet in height, for the second Goetheanum building, which make today a great impression upon thousands of visitors. For the motifs used in the pictorial representations upon the glass windows, Rudolf Steiner himself made the sketches. They represent the experience of the human being in penetrating into spiritual worlds.
In his lecture at the opening of the Dornach Glass Studio on June 17, 1914, Dr. Steiner dealt once more with general problems of architecture in the course of history and in the present age. He explained how in the Greek temple, in the Gothic building, the spiritual came to expression directly in the world of form; but that, in contemporary building forms, drawn mostly from the laws of the dead mineral world, there comes to expression no longer any such spiritual language. These are masterpieces of technique, perhaps, but they have no living organic relation with the true nature of the human being working within them. He said:
“I think, for example, about many structures created in our time through brilliant architectural talent. There are such buildings which, although introducing no new style and not streamed through by any new spirit, are brilliant architectural creations. But they all bear the imprint of the same characteristic. They can be admired when viewed from without. When one goes inside, one can find them wonderfully pretty inside. But to feel oneself within these structures as one feels oneself inclosed with one's sense organs,—this does not come about. Why does one not have such a feeling? One does not have this feeling within them because they are dumb; because they do not speak.”
Such structures no longer have a relation to the human beings working within them and to human tasks. The Greek style is used, perhaps, for a railway station, or the Gothic for a stock exchange, and the like, or any consideration of formation which does not appear on the drawing board to meet purely technical purposes is simply omitted. In such structures man can foster an external, materialistic civilization, and create in such an environment principles of community life appearing intellectually very clever. But to the forces of the Spirit, of the living, and of the creative social impulses to be drawn from these sources such building forms are alien. Regarding the ideas for whose realization the Dornach building was to be the first beginning, looking to the future, Rudolf Steiner said:
“If ideas for such works of art ever find successors, the human beings who pass through the doorways of such works or art, who permit themselves to be impressed by what speaks in such works of art—if they have once really learned to understand the language of these works of art—will never do wrong to their fellow men, never with their heads but also never with their hearts, for they will have learned from these artistic forms to love; they will learn to live in harmony and peace with their fellow men. Peace and harmony will stream into the hearts through these forms. Such buildings will become the law-givers. What cannot be bestowed by external arrangements will be achieved through the forms of this building of ours!・.・ Real healing out of the evil into the good for human souls will in the future lie in the fact that true art will send into human souls and hearts that spiritual fluid, so that the souls and hearts of human beings, when they are understandingly framed in by what has come into existence in architectural sculpture and other forms, will cease to lie, if they have a tendency to lie; will cease to disturb the peace of their fellow men, if they have the tendency to be disturbers of the peace. The qualities of architecture will begin to speak. The language which they will speak—human beings at the present time have not even an inkling of it.”
And he closed this festival with the words:
“In the Greek temple the God dwelt; in the Roman and the Gothic building the congregation can dwell with its spirit; but in the building of the future the spirit world is to speak ... The House of Speech, the speaking house, my dear friends,—this let us build in love to true art and therewith also in love to true spirituality, and therewith also in love to all men!"
In being creatively in the midst of a throng of those working spiritually, artists and those busy in active work, there became manifest more and more the community-building force which was incarnated in the personality of Rudolf Steiner. Here was created one of the first great achievements of the Society schooled by him through so many years: fellowship of all professions, talents, existing and newly arising capacities. There scientists discovered, perhaps, their gift for carving; musicians that they could also model. Many persons who had never practiced such an activity, or "ad never discovered this capacity within themselves, took hold of hammer and chisel in order to carve out the capitals of columns. A painter hitherto in the protection of his studio, perhaps, did not shrink back from dragging lumber to the building place and working with the carpenters on a scaffold. Hand-workers who had previously only carried out work assigned to them brought forth from its shell their talent for devising independently the difficult wood construction for the molding of the plastic forms； and in the evening all of these human beings of such varied types sat in the Schreinerei to listen to spiritual-scientific lectures. Of course, there were here and there the usual human antagonisms and friction, the residue of an ambition not yet sufficiently adjusted to the community, or one or another lapse into habits of life no longer suitable here. But gradually, with a loving heart and—if it had to be so—inflexibly according to the necessities, always with a goodness rooted in the understanding of the individual human being, Rudolf Steiner guided this group of persons into the reality of a community which took form in the work itself and created its laws of life in perfect clarity out of the spiritual and practical activity. What could never have been brought about by any theoretical law, however brilliant, became here the result of the work itself. Only in this way can we understand the rapid and successful achievement of the multitudinous difficult and unusual tasks involved in this first year of the building, and also the fact that, in spite of the enormous external hindrances of the coming years, this labor preserved uninterruptedly its spiritual and practical continuity.
In the activity of lecturing of June 1914, the Whitsuntide lecture of June 2 in Basel must be emphasized: The Three Sacrifices of the Christ. The Three Preliminary Stages of the Mystery of Golgotha. This lecture supplemented the picture of the cosmic deeds of Christ before his earthly birth already mentioned in connection with the lecture of December 1913.
In the lecture of June 2, 1914, he had revealed to the members still another mystery, showing the help given to him by departed friends out of the spiritual world in his research:
“And, as for myself, I had felt since the year 1909 more and more, when the problem was to develop in complete quietude and calm what was necessary for the Mystery Dramas,—I felt the spiritual power which came from without. I knew that the spiritual eye of a spiritual being rested upon what had been done. And I refer to this as a direct experience.
“In those first times when we were working in Germany in the field of our spiritual science, there came to us a friendly personality who received with wonderful enthusiasm what we could then give. But not only did this personality receive with a wonderful and devoted enthusiasm what could be given at that time about the evolution of humanity, cosmic mysteries, reincarnation and karma; but there was united with this at the same time a wonderful aesthetic feeling. Immersed in beauty was everything experienced together with this personality, whether teaching or conversing. At that time we were still a small number. To crowd ourselves together in a room as we have to do now was not then necessary. What we now speak in the presence of a great audience,—for such a discussion there were only three: I myself with two other persons. One of these two persons left us as early as 1904 on the physical plane and entered into the spiritual world. As is the course of events, such persons pass through a development after death. In the year 1907, when we carried out at our Congress Schur^s reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis, no such influence was yet discernible. In 1909 it began, and it came more and more in recent years. I knew precisely: this is the individuality of that personality who was such a friend, whom one could be very fond of in a purely objective way, solely on account of such a special quality of character. Taken away into the spiritual world, this person was working like a guardian angel for what we had to achieve in the union of the aesthetic with the esoteric in our Mystery Dramas. And one felt that this personality who had been taken away into the spiritual world in 1904 guarded well what then passed over into our earthly activity, what has flowed into the earthly activity and has permeated us; to which we look up thankfully in that it came to expression through the fact that the spiritual eye of a spiritual personality rested upon our actions. But, when it came to the question of carrying on what may be called a conversation with this personality— it can be called a conversation, since it is a kind of reciprocal influence,— when that was to come about, it always happened that this personality made it clear that, the more we permeate ourselves with the thought of the Christ in the development of the earth, the better this person could find the way into our earthly activity. If I should express in earthly words what this individuality said again and again'—of course, I can only express symbolically what is entirely different in the spiritual world—I would say: ‘I can find so well the way to you friends, because you are finding the way more and more to make your spiritual science an expression of what constitutes the living word of the Christ Himself.’”
This is only a single example among many of the way in which the dead are active in the work of the living. But here Rudolf Steiner ex236 pressed this in extremely concrete form. There can be comfort for those who pass through the portal of death in knowing how intensely in their essential being they can continue to share in the tasks of the Movement.
In the midst of this activity of lecturing and the work on the building, Rudolf Steiner went at the beginning of July to Scandinavia—the last lecture tour before the outbreak of the World War—and gave in Norrköping, Sweden, between July 12 and 16 a lecture cycle on Christ and the Human Soul. He placed at the center of his reflections the truth that the profoundest meaning of the soul element, in the totality of evolution and in the individual, consists in the fact that the single, ego-endowed “personality” shall be developed, rooted in freedom of will, and capable thus of choosing between that which is called in the Old Testament the temptation and original sin and what is described in the New Testament as the Mystery of Golgotha, which again makes possible for him the free return toward the divine. "Through the Mystery of Golgotha a Cosmic Being has entered into the stream of the earthly life; a superterrestrial Being united Himself with the earth." Because of this fact there has since been bom in every soul, as it were, a latent power which can be brought into consciousness, into activity, by the human being himself. The law of karma, of recompense in destiny, requires of the human being himself to make recompense in the present or in a later life on earth. But we must distinguish between "the results of a sin for ourself and the results of a sin for the objective course of the world." The latter results have been taken by Christ upon Himself. "Thy sins are forgiven thee” signifies, not a karmic, but a cosmic fact.
“The Christ did not come into the world and pass through the Mystery of Golgotha in order that He might be something for us, each single person, in our egoism. It would be terrible to imagine that the Christ should be so conceived that the words of St. Paul 'Not I but Christ in me' could only foster a loftier egoism. Christ died for all of humanity, for earthly humanity. The Christ has become the Central Spirit of the earth who has to save for the earth all of the terrestrial spirituality which flows from the human being ...And everything human in us which is something more than what is included simply within our ego is ennobled, is made fruitful for all of humanity, when it is permeated by the Christ.”
We can only hint here at what Rudolf Steiner clarified fully in those lectures. In an epoch in which humanity had recorded such a tremendous load of debts in its account book, there was need for a clarification in such questions for those who wished to look into the meaning of events.
Dr. Steiner returned to Dornach to devote himself entirely to the work on the building. He held there on July 26 the last lecture before the outbreak of the World War. He spoke in the Schreinerei first about specific artistic tasks, especially on The Creative World of the Colors, and then immediately afterward on The Seriousness of the European Situation. The last words he uttered before the beginning of the World War were:
“Truly in days, in hours, which present to us such a serious countenance as these, we may—we not only may but we must—speak about the sacred affairs of our spiritual science. For we are justified in believing that, small as the sun of this spiritual science is at present, it will grow and evermore grow, and become ever more and more shining, a sun of peace, a sun of love and harmony, above human beings. Those are serious words but words which justify us in thinking about the intimate affairs of our spiritual science truly with our souls, truly with our hearts, precisely at a time when serious hours look in through our windows.”
Rudolf Steiner had decided some time earlier once more to attend the Bayreuth Opera Festival. Even though much in the manner of presentation there did not correspond with his view of the spiritual backgrounds behind the Wagner operas, there existed here, nevertheless, the seeds of a desire to strive for the preservation and renewal of the spiritual in history. He left at the end of July for Bayreuth. Frau Marie Steiner has written regarding this:
“Before the train had reached Bayreuth, in the Nuremberg station, it was filled with the military. A roaring noise rose out of the interior of the station, passed through the coaches of the train. The war had broken out. In Bayreuth the famous singer Kirchhoff, just then invited, appeared once more as Parsifal only to hurry away that same evening to his military post. In the meanwhile our hostess, Frau Helene Rochling, whose chauffeur had to present himself for service, and who wished still to say good-bye to her sons in Mannheim, was able to procure a large open automobile, which now rushed with terrifying speed through the grey night. At every bridge there resounded ‘Halt!’ from the guard there posted. ‘Halt!’ frequently resounded even on the road, and excited men sprang into the automobile, asking questions and scrutinizing our faces, often riding for a stretch of the way on the running-board— fortunately expressing satisfaction for the most part with Dr. Steiner's answers and his identification papers. We arrived in the morning at the Stuttgart railway station. An unbelievable human mass moved back and forth m the station; train after train rolled out; hour after hour one stood before the closed gates, wedged into the throng, almost collapsing from weariness. Vividly do I remember the eyes and expression of face of a very young member, almost a boy, whom we met there and who had to enlist immediately. He helped me to hold out standing. Nothing has ever been heard from him since; he belongs among those who have disappeared.
“‘What sort of people are you?’ demanded the bureaucrat who required legal papers of Frl. Waller and me—and as a matter of fact, because of the all-night trip in the roaring open automobile, we looked bewildered and blue with cold, in spite of the knitted jackets and caps bought in a rush in Bayreuth. But, before I could answer, Dr. Steiner showed his Austrian passport with ingratiating compliance, adding: 'We come from Bayreuth/ and the bureaucrat turned to the next person. Then suddenly appeared, like a rescuing helper behind the grates, with an arm stretched out to direct us, the tall, uniformed figure of our Stuttgart member Herr Kieser, a highly placed railway official who had to maintain order here, and who now protected us against being trampled under foot. He was still able to push us into a compartment on the train. When we finally reached the customs barrier at the Swiss border, Dr. Grosheintz, who had traveled with us, brought his 'SchwyzerDiitsch' impressively into action. The official reacted to the words 'We come from Bayreuth/ and said, pointing to our baggage: 'Ah, those are your costumes5 ・・・ without waiting for an answer. We were immediately shoved a little further by the mass crowding behind us.
“During this terrible grey night, the world had changed, and the expression of a nightmare which rested during those days upon Dr. Steiner's face, his pain on account of humanity, was almost unbearable. But his first, unchangeable decision was that the work must continue.”
In Rudolf SteineFs first address after the outbreak of the war, he gave unmistakable expression to his point of view in the questions of destiny confronting each person because of his belonging to one of the lands at war or not at war: "With respect to what each individual is called upon to do, the only thing to say is that every one must do his duty!"
During these days all of the work on the building, begun on a large scale, had to be newly arranged; for the great number of those sharing in the work who had been called for military duty were enlisted, regardless of whether their countries were at war or not. Even the Swiss army was mobilized for the protection of the borders. Only those remained available to continue the work who were either too young or too old for military service, or belonged to one of the neutral states, and the women, who continued their work as artists. To these Rudolf Steiner gave during the very first days a course in first aid, to train them for the care of sick or wounded, in order to render possible for them also the most comprehensive helpfulness in the tremendous events as soon as such a task might confront them. Thus within a few days an organization capable of working had been created out of the persons still available, equipped for any of the demands of destiny, still able to continue the spiritual and practical upbuilding work. Although greatly reduced in number, this still constituted an organism including representatives of seventeen different countries. With increased intensity, substituting as well as possible for the absent friends, these went to work with chisel and hammer at the columns, architraves, and capitals of the tremendous building, to preserve the spiritual continuity and to complete the artistic work.
During all these four years, the dull roar of cannon could be heard in the neighboring Alsace. Often did the walls tremble in the night.
In the first lecture after the outbreak of the war, Rudolf Steiner said to those who were gathered around him in the evening of August 13, 1914, sitting on piles of lumber in the Schreinerei:
“We who are assembled here at our building, which is to become a symbol of the Spirit, are no doubt living under the impression of those events which have broken over Europe, whereas we are still completely occupied in working on our building. Those who have listened sufficiently to much that has been said in the last years within our circle know, indeed, that we have always lived under the impression of what has now broken out so furiously, and that very much has been said with a reference to what must come upon the people of Europe.
“But, as we here have these painful events in immediate proximity, on the one hand, and are shielded, as it were, on the other hand from these events because of what is occurring in the country into which our good karma with our building has brought us,—as we stand in the immediate presence of these occurrences and yet protected against them, we should and we must really at this moment most earnestly confront two kinds of ideas in our minds: the thought with which we can be imbued in the depths of our hearts, that of the unshakable confidence in the power and effectiveness of the Spirit, in the victory of the Spirit and its life, and we should be poor members of our spiritual Movement if we did not cherish this thought in our souls, if we had not achieved this in the course of the years during which we have been inside this Movement, if we did not bear within us the firm assurance that： whatever may come in the way of serious testings, whatever may happen to us, we maintain within us the unshakable confidence in the power and the victoriousness of the spiritual life—if we do not feel: at last the Spirit will triumph!...
“My dear friends, in peaceful thoughts and in peaceful work our building towers aloft. In these days when everything seems to be shattered, let us strive to be one throng which cherishes and practices peace and harmony in every heart, so that every one entertains the best thoughts about every other one, without envy, without discord. This will be the only thing which will make it possible under the penetration of the painful events to carry forward what must be carried forward. For our work must and will be carried forward in spite of all uptowering hindrances. That which must occur will occur in the spirit of our Movement. It will occur, no matter what the hindrances may be that come upon us. But it can occur only if we endeavor to cherish love and peace in our hearts which ought to be begotten in our hearts by our holding fast to the Spirit. Without this the world outside also cannot progress further. But for the group constituted by us who are assembled here, there is a special obligation to cherish love, peace, and harmony in our hearts. For what ought to occur in connection with our building is interfered with if it does not occur in these feelings of love and peace. Only if thoughts of harmony and peace and love are built into the forms at which we work will they be that which they are intended to be for humanity when peace shall have returned over the world. To the extent that we can bring about the mood of harmony, to that extent will this cling to these forms and means of expression which our building possesses. If we really have an insight into this, it may then become possible, perhaps, that we may be permeated in our innermost being with the attitude of mind which is, of course, the ideal of our spiritual aspirations.
“These preliminary remarks I wished to make today, intended to justify the fact that in such a time as this we continue to work here in complete calm.”
There followed immediately after this lecture the first course in first aid, conducted by Dr. Steiner himself. The following evening he spoke on The Experience of Pain, and followed this immediately with the second lesson in the first aid course, which continued then every day.
The task to be accomplished here was not only a difficult practical and organizational undertaking, but also in the highest degree spiritual. Inevitably the tidal waves of the war hurled their hate-filled effects into this community of persons from many countries. Only so lofty a personality as Rudolf Steiner could again and again have lifted the souls of these persons into a spiritual sphere which rendered it possible, in spite of all external contrasts, to maintain the central common direction and to carry out the practical work together in an uninterrupted spiritual schooling. Whereas in the daytime the building and the workshop were filled with the sounds of machines and hammers, the lofty forms of the building were taking on their shapes without and within, painters and sculptors, glass-engravers, Eurythmists, and architects were actively engaged, the hand-workers still available were carpentering, trucks bringing building material were rolling up the hill and down again, and a complex web of work bore witness to the alert and intense will of all. During the evening, on the contrary, of this August, 1914, Rudolf Steiner spoke on The Portal of Initiation^ on the barriers set up by a blind humanity between the sensible and the supersensible world, the removal of which alone could save European culture from decay and chaos.
At the end of August, Dr. Steiner set out for Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart to continue his earlier lectures. He first delivered a cycle dealing with Reflections on the Times, to inspire a continuity in spiritual work, to render possible a deeper understanding of the events, and the inner power of conscious sharing in this experience. The first lecture, on September 1, dealt with The Destiny of Man and the Destiny of Peoples. He threw light upon the historical backgrounds of European development, setting forth the spiritual causative forces. At the beginning and the end of these lectures he gave to those present to carry with them words which became a source of spiritual strengthening in the endurance of events still to occur. For an inner union with those relatives and friends on the battlefields, and with their guarding Spiritual Beings, he gave with his first address the following words in the form of a prayer:
Spirits of your souls, active Guardians,
On your pinions may you bear
Prayerful love of our souls
To men of earth entrusted to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may stream with help
To the souls it seeks in love.
For those who had already in the course of these events passed through the portal of death:
Spirits of your souls, active Guardians,
On your pinions may you bear
Prayerful love of our souls
To men of the spheres entrusted to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may stream in help
To the souls it seeks in love.
More penetratingly than ever did he impress upon people the fact that thinking, as a spiritual activity, possesses a history-forming reality just as effective as external events:
“If that is to occur which must occur in the spiritual atmosphere, thoughts must enter into this which can come only from souls that have comprehended the spiritual world. As intensively and fervently, therefore, as one can entreat, your souls are entreated to form thoughts such as we endeavor to stimulate through reflections like those of the present day, and which can be sent into the spiritual world only by souls who have had the experience of spiritual science. During the war itself and still more after the war, will souls have need of such thoughts. For thoughts are realities!”
At the end of the second lecture he said:
“If it is really possible that it shall prove to be true in our difficult fateful time, that those whose souls have passed through spiritual science shall be able to send into the spiritual world thoughts fructified by the Spirit, then the right fruit will result from what is now going on in such terrible struggles and with such grievious sacrifices. What I wished to speak to your hearts today, therefore, may be permitted to come to a close in the expression of what I should so wish to see as the consciousness, the innermost consciousness, of those soul who have had the experience of spiritual science:
From the battlers' courage,
From the blood of slaughter,
From the sorrow of bereaved ones,
From the sacrifice of peoples,
There will grow the fruit of Spirit—
If the souls aware of Spirit
Turn their thoughts to Spirit Land.
Naturally, during those first weeks of the war many persons who were in a life-and-death battle, who had lost relatives in the war, or who were called upon to bear grave responsibilities, came to Rudolf Steiner for counsel, spiritual help for inner strengthening, or for the simple reason of needing to express their human feelings. Among these numerous persons belonged General Helmuth von Moltke, a friend of Dr. Steiner's for more than a decade, who as Chief of the General Staff at that time, had to bear one of the most tremendous outer and inner burdens. When, therefore, the General's wife communicated the request to Dr. Steiner that, when passing through Koblenz, he should permit the General to make a brief personal call, it was altogether natural that Dr. Steiner granted this request. Thus he met Helmuth von Moltke on August 27 for a brief conversation of a purely human and personal character. This must be mentioned here for the reason that, many years later, some of the most virulent opponents of Rudolf Steiner invented the fantastic assertion that, during this conversation, he brought influence to bear upon the military decisions of the Chief of the General Staff; they even brought this accusation into relation with the Batde of the Marne, which occurred in September. How ill-willed, void of any understanding of the reality, and utterly naive these imaginations were is obvious from the simple fact that the conversation occurred at a time when the events and the situations involved in the September Battle of the Marne were by no means actual and, indeed, were utterly unknown. Rudolf Steiner did not deal in the slightest degree with such matters. On the other hand, General von Moltke was a far too honorable and conscientious person to discuss with a personal friend questions with which this friend had nothing to do, utterly outside the sphere of his responsibility. It is characteristic of the ill-willed fantasy of irresponsible opponents to disregard all elements of time, place, and content in order to fabricate such nonsensical fantasies. This was an affront against General von Moltke as well as Rudolf Steiner. When this senseless legen later flared up again, Rudolf Steiner simply set forth the facts in concrete objectivity: "In the month of August I saw General von Moltke a single time, on August 27, in Koblenz. Our conversation had to do exclusively with purely human matters. The German army was still in the midst of a victorious advance. Moreover, there was no occasion for speaking about something which did not yet exist. The Battle of the Marne developed later. I never saw von Moltke again before that battle."
This is mentioned only for the purpose of showing at what level and with what unfair and untenable means the conflict was often conducted by individual opponents. The whole thing has no relation whatever with Rudolf Steiner, the direction and the sphere of his work. He conceived it to be his task to deal exclusively with the purely spiritual and moral support and strengthening of those persons who requested this of him, and very few persons during that period contributed so much that was positive and helpful and thankfully accepted.
This brief visit was followed by those lectures in Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart already mentioned, through which he gave to numerous persons spiritual orientation, inner strengthening and assurance, increasing their capacity for meeting the grievous tasks of the surrounding world. Rudolf Steiner characterized the lofty spiritual goals toward which one should strive in relation to the great figures in the history of the German spiritual life—such persons as Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, and others. We shall have to refer later again to his tremendous strengthening and upholding influence.
In the second half of September and in October, he remained at his working place in Dornach. On September 19 and 20 he spoke on Folk-Souls and the Idea of Nationality, raising these conceptions out of the level of abstraction and antagonism into the sphere of the real living Spirit. He showed the evolution and transformation of these ideas in the course of history. On September 20 he called into memory the laying of the foundation stone of the Dornach building one year earlier. He reminded us that in laying the foundation stone we
“could look from this hill toward the north, south, east, and west, and that we desired to be servants of that spiritual life which we are convinced is needed by humanity in the north, the south, the east, and the west if the evolution of humanity is to advance in the manner intended by the spiritual Hierarchies....
“This justifies us in feeling that karma has laid upon us the necessity of doing everything possible which can release this holy will of man out of the depth of human nature within which it is surrounded—often surrounded in such concealment—in order that, being freed, it may unite with the wills of the Hierarchies streaming together, who will then choose the earth as that place in the cosmos where in the future holy, spiritual sunlight of the Christ shall stream, if humanity so desires, if humanity will make itself mature for this....
“As I have already indicated the last time I spoke to you from this place, it would be an indication of weakness in those who stand within the spiritual life if we should not find ourselves competent to meet the existing status through the very fact that, at least in our innermost being, we have developed within us the belief in the one great victory which must come—however it may come—in the victory and the victoriousness of the spiritual life. We are permitted to celebrate the anniversary festival of the building which is to serve in a preeminent sense the purpose of bringing human souls over the entire world into harmony....
“I shall state again and again what lives within me as my belief, my conviction, my knowledge, as that which I myself have experienced and must experience anew every day and every hour. May our spiritual stream stand the test which is to be stood at the present time by acquiring possession of the right sensibility and objectivity in the face of occurrences that we experience today; through the acquiring of sensitivities which exclude injustice toward the individual peoples that face one another today in battle.”
In a lecture of October 19, 1914, Rudolf Steiner described the building arched over by two lofty intersecting domes as a symbol of the reciprocal understanding of the peoples. But he not only presented such a view as a postulate for the future, but at the same time, by dealing in detail with the historical metamorphoses, he presented the spiritual necessity of such a striving on the basis of the phenomena in the evolution of humanity. Limits of space prevent us from doing more here than to point to the fundamental objectives and directions of such lectures, and to the unshakable consequentialness with which Rudolf Steiner labored for their realization.
During October 3-6 he gave in Dornach a lecture cycle on Occult Reading and Occult Hearing. This was originally to have been the subject matter for a cycle of fourteen lectures to be given during the rehearsal of a new Mystery Drama planned to carry into further steps what had already appeared in the four Mystery Dramas. This fifth play was to have been written during rehearsals in Munich, but the war put an end to all possible rehearsals. It was upon earnest request that he gave in shortened forms what was to have extended to fourteen lectures.
To understand the profounder aspect of such a lecture cycle, this must at times be considered in connection with lectures preceding or following. For Rudolf Steiner never wished only to increase the quantity of knowledge. His lectures always had the purpose of teaching, of bringing people on the basis of enhanced insight to the actions thus indicated. In this case he gave a picture of what may result from research in the hitherto “occult,” the supersensible, when this research is directed toward the inner, spiritually guided dynamics within the harmony of the macrocosmic worlds. Since man, as microcosm, has been born out of this world, and is therefore adjusted in his own dynamics to it, he must give attention to its spiritual laws if, for example, he wishes to create a true art of movement for humanity. This art, born out of a listening to the supersensible dynamics, had been given by Rudolf Steiner in Eurythmy. This art of movement is intended to lead the human being not only to the physiologically right movements—as in gymnastics—or the merely aesthetically beautiful—as in the artistic "dance," just then developing— but to a form of movement permeated with spiritual law. Goethe uttered the statement that art, the beautiful, is “a manifestation of secret laws of nature which without this manifestation would have remained forever hidden." Just as the supersensible etheric forces in the organism of the universe set in motion the cosmic bodies according to the laws of cosmic dynamics, so must Eurythmy bring the human body to the point of rendering visible the laws which are implanted in the supersensible etheric force-organism of man.
In a lecture following this cycle, Dr. Steiner called attention to the fact that Eurythmy has an artistic, a pedagogical, and a hygienic mission. We have already spoken about the first two of these. But bodily health, so much discussed at this time, can also be benefited by Eurythmy. Dr. Steiner frequently emphasized the folly of adapting in our own period something belonging to an earlier period—for instance, the Olympic Games, altogether right for the Greek period but not suited to the present time. He said:
“Simply to take over that which was Greek is the most ridiculous thing that can be done; it is a sin against the belief in human evolution. If we are to find in our day what the Greeks had to seek for in their way in the Olympic Games, then Eurythmy must simply find its way into the life of humanity; the health of the human body must be sought from the soul through the fact that we simply do not allow the physical body to atrophy, but cause it to make healthful movements. This is the hygienic side."
Our age requires again and again a world picture as a totality. Anthroposophy can provide such a totality. Out of this totality comes the impulse which produces Eurythmy. Rudolf Steiner said about this in that lecture:
“that it seems to me a matter of importance that all our endeavors, and everything that is connected with our endeavors, should be taken as a totality, as something unitary; and that it seems to me especially important that this totality which ought to be incorporated into the evolution of humanity as an impulse leading to a new spiritual culture should really unite itself with the longings, the hopes, the expectations of the spiritual culture of the immediate past.”
He described how in Goetheanism, especially in such personalities as Herman Grimm of the past century, there was a longing to give form to the whole of life in all its areas of expression as coming "out of one mold."
“And it will be a fulfillment of this expectation if, let me say, the offshoots of our spiritual Movement are all derived from the totality of our spiritual life. So it is with our Eurythmy, which must not be confused with any of the bodily or gymnastic or other endeavors which have arisen out of the materialistic life of the times. On the contrary, Eurythmy is derived from our spiritual striving with the purpose that human beings in this sphere also may be able to know out of their direct experiences how the Spirit works."
Eurythmy can be practiced by any one; but to understand its origin and meaning one must know the spiritual in man. For this reason, in later developments of this art, Rudolf Steiner constantly called attention again to the fact that, if many persons should become interested in offshoots of Anthroposophy in artistic or pedagogical or scientific or social form without an interest in Anthroposophy itself, the true nature and value of these things would be lost. It is impossible rightly, conscientiously, and truly to separate the art, the pedagogy, the agriculture, the medicine from the totality of the Anthroposophical connection.
For this reason the lectures between October 7 and 25 in Dornach emphasized a very definite element which influenced inspiringly both the spiritual and practical tasks which were here to be achieved day by day, giving to the artists the certitude that they were helping in a unique work related to the history of humanity. Rudolf Steiner began the lecture of October 18 with the following words:
“The Dornach building ought to be sensed in the universality of its style. For this, however, it is necessary that our friends undertake to transform into their own feeling everything that we in the course of the years have brought to bear upon our souls out of spiritual-scientific research. In this way we shall come to comprehend the forms of our building through our own inner feeling as universal, and therefore as writing symbols with many meanings."
In the following lectures he disclosed how the forms of the building, especially the columns, architraves, capitals, were the expression of a living metamorphosis of artistic forms in the sense of Goethe, but also that they brought into one5s experience the primal law of metamorphosis which holds sway in history. He declared that the organic transition from the capital of one column to that of another comes about according to the same laws of formation as the transition from one epoch in culture to another. For art, as the manifestation of secret laws of nature, unveils in this rhythm of forms the same laws that are working formatively in the transformations of history. We must allow space for only a few significant expressions out of these lectures:
October 18: “The forms of the capitals in relation with Post-Atlantean culture periods. The Sun State, by Campanella. Sophocles—Corneille. Voltaire, Moliere. The Ego-Culture and Its Relation with the Culture of the Intellectual Soul. Dürer. Leibniz. The 'Spectator Standpoint9 of the Culture of the Consciousness Soul. Shakespeare.
October 19: “Germanism and Hellenism. Bergson-Preuss. West and East (Solovieff); The Building: a nexus for the mutual understanding of the European Peoples.
October 24: “Regarding the Dome Forms. The Spheres of Thinking, Feeling, and Will in the Architectonics of the Building. The Painting in the Large Dome. The Dornach Building as Spiritual Catacombs in the Present.
October 25: “Regarding Building. Greek Culture. The Voyages of Discovery towards the Spiritual America. A New Language in Spiritual Science."
At the end of October he set out again on tours, to be helpfully at hand with the friends in Berlin and Hamburg in their difficult labor. He took up again the lectures in the Berlin Architektenhaus with a lecture on October 29 on Goethe's Type of Mind in Our Fateful Days and in German Culture. It was the first public lectures since the outbreak of the war, and was opened with these words:
“Year after year in recent times, I have been able to speak from this place about problems of spiritual science. It seems to me right this winter also to continue the lectures which have always begun about this time. For why should there not be a craving precisely in this fateful time of ours to enter more deeply into problems of the spiritual life! But it seems to me most of all important to take as our point of departure in the two introductory lectures, to be given today and a week hence, that which all of us have so deeply at heart. For it seems to me impossible to speak about anything whatever in our times without bearing in mind that what is spoken must be able to stand the test in the presence of those who, outside in the west and in the east, are involved with their heart's blood for that which the times demand...
“If, however, I begin in a special way with the genius who is so intimately bound up with all that he has bestowed upon his people and humanity, who is so intimately bound up with the development of Middle Europe, if I begin with Goethe, I do this primarily for the reason that I believe that, in the course of the years, however strange this may seem, I have not spoken a single word from this place which could not stand the test of Goethe's judgment— although what spiritual science has to say cannot always be proven word by word with what we know from Goethe. His spirit holds sway over us; and what can be justified before the spirit of Goethe, it is this that I consider as spiritual science in our present time ...
“Goethe became for me myself a kind of guiding genius. He appeared to me more and more as that genius of Middle Europe who represents not only what can be learned out of Goethe's 'Works； what we can learn to know out of the excessively abundant communications that we have regarding the life of Goethe. Indeed, Goethe did not seem to me exhausted even in what he himself has placed before us like a living being, his Faust. On the contrary, the impression that Goethe has made upon me is as if everything we have from him in his own communications, in his works, in what we can know through what is still continuing to work livingly in the culture of Middle Europe and even in the culture of the whole of humanity,—as if in all of this something more were present, far more comprehensive, far more universal: something that comes to meet us as if out of an enchanted mountain in intimate moments in life when we. are truly occupied with Goethe. Like the ancient Barbarossa himself in a renewed form, united with the genius of Middle Europe,—thus does a being come to meet us in Goethe intimately united with that which, originating in the German spirit, is to be incorporated in human culture.”
He reminded those who were struggling with the true tasks of the German, Middle European nature of sayings of the great Goethe specialists, Herman Grimm and Karl Julius Schröer, who was Rudolf Steiner's teacher in Vienna. In their spirit he said:
“The German knows that what hovers before him as ‘a German’ is an ideal connected with the profoundest sources of the spiritual; that one becomes a German and continues to become—and never is. Thus the German aspiration itself is always ascending into the spiritual worlds—just as the striving of Faust finally rises within his soul from stage to stage into worlds which Goethe has so wonderfully presented...
“Unforgettable for me are words spoken by Karl Julius Schröer in Vienna about Goethe which fell like a kindling spark into my soul. He began a lecture by explaining the essential nature of the German spirit; how German art, German fantasy—Goethean art, Goethean fantasy—are based upon the profoundest truth of existence. Illuminating like a flash of lightning an expansive realm, one might say, the Goetheanist Karl Julius Schröer said: 'The German has an aesthetic conscience. Because of the Faustian nature of the German, many questions become for him questions of conscience.' And thus even the greatest events confronting him—those events regarding which Goethe says that they are related with the 'gigantic fate which lifts the human being aloft even when it crushes him,—become for him questions of his conscience. It was the aspiration of Herman Grimm to take this conscience into his soul. For that reason he said many things that one would like to say again in these days during which, in responses to voices calling to us from all the world, in response to everything which is called out to us from everywhere, we desire most of all to question nothing else than our conscience: whether we are able to stand the test before this.”
Rudolf Steiner knew that truly aspiring human beings cannot be aided with cheap optimism, but only with the clear indication of lofty goals not yet achieved. Thus he measured every wielder of power and every leader on earth with the question: "Has he been touched by the spirit of Goethe?" He tested the spirits in the East, the Middle, and the West in this way and denied the right of any one of them to condemn the others if he could not stand the test of this lofty spiritual law. For this reason, he addressed himself sharply and unmistakably to those who attacked with senseless catchwords the German people, who had borne within themselves the power to bring into existence the spirit of Goethe and of German idealism. For this reason the next lecture in this series bore the defensive tide The "Barbarous" People of Schiller and Fichte. The strength of these great figures, pointing clearly to the right goal, he set before the conscience of human beings and directed their look to the demands made upon them through destiny by the Spiritual Powers. To the powers of the surrounding world, bent upon destruction, Rudolf Steiner called out words more laden with responsibility than anything hitherto spoken at that time out of the depths of spiritual knowledge:
The German spirit has not finished
What it is to achieve in world-becoming.
It lives in future sorrows full of hope,
It hopes for future action filled with life.
In deepest being feels it mightily
The hidden that must ripen still and work.
How dare, in hostile power void of knowledge,
The wish arise to bring about its end
So long as still is manifest the life
Which keeps it in its being's depth creative?
These words constituted a challenge for all to lofty duty and grave responsibility.
At the same time he continued his lectures for members on Reflections on the Times. Beginning with those words already quoted as prayers for the inner union with the living and those who had fallen in death, he gave to the living a world-embracing view of the true and the false, the good and the bad words and deeds of the spiritual, political, and economic leaders in the East, the Middle and the West. He explained the origin of these grievous events in the tumultuous* spiritual atmosphere, in the weakness of human beings, in fear, in self-indulgence, in spiritual blindness and false direction of will; and indicated that the point upon which to concentrate attention was the nature of the Faustian human being.
On November 9 Dr. Steiner returned to Dornach. The architects and artists were impatiently awaiting him, needing advice and instructions for carrying forward the technical constructional and sculptural work. He went immediately from one scaffold to another, from the Schreinerei into the Glass Studio, from the model room to the workshops of painters and sculptors, here and there correcting or supplementing, himself sharing in the carving or giving a new motif. Rudolf Steiner wore at that time a black frock coat characteristic for his figure and looking as if it had grown to him, usually high black boots; and just as his hands were a model in certainty and precision with hammer and chisel, so was he, although in his fifty-third year, an astonishing example for younger persons in the agility with which he moved about on the scaffolds, climbed around on the hill between piles of timber and heavy beams. Watching him in such activity, one felt that every movement of a hand, every placing of a foot, was permeated with consciousness; that this consciousness was all-pervading, both spiritual and physical. The late Count Lerchenfeld, who had acquired as a farmer earlier, and in hunting in the mountains and forests, a well trained eye for steady walking, said to me once as we saw Rudolf Steiner moving about on the Dornach hill that he had never seen such a certain tread in the country. He set his foot down like a trained mountain-climber. In every word, every movement of the hand, every step there was with him a completely controlled, alert consciousness in spirit, soul, and body. It was the extraordinary harmony of the entire being that an observer constantly admired.
In the evenings between November 9 and 15, he spoke in the Schreinerei on Northern Mythology and folklore, particularly about the epic Kalevala: The Connection Between the Human Being and the Elemental World. Finland and the Kalevala. He described the phenomenon of the attitude of soul of the northern peoples as being characterized by the differentiation between the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul. He contrasted this differentiation of the northern peoples with the appearance of a "unitary soul” in the south. He described these polarities in the manner of evolution of the Slavic and Finnish peoples, on the one hand, with the historical trend as manifest, for instance, in Byzantium. He then set forth the metamorphoses which had come about later in the configuration of Europe, and constantly brought this historical process of development into a living relation with the artistic realm of forms in the building. At the same time, he formulated the rights and the duties which grow for the future out of such all-sided observation of phenomena.
In additional lectures between November 20 and 22, he spoke on The World as the Result of the Balancing of Forces. He showed, for example, that revolutionary currents in history easily fall a prey to Lucifer; conservative trends rather to Ahriman; and pointed out that the spiritually schooled consciousness must achieve for itself the middle path, the balance.
Once having stabilized the work in Dornach for a period, he went again on lecture tours. Between November 26 and December 6 he was in Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart, continuing public lectures begun in September on The Human Soul in Life and Death; and on The Souls of the Peoples. He spoke also for members on Reflections on the Times.
On December 12 he was again in Dornach, where the work already in progress was carried forward energetically until the middle of January. The lectures between December 12 and 20 had to do especially with the cosmic writing in the signs of the zodiac; the planets and their movements; and the reflection of these things in the bodily members and the forces of language in the human being. He made clear how the body of formative forces, the astral and etheric organization of the human being, manifests a connection with the cosmic forces; and how these primordial forces were and are at work in the formation of the vowels and the consonants of human speech.
On December 24, he gave a special Christmas festival for children. In his Christmas lecture for adults, he set forth the phases in historical evolution; the history of the Mithras cult; the Manicheans; the historical figure of Faust of Milewe and of the Faust of the Middle Ages.
The lecture of December 27 dealt with the theme The Cosmic Christ and the Birth of a Knowledge of Christ in Us. There followed at the end of the year three lectures on: Transformation Impulses for the Artistic Evolution of Humanity, in which he pointed out the special relations of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, and Eurythmy with the members of man's being.
On December 31 occurred the General Meeting of the Johannes Building Association, the organization which was responsible for the external arranging and carrying out of all these manifold artistic tasks.
On New Year's Eve, Frau Marie Steiner recited the northern narrative poem of Olaf Åsteson. According to the ancient tradition, Olaf Åsteson had experienced wonderful inner visions during the thirteen Holy Days and Nights of the Christmas season, and had then made them known to the human beings about him as a warning. Rudolf Steiner connected the New Year's Eve lecture with the closing words of the poem: uAwake now, Olaf Åsteson!" He spoke of the forms of knowledge to which our own contemporary epoch in the evolution of the world must awaken if it wishes to bring light into the darkness of the times. His final words in this fateful year of 1914 were:
“Very long has the human soul been sleeping also, but the Cosmic Spirits will approach this human soul and call to it: ‘Awake now, O Olaf Åsteson!’
“We must prepare ourselves in the right way so that we shall not be faced with the call: 'Awake now, O Olaf Åsteson!' and have no ears with which to hear. It is for this reason that we are dealing with spiritual science, in order that we may have ears when the call for spiritual awakening shall sound forth in the evolution of humanity.
“It is good for the human being to remind himself frequently that he is a microcosm, and that he can have many experiences if he merges in the macrocosm. As we have already seen, the time, the time of the year, is favorable in which we are now living. Let us endeavor once to permit this New Yearns night to be a symbol for that spiritual New Year's night which is necessary for the evolution of earthly humanity, in which there shall come closer the new epoch in time, in which there shall grow and evermore grow the light, the light of soul, the beholding, the knowledge of that which lives in the spiritual and may stream out of the spiritual into the human soul and flow through it. Let us bring the microcosm of our experience in this New Yearns night into connection with the macrocosm of the life of humanity over the entire Earth! Then shall we be able to experience what our feelings ought to be as we are able to have some inkling of the dawn of the new, great cosmic day in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Period, before whose dawn we stand, whose midnight we desire to experience worthily.”
Thus did he admonish human beings on New Year's Eve at the end of the year 1914, which had introduced one of the most tragic epochs of the twentieth century. If only there were a number of human beings whose consciousness was not submerged in the dark stream of events, who strove to keep their head, their wakeful vision, above the surface of the dark waters of the times, it would be possible then to steer toward the lighthouse of the future cosmic New Year.