The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
1920
The year 1920 bears a special imprint in the life and work of Rudolf Steiner through the inauguration of a new institution of advanced education, to develop into the University of Spiritual Science, at the Goetheanum. Ever since his entrance into the Technological College in Vienna in 1879, he had struggled with the problem of the splintering of the ancient university {Universitas} into alienated, specialized divisions which rendered impossible the development of a totality in the world-picture of the human being. Since the turn of the century, he had devoted two decades to the endeavor to render available for humanity once more the consciousness of the reality of the Spirit, the supersensible in nature, which had been lost from the science of the preceding century. To achieve this, three stages were necessary: first, man must once more be made the central subject of reflection, as a creation out of spirit and nature, as the highest organic form on earth in which both worlds meet in consciousness. This stage he had achieved; the way of knowledge which leads the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe, Anthroposophy, was there. The totality thus recovered, the craving of the Goetheanists leads in turn to a comprehensive survey, a new synthesis of all sciences. This substance of knowledge was not the result of theories and hypotheses, but had been achieved out of a concrete phenomenology both of the sensible and of the supersensible in nature and in man. Cognition achieved through beholding both kinds of phenomena and the testing and fostering in practice of the natural and also of the spiritual processes of evolution had been systematically carried out. Art, in Goethe's sense as “a manifestation of secret laws of nature,” had made its creative contribution. The longing which is manifest in the religious life to find guidance from the world of Divine Beings and Creative Powers had been fulfilled through the opening of doors, through achieving again for human consciousness a union with the spiritual world.
Science, art, and religion, separated during long epochs, once more moved along the same path, furthering together the spiritual evolution of man. Spirit knowledge as the basis for action had been given to humanity. The present and future generations must now be trained systematically to move along this path, conscious of their goal. The advanced courses of the coming year, the beginning of a new Universitas were to constitute the first steps in this education of man. These initial advanced courses took place at Michaelmas of 1920.
But many preliminary steps had to be taken before the achievement of this Michaelmas event. At the beginning of the year, Dr. Steiner continued in Stuttgart the two series of lectures begun there the previous year, on natural science and on speech. Returning to Dornach on January 4, he gave three lectures in Basel under the titles Paths and Goals of Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy), rendering clear to the public what was being striven for. His lectures in Dornach then continued those of the preceding year dealing with the history of culture, bringing this up to the present time. Programs of Eurythmy and the Paradise plays were contributions from art, and on January 23 Dr. Steiner gave the first of a series of lectures illustrated with lantern slides, in which he made visible the artistic intentions in the painting and sculptural work in the interior of the Goetheanum building: the application of the principle of metamorphosis in the forms represented in the columns, architraves, capitals, and domes of the building.
A lecture of February 12 in St. Gallen dealt with the Educational Forces in the Community of Peoples. Lectures which followed in Dornach before already intensively trained collaborators dealt once more with the perils which grow out of the tendency to expansion of Powers hostile to the Spirit: for example, out of the historical development of imperialism. He brought into the open from the backgrounds of history the three phases of evolution in imperialism, as these had developed one after another during the preceding thousand years, and emphasized intensely the perils and also the obligations which have come about at present for the representatives of these currents.
When, a year after the close of the war, one was free to travel to various countries, a number of English friends came to Dornach at the end of 1919 to attend the lectures. Schooled in the new way of thinking during the preceding decades, they realized that the prevaHing methods adopted for the solution of the real problems of humanity would not succeed. Among the pioneers of the spirit in many lands, there was a serious and anxious effort to arrive at true solutions of the social problem. Movements had arisen in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Holland looking toward the development of the threefold organization of the social order. At the end of the year 1919, many persons having this desire came to Rudolf Steiner for counsel in their most difficult effort.
It was always his conviction that such new ideas, embracing the entire social life, can be introduced practically into the united life of individual persons and of peoples only if an understanding for these ideas might become world-wide. Thus, in addition to the members working in Dornach, who belonged to something like seventeen countries, and in addition to visitors from the states of Middle Europe, there had now met together visitors from Holland and England interested in obtaining orientation in regard to this new idea. He said, therefore, to the visitors from England:
“I hope that our English friends, who will soon return to their own country, may be able to carry back with them as much as possible. For that reason I shall so develop these lectures that one or the other may serve as a support for the effectiveness which is necessary."
He then gave them a picture of the historical evolution which illuminated the backgrounds and tendencies, the threatening perils, the wholesome solutions suited to the spirit.
In a different situation Rudolf Steiner had cast light upon the spiritual history of the past in a special lecture delivered on February 1 dealing with the related sources of inspiration of four great personalities of the past: Shakespeare, Bacon, Jacobus Baldus, and Jacob Boehme. By way of introduction he said:
“It is commonly supposed that a historical personality, whether in the field of art, statesmanship, religion, or some other field, produces an effect only through what proceeds from the person in consciously working impulses —that such a personality is effective only in this way. One then considers the questions involved in this matter in such a way that one asks: What has such a personality done? What has he spoken? How has this spread among people?—and similar questions.
“Such is not the state of the case precisely in reference to the most significant instances in the development of history; but what is effective in the evolution of humanity depends upon the spiritual forces at work behind the course of historical development, and personalities are in a certain sense only the ways and means through which certain spiritual forces and Powers produce their effects from the spiritual world in our historical development on earth.
“This does not contradict the fact that very much also which comes from the individuality, from the subjective being of guiding personalities, is effective in broader circles. This is, of course, to be taken for granted. But one acquires a correct view of history only when it becomes clear that, when a so-called great person says one thing or another in one place or another, the guiding spiritual Powers in human evolution are speaking through him, and he is in a certain sense only the symptom that certain forces are there at work He is the doorway through which these forces utter themselves into the course of historical development.”
Such influences can work effectively into an epoch of time—or into one or another representative personality—out of either evil or good sources, retarding or advancing, blocking or fostering the spiritual life of man. As Rudolf Steiner now pointed out, there are epochs in history when evolution seems to make a forward spring. Such an impulse for evolution was received by humanity out of the spiritual worlds at the turning point between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and this fact has its representatives in that age. For that reason four persons received their inspiration for this influence from the same sources:
“Out of the same sources from which the inspiration of Bacon and Shakespeare arose, out of exactly the same sources, even from the same initiate personality, came for Middle Europe the spiritual currents proceeding from Jacob Boehme and the southern German Jakob Baldus. To a far greater extent than is generally supposed, there exists in the spiritual life of Middle Europe that which originated with Jacob Boehme—once more such a personality as only formulates that which is living and working in more expansive circles even if this does not manifest itself in such words as those of Jacob Boehme.
“One must only understand clearly that a considerable part of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis is derived from Jacob Boehme; that a considerable part of everything that is to be found in Goethe's entire conception of organics came to Goethe from Jacob Boehme in a certain roundabout way, which can be easily established. Even though Jakob Baldus lived in the secluded town of Ingolstadt, he is a personality who was effective, not indeed among many of his contemporaries, but one who brought to expression in a characteristic way what existed in the feelings of widespread circles in this dawn of a new era. “But let us bear in mind the remarkable depth that lies in such things: that the inspiration for Baconism, Shakespeareanism, Boehmeism, Baldusism, is derived from the same source.”
He then pointed out how these influences, deriving from the same source of inspiration, flow through different channels and undergo transformations:
“These questions seem to belong to regions exceedingly distant from one's every-day life, but such is not the case. The questions upon which I have touched are such as lie at the basis of the most important world-shaping question, and no one will be able to answer the great question: What is the situation in the East and the West, what in Europe, Asia and America? who does not go back all the way to these things. For what we are experiencing today is, in the last analysis, the consequence of what has taken place in the souls of human beings through hundreds of years.
"It is only because of the lassitude of people that they are unwilling to go back to these things. It is for this reason that one experiences what I might call the terrible pain of heart which overcomes us when people are heard talking today about the great misfortune of the time, about other formations for the present political or economic life, about matters pertaining to Asia Europe, and America, as blind people talk about colors, for the reason that they are not willing to enter into that which is the true inner activating element in all of these great questions.”
In another lecture he showed how Goethe, instead of confining himself within the one sphere of his local environment, laid himself open to all currents of once existing sources of inspiration. Thus are the great individuak exponents of similar sources of inspiration, their differentiation and re-blending, creators of a new synthesis of all these spiritual and earthly forces.
After thus rendering clear the total spiritual situation, as was so necessary for that period of bitter antagonisms among the peoples of the world, and which rendered possible a new vision of the organism of humanity as a whole, Rudolf Steiner went again at the beginning of March to Stuttgart to aid in the further progress of the scientific, pedagogical, and social endeavors of his coDaborators.
He began this activity with the second Natural-Scientific Course, of March 1-14, which amplified the exposition of the nature of light and color, and was then devoted to the action of warmth in many relations. The manifold new aspects of the subject presented placed the element of warmth within the great evolution of the cosmos and then traced it even into the phenomena of life, the concrete processes in the transformation of the states of aggregation in matter, and even into mathematical formulae. The degree of detailed exposition included may be sensed from the following single brief example:
“You see, we shall have to center the work of our Research Institute upon such things. As additions to our ordinary thermometers and hygrometers, we shall have to invent instruments by means of which we shall be able to show that certain processes which occur in the terrestrial—especially in the fluid and gaseous terrestrial—occur otherwise by night than by day."
Indications thus given were then worked out during the following years in the Research Institute and Laboratory at the Goetheanum, and traced into numerous phenomena of the rhythms of the day and the year, phenomena of life, the most subtle influences in processes of crystallization, and they became useful in the later inaugurated agricultural work. They have undergone an intensive development to which we shall later refer.
During that period of the year 1920, certain persons introduced to Dr. Steiner plans looking toward the application of the new social ideas in the economic life, which then led to the founding of the enterprise "Der Kommende Tag," in Stuttgart. The idea included the blending of economic and cultural undertakings, and this gradually led to the integration within the one project of various industrial and agricultural enterprises, an undertaking for the production of medical remedies and cosmetic products, then a clinic, a publishing concern, a laboratory, and other things. But such an undertaking could have been developed only within a favorably organized environment; hence it had to be dissolved some years later. There will be occasion to mention this again in. connection with the year 1923.
During 1920, along with these questions and desires arising among business men, numerous tasks arose for Dr. Steiner out of the prosperous development of the Waldorf School and its steadily growing body of teachers and pupils. He conducted at that time conferences of teachers in which were discussed their experiences in their actual work, and during which he would at times offer new directive principles for the development of the general curriculum of the school and of individual departments, for the treatment of difficult children, the selection of the material for instruction, of books, of instruments, the use of recess periods. But there were ako evenings for parents, in which, through intensely interested discussion of teachers and parents with Dr, Steiner, the effort was made to develop an organic totality out of all the elements participating in the process of education. There was a rapid development of the "The Waldorf School Association/5 consisting of parents and other friends interested in the new pedagogy, which led to active help for the school from widespread circles. The result was, not only increased means for conducting the school and providing scholarships for many children needing them, but also aid in expanding the area of understanding for the general social values of this pedagogy.
After these weeks of work in Stuttgart, Dr. Steiner returned for several months to Dornach. During March 17-19 he gave in Zurich two lectures entitled Spirit and the Unspiritual in the Present and for the Future and The Spiritual Forces in the Art of Education and in the Life of the People. Before a statistical and economic society of the Canton of Zurich he spoke on The Threefold Social Order and the Contemporary World Situation.
A new phase in the comprehensive development was instituted on March 21 at Dornach with the first of a series of twenty lectures constituting the first Course for Physicians and Medical Students. Here he gave the foundation for the medical movement on a spiritual-scientific basis which later developed through the special training of physicians, the establishment of clinics and an extensive medical practice. This course was later published under the title Spiritual Science and Medicine.
As early as the very beginning of the century Rudolf Steiner had already expressed himself in regard to medical questions in an article we have already mentioned under the title Goethe and Medicine. In 1906 questions addressed to him by Dr. Ludwig Noll, of Kassel, created a favorable opportunity for dealing with special questions in the field of medicine on the basis of spiritual-scientific knowledge, and Dr. Steiner did this as we have already indicated—at first in a lecture of October 22, 1906, on Questions of Nutrition and Curative Methods. Since that year, an increasing number of physicians had interested themselves in these fundamental ideas and directives, so that in 1920, just two seven-year periods after the first initiative, it was possible to have the first course of lectures on medicine in Dornach. There is a definite significance in the fact that this development has occurred out of two seven-year periods following the initial impulse.
In these twenty lectures on medicine, an entirely new insight was provided into the nature and the organism of the human being requiring curative treatment, a great number of perspectives in the realms of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and therapy, the science of remedies, comprehensive material for elaboration in the fields of diagnosis and practice and especially for the doctor's own self-schooling in cognition. Rudolf Steiner always held firmly to the principle that his only task was to aid the physician in the achievement of knowledge and of capacity when he was requested to do this, but that actual practice of medicine must be left entirely to the doctor himself. At the end of this course he said once more:
“This is, in a sense, the one and only way chosen by me through which spiritual science may contribute to the art of healing, for you will always in future, for reasons which you will clearly understand, find that the same course is followed which I have always followed: it is my desire that whatever comes about by way of reciprocal action between spiritual science and the healing work of physicians shall always occur only between me and the physician. I desire, of course, never to intervene in any way whatever in the actual practice of healing, as I have never done this. This is to be left to the practicing physicians. But whatever may come about through spiritual-scientific stimulation is to occur through a reciprocal activity between spiritual science and the physician himself.”
Simultaneously with the course given to physicians, there occurred between March 24 and April 7, a series of public lectures on Anthroposophy and the Contemporary Sciences, during which lecturers belonging to various special fields participated.
At Easter, April 2 and 3, he spoke on Easter, the Festival of Warning. He dealt with the figure and the life of Paul, the event of Damascus, the new spiritual knowledge, the transformation of the blood and the rebirth in Christ. During April 4 and 5 he gave to visitors two lectures with lantern slides as an introduction into the plastic forms in the Goetheanum building, the colored glass windows, the paintings in the domes.
A series of sixteen which followed between April 9 and May 16 on Cosmological Reflections led further into the area of natural-scientific research and dealt in detail with the nature of the dimensions, the relations of man, animal, and plant with the directions in space, the cosmic tendencies in movement and rhythm and their reflections in the processes of organic life, the metamorphoses of the inner organs of the human being in successive lives on earth, the connection of the forces of conception and volition with the head system and the metabolic system, etc. He was thus giving a systematic survey of the interaction of cosmic and terrestrial organisms.
While the scientific collaborators were receiving in this way a rich fund of material to work with and the artists were receiving every day suggestions in connection with the carving and painting in the building, Rudolf Steiner gave in addition between April 20 and May 11 a course of fourteen lectures in Basel for teachers under the title The Renewal of the Pedagogical and Didactic Art through Spiritual Science. Out of the manifoldness of his activity, we might mention a lecture of April 18 for the persons then sharing in Basel in a course for citizens of the state, and a lecture on May 21 in Aargau for "The Association of Former Pupils in the Schools of the Canton Aargau," on Teaching and the Social Community. On April 26 he gave for the Swiss Trade Exhibition in Basel a similar special public lecture on The Present Economic Crisis and the Restoration of a Sound Economic Life through the Threefolding of the Social Organism. After this lecture, a special Eurythmy program was given for the visitors attending it. Another program was given on May 29 for the Association of Teachers of the Evangelical Schook of Basel and Baselland. Relations with the major questions of European life were again brought into the foreground by public lectures in Luzern and Basel on The Spiritual and Moral Forces of the Present-day Peoples in the Light of Spiritual Science and similar themes.
During the period of Whitsuntide of this year, Dr. Steiner devoted a series of lectures dealing with world history to the subject The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. The series dealt with the relation between Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, the spiritual nature of Thomism, the significance of Thomism for the present time. Limited space permits reference here to only one of the many essential aspects with which these lectures dealt. At present those who are the representatives of Thomism have no comprehension of the degree to which Rudolf Steiner had acquainted himself with this great personality in spiritual history. After he had clarified in detail the great achievement of high scholasticism, he pointed out how the further development of thinking no longer gave central consideration to the riddles of the spiritual world, as the scholastics had done, but concerned itself solely with the riddles of the material world, in natural science and philosophy, until such thinkers as Hume, Kant, and others adopted the theory of the limits of cognition as rendering it impossible to investigate the essential and spiritual, and limiting human cognitional capacity to the corporeal-earthly existence of man and nature. The endeavor of Goetheanism in the nineteenth century again to unite nature and the world of spirit in research was not taken up by the contemporary world. The two streams continued to remain separated, until spiritual science in the twentieth century again brings them into a synthesis. We quote here a brief illustrative fragment of the lectures:
“Because the age of natural science arose, and scholasticism did not change its attitude toward natural science, there arose Kantianism, which really came about out of subjectivity...
“In the Goethean world view there really exists the beginning of that into which Thomism must change, but only with a change of attitude toward natural science, in that Thomism must be lifted to the stage of evolution of the present time, must become a real current in evolution...
“The complete fulfillment of this Goetheanism will not come about until one possesses a spiritual science which brings forward out of its own forces an explanation of the facts of natural science. ... As the Thomistic philosophy, which had in the thirteenth century an abstract form, kindles itself in connection with Goetheanism, it lives in our age as spiritual science."
At the conclusion of these lectures on Thomism, Dr. Steiner said by way of summary:
“These reflections have been presented in order to show that in the high scholasticism of the thirteenth century in the Occident there was manifest a culmination of the spiritual evolution of Europe, and that the present time has every possible reason to inquire into the special nature of this culmination of European spiritual development; that we can learn a tremendous amount through such an inquiry; that we can learn most of all with respect to what we must call the deepening of our life of ideas in order that we may rise above the level of all nominalism and may recover the Christianizing of ideas, that Christianity which penetrates into the spiritual existence which must be the source of the human being himself, since, when he is entirely honest and upright in relation to himself, he cannot be satisfied with anything else than the consciousness of his spiritual origin.”
At the beginning of these biographical reflections, we emphasized the fact that a spiritual leader, unlike a revolutionary, never overthrows, but always connects the new which he is giving with the evolution and the spiritual deeds of the past. It is possible, therefore, to understand the work of Rudolf Steiner as consisting of these two components; that which he had created as something new and that coming out of the spiritual history of the past which prepared the ground for the new seed. For instance, one must be just as willing to deal with the spiritual deed of Aristotle, of Thomas Aquinas, if one wishes to understand the biography of a person who brings a spiritual renewal in our own time on the basis of its historical background. In precisely this way is it possible to understand the great step in the process of evolution brought about by Rudolf Steiner, doing justice to the past and also to the present. His creative work met with such enthusiastic response and acceptance out of the hearts of human beings and yet at the same time with bitter opposition, because it was not possible to classify his total activity within any one of the present-day narrowly defined systems of ideas. Many such efforts have been made by opponents but they have all failed. This explains why in the coming years so many of his opponents went astray into the area of untrue declarations, of slander and hatred. The last lecture before his next tour, delivered on June 5, was for this reason devoted to the theme: The Truth about Anthroposophy and Its Defense against Untruth. There now began a period of the bitterest spiritual battle with those who felt called upon to oppose the new impulse.
His first lecture after arrival in Stuttgart on June 8 dealt with the theme The Path to Sound Thinking and the Life Situation of the Present-day Human Being; the second with Education and Instruction in the Presence of the Contemporary World Situation. In the third public lecture, he spoke on his central work, the Goetheanum in Dornach, with lantern slides. On June 17 he gave a lecture in the Technical College in Stuttgart on Spiritual Science, Natural Science, and Technology. As a former student at the Vienna Technical College, and on the basis of his comprehensive research work since that period, he could now in his sixtieth year present to the similar institution in Stuttgart valuable results of research and important stimulations. An evening for students on June 16 brought out important items of knowledge in another area of practical life—the right integration of the functions of land in the social organism. He discussed the contemporary reform efforts of certain personalities, and pointed to the right directions through which the relation of land to the other factors of the social community might be organized in a wholesome manner.
While such elements in the comprehensive social reorganization demanded by the times were dealt with in these lectures, he devoted himself for many days to numerous conferences and conversations with the teachers, looking to the development of the Waldorf School in its constandy increasing circle of activity.
The demands upon the time and strength of Rudolf Steiner coming from all sides had so intensified that he had to travel back and forth in constantly shortened intervals between Dornach and Stuttgart. Thus after three weeks in Stuttgart he returned for three weeks to Dornach; then spent another week in Stuttgart; returned to Dornach. During the coming months these trips were constantly repeated within brief intervals.
We have already indicated that the activity and the success of Dr. Steiner in so many areas naturally disturbed his opponents, who went intensely to work to defend their restricted domains. As always happens in the course of history, the great and the new which was here appearing must be prevented from advancing or even be trampled in the dust. For this reason Dr. Steiner was compelled in his first lecture after returning to Dornach to take cognizance of crass falsehoods in a brochure published by an aggressive pastor. From such sources in the following years the most shocking attacks were made against him. In correcting untruths, he never descended to the level of such attacks and his work was in due course fully justified against all such enemies. Nevertheless, these loathsome attacks caused him great distress, needless expenditure of energy, and unspeakable burdens. Without repeating any of the offensive detail of the baseless slanders, one must, nevertheless, establish the historical fact that Rudolf Steiner, the personality who contributed out of the greatness and goodness of his lifework nothing but what was fruitful for the advance of humanity, was made to suffer from certain directions under such abominable charges.
One who had the opportunity to observe him at that time, how in the midst of this rude and noisy behavior of his opponents he continued to advance unconfused toward his goal, could learn the lesson that every such evil and dishonest blow against such a personality will in the end fall back upon the attacker himself. One has an inner vision of the beautiful Dürer picture of the knight between death and the Devil as one looks back upon the nature and the conduct of Rudolf Steiner in that period.
When we once more direct our look to the calm and certain forward march of the spiritual-scientific work, we find in those very months numerous impulses. Having warded off the attacks of his opponents, and then having dealt in those Dornach lectures with the apostles of ruin—especially with such an apostle as Oswald Spengler—he responded now again to the call of all those who were hoping for clarification through his help regarding the upbuilding of the Occident, whether in the circle of his students and collaborators or in the broader circle of many persons who were inclined to test understandingly his ideas. On July 8 he spoke in Bern upon an invitation from the Free Student Union on Anthroposophy, Its Nature and Its Philosophical Foundation. His fundamental philosophical work, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, has reached a total of approximately 40,000 copies in the German language and has appeared in many translations. This fundamental work and all that he has since added to it have entered into human consciousness over such vast areas of the earth that the retarding forces of the past will not be able to block their course. Future generations will not be guided by the apostles of ruin or those who face toward the past.
While he was giving to the student group the possibility of laying a foundation in philosophy, he once more led his students in Dornach more deeply into the structure of forces in the present age, and into the rejuvenating forces which stream anew with the birth of every human being out of spiritual worlds. He introduced them into the realm of preexistence and the realm where immortality holds sway, into the "spiritual communion53 of man on earth with the creative forces of the world, into the mission of the earth, and into those helpful truths which may be derived from Christology for our age.
Already in the previous year, shortly after the end of the World War, he had pointed in a lecture of June 12, 1919, to symptoms of the times by means of which it is possible to know how transformations were occurring at that time in human souls who are descending through the portals of birth to the earth and those who are leaving the earth. Indeed, many serious questions had arisen out of the suffering of the newly born in that period and because of the mighty army of the dead from the World War. For this reason Rudolf Steiner called attention to a phenomenon which could be observed in increasing measure at that time:
“I should like to begin with a phenomenon which is scarcely observed today in the midst of the manifold stormy events. It is looked upon as something insignificant and not deserving attention, but it is there for those who have achieved out of spiritual depths the possibility of observing life in accordance with reality.
“There have now been seven, eight, ten years—this may seem a paradox but it is true—during which for the true observer of life the children who are born are born with an entirely different expression of face from that of earlier periods. Of course, this is not observed, because people do not give attention to such things, for the reason that in general no attention is given at the present time to the most important things in life. But one who has achieved a capacity for seeing such things knows that over the faces of many children born during the past seven, eight, or ten years, there rests something like a feeling of depression, like a holding back in the presence of the world. One might say that even from the very first days, from the very first weeks, one notices in observing the physiognomy of children that something there is 'different' from what existed earlier.
“If one follows up this strange fact, sounding paradoxical to present-day persons, one then observes that the child souls who enter the world through birth, even while they are passing through conception and birth, already bear that within themselves which then gives to their expression of face almost from birth the melancholy stamp—perhaps, often hidden behind a smiling expression—which did not rest in earlier times upon the faces of children. And in these souls—of course, altogether unconsciously—there lives something of the mood of ‘not wishing’ to enter into life. Souls which today pass through birth—as I have said, this has been the case for almost ten years—feel something like a hindrance and a prevention from entering into the physical world.
“It is a fact that, before man enters into the physical world through conception and birth, he passes through something in the spiritual world, passes through an important occurrence in the spiritual world, which casts its rays, produces its effect, in the coming life. Human beings die here on the earth, they pass through the portal of death, they lay aside their physical body and enter with their souls into the spiritual world. These souls bear within themselves the effects of what they have lived through here in the physical world. These souls, as they pass through the portal of death, look like the results of what is experienced here in the earthly life.
“Now when these souls are passing through the portal of death they meet —this is an occurrence which is simply a fact; I can only relate it to you since these things can be obtained only through experience out of the spiritual world—they meet those souls which are preparing in the approaching period to descend into a physical body. And this is an important occurrence: this meeting of the souls which have just gone through the portal of death with those souls which will then enter through the portal of birth into the physical world. This event has a decisive influence. It occurs in a sense in order to impress upon the souls descending something like a conception of what they will meet here. And it is from this meeting that the impression arises which stamps the peculiar melancholy upon children who are now entering into the world. In a certain sense, they do not desire to enter this world about which they have learned through this meeting. For they know how, in a certain sense, their 'spiritual feathers' will be rumpled by that which is being experienced at the present time in the materialistic mood and also materialistic action into which humanity is immersed.
“This event, which can be confirmed, naturally only in a spiritual way, casts a very effective illumination upon our entire contemporary age, besides doing other things,—upon this contemporary age which can be understood only out of its underlying depths, but which really ought to be understood out of these depths.”
On this subject Dr. Steiner now spoke again in those Dornach lectures of June 1920, dealing with those realms of the pre-natal existence and the influence of human souk incorporating upon the earth on the progress of civilization. Everything that he did was directed toward creating for these coming generations, through a spiritual world conception, education, and social order, a spiritually fruitful earthly sphere worthy of man's life. Supplementing these lectures, there were during those weeks discussions of the social problem in evening meetings; and the formative creative capacity was disciplined through artistic work on the building, in Eurythmy and in all the practical arts.
In the latter part of July, he returned for a week to Stuttgart, to share on July 24 in the closing festivity of the Waldorf School preceding the summer vacation. He attached great importance to the festive and artistic form of such school occasions in the course of the year. In the following days he gave two public lectures to audiences filling the great auditorium of Siegle House on the characteristic themes Spiritual Reality and Contemporary Illusion and Who Is Entitled to Speak Against the Downfall of the Occident? In the danger of a popularizing at that time of Spengler's ideas of the unavoidable decadence of the Occident, he saw a peril which he opposed a number of times energetically and confidently out of the content of his spiritual science, which embodied in itself precisely the forces to bring about a rejuvenation of Occidental culture.
Lectures given in August at Dornach were a further development of the teaching about the senses given in the year 1916, but also a preparation for the first college courses at the Goetheanum, to come in September. The lecture of August 8 dealt with the special relations of the twelve sense-areas to the capacities to be newly developed: imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Thereafter knowledge, capacity for judgment, regarding the problems of the threefold nature of man and of the social organism were further aided in lectures and discussions.
On September 8 he spoke for teachers of the Dornach environs on pedagogy and Eurythmy. The lecture of September 12 on The Supersensible Origin of the Artistic has since, like many other similar lectures on art, appeared in book form. He describes how art imprints upon the earthly world that in the human being which arises from the pre-natal existence and is interwoven with his immortal character. The following weeks were spent in Stuttgart and Berlin. During September 15-22 he gave in Stuttgart The Second Pedagogical Course of four lectures.
At Michaelmas in 1920 the first collegiate course was given at the Goetheanum. This was during the first festival celebrated in the great auditorium of the Goetheanum building. Dr. Steiner emphasized the fact that the building was not yet completed and required for its completion the help of many persons. Yet it was an impressive experience for all of us in the history of this spiritual Movement to listen now for the first time in the auditorium under the tremendous dome, just seven years after the festive laying of the foundation stone, to the words of the one who had created all of this out of his spiritual knowledge and power of action.
Unforgettable in my memory is that moment when, during a prelude by organ and orchestra, we waited for this event: the earnest and solemn mood of some 1,000 persons now assembled for the first time in this great room, the tremendous, artistically molded columns which in organic ascent rose into the sphere of the mural paintings of the dome, the flood of light which streamed in through the great artistically formed windows and flooded with their colors these plastic shapes—a lofty unity which seemed like a living Being receiving into itself the expectantly waiting human beings. Through all this pulsated a stream of reciprocal giving and receiving between every human being and the surrounding structural work, seeming like the first life-giving breath at a moment of birth. And now Rudolf Steiner spoke for the first time in this “House of the Word” which brought to expression the intimate unity of the Spiritual Powers with the external incorporation in a molded form:
“It is with profound feeling and an earnest soul that I now speak these first words to be devoted to spiritual science in this room. Earnest must one*s mood be. In the background stand the needs of the times and all that is in the negative spiritual life of the present time and has led to this condition of need.
“But my mind rests also upon all that has been done by understanding spirits in such a time, intensely devoted to the evolution of a spiritual future for humanity, in order that this building in which we now begin the first collegiate course in spiritual science might be brought at least to its present stage. It must be with utmost thankfulness that we shall think in the spirit of such a scientific direction as is here intended of that attitude of mind and of its force which was present in all those who have helped materially and spiritually to bring about what has now resulted. Most of all should I like now to address myself to the numerous friends of our cause who have come to attend this course. Those who have come to attend this course demonstrate by that fact that they expect at least something from what is to be carried on here, of that which the serious need of our time, the special character of our spiritual life, demand for the present age.
"By appearing here and desiring to listen to this course of lectures, you have indicated in a certain sense that you expect an effort to be made in these spiritual experiences to listen to the tremendous call of the time, and that endeavors will be made to serve in the achievement of the tasks toward which the call of the time directs us.”
He then spoke of the once existing unity of science, art, and religion in the Mystery centers of the past:
“There were times in the evolution of humanity when separated institutions of education, separated churches, separated art institutions did not exist. There was a unitary influence which was at the same time artistically cognitional and also religious in character: places which were called Mysteries, where an art was practiced which was at the same time religion and science, where a religion was fostered which corresponded in its cult ceremonies with the artistic endeavors of that period, where a science was practiced which, because of the spirituality out of which it came, led directly to the divine sources of human and cosmic existence which are to be experienced in religious feelings.”
He described the harmful splitting apart of this unity during recent centuries, the loss of spiritual-cosmic creative forces in art, the opening of the road to agnosticism and atheism in religion and science; and now the birth of a new synthesis of the three highest human life spheres through the knowledge of the supersensible worlds in the spiritual science of the twentieth century.
“We desire to bring creatively to manifestation three new forces to be drawn out of spiritual sources: an art with the power of vision; a cognition of the supersensible for the rebirth of the soul and the spirit in that religion the mood of which must take form out of that art and that science.
“As to what is to come to birth as a force, we who work here have not only a conviction but a knowledge that we are able to bring into the individual branches of the cultural life of humanity, in all the details of our presently unstable social life, that which can come out of this new trinity— art with vision, science which grasps the spiritual, religion which experiences a rebirth in the supersensible—for the living existence of humanity. It is to that task that this building is to be dedicated. How wonderful it would be if I were able to say today that this building had been completed, that this building could now be devoted to all its goals, that, after seven years of labor—for it was seven years ago that we laid the foundation stone here—this building could now be devoted to its goals. That I cannot say. For very much is yet to be done before this building will have reached its completion. Thus we are not experiencing today an opening of the building; but that which we believe our spiritual stream has to say to the world we desire to present to the world at first provisionally in this college course even in this unfinished building.
“Thus those who have come for this course are not led into the completed building but—I should like to say-are led into the building in order that, as we confidently hope, out of what they will be able to perceive here, they will come to the conviction that this building must certainly be completed. And thus we dare to hope that, among those with whom we shall perhaps find understanding, helpers will come forward to aid in every possible and necessary manner for the completion of this building of ours.
“I do not for that reason think less gratefully out of the spirit of our spiritual science of all those who have brought this building to its present stage. It is out of this spirit of thankfulness and satisfaction that I now turn to those, who, as younger or older members of the Anthroposophical Society, have appeared here today in great numbers to work together with us out of a new spirit for the progress of humanity, to work for that which must be achieved.
“But I address myself especially to those visitors attending our course who belong to the student body of various countries. To them, to these students, I should like to say that it gives me the greatest satisfaction to see you just here, for, though a long time has passed since I myself belonged to a student body, I permit myself always to feel in the right and in the best sense as belonging among you. For what has been characterized as the goal towards which we must strive here must be striven for primarily out of the youthful spirit and youthful enthusiasm. Unite your youthful forces with the earnestness which lives in those who are laboring here for spiritual science because of the serious needs of the times, and that must be successfully achieved which the needs of the times so greatly demand. So you are warmly welcomed.”
In this college course, developed and supplemented through many other courses in the following years, a new center for the unity of cognition and action was to be established in opposition to the splintering and decadence in the civilization of the Occident.
“Through the power of an artistic, a cognizing, an inwardly religious and social will, something is to be established here which may lead to an ascent, to an upbuilding of a new civilization. To all of those, therefore, whom we so gladly see here today, who wish to unite with us in work, let those words be called out in the spirit of modesty, but at the same time in the conviction that has been achieved through spiritual science,—those words which are only to express the spirit and the purpose with which we desire to be united here today:
“To turn toward the light
In darksome times of need,
To the Spirit dawn
Our soul's gaze to direct:
May this be our human will,
And forever may it be.”
Rudolf Steiner initiated the college work at the Goetheanum with a course on science and a course on art. The first, under the title Limits in the Knowledge of Nature, has since been published in book form. It raised the question whether the conception of insurmountable limits of knowledge asserted by Du Bois-Reymonds in 1872 and stamped with the word Ignorabimus was to be taken as permanently valid. The answer to this question will determine, not only the destiny of science in the future, but also all choosing of goals for human social thinking and will. If nothing is within the reach of human research except what is in the sense world, the doors are closed to those worlds out of which man himself originated, in which are to be found the creative forces of the world, of man, of the social community. The eight lectures which he now gave showed with the methodical exactness of spiritual science that such limits are arbitrarily set; that, if the human being develops his organs of cognition further and schools them, he can behold, not only the realm beyond the sensible and material but also the Spirit active in the phenomena of nature:
“When we enter upon such paths of knowledge as I have characterized, we become aware of how we ourselves are organized out of the external world. We trace consciously that within us which takes bodily form and lives, in that we now acquire, as the most important thing, a clear feeling for the fact that Spirit is present in the external world. Precisely through following the principle of phenomenology, we come to see clearly that Spirit exists in the external world: not if we pursue an abstract metaphysics, but by means of the principle of phenomenology, we come to a knowledge of the Spirit in that we perceive—if we only lift into consciousness what we otherwise do unconsciously,—in that we perceive how through the sense world the spiritual penetrates into us and organizes us.”
It was now the task of the university of spiritual science founded by Rudolf Steiner to work out—not through abstract metaphysics, but through the schooling of the organs of cognition and through concrete phenomenology— that which is given in all directions of research. For that reason this course brought together thirty-two lectures by other speakers on philosophy, theology, history, the science of language, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, medicine, jurisprudence, pedagogy, national economics, economic practices, etc. In referring later to the course, Dr. Steiner spoke of the failure of certain of these lectures to harmonize with the unity striven for and to harmonize with the artistic interior of the building itself. Yet a goal had been given toward which all could strive according to their various capacities. That goal is to fructify all areas of life out of the innermost core of spiritual science and to bring them all again within a single survey. For it is toward this unity that the longing of the Goetheanists of the past was directed, and in it lies the meaning of the culture which the twentieth century is now called upon to achieve and is capable of achieving.
But what Rudolf Steiner himself at that time initiated in his lecture on The Limits in the Knowledge of Nature will be recognized in its significance only in the future. He opened the dams which hindered human cognition and rendered accessible new areas whose fruitfulness is inexhaustible. While one of his two collegiate courses was devoted to science, the second, given at the same time, was devoted to art. The arts of sculpture and painting could, indeed, speak through their own achievement in the building itself, and programs of Eurythmy had given beauty to the festival. Dr. Steiner now spoke also on The Art of Recitation and Declamation, with examples given in perfect form by Frau Marie Steiner from the Mystery Drama The Portal of Initiation and strophes from Goethe's Iphigenia.
Within the artistic sphere of this first collegiate conference, Albert Steffen gave a significant lecture on The Crisis in the Life of the Artist, in which he pointed out the decisive turning points in the lives and creative activity of Goethe and Schiller, and described with his great gift for the art of modeling in words the spiritual foundations for the creative work of the poet, the musician, the painter. To the realization of the unity which arises out of the common fountainhead of spiritual-scientific knowledge and artistic creative power, he has devoted his entire lifework, bestowing upon the artistic area of work of the Goetheanum during the succeeding years continually new gifts, especially in the form of his dramas, thus endowing the Goetheanum with spiritual substance.
During these three weeks Rudolf Steiner gave, in addition, three special lectures on The Architectural Idea of Dornach, and a series of four medical lectures on Physiology and Therapeutics on the Foundation of Spiritual Science. He also participated with enthusiasm in discussions of groups working within their own special fields and in student meetings.
In his dosing talk on October 16, he presented a survey of these three weeks of the first collegiate course at the Goetheanum, and closed his remarks with a challenge to many persons who were assembled here from various countries to carry this abundance of new impulses back into the world:
“Completed will that be which we intended here only when those who have seen, heard, and experienced go back into the world and each one, according to his strength, works farther in his own place. Then each one will be a building stone. Then will that great structure of the spiritual life, the being of art, social activity, be developed which we truly and imperatively need at the present time for the restoration of humanity.”
Because of these dosing words, that final lecture on the nature and objectives of the Dornach building is called The Building of Humanity.
The second half of October was devoted to intensive work within the circle of the Dornach collaborators. In this intimate connection Dr. Steiner continued his reflections on Historical Symptomatology. He began with the epoch around 700 B.G.—that is, the period of the dispute between the theologian Alcuin and the Greeks—and extending to the endeavors of Goethe and Schiller to deal with the social questions of their epoch, in Goethe's Fairy Tale and Schiller's Aesthetic Letters,—an endeavor in their relation as human beings of the Middle to the spiritual Powers of the East and the West. This historical reflection he continued organically up to the Goetheanism and the Christology of the twentieth century.
On October 31 occurred a meeting for the purpose of constituting the "Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland." The Swiss groups which had existed since the beginning of the Movement had up to that time continued their intensive work without constituting formally a common organization, since the long-continued presence of Dr. Steiner there and the work at the Goetheanum gave a center for the work in Switzerland. Since, however, the more intense public activity and the constantly increasing interest of broader circles created the necessity for a number of organizational undertakings, steps were now taken for the formal institution of a Branch for Switzerland, to be devoted to these special tasks. To the "Group at the Goetheanum” organized shortly before, Rudolf Steiner had entrusted especially, in addition to its Anthroposophical work, the important role of host for the numerous visitors coming from all parts of the world to Dornach.
During the period November 8-23, Dr. Steiner was again in Germany. He delivered a series of public lectures: in Stuttgart on The Spiritual Crisis of the Present and the Forces for the Progress of Humanity; in Freiburg in Breisgau on The Great Questions of the Times and the Anthroposophical Spiritual Knowledge. A series of Eurythmy programs contributed the element of art to this advance.
Between the end of November and the closing days of the year he then devoted all his strength to the work on the Goetheanum building. This had now been brought to the stage of serving as the place for the work of the College, but very much still remained to be done in completing the sculpture and painting, and he was now seen all day long again working in turn with hammer and chisel in the circle of the sculptors and then with the painters, the eurythmists, conferring with his scientific collaborators, or conversing with numerous visitors. In the evenings, after all this activity, he became again the teacher, contributing toward a deepening of the common basic substance of spiritual science. In the first of these evening lectures, he spoke for this reason on the harmony of the three spheres in the human being himself: the head man, the limb man, and the living rhythm of breathing and circulation which unites the two poles and weaves them together. He showed how the wisdom which is weaving within the living organism brings about balance and harmony with the elements of beauty and strength, and how the human being is thus endowed for the development of such manifold faculties. Explanations regarding the elements of thought and will in light and darkness and of the supersensible in the colors, contributed further to Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom.
Whereas public lectures in Basel, Bern, Zurich, and Olten contributed toward the spreading of the sphere of work into the surrounding world, Christmas on the other hand now brought concentration upon a new impulse in Dornach. This time he gave during Christmas (December 23-26) four lectures on The Search for the New Isis, the Divine Sophia. He pointed to the Christmas Tree as a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, and led the hearers back into those times when the ancient wisdom of the stars was still incorporated in the picture world of the Isis legends. Our time needs for release from the dying intellectualism a new gift of spirit-permeated imaginations, a new Isis legend, to mediate in pictures to the consciousness of the present stage of evolution spiritual truths. The lost knowledge of the ancient Mysteries of the divine power of "Sophia” must be given again at this different evolutionary stage through Anthroposophy. Creative art can be broadened through the development of the power of spirit-conscious imagination; the knowledge of nature through the achievement in inner exercise of the capacity of inspiration and intuition. In contrast with the alienation from the spirit, resignation, and lassitude of the present time, he called forth as the right Christmas mood the "birth of spiritual activity" in every human being, so that the power of Christ and the wisdom of spiritual Cosmic Powers may become helpers in human activity. For this reason all of Rudolf Steiner's work during these difficult times was related to the cosmic plan, to call forth in the midst of the seeming ruin of the Occident this “birth of spiritual activity,” which seeks for a new ascent through “Sophia,” the wisdom of spiritual evolution.