The Rudolf Steiner Archive

following the discussion after three lectures by Paul Baumann

On the Expansion of the Tone System

It is only really possible to make a few suggestions, because the questions posed by Mr. Stuten alone could be the subject of weeks of discussion if one wanted to answer them exhaustively. And we will see how far we get today. I would like to start with one topic, so that we can then perhaps move on from a center, so to speak. The extension of the tone system has been mentioned, hasn't it, and various speakers have, I believe, been interested in this extension of the tone system; I think there were also musicians and composers among them.

Now, the whole question is connected, as I believe, with another one that is perhaps not as easy to grasp as is usually thought. And here I would like to say first of all: I myself wanted to address a kind of question first to those personalities who have taken part in this discussion about the expansion of the tone system. I will just make a few preliminary remarks and then ask you to express yourself entirely according to your subjective experience.

There is hardly any doubt that with the point in time that Mr. Baumann characterized so well today as the advent of the seventh, a very significant turning point actually occurred in the musical experience of civilized humanity. I believe that we just do not know enough about the earlier musical experience; that is, theoretically, but we no longer experience it in such a way that we feel this change completely clearly and intensely enough. But what has emerged has not yet run its course, and perhaps we are in the midst of a transformation, if I may say so, of people's musical needs. Of course, such things do not happen so quickly that they can be clearly defined; but they do happen, and they can be recognized to a certain extent in the progressive development of humanity.

And here I would like to ask whether the individual previous speakers, when they reflect on what they experience musically, cannot point to something that signifies a kind of turning point in the whole of musical experience. To formulate the question more specifically: I would like to think that today, in musical experience, one could form an opinion about how different people - I will ignore more of the musical aspect for now - experience a single tone differently. Now, that they experience it differently is, of course, beyond doubt; but they experience it so differently that this different experience plays into their understanding of music in some way.

You can clearly perceive, I believe, that today there is a tendency, especially among people who experience music, to go deeper into the sound, so to speak. Isn't it true that you can stay more on the surface with a sound, or go deeper into the sound.

And now I ask the personalities who were previously involved in the discussion whether they can associate any idea with this when I say: the musical experience of the present is increasingly splitting the individual note in its conception, and, as it were, questioning the individual note as to whether it is a melody or not. I mean, whether any kind of idea can be associated with it? Because it is actually hardly possible to talk about the question of expanding the tone system without having a basis from which to talk.

A comment was made earlier about noises. Perhaps the whole discussion about noises can only be answered if such a prerequisite as I have stated here is first settled. Because if I assume, for example – I don't know whether these things are already being experienced very extensively subjectively today – that the gentleman who has been speaking here for some time, who has been talking about sounds, that he is particularly inclined to answer the question of whether a melody can be perceived in a tone can be perceived in the tone, in the broadest sense, then I understand him, then I completely understand how he enters into the individual tones, or into the individual sounds, which the other person merely perceives as a noise, and how, by delving into the depths of the sound, he does indeed find something in the tones that then form the sound that he can pick out, so that something musical comes about that someone who does not delve into these depths of the sound cannot follow.

This morning, Dr. Husemann pointed out that in another respect, too, present-day humanity is in danger of gradually splitting the personality more and more apart. And so it seems that there are already quite a number of people in the present day who simply have a different sound experience of a single note than musicians who have been very sharply trained in one direction or another. And this is connected with the other question, which has also been asked, namely how spiritual science should relate to the whole matter.

Now I would like to ask the precise question of whether any reasonable idea can be associated with it, if one says that under certain circumstances the individual tone can be felt as a melody by going into its depths, by emphasizing partial tones from the tone, so to speak, partial tones whose relationship, whose harmony can then itself be a kind of melody again?

Paul Baumann: It also emerged from my lecture that I associate noise with harmony, that is, with a summarized melody. Can we understand sound noise as something that is a summarized melody, perhaps a harmony, but that we would also feel musically? In reality, every sound is undoubtedly musical, but we do not need to address it as a musical art. We cannot distinguish it, but it can be felt very clearly in timbre that something particularly musical, something of the mobility of things, is speaking here again, that one can clearly distinguish the mere musical tone, which is not heard in itself, from what it very clearly resonates in.

That is not what I mean. What I mean specifically now is to expand the possibility of experiencing sound itself, that is, to go deeper into the depths when experiencing the sound, or, for that matter, to extract something from the sound, so that you actually experience something in the sound itself.

Paul Baumann: I mean the differentiation between what you need in musical art, what resonates, and what you also feel, something that has a musical effect in things.

I don't mean this now, but what you experience in a tone without it somehow contributing objectively. You split the tone itself and synthesize it again. I mean as a pure experience. From time immemorial, the tone was attributed to the spirit of clay. In layman's terms: at a historical performance of the Passau... play from 1250, the devil is introduced as a seducer right at the beginning, before the play even begins; and to make this atmosphere work properly, the devil has to blow into a fire horn; it sounds so shrill that it scares everyone. That is the basis of this sound spirit I am talking about.

Some opinions will still be expressed.

These are all things that do not apply to what I mean, the experience of a sound that appears as a melody. When a note is struck, a melody actually emanates from the note.

Dr. Stein: It seems to me that one must distinguish between the perception of sound and the sensation of sound. I feel something very deeply in my perception, and this feeling then goes deeper when I feel pain or shock.

I don't mean that we should define the things that already exist, but rather: whether we are living in a transitional period with regard to the sound experience, so that it actually becomes something different. I think that it is still understood in musical terms today as a note that is related to others, that is in a melody and so on, but that there is a possibility with the note to go into the depths, perhaps also to look for something below it and then, if one looks at this, only then is a fruitful examination possible.

Further expressions of opinion.

If you listen to a note for a long time, at the beginning of the “Freischütz” overture, for example, you may have a sensation that I can perhaps illustrate figuratively. So, so to speak, the sound would be: half of a bow – that should be a graphical representation – on this half of the bow, I would draw something like small nerves that go out from it, so that one has a sound sensation on this half of the bow, as if as if it were going in there, then going through again on the other side of the bow, then out again at nerves and veins, so that there is a certain inner movement, which is once on one side of this half bow, then once on the other. You could perhaps also express it dynamically, that you put a greater intensity into it and then back out.

Opinions.

The long hold is only to make it more noticeable. The long hold would also make it possible to notice the changes in tone. I am not so much referring to the illustrative curve, which can be drawn in this way, but rather to the one that is actually drawn here vertically on the board.

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Further comments:... It's the intensity? That's why I say: go deeper into the sound!

Longer comments from a participant.

Mr. van der Pals describes his experiences with a tone; an upbeat to Jacobowski's poems. A tone, indicated by the poem itself, by the content; one had no desire at all to move away from the tone; the tone was there, could just as well have remained there, was a melody in itself – I only moved away because one couldn't play it for half an hour.

Now that we have talked about this a bit, I would like to point out that things that develop sometimes come out very imperfectly in their first stages. For example, it can be pointed out that some things certainly appear in a really quite contestable way as Expressionist art – but that is not meant as a criticism of all Expressionist art, but only of some things that do not get beyond expressions – but that there is certainly an attempt at something in it that will one day mean a great deal.

And so I believe that, in a similar way to how we try to live with color and create from color in painting, this immersion in sound means something today, such as the beginning of progress in music. And if that occurs here or there and you don't like it, I completely agree. But I would like to know how one can actually understand such musical personalities as Debussy if not as a perhaps very vague forerunner of something future that lies in this direction. If we can admit something like that, we come to the conclusion that a certain possibility is indeed presented to us, namely the possibility that composing will be done in a different way than it is now, namely in such a way that the relationship between composer and reproducing artist becomes much freer, that the player, the reproducing artist, is much less determined, that he can become much more productive, that he has much more leeway. But this is only possible in music if the tone system is expanded, if you can really have the variations that are necessary, if you can really vary widely. And I could imagine that, for example, what the composer delivers would be more suggestive in the future, but that because it would be more suggestive, the reproducing artist would need many more variants, many more tones, to express things. If you find your way into the depths of the tone, you can distribute it in the most diverse ways by setting it out again in neighboring tones. In this way, a more flexible musical life would come about. I can only sketch the matter. One could go on talking all night, but we don't want to do that since we are meeting again tomorrow. But a much more flexible musical life will come about. And one can say: Today, this more flexible musical experience can really stand before us.

This is connected in a certain way with the other question that has been asked again and again, namely, how spiritual science should relate to music. In this question, there is always one thing that I dislike. Please, I do not want to offend anyone with what I say, but there is something about this question that I dislike, namely, it is actually posed in an unartistic way! It is actually always posed theoretically and in an unartistic way, even if the person in question does not mean it. And I feel that in a discussion about art, it is very easy to slip out of the artistic realm altogether and into a wild theorizing. Spiritual science, since it is not something intellectual, is not something that only takes hold of one part of the human being, but something that takes hold of the whole human being, will have an essential influence on the whole human being, on thinking, feeling and willing. Whereas our present materialistic-intellectualistic science basically only has an influence on thinking, on the intellectual element in man. Spiritual science will take hold of the human being fully. And the consequence of this will be that the human being becomes inwardly more mobile, that he comes to a greater variability of his partial experience and thus also to a stronger demand for the harmony of his partial experience. And when this happens, it essentially means an enrichment of the whole musical activity and experience. And then, in the case of such personalities, who are so permeated, so imbued, so vitalized by spiritual science, I might say, what can become reality in the field of music out of spiritual science will arise. There is no use theorizing about this. One should not theorize, one should rather feel today how spiritual science actually makes the human being more mobile and how, through this, the human being can also approach a more intense, more nuanced musical experience.

This can be linked to very big questions. You see, the spiritual science movement has often been criticized: Yes, there are mainly ladies there who are always interested in it, you don't see the men in the anthroposophical meetings. — I don't want to decide now to what extent this is statistically true or not. Some people have a newspaper article ready before they have seen the things, and they can't be dissuaded from it even if they then see the opposite of what they have written down. But on the whole – please, it is really not meant so badly – we can say: Because the male world has participated more in education, in the scientific and increasingly scientific education of the last few centuries, something has occurred for masculinity that could be called a solidification, a hardening of the brain. In women, the brain has remained more flexible and softer. These are, of course, radical expressions for the phenomena, but the phenomenon still exists. And so as not to be unfair, I will say: in men, the brain has become more solidified, and as a result they have become more proficient in the use of logic; in women, the brain has remained more agile, lighter, but they have not participated in the education of the last few centuries, which has so solidified the firm logic within itself, and as a result they have become superficial and so on. — Well, you can't just present things one-sidedly. But there is something in the whole matter that can make us aware of the fact that we urgently need to make what has been achieved in our own organization through the stiffening, drying out education of the last centuries, flexible again, by entering into this stronger handling of the ethereal. But here we are entering the musical element again. Here we are entering a completely musical experience. And that will naturally bear fruit.

But one would be quite inartistic if one wanted to create any kind of theory about what is happening. That always seems to me to be the same as if someone wanted to describe the weather of the day after tomorrow very precisely. I am not saying that there is not a state of consciousness in which one can do so to a high degree. But it has no real significance. It is better to let life live than to theorize about it in such a way.

Now, with this train of thought, the consideration has already been diverted from the musical to the human constitution. And so, in a spiritualized physiology, which in itself will already have something artistic about it, one will increasingly associate the musical with the human constitution.

Just think, there is something very deeply justified in Mr. Baumann's assertion of the connection between melos and breathing. Basically, melos and human breathing are two things that essentially belong together.

But now we must not forget: The breathing process is a process that takes place in the rhythmic system. This middle system of the human organization borders on the nervous-sense system, on the brain system, on the one hand. There is an interaction between the rhythmic system and the nervous-sense system. On the other hand, the rhythmic system borders on the entire limb and metabolic system. And this confluence also expresses itself, I would say, in the physical processes. Just think: when we breathe in, we push our diaphragm down, we push the brain water up to the head, so that with the breathing process we have a continuous up and down of the brain water. This means that there is a continuous interplay between the rhythmic movement of the cerebral fluid and that of the organs of imagination. On the other hand, there is a continuous collision of the cerebral fluid, which is going down again, with everything that is going on in the blood, in the metabolic system. More than one would think, the musical element is connected with this inner experience, thought of in organic terms. And in the following way: to the same extent that breathing approaches the head, the nervous-sensory life, with the interplay, the melodious element comes to the fore; to the same extent that the rhythmic system approaches the limb system, the actual rhythmic element comes to the fore; we have only transferred the word there.

And then, if you bear this in mind, you have a guide to answer, I would say, the whole bundle of questions that Mr. Stuten asked at the end, one by one. So what Mr. Stuten has put forward is correct. I would like to go into the one thing he mentioned about the connections between thinking, feeling and willing. This corresponds, in turn, to what I have just explained in terms of the organs. Then we have already discussed, and Mr. Stuten has repeated today, that what the actual musical forms are corresponds to the whole human being, that is, to the synthetic interweaving of thinking, feeling and willing.

Now he has also raised the question of the relationships between the thematic groups. These are, of course, specifically different, depending on whether they come from this or that composer. And now we can say the following: You were quite right to state that the melody corresponds to the imagination, the harmony to the feeling, the rhythm to the will, and the tone form to the whole person. Now we have a partial human being = thinking, a partial human being = feeling, a partial human being = willing, and the whole human being.

But now we not only have the whole human being in real human life, but the human being also lives all the years between birth and death. This whole human being is often present and continuously present, and changes, metamorphoses. And this is where the succession of thematic groupings comes into play. The human life cycle is something specific. And the underlying secret is this: in our consciousness, we do not know what the future holds, but in our feeling consciousness, we are attuned to how the future unfolds. Please observe purely empirically — one does not usually do this, but these things belong to a finer perception of a true anthropology, which then becomes anthroposophy — how the emotional life changes in a person whom one later learns has died. Of course, there are many things that prevent us from pursuing such things, but at least we can pursue them retrospectively. We can see very clearly in a person who died young how the whole emotional life tends towards death, how the future is already contained in the past life. This is also something that is part of the human life cycle.

All this plays a role when the musician lives out in the succession, in the recurrence of thematic groups and so on. The recurrence itself need not surprise you. For you need only look back over your life, if it has already been going on for some time; in particular, the usual periods, which do not cover the same number for everyone but are nevertheless present, could show you exactly the stages, could tell you: in this year a stage ended that lasted until that year, and so on. If someone experiences a phase of life at the age of forty-five, they will experience it again at the age of fifty-two at the next stage. And one can see the recurrence in human experience very clearly when one experiences something at the age of fifty-two, which does not have to be the same, but which, in its inner character, represents something similar to what happened in one's forty-fifth year.

All these things play a part in what is expressed in a musical work of art. For such a musical work of art is, at least at the moment it is created, always an expression of the whole human being. One can only hint at such things.

Some of the other questions that were asked, such as the relationship between Goethe's theory of sound and spiritual science, would really be too much to cover today. I believe that we can still meet on this or a similar occasion. And answering the question about major and minor, about the meaning of Greek music, would also be too much today.

With regard to the one thing that has been mentioned, the theories about breathing, singing and posture, I would just like to note that such things as described in the book mentioned are not without a certain significance if one knows how to take them sensibly.

It is extremely important to consider the human being as a whole. People who write such books do not usually do this, but they do provide material that can be useful even to the scholar, when it is viewed in the right light.

I also do not want to address the question of singing method today, because it can very easily be misunderstood if it is not developed out of some kind of premise, especially since there are so many different singing methods today. And you can meet people who have learned to sing using five or six different methods, which means they have forgotten how to sing altogether! Then, however, one cannot speak in such a simple way about the different singing methods.

Regarding what has been said about temperaments, about thesis, antithesis, synthesis, I must say that it is a rather unfruitful way of looking at things, because as a rule one can really develop anything from such bloodless abstractions. And just as you can say: Wagner – thesis, Bruckner – antithesis, which may be in principle, and spiritual science – the synthesis, so could another, who just classified differently, perhaps say: Wagner – thesis, Bruckner – antithesis, Mahler – synthesis. That would certainly be said by one or the other if one indulges in such bloodless abstractions.

Yes, I really don't think that we should extend the evening any further today, since we can't stay here overnight after all! Although I am happy to talk in detail about the issues I have noted down at a further get-together.

I would like to touch again today on some of the things I noted yesterday, which could no longer be properly discussed, with a few aphoristic remarks.

First, I would like to say a few words about the relationship between major and minor. If you want to get right into the intimacies of musical life, you have to be absolutely aware of how, in essence, musical life corresponds to a fine organization of our human nature. One could say that what appears in musical facts corresponds in a certain way to the finer inner constitution of the human being.

Yesterday I already hinted at a certain direction, how rhythm, which we experience musically, answers an inner rhythm in the rise and fall of the cerebral fluid and the connection that the cerebral fluid has on the one hand with the processes in the brain, and on the other hand with the processes in the metabolic system through the mediation of the blood system. But one can also point to, I would say, individually graded forms of the human constitution in this respect. Our most important rhythmic system is the respiratory system, and it is basically not difficult for most people, if they pay just a little attention, to experience how the course of thought, both the more logical course of thought and the more emotional, feeling-based course of thought, influence the breathing process. The breathing process is directly or indirectly connected with everything that a person experiences musically. Therefore, the particular breathing pattern of one or the other type of person sheds some light on the musical experience.

You see, there are people who are, so to speak, oxygen voluptuaries. They are constituted in such a way that they assimilate oxygen with a certain greed, absorb oxygen into themselves. Of course, all this takes place more or less in the subconscious, but one can certainly use the expressions borrowed from conscious life for the subconscious. People who absorb oxygen with a certain greed, who, if I may say so, enjoy absorbing oxygen, who are voluptuous in absorbing oxygen, have a very active, strongly vibrating astral life. Their astral body is inwardly active. And because their astral body is inwardly active, it also digs into the physical body with great desire, as it were. Such people live very much in their physical body.

Other people do not have this craving for oxygen. But they feel something, not like a lust now, but like a relief when they give up, exhale the carbonic acid. They are tuned to, as it were, removing the breathing air from themselves and finding a favor in the process that gives them a certain relief.

One can, by speaking the truth, say something that I would like to say, that makes a person feel a little uncomfortable. But that is one of the reasons why people reject the deeper truths, because they do not want to hear them. They then invent logical reasons for themselves. In reality, the reason is that people are subconsciously repulsed by certain truths. So they push these truths aside. And that is why they then find logical reasons for their evasion. It is certainly not so easy, for example, if you are a respected scholar and are opposed to this or that philosophical system because of an unhealthy gall-bladder, to simply say to your students: My gall-bladder does not tolerate this philosophical system! — So you then invent logical reasons, sometimes of an extraordinarily astute nature, and you console yourself with these logical reasons. For those who know life, for those who look deeper into the secrets of existence, sometimes logical reasons that come from this or that side are not quite so valuable. And so, for example, sometimes the melancholic temperament is based merely on the fact that the person concerned is a voluptuary of oxygen. And life more in the sanguine, life that is turned to the outer world, that likes to change with the impressions of the outer world, that is based on a certain love of exhaling, on a certain love of pushing the carbonic acid away from oneself.

However, these are only the external manifestations of the matter. For the rhythm, which we basically perceive only as the physical-secondary in the organism, is actually always a rhythm that takes place in the deeper sense between the astral body and the ether body. And ultimately one can say: we inhale with the astral body and with the etheric body we exhale again, so that in truth there is a rhythmic interaction between the astral body and the etheric body. And so now the individual types of people live, so to speak, in such a way that when one type of person's astral body strikes the ether body, a kind of lust occurs; when the ether body strikes back at the astral body, a kind of relief occurs in the other person, a kind of transition into the sanguine, experiencing the sanguine.

And you see, the origin of the major and minor scales is connected with this contrast between types of people, in that everything that can be experienced in minor keys belongs, or corresponds, to the constitution of the person who is based on the lustfulness of oxygen, which is based on the fact that the astral body, when it strikes the etheric body is felt with a certain voluptuousness, while conversely the major scales are based on the fact that there is a feeling of well-being when the aetheric body strikes back at the astral body, or there is a certain feeling of elevation, a feeling of relief, a feeling of momentum when the aetheric body strikes back at the astral body.

It is interesting that in the outer world things are often designated in the opposite direction. For example, one says: the melancholic person is the deeper person. Seen from the other side, he is not the deeper person, but the greater voluptuary for oxygen.

Since the musical in its intimacies essentially draws on the subconscious, we can associate such things with the very subconscious, semi-conscious, and conscious aspects of the musical experience, without indulging in an inartistic, theoretical approach. You will notice in general that a truly spiritual-scientific consideration of art does not need to become inartistic itself, for one does not arrive at bloodless abstractions and a theoretical web of aestheticizing kind. If we want to understand things spiritually, we come to realities in a certain way, the mutual interaction of which is presented pictorially or even musically in such a way that we, with our description, are ourselves in it in a kind of musical experience.

And I believe that this will be precisely the significant aspect in the further development of spiritual science: that in seeking to comprehend art, it itself seeks to create an art of comprehension, that it seeks to imbue its work and activity in ideas with pictoriality, with reality, and that in so doing, what we have today as such a dry, abstract science will be able to approach the artistic. But if we take something that has been approached purely and simply from a scientific point of view, such as education, and make it relevant to the tasks of our time, as we do in the Waldorf school , then we are in any case leading what used to be scientific pedagogy to the level of pedagogical art and talking about pedagogy in the sense that we actually understand it as an art of educating.

If you read what I wrote in the last issue of “Social Future” about the art of education, you will see how there is an effort to transform the sober science of education into the art of education.

Another thing I noted refers to the interesting comments Mr. Baumann made in his lecture about the relationship between vowels and tones and colors. He described, as you recall, the dark vowels U, O, as those that have the clearest effect in terms of tone. In the middle stands A, and at the other pole, so to speak, stand E and I, the light vowels, which appear the least tonal, which carry something noisy in them.

But then the astonishment was expressed as to how it comes about that precisely the dark vowels also correspond to the dark colors, and the light vowels, I, E, correspond to light colors, but do not actually have the tonal in their characteristic, but rather the noisy. - If I understood correctly, that was the case, wasn't it?

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Now I would like to make the following comment. If we do not write down the color scale in the abstract linearity that we are accustomed to in today's physics, but if we write down the color scale in a circle, as it must also be done in accordance with Goethe's color theory, so that we say: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet — if we proceed in this direction (see drawing), if we write down the color scale in this way, then we will naturally be compelled, by bringing to mind the experiential relationships between tone and color, to write U and O towards the blue side. But if we continue in Mr. Baumann's spirit, we will come to A and from this side enter the red and yellow, the light.

So when we move away from the blue in the sense of the accompanying colors of the individual tones, we are actually moving away from the color element and now touching it from behind. And therein lies the reason why we can no longer establish parallelism here in the same way as in the area where the tonal coincides with the color in a very evident way, because on the side of the color scale where the blue, the violet is, we are dealing, so to speak, with a going out of ourselves with the color. There is a sense of immersion in the external world. With sound, however, it is essentially also an outward movement. But when we come over here, we experience an onslaught of color: red and yellow colors rush at us. In this sense, behind this curtain, there is also painting here: it is the ability to paint from within the color. We live ourselves into the color. This is how we actually come out of the nature of the tones. This is the reason for the apparent incongruity that I pointed out to you yesterday.

Then I would also like to make a few comments about something that has been mentioned, that has been found – and it has not only been found by the one person mentioned yesterday, but similar things are being said and spread by a great many people – that one can feel the vowels, the tones, in the organism: I in the head, E more in the larynx, A in the chest, O in the abdomen, U very low down.

Now, these things are indeed correct, and you will no longer be surprised that these things have a certain correctness if you bear in mind that everything that exists in the outside world in the form of sound corresponds to very specific arrangements in our organism. But on the other hand, we must not forget: If such things are proclaimed without proper instruction – and proper in this case means only instruction that can speak from a certain spiritual-scientific experience – if such things are proclaimed without precise knowledge of the very interconnections that I have pointed out in a specific case today, that is, the interrelations between the astral body, the etheric body and so on, if they are trumpeted out into the world without reasonable guidance in the spiritual-scientific sense and people then do all kinds of exercises in this sense, then, indeed, quite embarrassing things can come about. If, for example, someone does breathing exercises of some kind and – as was hinted at yesterday – strongly visualizes the vowel when breathing and in doing so gets the feeling: the I sits in the head, the E in the larynx, and so on – this can certainly be right. But if he is not instructed in a sensible way, it can happen that the I remains in the head and sings continuously at the top of the head, and the E remains in the larynx and rumbles there. And if the A in the chest and abdomen also do their thing, then something similar to what Dr. Husemann has described in an excellent way for Staudenmaier in Munich, who also came up with very strange things because, as a person who has no experience at all in how to use such things, , he has actually gradually accumulated a whole legion of fools in his own organism, so many fools that these fools have simply suggested to him that this breeding of fools should now also be cultivated, that universities and schools should be founded so that all this folly can be taken even further. And you can really imagine that a naive mind has the answer for this: Now I'm supposed to pay taxes for him to live in his monkey cage with his magic, aren't I!

But today there are actually a great many things that simply boil down to the fact that the people who devote themselves to such things – and there is a certain greed even for such things – that these people are really driven crazy, you could say they are actually driven crazy. So such things are not entirely harmless, and it is good when attention is drawn to them.

You see, if you, as was the case with me before the war - now it is just no longer possible - if you had to travel, so to speak, through half of Europe more often, you really found a perpetual phenomenon throughout this half of Europe. I don't know how many people have noticed it, but those who live in spiritual science also acquire a certain talent for observation for external things, they simply see certain things. For example, they cannot simply stay in a hotel and not see all the letters in the porter's lodge for people who have arrived or who have not arrived. Letters are there from people who may have just skipped the city or this hotel due to the necessity of the trip and so on. Now, however, there was one recurring phenomenon in such porter's lodges, also in other places, again and again: these were the postings of a certain, as they were called, psychological-occult center. They sent such announcements to all possible addresses they could get hold of, about an “occult system” through which one could train oneself for all kinds of things. For example, one could train oneself to make a favorable impression on other people. In particular, one could train oneself as a commercial agent to easily persuade people to buy one's goods. Or one could also train oneself to do other interesting things, for example, to make the opposite sex fall in love with you easily and the like. Well, these things were sent out, and these things actually found a great deal of interest in the world. Then the war, didn't it, threw a bit of a wrench into these calculations for the simple reason that it had gradually become unpleasant that these things were being censored. And since censorship has not been abolished today either, at least in most areas, but on the contrary is still in effect in a very strange way, efforts to advocate occultism in this way have not yet been rewarded, and one notices less of these stories today. But I think they are being passed more and more from person to person, without using the postal system and similar things. So I just wanted to say that this vocal breathing game is not without significance and does have an embarrassing side.

Now yesterday various questions were asked that obviously relate to the statements I made in the first recitation lesson, which were only a few remarks for the time being, and that were linked to what Mr. Baumann said about the musical aspect. Well, with regard to the most important thing, of course, I must refer to the following lessons on declamation, but perhaps I can also make some aphoristic remarks there.

For example, the question was asked what changes in the way of speaking, in the art of acting, could be brought about by spiritual science. A term was used, if I understood it correctly – because it is possible that I did not understand it – that was supposed to replace physical eloquence. I think I remember this term, but I have absolutely no idea what is meant by “physical eloquence”!

Interjection: facial expressions are meant.

Oh, facial expressions as physical eloquence? Well, if that is meant, it is a rather occult expression. But perhaps we can also make a few comments on the matter by anticipating some of what still needs to be said in the lessons in context, and which perhaps can only be presented here in somewhat aphoristic form. I would like to say something about the way of speaking and acting in the art of acting, which has also undergone a rich history. One need only recall that Goethe also rehearsed his plays, for example, “Iphigenia,” with his actors in such a way that he had a baton, that he placed the greatest value on meter. And people in the second half of the 19th century would probably have described what Goethe called the beauty of his acting as a kind of chanting or something similar. There was indeed a great emphasis on meter. And one should not imagine that when Goethe himself played Orestes, for example, he went wild in the way that I have seen some Orestes actors go wild in on stages that are not even modern. When a certain Krastel played Orestes, yes, sometimes you felt the need to get a cage to contain his wildness. So one should not imagine that Goethe himself might have played the role of Orestes. On the contrary: he softened and smoothed out the very thing that was present in the content as strength and intense inner life by carefully observing the meter. So that there was moderation and balance in the manner of delivery that Goethe used for his Orestes.

As for facial expressions, it may be said that in earlier times – and these times are not so far back – these facial expressions were much more subject to the laws of theatrical art than they were in the last third of the 19th century. To a certain extent, stereotypical movements were used for certain types of feelings, and these were adhered to. So that it was less important, for example, to see in detail how some hand movement expresses some wild passion, but rather to see how some hand movement is, how it runs, how it has to connect to a previous hand movement, creating a beautiful form, and how it transitions to the next hand movement. So it was the inner shaping that was most important in facial expressions. And to the same extent that this artistry in both speech and facial expressions declined, to the same extent did the naturalistic immersion in the individual gesture and the individual word come about, and what then ultimately became the demand of naturalism for the entire drama was that which cannot actually be followed in the serious sense. Because, if it came down to only showing a front or back room in the stage set, where the same things happened that would naturally happen in a front or back room in three hours, , then one would actually have to say: the stage space would be designed in a completely naturalistic way if the side with the curtain were also closed – and the last naturalistic thing that one has striven for on the stage would actually have been achieved with something like that. It would have been quite interesting if, for example, the aesthetic wishes of Arno Holz had also led to the demand that the stage area be closed off at the front by a wall, so that it would now quite naturally depict a back room. One could have seen what impression such naturalism, such complete naturalism, would have made on the audience.

I know that when you take things to such grotesque extremes, it is very easy to find fault with them. But in the end, extreme naturalism really comes down to the fact that you can't really say anything other than that it is the last consequence.

And so it is with this pushing of the actor into the ordinary naturalistic way of speaking and into the naturalistic gesture. In more artistic times, the other tendency prevailed. There the gesture strove for the beautiful, plastic form, for the moving plastic form. And the spoken word strived more back to the musical. So that in fact the theatrical presentation was also lifted out of the ordinary naturalism, in that the actors moved as they did on stage for the older among us, with those tragedians and tragic actresses whom the younger ones no longer knew, like Klara Ziegler and others. There you could still see the last echoes of decadence. They couldn't do the things anymore, but they still did them with the last remnants of plastic stagecraft, and they still had in their manner of speaking what sound and even tone and even melos had in speaking.

It was interesting: those who, on the one hand, went wild, went wild naturalistically, like Krastel, on the other hand, did not want to become naturalistic – their temperament got the better of them – they did not want to become naturalistic. Therefore, however, they also took their path to the musical in speaking in such a way as the others did to the plastic in movement. I don't know if any of you still remember such things; but if you have seen and heard Krastel on the Viennese stage more than once, you may still have the sound of Krastel's singing in your ears.

So, by returning to earlier forms of acting and mime, we are dealing with a convergence of theatrical performance with the musical and the plastic. And basically, all art is based on the fact that certain archetypes of this art, I would say, split, that the individual forms, the differentiated forms of art emerged from what was a kind of singing art in prehistoric times. And when someone like Richard Wagner came along and directed his whole heart and soul back to the archetypes of artistry, then this striving for the Gesamtkunstwerk emerged from him. But the further we go back in the development of the human spirit, the more we find that what is separate today flows together. For example, at least for the older times of Greek civilization, we can assume that there was only a slight difference between recitation and song. Recitation was very much sung. And song approached recitation. What later became differentiated into recitation and song was thoroughly unified. And it was probably the same with the northern peoples. What the northern peoples had was not one-sided singing and one-sided saying, that is, declaiming; but it was the art of declamation that arose from the Nordic way— just as the art of recitation arose from the southern type. It was the art of declamation and the song of the north, which was based on quite different foundations than Greek song, which in turn were a kind of unity. So we are dealing with a differentiation of the arts. And it must be assumed that in the old form, singing, i.e. music, recitation or declamation and rhythmic movement, the art of dance, were connected in a unified way. They sounded together as a unified whole.

This art of dance was then the older form of eurythmy. And it is absolutely — although this can only be recognized with spiritual scientific research methods — it is absolutely, albeit in a somewhat different form, because everything is of course subject to development, as a eurythmic part in the Greek unity of singing and recitation art, this eurythmy. So that this eurythmy is definitely something that was part of musical life in older times. And basically we are not doing anything different today than going back to earlier forms of artistic expression in eurythmy. Except that we naturally have to take into account the fact that the arts have now advanced so much. So that the close connection between singing, recitation and eurythmy, as it certainly still existed in Greece in the time of Aeschylus, cannot exist. We have to take more account of the fact that we have come to a differentiation. Therefore, the forms of eurythmy today must be sought through real inspiration, intuition and imagination.

They are. I have always mentioned this in a certain way before eurythmic performances, in a kind of introduction: one must not imagine that something has simply been taken over from the old eurythmic forms; but what was previously done more instinctively has been raised into consciousness in the sense in which it must be done in our time. And this visible language of eurythmy is directly sensed and received from the spiritual world. For basically all human beings eurhythmy! All of you eurhythmy, namely your ether body. Then, when you speak, you eurhythmy. The secret of speaking consists in the fact that the entire ether body follows the impulses of the vowel and the consonant, the entire arrangement of the sentence formation. Everything that is presented in eurythmy is mirrored in the movements of the etheric body when people speak. And speaking is based only on the fact that what is spread throughout the entire etheric body in movements is concentrated in the physical through the larynx and its neighboring organs. So that he who can see the etheric body of the person speaking perceives speech twice: in the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs and in the etheric body as a whole. And when we practise eurythmy, we do nothing other than cause the physical body to perform the movements that the etheric body performs when a person speaks. The only difference is that we naturally have to round off, shape and transform everything that the ordinary human etheric body does into art, into beauty and the like.

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If every person were to practise eurythmy continually, I can assure you that not everyone would be able to do so artistically! The results are not always beautiful, although the process itself can be extremely interesting. And I once saw an extremely interesting group doing eurythmy. It was in Hermannstadt in 1889, and I was traveling from Vienna to Hermannstadt on Christmas Eve. And I had the misfortune of missing the connecting train in Budapest. So I had to take a train that went via Szegedin instead of Debrecen, and I arrived at the Hungarian-Transylvanian border on that Christmas Eve. There, where I had to wait for twelve hours, I met a group of people playing cards. It was, as they say, a motley crew from all the different nationalities that can be found in this corner of the world. Well, I took up the position of an observer. It was not a pleasant position, because the table at which I was to eat my supper looked so tempting that one would have liked to take out one's pocket knife and scrape off the dirt. And similar things could be observed. But I watched. The first player dealt the cards. Now you should have seen the eurythmy that sprang from the eyes of the others! The second played the cards – there were already two of the company lying on the table. Then the third played the cards, and then two more were lying under the table. And when the other cards were played, there was a colorful jumble: a wonderful but not beautiful eurythmy performed by these etheric bodies!

But there is so much to be learned about the human being and human nature by observing such scenes, where the human being's astral body comes into such a terribly angry movement, expressing all passions and then dominating the etheric body. And then there is the screeching of the etheric body when it screams! You can imagine that they shouted in confusion. And it was precisely this shouting that was then expressed in eurythmy. A lot can be studied from this. But when it comes to beautiful eurythmy, these movements must first be rounded off a little, translated into beauty.

But I am drawing your attention to certain processes that must precede the establishment of eurythmy if this eurythmy is not to be something fantastically contrived, but if it is to be what I have always presented in the introductions to the eurythmic performances. And I say such things in particular because it is very often imagined that everything that is presented in spiritual science and the art that is built up out of it is just pulled out of a hat. It is not pulled out of a hat, but is based on very thorough work.

Now this is, at least in essence, what I noted yesterday in relation to these matters.

There is still something about the Chinese scale. What was mentioned yesterday about the Chinese scale is not uninteresting when considered in connection with what I have just spoken about today. I said: the musical fact that takes place in the outer world corresponds to something in the human constitution. And if it is said today that the human being consists of these and these limbs, which interact in this and that way – physical body, etheric body, astral body and so on – then one can say in a certain way: there is also inner music in it, and this inner music corresponds to our outer musical reality.

But things are constantly changing as humanity develops. And a Chinese person is a different kind of human being from a European. A Chinese still has many connections between the physical body and the etheric body, the etheric body and the sentient soul, the sentient soul and the mind or emotional soul, and so on, which have already completely disappeared in European man. This constitution of the Chinese person now corresponds to the Chinese scale. And if one studies music history in such a way, for example, by taking a sensible approach to the development of the scale system, and if one has an understanding of the connection between the inner human organization and the outer musical facts, one can look back from the scales and from many other musical facts to the constitution of the respective human group or race, and so on.

Now, just a moment ago, I was also made aware of a difference of opinion regarding what I meant by delving into the sound yesterday.

I did not mean that tones are still present in the sequence of time, which might resonate together and then be perceived as one tone. This is not meant. Rather, what is meant is that today, in relation to the evolution of humanity, one begins to speak of an organization within the tone, to split the tone within oneself, so that one is, as it were, heading towards going deeper into the tone, going down below the tone and going beyond the tone above, in contrast to what was experienced by many people until our world time simply as one tone. to speak of a division, to split the tone within oneself, so that one is, as it were, heading towards going deeper into the tone, going down below the tone and, as it were, going beyond the tone above it to another tone. And then, I thought, when you have the actual tones that have been modified by the two neighboring tones that you have actually developed, when you have these three tones, you can express the varied main tone. It is then a slightly different tone. And you will notice that you have to shift one of the newly emerging tones downwards and the other upwards. But when you do that, you don't come across our usual tones, but tones that our current tone systems don't have. And in this way, I believe, an expansion of our tone system will indeed have to come about.

And it is also the case that, in a sense, an opposite process to our present-day tone system has led to it again. Our present-day tone system has also only come about through all kinds of superimpositions of tone sensations. Our tones would not have been immediately understood in certain ages.

I believe that a change is currently taking place in the way we experience sound, and that just as a very specific kind of music is emerging from the sometimes quite grotesque forms of experimentation, something is also announcing itself that wants to get out. For example, I have to say: either I don't understand Debussy at all, or I can only understand him in such a way that he foresaw something of this living into the sound. It is a completely different kind of musical feeling through Debussy than, for example, even in Wagner. Isn't it, you can say that.

So that is what I actually meant, that you find a kind of melody from the individual tone, which you then just spread out in time. But you only get this melody if you have a different tone system. That is what I meant.

There is still another question about Goethe's relationship to the theory of tone. This is, I would say, a somewhat complicated chapter, for Goethe's relationship to the theory of tone has not only one, but two sources, two starting points. From his correspondence with Zelter, we learn a great deal about the way in which Goethe, at his most mature point of view, thought about tone and music. But that actually had two sources. One source was that he had a certain naive musical understanding. He was not exactly diligent in music lessons. This may well be related to the fact that he was not exactly diligent in other subjects either, where the teachers were quite foolish. And, isn't it true that if we are familiar with Goethe's spelling at a certain age of his life, then we know that if someone were to get their hands on a Goethe manuscript from Goethe's archive today, say from around 1775 – so he was well into his twenties – a modern high school teacher would say of such a manuscript: “quite careless,” it would be full of red lines and “quite insufficient” would be written underneath. And so the one source actually shows more of his naive understanding of music than of what he had learned.

But then there is another source of Goethe's theory of sound: his attempt to gain a view, which could be called a general physical view, from his theory of colors. And, isn't it true, this theory of colors is very original and formed with enormous inner diligence and entirely from the matter at hand. But he could not conduct original research in all fields of physics. And so he formed many of his views on the theory of sound by creating analogies to the theory of colors. He sketched out – he only presented everything schematically – and provided schematics for the theory of sound in which he tried to bring the phenomena of music into an analogy with what he experienced in color, in the phenomena of light. That is the second source.

Now, as a third point — which is not a source but a way of looking at the matter — Goethe adds something else, namely that Goethe already had an instinctive feeling for those paths that we are uncovering today as spiritual-scientific paths. In many of Goethe's writings, one finds a remarkable experience that he then expresses in the most diverse ways, sometimes as theoretically as he did in his theory of colors, sometimes analogously theoretically as in his theory of sound, but also in poetry. What was instinctively present in Goethe's subconscious soul in this way lives its way into his works in a remarkable way. In this connection, those of his poems that remained unfinished, such as 'Pandora', are particularly interesting. Had this 'Pandora' been completed, it would have been something written entirely out of the spiritual world. It would have to be truly observed in the spiritual world.

Now, Goethe did not arrive at spiritual insight, but he was completely true inwardly. Therefore, he did not finish the matter, which remained stuck in this way, out of an inner weighing back and forth. And to study this, how Goethe always got stuck in such things, and because he was a true personality, a true nature, then left the matter alone, is one of the most interesting things in Goethe's poetry. It shows how Goethe had a feeling that, I would say, was of a spiritual-scientific, anthroposophical nature. And that was the third thing. So that in fact he saw more in the world of sounds in an ingenious way than would actually have corresponded to his learned understanding of music.

But it was precisely this that helped him to overcome his prejudices. Therefore, a certain spiritual-scientific trait also comes into the schematic representation of Goethe's theory of sound. And what is found in these sound theory schemas, for example, about the relationships, the polar relationships between major and minor, can of course be interpreted in the most diverse ways. There is only a scheme, and there is one parallelized with the other, the other parallelized with the one. So of course you have to know Goethe very well if you want to understand how he thought of it himself. But you can see from it that there are ways to be found to get very favorable results. And Goethe's theory of sound could also be inspiring for a physicist in spiritual scientific terms, just as it would be for a musician. For there is certainly an artistic element at work in Goethe's scientific work. And in his scheme for the theory of sound, there is really something that gives a kind of, I would even say score-like impression. There is something musical in it. Just as you can also find something truly musical in the way Goethe's theory of colors is presented.

Finally, read Goethe's theory of colors with regard to its composition, to the sequence of results, to the sequence in the description of the experiments! I recommend that you do so. And then read any standard physics book, that is, the optical chapter of a contemporary physics book, and you will perceive a huge difference. This difference also has a meaning, because the time will come when one will already feel towards the scientific presentation: That which considers, considers more the how. — It is actually only in the way something is presented that the way it is understood is expressed. And it is also one of the saddest achievements of modern times that, in a sense, the less artistically one can write, the worse the style, the better lecturer one becomes, and the more artistically one writes, the worse the lecturer one is. Of course, this is not stated, but the system is set up accordingly. And what has been achieved in terms of barbarisms in scientific stylization in recent times will no doubt be the subject of interesting cultural-historical chapters in the future, the likes of which present-day humanity can hardly imagine. “Scientific barbarism of style in the 19th and 20th centuries” will probably one day fill many pages of future literary works, if there are still oddballs around who write as much about things as the current oddballs write about some things.

But now I believe that I have essentially exhausted the questions. I don't know if this or that has been left out, but you see, not everything can be exhausted at once. These things are only intended to stimulate here. These lectures and exercises are only intended to provide suggestions! I hope that you will not leave here without the feeling of having received such suggestions, after what I hope will be quite some time.

Question: What is the concept of art that is not art at all, actually? What is the essence of art, and how does it differ from art history?

The question is posed in an extraordinarily abstract way and, in my opinion, in an extraordinarily inartistic way, for the simple reason that a statuary of a relationship to art and art science that boils down to a distinction cannot be properly felt in spiritual science.

You see, if you want to understand how the spiritual scientific stimulates artistic comprehension, then you have to have a sense for the difference between the way some aestheticians have written about architecture, sculpture, music and the like. After all, Moriz Carriere was regarded by many people, not only in Munich, as a great esthete, perhaps not for an art historian in your sense, but that does not matter, one could also bring examples from this region. But when Carriere, the esthete, lived in Munich, there also lived a painter. I met one of those, and on a particular occasion, when I had all sorts of things to show him, we also talked about Carriere. And he said: Oh yes, I still remember quite well how we, when we were young painters, young badgers, were completely absorbed in the artistic, talked about Carriere and called him the “aesthetic grunt of delight”.

Now, one may indeed have great respect for the abstract expression of one's thoughts on the artistic; but to demand - after speaking of an artistic conception of art that one must simply feel - that one should now in turn give a definition of the essence of art, I think that is something that does not go quite well. Of course it would be terribly easy to define the essence of art, because it has truly been defined many dozen times in the course of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. And if necessary, one can still imagine what someone who does not think that the artistic can be grasped through the approach of the humanities means by art science. But the point is not to get stuck with certain prejudices that one has once adopted, but to be able to place oneself in the living movement of intellectual life and go along with what is really demanded today from the depths of humanity: a coming together of science, art and religion, not a furthering of the splitting of these three currents of human spiritual life.

Of course, you can still cause offence today if the way you look at art has to take a completely different form from the traditional, conventional approach of some art scholars. But today we are at the point where we have to move forward in the direction that has been indicated here. And that also means that questions such as What is the essence of art? What is the essence of man? - which, according to the definition, will eventually cease altogether. It is a matter of our having to understand more and more what people like Goethe meant when he says in his introduction to the theory of colors: One cannot really speak about the essence of light; colors are the acts of light. And anyone who gives a complete description of the color phenomena also says something about the essence of light. So anyone who addresses the facts of any field, any field of art, in a form that comes close to the experience of that field of art, gradually provides a kind of consideration of the essence of the field of art in question. But this will be overcome altogether, that definitions are placed at the top or somehow without context, that questions are raised: What is the essence of man, what is the essence of art and the like?

We had such a strange case here yesterday; someone said: Wagner - thesis, Bruckner - antithesis, and spiritual science should now be the synthesis. Yes, you see, something like that, placed in a certain place, if, for example, I said something sensible about Wagner, then said something sensible about Bruckner, and then knew how to say something sensible about something traditional, then, so to speak, summarizing the many, I could use the abstract, bloodless concepts: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, to summarize. Then it would make sense. But as a single dictum it is impossible. So you have to have a feeling for something when something is an organism,

I will give you an example from another area: Hegel's Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. The last chapter is about philosophy itself. Yes, what is said there about philosophy itself is said in addition to everything that has gone before. So that one has absorbed everything that has gone before. It is magnificent, a tremendous architectural conclusion. Please, take this last chapter away and take it for yourself, as something like a definition of philosophy – it is pure nonsense. It is pure nonsense! This is what draws attention to the fact that we must again enter into the experience of the whole from the understanding of the individual, how we must gradually rise from the stick we have been trained in, in terms of individual characteristics, to grasping the whole, to overlooking the whole.

And in this sense, I think that it does lead to a kind of understanding when one shows what is happening externally as a musical fact in its other pole in inner experience; and when one then empathizes with what is going on in the person, then I believe that this is indeed a more artistic conception than that of some musicology! And I would like to add that today, for easily understandable reasons, we cannot go far enough. If we had already progressed so far that we could take it all the way to the imaginations and the description of the imaginations, then we might also be able to create something similar to what the Greeks created when they spoke of Apollo's lyre, actually meaning this inner part of the human being as a living musical instrument that reproduces the harmonies and the melos in the cosmos. We are not even yet so far advanced that we can feel what the Greeks felt when they heard the word Cosmos. This word is not connected with some abstraction of a modern scientist, with a certain description of the universe, but with the beauty of the universe, with the harmony of that in the cosmos which is actually connected with the beauty of the universe.

Humanity once proceeded from a kind of interaction of that which is differentiated today. We must indeed be able to experience these differentiations, but we must in turn have the opportunity to see this differentiation together, to hear it resound together, to work ourselves into a living whole, so that what is the result of knowledge also becomes the content of an artistic work and the revelation of a religious experience.

That is what we must strive for again. That which is wisdom can certainly appear in the form of beauty and reveal itself in the form of a religious impulse. Then we will experience something that still belongs to a more distant future: that we ourselves find a synthesis between an altar and a laboratory bench. When we can stand with the reverence for nature with which we should actually stand before it, then science becomes a form of worship for us. And when we as human beings imbibe those skills, that manual dexterity that corresponds to such an understanding of nature and of the spirit and the soul, then all our dealings with science will also flow into beautiful forms.

Today this still seems like a fantasy. But it is a reality! For it is something that must be striven for and realized, lest humanity descend ever deeper into decadence.

A participant asks about the deeper meaning of the fairy tale of the Bremen Town Musicians, and whether it has something to do with the context of the human constitutional elements. “But of course I am willing to go without the answer today if Dr. Steiner is too tired.”

That is not the reason, my dear Mr. Büttner, but I would like to say the following about it: I once said some things in Berlin and also gave some examples of the way in which spiritual science can be used to understand fairy tales, and I actually had to apply quite a lot of research effort to get to the bottom of fairy tales. Because, you see, I really don't want to be one of those people who live by the saying:

When interpreting, you are fresh and lively;
because if you don't interpret it, you just interpret it.

That was never my principle. Rather, it always took me a great deal of effort to get to the heart of a fairy tale, sometimes in all possible regions of research. And so I have to say: even if I were even more tired than I am today, it would give me the greatest pleasure to be able to make you happy with an interpretation, an explanation of the fairy tale of the Bremen Town Musicians. But I have never studied it and therefore have nothing to say about it. And so I ask you to wait until an opportunity presents itself in this or in a next life, after the matter has been researched.

Question: How does spiritual science view the phenomenon of instinctive so-called absolute hearing?

Dr. Steiner has made it very easy for us to experience the spirit of the living in her declamation. Inspired by this, I would like to ask what kind of singing a student should do? I can assure you that in the new way of practising art that has been entrusted to us, for the establishment of a new art of singing, for example, no teacher can really come into consideration as a helper for a male voice that is to be educated. I would therefore also like to ask whether a woman can also work as a trainer.

There doesn't seem to be much homeopathy in the question today! First, yes, that's right, after all, there is not much to be connected or connected to it, other than what is present in any other human ability. It is quite reasonable to assume, although I can only express this with caution here because it is a question that I have not yet dealt with in a truly research-based way, but it is reasonable to assume that this instinctive presence of an absolute sense of tone consciousness in a number of people – I believe in fewer people than one would usually think – is based on some peculiarity of the etheric or astral body, which is then somehow reflected in the physical body. But it would be necessary to conduct very specific research. It is only very likely to me that this absolute sound consciousness is based on the fact that a very specific configuration of the three semi-circular canals is also present in this case. So that is probable – but as I said, I would only like to express myself with caution here – this organ, which has many functions, including, among other things, an organ of equilibrium for certain equilibrium conditions, that this organ probably also has something to do with an absolute sense of tone.

Now to what was said in connection with Dr. Steiner's declamation. I can assure you, the question is indeed asked, but not actually asked in such a way that one finds out something that the questioner actually wants when he asks: What should be taught in singing, how should it be taught, so that what one has in mind in the spiritual-scientific sense by good vocal art can be achieved as quickly as possible? – Yes, I must say that, in my feeling, there is a great deal of philistinism mixed up in this question. Because it is true that one must seriously admit that spiritual science has a certain influence on people, that it has a certain effect on people and that people are not remodeled by spiritual science – they are not worked on from the outside — but that they come into a position to bring out of themselves certain forces that have so far remained latent in the development of humanity and to reveal a deeper human nature through them.

In this way the most diverse branches of human spiritual life will also be further developed. And among the many things that could be said about such a question, one thing can be said by pointing out that, above all, we should get away from talking about all the many methods of teaching singing. I do not like to say this at all, because the localities where these methods are hatched are so terribly populated that one does not know where to stop when expressing one's opinion about present-day methods of teaching singing! I do not want to dwell on this, but I would like to draw attention to one thing.

I believe that one must begin to understand what it means not to work according to a method, not to ask: How must this and that be placed, how must breathing be arranged, how must the many preparations be made before one even gets around to singing anything? Most of today's methods are actually preparation methods, methods of attitudes, methods of breathing and so on. One must disregard all of this, which actually amounts to regarding the human organism a bit like a machine and oiling it in the right way, bringing the wheels to the right axis height and the like. It is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but you get what I mean. Instead of this, one should see that especially in art lessons an enormous amount depends on the personal, imponderable relationship between teacher and pupil, and one should come to associate with it an idea of what it means to actually lift one's consciousness out of the larynx and everything that produces the sound, and to be more consciously in touch with the surrounding air, to sing more with the environment of the larynx than with the larynx itself. I know that many people today cannot yet connect with what is said, but one must just gain these concepts. More emphasis must be placed on how one experiences, I might say, listening back, by singing but hearing, by learning to listen to oneself, but in such a way that one does not do something while listening, as if one were walking and constantly stepping on one's feet; that would, of course, disturb the singing. So when you come to live less in the physiological and more in the artistic as such, and when the teaching also proceeds more in the intervention of the artistic, then you will come upon the path to which the questioner may have been pointed.

However, I do believe that a pedagogy such as we cultivate through the Waldorf School will also gradually achieve success for art and singing lessons if we are given the external means to do so.

What Mr. Baumann meant yesterday with regard to the Waldorf School is also present in eurythmy and in singing, in the musical element. If it is not yet possible to do with the musical and the vocal as it should be according to his ideal, it is truly not due to our education, not at all to our education, at least not to the education of our teachers , but rather it is more a matter of the education of those who, from completely different backgrounds, could perhaps provide appropriately large rooms in which musical instruments can also be properly accommodated, and well-ventilated rooms for eurythmy and the like. I would like to make a point of mentioning this. And I believe that what could already be achieved in Waldorf schools today, including in the field of music and eurythmy teaching, could be quite different if we only had to deal with the pedagogy of our teachers and not with the pedagogy of other things that are necessary when a school is to be founded.

I was asked today – I don't know if the gentleman is here – whether he has a feeling that schools should also be founded in other places. I said that you just have to start at the beginning. If you have money, then we'll talk further!

Well, that is perhaps also something that hits the nail on the head. Or did you mean it differently? I don't want to ascribe to you, Mr. Baumann, that you couldn't have meant it differently.

Paul Baumann: Now the question about male voices,

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps it would be a disappointment if I left it out altogether: Can a woman also work as a creator for a male voice? Since I have already said that it essentially depends on the personal imponderable, I would naturally like to extend this to answering this question, and I do believe that under certain circumstances this could even be a very favorable relationship, that this man could even learn a great deal, much more than if he were to be taught by a man – especially if the woman is still beautiful or otherwise intact!

after a lecture by Professor Franz Thomastik on acoustic problems.

If I myself add just a few remarks, it is to point out, as it were, that this matter should not really be discussed at all, but rather that we should continue to work. I believe I am even expressing Dr. Thomastik's own views. It is indeed extremely important for the realization of the ideas that have been presented here to now really come up with the principles according to which the materials for the instruments must be used.

Now there is a certain difficulty because the materials we use for musical instruments are created in such a way that they represent something secondary. We must be clear about the fact that we do not actually perceive the real sound. In one of the last lectures - I think, as you were already there, I said: We actually perceive the sound as it expresses itself, announces itself in the air. And air is not the most suitable medium for sound among earthly elements. Sound would actually only be perceived adequately in its own ether. Among earthly elements, however, one would actually have to get used to perceiving sound in its own essence, if possible in water or in liquid, moist air, because that is where it actually is in reality.

I do not mention this to express a curiosity – reality is sometimes much stranger than one would think – but because the wood from which we build our instruments are taken from plants, because they are really formed from the clayey part of the moisture, both from the moisture of the earth from which the root grows and from the moisture in the air. And in a certain sense, one can see from the external configuration, let us say, of a tree whether the wood is suitable for a low or high pitch. The wood of a tree with more crenate leaves will always be better for a higher tone than the wood of a tree with different leaves (see illustration). This is because the tree is formed out of the tone; it itself produces the tone. And from this the principle will arise, which I have not yet had occasion to work out, but which will certainly be recognized if Dr. Thomastik's interesting explanations can be followed up further. Much will be able to arise from the things that have been stated here in a truly very spirited way, also in the spiritual-scientific sense.

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So we have to say that it is a matter of studying the tree entirely from its origin and studying the structure of the wood, which essentially originates from what the aqueous element, the moist element, contains, which is the actual sound carrier. For example, one way of doing this would be to study the absorbency of the wood in question purely from the perspective of the situation. One wood absorbs more water, the other less. This would already yield something; but it would still be a very rough processing.

I would like to make one more point. It is extremely interesting how Dr. Thomastik has developed, so to speak, an ideal architecture for musical listening. And this is definitely something that can be pursued further. I would just like to draw your attention to one thing. Reality is actually an extremely complicated thing, and it is extremely difficult, I would say, to construct reality from one corner of the world, so to speak. Let us say, for example, that one could ask: Why are our columns over there in our construction made of different types of wood? And one could relate these types of wood to the types of wood from which the instruments are to be built. That would be wrong, because that is not the function of these types of wood; rather, the function of these types of wood consists in something else, which I will discuss in a moment, when I have said something in advance.

You see, it is easy to imagine how to build if you want to create an ideal listening experience. However, the following would still have to be taken into account: even if you were to copy exactly some existing room, such as a concert hall in a particular location with good acoustics, and then move it to a different location, the acoustics might not be the same at all. That remains the case nonetheless. But one could imagine an ideal room built entirely according to acoustic principles.

Now Dr. Thomastik has explained something extremely important, namely how one is disturbed when sitting in the concert hall, and sitting in front of the orchestra. The bassist sweats profusely, struggles, and you have to watch all of this, you have to see the various contortions and the like. You are completely disturbed in your devotion to the sound by what is visually in front of you, and also disturbed by the construction conditions and so on.

But let us imagine a space that is constructed even more from the acoustic, but I don't even want to say from the acoustic, but rather entirely from the musical corner. Yes, such a space cannot be prevented from being seen from the inside when we are sitting in it. We also have to look at it. If we do not at the same time establish the principle that the room is darkened the moment the music begins, then we cannot, since we also have eyes, merely listen. We cannot build it only acoustically, apart from the fact that we would also have to enjoy it before the music begins; otherwise we would also have to enter in the dark. Rooms built purely according to acoustic principles would not be more beautiful to look at than an orchestra is!

So it is necessary not only to construct reality from one corner, but to have an organ for constructing reality from the most diverse corners. And you see, in acoustics, the combination of observation and perception of a much wider range of factors is necessary to bring about such things, whereby a sound is heard in a room that is supposed to be beautiful at the same time in a way that is appropriate because it is not only reflected by the wall on which it falls, but also absorbed. It always penetrates a certain distance and is only then reflected back. The sense of material is there when you hear the sound in a certain space that has walls made of a certain material. And so, in order to evoke these possibilities of reflection, you have to look at various things together. And the seven different types of wood for the columns were chosen with this in mind. They are there specifically to serve the acoustics, that is, the acoustics that are produced by reflection.

And so it is with many other things. For example, the double dome in the building over there, which provides a soundboard, is constructed from such points of view, as well as possible.

Well, of course, there are other things to consider, especially the fact that you can't always go to the place where the acoustics can be achieved in the simplest way. A lot can be achieved by intuitive observation.

And the organ sunk into the earth is an extraordinarily ingenious idea! But it would present a certain difficulty, because the pipes' relative neutrality with respect to the external air would end at the moment we actually sank the organ into the earth. It would sound quite different in winter than in summer; it would have to be treated and tuned quite differently in winter than in summer. Above all, winter and summer would become intensely noticeable. And many other things come into consideration. So a whole series of extraordinarily difficult problems arise that cannot be solved from the perspective of acoustics alone, or even from the perspective of music alone.

Dr. Thomastik made an extremely interesting comment. It was that Vienna was actually the meeting place for all great musicians, and that these musicians were loyal to Vienna, had a lot in Vienna, even though they were not exactly living in clover there! I will tell you a simple thing that will show you that Vienna was supposed to be a gathering place for certain people. You can study the geological conditions in Europe by going over wide areas, of course this is to be understood cum grano salis, but that is a very small granum: the Vienna Basin, simply the ground on which Vienna stands, and the surrounding area, contains so much of the confluence of all European geological conditions that almost all of European geology can be studied in the Vienna Basin. Now, if you have any idea of what that means, how intimately everything in the spiritual realm is connected with the soil, if you consider what it means that Vienna is actually a compendium of all European soil conditions in Vienna, and if you consider that the substantial as such, the relationships of the substances to each other are actually the scale - no, chemical equivalent weights are actually tone relationships (gap in the transcript) - if you consider all this, you will see that, inwardly, one really does hit the mark based on cosmic relationships when one says that Vienna also has a spiritual and intellectual milieu in which musical geniuses in particular feel at home and are pleasantly touched.

It is also interesting to note that Graz is an unmusical city. Well, I think one need only go over the Murbrücke and listen to the unpleasant rushing of the Mur, in contrast to other rivers, and one will see that nature, in the flowing of the Mur, behaves in an extraordinarily offensive musical way. Isn't that so? It has an enormously unpleasant, especially in the rushing, unpleasant gradient! But that is also due to the very special configuration there. How much more musical it is when, let's say, you take the north-west train towards Vienna! The entire ground structure is already musical there. The mountains and everything are arranged musically. Graz may have many lovers, but the entire Alpine world, including the ground structure, is unmusically placed.

So, if you go beyond the purely musical, then extremely far-reaching problems are suggested. And I would actually like to regard this as a particularly favorable success for Dr. Thomastik's very valuable discussion today, if you, my dear friends, were to suggest as many such problems as possible.

I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that it is truly extraordinarily significant that musical instruments basically arose out of the traditions of the fourth post-Atlantean period. And as the fifth post-Atlantean period is emerging, musical instruments are entering a period of decadence. This is connected with the entire evolution of the fifth post-Atlantean period. And basically, this fifth post-Atlantic period is actually an unmusical one. The intellectual and the theoretical, which arose particularly in the 19th century, is something thoroughly unmusical. And it is connected with the whole inner character of the fifth post-Atlantic period that musical instruments have fallen into decadence. And of course it is not that easy to restore them to their former glory. Because – Dr. Thomastik will agree with me – if the demand were to arise for an organ builder to build an organ for him today that meets his ideals, we would have to wait until the next incarnation. I don't think that an organ builder today builds the kind of things that Dr. Thomastik mentioned in his interesting presentation. Dr. Thomastik does use a very beautiful comparison: if musical instruments were placed in the hands of a manufacturer, it would be like placing paints in the hands of a manufacturer. But that is the ideal of today's painters; they get their paints from the manufacturer, they no longer make their own paints. They become more and more dependent on the paint manufacturer, just as musicians have become dependent on organ builders, violin makers, and so on.

Now, from the point of view of spiritual development, it is therefore of very special importance that efforts such as those with this newly built violin emerge. Because the whole question of musical instruments is set in motion as a result. It actually serves the purpose we are seeking from our point of view: to combat the phenomena of decadence, which are so significant in all fields. And from this point of view, one would like to wish such work as that with this violin a really great success. Because this success is entirely in line with our humanistic endeavors.

These are just a few comments on the interesting lecture.

after a lecture by Leopold van der Pals

I would just like to say this: Mr van der Pals has rightly pointed out that, in something like the Chinese legend of the 'Moon Violin', there is no mention of the human being. And I believe he meant, didn't he, that this is something particularly striking, that the human being is thrown out of the human being's own being placed in the whole cosmos, in the musical sense. - This is connected with the inner meaning that such a legend has in oriental literature, including Chinese literature. In a certain sense, the human being is part of it: and what is meant is always a deeply felt, one could say for older times, instinctively clairvoyant knowing of the human being as being together with the whole cosmos.

In Chinese, there is a particularly deep awareness of the connection between the human head and the upper spheres, between the human rhythmic system, the lung-heart system and what is earth, in which man participates by breathing, in that the breath itself sets his rhythmic system in motion. And then it is the human being as a whole, in whom one senses that he is something new within the evolution of the earth, and cannot yet be directly related to anything cosmic, such as his head as a part or his chest organs as parts, but the relationship of the whole human being to the cosmos remains somewhat indeterminate.

But what remains indeterminate in the human being was called the moon in the human being. And there was a fundamental, if instinctive, awareness that what is, so to speak, the third link in a three-part human being is moon-like. This is also the basis of all spiritual scientific conceptions of the human being (see drawing, moon).

Now, we distinguish from this moon-like element that which, as it were, arises out of the entire rhythmic system, which, as it were, floats on the rhythmic system and represents the result of the rhythmic system. This is then the sun-like element (see drawing, sun). This would then have to be found mainly concentrated in the human heart.

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These two limbs of the human being are, as it were, located at the front in human nature. The solar aspect is that which he has not yet fully developed, not in the sense of the old planet, as my “Occult Science in Outline” suggests, but of the present sun shining in the sky.

In addition, there is that in man which is related to the rhythmic system: what is the structure of his nervous system, and what is related to the other planets. So that one has, for example, at the very top of the head, in relation to the entire nervous system, the central nervous system, Saturn (see drawing), that which then lies more towards the sense organs, towards the eyes: Jupiter, that which underlies the speech organs, the singing organs: Mars, that which leads more to the sympathetic nervous system: Venus and Mercury. So one would have the overall nature of the human being, as it came across from the moon, as that which underlies it. And one would have to distinguish five connecting lines that go back to the five planets:

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This would give us the inner organisation of the human being in the sense of an ideal, but very real, musical instrument within the human being.

This musical instrument would, as it were, be built up out of the moon-nature of the human being. And, as you know, in all older views of the human being, it is represented under the image of a tree or a plant. You only need to think of the world ash tree. This view goes back a long way. So you just need to imagine: the five stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, they descend on the human tree and stretch the lyre on it, so that it becomes a musical instrument. Above it all, descending from the spiritual universe, hovers the tuner of this instrument: the bird Phoenix, the immortal human soul.

This Chinese legend does indeed have a very significant meaning. And the reason why the human being stays away is because he is the music itself, because the legend does not talk about what is the main thing. It speaks of the parts that make up the entire musical instrument. It is a bit like when someone builds a violin and talks about the wood, the strings, the bridge, but not about the violin itself. In the same way, this Chinese legend speaks of nothing other than the human being, the becoming of these five stars, of the immortal soul; but precisely because the whole of which it is composed actually points to the human being, the human being is absent. It is this deep awareness of the connection between the actual music and human nature itself that underlies it.

That is why Mr. van der Pals was quite right when he said: anyone looking for the origin of melody is actually going completely astray if they try to find it in the present day. — He who would seek it would have to go back to the sacred scriptures and further and further back, and he would never come to the end of his research, because the melodies are really something that belongs to the ancient stock of an entire human cultural development.

One should actually say: it was not only that it arose from a truly deep feeling that someone like Nietzsche wrote as his first work: “The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music”, but – even if what what Mr. van der Pals said, that the art of music, as we understand it today, only really emerged at the end of the Middle Ages – musicality as such goes back very deep into the origin of humanity. And one could also say something along the lines of: the origin of all human spiritual life from the musical element. For anyone who has the right feeling for a small child would always want to say: the small child is actually born as a musical instrument. And the musicality of children is based on this primal connection of the melodious element with the human being.

But, as I said, to go into these things in detail today would truly be going too far. I just wanted to point it out. And the expression “moon violin” is also thoroughly justified, grounded in the whole view, for it is precisely the lunar nature of the human being that is appealed to here when one speaks of the fact that the moon violin is being built.

This is the 9th of 12 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities from 1906 to 1923. The series of lectures is entitled: The Essence of Music and the Experience of Tone. Another name of this lecture is: Human Expression through Tone and Word.

I have already pointed out in recent lectures how certain functions or activities of the human being, which emerge in early childhood, are in reality a metamorphosis of activities which belong to man between death and a new birth, i.e. in his pre-earthly life. At birth the child is not yet fully adapted to the earthly gravitation, the earthly conditions of equilibrium. We see the child slowly and gradually adapt himself to these earthly conditions as he learns to stand and walk. Thus the adaptation of the body to the position of equilibrium for earthly life is a faculty which man does not bring with him. He must acquire it during his earthly life.

Now we know that the physical body of man in all its form is the result of a mighty spiritual activity—an activity which man performs in unison with Beings of the Higher Worlds between death and a new birth. Yet that which man forms and creates in this activity—we may call it in a sense the spiritual germ of his future physical earthly body—is not so formed as already to contain the faculty of upright gait and posture. This faculty is only incorporated in man's nature when, after his birth, he gradually finds his way into the conditions of equilibrium, into the forces of earthly existence. For in the pre-earthly life, balance or equilibrium is not the same as it is on earth, where it signifies the power to walk and stand. In the pre-earthly life, balance and equilibrium signify the relation man has to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and so forth—to the Beings of the Hierarchies—a relation manifold and differentiated according as one feels oneself drawn more towards one Being or more towards another. This constitutes the state of equilibrium in the spiritual worlds. And this, man loses in a certain sense when he descends on to the earth. In the mother's womb he is neither in the conditions of equilibrium of his spiritual existence, nor is he yet in the conditions of equilibrium of his earthly life. He has left the former and has not yet entered into the latter.

It is similar in the case of speech. The language which we speak here on earth is, of course, essentially adapted to earthly conditions. In the first place it is an expression of our earthly thoughts. These earthly thoughts contain earthly information and earthly knowledge; and to all this our speech or language is adapted during our life on earth. But in the pre-earthly life as I have already explained, man has a very different language—one which does not go from within outwards, which does not mainly follow the out-breathing process, but the spiritual in-breathing or inspiration (which we observe to correspond to breathing in the pre-earthly life). Thus in pre-earthly existence, man's language is a living with the cosmic Logos; it is a living within the cosmic Word—the cosmic language from out of which all things of the world are made.

This too we lose when we descend on to the earth. We lose the life within the cosmic language, and acquire here on earth the language which serves us in the first place to express our thoughts—our earthly thoughts. This earthly language serves our mutual understanding—understanding as between human beings, all of whom are living on the earth.

And so it is with our thoughts themselves—our earthly thinking. Here on earth, our thinking is gradually adapted to the earthly conditions. In pre-earthly existence on the other hand, our thought is a living within the creative thoughts of the Cosmos.

Walking, Speaking and Thinking:—let us now consider, of these three, the middle member—human speech. We may indeed say that in speech there lies a most essential element of all earthly culture and civilisation. By speech, human beings come together here on earth, and one man finds the way to another. Bridging the gulf that lies between, soul meets with soul through speech. We feel that we have in speech something essential to our nature here on earth. And indeed our speech is the earthly reflection of our life in the Logos, in the cosmic Word. Thus it is particularly interesting to understand the connection of what man attains by great efforts here on earth, as speech and language, with the metamorphosis of speech and language yonder in the pre-earthly life. Indeed, when we study this relationship, we are led to perceive how the human being is inwardly constructed and organised out of the very element of spoken sound and music. And it is a happy coincidence at the present moment that in the cosmological studies we have pursued for some weeks, I can to-day insert the chapter on the expression of the human being through the words of speech and the sounds of song. It is our great pleasure in these days to be having so excellent a performance of song, here in our Goetheanum building.¹ Allow me therefore to-day, if I may say so, to express my personal gratitude for this happy artistic event in our midst, by telling you a little of the connection between the speech and song of man here on earth, and his life in that element which corresponds to the Sound in speech and song, in the spiritual world.

If we study the human organism as it stands before us here on earth, we know that it is through and through an image of the spiritual. Everything here—not only what man bears in himself, but also what surrounds him in external nature—is an image of the spiritual. Now when man expresses himself in speech or in song, he is really manifesting his whole nature—body, soul and spirit—not only outwardly but inwardly. In all that he brings forth by way of sound—whether the articulate sounds of speech or the musical notes of song—the full human being is in fact contained. How deeply and fully he is contained, we only begin to see when we understand more in detail what the human being is in that he speaks or sings.

Let us take our start from speech. In the historic evolution of mankind, speech, as we know, proceeded from something which originally was song. The farther we go back into pre-historic ages, the more does speech become recitative and eventually song. In distant ages of human evolution upon earth, the expression of the human being through sound was not really differentiated into song and speech, but these two were one. What is so often referred to as the primeval language of man was such that we might as well speak of it as a primeval song.

But we will now study speech in its present condition, where it has become very far removed from the pure element of song, and is steeped in the prosaic and intellectual quality. If we take speech as we have it to-day, we find in it two essential elements—consonant and vowel, All that we bring forth in speech is composed of a consonantal and of a vowel element. Now, the consonantal element is in reality entirely based upon the finer plastic structure of our body. Whether we pronounce a B or a P, an L or an M, in each case it rests upon the fact that something or other in our body has a certain plastic form. Nor is this confined by any means to the organs of speech and song alone. These organs only represent the highest culmination of what is here meant. For when the human being brings forth a musical note in song or an articulate sound in speech, his whole body really takes part in the process. The process that goes on in the organ of speech or song is but the final culmination of something that is taking place through the whole human being. Our human body therefore, as to its plastic form and structure, may really be conceived as follows. We take all the consonants there are in any language. They are always variations of twelve primary consonants, and indeed in the Finnish language you still find these twelve preserved very nearly in their pure, original nature; eleven are quite distinct, only the twelfth has grown a little indistinct, but it, too, is still present. Now, these twelve original consonants when rightly understood (and each of them can at the same time be conceived as a form), these twelve consonants taken together really represent the entire plastic structure of the human body. We may say therefore, without speaking figuratively in the least:—the human being is plastically expressed by the twelve primeval consonants.

What then is this human body? From the point of view—the musical point of view—we are now taking, the human body is nothing else than a great musical instrument. Even the external musical instruments—the violin or any other instrument of music—even these you can best understand by somehow perceiving in their form and shape a consonant or consonants. You must see them, as it were, built up out of the consonants. When we refer to the consonant element in speech, there must always be something in our feeling reminiscent of musical instruments; and the totality, the harmony of all consonants, represents the plastic sculpture of the human body.

And the vowel element—in this we have the soul which plays upon the instrument. The soul provides the vowel nature. Thus when you embody in speech the consonant and vowel elements, you have in every manifestation of speech or of song a self-expression of the human being. The soul of the human being plays in vowels upon the consonants of the musical instrument—the human body.

Now if, as I said, we are considering the speech that forms a part of present-day civilisation, we find that our soul, whenever it brings forth vowel sounds, makes use to a very great extent of the brain, the system of head and nerves. In earlier ages of human evolution, this was not the case to the same degree.

Let us consider for a minute the system of head and nerves. The whole structure of the head is permeated by forces which run along the nerve-strands. Now the activity which the nerve-strands here develop is entered and permeated by another activity, namely that which comes about through our breathing-in the air. The air which we breathe in passes through the spinal canal right up into the head, and the impact of the breathing beats in unison with the movements that are executed along the nerve-strands. Pressing upward to the head through the spinal canal, the current of the breath is perpetually meeting with the activity of the nerves in the head. We have not a separate nervous activity, and a separate breathing activity; we have in the head a harmony and mutual resonance of breathing activity and nervous activity. Now the man of to-day, having grown prosaic in his ordinary life, sets more store by the nerve forces than by the breathing impulses. He makes more use of his nervous system when he speaks; he permeates with nerve, if we might put it so, the instrument which through its consonantal nature shapes and forms the vowel currents.

In earlier ages of human evolution, this was not the case. Man lived not so much in his nervous system; he lived in the breathing system. Hence the primeval language was more like song. Now when the man of to-day sings, he takes what he does in speech—where he permeates it with the nervous activity of the nervous system—and restores it to the current of the breath. He consciously calls into activity this second stream—the breathing. It is the continuation of the breathing into the head which is directly called into activity when, as in song, the uttering of the vowel is added to the bringing forth of the note. But here in song man does not leave the element of breath; he takes back his now prosaic language into the poetic and artistic nature of the rhythmic breathing process. The poet of to-day still strives to maintain the rhythm of the breath itself in the way he shapes and moulds the language of his poems. And he who writes for song takes it all back again into the breathing process (including the breathing process of the head). Thus we may say, the very process which man must undergo here on earth, in that he adapts his language to earthly conditions, is reversed in a certain sense when we pass from speech to song. Song is indeed a. real recollection—though by earthly means—of that which we experienced in the pre-earthly life. For in our rhythmic system we are far nearer to the spiritual world than in our thinking system. And it is of course the thinking system which takes hold of speech when speech becomes prosaic.

When we utter the vowel sounds, we press what is living in our soul down into the body; and the body, by adding the consonantal element, does but provide the musical instrument for our soul to use. You will certainly have the feeling that in every vowel there is something of the soul, immediate and living. The vowel can be taken by itself. The consonant on the other hand is perpetually longing for the vowel, tending towards it. The plastic instrument of the body is in fact a dead thing until the vowel nature—the soul—strikes its chords.

You can see this in detailed examples. Take for instance, in certain dialects of Middle Europe, the word mir as in the phrase Es geht mir gut. When I was a little boy, I simply could not conceive that the word should be written as it is. I always wrote it mia; for in the r the longing towards the a is quite inherent. Thus when we perceive the human organism as the harmony of all consonants, we find in it everywhere the longing for the vowel nature, that is to say for the soul. Now we are driven to ask, what is the origin of all these things?

This human body, in the whole arrangement of its plastic structure here on earth, has to adapt itself to the earthly conditions. It is shaped as it is, because the earthly position of equilibrium and the whole system of the earthly forces would not allow it to be otherwise. And yet all the time it is shaped out of the spiritual world. This matter can be understood only by deeper spiritual-scientific research. The soul-nature, manifesting itself through the vowels, strikes upon the consonantal nature, which is plastically shaped and formed in accordance with earthly conditions.

If we lift ourselves into the spiritual world, in the way I have described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, we first attain Imagination or Imaginative Cognition, as I have often told you. Now when we reach this point, we find that we have lost the consonants. We still possess the vowels, but the consonants—to begin with at any rate—are lost. In the Imaginative condition, we have in effect lost our physical body—i.e. we have lost the consonants. In the Imaginative world, the consonants no longer appeal to us. To describe what we have in that world adequately in spoken words, our words would have to consist, to begin with, of vowels only.

We have lost the instrument, and we enter a pure world of sound, where the vowels are indeed coloured and shaded in manifold variety, but all the consonants of earth are in effect dissolved away in the vowels.

You will therefore find that in those languages which were not yet so far removed from the primeval, the things of the super-sensible world were named in words consisting of vowels only. The word Jahve for example did not contain our present form of J or V. It consisted only of vowels, and was half-scanned, half-sung. We enter here into a vowel-language which it is only natural to sing. And when we reach from Imaginative to Inspired Cognition—when therefore we receive the direct manifestations of the spiritual world—then all the consonants we have on earth are changed into something quite different. The consonants, as such, we lose. But in place of it, a new thing comes forth in the spiritual perception which comes to us in Inspiration. And this new thing we find to be none other than the spiritual counterparts of the consonants.

But the spiritual counterparts of the consonants are not there between the vowels; they live in them. In your speech here on earth you have the consonants and vowels side by side. You lose the consonants as you ascend into the spiritual world. You live your way into a vowel world of song. To put it truly one must say, “It sings,” for you yourself no longer sing. The World itself becomes cosmic song. But all this vowel world is variedly coloured or shaded in a spiritual sense. In effect, there is something living in the vowels—namely the spiritual counterparts of the consonants.

Here on earth we have the vowel sound A for example, and—if you will the note C sharp in a certain octave. But when we reach the spiritual world, we do not have one A, or one C sharp in a given octave, but countless ones differing in inner quality. For it is another thing, whether a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi speaks A to one, or a Being of the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, or some other Being. Outwardly the manifestation is the same, but it is filled in each case with a different inner soul.

We may say therefore:—Here on earth we have our body. The vowel sound strikes into it. Yonder in the spiritual world we have the vowel sound; and the soul strikes into it, and lives in it, so that the sound becomes the body for the soul. You are immersed in cosmic music, cosmic song; you are within the creative sound—within the creative Word.

Let us now consider sound as it is on earth, including spoken sound. Sound has its earthly life in the element of air. It is, however, but a childish conception of Physics to believe that the peculiar forms in the air are the reality of sound. It is really childish. Imagine, for a moment, you have a piece of ground, and on it stands a man. The ground is most certainly not the man, yet the ground must be there for the man to stand on. Without it, the man himself could not be there. It will not therefore occur to you to seek to understand the man by examining the soil beneath his feet.

In the same way the air must be there for the sound to have a basis of support. Just as man stands on the soil—only in a rather more complicated way the sound has its “soil,” its necessary basis or resistance in the air. For the sound itself, the air signifies no more than does the soil for the man who stands on it. The sound presses forward to the air, and the air gives it the possibility to stand. But the sound itself is spiritual. Just as the man is different from the earthly soil on which he stands, so, is the sound different from the air upon which it stands—in which it finds its support though of course in a more complicated way, in a manifold and varied way.

Through the fact that we on earth can only speak and sing by means of the air, we have in the airy forming of the sound the earthly image of a thing of soul and spirit. The soul-and-spirit of sound belongs to the super-sensible world, and that which dwells here in the air is fundamentally the body of the sound. We need not therefore be surprised if we find the sound again in the spiritual world, though shorn of that which comes from the earthly—the earthly consonant-articulation. The vowel only is carried over there. The sound as such in its spiritual content goes with us when we rise into the spiritual world, only there it becomes filled with soul. Instead of being shaped and moulded outwardly by the nature of the consonants, the sound is inwardly ensouled.

Now all this runs parallel with man's entry into the spiritual world in the widest sense. Think for a moment, my dear friends, man passes through the gate of death. The consonants he soon leaves behind, but the vowels—and especially the manifold intonations of the vowels—these he experiences all the more strongly, only with this difference. He no longer feels the sound proceeding from his own larynx, but he feels that there is singing all around him, and that in every sound of the song, he himself is living. It is so in the very first days after man passes through the gate of death. He is dwelling in a musical element, which is at the same time an element of speech; and this musical element reveals ever more and more as it becomes filled with living soul from the spiritual world.

Now, as I have told you, man's going forth into the Universe after he has passed through the gate of death is at the same time a passing from the earthly world into the world of the stars.

When we describe such a thing as this, we seem to be speaking in images, but our images none the less are reality. Imagine here the Earth. Around it are the planets, then the heavens of the fixed stars, conceived from time immemorial—and rightly so—as the Animal Circle or Zodiac. Man standing on the Earth sees the planets and the fixed stars in their shadowed radiance. He sees them from the Earth—or, shall we say, with due respect to earthly man, he sees them “from in front?” (The Old Testament, as you know, expressed it differently.) After death, when man goes farther and farther from the earth, he gradually comes to see the planets as well as the fixed stars “from behind.” But there he does not see these points of light or surfaces of light which are seen from the earth. Rather does he see the spiritual—the corresponding spiritual Beings. On all sides it is a world of spiritual Beings. Wherever he looks back, whether it be towards Saturn, Sun or Moon, or towards Aries, Taurus and the other constellations, he sees from yonder side the spiritual Beings.

But this seeing is at the same time a hearing; and when he says:—Man sees from the other side—or from behind—Moon, Venus, Aries, Taurus and so forth, we might equally well express it thus:—Man hears the Beings, who have their dwelling in these heavenly bodies, resounding forth into the cosmic spaces.

Try to imagine it in its totality. (It really looks as though we were speaking figuratively, but we are not, it is absolutely real.) Imagine yourself out there in the Cosmos—the planetary world farther from you now, the Zodiac with its twelve constellations nearer. From all the heavenly bodies it is singing, speaking as it sings to you, singing as it speaks; and all your perception is a listening to the speaking song, the singing speech of the World. You look out in the direction of Aries, and as you do so, receive the impression of a consonant soul-nature. Behind Aries maybe, is Saturn, a vowel element of soul. And in this vowel element as it radiates out into the cosmic space from Saturn—in it there dwells the soul-and-spirit Consonant:—Aries, or in another instance, Taurus. Thus you have the planetary sphere singing to you in vowels—singing forth into the cosmic spaces; and the fixed stars permeate the song of the planetary sphere with soul from the consonants. Picture it to yourselves as vividly as you can:—the sphere of the fixed stars at rest, and behind it the wandering planets. Whenever a planet in its course passes a constellation of the fixed stars, there bursts forth not a single note, but a whole world of sound. Then as the planet passes on from Aries to Taurus, a different world of sound rings forth. But behind it there follows, let us say, another planet:—Mars. Mars passing through the constellation of Taurus, causes a different world of sounds to ring forth once more. Thus you have in the heavens of the fixed stars, or the Zodiac, a wondrous cosmic instrument of music, while from behind it our planetary Gods are playing upon this instrument.

We may truly say, my dear friends, when man down here on earth takes back his speech (which is now formed for his earthly needs, just as his walking is transformed, for earthly needs, from his spiritual power of orientation in the Cosmos)—when therefore man takes speech back again into the element of song, he really inclines himself to that cosmic pre-earthly existence from out of which he is born for earthly life. And indeed, all Art comes before man in this sense. It is as though, whenever he expresses himself in Art, he were to say, “’Tis human destiny—and rightly so that man as he begins his earthly course of life is placed into the midst of earthly conditions and must adapt himself to these. But in Art he goes back again a little step, leaves the earthly life to take its course around him, and retreating for a moment approaches once more the world of Soul and Spirit—the pre-earthly life from which he has come forth.”

We do not understand Art, my dear friends, unless we feel in it the longing to experience the Spiritual—though it be but manifested, to begin with, in a world of beautiful semblance. Our creative fancy, whereby we develop all artistic things, is at bottom nothing else than the power of clairvoyance in an earthly form. We are tempted to say:—As sound dwells on earth in the element of air, so it is with the nature of the soul itself. That which is truly spiritual in the pre-earthly life has its earthly dwelling in the image of the spiritual. For when man speaks, he makes use of his whole body. The consonant nature becomes in him the plastic sculpture of the human frame, and the Soul makes use of the current of the breath which does not enter into solid form, to play upon this plastic instrument of music and now, in a twofold way we can turn once more to the Divine, what we thus are as human beings speaking upon earth.

Take the consonantal human frame. Suppose we loosen it as it were from the solid form wherein the earthly forces—gravity and the like—or the chemical forces in the foodstuffs have enchained it. Suppose we liberate the consonant nature that permeates the human being for so we may now describe it. When we place a lung on the dissection table we find chemical substances in it, which we can investigate by chemical methods. But this is not the lung. What is the lung? It is a consonant, spoken forth out of the Cosmos, which has taken plastic form. The heart, if we lay it on the dissection table, consists of cells which we can investigate chemically and find the substances composing it. But this is not the heart. The heart again is a consonant—another consonant, spoken forth out of the Cosmos. And if we conceive the whole twelve consonants, cosmically spoken and resounding forth, we have in all essentials the human bodily frame.

Thus as we look to the consonants, if we have the necessary clairvoyant power of imagination to see them in their real connection, there arises before us the human body in its plastic shape. If then we take the consonants out of the human being, we have the Art of Sculpture. If on the other hand we take the breath, which the soul uses to play upon the bodily instrument in song—if we take the vowel nature out of the human being, there arises the musical art, the Art of Song.

Once more:—Take the Consonant-nature out of the human being, and there arises Form, which you must mould in plastic art. Take the Vowel-nature out of the human being, and there arises Song—Music, which you must sing. Man as he stands before us here on earth proceeds out of the two Cosmic Arts—a Cosmic Art of Sculpture from the one side, and a cosmic Art of Song or Music from the other. Two kinds of spiritual Beings join their activity together. The one provides the instrument, the other plays upon it; the one forms and moulds the instrument, the other plays upon it.

Can we wonder that in olden time, when things like these were felt, it was said of the greatest of all artists, Orpheus, that his command over the soul was such that he was able, not only to use the ready-moulded human body as an instrument, but to cast even amorphous matter into plastic forms—forms which correspond to the notes of his music.

My dear friends! You will understand that when we describe such things as these we must depart a little in our use of words from what is usual in this prosaic age. Nevertheless what I have said is not intended in a figurative or symbolic but in a most real sense. These things are indeed such as I have described them, albeit to describe them we must sometimes bring our language into greater flow and movement than is customary in its use to-day.

• 1. Song-Recital by Frau Werbeck-Svärdstrom and her sisters.

A thought that may often arise in connection with this building is that of our responsibility to the sacrifices which friends have made for its sake. Those who know how great these sacrifices have been, will realise that the only fit response is a strong sense of responsibility, for the goal at which we must aim is the actual fulfilment of the hopes resting in this building. Anyone who has seen even a single detail—not to speak of the whole structure, for no conception of that is possible yet—will realise that this building represents many deviations from other architectural styles that have hitherto arisen in the evolution of humanity and have been justified in the jugdment of man. An undertaking like this can of course only be justified if the goal is in some measure attained. In comparison to what might be, we shall only be able to achieve a small, perhaps insignificant beginning. Yet, may be, this small beginning will reveal the lines along which a spiritual transformation of artistic style must come about in the wider future of humanity. We must realise that when the building is once there, all kind of objections will be made, especially by so-called ‘experts,’ that it is not convincing, perhaps even dilettante. This will not disconcert us, for it lies in the nature of things that ‘expert’ opinion is least of all right when anything claiming to be new is placed before the world. We shall not, however, be depressed by derogatory criticism that may be levelled at our idea of artistic creation, if we realise, as a compensation for our sense of responsibility, that in our age, the origin of the Arts and of their particular forms and motifs is greatly misunderstood by technical experts. And then, gradually, we shall understand that all we are striving to attain in this building stands much closer to primordial forces of artistic endeavour which are revealed when the eye of the Spirit is directed to the origin of the Arts, than do the conceptions of art claiming to be authoritative at the present time. There is now little understanding of what was once implied by the phrase “true artistic conception.” It need not therefore astonish us if a building like ours, which strives to be in harmony with primordial Will and in accordance with the origin of the arts, is not well or kindly received by those who adhere to the direction and tendency of the present age.

In order to bring home these thoughts to you, I should like to start to-day by considering a well-known motif in art—that of the so-called acanthus leaf—showing the sense in which our aims are in harmony with the artistic endeavours of humanity as expressed in the origin of this acanthus leaf as a decorative motif. Now because our endeavours are separated by many hundreds, nay even thousands of years, from the first appearance of this acanthus motif, they must naturally take a very different form from anything that existed in the days when, for instance, the acanthus leaf was introduced into the Corinthian capital.

If I may be permitted a brief personal reference here, let me say that my own student days in Vienna were passed during the time when the buildings which have given that city its present stamp, were completed—the Parliament Buildings, the Town Hall, the Votivkirche and the Burgtheatre. The famous architects of these buildings were still living: Hanson who revived Greek architecture, Schmidt who elaborated Gothic styles with great originality, Ferstel who built the Votivkirche. It is perhaps not known to you that the Burgtheatre in Vienna was built according to the designs of an artist who in the seventies and eighties of the last century was the leading influence in artistic appreciation and development of form in architecture and sculpture. The Burgtheatre was built according to the designs of the great Architect, Gottfried Semper.

At the Grammar School I myself had as a teacher a gifted admirer and disciple of Gottfried Semper, in the person of Josef Baier, so that I was able to live, as it were, in the whole conception of the world of architectural, sculptural and decorative form as inaugurated by the great Semper.

Now, in spite of all the genius that was at work, here was something that well-nigh drove one to despair in the whole atmosphere of the current conceptions of the historical development of art, on the one side, and of the way to artistic creation on the other. Gottfried Semper was undoubtedly a highly gifted being, but in those days the usual conception of man and the universe was an outcome of the materialistic interpretation of Darwin, and the doctrine of evolution was also apparent in the current ideas of art. Again and again this materialistic element crept into the conceptions of art. It was, above all, considered necessary to possess a knowledge of the technique of weaving and interlacing. Architectural forms were derived in the first place from the way in which substances were woven together, or fences constructed so that the single canes might interpenetrate and hold together. In short, people were saturated with the principle that decoration and ornamentation were forms of external technique. This subject of course might be further elaborated, but I only want to indicate the general tendency which was asserting itself at that time—namely, the tendency to lead everything artistic back to external technique. The standpoint had really become one of ultilitarianism and the artistic element was considered to be an outcome of the use to which things were put. All treatises on the subject of art, and especially on decoration, invariably made mention of the special idiosyncrasies of the different technical experts. This of course was a stream running parallel to the great flood of materialistic conceptions that swept over the 19th century, chief among them being the materialistic conception of art. The extent to which materialism asserted itself in all spheres of life during the second half of the 19th century was enough to drive one to despair. Indeed I still remember how many sleepless nights I had at that time over the Corinthian capital. Now the main feature, the principal decoration of the Corinthian capital—although in the days of which I am speaking it was almost forbidden to speak of such a thing as ‘decoration’—is the acanthus leaf. What could be more obvious than to infer that the acanthus leaf, on the Corinthian capital was simply the result of a naturalistic imitation of the leaf of the common acanthus plant? Now anyone with true artistic feelings finds it very difficult to conceive that a beginning was somewhere made by man taking a leaf of a weed, an acanthus leaf, working it out plastically and adding it to the Corinthian column. Let us think for a moment of the form of the acanthus leaf.

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The basis of all artistic creation is a consciousness that comes to a standstill before the portals of the historical evolution of humanity as depicted by external documents. A certain consciousness that was once active in man, a remnant of the old clairvoyance, belonged to the fourth Post-Atlantean period, the Graeco-Roman. Although Egyptian culture belongs to the third Post-Atlantean epoch, all that was expressed in Egyptian art belongs to the fourth epoch. In the fourth epoch this consciousness gave rise to such intense inner feeling in men that they perceived how the movement, bearing and gestures of the human being, nay even the human form itself, develop outwards into the physical and etheric. You will understand me if you realise that in those times, when there was a true conception of artistic aim, the mere sight of a flower or a tendril was of much less importance than the feeling: ‘I have to carry something heavy; I bend my back and generate with my own form the forces which make me, as a human being, able to bear the weight.’ Men felt within themselves what they must bring to expression in their own postures. This was the sense in which they made movements when it was a question of taking hold of something or of carrying something in the hand. They were conscious of a sense of carrying, of weight, where it was necessary to spread the hands and finger outwards. Then there arose the lines and forms which passed over into artistic creation. It is as though one felt in humanity itself how man can indeed go beyond what he sees with his eyes and perceives with his other senses:—he can go beyond it when he enters into and adapts himself to a larger whole. Even in this case of a larger whole, when a man no longer merely lets himself go as he walks along, but is obliged to adapt himself to the carrying of a load—already here he enters into the organism of the whole universe.

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I have drawn it diagrammatically, from the side view: a number of men are walking one behind the other. They form the procession which then passes round inside the circle; others are sitting in the circle looking on.

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If you think of these two figures in alternation, you have the earth-motif and the sun-motif that were always carried by the people who formed the procession. This was one thing that in olden times was presented in circling procession. The people sat around in a circle and the actors passed around in a procession. Some of them carried emblems representing man's connection with the sun; and they alternated: earth-sun, sun-earth and so on:

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Man sensed this cosmic power: earth-sun, and then he began to think how he could portray it. The best medium for purposes of art proved to be a plant or tree whose forms runs upwards to a point from a wider base. This was alternated with palms. Plants having a form like a wide bud were alternated with palms. Palms represented' the sun forces; bud-forms running upwards to a point, the earth forces.

Feeling his place in the cosmos, man created certain forms, merely using the plants as a means of expression. He used plants instead of having to invent some other device. Artistic creation was the result of a living experience of cosmic connections; this is in accordance with the evolution of the creative urge in man and the process is no mere imitation of outer phenomena of nature. The artistic representation of the elements of outer nature only entered into art later on. When men no longer realised that palms were used to express the sun forces, they began to think that the ancients simply imitated the palm in their designs. This was never the case; the ancients used the leaves of palms because they were typifying the sun forces. Thus has all true artistic creation arisen, from a ‘superabundance’ of forces in the being of man—forces which cannot find expression in external life, which strive to do so through man's consciousness of his connection with the universe as a whole. Now all contemplation and thought both in the spheres of natural science and art, have been misled and confused by a certain idea which it will be very difficult to displace. It is the idea that complexity has arisen from simplicity. Now this is not the case. The construction of the human eye, for instance, is much more simple than that of many of the lower animals. The course of evolution is often from the complex to the simple; it often happens that the most intricate interlacing finally resolves itself into the straight line. In many instances, simplification is the later stage, and man will not acquire the true conception of evolution unless he realises this.

Now all that was presented to the spectators in those ancient times, when it was always a question of portraying living cosmic forces, was later on simplified into the decoration, the lines of which expressed man's living experience when he presented these things.

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This alternation of Sun-motif, Earth-motif, presented itself to the artistic feeling of mankind as a decorative motif in the truest sense. Later on man no longer realised that he must see in this decorative motif a reproduction that had passed into the subconscious realm, of a very ancient dance motif, a ceremonial dance. This was preserved in the palmette motif. Now it is interesting to consider

the following:—On the decorations of certain Doric columns one often finds a very interesting motif which I will sketch thus.

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In Greece, that wonderful land where the fourth Post-Atlantean period was expressed in all its fulness, there was a union of what came over from Asia with all that I have now described and which, as an after-image is there, on Doric columns together with the truly dynamic-architectonic principle of weight-bearing. This union came about because it was in Greece that the Ego was fully realised within the human body, and therefore this motif could find expression in Greek culture.

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Now you need only imagine what is merely indicated in the Ionic pillars, the middle portion, developing downwards to the perfect volute and you have the Corinthian column.

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The essential forms of art can no more arise from an imitation of nature than music can be created by an imitation of nature. Even in the so-called imitative arts, the thing that is imitated is fundamentally secondary, an accessory as it were. Naturalism is absolutely contrary to true artistic feeling. If we find that people think our forms here are grotesque we shall be able to comfort ourselves with the knowledge that this kind of artistic conception sees in the acanthus motive nothing but a naturalistic imitation. The acanthus motif, as we have seen, was created purely from the spirit and only in its late development came to bear a remote resemblance to the acanthus leaf. Artistic understanding in future ages will simply be unable to understand this attitude of mind which in our time influences not only the art experts who are supposed to understand their subject, but all artistic creation as well. The materialistic attitude of mind in Darwinism also confronts us in artistic creation, in that there is a greater and greater tendency to make art into a mere imitation of nature. My discovery of these connections in regard to the acanthus leaf has really been a source of joy to me, for it proves circumstantially that the primordial forms of art have also sprung from the human soul and not from imitation of external phenomena.

I was only able really to penetrate to the essence of art after I had myself moulded the forms of our building here. When one moulds forms from out of the very well-springs of human evolution, one feels how artistic creation has arisen in mankind. It was a strange piece of karma that during the time when I was deeply occupied with following up a certain artistic intuition (this was after the forms for the buildings had already been made)—an intuition that had arisen during the General Congress in Berlin—it happened that I began to investigate what I had created in these forms, in order to get a deeper understanding. One can only think afterwards about artistic forms; if one “understands” them first and then carries them out, they will have no value. If one creates from concepts and ideas nothing of value will ensue, and the very thing that I perceived so clearly in connection with the acanthus leaf, and have shown to be erroneous, is an indication of the inner connections of the art in our building.

I came upon a remarkable example which is purely the result of clairvoyant investigation. At one point I discovered a curious point of contact with Rigl, a fellow-countryman of mine. It is a curious name, not very aristocratic, but typically Austrian. This man Rigl did not achieve anything of great importance but while he was Curator of an Architectural Museum in Vienna he had an intuitive perception of the fact that these architectural decorations had not arisen in the way described by “Semperism” at the end of the 19th century. Rigl hit upon certain thoughts which are really in line with the metamorphosis of the palmette motif into that of the acanthus leaf. Quite recently, therefore, I have discovered a perfect connection between the results of occult investigation, and external research which has also hit upon this development of the so-called acanthus motif from the palmette. ‘Palmette’ is of course merely a name; what is really there in the palmette is the Sun-motif. In the first place, of course, one feels in despair about an idea like that of Rigl. He simply could not realise whence the palmette motif had originated and that it was connected with forces working and moving in man. Rigl remonstrates with the learned art critics who have brought Semper's ideas into everything and are for the most part mere naturalists, but in spite of this he did not get very far. He says that in regard to the acanthus leaf the learned art critics are still feeding upon the old anecdote quoted by Vitruvius. (It cannot be said that they are all feeding upon it, but it is true that they constantly quote it.) Rigl, however, only mentions this anecdote briefly; he does not think it worth while to go into all the details because it is too well known. What he leaves out is very characteristic. He says that Callimachos had seen a basket surrounded by acanthus leaves and that then the idea of the Corinthian column came to him. Rigl, too, leaves something out and this very thing shows that the typical conceptions of our age must despair of ever having real knowledge in this sphere. He leaves out the most important factor in the whole anecdote, which is that what Callimachos saw was over the grave of a Corinthian girl. That is the important thing, for it implies no less than that Vitruvius, although he wisely holds his tongue about it, intends to indicate that Callimachos was clairvoyant and saw, over a girl's grave, the Sun-motif struggling with the Earth-motif, and above this the girl herself, hovering in her etheric body. Here indeed is a significant indication of how the motifs of Sun and Earth came to be used on the capitals of columns. If we are able to see clairvoyantly what is actually present in the etheric world above the grave of a girl who had died, we realise that the palmette motif has arisen out of this, growing, as it were, around the etheric body that is rising like the sun. It seems as though men have never really understood the later Roman statues of Pytri-Clitia for they are nothing else than a clairvoyant impression that can be received over the graves of certain people; in these statues, the head of an extraordinarily spiritual, though not virginal Roman woman, seems to grow upwards as if from a flower chalice. Some time, my dear friends, we shall understand what really underlies the anecdote quoted by Vitruvius, but not until we grow out of the unfortunate habit which makes us perpetually ask, ‘What is the meaning of this or that?’ and is always looking for symbolic interpretations such as, ‘this signifies the physical body, that the etheric body, this or that the astral body.’ When this habit is eliminated from our Movement we shall really come to understand what underlies artistic form—that is to say, we shall either have direct perception of true spiritual movement, or of the corresponding etheric phenomenon.

It is actually the case that in clairvoyant vision the acanthus leaf can be seen, in its true form, above a grave.

If you will consider all these things; my dear friends, you will realise how important it is to understand the forms in the interior of our building, the forms that should adorn it, and to know the artistic principle from which they have arisen. On previous occasions I used a somewhat trivial comparison, but it is only a question of understanding the analogy. Although it is trivial, it does, nevertheless, convey what it is intended to convey. When we are trying to understand what will be placed in the interior of the building in these two different sized spaces, we may with advantage think of the principle of the mould in which German cakes are baked.

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It would have been my wish—only it was not to be—that we should have had no such surfaces as these (pointing to an architrave). They will only be right—when something is taken away from them. This roundness here must be eliminated. It would have been better if from the very beginning we had worked with the graver's chisel for then there would have been no protuberance but only a surface. What we must do is to feel from the models how the interior decoration is the plastic vesture for the Spiritual Science that is given its in the building. Just as the interior decoration has the quality of being ‘in-carved,’ so the outer decoration will seem as though it is ‘laid on.’ The interior decoration must always have the character of being in-carved. One can feel this in the model, for the essential thing is a true inner feeling for form in space. It is this that leaves one unsatisfied even in such writings as those of a man like Hildebrandt. He has a certain idea of the workings of form but what he lacks is the inner feeling of form—the inner feeling that makes one live wholly within the form. He simply says that the eye should feel at home when it looks at form. In our building we must learn to experience the forms inwardly, so that, holding the chisel in a particular way, we learn to love the surface we are creating—the surface that is coming into being under the mallet. I, for my part, must admit that I always feel as if I could in some way caress such a surface. We must grow to love it, so that we live in it with inner feeling and not think of it as something that is merely there for the eye to look at.

Just recently someone told me after a lecture that a certain very clever man had accused us of straining after ‘externalities,’ as instanced by the fact that different kinds of wood have been used for the columns in the interior. This shows how little our work has been understood. Such a thing is considered to be a dreadful externality. This very intelligent man, you see, simply cannot realise that the columns must be of different woods. The real reason why he cannot understand, is that he has not paused to consider what answer he would have to make if he were asked: ‘Why must there be different strings on a violin? Would it not be possible simply to stretch four A strings instead?’ The use of different woods is a reality in just the same sense. We could no more use only one kind of wood than we could have only A strings on a violin. Real inner necessities are bound up with this. One can never do more than mention a few details in these matters. The whole conception of our building and what must be expressed in it, is based upon deep wisdom, but a wisdom that is at the same time very intimate. Of course there will be forms which are nowhere to be found in the outer physical world. If anything bears an apparent resemblance to a form in the animal or human body, this is simply due to the fact that higher Spirits who work in nature, create according to these forces; nature is expressing the same things as we are expressing in our building. It is not a question of an imitation of nature, but of the expression of what is there as pure etheric form. It is as though a man were to ask himself: ‘What idea must I have of my own being when I look away from the outer sense-world, and try to find an environment that will express my inner being in forms?’ I am sure that everyone will be struck by the plastic forms on the capitals and in the rest of the interior. Not a single one of these forms is without its own raison d'étre. Suppose anyone is carving the column just here (pointing to an architrave motif). At another place he will carve more lightly or deeper down into the wood. It would be nonsense to demand symmetry. There must be living progression, not symmetry. The columns and architraves in the interior are a necessary consequence of the two circular buildings with the two incomplete domes. And I cannot express this any more precisely than by saying that if the radius of the small dome were at all larger or smaller in proportion to the large dome, each of these forms would have to be quite different, just as the little finger of a dwarf is different from that of a giant. It was not only the differences in dimension, but the differences in the forms that called forth the overwhelming feeling of responsibility while we were erecting the building; down to the smallest detail it could not be other than it is. Each single part of a living organism has to exist within and in accordance with the whole living organism. It would be nonsense to say: I want to change the nose and put a different organ in the place where the nose now is.' It is a matter of actual fact that the big toe, and the small toe as well, would have to be different if the nose were different. Just as nobody in his senses would wish to re-model the nose, so it is impossible that the form here should be other than it is. If this form were different, the whole building would have to be different, for the whole is conceived in living, organic form. The advance we must make is this: all that was, in the early days of art, a kind of instinctive perception of a human posture transformed into artistic form must now enter with consciousness into the feeling life of man. In this way we shall have, in our interior decorations, etheric forms that are true and living, and we shall feel them to be the true expression of all that is to live in our building. It simply cannot be otherwise.

Now the other day I received two letters from a man who, ten years ago, it is true, did belong to the Anthroposophical Movement, but who since then has left it. He asked me if he could be allowed to make the windows, for he was so well qualified for the work. He was really very insistent. But when you see the windows you will understand that they could only be made by somebody who has followed our work right up to the present. Suppose I were to press my hand into a soft substance: the impress could only be that of my hand, it could not be the head of an ox for instance! It is Spiritual Science that must be impressed into the interior decoration; and Spiritual Science must let in the sunlight through the windows in a way that harmonises with its own nature. The whole building is really constructed—forgive this analogy—according to the principle of the cake mould, only of course instead of a rising cake, it is filled with Spiritual Science and all the sacred things that inspire us. This was always the case in art, and above all it was so in the days when men perceived in their dim, mystical life of feeling the alternation of the principles of earth and sun in the living dance and then portrayed the dance in the palmette motif. So it must be when it is a question of penetrating the outer sense- veil of natural and human existence and expressing in forms things that lie behind the realm of sense perception—if, that is to say, we are fortunate enough to be able to carry this building through. How inner progress is related to the symptoms of onward-flowing evolution—this is what will be expressed in the building, in the dimensional proportions, forms, designs and paintings.

I wanted to place these thoughts before you in order that you may not allow yourselves to be misled by modern conceptions of art, which have put all true understanding on one side. A good example of this is the belief that the Corinthian capital arose primarily from the sight of a little basket with acanthus leaves around it. The truth is that something springing from the very depths of human evolution has been expressed in the Corinthian capital. So also we shall feel that what surrounds us in our building is the expression of something living in the depths of human nature behind the experiences and events of the physical plane.

To-day I only wanted to speak of this particular detail in connection with our building and with a certain chapter in the history of art.

There may be opportunities during the coming weeks to speak to you of other things in connection with some of the motifs in the building. I shall seize every available opportunity to bring you nearer to what is indeed full of complexity, but yet absolutely natural and necessary, in a spiritual sense, for our building.

In our days it is not at all easy to speak about problems of art, for naturalism, the principle of imitation, really dominates the whole realm of art. So far as the artist himself is concerned, naturalism has arisen out of a very simple principle; so far as other people are concerned it seems to have arisen from something less simple. The artist, when he is learning must, of course, copy the productions of his master; he must imitate in order to learn. Man now imitates nature out of instinct—for he has made the principle of pupil into that of master and has then put the master on one side because he will brook no authority. This principle is very convenient for artists, for they do not want to get beyond an artistic reproduction of the models before them. The layman to-day understands the principle of naturalism as a matter of course. Where can he find anything to take hold of when he sees forms like those in our building? How are these forms to stimulate any thought at all? He will tear his hair and ask, with a shrug of his shoulders: ‘Whatever is this?’ And he will be lucky if he finds anything at all to take hold of, for instance, if he discovers that some detail has a slight resemblance, maybe to a nose! Although this may be negative, he is delighted that he has discovered anything at all. To-day the layman is pleased if when he finds in the different arts something that transcends the purely naturalistic element, he can say: ‘This has a resemblance to something or other.’ Art will most certainly be misunderstood if people continue to think that it is only legitimate to express things that resemble something or other in the external world. Real art does not ‘resemble’ anything at all; it is something in itself, sufficient unto itself. And again from this point of view it was despairing to find that as a result of the materialism of the second half of last century, painters (not to speak of sculptors) were asking themselves for instance: ‘How am I to get the effect of that mist in the distance?’ And then all kinds of attempts were made to reproduce nature by pure imitation. It really was enough to drive one to despair! Ingenious things were produced, it is true, but what is the value of them? It is all far better in nature herself. The artists were wasting their time in their efforts to imitate, for nature has it all in a much higher form. The answer to this problem is to be found in the Prologue to “The Portal of Initiation.” [The first of Dr. Steiner's Mystery Plays.]

Not long ago we happened to be going through the Luxemburg Gallery in Paris, and we saw a statue there. At first sight it was exceedingly difficult to make out what it was supposed to be, but by degrees it dawned on one that perhaps it was meant to represent a human figure. It was so distorted .... I will not imitate the posture, for it would be too much of a strain on the shoulders and knees! It is an absolutely hideous production, but I assure you that if it were to meet one in nature it would be much easier to understand than this “work of art.” People to-day do not realise the absurdity of giving plastic form to a motif that has been thought out, for there is, as a matter of fact, no real necessity to give it plastic form. That which is to be given plastic form must from the very beginning be there in itself and only conceived of plastically. No true sculptor will say that Rodin's productions are an expression of true plastic art. Rodin models non-plastic motifs very well, in an external sense, but true artistic feeling will always be prompted to ask if it amounts to anything, for true plastic conception is entirely lacking. All these things are connected, my dear friends. I have told you what happened in my young days, when I was about 24 or 25 years old, when I absorbed the doctrines of Semper. Already then they were enough to drive one to despair and their influence has not been got rid of yet. Therefore I ask you—and more particularly those who are working so devotedly and unselfishly at our building with all the sacrifices that their work entails—always to try to proceed from inner feeling for what this building ought to contain and to feel in life itself the forms which must arise, in order that we may free ourselves from the trammels of much so-called modern “art.” We must realise, in a new sense, that art is born from the depths of man's being. So greatly is this prone to be misunderstood in our age that people have taken the metamorphosis of of the Earth and Sun motifs to be an imitation of the acanthus leaf. If people will stop believing the anecdote quoted by Vitruvius, that Callimachos saw a basket strewn around with acanthus leaves and then used it as a motif on columns, and will listen to what he says about Callimachos having had a vision over the grave of a Corinthian girl, they will also realise that he had clairvoyant sight and they will have a better understanding of the evolution of art. They will realise that development of clairvoyance leads man to the realm lying behind the world of sense. Art is the divine child of clairvoyant vision—although it only lives as unconscious feeling in the soul. The forms that are seen by the clairvoyant eye in the higher worlds cast their shadow pictures, as it were, down to the physical plane.

When people understand all that lives in the Spirit—the Spirit which has the power to impress itself into what surrounds us here in our building, finding its expression in the outer framework around us—they will also understand the goal we have set ourselves, and see in the forms of art the impress of what has to be accomplished and proclaimed in living words in our building. It is a living word this building of ours!

Now that I have tried, scantily, it is true, to indicate something in regard to the interior we shall, before very long, be able to speak of the painting and also of the outside of the building.

Even more than on the last occasion when I spoke to you about our building am I reminded to-day of the attitude we must have to this edifice, dedicated as it is to the cause of Spiritual Science. The sacrifices of those who have befriended the cause of Anthroposophy call for a sense of great responsibility. To-day is a splendid occasion for reminding ourselves of this responsibility, for the first of our auxiliary buildings is to be given over to its own tasks. We can be reminded of this responsibility by studies that arise naturally out of the tasks before us and the goal we are striving to attain.

The immediate use to which these rooms will be put is the production of the glass windows for our building, and we cannot help being moved by the thought that our human faculties are not really mature enough as yet to accomplish the full task before us. I think it is healthy and good that all our work should be permeated by the feeling that we have not as yet grown equal to our task, for only this can enable us to accomplish the highest that lies within our power. We shall be able to create the first beginnings of an artistic vesture for Spiritual Science—to the extent to which our epoch and our means allow—if we are always pervaded by the feeling that we are, in truth, little qualified for the full task. The site on which our building stands is pervaded by an atmosphere which seems to say: “Do the very utmost of which your powers and faculties are capable, for you cannot do nearly enough in comparison with what ought to be achieved; and even when you have done your very utmost, it will not by any means suffice.”

When we look at the site of our building we should be pervaded by an indefinable feeling—a presentiment that a mighty task is hovering before us. And more particularly should this be the case to-day when we are handing over this auxiliary building to our friend Rychter and his workers, in order that they may create something that in the fairest sense may be a living member in the whole organism of our building.

Entering the room through this door, our feeling will be that we are indeed blessed, as individuals, in having the opportunity to co-operate in work like this. And when we think of the functions of the windows in the building, an atmosphere of the soul and spirit will hover around us, whispering of the deep spirituality which we pray may flow like purifying waves of healing through this room.

When the building is once ready we shall again and again be conscious of a feeling which I may perhaps express as follows: ‘How infinitely necessary it is to grow beyond everything personal, if the forms of this framework for our Spiritual Science are to have real meaning for us.’ This again is, in a certain sense, the satisfying element in our building. Our architects, engineers, and all the other workers may well derive strength from the comforting feeling that apart from all the cares and troubles which the building involves, it can itself be for us a wonderful education—an education leading us above everything personal. The building demands a great deal more than the expression of any personal element. As we set about our work, and permeate the single forms with thought and feeling, we become conscious of new tasks of which we previously had no inkling. We feel that a mystery is there around us, calling out to the highest forces of soul, heart and mind to create something that transcends personality. This building can teach us how to fulfil the tasks which arise every day. It brings home to us a feeling that can ring in such sacred tones in the soul: How infinitely greater are the potentialities of the Universe than insignificant human beings! The highest we can create must be infinitely greater if it is to prove equal to the tasks before us in the objective world.' All that can ever be enclosed within the limits of the personal self must be transcended. The building itself, and the auxiliary house we have been able to open to-day can be a means of education for us. Indeed, the more they become a means of education, the greater understanding we shall have. Already now, as we look at the incomplete building and at this house, we cannot help thinking of what our feeling should be as we enter. How often we shall feel, ‘Ah, if only all human beings could be led here!’ Do we really deserve so sacred a framework—a framework we ourselves have helped to create—if we have any desire to exclude other human beings? Shall it not rather be our dearest wish to bring all men into the building? This will certainly be our desire if we realise the mission that such buildings will have to humanity, if they find imitators and followers?

Think for a moment of many buildings erected in our times by clever architects. Some of them, although they show no signs of a new style and are not permeated with any new spirituality, are really creations of architectural genius. Yet they all have one thing in common. We may admire them from outside and think them beautiful inside, but they do not make us feel, as our building will do, that we are enclosed as if by organs of sense. The reason for this is that these other buildings are dumb—they do not speak. This is the thought that I would like to press home to you this evening.

Let us think of buildings which express all the characteristics of our times. People pass in and out without in any way growing into their architecture, forms or art. Everywhere we feel that what ought to be expressed through the forms of art has to-day to be communicated to humanity by other means. In the present age man is more and more compelled to bring about order, stability, peace and harmony by means of external laws, decrees or institutions, definitions in words. This implies no syllable or thought of criticism, for it must be so in our age. But something must be added to this—something that signifies the onward evolution of humanity in a different sense. It is probable that our building will not be able fully to attain its goal—indeed we are only aiming at a primitive beginning. Yet if human culture is able to take what is expressed in our building (in so far as we fulfil the tasks set us by the higher Spirits) and develop it; if the ideas underlying such works of art find followers—then people who allow themselves to be impressed by these works of art and who have learnt to understand their language, will never do wrong to their fellow men either in heart or intellect, because the forms of art will teach them how to love; they will learn to live in harmony and peace with their fellow beings. Peace and harmony will pour into all hearts through these forms; such buildings will be ‘Lawgivers’ and their forms will be able to achieve what external institutions can never achieve.

However much study may be given to the elimination of crime and wrong-doing from the world, true redemption, the turning of evil into good, will in future depend upon whether true art is able to pour a spiritual fluid into the hearts and souls of men. When men's hearts and souls are surrounded by the achievements of true architecture, sculpture and the like, they will cease to lie if it happens they are untruthfully inclined; they will cease to disturb the peace of their fellow men if this is their tendency. Edifices and buildings will begin to speak, and in a language of which people to-day have no sort of inkling.

Human beings are wont to gather together in Congresses to-day for the purpose of putting their affairs in order, for they imagine that what passes from mouth to ear can create peace and harmony. But peace and harmony, and man's rightful position can only be established when the Gods speak to us. When will the Gods speak to us?

Now when does a human being speak to us?—When he possesses a larynx. He would never be able to speak to us if he had no larynx. The spirits of nature have given us the larynx and we make this gift an organic part of the whole cosmos when we find the true forms of art, for they become instruments through which the Gods speak to us. We must, however, first learn how to make ourselves part of the great cosmos, and then our desire to lead all mankind through these doors will be the stronger. Out of this desire—for its fulfilment is not yet—the longing will develop to work so intensely for our spiritual movement that this aim may gradually be attained. Art is the creation of an organ through which the Gods are able to speak to mankind .... I have already spoken of many things in this connection. I have spoken of the Greek Temple and have shown how all its forms express the fact it is a dwelling place of the God. To-day I want to add something to this. If we try to understand the basic nature of the Greek art of building we shall realise that the very being and essence of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch flowed into the Greeks' mode of perception and thence into their art of building.

What is the basis of Greek perception and feeling? It is, of course, a wide subject, but I will only speak of one aspect.

Here (see diagram) we have the wall surrounding the Greek Temple, with the horizontal structure resting upon it. When anything rises above the horizontal it is so constructed that it is upheld by its own forces which balance each other; just as when, in building, we place two beams together.

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The presupposition here is that the earth with its gravity lies beneath. And translating this feeling into words, we may say: ‘In the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch man felt that the site of the earth was a gift of the God; it was as though Divine power overflowed into the creations of art.’ Therefore, by means of the forces in the earth given to man by the Gods, it was felt that gravity could be overcome. In the Greek Temple man controls the force of gravity and thereby creates a dwelling place for the God who has given him the earth.

Neither this “dwelling-place of the God” nor the later Roman Temples can be thought of apart from the surrounding land. The land is part of the Temple itself. A Greek Temple is complete in itself even if nobody is within it, for its whole conception is that of the dwelling-place of the God; it is the sanctuary of the God. Human beings may live for miles around in the district; if nobody enters the Temple, it stands there, none the less, complete in itself—a dwelling-place of the God. In every detail we see how man expresses in the decorative forms of these dwelling- places of the Gods all that his feeling of veneration makes him feel he ought to do for the Gods. In the last lecture I tried to show you that the motif on the capitals has its origin in a dance motif—a dance that was performed as homage to the Gods of nature. And now let us pass on to the forms of the earliest Christian architecture. One thought in particular arises within us when we pass from the Greek Temple to the Church of Christendom. The Greek Temple stands within its surrounding territory, belongs to the territory. Human beings are not necessarily within the Temple; they live around it, outside it. The Temple belongs to the surrounding territory, is thought of as the altar of the land around it. The Temple hallows everything, even the trivial daily occupations of the human beings who live on the land. Service rendered to the earth becomes a divine office because the God stands or is enthroned as Lord and participates in the work on the land and in the pursuits of human beings living around the Temple. Man feels himself united with the God as he works on the land. Worship of the God is not yet separated from service to the earth. The Temple grows out of the human element, sometimes indeed out of the ‘all-too-human,’ and hallows everything around it. ‘Earth, be thou strong!’—This is the prevailing mood of the fourth Post-Atlatean epoch, when human beings are still at one with the earth which the Gods have given into their charge, when the Ego is still slumbering in a kind of dream consciousness, when man still feels himself connected with the Group-Soul of the whole of humanity. Then man grows out of this Group-Soul, becomes more and more individual, and he separates from the land, from daily life and activity, the worship he performs in his spiritual life.

In the early days of Christianity the feelings of men were no longer the same as in the Greek age. Looking into the soul of the Greek, we see him sowing his fields and working at his industrial pursuits, pervaded by this unshakable feeling: There stands the Temple with the in-dwelling God and I am near. I may be carrying out my pursuits and working on the land but all the while the God is dwelling there within the Temple. Then man grows more individual, a strong sense of Ego, of “I” arises within him, and Christendom represents the emergence of something that had been prepared through the course of long ages by the ancient Hebrew civilisation. Out of the human soul arises the need to separate off from the affairs of everyday life the worship that is offered to the God. The building is separated from the land and the Church of Christendom comes into being. The land becomes independent; the building becomes an entity independent of the territory; it is an ‘individuality’ complete in itself. The Greek Temple was still a kind of altar for the whole territory, whereas the walls of the Christian Church now form a space set apart for those who are to worship. The forms of the Churches of Christendom and also of Roman architecture gradually come to express this individual, spiritual need of man, and they can only be understood in this sense. The place of the Greek within earthly existence was such that he said to himself: ‘I can remain here with my flocks, carrying out my occupations, doing my work on the land, for the Temple stands there like an altar for the whole countryside: the God is dwelling within it.’ In Christendom, man says: ‘I must leave my work and repair to this building, for there I must seek for the Spirit.’ The service of earth and the service of heaven are separated and the Christian Church more and more assumes a form where Greek and Roman architecture would no longer be suitable. It is a form which reveals that the community belongs to the church; the church is intended to enclose the community. Then, once again set apart from the community, we find the house of the priests, of those who teach. An image of the universe comes into being; the Spirit speaks to those who seek for the spirit, in precincts where they are enclosed within walls. The whole world was felt by the Greeks and Romans in former times in the same way in which the Christians afterwards felt the precincts of the Church with its enclosing walls.

And what the Greek Temple itself had been now became the chancel. Men sought now for a distinct image of the world whereas formerly they had taken the world itself and only placed within it, visible to outer senses, the Temple as the dwelling-place of God. Gothic architecture is really only a branch of what was already being prepared. The essential feature of Gothic architecture is that the weight is taken away from the walls and placed upon the pillars. What is the origin of this whole mode of construction, where the weight rests on pillars, which are so moulded that they are able to bear it? It is based on a quite different conception from that of the Greek Temple. When we pass to the pillars of Gothic architecture which take away the weight from the walls, we are no longer concerned with the pure force of gravity. Here, man himself is working. In the Greek Temple it is as though he frees himself from the earth's gravity and having gained knowledge of it within the earthly realm, now rises above it. In that man makes use of the force of gravity, he overcomes it. In the weight-bearing Gothic pillars we are no longer concerned with the pure working of the force of gravity; in the Gothic building the art of handicraft is necessary, of higher and lower handicraft. The need for the creation of precincts which enclose the community also gives rise, in Gothic architecture, to the need for something wherein the activity of the community plays a part. In the single forms we see a continuation, as it were, of what the people have learnt. The art of the hand-workers flows into the forms, and in studying these forms we see the art of human beings who have contributed their share, who have worked together. The old Roman Churches are still edifices which enclose the God. The Gothic Church is an edifice built by the community to enclose the God but one where the people have contributed their own handicraft. They do not only enter the Churches but they themselves work at the building as a community. In Gothic architecture this labour of human beings unites itself with the Divine. The souls of men no longer receive the Divine as a matter of course; they do not only come together and listen to the word of the Spirit proceeding from the chancel, but they gather around the God in their labours. Gothic Churches are really crystallised handicraft.

We can quickly pass over what came next, for it really amounted to a revival of classic architecture. In this connection it is not necessary to speak of the Renaissance; we will speak of what the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch demands of us.

Let us consider the element of weight and support, following it to the point where it becomes crystallised handicraft in Gothic architecture.

If we penetrate this with artistic feeling we realise that here is something at rest within itself, at rest within the earthly forces. All the forces of these edifices rest within the earthly element. The Greek Temple everywhere indicates the force of gravity and its own union with the earth. In the Greek Temple we can everywhere observe some manifestation of the force of gravity. Its very forms reveal a union with the earth.

And now let us compare the basic form in our building that will confront everyone even from the outside. I will make a rough diagram of it. What is the characteristic of this motif?

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I should have to speak for a long time if I wanted to show that this is how the art of relief first assumes its real meaning, but I will only give you an indication of what I really have in mind. A certain eminent artist of modern times has spoken a great deal about the art of relief and has said some clever things. He tells us to think of two panes of glass standing parallel to each other and between them an intersected figure. We should then be looking in the direction of the arrow through the panes of glass at the figure ...

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Now there is in the world a relief which is full of meaning, only we pay no proper attention to it. There is a certain relief that has been created in accordance with the true idea—it is the earth with her plant kingdom. We must, however, pass away from the surface of the earth into cosmic space before we can study this relief. The earth is the living surface which brings forth its creatures from its own being. Our own art of relief must be based upon the conception that the wall is a living thing even as the earth brings forth her plants. This is how a true art of relief is attained. To go beyond this principle is to sin against the essence of the art of relief. When we look down upon the great relief of the earth, we see human beings and animals moving upon it, but they do not belong to the relief. They can be introduced into the relief, of course, because the arts can be developed in all directions, but this is no longer the pure essence of the art of relief.

Our building must speak through the forms in its interior, but the speech must be that of the Gods. Think for a moment of the life of human beings on the earth, that is to say, immediately on the surface of the earth. Here we need not draw directly on our teachings—we need only turn to the Paradise Legend. If man had remained in Paradise he would have looked upon the wonderful relief of the earth with her plant kingdom from outside. He himself, however, was transplanted, as it were, into this relief. He could not observe it from outside for he was taken out of Paradise. The speech of the Gods cannot ascend from the earth to men for the speech of the earth drowns the speech of the Gods.

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Nothing in this architecture is there for its own sake alone. The one form leads over into the other; or, if the forms have a threefold character, the central form is the bridge between the other two. Here we have a rough sketch of the forms of the doors and windows.

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Now all that lives in the sculptured forms is three dimensional; relief is a conquest of the second dimension, surface, which is then brought into the third dimension. This is not realised if we merely take the standpoint of an observer or spectator: for we need a living feeling of how the earth allows the plants to grow out of her being.

When I come to speak of the real nature of painting we shall understand the significance of the connection between colour and the inner element of soul in the universe. There would be no sense in painting with colours if colour were not something quite different from what physics imagines it to be. The principles of colour as the speech of the soul of nature, of the soul of the universe, will be the subject of a later lecture.

I will now indicate how our glass windows are to represent the union of the outer with the inner. They will each in themselves be of one single colour, but different colours will be used at the various positions in the building. This expresses the spiritual, musical harmony of the outer with the inner world. And the single coloured window will only express this harmony in the thicker and thinner strata of the glass. That is to say, we shall have surfaces where the glass is thicker, more solid, and surfaces where the glass is thinner. The light will shine more strongly through the thinner places in the windows; it will shine less strongly, and produce darker colours, through the places where the glass is thicker. The connection between spirit and matter will be expressed in the glass windows; but the whole interior will strive to be an organ for the speech of the Gods. The larynx makes it possible for man to speak, and in the same way the whole of our relief-moulding is an organ for the Gods who should speak to us from all sides of the universe. So that when we make an aperture for the windows in the walls which allow the Gods to speak to us, we are seeking the path to the Spirits of the cosmos. These windows are intended to signify in their coloured shadings: ‘Thus, O man, thou findest the path to the Spirit.’ We shall see how the soul is connected with the spiritual world when it sleeps during the night and is living outside the body. We shall see the way in which the soul is connected with the spiritual world between death and a new birth in the disembodied state. The windows will show us how, when man approaches the threshold, he becomes aware of the abyss; the stations on the path to the spiritual world will be revealed. They will arise as light formations from the West, revealing to us the mysteries of Initiation. We are trying to create walls, the forms of which make the wall themselves seem to pass away. The designs must express how we pierce the walls, showing us how we find the path to the spiritual worlds, or traverse these worlds unconsciously, showing us what our relation to the spiritual worlds must be.

The Greek Temple, the dwelling place of the God, and the later edifice, which was built for the community desiring to be united with their God, were building-sheaths which enclosed and shut off. Our building must not shut off anything in the universe; its walls must live, but live in accordance with truth itself. Truth flows into the beauty of our relief-moulding. If we had not been driven out of Paradise we should be conscious of the ' speaking ' relief proceeding from the earth herself in the plant forms, which grow even above the geological formations of the mountains and only allow these strata to be bare in places where it is right that they should be bare. The moment however when we find in our perceptual life the transition from the 'repose' where the Gods speak to us, from that ‘repose’ to our own activity, to what we must do in order to find the way to the Gods—in that moment we must have movement, inner movement; we must pierce the wall. We must have these windows which call to our souls to tread the path to those regions whence the words expressed by the forms of the walls have proceeded. Then each one of us will sit within the building and we shall say to ourselves: “The organs of the great Spirits themselves are round about us; it is for us to understand the language spoken though these forms.” But we must understand it in the heart and not merely be able to grasp it intellectually.

Those who begin to, explain' the meaning of these forms are on the wrong track. They stand on the same ground as those who interpret the old myths symbolically and allegorically, and imagine for instance, that they are advancing the cause of Theosophy. A man who tries to ‘interpret’ the myths and explain external forms may be clever and ingenious but he is like one who tries to look under his chin to explain the symbolism of his larynx. We understand the speech of the Gods by learning how to listen with our hearts, not by using intellectual agility and giving symbolic or allegorical meanings to myths and artistic forms. ‘Here you sit and the Spirits of the Universe are speaking to you’—this must become a living feeling within us. When this becomes a living perception of what the soul must do if it is to find the way to those regions whence the speech of the Spirits proceeds, we shall direct our gaze to where the walls are pierced by the windows; and at those places there will be revealed to us the mysteries enacted in man as he consciously or unconsciously treads the path from the physical to the spiritual.

I have tried to express the feelings of our hearts and souls to-day when this house is being given over to the charge of our friend Rychter and his colleagues for their work. May they feel, as they receive it, the sacred nature of their task and something of the holiness of which I have spoken. Up on the hill itself we are still working at the building which will reveal, to those who seek, organs through which the Gods may speak to them. But there must arise in these seekers a holy longing to find the ways and paths to the realms of the Gods. The work of Rychter and his colleagues in the rooms of this house will be taken up the hill and placed in the positions where the walls are pierced. It will move the souls of those gathered together in the building at the top of the hill and show them the path to the Spirit.

May this holy mood pervade this house; may each drilling in the glass be carried out with the feeling: ‘Here I have to mould something that will lead to the realms of the Spirits those who see it up there in the building. My creations must make the soul's perception so living that the shadings in the coloured glass will represent the channels by which the spiritual worlds are speaking through the forms in the interior.’ The difficulties may be very great, indeed there may be only partial success in many cases and in other cases total failure, but the attitude I have described will be an unfailing help.

I did not intend to-night merely to speak of matters which may help to make art more intelligible. I have spoken as I have because I pray that something of what I feel may flow from my heart to yours. I want your hearts to be livingly permeated with a feeling inwardly vibrant with the sense of the holiness of this work. We dedicate this house of labour most fitly if as we leave the doors we concentrate with all the forces of our hearts on love for the world of man and of spirit, to the end that the way to the Spirit may be found through what is accomplished here—to the Spirit whence peace and harmony can flow among men on the earth. If all our labours are made living by the Spirit, if all the work on this hill is filled with the Spirit of Love—which is at the same time the Spirit of true art—then from our building there will flow out over the earth the spirit of Peace, of Harmony, of Love. The possibility will be created for the work on this hill to find successors; many such centres of earthly and spiritual peace, harmony and love may thus spring up in the world. Let us realise the living nature of our work in this mood of peace and loving harmony, knowing that our labours flow from the Spirit of Life itself. There have been dwelling-places of the Gods, sanctuaries of the community, and there yet will be an organ of speech for the Spirit, a building which points out the way to the Spirit. The God dwelt in the Greek Temple; the spirit of the community may dwell within the Roman or Gothic edifice; but the world of the Spirit itself must speak through the building of the future. We have seen the house of earthly forces and forms arise and pass away in the course of human evolution; we have seen the house of the union of human souls arise and pass away in the spiritual evolution of the earth. It is for us to build the house of speech out of our love for true art, which is at the same time love for true spirituality and for all mankind.

During the time when the construction of our building is proceeding I think it is a very good thing for us to try to grow more and more into its meaning. We have already made a beginning with the two previous lectures and we will try as far as we can, by means of further study, really to become one with what is to be accomplished here.

In the first place I should like to remind you of what I said when we opened the house dedicated to the work of constructing the glass windows. The lecture referred to the evolution of thought and conception underlying the art of building and I will just briefly recapitulate what I was then only able to indicate.

In regard to the Greek Temple, I said that in a certain sense it formed a unity with the whole countryside—the whole countryside was one with it. The Temple stood there as the ‘dwelling place of the God.’ Nothing need be in the Greek Temple save the spiritual presence of the God and his physical image. The essence of the construction of the Temple was the fact that every man engaged in his daily pursuits on the land knew that within the region where he was carrying on his work he was not merely alone with the earth but united with the spiritual world. And the token for the fact that man, as he lived on the earth, was also united with the spiritual world, was the Temple standing there like an altar in the land.

We then saw evidence of progress in architectural thought, in that the Christian art of building separated off the edifice from the land. Everyday life and the mood of exaltation by which man raised himself to the Spirit were separated from each other. The Church of Christendom is no longer actually one with the land; it serves the Spirit, apart from the countryside, and expresses the fact that when man is to rise to the Spirit he must leave the affairs of daily life, repair for a time to a place set apart and there be united with the spirit. The Church of Christendom, therefore, could no longer be what the buildings of Greece and also of Rome were in their real being. The Church of Christendom was in itself a duality, the house of the community and the house set apart for the altar and the priesthood. Man leaves the affairs of everyday life and enters into the precincts where he feels himself gazing upwards to the Spirit which comes to him from the chancel where the altar stands.

This evolution in architectural thought naturally implies the transformation of the ancient Greek form of building (which was derived purely from static and dynamic factors, the factors of space and gravity) into the form corresponding to the conception of the community being set apart.

Passing to the Gothic Cathedral we have a still later form of architectural conception. We have the striving of the community not only to bear their own personalities into the sanctuary but also their individual work, and this is expressed in the forms of Gothic architecture. We feel as if the work performed in the environment has passed into the architectural forms and rises to the Spirit like a prayer, a folding of the hands.

I also said that a real advance in architectural conception must come to pass again in our times and that this is only possible if the nearness to the Spirit which was achieved to an ever-increasing extent from the period of the Greek conception of architecture onwards to that of Gothic building—if this nearness is gradually transformed into a complete union with the Spirit. This means that buildings which should now be dedicated to life in union with the Spirit must in their very form express inner correspondence with the Spiritual. We can indeed say—if we try not to explain the thing in abstractions but to grasp it with the whole of our feeling and soul—‘All that is embodied in our life of soul through Spiritual Science implies an actual penetration into the form that is created. The Spirit is revealed in freedom, having now descended to mankind.’ Whereas the Greek placed the Temple like an altar in the land, the future and, inasmuch as we are working from out of the future in our building, the present, are placing a true expression of the Spirit in the land as the result of what the Spirit expresses in its forms.

A speech which has a message for man of the present day will arise. But all this requires that we endeavour to understand the Spirit in its forms of expression. In order to understand the Greek Temple, we tried, last time, to grasp the purely physical qualities of space and of gravity. But the Spirit does not only work according to the laws of mechanics and dynamics; it does not only reveal itself in conditions of space and energy. The Spirit is living, hence it must be expressed in our building in a living way, a truly living way. We shall not understand this any better by interpreting the Spirit symbolically, but by beginning to feel that the forms are living, that they are organs of speech flowing from the spiritual world.

Is it possible for forms to speak from the spiritual world? It is indeed possible, in many ways. Let us take a thought that is specially near to us because on the one hand it is the expression of the highest, and on the other, in its Luciferic aspect it is submerged in the lowest—let us take the idea of the Ego, of Selfhood.

The mere utterance of the word “I” or “Self” does not as yet evoke much thought in man. Many epochs will have to run their course in human history before a fully conscious idea can arise in the soul when the word “I” or “Self” is uttered. Nevertheless, Selfhood, Ego-hood, can be felt in form, and above all when we pass from a purely mathematical conception of form to a feeling in form we can acquire a perception of Ego-hood, Selfhood, in the perfect circle. If you realise this you will readily understand what follows from it. If the true, living, sentient human being, confronting a circle, senses the feeling of Ego-hood, Selfhood, arising in his soul, or if when he sees a fragment of a circle he feels that it typifies the independent Self, he is learning to live in forms. And the characteristic of really living feeling is the capacity for living in forms. If you keep this in mind you will easily be able to pass on to other things that follow from it.

The first circle I have drawn here has an unbroken line (1).

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This line however can be varied so that it shows these wavy projections (2).

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But we can go further. Let us picture to ourselves a less simple variation (4). The form moves in one direction and becomes action. If we live in this form we have the feeling that it advances, that it moves. In the forms themselves we find the quality of movement. I have here made a simple sketch of something that will appear in a complicated form in the building, but you will find that there is an absolute correspondence. Passing from the entrance at the West and thence towards the smaller structure (at the East) you will find that all the forms in the interior will evoke the feeling that the whole structure is proceeding from the West onwards to the East. This is expressed in the forms. At the West you will feel in thought that you are within a vehicle that is bearing you to the East. The very essence and meaning of these relief variations is that they do not merely appear as dead, dynamic or mechanical forms; we seem to enter a vehicle that bears us onwards. In a spiritual sense we shall not “rest” in our building; we shall be led onwards.

From this you will realise that the basic character of the forms here is quite different from the forms of the three stages of architectural thought which I have described. Up to our time architectural thought has been concerned with the qualities of lifeless, mechanical rest. Now, however architectural thought becomes the thought of speech, of inner movement, of that which draws us along with it. This is what is new in the whole conception, and the basic form must of course correspond to it. In what way does the basic form correspond to it? Now I have said that the most intimate of all impressions is that of the Self, the Ego, as expressed in the circle or sphere. Why is this? It is because the simple circle or sphere is of all forms the most easily perceptible. It is an absolutely simple matter to recognise a circle. All that is necessary is the most trivial thought that everything is equidistant from the central point. As soon as we picture to ourselves points standing at an equal distance from this centre, we have the sphere, or circle. It is the very easiest process that can be carried out in thought. As form, then, the circle is the simplest of all entities. This is also in accordance with external reality, for the Selfhood in every being, from the simplest cell to the complex human being, is the simplest of all impressions, just like the circle or sphere. Behind all this there is something much deeper and I want you now to follow me in a thought that will lead those who really understand it, to great profundities.

Now the form of an ellipse is more complex than that of the circle. I will draw the form of an ordinary ellipse. It need not be exact but merely have the general character of an ellipse. The simplicity of the thought is no longer there when we pass to the ellipse. Although the ellipse is still spherical, we have no longer the nature of equality as in the case of the circle. Here I must ask those who have studied geometry—although for politeness sake we will assume that you all know a little of geometry though you may have forgotten some of it—to try to understand the following ideas. There is also order and regularity in the ellipse. Just as the circle is related to one point, the ellipse is related to two.

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In the case of the circle there is no such feeling of satisfaction, for the circle is so immediately obvious. The ellipse causes us greater joy because there we have to be inwardly active. The more one is inwardly active, the greater joy one has. What is often so difficult to realise is that man, in his inner being, craves for activity. If he wants to be lazy this is merely an affair of his conscious life. The astral body is not only wiser, but also more industrious and would like always to be active.

Now there is another line consisting, of course, always of two portions. Those who have studied geometry will know that the hyperbola consists of two symmetrical curves.

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Man is thus a mathematician in the substrata of his consciousness and by means of subconscious calculation we create for ourselves regularity of form. We add and subtract, but we can also multiply. Here again we have two points. Multiplying the one by the other we again get a line that looks somewhat like the ellipse but is not the same. This line contains an inner process of multiplication.

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This line has something mysterious about it. The circle is a simple entity, the ellipse already more complicated, the hyperbola still more so, for I do not think that the ordinary person sees only one single line in the two curves. The ordinary intellect believes there are two curves. The ordinary intellect believes there are two lines, but in reality this is not so. The other line is mysterious for another reason, for according to what is produced by multiplication the line is changed into this curious form. It is the curve of multiplication, the curve of Cassini, the lemniscate which plays so important a rôle in occult investigations. The line can develop in such a way that it assumes these forms. There are two lines, you see, but in the inner sense there is really one line, and when we feel it as one line in the astral world we know that this form (o-o) is only a specialisation of this form ( ∞ ). But now think—this form ( ∞ ) disappears into the fourth dimension—then appears again and enters the physical world. It is an unity because it ever and again disappears into the fourth dimension. This multiplication process has really three different forms.

We have therefore a line of addition, a line of subtraction, a line of multiplication. Someone may say that there must then be a line of division, the fourth method of calculation.

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We add and get the ellipse.
We subtract and get the hyperbola.
We multiply and get the curves of Cassini, the Lemniscate.
We divide and get the circle.

Now we have something very remarkable indeed. When we really try to penetrate into the depths of nature they appear before the soul in all their wonder. The circle appears to be an utterly simple entity but it is, nevertheless, full of mystery. The circle can also be understood by taking two points and dividing, and inasmuch as the same result is arrived at, we get the circle. The circle is thus something very remarkable. It is the simplest of all entities and yet it is the product of an occult process of division that is brought into consciousness. It is just the same in the case of the self of man: the ordinary self is the simple entity and the higher self the mysterious entity resting in the depths of being—a self that can only be found when we transcend its limits and pay heed to the world with which it is connected. The circle is the same whether we say that it is the simplest of all forms or that the product of division from two points is always the same. Just as we have the same circle, so we have within ourselves a duality: something that belongs to everyday life and is readily perceptible, and something that we only grasp when we go out to the whole universe, conceiving of this entity as the most complicated product of the great cosmic struggle where Ahriman and Lucifer carry out the division and where our own higher self has to maintain itself as the quotient if it is ever to come to expression.

Portions of the ellipse and of the hyperbola and also of the curves of Cassini will be found everywhere in our building, and your astral bodies will have plenty of opportunity to make these calculations! Here I will only mention one instance: when people go into our building and stand in the gallery where the organ and the singers will stand, their souls will be able to carry out this process of multiplication. The soul may not do so consciously but it will feel this process in the depths of its being, because this is the line of the structure around the organ. This line will be found in many places in the building.

After what I have now told you about the twofold meaning of the circle you will be able to realise that when you enter the building from the West and feel yourselves surrounded by the circular structure, by the cupola above, that here is the image of the human self. But the other smaller space in the East is not at first sight so intelligible. The smaller structure will seem to be full of mystery because, although its form is also circular, it must be conceived of as the result of a process of division and it only outwardly resembles the larger space. There are two circles, but the one corresponds to the life of everyday and the other is connected with the whole cosmos. We bear within us a lower self and a higher self. Both again are one. Thus our building had to be a twofold structure. Its form expresses—not in any symbolical sense but in its very being—the dual nature of man. When the curtain in front of the stage is open we shall perceive an image of man not only as he is in everyday life, but as complete man. The forms themselves express a movement from West to East, the path of the lower to the higher Self. All that I have told you can actually be felt in the forms. The erection of a building of this kind reveals how the spiritual form of nature and the higher spiritual world can be expressed. Nobody who begins to think out all kinds of ingenious interpretations will Understand our building. It can only be understood by a living feeling of the development and being of the forms. For this reason I do not want to describe the building pictorially but to speak of the mode of its development, how spiritual being itself has become form and movement and has flowed into it. Suppose anyone were to look at the interior and begin to speculate thus: ‘Yes, two cupolas, two circular structures—lower Self, higher Self; a lower Self, a higher Self—a unity.’ This may be a neat interpretation but it would be of no more value than if it were said that Maria and Johannes Thomasius in the Mystery Plays are really one being. This is a mere speculation, for it results in an abstraction. The unity lies in the living ‘becoming.’ Naturally the living powers of becoming can bring forth both Maria and Thomasius but only as the result of a differentiation. Even in similarity the true occultist will always seek for diversity, for it would be false occultism to desire always to lead back diversity to unity. Hence the example of the circle. The circle is the simplest of all entities, where all points are equidistant from the centre—but it is also the result of division. In the circle we have something that is a unity in the outer world and complex in the spiritual world.

These are some of the remarks I desired to make. On another occasion I shall speak further on these matters. I shall now speak briefly of other things.

Man, as he enters the world, is really a highly complicated being. When he enters the world—as I have often said—he cannot at first stand upright; lie crawls, and at the very beginning of his existence he does not even crawl. Gradually he learns to control the forces which make him able to stand upright.

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The advance from Gothic architecture to that of Spiritual Science may be described as follows: Gothic architecture contains the prayer: ‘O Father of the Universe, may we be united with Thee, in Thy Spirit.’ Those who know what this prayer contains, who really understand the living development of Spiritual Science, will solve the riddle of the evolution of man. And then, when the forms of architectural thought strive to be united with the Spirit—expressing this striving in their very being—man will feel how he has been permeated with the hidden Spirit and can have around him a building which is a direct expression of the living, inner development of his being.

‘We dwell in the land, but the Spirit is among us.’ This is the Greek thought of architecture.

‘We dwell for a season in the sanctuary and the Spirit comes to us.’ This is the thought behind Christian architecture.

‘We dwell for a season in the sanctuary, but we uplift the soul by raising ourselves to the Spirit.’ This is the thought behind Gothic architecture.

‘We enter with reverence into the Spirit in order that we may become one with the Spirit poured out around us in the forms—the Spirit that moves and is active, because behind the Spirits of Form stand the Spirits of Movement.’ This is the thought behind the new architecture.

Existence thus advances through earthly evolution and it is man's task to understand the inner meaning and purport of this existence. He only advances in the wake of true evolution when he endeavours, in every epoch, to experience what the spiritual world bestows in that epoch.

Why do our souls pass through different, successive incarnations? Not in order that we may repeat the same experiences, nor that we may pass through re-birth, re-naissance, again and again, but in order that we may assimilate, ever and again, the new that pours into our souls from out the spiritual worlds. We are standing at a definite point in the evolution of humanity in the sphere of art and in many other spheres of spiritual life—at a point where the Spirit speaks clearly to us of new riddles. And just as in the time of the Renaissance man was destined primarily to orientate himself to the past in order to work his way through to the new, so it is with our own external knowledge and perception of the universe. All that has been produced by the modern age since the sixteenth century is only the preparation for a living experience of the universe in its forms and movements which now stand before us as riddles.

This, then, is all for to-day. In another lecture I will try to approach questions of a still more intimate character—questions relating to the living soul of nature in connection with colour and the art of painting.

In the last lecture we spoke of the Spirit which should pervade the forms in our building. From all that has been said you will have gathered that these forms are no more the result of imitation of the external physical world than of mere speculation. Your feeling will have been that the forms have been derived from the spiritual world of which man is an integral part and of which he may hope to become conscious in the development of his knowledge of Spiritual Science. I want to remind you once again of an important fact, of which mention has already been made, namely, that human life runs its course in periods of approximately seven years each, and—as I tried last time to explain to you from spiritual-scientific cosmology—when we observe the whole course of these periods of seven years, we may say that after each period a certain support is added to man's being. When he has passed through seven such periods, therefore, he has reached approximately his fiftieth year, he possesses seven pairs of these ‘life-supports.’

If we were now to imagine ourselves entering the building from the West, in the first two pillars we have the expression of the supports which man has raised in his own being after the first period of seven years has run its course; the second pair of pillars are an expression of the supports he has added after the second period of seven years; and so it goes on, only it must be remembered that in man these supports are intermingled, whereas in the building they have had to be placed one behind the other in space. We may then be permeated with the feeling that when we pass through the building from the West towards the East, all that works upon us from left and right is a revelation of processes in human life itself. This shows us that there are firmly established cosmic laws of which man is a part but which are infinitely deeper than the so-called ‘natural laws’ of the outer physical world, and furthermore that the forms in our building have been evolved from these deep cosmic laws.

To study every detail from this point of view would lead us very far, although it could be done. In the present materialistic epoch, where there is no knowledge of Spiritual Science, there will be little understanding for these deeper laws of ‘being and becoming.’ We may therefore find ourselves faced with the question—and it is a wholly understandable one from the point of view of external knowledge—‘Why are the columns made of different kinds of wood?’ There is no allegorical or symbolical meaning in this, and anyone who raises such a question merely proves that life has afforded him no opportunity for the contemplation of deeper cosmic laws. The only rejoinder we can make is this: ‘Why, then, do you consider it necessary for a violin not to have only A strings?’ A man who wanted to use only A strings on a violin would be in exactly the same position as one who—perhaps quite unconsciously and naïvely—were to ask as the result of superficial knowledge, why our pillars are made of different woods.

We can develop these matters slowly, for we shall often meet together here. We can allow subjects that may prove fruitful to enter gradually into our feelings. To-day, therefore, I only want to speak of one matter that will help to stimulate our perception of what underlies the laws of true aesthetic form, on the one hand in the cosmos, and on the other in the microcosm, in the constitution of man. Before very long, the so-called science of to-day will undergo an overwhelming expansion, and only then will there be understanding of the true and deeper laws of aesthetic form.

In order to evoke a concrete perception of what I have here mentioned in mere abstract words, let us consider the following. I am going to place before you something that corresponds to a cosmological fact, a mighty cosmic fact.

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Now these three heavenly bodies (see diagram) stand in a certain mutual relationship to each other; they reveal their activities to each other and I want to speak of one particular aspect of these activities. To this end I will first divide the Sun diagrammatically as it actually appears to the occult seer when he directs his attention to these things. The Sun is seen divided into a kind of cross, into four chambers. The remarkable thing is that in the first moments of vision we see a kind of streaming current, but closer scrutiny reveals the fact that here we have to do with hosts of beings passing to and fro. We can see such a stream of spiritual beings passing from a certain “chamber” of the Sun to the Earth, penetrating the Earth and vitalising the Earth with solar essence, that is to say, with the spiritual force of the Sun, and thence streaming to their own chamber in the Sun.

This is cosmic reality but one sees still more—one sees migrations of hosts of spiritual beings who are flowing around and through the Moon (see diagram). They proceed from another chamber of the Sun: but they also flow in the other direction and pour through the Moon. Up to this point we are perceiving the activities of the inhabitants of three chambers in the Sun. Another migration or stream arises from the fact that these beings always return to the Sun after having passed through the Moon; thus a double stream has arisen. On the one hand the beings return into the fourth chamber in the Sun after having poured through the Moon, but another stream is formed because certain beings do not take part in the migration to the Moon; before reaching the Moon they turn back again to the Sun. This configuration reveals to us a kind of mirror-image in the cosmos, but we will leave this image out of consideration for the moment. It would be formed by a symmetrical expansion of the figure that is engraved there in the cosmos. This means, in effect, that there is revealed to clairvoyant consciousness a marvellous combination of forms, a figure engraved in the cosmos representing the interplay between the forces of Sun, Moon and Earth.

Now I will draw the diagram rather differently, with the Sun rather turned (Diagram II). The cross must also be turned.

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Now I will draw the diagram again differently (Diagram III). Here I have assumed hypothetically that Ahriman and Lucifer have entered, bringing disorder in their train. I will draw the Sun, Moon and Earth more irregularly and again trace the connections between them. What have I now drawn? Exactly the same thing as in the other diagrams, only somewhat distorted as a result of the intervention of Ahriman and Lucifer. I have now drawn a sketch of the blood circulation in man, a sketch of how the blood flows from the left ventricle of the heart through the body, on the one hand through the brain on the other through the rest of the body, returning as venous blood; you also see the course of the small circulatory stream through the right ventricle and lungs back again to the so-called left auricle.

Thus we can read from the cosmos what man is as a microcosmos, only it must be remembered that Ahriman and Lucifer have approached him.

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If a figure were made of this diagram—that is to say, a figure copied from the cosmos and expressed in some motif—we should have before us a profound cosmic mystery merely in the combination of form. When a certain combination of lines underlies a figure of this kind—where perhaps only a few of these lines are expressed and the others drawn in quite another way—those who have real feeling and not merely intellectual understanding, will perceive a cosmic mystery in the very form itself. They will say to themselves: ‘What is it that this form expresses? I do not actually know, but I feel that it expresses a mystery.’ It is this that inspires our souls and makes our hearts glow when we look at certain forms. We cannot always be conscious of what lies behind them, but our astral body, our subconscious being, contains the mysteries of the cosmos and senses them in the depths just as it contains the secrets of mathematics, as I told you in the previous lecture. When a man says, ‘I feel beauty here, but I cannot explain to myself what it really is,’ something is taking place in his astral body. This he may express by saying that he senses the existence of deep and mysterious secrets of the cosmos which do not take the form of ideas and thoughts but are expressed in a feeling, ‘Ah, how beautiful this form is.’ The reason why he feels this as warmth pouring through his heart and soul is that if he were as conscious in his astral body as he is in his ego he would have a deep knowledge of the cosmos.

These things must teach us to understand how art has gradually developed in human evolution and to realise that true works of art in the Goethean sense are ‘a manifestation of higher laws of nature than the ordinary intellect of man can divine.’ We find an inkling of the truth of these things more especially when we go back to what modern opinion holds to be the “primitive art” of earlier periods of human evolution. This is because in those olden times a certain primitive, atavistic clairvoyance was a common attribute of humanity and because man then created forms from out of this clairvoyance. Many of the forms to be found in primitive art can only be understood when we realise that they were the outcome of this primordial clairvoyant consciousness. Men experienced the content of their astral bodies as living movement, tried to express it in a kind of noble dance, and then converted it from the Dionysian dance into Apollonian design and painting. Such is the origin of certain forms of early art which often seem to us merely primitive, but which in truth have sprung from a deeper understanding of the spiritual world imparted by the clairvoyance of those times.

This, I think, will show you that in the sense of true, genuine art, the easy phrase ‘there can be no disputing about taste’ is wholly incorrect in its ordinary sense. Fundamentally speaking, of course, one can dispute about everything, even about mathematical principles. When one man applies a mathematical principle and gets a different result from another who also applies it, disputes can naturally arise and even become acute, but one of the two has made an error. The error, of course, is not so easy to discover in the case of beauty or art. Nevertheless man can attain to a point of view which convinces him that the forms and laws of true art are firmly established and based upon the deeper laws of cosmic being. Perhaps it may be admitted that the principle ' there is no disputing about taste' only penetrates into life by dint of effort, that it is a conception only to be evolved very gradually. But in the course of his life a man can be convinced of the truth of it when he realises that art is a manifestation of higher laws of nature which without art would never be revealed. Here again I am using Goethe's words. Man can indeed be convinced that art is this manifestation of higher laws of nature about which there can fundamentally be no disputing.

In the light of what now should be living within us, not so much as thought, but as feeling, we must gradually be able to work our way to another perception. What is really happening to us when we delight in forms that are truly artistic? We are passing out of ourselves, penetrating with the soul into something that is real, outside ourselves. Therefore it is not at all unnatural that in a building which belongs to the present and future we should set out in full consciousness to create forms which will help man to conquer the consciousness of merely physical and material actuality and feel himself expanded out into the cosmos through the architecture, sculpture and all that this work of art may contain. Much will have to be done, however, before this feeling will be able to penetrate into every sphere of art and be admitted by modern science. Darwinism, and all that it brought in its train in the nineteenth century, rendered great service to the progress of human knowledge and culture, but it gave rise to many one-sided conceptions, for instance, in the law of so-called “selection” which has been laid down as a universal law, although it only holds good in one connection. The knowledge of this law is very important, but to lay it down as a universal law is the result of distorted, one-sided conceptions. People have been led to think somewhat as follows. They ask, ‘Why is it that the structure of living beings is contrived in accordance with expediency? What is the origin of this?’ The monistic materialist of the present day answers: ‘We are no longer as stupid as our ancestors. We have great intelligence and do not therefore believe that some spiritual being or other has endowed living organisms with this “expedient” structure. It is part of nature that the expedient and the inexpedient (the fit and the unfit) should originally have arisen, concomitantly. These two elements then entered into the struggle for existence where the fit conquered and the unfit was exterminated. The fit passes down through heredity, so that after a certain time it alone remains.’ The ‘fitness’ of the organic structure was thus explained by the law of causality.

This conception is then applied in a special instance. Some creature lives in a certain environment and has this remarkable characteristic, that its colouring is the same as that of its environment. Certain creatures live, let us say, in sand of a particular colour. In such cases observation shows that the creatures take on the colour of the sand. Those who adhere to the theory of selection and expediency say: ‘It is expedient for these creatures to have the colour of their environment, for their enemies do not see them and hence cannot pursue them. They are not destroyed. They have this advantage over other creatures whose colour differs from that of the sand. Once upon a time there were creatures who colours resembled the sand, while others were of every possible hue. But these latter were seen by their foes and destroyed; they were at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence.’ The others, however, who were, by chance of the same colour as the sand, remained, and this quality was transmitted to the following generations. The creatures who were differently coloured died out and those like the sand maintained themselves in the struggle for existence.' This is a highly plausible train of thought and it has dominated the minds of men for decades. In sandy places hosts of these tiny creatures of exactly the same colour as the sand are to be found. According to materialistic, monistic Darwinism they are supposed to have originated as I have described. But actual facts upset the conclusion, for, in spite of it all, as soon as these creatures show themselves they are destroyed by their foes. The whole conception is based upon a chain of argument that does not reckon with the actual facts. All these materialistic speculations and fantasies will one day be replaced by true insight which may indeed seem grotesque and paradoxical to many people but which will explain, for instance, why the polar bear is white and not black or brown. The insight will arise that there is an astral nature, that every animal has an astral body and that soul processes have their seat in this astral body. The greyish coloured creatures in the sand have of course no ego, but they have an astral body, primitive though it may be. An interplay arises between this astral body and the colour of the environment, and the effects produced by this interplay between the greyness, let us say, of the environment, and the astral body, pass into the dimmer consciousness of the astral body and permeate the whole being. It is just as if you were to look around here and say, ‘This is wood, I know that it is wood.’ The creature lives in the sand, its astral body is permeated with the colour of the sand and the consciousness of the colour of the sand' flows through its whole being. It takes on the colour, saturates itself with the colour of the environment which has been consciously absorbed. The colour is of course modified by every struggle arising between the immediate colour of the environment and the direct light of the sun. The influence of the direct light of the sun on the astral body, however, is such that, by way of the soul nature, something that in turn streams out and permeates the the whole being enters into the astral body. In the very colours of birds' feathers and skins of animals man will recognise the deeper effects of the consciousness, which is the result of the interplay between the astral body and the environment. The living being lives and moves in the flowing ocean of colour and identifies itself with this flowing colour essence. The human being also does this below the threshold of his ego, but in a higher sense. Our life, therefore, is bound up with the life of the flowing sea of colour. As human beings we have the advantage of the animals in one thing only. I can now do no more than hint at it. Think, by way of comparison, of certain animals which always swim under water and never come to the surface. They have water in their environment. They adapt themselves to what they take into themselves from the water. Others have to come to the surface and they too adapt themselves to what is above the surface of the water. Instead of the water, think now of a flowing sea of colour and light. All animals live, as it were, under the surface of the sea of colour and light, hence they adjust their outer covering primarily in accordance with this flowing colour and light. Man with his ego consciousness stretches out beyond the sea of colour and light and the very fact that he can do this gives him his ego consciousness. When man's colouring is influenced, as in the different races, the influence is not, in his case, the outcome of colour and light, but of the conditions of warmth and climate. The reason why humming birds in certain regions are decked with such a variety of colours is very different from the reason which causes human beings in the same region to be of a negroid black. The birds have been worked upon by colour conditions, and man by the warmth condition, because, in effect, the human being with his ego rises above the sea of colour and this only works in his astral body. Otherwise—to use a radical and therefore paradoxical expression—if the agricultural labourer who is perpetually surrounded by green had no ego whereby he reaches beyond the sea of colour, he would go about with a greenish skin; and the skin of the city man, living perpetually among grey houses and seldom leaving them, would have a horrible greyish tint—that is to say if primordial forces were at work., Our astral body none the less is immersed in the flowing sea of colour, but all that the astral body absorbs from this sea of colour has taken on a different activity. Our hair is not coloured, nor if we had feathers would they be coloured by what the astral body absorbs; instead of this, we have perceptions and feelings in connection with colour without diffusing the colours through our being. If we were simply to absorb the green or blue or red into our astral body and diffuse them through our being, thus giving ourselves the colouring of the outer world, we should have quite a different relationship to the world of colour than is actually the case. We do not, however, do this. We absorb the colours into our being in a spiritual sense, so that blue, for instance, becomes the expression of rest; red the expression of all that is passionate, fiery. Colour is changed into flowing perception or feeling in man, because he reaches out with his ego beyond the flowing sea of colour. Here is a proof that we float in the colour essence of the cosmos and that even when we are merely contemplating the colours of nature we must try to perceive in the aesthetic sense, to establish standards of beauty. This however implies that we must learn to grow into colours, to live in them as within our own element. One seldom finds this feeling for colour, even among people who think a great deal about art. Take, for instance, Hildebrand, who is an exceedingly good artist and who has written an ingenious book on the subject of artistic forms. We read there that colour alone cannot suffice for the real portrayal of things; there must first be the design, the drawing. This, however, is not correct. Hildebrand thinks that when he has a coloured wall in front of him, he is simply looking at colour, possibly blue or red, whereas if he draws contours or designs upon it he has an expression of something. If a surface is covered with blue or red it does not express anything definite—at least according to Hildebrand. Nor this is not the case. A surface covered with blue produces an impression which may be expressed in the following way. Instead of the area that appears blue, the feeling arises that blue takes one into greater and greater depths, to distances ever more remote, to the Infinite, as it were. The blue colour takes one along with it—on and on. Red seems to fight with one, to approach.

This of course is somewhat radically expressed, but the whole colour scale thus reveals itself as living being. Just as forms with clear contours express something definite, so does colour place before us something quite definite, differentiated. To fathom these things, however, will be the task of future Art—and in what sense? To understand this we will consider the real nature of the spirit of human evolution.

Human evolution proceeded from conditions of primitive, atavistic clairvoyant consciousness. Man gradually worked his way upwards through the different civilisations until, during the Graeco-Latin age, his ego came to birth in the intellectual or mind-soul. We are now living in an age when the ego rises into the consciousness soul (spiritual soul) and has then gradually to rise to Spirit-Self or Manas. In the ages preceding the birth of the ego, of the ego consciousness, art proceeded from direct inspiration which flowed into man from the spiritual world, and all the different forms in art were an expression of this. Suppose a man went out into the on-coming night and looked at the moon. The atavistic clairvoyant consciousness he still possessed gave him the knowledge that here was a revelation of the connection between his brain and the moon, that his lungs breathed in all that the earth's being was communicating to him. The sun had set, but he knew that in the pulsating beat of his heart he bore the sun workings within him. Then man felt—or rather he ‘saw’ it in the atavistic clairvoyance of those ancient times—he felt: ‘Yes indeed there is a connection between earth, sun and moon. Spiritual Beings are hovering up and down between the sun and moon!’

“Like heavenly forces rising and descending,
Their golden urns reciprocally lending.”

(From Goethe's Faust. Scene I.)

... Then came the age in human evolution when this old clairvoyance gradually passed away; man entered into a condition where he could only perceive the external world of sense. Nothing flowed into him from the spiritual world and it became necessary to resort to a different realm. Every artistic impulse lived originally in the moving being of man himself. He tried to imitate or copy what he perceived in the cosmos by expressing through his hands and with his hands the form that he felt to be living in his hands like a cosmic force. At that time he had to translate into form what he expressed in gestures. It did not occur to him to copy or imitate an object in the external sense. All that lived and pulsated within him, flowing and breathing into him from the cosmos, developed into art without any mere imitation, because the inner life surging within him used him as an instrument. He was the instrument guided by the cosmos itself.

This was no longer the case after the old clairvoyant consciousness, which linked man to the cosmos, ceased. Imitative art came into being, for man no longer possessed within himself the power which guided the lines and other factors of art; he no longer felt, I will draw near to the Godhead. ‘There is the Godhead and I will approach.’ When a man felt himself rising to the Godhead he was conscious of the perception of blue, and if he wanted to give expression to this feeling he used the colour blue. But if he was conscious of the approach of an enemy, an alien being bearing down upon him, then he used red. He experienced the flowing sea of colour within himself and there was no need to imitate or copy. This was no longer the case when atavistic connection with the cosmos ceased. Imitative art came into being and attained its summit, so far as sculpture was concerned, in the Graeco-Latin epoch, and so far as painting was concerned, in the age which marked the transition to the fifth Post-Atlantean period. To those who have eyes to see, external history would also be able to prove the truth of these things. Try to think why it is that peoples from Northern and Central Europe who came into contact with Graeco-Latin culture remained so long in a state of barbarism and could not find their way to art. The reason is that these Celtic, Germanic, Slavonic peoples had remained at an earlier stage of evolution than the Graeco-Latin peoples. They had not reached the stage of the full birth of the ego and understood nothing of true imitative art. They came along afterwards with a reinforcing impulse. Hence when we study the art of the Middle Ages we find that the significant elements there are not those of imitative art. The characteristic qualities of mediaeval art are to be found in architecture where man does not imitate but creates out of his inner being. It is only gradually that the imitative element in art entered into the northern peoples.

Nowadays, however, we are living in an epoch when man must again find his way into the spiritual world, when he must pass over from imitative art to a new form of artistic creation, when there must be a true renewal of art. The imitative arts reached their prime in the sculpture of antiquity, in Raphael, Michelangelo and others. Something different hovers before us now—a consciousness that penetrates into the spiritual world and at the same time brings down all that exists in forms and colours in the cosmic ocean flowing spiritually around us. A beginning must be made. Something that is not achieved by imitation and which is all around us must be brought down from the spiritual world. I have already spoken of the extent to which this conception has flowed into certain forms in our building and on another occasion we will speak of the new conception of the art of painting. To-day I only wanted to try to deepen the feelings and perceptions which must be ours if we are really to understand the transition which must come about before the old forms of art can pass over to the new.

I hope that those friends whose unselfish and devoted labours are revealed each day that passes, will work in such a way towards a mastery of the forms which are necessary to our building, that although it be only a primitive beginning, there will none the less be a real beginning of a spiritualised art. I hope that they will find more and enthusiasm, greater and greater joy, in the consciousness that the World-Spirit demands us to help in the task of establishing in human evolution those things which must be established in our own fifth epoch and during the transition into the sixth. If we understand this, we link ourselves with the World-Spirit working in human evolution, of Whom we try to gain knowledge through true Spiritual Science. All the impulses of this Spiritual Science can pass over into artistic feeling, artistic activity and experience of the cosmos. True enthusiasm and devotion are necessary, but they will grow in us if we lovingly rise to the Spirit Who has guided mankind from the beginning of evolution. That Spirit will not forsake us if we dedicate ourselves to Him with upright hearts and in the real sense—if our labours are not a sentimental prayer, but a true one arising from the power flowing into our inner being from the World-Spirit Who is leading us, and if we are filled with the inspiration of the knowledge that we allow the work of our hands and souls to be guided by the power of the Spirit within us.

In this sense, then, let us continue our work.

To-day we will continue our study of subjects connected with art. The lectures are meant to help us in regard to the kind of thoughts which should permeate the work before us. If we would couple right thoughts with the task which we are here beginning in a primitive fashion, the necessity arises to bring before the soul many things that impress us when we study man's achievements in art and their connection with human civilisation.

Herman Grimm, the very intuitive student of art in the nineteenth century, made a certain apparently radical statement about Goethe. He spoke of the date at which humanity would first have developed a real understanding of Goethe, placing it about the year 2000. According to Grimm's idea, therefore, a long time will have to elapse before mankind will have developed to the point of understanding the real significance of Goethe. And, indeed, when one observes the present age, one does not feel inclined to contradict such a statement. To Grimm, Goethe's greatest significance does not lie in the fact that he was a poet, that he had created this or that particular work of art, but that he always created from a full and complete manhood—the impulse of this full manhood lies behind every detail of his creative activity. Our age is very far from understanding this full manhood that lived, for instance, in Goethe. In saying this I have naturally no wish to speak derogatively of the specialisation that has entered into the study of science, which is indeed often deplored—for from one point of view this specialisation is a necessity. Much more significant than the specialisation in science is that which has crept into modern life itself, for, as a result of this, the individual soul, enclosed within some particular sphere of specialised conceptions or ideas, grows less and less capable of understanding other souls who specialise in a different sphere. In a certain sense all human beings are “specialists” to-day so far as their souls are concerned. More particularly are we struck with this specialised mode of perception when we study the development of art in humanity. And for this very reason it is necessary—although it can only be a primitive beginning—that there shall again come into existence a comprehensive understanding of spiritual life in its totality. True form in art will arise from this comprehensive understanding of spiritual life. We need not enter upon a very far-reaching study in order to prove the truth of this. We shall come to a better understanding if we start from something near at hand, and I will therefore speak of one small point in the numerous irrelevant and often ridiculous attacks made against our spiritual movement at the present time.

It is so cheap for people to try, by means of pure fabrications, to slander us in the eyes of the world, saying, for instance, that we are on the wrong track because here or there we have given to our buildings a form that we consider suitable to our work. We are reproached for having coloured walls in certain of our meeting rooms and we are already tired of hearing about the ‘sensationalism’ in our building—which is said to be quite unnecessary for true ‘Theosophy’—that is how people express it. In certain circles ‘true Theosophy’ is thought to be a kind of psychic hotch-potch, teeming with obscure sensations, glorying to some extent in the fact that the soul can unfold a higher ego within. This, however, is really nothing but egotism. From the point of view of this obscure psychic hotch-potch people think it superfluous for a spiritual current to be expressed in any outer form, although this outer form, it is true, can only be a primitive beginning. Such people think themselves justified in chattering about these psychic matters no matter where they may be. Why, then—so they think—is it necessary to express anything in definite forms? We really cannot expect to find any capacity of real thought in people who hurl this kind of reproach at us—in fact we can expect it from very few people at the present time—but, nevertheless, we must be clear in our own minds on many points if we are to be able at least to give the right answers to questions that arise in our own souls.

I want to draw your attention to Carstens, an artist who made his mark in the sphere of art at the end of the eighteenth century as a designer and painter of decided talent. I do not propose in any way to speak of the value of Carstens' art, nor to describe his work—neither am I going to give you a biographical sketch of his life. I only want to call your attention to the fact that he certainly possessed great talent for design, if not for painting. In the soul of Carstens we find a certain artistic longing, but we can also see what was lacking in him. He wanted to draw ideas, to embody them in painting, but he was not in the position of men like Raphael or Leonardo da Vinci—or to take an example from poetry—of Dante. Raphael, Leonardo and Dante lived within a culture that teemed with import—a culture that penetrated into and at the same time surrounded the soul of man. When Raphael painted his Madonnas they were living in men's hearts and souls and in the very highest sense something streamed from the soul of the public in response to the creations of this great artist. When Dante set out to transport the soul into spiritual realms he had only to draw his material, his substance, from something that was resounding, as it were, in every human soul. These artists possessed in their own souls the substance of the general culture of the age. In any work of the scientific culture of that time—however much it may have fallen into disuse—we shall find connecting links with an element that was living in all human souls, even down to the humblest circles. The learned men of the spheres of culture where Raphael created his Madonnas were fully cognisant of the idea at the back of the figures of the Madonna, nay more, the idea was a living thing within their souls. Thus artistic creations seem to be expressions of a general, uniform spiritual life. This quality came to light again in Goethe as a single individual, in the way that was possible at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So little is this understood in our times, that, in Herman Grimm's opinion, as I have already said, it will be necessary to wait until the year 2000 before the world will again reveal such understanding.

Let us turn again to Carstens. He takes the Iliad of Homer, and he impresses into his penciled forms the processes and events of which he reads. What a different relationship there is to the Homeric figures in the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century from the relationship that existed between the soul of Raphael and the figures of the Madonna and other motifs of that age! In the greatest epochs the content of art was immediately perceptible because it flowed from something that moved the innermost being of man. In the nineteenth century’ it began to be necessary for artists to seek for the content of their creations by dint of effort and we soon find that the artist becomes a kind of ‘cultural hermit,’ one who is only concerned with himself and of whom people ask, ‘What relationship is there between himself and his own particular world of form?’ A study of the history of art in the nineteenth century would reveal the true state of affairs in this connection.

Thus there gradually arose, not only the indifferent attitude to art, but the cold one that exists nowadays. Think of someone in a modern city walking through a picture gallery or exhibition of pictures. The soul is not moved by what is seen, no inner confidence is felt in it. The person is faced by what really amounts to a multitude of riddles—to use a radical expression—riddles which can only be solved if to some extent penetration is made into the particular relationship of this or that artist to nature, or to other things. The soul is faced with purely individual problems or riddles, and the significant thing is, that although people believe they are solving the problems of art, they are, in the vast majority of cases, trying to solve problems not really connected with art itself—to wit, psychological problems. Such problems as: How does this or that artist look on nature—are problems of philosophy or the like and are of no importance when we really penetrate into the great epochs of art. On the contrary, when this penetration is undertaken, the problems that emerge not only for the artist but for the contemplator of the works of art, are truly artistic, truly aesthetic ones. For it is the manner that really concerns the creative artists, while the mere matter, the mere substance, is only the element that flows around him, in which he is immersed. We might even put it thus: our artists are no longer artists. They are contemplators of the world, each from a certain point of view and what they see, what strikes them in the world, this they contrive to shape. But these are theory, problems of history and so forth, while on the other hand our age has almost altogether lost the power—or indeed the heart—to perceive art in its essence, to perceive the manner, not the mere matter.

Our conception of the world—theoretical from its very foundations—is a good deal to blame for this. Practical as men have become in technical, industrial and commercial affairs, they have become eminently theoretical so far as their thinking is concerned. The endeavour to build a bridge between modern science and the conception of the world held by the artist is not only fraught with difficulty, but with the fact that so few people feel there is any need to build it. Words like those of Goethe: “Art is the manifestation of secret laws of nature without which they could never find expression” are wholly unintelligible to our age, although here and there people think they understand them. Our age holds fast to the most external, the most abstract natural laws—laws which are themselves based on utterly abstract mathematical principles—and it will not admit the validity of any penetration into reality which transcends all abstract mathematics or systems of that kind. No wonder our age has lost the living element of soul which feels the working of the very substance of world connections—the substance that must indeed well up from these world connections before art can come into being. The thoughts and ideas evolved by the modern age in regard to the universe are inartistic in their very nature—nay more, they even strive to be so. Colours—what have they become according to modern scientific opinion? Vibrations of the most abstract substance in the ether, etheric vibrations of so many wave lengths. These waves of vibrating ether sought by modern science, how remote they are from the direct, living essence of colour! What else is possible than that man is led wholly to ignore the living essence of colour? I have already told you that this element of colour is, in its very being, fluidic and alive—an element moreover in which our soul lives. And a time will come—as I have also indicated—when man will again perceive the living connection of the flowing sea of colour with the colours of creatures and objects manifested in the external world.

This is difficult for man because, since he has to develop his ego during earthly evolution, he has risen out of this flowing sea of colour to a mode of contemplation that proceeds purely from the ego. With his ego, man rises out of the sea of colour; the animal lives wholly within it and the fact that certain animals have feathers or skins of particular colours is connected with the whole relationship existing between the souls of these animals and the flowing sea of colour. The animal perceives objects with its astral body (as we perceive them with the ego) and into the astral body flow the forces living in the group-soul of the animal. It is nonsense to imagine that animals, even higher animals, behold the world as man beholds it. At the present time there is no understanding of these things. Man imagines that if he is standing near a horse, the horse sees him in exactly the same way as he sees the horse. What is more natural than to think that since the horse has eyes it sees him just as he sees it? This, however, is absolute nonsense. Without a certain clairvoyance a horse would no more see a human being than a human being, being without problems of psychological clairvoyance, would see an angel, for the man simply does not exist for the horse as a physical being, but only as a spiritual being. The horse is possessed of a certain order of clairvoyance and what the horse sees in man is quite different from what man sees in the horse: as we go about we are spectral beings to the horse. If animals could speak in their own language—not in the way they are sometimes made to ‘speak’ nowadays, but in their own language—man would realise that it never by any chance occurs to the animals to contemplate him as a being of similar order but as one who stands higher than themselves—a spectral, ghostlike being. Even if the animals assume their own body to consist of flesh and blood, they certainly have a different conception of the body of man. To the modern mind this of course sounds the purest nonsense—so far is the present age removed from truth!

As a result of the relation between astral body and group-soul, a receptivity to the living, creative power of colour flows into the animal. Just as we may see an object that rouses desire in us and we stretch out towards it by movement of the hand, an impression is made in the whole animal organism by the direct creative power in the colour; this impression flows into the feathers or skin and gives the animal its colour. I have already said that our age cannot understand why it is that the polar bear is white; the white colour is the effect produced by the environment and when the polar bear ‘whitens’ itself, this, at a different level, is practically the same thing as when man stretches out with a movement of his hand to pick a rose in response to a desire. The living creative effects of the environment work upon the polar bear in such a way that an impulse is released within it and it ‘whitens’ itself.

In man, this living weaving and moving in the element of colour has passed into the substrata of his being because he would never have been able to develop his ego if he had remained wholly immersed within the sea of colour and were, for instance, in response to an impression of a rosy hue of dawn to feel the impulse to impress these tints through creative imagination into certain parts of his skin. During the ancient moon period these conditions still obtained. The contemplation of scenes in nature like that of a rosy dawn worked upon man as he then was; this impression was reflected back, as it were, into his own colouring; it penetrated into the being of man in those times and was then outwardly expressed in certain areas of his body. During the earth period, this living bodily existence in the flowing sea of colour had to cease in order that man might be able to evolve his own conception of the world in his ego. So far as his form was concerned he had to become neutral to this sea of colour. The tint of the human skin as it appears in the temperate zones is essentially the expression of the ego, of absolute neutrality in face of the outer waves of colour; it denotes man's ascent above the flowing sea of colour. But even the most elementary facts of Spiritual Science remind us that it is man's task to find the path of return.

Physical body, etheric body, astral body—these were developed during the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon; the ego has to develop during the earth period. Man must find the ways and means to spiritualise his astral body once again, to permeate it with all that the ego has won for itself. And as he spiritualises his astral body and so discovers the path of return, he must again find the flowing, surging waves of colour out of which he arose in order that his ego might develop—just as a man who rises from the sea only sees what is over the sea. We are indeed already living in an age when this penetration into the spiritual flow of the powers of of nature—that is to say of the spiritual powers behind nature—must begin. It must again be possible for us not merely to look at colours, to reproduce them outwardly here or 'there, but to live with colour, to experience the inner life-force of colour. This cannot be done by merely studying in painting, for instance, the effects of the colours and their interplay as we look at them. It can only be done if once again we sink our soul in the flow of red or blue, for instance, if the flow of the colour really lives—if we are able to ensoul the essence of colour that instead of evolving any kind of colour symbolism (which would of course be the very opposite way of going to work) we really discover what is already living in colour just as the power of laughter exists in a man who laughs. Hence we must seek out the paths of return to the flowing world of colour, for as I have already said, man has risen above it with his ego. If he has no other perception save ‘here is red, here is blue’—which is often the case to-day—he can never press onwards to living experience of the real essence of colour. Still less is this possible when he gives an intellectualistic garb to this inner essence and perceives red as a symbol, blue as another, and so forth. This will never lead to real experience of colour. We must know how to surrender the whole soul to what speaks to us from out of colour. Then, when we are confronted with red we have a sense of attack, aggression—this comes to us from the red. If ladies were all to go about dressed in red, a man possessed of a delicate sense for colour would silently imagine, simply on account of their clothing, that they might at any moment set about him vigourously! In red, then, there is a quality of aggression, something that comes towards us. Blue has an element that seems to pass away from us, to leave us, something after which we gaze with a certain wistfulness, with yearning.

How far the present age is removed from any such living understanding of colour may be realised from what I have already said about Hildebrand, an excellent artist, who expressly states that a colour on a surface is simply that and nothing more; the surface is there, overlaid with colour—that is all—though to be sure it is not quite the same in the case of form which expresses distance, for example. Colour expresses more than mere distance and we cannot help finding it deeply symptomatic of the whole nature of the present age that this is not perceived, even by an artist like Hildebrand. It is impossible to live into the essence of colour if one cannot immediately pass over from repose into movement, realising that a red disc approaches us, and that a blue disc, on the other hand, withdraws. These colours move in opposite directions. When we penetrate deeply into this living essence of colour we are led further and further. We begin to realise—if we really believe in colour—that we simply could not picture two coloured discs of this kind remaining there at rest. To picture such a thing would be to deaden all living feeling, for living feeling immediately changes into the realisation that the red and the blue discs are revolving round each other, the one towards the spectator, the other away from him. The relation between the red that is painted on a figure, in contrast to the blue, is such that the figure takes on life and movement through the very colour itself. The figure is caught up into the universe of life because this is shining in the colours. Form is of course the element that is at rest, stationary; but the moment the form has colour, the inner movement in the colour rises out of the form, and the whirl of the cosmos, the whirl of spirituality passes through the form. If you colour a form you endow it with the soul element of the universe, with cosmic soul, because colour is not only a part of form; the colour you give to a particular form places this form into the whole concatenation of its environment and indeed into the whole universe. In colouring a form we should feel: ‘Now we are endowing form with soul.’ We breathe soul into dead form when, through colour, we make it living.

We need only draw a little nearer to this inner living weaving of colours and we shall feel as if we are not confronting them on a level but as if we were standing either above or below them—again it is as if the colour becomes inwardly alive. To a lover of abstractions, to one who merely gazes at the colours and does not livingly penetrate into them, a red sphere may indeed seem to move around a blue, but he does not feel the need to vary the movement in any sense. He may be a great mathematician, or a great metaphysician, but he does not know how to live with colour because it seems to pass like a dead thing from one place to another. This is not so in reality; colour radiates, changes within itself, and if red moves it will send on before it a kind of orange aura, a yellow aura, a green aura. If blue moves it will send something different on before it.

We have, then, a play of colours as it were. Something actually happens when we experience in colour; thus red seems to attack, blue to pass away. We feel red as something which we want to ward off, blue as something we would pursue as if with longing. And if we could feel in colour in such a way that red and blue really live and move, we should indeed inwardly flow with the surging sea of colour, our souls would feel the eddying vortex of attacks and longings, the sense of flight and the prayer of surrender that intermingle with one another. And if we were to express this in some form, artistically of course, this form, which in itself is at rest, we should tear away from rest and repose. The moment we have a form which we paint, we have, instead of the form which is at rest, living movement that does not only belong to the form but to the forces and weaving being round about the form. Thus through a life of soul we wrest the material form away from its mere repose, from its mere quality of rigid form. Something like this must surely once be painted into this world by the creative elemental powers of the universe. [Note 1] For all that man is destined to receive by way of powers of longing—all this is something that could find expression in the blue. This on the one hand man must bear as a forming, shaping principle in his head, while all that finds expression in the red he must bear within him in a form that rushes upward from the rest of the body to the brain. Two such currents are indeed active in the structure of the human brain. Around man externally is the world—all that for which he longs—and this is perpetually being flooded over by that which surges upward from his own body. By day it happens that all which the blue half contains flows more intensely than the red and yellow: by night, so far as the physical human organism is concerned it is the opposite. And what we are wont to called the two-petalled lotus flower [Note 2] is indeed a true image of what I have here portrayed, for this two-petalled lotus flower does indeed reveal to the seer just such colours and movements. Nobody will really be able to fathom what lives in the world of form as the creative element, as the upper part of the human head, if he is not able to follow this flow of colour that in man is indeed a “hidden” flow of colour.

It must be the endeavour of art again to dive down into the life of the elements. Art has observed and studied nature long enough, has tried long enough to solve all the riddles of nature and to express in another form all that can be observed by this penetration into nature. What lives in the elements is, however, dead so far as modern art is concerned. Air, water, light—all are dead as they are painted to-day; form is dead as is expressed in modern sculpture. A new art will arise when the human soul learns to penetrate to the depths of the elemental world, for this world is living. People may rail against this; they may think that it ought not to be, but such raillery is only the outcome of human inertia. Unless man enters with his whole being into the world of the elements, and absorbs into himself the spirit and soul of the external world art will more and more become a work of the human soul in isolation. This of course may bring many interesting things to light in regard to the psychology of certain souls, but it will never achieve that which art alone can achieve. These things belong to the far, far future but we must go forward to meet this future with eyes that have been opened by Spiritual Science—otherwise we can see in that future nothing but death and paralysis.

This is why we must seek for inner connection between all our forms and colours here and the spiritual knowledge that moves innermost depths of the soul; we must seek that which lives in the Spirit in the same way as the Madonnas lived in Raphael, so lived in him that he was able to paint them as he did. The Madonnas were living in Raphael's very being, just as they were living in the learned men, the labourers in the fields and the craftsmen of his time. That is why he was the true artist of the Madonna. Only when we succeed in bringing into our forms in a purely artistic sense, without symbolism or allegory, all that lives in our idea of the world—not as abstract thought, dead knowledge or science, but as living substance of the soul—only then do we divine something of what the future holds in store.

Thus there must be unity between what is created externally and all that permeates the soul in the innermost depths of her being—a unity that was present in Goethe as the result of a special karma. Bridges must be built between what is still to many people so much abstract conception in Spiritual Science and what arises from hand, chisel and paint brush. To-day the building of these bridges is hindered by a cultural life that is in many respects superficial and abstract, and will not allow life to flow into action. This explains the appearance of the wholly groundless idea that spiritual knowledge might cause the death of art. In many instances of course a paralysing effect has been evident, for instance in all the allegorising and symbolising that goes on, in the perpetual questioning, ‘what does this mean?’ ‘what does that mean?’ I have already said that we should not always be asking what things ‘mean.’ We should not think of asking about the ‘meaning’ of the larynx, for instance. The larynx does not ‘mean’ anything, for it is the living organ of human speech and this is the sense in which we must look at all that lives in forms and colours when they are living organs of the spiritual world. So long as we have not ceased asking about allegorical or symbolical meanings, so long as we interpret myths and sagas allegorically and symbolically instead of feeling the living breath of the Spirit pervading the cosmos, realising how the cosmos lives in the figures of the world of myths and fairy stories—so long have we not attained to real spiritual knowledge.

A beginning, however, must be made, imperfect though it will be. No one should imagine that we take this beginning to be the perfect thing; but like many other objections to our spiritual movement made by the modern age, it is nonsense to say that our building is not an essential part of this spiritual movement. We ourselves are already aware of the facts which people may bring forward. We realise also that all the foolish chatter about the ‘higher self,’ all the rhapsodies in regard to the ‘divinity of the soul of man’ can also be expressed in outer forms of the present age; and of course we know that it is everywhere possible for man to promote Spiritual Science in its mental and intellectual aspects. But over and above this merely intellectual aspect we feel that if Spiritual Science is to pour life into the souls of men it demands a vesture of a different kind from any that may be a product of the dying culture of our day. It is not at all necessary for the outer world to remind us of the cheap truth that Spiritual Science can also be studied in its mental aspect in surroundings of a different kind from those which are made living by our forms. The ideal which Spiritual Science must pour into our souls must be earnest and grow ever more earnest. A great many things are still necessary before this earnestness, this inner driving force of the soul can become part of our very being. It is quite easy to speak of Spiritual Science and its expression in the outer world in such way that its core and nerve are wholly lacking. The form taken by the most vigorous attacks levelled against our spiritual movement creates a strange impression. Those who read some of these attacks will, if they are in their right minds, wonder what on earth they are driving at. They describe all manner of fantastic nonsense which has not the remotest connection with us, and then the opposition is levelled against these absurdities! The world is so little capable of absorbing new spiritual leaven that it invents a wholly grotesque caricature and then sets to work to fight against that. There are even people who think that the whole movement should be done away with. Attack of course is always possible but it is a reductio ab absurdum to do away with an invention that has no resemblance of any kind to what it sets out to depict. It behooves us, however, to realise what kind of sense for truth underlies these things, for this will make us strong to receive all that must flow to us from Spiritual Science, and, made living by this Spiritual Science, shine into material existence. That the world has not grown in tolerance or understanding is shown by the attitude adopted towards Spiritual Science. The world has not grown in either of these qualities.

We can celebrate the inner confluence of the soul with Spiritual Science in no better way than by deepening ourselves in problems like that of the nature and being of colour, for in experience of the living flow of colour we transcend the measure of our own stature and live in cosmic life. Colour is the soul of nature and of the whole cosmos and we partake of this soul as we experience colour.

This was what I wanted to indicate to-day, in order next time to penetrate still more deeply into the nature of the world of colour and the essence of painting.

I could not help interspersing these remarks with references to the attacks that are being made upon us from all sides—attacks emanating from a world incapable of understanding the aims of our Anthroposophical Movement. One can only hope that those within our Movement will be able, by a deepening of their being, to understand something truly symptomatic of our times, the falsehood and untruth that is creeping into man's conception of what is striving to find its place within the spiritual world. We of course have no wish to seclude our spiritual stream, to shut it off from the world; as much as the world is willing to receive, that it can have. But one thing the world must accept if it is to understand us, and that is the unity of the whole nature of man—the unity which makes every human achievement the outcome of this full and complete ‘manhood.’

These words are not meant to be an attack on the present age. I speak them with a certain sense of pain, because the more our will and our efforts increase in this Movement of ours, the more malicious—perhaps not consciously, but more or less unconsciously malicious—do the opposing forces become. I have, moreover, spoken thus because the way in which these things must be looked at is not yet fully understood even among ourselves. The unshakable standpoint must be that something new, a new beginning, is at least intended in our Movement. What lies beyond this ‘intention’ has of course yet to come. We with our building can still do no more than ‘intend.’ Those who can do more than intend—they will come, even though it be not before the time Herman Grimm thinks must elapse before there will be a complete understanding of Goethe. A certain humility is bound up with the understanding of this and there is little humility in modern spiritual life. Spiritual Science is well suited to give this humility and at the same time to bring the soul to a realisation of the gravity of these things.

A painful impression is caused by the opposition arising on all sides against our spiritual Movement, now that the world is now beginning to see real results. So long as the Movement was merely there in a spiritual sense the world could see nothing. Now that it does, and it cannot understand what it sees, dissonant voices are beginning to sound from every side. This opposition will grow stronger and stronger. When we realise its existence we shall naturally at first be filled with a certain sorrow, but an inner power will make us able to intercede on behalf of what is to us not merely conviction, but life itself. The soul will be pervaded by an ethereal, living activity, filled with something more than the theoretical convictions of which modern man is so proud. This earnest mood of soul will bring in its train the sure confidence that the foundations of our world and our existence as human beings are able to sustain us, if we seek for them in the spiritual world. Sometimes we need this confidence more, sometimes less. If we speak of sorrow caused by the echo which our spiritual Movement finds in the world—this mood of sorrow must give birth to the mood of power derived from the knowledge that the roots of man's life are in the Spirit and that the Spirit of man will lead him out beyond all the disharmony that can only cause him pain. Strength will flow into man from this mood of power.

If in these very days one cannot help speaking of things spiritual with a sorrow even greater than that caused by the discrepancy between what we desire in our spiritual Movement and the echo it finds in the world—yet it must be said that the world's disharmonies will take a different course when men realise how human hearts can be kindled by the spiritual light for which we strive in anthroposophy. The sorrow connected with our Movement seems only slight when we look at all the sadness lying in the destiny of Europe. The words I have spoken to you are pervaded with sorrow, but they are spoken with the living conviction that whatever pain may await European humanity in a sear or distant future there may, none the less, live within us a confidence born from the knowledge that the Spirit will lead man victoriously through every wilderness. Even in these days of sorrow, in hours fraught with such gravity, we may in very truth, indeed we must, speak of the holy things of Spiritual Science, for we may believe that however dimly the sun of Spiritual Science is shining to-day, its radiance will ever increase until it is a sun of peace, of love and of harmony among men.

Grave though these words may be, they justify us in thinking of the narrower affairs of Spiritual Science with all the powers of heart and soul, when hours of ordeal are being made manifest through the windows of the world.

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Notes:

Note 1. Translator's Note. Presumably Dr. Steiner was here drawing on the blackboard while he was speaking. The expressions used in the German seem to indicate this.

Note 2. See ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment,’ by Rudolf Steiner. Anthrosophical Publishing Co.

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