The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From the aspect of modern thinking it may perhaps sound strange that we are arranging a study course for the Christmas holidays (Christmas Course for Teachers, 23rd December to 7th of January), because people generally think that during the great festivals of the year work should stop and that Christmas in particular should only be dedicated to religious exercises. Nevertheless a deeper insight into present conditions should not conceal the fact that this Christmas above all calls for other things than those which held good for such a long time. We live in another age and today it must seem frivolous to maintain old customs and traditions, without considering the difficult, distressing times in which we live, and untouched by what is taking place particularly in the present day both in the visible and in the invisible world. We see people making presents to each other at Christmas, they adorn the tree and do other things out of tradition, things which people have been accustomed to do for many centuries. But today in particular we should bear in mind that to keep up such old traditions and customs in almost … a crime.

Those who had a deeper share in the events of the past years feel as if they had lived for centuries, and they can only look with a certain feeling of sorrow upon that part of mankind which is still led by habit and has the same thoughts today which were to some extent justified until the beginning or the middle of the second decade of our century. To an unprejudiced mind everything coming from the events of the time must appear full of problems which touch the very elements of the whole life of man.

We frequently hear the reproach that many people more and more believe that Christianity consists in their calling out “Lord, Lord,” or in uttering the name of Christ as often as possible. But something quite different is needed today: A Christianization of our whole life, in which it does not suffice to utter the name of Christ, but entails that we should deeply and intimately unite ourselves with the Spirit of Christ. We see that almost in the whole world great problems of life are being advanced today. And we can already perceive that the region, the European region which has for many centuries been the stage of human civilization cannot remain so in future. We perceive that the world problems now extend to larger territories and in the present time we perceive above all through symptomatic phenomena that the great conflict between the West and the East announced itself in every sphere of life.

The West kindled the flame of a young spiritual life based upon a mechanical-naturalistic foundation. This spiritual life is only viewed in the right way by those who hold that it is in the beginning of its development. But from this young spiritual life in the West we should look across to the East; we become more and more connected with it, also geographically and historically, and the West must reckon with the East.

In the East there exists an ancient life of the spirit, a spiritual life that can be traced back thousands of years. Immense respect can be felt for what lives in the East; although it is already decadent; the greatest reverence can be felt for it when looking back from its present state of decadence to the primeval wisdom of humanity from which it sprang.

When we envisage the more spiritual aspects of life a word re-echoes from the East which always awakens a peculiar echo in our hearts, particularly when we adopt the standpoint of the West. It is a word which is meant to express in the language of the East the characteristic of the physical world which we perceive round about us through our senses. The East, beginning with India, has been accustomed to designate this physical-sensory world as MAYA, the great illusion – apart from the fact of it being expressed more or less clearly.

The East (but, as stated, this exists only in a decadent form) thus faces the external world perceived through the eyes and ears as a great illusion that confronts man, as Maya.

Those who learn to know the characteristics of the life conceptions of the East, must experience that this conception of Maya was not originally contained in the primeval wisdom of the Orient. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy above all enables us to gain insight into a development of the Oriental civilization stretching over thousands of years. We then look back into a time which lies 3000 years before Christ, and by going back still further into a remote antiquity, we find this conception of Maya less and less, this idea of the great illusion connected with the physical-sensory reality of the external world.

If we wish to indicate an approximate epoch, we may say: Only at the turn of the 3rd and 4th millennium B.C. this concept rises up in the East; the conviction rises up that the physical-sensory world which surrounds man is not a reality, but a great illusion, a Maya.

What is the cause of this immense change in the life attitude of the East? The cause lies deeply rooted in the soul development of humanity. If we consider the primeval wisdom of the East, the poetical form which it assumed later on in the Vedas, the philosophical form of the Vedanta philosophy and the Yoga doctrine into which it developed, if we notice, for example, the greatness and loftiness in which this eastern teaching is contained in the Bhagavad Gita, we find that once upon a time the essence of this Eastern teaching was that man perceived not only the external sensory world, but that in this physical world, in everything he saw through his eyes, heard through his ears or touched with his hands, he perceived a divine-spiritual essence.

For these primeval men the trees did not exist as prosaically as they do for us: In every tree, in every bush, in every cloud, in every fountain there was something which announced itself as a soul-spiritual, cosmic content of the world. Wherever they looked, they saw the physical permeated by the spiritual. The fountain did not only murmur in inarticulate sounds, but the murmuring fountain conveyed a soul-spiritual content. The forest did not only rustle in an inarticulate way; the rustling forest spoke to them the language of the everlasting Cosmic Word, of a soul-spiritual Being. Modern people can only have a very pale idea of the immensely living way in which man experienced the world in this remote, primeval time.

But this alert, spiritual way in which man lived in his surroundings gradually became paralyzed towards the 3rd millennium B.C. And if we transfer ourselves into the development of the times, we perceive that humanity, now taken as a whole, as it were, as humanity of the Orient, began to perceive the phenomena of the world with a certain feeling of longing and of sorrow, as if the gods had withdrawn from them. This feeling was voiced by many more profound souls almost in the form of a prayer by saying: the old gods have vanished and are now behind the surface of the external physical objects. The world has grown empty, it has lost the gods, and because of this emptiness, because it is without the gods, it is Maya, the great illusion. They did not speak of the world as a great illusion from the very beginning; but because it no longer contained the gods, they experienced it as a great illusion, as Maya.

If we wish to go back to the truly living essence of this conception we should go back even behind the Atlantean catastrophe, as far as the Atlantean race. For immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe civilization in general shows a faint trace of looking upon the external physical phenomena of the world as something not real.

Yet until the end of the 4th millennium B.C. there still existed in a strong measure the capacity to perceive the gods in the physical world. This faculty existed in so strong a measure that until that time people needed no consolation for what had up to that time been considered as unreality in the world. But such a consolation was needed after 4000 B.C. It was sought in initiation by the teachers and priests of the Mysteries. It was sought in the language of the stars. Here on earth – people said – there is no reality. But if we investigate the stars, they tell us in their language that reality is poured down to the earth from world-distant heavenly regions. If we listen to the language spoken by the stars Maya seems to obtain a true meaning. The great impression made upon mankind by the star wisdom of the ancient Egyptians consisted in the fact that people felt in this star wisdom something which gave Maya a foundation of reality. People said that here on earth only unreal things are to be found. But one had to look up to the eternal Cosmic Word that speaks to receptive souls in the movements and positions of the stars. Reality will then manifest itself in Maya. If anyone wished to know something important and significant in life, it was investigated in the stars and in their language. This was the human soul constitution until the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

What was real was announced to humanity by the sages of the mysteries, for people did not think that this reality could be found on earth. Those who understand the true essence of life in ancient Greece will perceive that something tragic weighs on it (although a certain superficial way of looking at things makes people say that in Greece life consisted in a childlike joy over the nature of reality); the Greeks yearned for a kind of redemption in human life. This is nothing but the echo of that Oriental feeling, which I have described to you just now. We modern people have reached the point where thought develops, as it were, in modern civilization as highest inner treasure; thought unfolds on every side. But we have not reached the point of recognizing thought as a reality. When submitting to the life of thought we feel as if we lived in something not real. Indeed, many people say that thought life is nothing but an ideology. This word “ideology” indicates in regard to the inner life of the soul, the same thing which was experienced in the Orient in regard to the external physical-sensory reality, which was designated as Maya. In the same way in which we speak of ideology, we may speak of Maya, but we must apply this to our inner soul life.

The soul-spiritual which was such an intense reality in the Orient for a certain epoch, became Maya for the Occident, and the Maya of the Orient, the external, physical-sensory world, became our naturalistic reality. We live by calling that which permeates us inwardly, maturing to the stage of thought, an ideology, or Maya. The Orientals once perceived gods in the external physical world of nature. But these gods vanished from their sight. The Orientals did not have thought in the form in which we have it now. The characteristic of the Occident is that it gained the faculty of thought, the purest, most light-filled form of soul life. But the divine element in thought has not yet dawned for us. We are waiting for the divine essence in thought which must rise up for us. The Orientals lost the divine essence in the external physical world, so that it became a Maya, but this divine essence does not as yet exist in our world of ideas, in our thoughts, in our inner world filled with thought. In the course of historical development the Orientals little by little saw that the external physical world no longer contained the gods. And our thought life does not yet contain the divine; it is without God. We can only grasp this by looking upon it as a kind of prophecy that one day the Maya of our thoughts will be filled by an inner reality.

The history of human evolution is thus divided into two important parts. One part develops from a life filled with the divine essence to a life deprived of this divine essence, of the gods; the other part – and we are now living in the beginning of this development – unfolds from a life deprived of the divine towards the hoped-for life filled with the divine. And in the middle - in between these two streams of development, the Cross is set up on Golgotha. How does it stand within the consciousness of humanity?

From the time of the Mystery of Golgotha we look back six centuries and come to Buddha, who gradually became an object of veneration on the part of a large community. We see Buddha abandoning his home and going out into the world, and among the manifold things which he perceives he sees a corpse. The sight of this corpse stirs up his soul, so that he turns away from the Maya of the external world. The corpse has a discouraging, frightening effect on Buddha. And because he had to look upon death, the corpse, he felt that he had to turn his gaze away from the physical world to another sphere, to the divine-spiritual which cannot be found on earth. The sight of the lifeless body was the true reason why Buddha left the world and fled into a sphere of reality outside the physical world.

Let us now turn to a historical moment about 600 years after the Mystery of Golgotha. Many people look towards that great symbol: the cross with the corpse hanging upon it. They look upon the lifeless human being. Yet they do not look upon him in such a way as to flee from him and seek another reality, but in this lifeless human being they see something which is a real refuge to them. Mankind went through a great change in the course of twelve centuries: It learned to love death upon the cross, that death from which Buddha fled.

Nothing can indicate more deeply the great change which took place through the Mystery of Golgotha, which lies in the middle, in between these two historical moments. And by turning our thoughts to the Mystery of Golgotha we should remember what was really the object of reverence in accordance with early Christianity.

St. Paul, an initiate in the mysteries of his time, could not believe in the living Jesus; he opposed the living Jesus. But when he perceived the living Christ on his way to Damascus, the Christ that can even manifest Himself out of the world's darkness, then Paul believed in the risen Christ, not in the living Jesus, and he began to love the living Jesus because he was the bearer of the risen Christ. Out of this special insight into the connections of the world St. Paul gained certainty in regard to the divine-spiritual life, and this certainty sprang out of death.

What had taken place in the development of humanity was that people once found comfort when they looked up from the earth to the stars, whence the everlasting Word resounded, whereas later on they turned their gaze to the historical event upon Golgotha; they beheld a human sheath that contained the mystery of life.

The apostle St. John expressed this Mystery of Life in the words: “In the beginning was the Word.” Yes, in the beginning the Word spoke out of the path and position of the stars! This Word resounded from the cosmos. This Word could no longer be found upon the earth, but it came down to the earth from heavenly spaces, from the Home of the Father. The writer of the Gospel of St. John ventured to pronounce the words: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is to say, what once lived outside in the stars took up its abode in the body which hung upon the cross. What was formerly sought outside in the cosmic spaces became visible in a human being. What formerly streamed down to the earth in the shining light, came down to man! The whole way of looking upon life was inspired by a world-wide cosmology which led to a conception of the central human being filled by that which came down to man! The whole way of looking upon life was inspired by a world-wide cosmology which led to a conception of the central human being filled by that which once shone down from the stars and was permeated by the living Cosmic Word.

The sense, the deeper meaning which is to be revealed by the Mystery of Golgotha is that it is also possible to look towards the origin of the world by looking into Jesus' inner being and by establishing an intimate connection between one's own inner being and the inner human being of Jesus, even as in the past a connection was established between the human being living on earth and the everlasting Cosmic Word speaking out of the stars. The Mystery of Golgotha is indeed the most important and incisive influence in the evolution of the earth and this is indicated in the New Testament.

It is immensely stirring and profound how the Gospels – now it is related by this one, now by the other – speak of the coming of Christ Jesus. On the one hand there are the three sages, the Magi from the Orient, the bearers of an ancient starry lore, who investigated the Cosmic Word in the star writing of the cosmos. They were endowed with the highest wisdom then accessible to man. And the Gospels indicate that the highest wisdom could at that time only state that Christ Jesus had appeared, for the stars had revealed it. It is the eternal Cosmic Word that lives in the stars which revealed to man that Christ Jesus would appear. The schools of wisdom proclaimed: Since the beginning of the present earthly existence of mankind, Jupiter completed his planetary orbit 354 times. A Jupiter year, a great Jupiter year, reached its close since the time which the ancient Hebrews, for example, fixed for the beginning of man's existence on earth. In accordance with the world conception of that time, an ordinary year only had 354 days. 354 Jupiter days elapsed, and these 354 Jupiter days are like a sentence speaking out of the cosmic wisdom, a sublime sentence, in which the single words indicate the revolutions of Mercury. There is a Mercury day 7 x 7 = 49 times, and this in the same length of time of a Jupiter day.

These were the connections sought by the ancient sages in the writing of the stars. And the inspirations which their souls received by deciphering the starry writing was interpreted in such a way that they were able to say: Christ Jesus is coming, for the times are fulfilled. The Jupiter time, the Mercury time are both fulfilled. This is what the Gospels relate on the one side. On the other side they tell of the revelation which was given to the poor shepherds on the field; without any wisdom, from the dream streaming out of their simple hearts, merely by listening to the simple, pious voice of the human soul, a revelation came to these poor shepherds out of the depths of the human heart. And it is the same message: Christ is coming. Highest wisdom and greatest soul simplicity unite in the words: Christ is coming. At that time the highest wisdom was already decadent, it was setting. Instead, there rises up something which comes from man's own inner being. Ever since, thought has risen out of man's inner being. We cannot yet raise it to the stage of reality; it is still a Maya, but it is necessary in an ever-growing measure to bear in mind that thought can become a reality. In pre-Christian times man looked up to the stars in order to experience reality. We must look towards Christ in order to have reality in regard to our inner being. Not I, Christ in me – this is the Word which will confer weight and inner reality to thought.

The theologians of the 19th Century gradually changed Christ Jesus into a merely human character which can also be recognized with the aid of history, ordinary history; Jesus, the simple, though highly developed man of Nazareth. The Christ has been lost. He will appear in His true shape when a world conception based on the super-sensible will rise up again, a life conception that turns from the physical-sensory to the super-sensible. In the same measure in which mankind has lost the spiritual from the physical, it must gain inner reality in the life of thought, which has to be sure advanced to the stage of being filled with light, but in an abstract way.

This inner reality will be gained by perceiving on the earth itself, in the things taking place in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, something which the human soul can only face through super-sensible conceptions. Christ will be born anew in the development of human civilization in the same measure in which we decide to gain an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, with the aid of super-sensible knowledge. By absorbing super-sensible knowledge man may hope for a perennial Bethlehem. A profound meaning lies in the words of Angelus Silesius: “Though Christ be born a thousand times in Bethlehem, but not in you, then you are lost for evermore.”

Christ must be born not only in empty words, but in every form of wisdom and knowledge. We must reach the point of envisaging what may be gained by looking at the world, as Paul did before he approached the event of Damascus, before he perceived that the earth is permeated by the forces of the living Christ. These forces of the living Christ should be brought into every form of knowledge. The cold abstract knowledge which led us into the misery of the present time must be filled with warmth. This is an important and significant task of the present times. We should feel that first of all we must reach Christ. A profound intimate deepening of the Christ idea must be gained. We should realize that the present misery is too great for the maintenance of old Christmas customs. We must rise to the conviction that it is a farce to keep them up in the face of the other conceptions which prevail in the present time. The great conflict between East and West must also take place in the spiritual sphere and the harmonization of the Maya of the East with the Maya of the West – the Maya of the external world and the Maya of thought. These must reach a harmonious agreement.

Let us not think that in the present time we already have Christ. We should feel like the poor shepherds who were conscious of their misery. Christ should be sought in the innermost depths of man's being, even as the shepherds sought him in the stable of Bethlehem. Sacrifices should be offered to Christ, who transforms the Maya of our thoughts into realities. We should be humble enough to realize that we must first rise to an understanding of Christ's birth. We should remember that we first have to gain an understanding of the Christmas idea before we are really able to appreciate Christmas in the right way. Every sphere of life should be permeated with the living forces of Christ. We must work. And the festivals will be celebrated best of all if in the present misery we strive to transform into a spiritual reality the symbol – but it is a symbol of reality – which faces us historically from Golgotha's place of skulls.

Let us grasp that the most significant thought which we can have at Christmas is the following: A real understanding of Christianity must bring about a Cosmic Christmas. This inner voice, this inner longing, can lead us over into a Christmas which is in keeping with the misery of the present time. For the consecrated holy nights, the Christmas festival at the end of the year, can only acquire life if we are filled with the longing to see in Christmas an inducement to gain insight into the needs of human development. The festive feeling which we have at Christmas will then ray out something of the truth that tells us that through the power of an inner understanding of that reality which is still a Maya for us, we can come to the resurrection of that divine-spiritual reality which came to an end in more remote ages and led to the conception of Maya. Mankind reached Maya, the external Maya. The true soul-spiritual reality must unfold out of the inner Maya. If we understand this, then the individual Christmas idea which we have during this festive season will be permeated by a true cosmic feeling, and this is needed today, if we are to experience the true value and dignity of man. The feelings which we have in connection with the different festivals of the year will then ray out something which will induce us to say: In these times of misery and distress, Christmas should be celebrated in such a way that we can see the NEW CHRISTMAS LIGHTS OF A NEW SPIRITUAL LIFE. We must learn to celebrate not only an individual Christmas, but a COSMIC, UNIVERSAL CHRISTMAS.

Dr. Steiner: I would first like to ask if anyone has something to say now that we have had time to think about things.

A teacher would like to know more about the financial situation of the school.

Dr. Steiner: I would ask Mr. Molt to answer that question, since he is better informed.

Emil Molt reports about the financial situation of the school.

A teacher asks if they could ask the audience at tonight’s public lecture to help.

A statement written by Dr. von Heydebrand and Dr. Hahn is read.

Dr. Steiner: That statement is excellent and will certainly have an effect. In my opinion, though, that will happen only if we also say that we can continue to work only if the public provides the necessary financial means.

A teacher: I would like to wait before turning back the new enrollments.

Dr. Steiner: Why shouldn’t we tell people now that we must reject the newly enrolled children if we do not receive the funds? Through just that, our appeal will be effective. We need to turn away the children because we cannot employ new teachers. I think it is necessary in order to be effective.

These requests have their difficulties. First, the public thinks the school is a Waldorf-Astoria school, and many people call it that. People think the Waldorf-Astoria Company supports the school financially, and they are surprised that this is not the case. Well, that is one thing. We must find some means of counteracting that kind of public surprise. We must clearly say that public support is necessary. That is one thing.

The second thing is that it is difficult to obtain money outside [Stuttgart for] the Waldorf School Association we are founding in Stuttgart. It is not the same as with the other central organizations in Stuttgart. Clearly The Coming Day and the Threefold are headquartered in Stuttgart. That is something for the world. Before people want to give money to the Waldorf School, they will want to send their children here. They ask us why we cannot raise the money here in the Stuttgart area, where most of the children come from. You can require people who bring their children from further away to pay so much to have their children here. We could demand a high tuition. If we expect people from outside to give money for a school association that is, in principle, for the Waldorf School, we must make it clear that we want to carry the Waldorf School we have begun in Stuttgart to the entire world. Of course, everyone asks why we don’t raise the money here in Stuttgart and vicinity. Those are difficulties we can counter by saying that we cannot extend the school beyond its present size. We will have to turn the children away if we do not receive financial help. I do not think we have reason for much optimism about that. Those two problems play an important role.

A teacher: Could we transform the Waldorf School Association into a world association if we could agree upon it?

Dr. Steiner: We formed the Waldorf School Association as a local group, to an extent under the assumption that the stockholders of the Waldorf-Astoria Company would be impressed and would provide some money. For that reason, I imagined we would have to create the World School Association separately.

A teacher: Dr. Steiner, you said we could take up the World School Association when we had moved forward.

Dr. Steiner: I meant that we would need to form the foundation from which it could grow, that we could clearly see the difficulties that exist in creating interest for the World School Association.

A teacher asks whether it would be possible to interest the Swiss members.

Dr. Steiner: The Swiss members are having so many difficulties because of the exchange rate that they can hardly do anything. In a brochure we recently sent out, we had to remove some words indicating that members in Middle Europe could do almost nothing because of the exchange problems. I am not terribly happy about pressuring the Swiss members anyway, since they do not easily open their wallets. We need to form a World School Association that does not include the Stuttgart school in its program, but has as its purpose the formation of schools according to our principles. The first responsibility of that association will be to undertake to support the Waldorf School.

Marie Steiner: I think we should first complete the Goetheanum, since otherwise the earlier projects would suffer because of the later projects. Members in Middle Europe can do much for the school. The people in Sweden and Norway are open to giving money. If we tap foreigners too much for the school, we will never complete the Goetheanum.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly true that if we form a World School Association, then it would also be important that it could freely determine how to use the money, and that it could support the Free University in Dornach with that money. My idea was to centralize the entire financial organization. We want a central financial organization so that all money donated for anthroposophical use will go to one central organization. That was what we wanted to do in those days when we worked toward forming The Coming Day and The Future. Then things became confused because the Waldorf-Astoria Company could no longer help, and we had to form the Waldorf School Association. We also had to found a number of things in Dornach, but all of them are only formalities. We could also include the Association for Goetheanism when necessary. We need to create everything we need so that in the end, everything leads to a central organization.

That was also our intention when we founded The Coming Day. It cannot accept yearly membership fees. An organization like the World School Association does not represent any kind of decentralization. It is not so that The Coming Day would be the central administration; it is only an organization that would participate. What I am thinking of as a central administration would be much broader. I did not say you should consider The Coming Day a central administration. The intention was to have all the money we receive go into a unified central fund, and then be distributed according to what is needed. If we founded a World School Association, it could administer its own money, but we would have to found it so that it could be a part of that central organization, just as the Association for Goetheanism in Dornach could be when we have someone to administer it. Purely objective principles must prevail here. We can found the World School Association in the same way. All we need is that its bylaws state that the money it receives can go to an elementary school as well as to the Free University.

Marie Steiner: Otherwise, everything would be at the expense of the Goetheanum.

A teacher: The way things are, I do not think the name “Waldorf School Association” is correct. We could use it for the lower eight grades, but for what is beyond, we need an “Association for the Founding of Rudolf Steiner Schools.”

Dr. Steiner: Under no circumstances can we do that.

Dr. Steiner: We need to find a much more modern name. Much of the opposition we encounter is due to the emphasis of the name. You will notice that people often say it with much emphasis. I can tell you that publishers accepted essays I wrote anonymously at one time or another, but when I included my name with them, the situation reversed. We could have another company name, but we will improve nothing by giving it a personal name. Marie Steiner: Could we perhaps talk about what name would be desirable?

Dr. Steiner: It would certainly be quite good if we did that, then we would settle things. Perhaps the Goetheanism School, or the School of The Coming Day. It needs something like that, something that looks toward the future. We also need to think of something that indicates it is not a state school. The name needs to express the independence from the state, the foundation of the school without the state. We can achieve that only through a neutral designation. We did that in the Waldorf School by using “Independent.” The designation “Independent Waldorf School” was good for the beginning, and had things continued as they had been, and had we not needed to form the Waldorf School Association, there would be little to say against that name. However, things have not gone on as they were. We need to express somehow the principle of independence from the state. We need something to indicate a school system created out of the independent cultural life. The question is whether we will be able to form the World School Association.

A teacher: Could we use “Anthroposophy” in the name?

Dr. Steiner: No, we need to leave that out.

A teacher: We should retain the name “Waldorf School” until the school reaches a certain size, so that interest does not wane. Dr. Steiner: Leaving the ninth grade aside, it is already so that we can no longer work with the eight classes as before. Without subsidies, we cannot continue the eight grades as we want. We will have to turn away new children for the eight grades unless we receive a subsidy. We can keep only the current level of activity. Then, there is the question of space. We cannot increase the number of students without increasing our space. With the fourth grade at fifty-three and the second grade at fifty-six children, there is also the question of additional teachers. In my opinion, if the classroom was large enough, a teacher could handle even a hundred children. Simply because we do not have the space, because our classrooms are too small, we will need more teachers. That will especially affect the future fourth and second grades that we will have to divide. In any event, we need to divide the first and fifth grades. The space problem is quite acute. There is still the problem of the eurythmy and gymnastics hall.

A teacher: Cultural School.

A teacher: I had thought of Independent Cultural School.

Marie Steiner: Perhaps someone else will think of something.

Dr. Steiner: It is not important to go into changing the name now. What is important is whether or not we receive the two million marks. We have this problem because we have accepted every child. The Waldorf-Astoria Company has done nothing wrong.

A teacher: It would be important to differentiate between the Waldorf School Association and the Waldorf School. We could leave the Waldorf School as the “Waldorf School.”

Dr. Steiner: The financial association does not need to carry that name. That would not hurt the Waldorf-Astoria Company. The Waldorf School is a historical fact that should remain. On the other hand, though, we do not need to expect that we should extend into other areas of Germany and Austria under the name of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. I think that for the purely practical reason that people will not give any money for it. We should limit announcements for the association to Stuttgart and Württemberg. On the other hand, though, it seems clear to me that we should do things so we can have an international outreach.

A teacher: Are we deciding to drop the association?

Dr. Steiner: I am convinced that continuing the first eight grades is a salary problem. How much do we have in the School Association account? We need to know, otherwise we will never come out of this murky situation. We will be clear about our situation only when the School Association exists, and the Waldorf-Astoria Company increases the amount of its contribution. Then we would have money in the Association’s account. We need to be able to say exactly how much the Waldorf-Astoria Company will need to provide, either as a certain donation per child or a particular amount we can count upon. Right now, that is all unclear.

I have the feeling that the financial basis of the school depends upon the Waldorf-Astoria Company and, to a large extent, upon the private wealth of Mr. Molt. We need to differentiate those two things. My feeling is that Mr. Molt has financially supported the Waldorf School himself. In addition to what he personally gave, the Waldorf-Astoria Company also provided support. Perhaps it is not appropriate to say so now, but Mr. Molt’s private resources are strongly involved.

Emil Molt: It is difficult to discuss this. The school is registered as my private property. I paid for the construction. The school pays no rent, and I also paid other amounts for the other school buildings.

Dr. Steiner: It is good that we know this. The problem we have is that the Waldorf-Astoria Company has come out a little too good in the picture of the Waldorf School. I do not find it responsible to give all the credit for the existence of this school to the Waldorf- Astoria Company when they were really not so enthusiastic about becoming the patron of the school, whereas, Mr. Molt actually did most of it. We could at best say that the Waldorf-Astoria Company is a member of the School Association.

It is certainly not right when people from out of town pay only what it costs for their child. They should also pay a part of the other costs, like the desks, and so on. However, this completely justifiable situation should be compensated for by not making the school purely a concern of Stuttgart. People need to understand that they will not have to pay so much when the school becomes an international organization.

A teacher: The tuition would be a thousand marks, since each child costs us about that much.

Dr. Steiner: If we knew the Waldorf-Astoria Company would pay that amount for the children of its employees, that would not help much, since we would not be able to accept other children without donations. We must maintain our principle of accepting children who cannot pay the tuition. The school suffers from the fact that, aside from the children of the Waldorf-Astoria Company, it is a capitalistic school. We can say these things publicly. In Switzerland, I was always in favor of saying that if every citizen gave a few marks, we could easily finish the Goetheanum. If we were to put that to people strongly, they would realize that what we are doing is for the general good, namely, that we accept poor children, for whom wealthier people pay the tuition. What I wanted to say before was that we cannot set the tuition for outside children according to what we are lacking. Therefore, we must continue to try to obtain public donations. We can reach this goal only when a wealthier person pays the tuition for a poor child.

Have we included patronages in the Waldorf School Association?

A teacher: I had thought that the membership would be a thousand marks for patrons. There are not many patrons yet.

A teacher: People could give bricks to the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do that. Collecting is good work. Of course, when we tell people they can give a small amount, then they will give a small amount. The members should go out and collect.

The main question is the formation of the World School Association. We must connect everything else with it. I still have not heard how much the Waldorf School Association has in its account. I would like to know that.

A teacher: Sixty to eighty thousand marks.

Dr. Steiner: So that is approximately what we have.

A teacher: The Waldorf factory pays 170,000 marks per year.

Dr. Steiner: Can we count on such donations in the coming years?

Emil Molt: If the economic situation does not break down, the amount will be raised to 200,000.

Dr. Steiner: And if that does not happen?

Emil Molt: That is why I am at the head of the company, in order to influence things enough.

Dr. Steiner: So, that would be the costs to the Waldorf-Astoria Company. We have so many wealthy parents who could afford to pay an appropriate amount, and who cannot demand that the company gives large donations. We need to approach those people who have an interest in the school if it does not fade as soon as we ask them to open their wallets. Otherwise, it is better the children do not come. We are not here to enroll children simply because the school is close. We will see what happens in the next week. If nothing happens, we will have to go back on the enrollments. There will be a parting of the ways if people say a unified school is one where no one pays anything, where everybody is equal, and they have nothing against that. We do not need to consider it an honor that the children of high government officials attend, but that in the future the children of wealthy people will sit next to those of poorer people.

Perhaps we can still gain some clarity about the question of the World School Association. In all these things we may not forget that we have great difficulty in obtaining money for the building in Dornach. We will have fewer difficulties in funding a school, particularly in America. We would have the least number of difficulties if we would create a sanitorium. People understand that we need a sanitorium, but they have less understanding that we need schools. However, they have no understanding for the building in Dornach.

A teacher: Then we will have to connect a sanitorium with the school.

Dr. Steiner: Our schools are built differently, but we have no way to express that. Otherwise, we could form a World Association for Young Invalids. A “School for Health.” That would be effective. However, that wouldn’t work. We will have to connect things in our circulars so that we have a common fund that will pay for sanitoriums and schools. If we want to start schools, we would have to give the Association the right to use the money for Dornach, also. Otherwise, the Association would be counterproductive in regard to Dornach and would suck up all the donations. If we transform eurythmy into curative eurythmy, we would soon have a sanitorium. I will try to do something in a very limited way to show what can be done. I have been asked if we can use eurythmy curatively. I will try to do that, and you will see that people will come.

We must emphasize that the school as such is independent of the state, and that it is created out of an independent cultural life.

A teacher: We should try to make specific proposals concerning the World School Association. Before we approach the public, we should do that and then wait to see the effect. We should not give the impression we cannot continue.

Dr. Steiner: We have so many applications that we can accept them only if we receive more donations. Do you think our appeal gives the impression that we feel we are failing? I wanted the faculty to emphasize what we have achieved with the school that would interest the public enough that they make some donations. The number of applications was emphasized. It appeared to me important that we wait with the numbers. There are already a hundred we cannot accept unless we receive financial support. I propose we write in a circular that the children are pouring in. I would also suggest that a teacher say that, because it makes more of an impression. Now we need only find a way of saying that so that people don’t say to us, “Well, if the children are pouring in, then their parents should pay.” It is one of our principles that we do not require every child to pay tuition. That is the reason for our difficulties, namely, that we accept children who cannot pay tuition.

A teacher proposes that Dr. von Heydebrand and Mr. Hahn prepare a statement to be read this evening.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against that since it is not actually a meeting. We could do that. I think, though, we should state it more clearly so that people become more concretely aware. I don’t think such a public statement would act against private activities. Perhaps it would be good to say this publicly.

There is a proposal that we continue this discussion again, and that you come ready to fire from both barrels. Is there anything against that? If you want to call another meeting today, you should do that. I cannot be here this afternoon.

A teacher asks about the curriculum of the ninth grade and about building a dormitory. Some people have offered to take children as a means of making a living or simply as a secondary income. There was also a question about the Abitur.

Dr. Steiner: Concerning the ninth grade curriculum, a primarily pedagogical question, we will take care of that at the beginning of the next school year. I will present that as a course of five to seven new lectures, which I still need to prepare. I will give them to the faculty at the beginning of the school year. Planning the curriculum for the ninth grade is something that will take five or six days, and to that extent we should put it off until the beginning of the next school year. Now we need only decide who will take the individual classes.

We also have the problem of the Abitur. That is a not so simple a question. If we were working toward official recognition of our middle school, we would have to be untrue to our principles. We would then be dependent upon the state and could no longer speak of an independent school. We can remain true to our principles only if we tell the children that they will have to take the state examination if that they want a position with the state, or that they will need to take the examination that gives them the right to attend a university. As soon as we begin to negotiate with the state, we will become dependent upon it. The state will probably demand that some state inspector be at our graduation examination. We may not allow that kind of substantial modification of our instruction. If they want to look at the school, they should do it, but we cannot allow ourselves to enter into any real negotiations. We will not be untrue to our principles if the state examines those children who want the security of civil service.

Forming a ninth grade really makes sense only if we intend to form a completely independent college. It makes sense only if we intend to form an independent college at the same time, and then it will not matter whether we have an Abitur or not. Then we will have to look only at the question of who may attend the college, but that is a question we can put off. By then, the situation will have changed enough that [the state] can ignore the accreditation of such a college.

A dormitory would be desirable. That is something connected with accepting children from far away. It would be quite nice. A lot of people talk about wanting to send their children here. We would immediately have the two X boys from Dornach. At present, they are only circling overhead, but soon they will land on the nose of the housemother. That is certainly an enticing prospect.

There is a question about what color to paint the desks.

Dr. Steiner: We could certainly paint the desks. Perhaps lilac, light bluish. We can do that with normal paint. The paints used in Dornach are too expensive to use here.

I brought some drawings from a few of the children in Dornach that Mr. B. has brought along quite well. These are drawings by the children who were given a theme, and we see the result for each of the children. When we have some time, I would like to go through these drawings and discuss them with you. They are important if you are thinking about publishing something. When I mentioned to little G.W. that we would display her drawings in the Waldorf School, she said she was making clay models, also. In this way, the children’s individual personalities are wonderfully expressed. I have no thought whatsoever of making a rule in that regard. Someone else might do it differently, but you can learn much from that. Mr. B. tells the children one thing or another, then, after giving them a little instruction, allows them simply to bring their ideas into some form. The children discuss it among themselves.

In the afternoon, there was a discussion with an extended group, but without Dr. Steiner, about how to raise money and about the formation of a World School Association. In the evening, Dr. Steiner gave the lecture “The Decline of the West” [July 29, 1920, contained in GA 335, not published in German or English].

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, I could not visit the classes, but you could tell me about them. I have not finished the curriculum for the ancient languages yet.

A teacher asks whether there will be levels of grammar in the foreignlanguages classes like those in German.

Dr. Steiner: Well, this is the situation. What I gave was according to the needs of the respective ages of the children. What they need is that you give them the nuances of the state of their souls at their age. Children learn how to enliven such nuances most easily through their mother tongue. It is best to make a connection with other languages after they have learned things in their mother tongue, for instance, to show how differently other languages express the same mood of soul. You can certainly make comparisons like that.

You should not begin teaching them grammar before the age of nine or ten. Develop your language teaching during the earlier stages purely from speaking and from the feeling for what is spoken, so that the child learns to speak from feeling. At that age, which is, of course, not completely fixed but lies between the age of nine and ten, you should begin with grammar. Working with the grammar of a language is connected with the development of the I. Of course, it is not as though you should somehow ask how you can develop the I through grammar. Grammar will do that by itself. It is not necessary to have specific teaching examples in that regard. You should not begin grammar earlier, but instead, attempt to develop grammar out of the substance of the language.

A teacher: You said that in eighth grade we should begin to give them the basics of meter and poetics, and then in the eleventh grade, the aesthetics of the language. What did you mean?

Dr. Steiner: Metrics is the theory of the structure of verses, the theory of how a verse is constructed. Poetics is the various forms of poetry, the types of lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry. That is what metrics and poetics are. You can then go on to metaphor and figures of speech. Always give the children some examples.

The children have a rather large vocabulary, German, French, and English, which you can use as a basis for comparing the different languages. Teaching the aesthetics of a language means that you draw their attention to such things as whether a language is rich in the o and u vowels or in the i and e vowels. You can then try to give them the feeling of how much more musical is a language that has many o and u sounds than one that has e and i sounds. You can try to give them a feeling for how the aesthetic beauty of a language decreases when the possibility of inwardly transforming words in various cases is lost and when endings disappear. Thus, the structure of the language is part of its aesthetics, whether it is flexible or more lyrical and musical, whether it can express complicated interjections, and so forth. That is different from actual metrics and poetics. The aesthetics of a language is concerned with the actual beauty of the language.

Sanskrit is very rich in a’s. U and o make a language musical. E and i make it discordant. The German language is discordant. Sanskrit is somewhat monotonic due to the predominance of a, but lies between the musical and flexible. It has a strong tendency to be musically flexible, that is, not to be unmusical in its plastic forms. That is how a works. It stands in the middle. It is particularly characteristic to find a vowel next to an a in Sanskrit. It is very characteristic, for example, to hear an Indian say, “Peace, peace, peace,” since an a comes first and then there is a soft hint, almost a shameful hint, of the I. That is because they say, “Shanti, shanti.” I is the most egotistical vowel. It is as though the Indian immediately becomes red in the face from shame when he says i.

A teacher: The Finnish language also has many a’s.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, but you should also consider how long a language has been at the stage of this particular peculiarity. There is something hardened in the a of the Finnish language, which, of course, relates to its tendency toward consonants. It is a kind of hardening that begins to become sympathetic. All these things are based upon a subtle aesthetic feeling for the language, but such subtle feelings are no longer natural for people today. If an Englishman spoke the ending syllable of English words the way a German- or a French-speaking person does, that would be a hardening for the English person. English-speaking people have begun to drop the end syllables because they are moving out of the language. What is a hardening for one can be something quite natural for the other.

A teacher asks another question about metaphors and figures of speech.

Dr. Steiner: Metaphors correspond to the imagination, figures of speech, to inspiration. First you have what is absolutely unpoetic and characterizes the greatest portion, 99 percent, of all poetry. You then have one percent remaining. Of that one percent, there are poets who, when they want to go beyond the physical plane, need to strew pictures and figures of speech over the inadequacies of normal prose. How could you express, “Oh, water lily, you blooming swan; Oh swan, you swimming lily!” That is a metaphor. What is expressed is neither a water lily, nor a swan; it floats between them. It cannot be expressed in prose, and the same holds for figures of speech. However, it is possible to adequately express the supersensible without using a picture or a figure of speech, as Goethe was sometimes able to do. In such cases, he did not use a picture, and there you find the intuitive. You stand directly in the thing. That is so with Goethe and also sometimes with Martin Greif. They actually achieve what we could objectively call lyric. Shakespeare also achieves it sometimes with the lyric poetry he mixed into his drama.

In the pedagogical course given by Dr. Steiner in Ilkley in August 1923, he characterized four languages in the eleventh lecture without naming them. A teacher asks which languages he meant.

Dr. Steiner: The first language is English, which people speak as though the listener were listening from a distance, from a ship floating on the waves of the sea, struggling against the wind, struggling against the movement and spray of the sea, that is. The second language, which has a purely musical effect when heard, is Italian. The third, which affects the intellect, which comes through reasoning and is expressed through its logical forms, is French. The fourth, which sculpts its words, is German.

A teacher: What is the basis of French meter?

Dr. Steiner: As hard as this may be to believe, the basis of French meter is a sense of systematic division, of mathematics in language. That is unconscious. In French meter, everything is counted according to reason, just as everything in French thinking in general is done according to reason. That is, of course, somewhat veiled since it is not emphasized. Here, reason becomes rhetoric, not intellect. Rhetoric is audible reasoning.

A teacher asks which texts they should use for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We have already spoken a great deal about the twelfth grade, and I gave you some suggestions, for example, MacKenzie. In the preceding grades, it would depend a little upon what the teacher has already read and what the teacher likes, and for that reason, I gave only the qualities. For the tenth grade, you should certainly consider older and more recent lyric poetry.

A teacher says that he began with lyrics from Milton’s time.

Dr. Steiner: You should do it in the following way. In the tenth grade, read the lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s time and then give a short review in the twelfth grade. We cannot completely ignore lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s time because it gives a curiously deep indication of the period of European development when the Germanic languages were much more similar to one another than they are only a few centuries later. English lyric poetry is still unbelievably German. If you read Shakespeare’s lyrics, you will see they are not at all un-German. We can show that in the twelfth grade, so that a feeling will arise that is very important for humanity in general.

Thus, for the tenth grade, Robert Burns, some things out of the period of Thomas Percy. Some things from the Sea School, for example, Coleridge, and then Shelley and Keats. You will, of course, need to be selective, but do what you prefer, since you will then do it better. You could also present some particular points of view. There is, however, one thing in these lyrics that you will find throughout almost all English lyric poetry, namely, that where it is good it has a sentimental element. Sometimes that is very beautiful, but there is certainly a sentimental element throughout.

Something else is that when the English way of thinking becomes poetic, it is not at all appropriate for representing humor. English then becomes trivial and has no humor in a higher sense. There is not even a word for it. How could you say “humor” in English? The way Falstaff is handled would not represent humor today. We would, of course, say there is much humor in it, but we would not refer to the way the whole thing is presented as humor itself. What is apparent to us is how precise the characterizations are. We perceive what is human, but in Shakespeare’s time it was not perceived in that way. The well-roundedness and exactness of characterizations was unimportant for people in earlier times. What was important then was that the humors be good for presentation on the stage. People thought much more as actors at that time.

Today, we can no longer call Falstaff humorous. By the word humor, we mean someone who dissolves in a kind of fog, that is, someone not so well defined in regard to his temperament. Humor is the kind of temperament someone has. The four temperaments are humors. Today, you can no longer say that someone has a melancholic humor. Thus, someone whom you cannot really quite grasp, who dissolves in the fog of their temperaments, has humor.

In drama, you should show that the development of the English people resulted in the height of English drama being reached by Shakespeare, and that since then nothing else has reached the same height. It is, of course, interesting, but you should draw the students’ attention to how development proceeds only in the twelfth grade. You can mention how in Middle Europe, the German Reformation kept its basic religious character through the great importance of church lyric. In France, the Reformation does not have a religious character; it has a social character, and this can be shown in the poetry. In England, it has a political/moral character, something we can see in Shakespeare. That is connected with the fact that for a long time the English did not have an idealistic philosophy, so they lived it out in poetry. That gives their poetry a sentimental tendency. That is what made the rise of Darwinism possible.

A teacher: We still need to group the three fifth-grade classes for Latin and Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether Mr. X. will take over that instruction.

A teacher asks about religious instruction in the Waldorf School and in the Christian Community.

Dr. Steiner: One thing we need to consider is that the Christian Community also gives religious instruction to the children. There are continuing questions. First, how is the independent religious instruction in the Waldorf School connected with the religious instruction of the Christian Community, and, second, how are the school’s Sunday services related to the Christian Community Sunday services? I would like to hear your feelings about these things. I would also like to say beforehand that we cannot object in principle to the children participating in both the Waldorf School religious instruction and the Christian Community instruction and also attending both services. Our only possible objection might be that it might be too much. You should speak about it, though, as we should not decide something dogmatically.

The situation is this: We have seen how the Christian Community has grown out of the anthroposophical movement. There cannot be any discrepancy within the content of the two. The question concerning religious instruction is that if the Christian Community were to request to instruct the children who belonged to the Christian Community, we would have to give them the same rights as other confessions. The children who do not belong to the Christian Community will, in the majority, have the independent religious instruction. Thus, we will have just one more religion class. But why should we allow an extra religion class for the Christian Community other than the independent religious instruction? I do not actually see how we can decide this question in principle, since we cannot put ourselves in the position of advising someone not to participate in our religious instruction. To do that would be incorrect.

Take, for instance, the situation of a Catholic father saying that he wants to send his boy to the Catholic religious instruction as well as to the independent religious instruction. We could certainly not say anything against that if it was possible to schedule things that way. We cannot decide it, the Christian Community must decide it for themselves.

[,em>There is a break in the transcript here, and the following is not completely clear.]

It should not be possible for a child to make comparisons and conclude that the religious instruction given by the Waldorf teacher is not as good. The school exists within the framework of anthroposophy, so if a child makes such a comparison of which teacher is better, it should be obvious that due to the nature of the subject, the Waldorf teacher is better.

A teacher asks about the selection of a new religion teacher.

Dr. Steiner: This situation could someday cause us very large problems, greater than all previous ones. As you know, it was very difficult to find religion teachers. The teachers here are more concerned with their own specific subjects, and there is a certain prerequisite for teaching religion. It might occur that we will need to find a religion teacher for the school within the Christian Community. I would try to avoid that as long as possible, but it may someday be necessary. I do not see why we should be so exclusive. We can leave it up to the parents and children whether they want to participate here and there; however, I think it would be good if they participated in both, so that there would be a harmonious discussion of the material by the religion teacher here and the religion teacher there.

You should also not forget that the priests of the Christian Community are also anthroposophists, and they have made great strides in a very short time. The priests are not the same as they were, they have made enormous progress in their inner development. They have undergone an exemplary development in the life of their souls during the short time the Christian Community has existed. Not everyone, of course, but it is true in general, and they are a great blessing in all areas. There was a youth group meeting in Breslau, and two theologians worked with them. That had a very good effect. Young Wistinghausen is a blessing for the youth there.

A teacher: What should we do with the newly enrolled students? They have already been confirmed by the Christian Community. Should they immediately go to the Youth Service?

Dr. Steiner: That would not be good, as they would not begin the Youth Services with an Easter service. It is extremely important that they begin the Youth Services at Easter. You should make it clear to them that they should attend the Youth Services somewhat later. You could allow them to attend as observers, but not for a whole year. Those children should attend the Youth Services beginning at Easter when they have completed the eighth grade. The Youth Service has its entire orientation toward Easter.

A teacher: What should we do with those who have gone through the Protestant confirmation or Catholic First Communion?

Dr. Steiner: The main problem is that these children have been confirmed or have taken First Communion, and now they are taking independent religious instruction. By doing that, they lose the entire meaning of confirmation or First Communion; they negate it and strike it out of their lives. Once they have been confirmed or have taken First Communion, they cannot simply take independent religious instruction. Being confirmed means to be an active member of a Protestant church, so they cannot participate in the independent religious instruction because that negates the confirmation. That is even more true with First Communion. Our task is to indicate to the children in a kind way that they need to first live into their new life, so that it will not be so bad if they do not participate in the Youth Service until next Easter. You need to prepare them for renouncing their faith and direct them to something quite different. These are things we should take quite seriously. At worst, these seven will have participated too early, but not too late if they come only at Easter. We should perhaps consider this if a dissident is there.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand at all why someone who was confirmed by Priest K. should not go through the Sunday services for a year, since he had not been confirmed before. In his case, our only question is whether he should go to the Sunday services for a year.

If you look at the inner meaning of our Youth Service and that of the Christian Community, you will see they are compatible. The inner meaning of our Youth Service is to place a person into the human community, not into a specific religious community, whereas the Christian Community’s is to place the person into a specific religious community. It is, therefore, completely compatible for someone to attend the Christian Community Youth Service after attending our youth services; that is not a contradiction. The other way around, for someone who is confirmed before attending our Youth Service, is not compatible. However, the first way is compatible. Parents from the Christian Community have asked me about this. First, the children should go to the youth services here, and then go through confirmation in the Christian Community. If a child attends the Christian Community youth services, we should not object. It is compatible because we do not place the children into the Christian Community. I did not say they must be confirmed into the Christian Community, rather, they may. Our Youth Service does not replace that of the Christian Community because it does not lead to membership in the Christian Community. If children have been confirmed in the Christian Community, they will need to wait here until next Easter.

A religion teacher says the older students do not like to go to the services for the younger ones. They think they are too old for that.

Dr. Steiner: They completely misunderstand the service. They have a Protestant understanding of ritual, which means a rejection of it. It is possible to attend the service throughout your entire life. Their understanding is based upon the perspective that these teachings are preparations, not a ritual. We need to overcome that Protestant understanding.

A teacher asks how to handle students who only audit the classes.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question we can decide quite objectively, but then there can be no differing opinions. The instruction we give in the Waldorf School assumes a certain methodology. We present the material according to that methodology, and we cannot take other circumstances into account. Those who audit the Waldorf School need to assume that they will be treated according to that methodology. We cannot answer this question with a subjective opinion. You cannot modify the methodology by saying you will ask one student and not another, since you would no longer treat the students according to the Waldorf methodology. As long as he is in the class, you have to treat him like the others.

I do not understand why his report is not different from the others. If someone attends all the classes, I do not see why he is an auditor. His report should clearly state that he took only some classes. That should be summarized somewhere. At the end of the report, you should state that the student did not receive remarks about all subjects because, as an auditor, he did not attend all classes. The reports are uniformly written, and it should, therefore, be evident that the student was an auditor unless we have cause to view him differently. We spoke about this when we discussed how the reports were becoming more bland and that we should stop that. If you do not write them with enough care, they no longer have any real meaning. I do not see why that should be any different now. If we give an auditor a report—to the extent that we can give such a report—we should do it according to the principles of the Waldorf School or not at all. That is really self-evident.

The only question could be whether he should automatically receive a report, or only if he requests it. That is not a major question and has no further consequences. Certainly, you could give him a report regardless of whether he asks for it or not, and he might tear it up, or you could ask him and if he does not want it you simply save yourself the work of writing the report; that is really not so important. If he is to audit, then he must be an auditor in the Waldorf School. To treat him differently would not correspond to teaching in the Waldorf School. His extended leaves from school are a different question.

There is further discussion about S.T. Some letters to his mother are read aloud.

Dr. Steiner: I recently discussed this whole matter very clearly and said that when he was enrolled I assumed he would be treated according to his very specific nature. I continue to assume that, otherwise I would have advised him not to come to the Waldorf School. At that time, I said it was absolutely necessary for him to live with one of the Waldorf School teachers. I also said he does not tend to progress in individual subjects in a straightforward fashion, but we have not gotten past that problem. We appear to have characterized him, but that is really not much more than just giving grades. He has not been treated as I intended he should be treated. In a certain sense, the way T. has been treated is a kind of rejection of me by the faculty. That is something that is actually not possible to correct. These letters are simply a justification of his report. I do not agree with the report nor with your justification of it. You have not taken his particular situation into account. He is difficult to handle, but you also have no real desire to work with him as an individual. I need to say that in an extreme way as otherwise you will not understand me clearly. You could have said everything in his report differently. Now there is nothing to do other than to send this letter. What else can we do? I think, however, that we can learn a great deal from this report because most of what is in it is said in a devious way. He is also now living in R.’s boarding house. You have done nothing I wanted. Some of the students are living with teachers.

I do not think we can achieve more by rewriting the letters. What we should have achieved should have been done throughout the year. What is important is to be more careful in carrying out the intentions. Otherwise, we should not have accepted him.

A teacher: Should we advise an eleventh-grade student who wants to study music to no longer attend school?

Dr. Steiner: As a school, we can really not say anything when a student no longer wants to attend. We do not have compulsory attendance. However, as the Waldorf School, we can certainly not advise such a young student that he should no longer attend. That is something we cannot do. We need to take the viewpoint that he should continue and finish. That is the advice we can give. If it is necessary for the boy not to complete the Waldorf School in order to become a musician, then we will lose him, and his mother will not be able to keep him, either. If he is to become a good musician, we cannot advise him not to continue in school.

A teacher asks about a child in the third grade who has difficulties concentrating and cannot make the connections necessary to write short essays.

Dr. Steiner: Have the child repeat a series of experiences forward and then backward. For instance, a tree: root, trunk, branch, leaf, flower, fruit. And now backward: fruit, flower, leaf, branch, trunk, root. Or you could also do a person: head, chest, stomach, leg, foot. Then, foot, leg, stomach, chest, head. Try to give him some reminders also.

A teacher: How often should we have parent evenings?

Dr. Steiner: When possible, parent meetings should be monthly.

In today’s lecture we shall consider how the content of a lesson may be adapted to the life of the children. There can be no doubt whatsoever that an education that is not based on a true understanding of the human being cannot possibly succeed in adapting the content of a lesson to the reality of human life.

The spiritual aspect of the human being is not recognized today; it is really only the physical body that is considered. There are some, perhaps, who admit to something of a soul nature that, in a vague way, influences the physical body. But even they do not consider the inner concrete nature of soul and spirit. It is exactly this consideration that anthroposophy is to contribute toward an understanding of the human being. It is only this that will, in a conscious way, make the adaptation of our lessons to the human life processes possible.

Let us assume—it will not be difficult to imagine it—that the children are listening to a story you tell them, or that they are looking at a picture you drew for them on the blackboard, or that they are looking at a diagram of an experiment, or that they are listening to a piece of music you play for them. In each of these activities you are initially in a relation to the outer physical reality of the children. But what you are inserting into the children in a roundabout way through the physical reality—be it through the eyes, the ears, or the comprehending intellect—everything that is thus placed into the children very soon assumes a quite different form of life.

The children go home, they go to bed, they go to sleep; their egos and astral bodies are outside their etheric and physical bodies. What you did with the children in this roundabout way through the physical body and also the etheric body continues in the astral body and the ego. But the latter two are now, during sleep, in a quite different environment. They experience something that can only be experienced during sleep, and everything you taught the children participates in the experience. The effects of the lesson that remain in the astral body and ego are part of the experience during sleep. You must know that you let flow into the astral body and ego what you teach the children through this detour of the physical body and that you thus affect the children’s sleep experience. The children will present to you on the following morning the results of what they experience between falling asleep and waking.

A simple example will clarify this for you. Let us think of a child who is doing eurythmy or singing. The physical body is active, and the active physical body and the etheric body impress this activity on the astral body and ego. The ego and astral body are forced into participating in the movements of the physical and etheric bodies. But they resist, because actually they have other forces to concentrate on. These forces must now, in a way, be subdued. And although the ego and astral body resist, they must accept what their own physical and etheric bodies mediate to them—in eurythmy it is more the physical body; in listening to a piece of music, it is more the etheric body.

Ego and astral body then enter the world we live in between falling asleep and waking up. Everything that has been impressed on them continues during sleep to vibrate in them. Ego and astral body actually repeat—in the more intricate and spiritualized way peculiar to their nature—what they experienced in eurythmy and music. They repeat all of it. And what they thus experience during sleep, this the children take with them to school on the following day. The children incorporate the experience into their etheric and physical bodies, and we have to reckon with that.

Considered in totality, the human being presents an extraordinarily complicated structure for us to come to terms with in our lessons. Let us now take a closer look at these processes. Let us consider a child who is doing eurythmy. The physical body is in movement, and the movements of the physical are transferred to the etheric body. Astral body and ego initially resist, but the activities of the physical and etheric bodies are impressed on them. Astral body and ego then separate during sleep and connect the impressions to spiritual forces that are quite different. On the following morning astral body and ego return the impressions to the etheric and physical bodies. We can then see a remarkable harmony between that which was received from the spiritual world during sleep and what the etheric and physical bodies experienced during eurythmy. The effect shows itself in the way the sleep experiences adjust to what was prepared and carried out on the previous day. It is only in this complementing of the physical/etheric by the spiritual that we can see the special healing element of eurythmy.

Indeed, spiritual substantiality is brought to the human being upon awakening in the morning after a day including eurythmy. It is similar in singing. When we let a child sing, the essential activity is that of the etheric body. The astral body must strongly adapt to this activity and, again, initially resists before taking it into the spiritual world. The astral body returns, and what it brings back again expresses itself in effectively healing forces. We may say that in eurythmy we have a force that mainly affects the health of the child’s physical body, while in singing a force expresses itself that mainly affects the child’s mechanism of movement and, through movements, then again the health of the physical body.

We can make very good use of these connections in education. If we organize our curriculum—this is an ideal, but the teachers could at least try to come close to it—so that the eurythmy lesson is given in the afternoon, it will be allowed to continue its life during the following night. On the next day, we can teach a physical education lesson in the way I outlined yesterday. The experience then penetrates the body in such a way that the movements made in physical education have a healing effect. Much can be achieved by this alternation of eurythmy and physical education.

Or again, much can be achieved on any one day when we let the children sing. They take this experience into the spiritual world during sleep. On the following day we let them listen to music—we let them listen to rather than make music. What was done on the previous day is then consolidated in the listening to music—an extraordinary healing process. You can see that under ideal conditions—that is, a curriculum structured to adapt to the conditions of life—we can affect the children’s health in an extraordinary way. We shall do still far more in this regard.

Let us take the physics lesson as another example. We make an experiment. Remember what I said yesterday: Our thinking, our mental pictures, are head processes, while it is the rhythmic human being who judges, and the metabolic human being who draws conclusions. It is especially our legs and feet that draw conclusions. If you keep this in mind, if you think of the processes of perception in this way, you will tell yourselves that everything connected with the will, everything we produce out of ourselves during the process of perceiving, is deeply connected to the drawing of conclusions and not only to the forming of mental pictures or ideas. When I look at my body, then this body is itself a conclusion. The idea, the mental image, arises only because I am looking at my body, but in carrying out a definite half-conscious or unconscious procedure, I synthesize the parts in a way, akin to the forming of judgments, that allows me to experience the totality. I then express the experience in the sentence: This is my body. But this is already the perception of a conclusion. As I perceive, perceive intelligently, I am drawing conclusions. And the whole of the human being is within these conclusions.

This is so during an experiment, because in experimenting the whole of the human being is active, receiving information. Conclusions are continuously drawn during the process. Judgments are generally not perceived; they are predominantly inner processes. We may thus say that the whole of the human being is occupied during an experiment.

From an educational point of view, children do not really benefit much at all from such experiments. They may be interested in what they see, but their normal organization as human beings is as such not strong enough for them to exert themselves continuously in every part of their being. That is not possible. I always ask too much of them when I ask them to exert themselves totally. The children always get too far outside themselves when I ask them to observe an experiment or something in the environment. The important aspect in education consists in really paying attention to the three parts of the threefold human being—in allowing each part to receive its due, but also in getting all to the point where they can correspondingly interact.

Let us return to the physics lesson. I make an experiment. The whole of the human being is occupied, is asked to make an effort. This is quite enough to begin with. I then draw the children’s attention away from the instruments I experimented with and repeat the various stages. Here I am appealing to their memory of the direct experience. During such a review or recapitulation—without the presence of the apparati, purely in the mind—the rhythmic system is especially enlivened. After having engrossed the whole of the human being, I now appeal to the rhythmic system, and to the head system, because the head naturally participates during recapitulation. The lesson can then be concluded. After first having occupied the whole of the human being, then mainly the rhythmic system, I dismiss the children. They go to bed and sleep. What I activated in the whole of their being, then in their rhythmic system, now during sleep continues to live in their limbs when astral body and ego are outside the body.

Let us now regard what remains lying on the bed, what allows the content of the lesson to keep on working. Everything that has developed in the rhythmic system and the whole of the human being now streams upward into the head. Pictures of these experiences now form themselves in the head. And it is these pictures that the children find on waking up and going to school. Indeed, it is so. When the children arrive at school on the following morning they have, without knowing it, pictures of the previous day’s experiments in their heads, as well as pictures of what—in as imaginative a way as possible—I repeated, recapitulated after the experiment. The children I then confront have photographs of the previous day’s experiment in their heads. And I shall now reflect on yesterday’s lesson in a contemplative way. Yesterday I experimented, and in reviewing the experiment I then appealed to the children’s imagination. In today’s lesson I add the contemplative element. In doing so, I not only meet the pictures in the children’s heads, but also help to bring the pictures into their consciousness.

Remember the progression: I teach a physics lesson, make an experiment, then recapitulate the stages of the experiment without the apparatus. On the following day, we discuss the previous experiment, contemplate it, reflect on it. The children are to learn the inherent laws. The cognitive element, thinking, is now employed. I do not force the children to have mere pictures in their heads, pictures they have brought with them from sleep, pictures without substance, without meaning. Just imagine the children coming to school with these pictures in their heads, of which they have no knowledge. If I were to immediately start with a new experiment, without first nourishing them with the cognitive, contemplative element, I would again occupy the whole of their being, and the effort they would have to make would stir up these pictures; I would create chaos in their heads. No, above all, what I must do first is consolidate what wishes to be there, provide nourishment. These sequences are important; they adapt to, are in tune with, the life processes.

Let us take another example, a history lesson. In the teaching of history there is no apparatus, no experiment. I must find a way of again adapting the lesson to the life processes, and I can do this as follows. I give the children the mere facts that occur in space and time. The whole being is again addressed just as during an experiment, because the children are called upon to make themselves a mental picture of space. We should see to it that they do this, that they see what we tell them, in their minds. They should also have a mental picture of the corresponding time. When I have brought this about, I shall try to add details about the people and events—not in a narrative way, but merely by characterization. I now describe and draw the children’s attention to what they heard in the first part of the lesson. In the first part, I occupied their whole being; in the second, it is the rhythmic part of their being that must make an effort. I then dismiss them.

When they return on the following day they again have the spiritual photographs of the previous day’s lesson in their heads. I connect today’s lesson with them by a reflective, contemplative approach—for example, a discussion on whether Alcibiades or Mithradates was a decent or an immoral person. When I make an objective, characterizing approach on the first day, followed on the next day by reflection, by judgments, I shall allow the three parts of the threefold human being to interact, to harmonize in the right way.

These examples show what can be done if the lessons are properly structured, if they are adapted to life conditions. The structuring and adaptation are only possible in our curriculum, which allows the teaching of a subject for several weeks. They are not possible in the traditional schedule, wherein physics is taught on one day and, perhaps, religion on the next. How could one thus consider what the children bring with them? It is difficult, of course, to structure all the lessons in this way, but one can at least come close to doing so. And by taking a good look at our schedule, you will see that we have attempted to make that possible.

It is furthermore also important to have an overview of all these connections. If you remember what I said yesterday—that it is not only the head but the whole human being who is a logician—you will learn to appreciate the significance of activities that require skills. It really was not a mere whim on our part when we introduced knitting also for boys. The faculty of judgment is indeed essentially enhanced by this activity of the hands. It is least developed through mere logical exercises. Logical exercises actually do very little for the development of the faculty of judging, of forming opinions. By connecting predicate to subject we contribute nothing to that faculty. What we actually do in that instance is make the faculty of judgment rigid. Children so exercised will grow into adults who can only judge according to patterns or schemes. Too many intellectual exercises result in schematic individuals. Another result of such exercises is too much salt deposit; the human being is permeated by salt and tends toward perspiring. We can easily observe this in children whose judgments have been unduly taxed: they perspire too much during the night.

Indeed, it is true. When we are too strongly and one-sidedly intellectual/spiritual—without knowing that the physical/corporeal is the pure expression of the spiritual—we usually affect the body, and mostly in the wrong way. Herbart’s education, as well as that of others—education that is predominantly based on developing the faculty of forming mental images and ideas—results in the destruction of the body. It is important for teachers to know this.

You can see the significance of what I have told you in other areas of life. Every decent human being is supposed to listen to sermons in church. This is certainly a good tradition. The usual sermons are rather abstract. In fact, the preacher is trying to direct his congregation from everyday life to higher regions. They are to be edified and so on. It is all quite justified. Still we must understand what is actually happening during today’s sermons, preached by people who are living in abstractions, who are ignorant of the connections in nature, whose thoughts do not contain such connections, who in fact do not even enjoy natural phenomena.

Let us now assume that the faithful attend such sermons that are not connected to everyday life. There are many such sermons nowadays. The faithful listen. Initially we do not notice anything amiss. But they do get physically ill, albeit only to a slight degree that is outwardly not noticeable. The effect of such sermons is the breeding of slight illnesses. A few hours after such a sermon, the listeners are subjected to the processes of an illness. The pain is consciously experienced to only a half or even a quarter degree. The inevitable effect is the feeling of one’s miserable body. But surely the cause cannot possibly be in the sermon that has raised one to higher, more spiritual regions! One then analyzes one’s feelings, becomes contrite, and realizes: I am a sinner. This is the interpretation of the illness that follows a sermon. And this—making the congregation experience themselves as sinners—may even have been intended by a certain unconscious shrewdness on the part of the sermonizer.

This phenomenon, quite general in our time, is connected with the other phenomena of decadence. I have mentioned it in order to show you that a wrong preoccupation with the spirit does not affect the spirit but rather the body, and quite concretely; I have mentioned the phenomenon so that you may understand that we ought to educate our children from a knowledge of this accord of the spirit with the physical body.

Sometimes curious events are not noticed, although they greatly influence the whole of our cultural life. During the last third of the nineteenth century less attention was given to the teaching of geography. The subject of geography played an ever diminishing role in teachers colleges. It was given an unimportant place in the curriculum, to be taught as a secondary subject by either the teacher of history or the teacher of the natural sciences. But take another good look at our diagram of the human being on the blackboard. When we see the human as a being who draws conclusions, who is placed within the world and does not separate from it through the head, we cannot think of him or her without the surrounding space. Space is part of the human being. Insofar as we have feet and legs, we are a part of the world of space. And the teaching of geography is, spatially considered, for the astral body a “being-put-on-itslegs.” The astral body actually grows denser and thicker lower down. We teach about space and in so doing increase the density of spirit and soul in the lower astral body, toward the ground. In other words, we consolidate, we bring about a certain firmness in the human being when we teach geography in an imaginative way—always stressing the reality of space, making the children conscious of, for example, the distance between the River Thames and Niagara Falls.

If we teach geography clearly and graphically, we place the human being within space, and we especially cultivate an interest in the whole world. The effects will be seen in various ways. Individuals taught geography in this way will have a more loving relation with their fellow beings than those who have not learned about spatial relationships. They learn to take their place next to other human beings, learn to be considerate. These things strongly affect the moral life, whereas the neglect of geography results in an aversion to loving one’s fellow beings. Even a superficial observation will confirm this. The connections are there, even if they are not noticed. Today’s unhappy cultural phenomena are the effects of such follies.

The effects of the teaching of history are quite different. History is concerned with time. We only teach it correctly when we pay attention to this fact. If we merely concentrate on historical episodes, we do not consider the time element enough. If, for example, I speak about Charlemagne as though he were the children’s uncle who is still alive today, I give them a false picture. Whenever I speak of Charlemagne, I must give the children a clear and graphic experience of the distance in time. I can do this by saying: “Just imagine—you are a small child and you take your father’s hand.” The children will have no difficulty in imagining this. I now point out the difference between the child’s and the father’s ages. I continue: “Your father holds his father’s hand, then he your grandfather’s, and so on. Now imagine thirty people holding hands. The thirtieth could be Charlemagne.” In this way, the children get a feeling for the distance in time. It is important to teach history in this way—not placing isolated episodes next to each other but rather giving the children the feeling of distance in time.

It really is important to point out the characteristic differences [in consciousness—translator] when we deal with specific epochs in history, so that the children can have an idea of them. What matters is that historical events are seen to be living within the framework of time. Seeing historical events in this way strongly affects our inner life.

If, on the other hand, we teach history in a way that ignores the time element and also takes hold of the inner life too strongly—that is, if we concentrate on recent local history at the expense of events in the distant past, if (as it were) we put the emphasis in our lessons on cultivating a wrong patriotism (you will easily think of many such instances)—then we shall greatly engender obstinacy and willfulness of the inner life and a tendency toward moodiness. These are side effects, which will, above all, make people reluctant to observe world events objectively. And this is so terrible today. Neglecting geography and taking the wrong approach to history have greatly contributed to the serious illnesses of our time. You yourselves will admit to the problems you have in facing many a situation now, problems resulting from the way you were taught history in school.

The examples I have given you will illustrate the path our teaching must take if it is to connect to life conditions, to life impulses, in a healthy way. We cannot be satisfied simply with mediating facts; we must, above all, be aware of the life conditions of the human being in the physical, soul, and spiritual connections. We must always see the human being before us; and we must see the human being in his or her totality, as a being who is also extremely active during sleep. If we ignore this sleep activity—and this is ignored in today’s education, apart from the hygienic aspects of sleep—if we ignore the fact that the content of our lessons continues into sleep, develops further during sleep, we will have the quite definite effect of making the human being into a robot, an automaton.

We could, indeed, venture to say that today’s education is in many respects an education not toward humanness but toward the most obvious type of human automaton—namely, the bureaucrat. Our children are trained to become bureaucrats. Such people are no longer really human. They are fixed, they have an existence, they are finished. The human being is lost, is concealed behind the label. We have an appointment with an officer, be it a clerk or barrister, and it matters little who the actual person behind the label is.

Such is the result of only paying attention to daytime consciousness in education, of denying the spiritual element, of not considering the activities during sleep. We see this tendency in a frightening way in modern philosophy. Descartes and Bergson assert that the ego constitutes the continuity of the human being, that in the ego we can grasp the reality. I would like to point out to such people that they then cease to exist as soon as they fall asleep, that they always begin life anew on waking up. The dictum “I think, therefore I am” should really be changed to: “On June 2, 1867, I was from 6 A.M. to 8 P.M., because I thought during that time. Then again I was from 6 A.M. to 8 P.M. on the following day.” Life would then become rather complicated. What lies between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. would have to be excluded. But this is not considered, because such people prefer all sorts of ideas and abstractions to the realities at the basis of the human being.

But we must deal with these realities in our education. Doing so will allow us to educate human beings again. Doing so we need not then worry about establishing the right social or economic conditions. People who have been educated as human beings will see to them. Clearly, cultural life must be autonomous and independent. We can educate human beings only when concentrating on their human aspects, when we think about social change merely as a consequence of such an education—that is, not as having been made by the government. Cultural life must not be an appendix of the state or of economic life but must develop out of its very own sphere.

Our talks so far will have shown you the necessity of including exact knowledge of the physical human being when you prepare your lessons. The reason we consider such apparently remote matters is the important step our school is taking in adding a tenth grade class to the present elementary grades. In the tenth grade class we shall have girls and boys who are already more mature, who are at an age that will have to be treated especially carefully. I would like to spend the next few days in giving you a thorough understanding of this age when, as you know, important developmental stages occur.

You may well say that this is surely the business only of those who teach at this level. But this is not so. The teachers in our school must develop ever more into a complete organism, and all of you will, directly or indirectly, be concerned with all age groups, with the total education of every child.

However, before I address myself to the needs of the fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old students, I must today touch on some preliminary matters. During our meetings we shall then work on the tenth grade curriculum.

Let us, therefore, continue in the way we began during the last two days. I would like to impress on you the connection between the spirit/soul and the physical/corporeal aspects of the human being, especially of the child. Today’s culture regards spirit and soul merely intellectually. Our cultural life does not include an actual and living spiritual life. And in the mainly Catholic central European countries, Catholicism has assumed forms that are no longer true, so that even there one cannot expect any help regarding the religious mediation of spiritual life. The Protestant spiritual life has become more or less fully intellectualistic. As far as our school is concerned, the actual spiritual life can be present only because its staff consists of anthroposophists. We do not teach anthroposophy—our school must not represent a world conception—but through the way the teachers are acting, through their inner life, the soul and spirit elements enter the school as though through the imponderables of the soul.

When we now teach the various subjects expected of a school—reading, the thought processes in arithmetic, those in the natural sciences, everything that is of a cognitive nature—we give the children ideas and mental pictures. The ideas and mental images are for the child’s organism an activity that is quite different from physical/corporeal instruction—which, although it participates in the education of the thought processes, is also carried out independently. Physical/corporeal instruction is carried out quite independently in eurythmy, in physical education, and in instrumental music, but no longer in singing. Everything is, of course, relative. But there is a great difference, a polarity, between what the children are asked to do in these subjects—and also when they are learning reading and writing, when we strongly appeal to the physical activity—and what they are asked to do in subjects such as arithmetic, in which case the physical activity plays a subordinate role. In handwriting, on the other hand, physical activity plays a predominant part.

We should really go into details. Let me single out the subject of writing and show you the role physical activity plays. There are two types of people in regard to writing. (I believe I have already mentioned this to those of you who have attended previous lectures.) There are those who write as though the writing is flowing from their wrists. The forming of the letters is carried out from the wrist. Future business people are actually trained to write in this way. Their writing flows from their wrists, and this is all there is to it. That is one of the two types of people in regard to writing. The other type is disposed to looking at the letters. These people always contemplate what they write, deriving an almost aesthetic pleasure from it. These are the painter type, and they do not so much write from the wrist. Those of the first type do not paint.

I actually got to know the special training for people who are prepared for business. They are encouraged to put a kind of flourish to the letters. Their writing is characterized by continuous flourishes emanating from a certain swinging motion of the wrist. Taken to an extreme, this kind of writing will lead to something that is really quite awful. I know people who carry out all sorts of swinging motions with their pens in the air before they begin to write—a quite terrible thing when taken to an extreme.

We really ought to get people to write in a way that is akin to painting. Writing in that way is far more hygienic. When writing is accompanied by an aesthetic pleasure, the mechanical aspect is pushed into the body. It is the inner organism rather than the wrist that is writing. And this is most important, because the mechanical aspect is then diverted from the periphery to the whole of the human being. You will notice that when you teach children to write in this painting way, they will also be able to write with their toes. This would, in fact, constitute a triumph, a success—when a child is able to hold a pencil between the toes and form adequate letters. I do not say that this ability should be developed artistically. But we do have in such an instance a shifting of the mechanical activity to the whole human being. You will agree that in this regard most of us are extremely clumsy. Can you think of anyone who is able to pick up a piece of soap from the floor with his or her toes? To do this at least should be possible. It sounds grotesque, but it points to something of great significance.

We should cultivate this painting-like writing. It pushes the actual mechanical activity into the body, and the writer’s connection to the writing is brought to and beyond the surface. The human being is imparted into his or her environment. We should really get used to seeing everything we do, rather than doing things thoughtlessly, mechanically. Most people do write mechanically, thoughtlessly. Because writing is thus a manysided activity, we can, in a certain way, consider it as a significant aspect in our lessons. In arithmetic, on the other hand, the actual writing has a subordinate position, because with that subject it is the thinking that preoccupies the student.

We must now be quite clear about the processes taking place during reading. The activity of reading is initially spiritual and then continues into the physical body. It is especially the activities that are of a cognitive, mental/spiritual nature that considerably tax the delicate parts of the physical organization. You can picture, physiologically, the deeper parts of the brain, the white matter. The white matter is the actual, the more perfectly organized part of the brain. It is organized toward the more functional tasks, whereas the gray matter at the surface—which is especially well developed in humans—provides the brain’s nourishment. The gray matter has remained behind, in a very early stage of evolution. In regard to evolution, it is the deeper part of the brain that is more perfect.

If we teach a child to observe well, as in reading, we greatly tax the gray matter, engendering a very delicate metabolic process. And this delicate metabolic process then spreads throughout the organism. It is especially when we believe ourselves to be occupying the children mentally and spiritually that we affect their physical organism most strongly. The observation and comprehension during the reading of and listening to stories engender metabolic processes that tax the children to an inordinately strong degree. We could call what is happening the impression of the spiritual into the physical. A kind of incorporation of what we observe and comprehend during a story is necessary. Something akin to a physical phantom must develop and then impart itself into the whole organism. The organism is filled with delicate salt deposits. Not coarsely, of course. A salt phantom is imparted into the whole organism, and the necessity arises to dissolve it again through the metabolism.

This process takes place when the children read or listen to stories. When we believe ourselves to be occupying the mind and spirit in our lessons, we really evoke metabolic processes. And this must be considered. We cannot do anything else but to see to it that our stories and reading material are faultless in two respects. First, the children must be interested in the subject. Genuine interest is connected with a delicate feeling of pleasure that must always be present. That feeling expresses itself physically in very subtle glandular secretions that absorb the salt deposits caused during reading and listening. We must endeavor never to bore the children. Lack of interest, boredom, leads to all sorts of metabolic problems. This is especially the case with girls. Migraine-like conditions are the result of a one-sided stuffing of material that must be learned without pleasure. The children are then filled with tiny spikes that do not get dissolved. They tend toward developing such spikes. Yes—we must be aware of these problems.

Second, immediately connected with the metabolic problems arising from boredom is the unhappy situation that does not allow us enough time for everything we ought to do. We should really see to it that the currently available readers—which can drive you up the wall—are not used. The books I have seen in the classrooms are really quite awful.

We must not forget that we are preparing the children’s physical constitutions for the rest of their lives. If we make them read the trivial stuff contained in most readers we affect their delicate organs accordingly. The children will turn into philistines rather than into complete human beings. We must know that the reading material we give our children strongly affects their development. The results are unavoidable in later life.

I really would like to ask you to compile your own anthologies, including the classics and other worthwhile authors, and to refrain from using the available books. This additional effort is necessary. We must do something. It is, after all, the task of the Waldorf school to use methods different from those practiced elsewhere. What matters is that in reading or storytelling, and also in the presentation of the natural sciences, we take great care not to harm the children in these two ways.

Eurythmy and singing lessons can be said to be working in the opposite direction, engendering an organic process that is quite different. All the organs connected with these activities contain spirit. When the children are doing eurythmy they move, and during the moving the spirit in the limbs is streaming upward. When we ask the children to do eurythmy or to sing, we liberate the spirit. The spiritual, of which the limbs abound, is liberated—a very real process. In our singing and eurythmy lessons we release the spiritual from the children. As a consequence, the released or liberated spirit expects to be made use of after these exercises. I explained this to you in yesterday’s lecture in another connection. The spirit now also waits to be consolidated.

In singing, eurythmy, and physical education we spiritualize the children. They are quite different beings at the end of the lesson; there is much more spirit in them. But this spirit wishes to consolidate, wishes to remain with the children. We must not allow it to dissipate. We can prevent it from dissipating quite simply and effectively by making the children sit or stand quietly at the end of the lesson. We should try to maintain this calm for a few minutes. The older the children, the more important this will be. We should pay attention to these things if we wish to prepare the children in the best possible way for the following day. It is not in the children’s interest for us to let them rush out of the room immediately after a gym, singing, or eurythmy lesson. We should, instead, let them calm down and sit quietly for a few minutes.

In considering such matters we really touch on a cosmic principle. There are many and diverse theories about matter and spirit. But both, matter and spirit, contain something that is more than either of them, a higher element. We may say that if this higher element is brought to a state of calm, it is matter; if it is brought into movement, it is spirit. This being a high principle, we can apply it to the human being. Through the short period of calm following a gym, singing, or eurythmy lesson or other such activity, we produce in ourselves—for the spirit we have liberated—a delicate physical phantom, which then deposits itself in our organism for us to make use of. Knowing about this process can help us make discoveries that will have corresponding effects in our other interactions with the children.

We shall now consider further uses for this knowledge. There are children in our school with a very vivid imagination, and there are children with very little imagination. We need not jump to the conclusion that half of our students are poets and the other half not. We notice the difference not so much in the actual way the imagination shows itself but rather in the way memory develops. Memory is strongly related to imagination. We have some children—and we should notice them—who quickly forget what they have experienced and heard during a lesson, who cannot hold on to the pictures of what they have experienced, for whom the pictures disappear. And we have other children for whom the pictures remain, assume an independent life of their own, and surface continuously, cannot be controlled. We should be well aware of these two types of children. There is, of course, a whole range between these extremes. For children with a vivid imagination, memory causes the pictures to surface in a changed form. Most frequently, however, the pictures surface unchanged, as reminiscences. The children are then slaves to what they have experienced during their lessons. And then there are the children for whom everything disappears, evaporates.

It is now a matter of dealing with these two types of children appropriately. It is possible to occupy groups of children in the most diverse ways if we develop a routine in the best sense of the word—a routine in a spiritual sense. Children with poor memory, who have difficulty in getting the pictures to surface, should be made to observe better during reading. We should try to get them to listen better. With children who are slaves to their mental pictures, we should see to it that they become more physically active, mobile; we should make them concentrate more on writing. We could have two groups in the class—giving the children who are poor in imagination the opportunity for cultivating their reading and observation, while for the other group, the children with a vivid imagination, we could especially cultivate painting and writing. Naturally, it is a matter of degree, because everything is relative.

We can take this distinction further. (But the following observation is especially important: We can only gradually learn these things; we cannot cover everything during the first year.) Children who are poor in imagination—that is, children who cannot easily remember—should be asked to do eurythmy standing up, mainly with their arms. Children with a vivid imagination who are tormented by their mental pictures will benefit by moving the whole body, be it by running or by walking. This we can encourage. It really is very important that we pay attention to such matters.

In addition, we ought to know the value of the consonants for phlegmatic children who find it difficult to recall mental pictures, whereas the children who are tormented by their ever-surfacing mental pictures will greatly benefit from eurythmy exercises that concentrate mainly on vowel sounds. It can indeed be observed that vowel exercises have a calming effect on the rising mental pictures, while consonant exercises engender them. Acting on this knowledge can help both groups.

The same distinction applies to music lessons. Children poor in imagination and memory should be encouraged to play musical instruments; children with a vivid imagination should be occupied with singing. It would be ideal—if we had the necessary rooms—to teach both groups simultaneously, one in singing, the other in instrumental music. If we could practice a twofold method—listening to and making music—this would have a tremendously harmonizing effect on the children. It would be most valuable if we could make it possible to alternate between singing and listening: to let half the class sing and the other half listen, and then vice versa. This practice should really be cultivated, because listening to music has a hygienic, a healing effect on what the head is to do in the human organism; singing has a healing effect on what the body is to do in the head. If we carried out everything that we could in this way, we would have far healthier people about.

We are not really aware of the fact that we have regressed in human evolution. In the past, children were allowed to grow up without being educated; their freedom was not invaded. Now we violate this freedom when we begin to educate them in the sixth or seventh year. We must make up for this crime, this destruction of freedom, by educating them correctly. We must be quite clear that it is the manner of education, the “how,” that we have to improve if we wish to avoid a terrible future situation. It does not matter how much today people insist on stressing the cultural progress, the dwindling number of illiterates—they themselves are no more than imprints, the automata made by the schools. We must avoid this end, must not produce mere imprints in our schools. We must allow our children to develop in their individuality.

This issue becomes especially important when we make use of artificial methods such as learning by rote or by heart. In repeating something in this way the children transmit the content of what they have learned from the soul and spirit to the physical organism. What is learned by heart must first be understood. But during the process of learning by heart the children gradually slither into an ever more mechanical, physical way of learning. This is the way along which the content of learning is taken—from the initial subjective element to the objective element.

We must be honest in such matters. When the content is taken to the objective level, we must make the children listen to themselves, must make them aware that they are hearing themselves speak. We must bring the children to the point that, to the same extent as they recite the lines, they listen to themselves. We can succeed in this if, for example, the children differentiate the sounds they produce. We tell them: “What you are speaking is all about you, and you can hear it.” We must try to get the children to the point that they can hear themselves speak.

But this is not enough. Something else is even more important. We shall never succeed in letting the children find the transition from having the content of the words in their thoughts and feelings to learning it by heart if we do not appeal most strongly to their feelings before the memorizing begins. The children must never be asked to learn anything by heart before they have a deep feeling for all the details contained in the words—especially a feeling that allows them to relate to the content in the right way.

Let us consider an extreme case. Let us think of a prayer. The children should, when asked to learn a prayer, be urged to be in a mood of devotion. It is up to us to see to this. We must almost feel a horror if we teach the children a prayer without first establishing this mood of reverence or devotion. And they should never say a prayer without this mood. We should thus not make the children recite a lovely poem without first arousing in them a faint smile, a pleasure or joy; we should not order them to have these feelings but rather allow the content of the poem to awaken them. This principle applies to other subjects as well.

Much harm has been done to humankind during the course of evolution. Certainly, things have improved a little in this respect. But my generation remembers the way children were made to memorize, for example, historical dates and other facts. I myself remember history lessons during which teacher and children read a paragraph in a textbook and the children were afterward supposed to remember it; they simply learned it by heart. I heard an intelligent boy speak of the “Car of Jerusalem” instead of the “Czar of Russia”! He did not notice the gaffe during his mechanical recital of a passage in the book. This is not an isolated case. This method of learning things by heart in such subjects as geography and history has greatly contributed to our present cultural decadence.

It is essential to prepare the children correctly for such things that are to be learned by heart: prayers and poems. Their feelings must be engendered, the feelings they must have when they listen to themselves. Especially during the saying of a prayer, the children must have the feeling: “I grow above myself. I am saying something that makes me grow above myself.” This mood must apply to everything that is beautiful and graceful.

The mood also affects the physical organism, has a hygienic significance, because every time we teach something of a tragic or exalted nature we affect the metabolism. Every time we teach something of a graceful, dainty nature we affect the head, the nerve-sense organism. We can thus proceed in a hygienic way. Children who are flippant, light-headed, who are always bent on sensations, we shall try to cure by producing in them the mood they must have for something of a sublime, tragic nature. This will already be beneficial. We must pay attention to such matters in our lessons.

You will be able to do this if you yourselves have the right attitude to your teaching. Every now and then, in an almost meditative way, you ought to answer the question: How does my teaching of history or geography affect the children? It is necessary for us as teachers to know what we are doing. We have spoken about the way history and geography ought to be taught, but it is not enough to know it; it must be recalled in brief meditations. Does the teacher of eurythmy, for example, know that he releases the spirit from the children’s limbs? Does the teacher, during a reading lesson, know that she incorporates the spirit in the children?

If the teacher becomes aware of these things, she will almost see that when she is reading in the wrong way, when she bores the children, they will tend toward metabolic illness; she will feel that by making a child read a boring piece of literature, she actually produces a diabetic in later life. She will then develop the right sense of responsibility. By occupying the children continuously with boring material, you produce diabetics. If you don’t calm the released spirit after a physical exercise or a singing lesson, you produce people who lose themselves in life.

It is extraordinarily important that teachers thus occasionally reflect on what they are doing. But the reflection need not be oppressive. The teacher who is primarily concerned with reading will through it develop the feeling that she is actually continuously incorporating something, that she is working at the physical organism, and that she makes the children, through the way they are reading, into physically strong or weak adults. The teacher of handwork or crafts will be able to say to himself that he affects especially the spiritual in the children. If we let the children do things in handwork or crafts that are meaningful, we shall do more for the spirit than if we let them do things that are generally believed to be spiritual.

Much can be done in this direction, because much of what the children are doing nowadays in handwork is quite wrong. We can work in a more positive way that will have especially good results. I immediately noticed the children in Dornach making pillows, little cushions, which they then embroidered. If the embroidery is merely arbitrary, it isn’t really a cushion. The embroidery must be such that it invites the ear to lie on the cushion. The children seemed to especially enjoy making tea cosies. But they must be made properly. If I am to open the cosy at the bottom, the movement of my hands must be continued in the embroidery; the embroidery must indicate the opening of the cosy. But the children have been so ruined by the conditions of our time that they embroider the bottom of their cosies like this:

This is the wrong way round. The drawing must show where the opening is. When embroidering the top of a blouse or shirt, the children must learn that the embroidered band at the throat must widen toward the bottom and narrow toward the top. An embroidery on a belt must immediately show that it opens to both sides simultaneously; it must be widest at the center. Everywhere the children should learn to find the correct form.

Very much can be achieved by these things if we do not so much bother about the eye, but produce them in the feeling. You must get the children to feel what their design indicates: it widens at the bottom, it presses down from above. This must be translated into feeling; we must get, what the hands are supposed to do, into the hands. The human being is here essentially fully occupied in his whole being, thinks with his whole body. We really must try to see to it that such things are felt. The handwork lessons must be directed to feeling. The child should, when embroidering a corner, have the feeling: this corner must be embroidered in such a way that, when I put my finger into it, it can’t get through. If it happens to be something else, the embroidery must indicate this. This is the way we ought to teach. The handwork teacher can then say: I teach in a way that I especially engender the children’s spiritual activity. No teacher needs to feel that he or she occupies an inferior position in the school.

[See GA 259 for Rudolf Steiner's introductory words given immediately before this lecture concerning the burning of the first Goetheanum. —rsarchive.org]

In my last lecture, I said that one root of the scientific world conception lay in the fact that John Locke and other thinkers of like mind distinguished between the primary and secondary qualities of things in the surrounding world. Locke called primary everything that pertains to shape, to geometrical and numerical characteristics, to motion and to size. From these he distinguished what he called the secondary qualities, such as color, sound, and warmth. He assigned the primary qualities to the things themselves, assuming that spatial corporeal things actually existed and possessed properties such as form, motion and geometrical qualities; and he further assumed that all secondary qualities such as color, sound, etc. are only effects on the human being. Only the primary qualities are supposed to be in the external things. Something out there has size, form and motion, but is dark, silent and cold. This produces some sort of effect that expresses itself in man's experiences of sound, color and warmth.⁵²

I have also pointed out how, in this scientific age, space became an abstraction in relation to the dimensions. Man was no longer aware that the three dimensions—up-down, right-left, front-back—were concretely experienced within himself. In the scientific age, he no longer took this reality of the three dimensions into consideration. AS far as he was concerned, they arose in total abstraction. He no longer sought the intersecting point of the three dimensions where it is in fact experienced; namely, within man's own being. Instead, he looked for it somewhere in external space, wherever it might be. Thenceforth, this space framework of the three dimensions had an independent existence, but only an abstract thought-out one. This empty thought was no longer experienced as belonging to the external world as well as to man; whereas an earlier age experienced the three spatial dimensions in such a way that man knew he was experiencing them not only in himself but together with the nature of physical corporeality.

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The dimensions of space had, as it were, already been abstracted and ejected from man. They had acquired a quite abstract, inanimate character. Man had forgotten that he experiences the dimensions of space in his own being together with the external world; and the same applied to everything concerned with geometry, number, weight, etc. He no longer knew that in order to experience them in their full living reality, he had to look into his own inner being. A man like John Locke transferred the primary qualities—which are of like kind with the three dimensions of space, the latter being a sort of form or shape—into the external world only because the connection of these qualities with man's inner being was no longer known.

The others, the secondary qualities, which were actually experienced qualitatively (as color, tone, warmth, smell or taste,) now were viewed as merely the effects of the things upon man, as inward experiences. But I have pointed out that inside the physical man as well as inside the etheric man these secondary qualities can no longer be found, so that they became free-floating in a certain respect. They were no longer sought in the outer world; they were relocated into man's inner being. It was felt that so long as man did not listen to the world, did not look at it, did not direct his sense of warmth to it, the world was silent. It had primary qualities, vibrations that were formed in a certain way, but no sound; it had processes of some kind in the ether, but no color; it had some sort of processes in ponderable matter (matter that has weight)—but it had no quality of warmth. As to these experienced qualities, the scientific age was really saying that it did not know what to do with them. It did not want to look for them in the world, admitting that it was powerless to do so. They were sought for within man, but only because nobody had any better ideas. To a certain extent science investigates man's inner nature, but it does not (and perhaps cannot) go very far with this, hence it really does not take into consideration that these secondary qualities cannot be found in this inner nature. Therefore it has no pigeonhole for them. Why is this so?

Let us recall that if we really want to focus correctly on something that is related to form, space, geometry or arithmetic, we have to turn our attention to the inward life-filled activity whereby we build up the spatial element within our own organism, as we do with above-below, back-front, left-right. Therefore, we must say that if we want to discover the nature of geometry and space, if we want to get to the essence of Locke's primary qualities of corporeal things, we must look within ourselves. Otherwise, we only attain to abstractions.

In the case of the secondary qualities such as sound, color, warmth, smell and taste, man has to remember that his ego and astral body normally dwell within his physical and etheric bodies but during sleep they can also be outside the physical and etheric bodies. Just as man experiences the primary qualities, such as the three dimensions, not outside but within himself during full wakefulness, so, when he succeeds (whether through instinct or through spiritual-scientific training) in really inwardly experiencing what is to be found outside the physical and etheric bodies from the moment of falling asleep to waking up, he knows that he is really experiencing the true essence of sound, color, smell, taste, and warmth in the external world outside his own body. When, during the waking condition, man is only within himself, he cannot experience anything but picture-images of the true realities of tone, color, warmth, smell and taste. But these images correspond to soul-spirit realities, not physical-etheric ones. In spite of the fact that what we experience as sound seems to be connected with certain forms of air vibrations, just as color is connected with certain processes in the colorless external world, it still has to be recognized that both are pictures, not of anything corporeal, but of the soul-spirit element contained in the external world.

We must be able to tell ourselves: When we experience a sound, a color, a degree of warmth, we experience an image of them. But we experience them as reality, when we are outside our physical body. We can portray the facts in a drawing as follows: Man experiences the primary qualities within himself when fully awake, and projects them as images into the outer world. If he only knows them in the outer world, he has the primary qualities only in images (arrow in sketch). These images are the mathematical geometrical, and arithmetical qualities of things.

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It is different in the case of the secondary qualities. (The horizontal lines stand for the physical and etheric body of man, the red shaded area for the soul-spirit aspect, the ego and astral body.) Man experiences them outside his physical and etheric body,⁵³ and projects only the images into himself. Because the scientific age no longer saw through this, mathematical forms and numbers became something that man looked for abstractly in the outer world. The secondary qualities became something that man looked for only in himself. But because they are only images in himself, man lost them altogether as realities.

As few isolated thinkers, who still retained traditions of earlier views concerning the outer world, struggled to form conceptions that were truer to reality than those that, in the course of the scientific age, gradually emerged as the official views. Aside from Paracelsus,⁵⁴ there was, for example, van Helmont,⁵⁵ who was well aware that man's spiritual element is active when color, tone, and so forth are experienced. During the waking state, however, the spiritual is active only with the aid of the physical body. Hence it produces only an image of what is really contained in sound or color. This leads to a false description of external reality; namely, that purely mathematical-mechanistic form of motion for what is supposed to be experienced as secondary qualities in man's inner being, whereas, in accordance with their reality, their true nature, they can only be experienced outside the body. We should not be told that if we wish to comprehend the true nature of sound, for example, we ought to conduct physical experiments as to what happens in the air that carries us to the sound that we hear. Instead, we should be told that if we want to acquaint ourselves with the true nature of sound, we have to form an idea of how we really experience sound outside our physical and etheric bodies. But these are thoughts that never occurred to the men of the scientific age. They had no inclination to consider the totality of human nature, the true being of man. Therefore they did not find either mathematics or the primary qualities in this unknown human nature; and they did not find the secondary qualities in the external world, because they did not know that man belongs to it also.

I do not say that one has to be clairvoyant in order to gain the right insight into these matters, although a clairvoyant approach would certainly produce more penetrating perceptions in this area. But I do say that a healthy and open mind would lead one to place the primary qualities, everything mathematical-mechanical, into man's inner being, and to place the secondary qualities into the outer world. The thinkers no longer understand human nature. They did not know how man's corporeality is filled with spirit, or how this spirit, when it is awake in a person, must forget itself and devote itself to the body if it is to comprehend mathematics. Nor was it known that this same spirituality must take complete hold of itself and live independently of the body, outside the body, in order to come to the secondary qualities. Concerning all these matters, I say that clairvoyant perception can give greater insight, but it is not indispensable. A healthy and open mind can feel that mathematics belongs inside, while sound, color, etc. are something external.

In my notes on Goethe's scientific works⁵⁶ in the 1880's, I set forth what healthy feeling can do in this direction. I never mentioned clairvoyant knowledge, but I did show to what extent man can acknowledge the reality of color, tone, etc. without any clairvoyant perception. This has not yet been understood. The scientific age is still too deeply entangled in Locke's manner of thinking. I set it forth again, in philosophic terms, in 1911 at the Philosophic Congress in Bologna.⁵⁷ And again it was not understood. I tried to show how man's soul—spirit organization does indeed indwell and permeate the physical and etheric body during the waking state, but still remains inwardly independent. If one senses this inward independence of the soul and spirit, then on also has a feeling for what the soul and spirit have experienced during sleep about the reality of green and yellow, G and C-sharp, warm and cold, sour or sweet. But the scientific age was unwilling to go into a true knowledge of man.

This description of the primary and secondary qualities shows quite clearly how man got away from the correct feeling about himself and his connection to the world. The same thing comes out in other connections. Failing to grasp how the mathematical with its three-dimensional character dwells in man, the thinkers likewise could not understand man's spirituality. They would have had to see how man is in a position to comprehend right-left by means of the symmetrical movements of his arms and hands and other symmetrical movements. Through sensing the course taken, for example, by his food, he can experience front-back. He experiences up-down as he coordinates himself in this direction in his earliest years. If we discern this, we see how man inwardly unfolds the activity that produces the three dimensions of space. Let me point out also that the animal does not have the vertical direction in the same way as man does, since its main axis is horizontal, which is what man can experience as front-back. The abstract space framework could no longer produce anything other than mathematical, mechanistic, abstract relationships in inorganic nature. It could not develop an inward awareness of space in the animal or in man.

Thus no correct opinion could be reached in this scientific age concerning the question: How does man relate to the animal, the animal to man? What distinguishes them from one another? It was still dimly felt that there was a difference between the two, hence one looked for the distinguishing features. But nothing could be found in either man or animal that was decisive and consistent. Here is a famous example: It was asserted that man's upper jawbone, in which the upper teeth are located, was in one piece, whereas in the animal, the front teeth were located in a separate one, the inter-maxillary bone, with the actual upper jawbone on either side of them. Man, it was thought, did not possess this inter-maxillary bone. Since one could no longer find the relationship of man to animal by inner soul-spirit means, one looked for it in such external features and said that the animal had an inter-maxillary bone and man did not.

Goethe could not put into words what I have said today concerning primary and secondary qualities. But he had a healthy feeling about all these matters. He knew instinctively that the difference between man and animals must lie in the human form as a whole, not in any single feature. This is why Goethe opposed the idea that the inter-maxillary bone is missing in man. As a young man, he wrote an important article suggesting that there is an inter-maxillary bone in man as well as in the animal. He was able to prove this by showing that in the embryo the inter-maxillary bone is still clearly evident in man although in early childhood this bone fuses with the upper jaw, whereas it remains separate in the animal. Goethe did all this out of a certain instinct, and this instinct led him to say that one must not seek the difference between man and animal in details of this kind; instead, it must be sought for in the whole relation of man's form, soul, and spirit to the world.

By opposing the naturalists who held that man lacks the inter-maxillary bone Goethe brought man close to the animal. But he did this in order to bring out the true difference as regards man's essential nature. Goethe's approach out of instinctive knowledge put him in opposition to the views of orthodox science, and this opposition has remained to this day. This is why Goethe really found no successors in the scientific world. On the contrary, as a consequence of all that had developed since the Fifteenth Century in the scientific field, in the Nineteenth Century the tendency grew stronger to approximate man to the animal. The search for a difference in external details diminished with the increasing effort to equate man as nearly as possible with the animal. This tendency is reflected in what arose later on as the Darwinian idea of evolution. This found followers, while Goethe's conception did not. Some have treated Goethe as a kind of Darwinist, because all they see in him is that, through his work on the inter-maxillary bone,⁵⁸ he brought man nearer to the animal. But they fail to realize that he did this because he wanted to point out (he himself did not say so in so many words, but it is implicit in his work) that the difference between man and animal cannot be found in these external details.

Since one no longer knew anything about man, one searched for man's traits in the animal. The conclusion was that the animal traits are simply a little more developed in man. As time went by, there was no longer any inkling that even in regard to space man had a completely different position. Basically, all views of evolution that originated during the scientific age were formulated without any true knowledge of man. One did not know what to make of man, so he was simply represented as the culmination of the animal series. It was a though one said: Here are the animals; they build up to a final degree of perfection, a perfect animal; and this perfect animal is man.

My dear friends, I want to draw your attention to how matters have proceeded with a certain inner consistency in the various branches of scientific thinking since its first beginnings in the Fifteenth Century; how we picture our relation to the world on the basis of physics, of physiology, by saying: Out there is a silent and colorless world. It affects us. We fashion the colors and sounds in ourselves as experiences of the effects of the outer world.

At the same time we believe that the three dimensions of space exist outside of us in the external world. We do this, because we have lost the ability to comprehend man as a whole. We do this because our theories of animal and man do not penetrate the true nature of man. Therefore, in spite of its great achievements we can say that science owes its greatness to the fact that it has completely missed the essential nature of man. We were not really aware of the extent to which science was missing this. A few especially enthusiastic materialistic thinkers in the Nineteenth Century asserted that man cannot rightly lay claim to anything like soul and spirit because what appears as soul and spirit is only the effect of something taking place outside us in time and space. Such enthusiasts describe how light works on us; how something etheric (according to their theory) works into us through vibrations along our nerves; how the external air also continues on in breathing, etc. Summing it all up, they said that man is dependent on every rise and fall of temperature, on any malformation of his nervous system, etc. Their conclusion was that man is a creature pitifully dependent on every draft or change of pressure.

Anyone who reads such descriptions with an open mind will notice that, instead of dealing with the true nature of man, they are describing something that turns man into a nervous wreck. The right reply to such descriptions is that a man so dependent on every little draft of air is not a normal person but a neurasthenic. But they spoke of this neurasthenic as if he were typical. They left out his real nature, recognizing only what might make him into a neurasthenic. Through the peculiar character of this kind of thinking about nature, all understanding was gradually lost. This is what Goethe revolted against, though he was unable to express his insights in clearly formulated sentences.

Matters such as these must be seen as part of the great change in scientific thinking since the Fifteenth Century. Then they will throw light on what is essential in this development. I would like to put it like this: Goethe in his youth took a keen interest in what science had produced in its various domains. He studied it, he let it stimulate him, but he never agreed with everything that confronted him, because in all of it he sensed that man was left out of consideration. He had an intense feeling for man as a whole. This is why he revolted in a variety of areas against the scientific views that he saw around him. It is important to see this scientific development since the Fifteenth Century against the background of Goethe's world conception. Proceeding from a strictly historical standpoint, one can clearly perceive how the real being of man is missing in the scientific approach, missing in the physical sciences as well as in the biological.

This is a description of the scientific view, not a criticism. Let us assume that somebody says: “Here I have water. I cannot use it in this state. I separate the oxygen from hydrogen, because I need the hydrogen.” He then proceeds to do so. If I then say what he has done, this is not criticism of his conduct. I have no business to tell him he is doing something wrong and should leave the water alone. Nor is it criticism, when I saw that since the Fifteenth Century science has taken the world of living beings and separated from it the true nature of man, discarding it and retaining what this age required. It then led this dehumanized science to the triumphs that have been achieved.

It is not a criticism if something like this is said; it is only a description. The scientist of modern times needed a dehumanized nature, just as chemist needs deoxygenized hydrogen and therefore has to split water into its two components. The point is to understand that we must not constantly fall into the error of looking to science for an understanding of man.

• 52In the night from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day 1922/23 the Goetheanum burned down. It was built in ten years, with the help of various artists from many countries. This primarily wooden building, in which each surface and corner was formed artistically (see Steiner, Ways to a New Style in Architecture [London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. and New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1927]) had been designed in all details by Rudolf Steiner who also managed the construction work through all these years. From the first of January on, the activities had to be transferred into the so-called “Schreinerei,” a building that was used during the construction of the Goetheanum. For the work itself, Rudolf Steiner did not allow any interruption; the afternoon after the fire, the “Three Kings Play” was performed, as was written on the invitations of the ongoing course (see Christmas Plays from Obervfer, trans. A.C. Harwood [London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973]). Rudolf Steiner introduced it with a short address, in which he spoke the following words: “great suffering knows how to keep silent about what it is feeling ... The building that was created in ten years through the love and compassion of innumerable friends of the movement was destroyed in one night. But just today the silent suffering experiences what our friends have put in this work. Since we feel that everything we do in our movement is necessary in our present civilization, we will want to continue whatever we can in the given frame, and therefore even in this hour as the flames outside still burn and rise, although such suffering is present, still perform this play which we promised our participants in connection with our course, and which these participants expect. I also will hold the lecture I offered, here in the ‘Schreinerei’ this evening at 8:00 P.M.” (printed in Ansprachen zu den Weihnachtsspielen aus Altem Volkstum [Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974], GA Bibl. Nr. 274). The beginning of the course's lecture was then devoted to the fire, which is printed in The Younger Generation (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1984).
• 53. One can find the basic reality explained in the chapter “Sleep and Death” in An Outline Of Occult Science and in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 54. Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim: Einsiedein, Kanton Schwytz 1493–1541 Salzburg, Md. Ferrara, Professor in Basel. Accomplished physician, scientist, and philosopher. Wrote about chemistry, medical science, biology, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and theology. The myths about Paracelsus as goldmaker, magician, or charlatan were made up after his death and distorted the picture of his character. Most complete work published by Karl Sudhoff (fourteen volumes). See Riddles of Philosophy.
• 55. Helmont, Johann Baptist van: Brussels 1577–1644. Physician and iatrochemist. He managed the differentiation and separation of gases (hydrogen, carbon). He coined the name “gas” for the airy state.
• 56. See Steiner, Goethe the Scientist. Especially see Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15.
• 57. Lecture of April 8, 1911, at the 9th International Philosophical Congress, “The Psychological Foundations of Anthroposophy,” in Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Development, Spring Valley, NY: 1982), pp. 25–55.
• 58. See Steiner, Goethe the Scientist.

After the points of business, Rudolf Steiner took the floor:

On the whole, it can be said that many of the outcomes of our goals actually constitute a single phenomenon within a larger framework of facts. Please allow me to make a few comments on this, and especially on the experience we have gathered since founding the Waldorf School.

As you know, we founded the Waldorf School as one part of the effects that were intended to proceed from a spiritual movement that is over two decades old. The Waldorf School would be inconceivable without this spiritual movement. In its particulars, the plan to found the school came from our dear friend Emil Molt at a time when there was a certain interest in great humanitarian questions because it was a time of such great need. Counting on this interest, we began to work in many different directions to try to influence aspects of public life from anthroposophical points of view. We may well say that since that time we have been able to acquire very extensive experience along certain lines.

To begin with, we encountered a certain interest that promised to encompass broader circles. In 1919 humanity had a great interest in working in one or the other direction to enable forces of ascent to replace the forces of decline that were so evident. And today we still see a universal interest in educational issues, not only in Central Europe but all over the world. It is a remarkable fact that this year’s Shakespeare festival in Stratford actually took place under the auspices of educational issues. You know that I myself had to give lectures at this festival, and that the event stood fully under the sign of educational issues. In fact, a committee on new ideals in education organized this event. This summer we will have another opportunity to have a conference, this time at Oxford, where nine out of twelve lectures will deal with educational issues in a narrower sense.¹ This shows that at any rate an interest in educational issues is still present today.

This interest is to be found everywhere. In the widest possible circles today, we definitely find that educational issues are thought to be the most important issues of all. We find numerous people who believe, and rightly so, that any talk of social issues does not rest on firm ground if it does not take educational issues as its starting point. We have come to realize that the chaos that humanity has fallen into and will continue to fall into has essentially been brought about by our failure to place the right value on the spiritual issues of humankind’s evolution.

However, this interest is “thought interest,” if I may put it like that. The way in which this interest manifests clearly shows that we are dealing with some kind of thought interest. People organize conferences on education just as they organize other conferences today. They get together and talk about educational issues, and it cannot be denied that extraordinarily clever things are talked about at these gatherings. People nowadays talk with extraordinary cleverness. A large portion of humanity today is smart, and it is also the case that the majority of these very smart people like to hear themselves talk. This creates the best circumstances imaginable for holding conferences to discuss how to find ways out of these chaotic conditions.

If it depended only on conferences of this sort, we would be well on the way. Ladies and gentlemen, this is something we should consider very carefully. I have often stated that I am convinced that if twelve people or some other number of people would get together to undertake to establish an agenda for educating children in the best way, something extremely clever would come out of it. I say this in complete seriousness. When it comes to establishing an agenda for assembling the best pedagogical principles for dealing with children, the literature available today is excellent. What people are saying today in these conferences is literature. However, it all depends on accomplishing the work that is to be done on the basis of real life. People who establish agendas are never dealing with real life. In real life you deal with a certain number of students and a certain number of teachers; you deal with people. These people will do what needs doing; they will do whatever they can do.

However, in order to actually accomplish what is theoretically possible, we depend on having our hands free to do our work on a humanitarian basis. This brings us to the fact that nowadays the presence of a “thought interest” in great existential issues is much less important than the presence of the will to actually bring about the conditions that make a system of education such as this one possible. The remarkable thing about this is that while there is the broadest possible interest in the thought or the feeling that such and such ought to be, this is not accompanied by any real will interest. That no real will interest accompanies it is the reason why I call what it is our conferences deal with, “literature.” Literature is what it actually is; it is not something that will be transformed into action.

One of the most important facts about the background of the Waldorf School is that we were in a position to make the anthroposophical movement a relatively large movement. The anthroposophical movement has become a large one. This is evident from the fact that difficult anthroposophical books go through many editions.”² Interest springs up everywhere. This is a “thought interest,” or even goes beyond thought interest to the extent that the people who come together in the anthroposophical movement also have a feeling interest in it, an interest of the heart. In all of our modern movements people are coming together with a mere “thought interest” that is transformed into a talking interest in those who are somewhat active. The anthroposophical movement gathers together those people who have an intense human need, a soul need, to make headway with regard to the essence of the human being. This is what things look like when we consider an interest in knowledge, a feeling interest, more theoretically. There are very many people today who realize that there is something here that can satisfy their spiritual interests. That is how it stands today, and I hope that its growth is guaranteed in spite of the scandalous opposition to it.

But what we are lacking are people who are not merely interested in the anthroposophical movement becoming as large as possible and bringing forth as much spiritual content as possible, but who are also interested in making this anthroposophical movement happen, in being co-workers in its coming about. There are extraordinarily few of them. We have many people who listen, many who want something for themselves, but we have extraordinarily few people who are co-workers in the fullest sense of the word.

You know, when our conference in Vienna was being organized, which was not a conference in the same sense as other conferences—the point of our conferences is for people to get together to receive something they can take home, while in other conferences everyone wants to get rid of what they bring from home—in any case, when this conference was being organized, there had to be workers there to get ready for it and bring it about, and there had to be speakers there. There are always a small number of friends who nearly have to run their legs off, work their fingers to the bone writing letters, and empty out their wallets. There are only a small number of them, the Waldorf teachers and a small number of others, and they are thoroughly overworked almost every month of the year because of their involvement. Actually, they are always terribly overworked.

But at the end of a conference such as this, even if it is as successful as the one in Vienna, we experience once again that although all the conditions are in place for our Waldorf system of education to expand, or something of that sort, the way these conditions come about means that the small number of active people get in over their heads. Again and again we have to be on the lookout for new coworkers. Perhaps not all of you will agree with me, but I would like to state my experience quite openly. As things stand today, I believe there would be a possibility of gaining plenty of members. I got the impression in Vienna that it would be possible to attract enough people who would become coworkers in the best sense of the word.

But—and here our general concern coincides with our concern for the Waldorf School—at this point we bump up against the fact that it is not possible to expand our circle of coworkers for the simple reason that we have no money. People everywhere have the means of supporting their coworkers, but this is only possible for us to a very inadequate extent. The main question is always how to offer people the means to exist when we disconnect them from their previous means. That is the fact of the matter. Today, if we want to move forward, we need a large number of coworkers. Those we have are simply not enough. Thus, what needs to be taken care of can be done only by exhausting the strength of the forces we have, and what can be done in this way is at most a tenth of what could be accomplished under conditions at present if we could count on a full complement of coworkers. After the Vienna conference in particular, we could watch the experience I have just described welling up.

Naturally this is not a question of an ordinary appeal to the wallets of those who are already members. That is not the issue. The issue, to put it very strongly for once, is that in recent times whenever we have appealed to the will, the matter in question failed.

In the end, the Waldorf School movement is connected to the threefold movement. The Waldorf School movement is conceivable only within a free spiritual life. The “thought interest” we met with at first has not led to a will interest. When the attempt was made to accomplish the deed of founding the World School Association as our only means of expanding beyond Central Europe, this attempt failed.³ It was to have encompassed the entire civilized world. The attempt to rouse whatever belief people had that the educational system must change, which was what was being attempted in the World School Association, was a miserable fiasco. There is such a terrible feeling of being rebuffed when you appeal to the will. I do not say that I am appealing for money in this case. We are lacking in money, but we are lacking in will to a much greater extent. The interest that exists does not go very deep, otherwise it would extend to the right areas.

We were able to found the Waldorf School. Herr Stockmeyer⁴ read the ruling,⁵ the gist of which was that as of Easter of 1925 we will lose our first grade, and eventually the four lowest classes. We would hardly have been able to open the school at all anywhere else. In founding the Waldorf School, we took advantage of the right moment in which it was possible to do such a thing.

Whenever the educational system is at the mercy of universal schematization, we can point to strongly working forces of decline. We encounter them everywhere. We can point them out wherever what is laid down in the regulations for primary schools is taken to the last stage. In Lunatsharsky’s school system in Soviet Russia, it has been carried through to its conclusion. People there are thinking the way we will think here when this is carried through to its conclusion and the full consequences have been felt. The current misery in Eastern Europe is what comes of it when this way of thinking about non-independent schools finds its way into practice.

I am trying to speak today in a way that awakens enthusiasm, so that people feel the spiritual blood trickling in their souls and a large number of people who realize this will commit themselves, so that public opinion is aroused. Actually, I must say that at any point in the last twenty years when I tried to speak a language that appealed to people’s hearts not only in a theoretical sense, but to the heart as an organ of will, what I felt, first in the Anthroposophical Society and later in other groups, always made me wonder, “Dont people have ears?” It seemed that people could not hear things that were supposed to move from words to action. The experience of the fiasco of the World School Association was enough to drive one to despair.

How do we think when we hear something such as this ruling that was read aloud? We think that perhaps ways and means will be found to push through the lower classes for a few years, after all. Even in more intimate circles, not much more comes of it than thinking, “Well, maybe the possibility will be there for a few more years.” The point, however, is for all of us to stand behind it now. Education must evolve independently, as has been emphasized ever since 1919. There is no other way for this to become a reality than through general acceptance of what is offered by the members of our various associations, who are in full agreement that something like this should exist, and through them being joined by more and more people who will become active members. The will has to develop first!

I would like to tell you how my calculation goes: If numbers speak, we can say that we have no money. Having said that, we then collect money and fill the gap by the skin of our teeth.

However, we will also not get very far by this means. We will get further only by the means I intended in speaking of the World School Association. We must have an active faith that what is being done will really become a factor in public opinion. In order to maintain the Waldorf School and establish additional schools, we need a growing public conviction that continuing in the sense of the old school system will lead only to forces of decline within humanity. This conviction is what we need. We will move forward only when instead of merely establishing schools here and there for the sake of practicing some kind of educational quackery, we can make the breakthrough to deciding to take our educational principles to the public in a way that will make them a matter of inner conviction for parents and non-parents alike.

Please excuse me, but in a certain respect I really cannot avoid saying that I know many people will recognize the truth in what I have just said, but you only really acknowledge the truth of something by doing something about it! By doing something about it! This is why, above all, we must make sure that we do not found schools simply to an extent that lies within our existing means, which come from our branches and from wallets that are already empty. We must try to work for ideas and ideals so that an ever growing number of people is imbued with them.

In this respect our actual experience is just the opposite. The current issue of the newspaper for threefolding has just announced that in future it will be a magazine for anthroposophy. Why? Because the promising beginnings in understanding threefolding have petered out. Because, fundamentally, we must go back to the style we had prior to the threefolding movement. In spite of the fact that a lot has been said about threefolding, this is another case of being driven to despair when you talk with people. We need something to come of this; we need it to enter public opinion. That is what we need above all else if we want to make progress with the Waldorf School.

I must admit that I have been saying this for a long time. But just about anything else strikes a chord more readily than what I have said today. I would like to say that if I see what lives in people’s will as mere faith—well, no one believes that mere faith, the mere faith that humanity can only be helped by having an independent system of education, will accomplish anything. But it would lead people who are still able to do so to support us financially, so that we would not continually be left empty-handed in comparison to other movements.

The anthroposophical movement is the basis of the Waldorf School movement. Even if it is set back by scandalous things such as are happening now,⁶ it has within it the necessary prerequisites for life. A lot of associations are founded that have adequate monetary means but no inherent prerequisites for life. Associations are constantly being founded, and people have money for them, and yet they fail. If all the money that people spend today on unnecessary associations could be directed into our channels, then the reports would look different. Herr Leinhas⁷ would have to report that our reserve fund is so large that we will have to try to invest it fruitfully.

I do not believe at all that the main thing for us today is our lack of money. What we are lacking is the will to assert ourselves in real life, to insist that the portion of spiritual life that we acknowledge as true be given its due in the world. What use would it be if I had claimed that our effectiveness in the past year was satisfactory in some way? But here, in a members’ meeting, it is necessary to speak from this point of view. I am fully convinced that our Waldorf School can get as good as it can, but if we do not find the possibility of imbuing public opinion with our educational impulses, then all of our fancy arithmetic will not help us at all.

The will to convince everyone must be present in an everincreasing number of people. In addition, the conviction must become widespread that for the salvation of humanity, it is necessary for something such as is present in embryonic form in the Waldorf School to keep on growing.

That is what I wanted to have said to that percentage of hearts in which the impulse of will is present. We can get very far if we only think about what it depends on: It depends on us using our will to really get public opinion to where it ought to be. That is what I needed to say.

From the discussion

I must add that a great number of parents have expressed the request that something be done by the Waldorf School to manage the relationship of the faculty to the parent body—what can the parents themselves do for the children? I would like to say that we will very soon be giving careful thought to how we can work in this direction. At parents’ evenings, I myself will try to offer something along the lines indicated by these many signatures.⁷

We will try to do everything possible along these lines in the very near future.

Expanding our circle of coworkers can be achieved only if the circumstances of which I spoke become a reality. Something must first be done to shape public opinion so that more extensive work can be undertaken. Then it will be possible to do many things. But as long as what is growing on our grounds remains the secret of the members, we will not be able to move on.

A question is asked, among others, regarding the official ruling mentioned in the speech.

Dr. Steiner: It would not help us to file a complaint with the authorities. As many people as possible must be won over to the idea that such a school should exist. The authorities are doing the right thing if that is the law. It is a question of opinjons gaining a foothold, becoming an effective force. There is something much deeper at stake. We must decide to interpret things ambitiously, to realize that what we think to be right must become the opinion of the public. The point is to get this idea into as many heads as possible. That must be accomplished so that as many people as possible change their view.

Dr. Steiner (in response to a suggestion). That does not come into question at all. Influencing public opinion is the only possible means of bringing the other methods up for discussion. To win over public opinion is the only practical way for us to go. We have not done so because there are far too few of us who believe in such a thing. I imagined that the World School Association would be promulgated in a certain way. If the monthly contribution could be one franc per member, we would be able to achieve what would have to be achieved by such an association. It would only be a question of individuals working in such a way that enthusiasm is present in their will.

Without doing that, we will get no further; we will simply manage to use up our last reserves. Even if we still find a lot of well-meaning members, it would be impractical to carry out. Even if something like that were to become a reality, we would only use up our last reserves. Our experience has shown most recently that it is necessary to attract the circles that are interested in what we are doing but are being kept away by the fact that the majority of the current membership feels the urge to keep the membership small.

May I still say that although we have established a certain level of contribution for membership, it is very good not to exclude anyone who is simply not in a position to pay the whole amount. Alongside the paragraph in the bylaws, let us remember among ourselves that people can also pay less.

• 1. This international congress on “Spiritual Values in Education and Social Life” at which Rudolf Steiner was invited to speak took place under the patronage of the English Minister of Education and others active in public life in England. From August 16-25, 1922, Steiner spoke on “The Basic Forces of Soul and Spirit in the Art of Education” [Die geistig-seelischen Grundkréfte der Erziehungskunst], 12 lectures, Oxford, 1922, GA 305, 1978], see The Spiritual Ground of Education, Garber Publications, Blauvelt, NY, nd.
• 2. For example, if paperback editions are included, in 1980 7heosophywas in its 30th German edition (164,000), Occult Science in its 29th edition (108,000), How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds in its 21st edition (150,000), The Philosophy of Freedomy/Spiritual Activity in its 14th edition (156,000) and Riddles of Philosophy in its eighth edition (31,000).
• 3. See note p. 119.
• 4. A teacher at the Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart.
• 5. See note p. 95.
• 6. The opposition to Rudolf Steiner and the Goetheanum.
• 7. Chief accountant of the Independent Waldorf School Association.
• 7. The thrust of this request can be gathered from Rudolf Steiner’s presentation on “Issues of School and Home” at the parents’ evening on June 22, 1923. See pp. 190-202 of this volume.

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.

When at the present time a Madonna, when a goddess addresses us from the stage one can hardly believe one’s ears. Not the faintest attempt is made to set the language apart from the ephemera of common life, and not the slightest effort to attain with the aid of speech to a higher sphere. The spirit is barred every way from admittance to the stage, and not an opening, not even the least pretentious of openings into its alien, inaccessible worlds can be found. Absolutely no one undertakes to allow any light to infiltrate from that hinterland of speech whence celestial forms may shine through. The reality of spirit is a concept cast by the wayside. A washerwoman at her sink is quite up to any one of these Madonnas perched on a pedestal in some miracle-play – and quite devoid of anything divine and spiritual in her language. The speaking is so uncultivated, so rough, so painfully prosaic. It is positively offensive. I do not mean this as a snub to washerwomen and the way they speak, which in their case is quite justifiable. Hard work makes the voice hard and rugged, and her struggling with material tasks must have a coarsening effect unless there happens to be religion or anthroposophy to restore the balance. But a Madonna is hardly likely to be subjected to such physical labours in the heavenly heights: A certain aura should always hedge her about – even on the pedestal. There should be a certain translucence, a luminosity, a spirituality that sounds in her voice. The speaker should be able to produce the effect of a voice sounding from afar, free and floating. The figure thus presented is an image of something that reaches for the heavens and brings us down her gifts, catching us in the effulgence of her beams and the music of the spheres.

And what about the heavenly hosts: Have you ever heard them speak, either on stage or behind the scenes? What about Goethe’s archangels, for instance, or the Lord in the same scene? They sound like a real lot of stay-at-homes, or a chorus of sales executives: dry, dun, getting-down-to-business, quite down-to-earth. As for the spiritual background, the circling tread of the dance, the course of the aeons – all absent.

The sun makes music as of old

Amid the rival spheres of heaven

Of the poetry there is hardly a trace.

Yet this is what we ought to pursue, to capture, today.

We have to feel our way towards it, step by step, listening, responding, continually wrestling, never relenting, until we burst out of our intellectual constraints, the barriers directed by material life across our path; until we transcend our restrictions and emerge into the open on the other side, liberated, saved. Anyone who is “happy discovering earthworms” will never succeed in getting beyond himself, will not make the discovery that he is also a being of air who can master the physical man, and make use of him without being chained to him. For him there will be no encounter with the word’s healing power, its life-giving power, or the power of illumination which enables him to grasp the core of his being and carries him over into the realm from whence he came. Borne on the wings of the word, he can endeavour to seek out his way along these paths. He has a presentiment of them whenever he gives himself over to the primordial powers of the word. The “I” – the vital breath – the divine centre: along such a path may the word lead one back to the beginning.

And let us explore the realms of that less expansive spirituality that opens up for us in poetry. Let us take the elemental world. Does modern art, like a child of the gods, hand us the key to unlock these kingdoms? Not at all! Cleverness, and a dash of temperament, are enough to be going on – absolutely rattling along, with no feeling at all for a wise disposition of aesthetic resources, such as comes from knowledge of our human organization. No knowledge of the laws that are manifestations of divine-creative forces in art, of which for us both man and the world are representations. Should not our ultimate aim be to trace the routes that the gods have taken in creating works of art after their own image, and into which they have breathed the breath of life? Let us embark with our tentative consciousness on those paths, beginning quietly and reverentially by experiencing the breath of life that furnishes the ground of our existence – here, in speech, as there, in creation. It is when we immerse ourselves in the word, when we fathom its being, that we enter upon those paths. What more marvellous prospect could there be?

Only we must begin by learning to spell. We must concern ourselves with the fundamentals, the speech-sounds themselves, and not with projecting our own one-sided personality.

I once saw in Germany a large-scale production of Shakespeare’s Tempest. But of the elemental world and its spiritual nature, there was nothing to be perceived. There was certainly a lot of noise, temperamental outbursts and screaming. The Caliban scenes were exorbitantly overdone, and protracted in the realist manner far beyond anything Shakespeare apportioned them. And Ariel? There was nothing in him of aerial lightness and strength: a heavy, booming voice, hard as bone; the figure thick-set. There was much bouncing up and down and shrieking. But the bouncing did nothing to dispel the heaviness of that little, earth-bound, dumpy figure with its anti-halo of tousled, dishevelled hair. An Ariel! Is not the word itself pure lightness and radiance – a soaring, sounding, hovering delight in the air? Shortly afterwards, I saw the same actress as Salome in Hebbel’s Herodes and Mariamne. It struck me then that she was talented. Her constitution lent support to her in that role: the dark, heavy voice, the hard, watchful, furtive glance; rooted to the earth and stocky in stature, she was the most interesting figure in Hebbel’s darkly-coloured piece, brooding on disaster as Salome-Herodias. Mariamne, on the other hand, seemed too cool and self-conscious, too keenly intelligent and concerned with women’s rights. A Maccabee? – no, a north-German down to the ground.

When will the actors find the escape route from this one-sidedness of the intellect, and reach the sources that will open up for them the culture-epochs, the races, the elements and the spirit-world? Desiccation is the only alternative to finding this way. In extremity, nerves fray. The breathless, consumptive approach soon loses its fascination – and is anyway not productive. If once the practice spreads, it becomes frankly objectionable. It is increasingly being rumoured that the theatre will be ousted by the film.

I once saw an Iphigeneia performance that acquired for me the status of an event. It was something of a turning-point, for things just could not continue like this. They had already been taken to breaking-point. And perhaps it was exactly here, where lay the driving powers behind such excesses as these, that the counter-forces could be evoked. I refrain from saying much about Iphigeneia herself. She was terribly tedious and common-place, expressing the boring and blasé inanities of a salon-lady – the kind who has nothing to do but parade up and down in her park and be pestered by her (solitary) insufferable admirer. Nor will I dwell upon the prize-fighter’s figure of King Thoas, the admirer in this case – though, with a neck like a bull and swinging his bare, muscular arms, he seemed to be saying: Just take my measurements, you won’t find anyone who can size up to me! I do not recall that anything else was conveyed in what he did say; certainly nothing faintly regal.

But then Orestes – Orestes: He was obviously sustained by one idea alone: that of being different from any Orestes that ever was. He was out to excel in triviality. Now if one is supposed to be a tramp, one must have the proper attributes: a skin as red as copper, an unkempt, tangled head of hair (of an indeterminate mousy colour), and a voice that is hoarse and flat, with a tinny ring. Orestes is supposed to be possessed. And so the intellect is set in motion to work out what a possessed person should look like: his thoughts will be incoherent, his nerves sensitive, making him nervous and wary of being touched; he finds everything repellent. Inwardly, such a concocted product of the head’s “realism” possesses about as much truth as a billiard ball that is made to speak. And outwardly it looks like a sort of uncared-for vagabond one might encounter on the highways of Russia ... but wait, that might actually be an inspiration: Tauris – the Crimea – Russia – a possessed vagabond it yields analogies: Modern interpretations are scarcely drawn from farther afield than this. As for Orestes, the accursed descendent of Tantalus, the Greek hero, on the other hand – such ideas are long out of date, far too hackneyed. And the same goes for iambics, for the metres and noble harmony of speech: we got beyond such things years ago.

It is said that Maximilian Harden’s journalistic career began in the following way. The editor of the Monday edition of the Berliner Tagblatt instructed a number of his young employees to “do nothing for the whole week except sit in coffee-houses, read all the papers you can lay hands on, and for next Monday write me an article that is different from everything else you have read on the subject.” Maximilian Harden is said to have done the best job.

If the motive-power behind the player of Orestes was something on the same lines, this might explain his grotesque whim and bad taste – otherwise quite inexplicable. His novelty consisted, in effect, only in pushing the tendencies of intellectualism and naturalism to an extreme, obsessively debasing this culminating achievement of the German spirit by his nervous brand of realism. The noblest, flawless, perfect product of German poetry, the Roman version of Goethe’s Iphigeneia, was quite ruthlessly and brutally trampled upon, and anyone who felt in sympathy with the play felt himself trampled upon too. We came away from the performance with a burden of responsibility: to rescue the most exalted values of the spirit.

It was about this time, as well, that our Shaper of Destinies was taken from us, he who had done so much for art, too, and pointed out the path of recuperation. He spanned the “shimmering arch” which bridges over the spirit-abandoned abyss of modern times to the other side. He was the builder, he did the moulding, he kindled and scattered the sparks, bequeathing us in his work myriads of precious stones. It is with a profound sense of responsibility that we now put together these precious stones from his spiritual wealth.

They will ennoble human beings, and fill them with bliss for thousands of years to come; and they will serve today as a magic key to open closed doors, to revive what is dead and heal what is sick, to atone for what is evil. We must only have good will. All these far-flung gems can become a magic key – even though, as in the case of these transcripts, they lie before our eyes in fragments. The notes of these three splendid lectures are very inadequate, and for all of seven years they lay hidden from the public at large because these deficiencies seemed too obvious. But so much of their richness remains that, on the foundation they lay, a rebirth of the theatre can come about.

Every word that was uttered must indeed be given its full value, and taken in all its interconnections. A foundation must be furnished for an understanding based on the will to an all-round knowledge of man and the world in their cosmic dimensions. Rudolf Steiner refers to what is adumbrated here as being “guiding principles”. With them he has opened new worlds for us.

These lectures can be our signposts to those more subtle reaches of art to which access has presently been lost, barred by materialism. The intimacies of the soul-life, the mysteries of man’s organization in conjunction with the mysteries of the cosmos form the basis of our considerations. They are intended only as points of departure for further advances, which will be achieved through steady work and inner experience. Limitations of time meant that they could be carried out only cursorily; but they may serve as prompters and awakeners to rouse the artist’s powers to independent life. They were given as part of a whole complex of lectures, which were aimed in a single direction: away from the nihilistic forces at work in our age, towards new light and recuperation. This was the deed which Rudolf Steiner performed. And if, to some hostile powers, his life’s work seems to have been checked or even annulled through the crippling of his public activities, the burning of the Goetheanum, his physical death – they are mistaken. The seeds, sheltering the future within them, are there. They are sprouting everywhere, even though external forms may be disrupted.

The task of preparation and re-edification for the future demanded unflagging effort, superhuman strength; and their affirmation could only be achieved through sacrifice. In a lifetime of indefatigable labour, one of the high points of Rudolf Steiner’s work was the opening of the Goetheanum as a Spiritual Scientific University (Hochschule). It was a time of subversive acts, of social dissension and economic collapse. Even though the art work was not entirely finished, the building could be committed to its proper function, the work for which it was intended. For three years the building served this purpose: the spiritual renewal of mankind. Then, on Sylvester Night, it was destroyed by fire. The solemnity of the festival gave way to the act of destruction; the vast framework of the completed year passed over into history. And thus, when it was rent away from earthly effectiveness, the building was impressed like a seal into the cosmos and the course of the ages.

The lectures formed part of the course for this university, and were not to be omitted from their context in the whole opening ceremony, of which they formed an integral part. For Rudolf Steiner the word stood at the foundation of everything that took place. The word was his point of departure, the central and directing force behind every development that unfolded and every seal that was opened. It was not Rudolf Steiner’s way to shroud great words in the secrecy of the occult: he paved the way for them through genuine understanding and inner apprehension. What he laid open to us became a matter of perception, something consciously grasped, an activity consciously undertaken. We were able, under his guidance, to scale the first rungs of the ladder. Then he gave us our freedom. In us his word was to become a courageous venture and accomplishment.

Art was never lacking in any of the projects inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner. We were to approach art with understanding, and practise it with reverence, being mindful of its origin. In the celebration of the cosmic rite, art played a vital role. It sprang from the threefold Logos; it officiated and performed the sacrifice at the altars of truth, beauty and power. In the course of the age of rationalism, it has for the longest time preserved its links with the divine. In the age of triviality, this heaven-born child was sunk in physical nature: the triumph of mechanics tore her away from her spiritual origins and fettered her to the machine. She must be redeemed again!

The House of Speech (as Rudolf Steiner called the Goetheanum) was intended to lead art, science and religion, which had grown apart from their original unity into threefold isolation, back together. Rudolf Steiner saw in a spiritual deepening of art, science and religion and in their mutual fructification an effective remedy for the social ills of mankind. Barbarity might be avoided and, in place of the twilight of European culture that has already been confirmed by science, there might rise out of affliction, misery and delusion the light of a new dawn.

He expressed the object of his strivings in profoundly penetrating words, which allow us to realize the significance he attributed to a spiritualized form of art in the rebuilding of a higher culture for humanity.

The house which served this end, freely and openly bidding welcome to every guest, is no longer standing. But in its place there rises a building made, like a stronghold, in the hard material of our time – concrete. Life from its departed creator was still breathed into it, ennobling it and giving it its special significance. It is there that the Mystery Plays are to be performed. These dramatic creations of Rudolf Steiner, which put man in connection again with the spiritual cosmos and make him once more a “citizen of the universe”, explaining his present personality in terms of his earlier lives an earth – these productions will enable mankind to attain to self-knowledge, self-realization and self-renewal. And there above all, eurythmy must be cultivated: Rudolf Steiner added this new art, where speech-movement takes an externally visible form, to the series of already existing arts; and this leads to the compelling, the imperative demand for a renewal of the art of speech – the word artistically spoken. Concerted interaction between spoken word and eurythmic gesture was what Rudolf Steiner called for and this had to be attained in practice. When the performance corresponded with his demands, he gave us a conscious insight into our actions and shed light on the mysteries of the art of speech and poetry, thereby redeeming us from the insufferable state into which they had degenerated.

We are under no illusion that the world will bring any but a meagre understanding to bear on our endeavours. We shall be understanding, even if some honest student at first casts this book impatiently and despairingly aside. A metamorphosis of consciousness is necessary to pass this way, and art has been held back from any permeation by consciousness. A perceiving, a hearing, a willing consciousness: today these alone can bring us genuine aesthetic experience and wrest the language of poetry away from the abstractive intelligence and mechanization to which it has now fallen prey.

We have grown accustomed to what the modern stage puts before us and thus have little notion of the suffering that can be inflicted when the noblest works of poetic drama are brought before the soul mutilated, maltreated and desecrated, as is only too often the case today.

It is as if the gods have turned away in anger from what we have made of their gifts. They gave us everything, held nothing back. Works of unbelievable stature, purity and perfection of form have come into being. The German language has been moulded into an instrument of subtlest strength and pliancy, to grasp the breadth and profundity of existence, to unfold the inner essences of things. It is still capable of transformation, of pliancy; it still has the ability to grow beyond itself, bearing mankind onward and upward in its progress. But whoever leads it on to its destination resolutely and imperturbably will be stoned – while those who make it banal, who reduce it to the level of the feuilleton will be venerated.

The German language’s potentialities for concrete delineation and for the transcending of conceptual formulations are also to be found in another way: in the plasticity and translucence of its speech-sounds. It is not in the usual sense musical – not superficially. One has to have an ear for it. But it does have so many lights and shades, such capacities for veiling the sound or for brightening, flashing, that with its help we can break through the bounds of the senses. The world beyond sounds through in its modified vowels and its diphthongs, whispers through its clusters of consonants and rings out in the freely-suspended vaulting of its syntax. We do not realise what an artistic experience language can be until we have learnt to listen inwardly, until psychic-spiritual sound has been transposed into tone-formation and soaring movement.

The world of today is sheer intellect rendered actual. It does not go beyond the mechanical and mathematical; it cannot find the way into imagination and the creating of myths. We are unable to produce images any more, because we have grown abstract and hollow. It is much easier to be clever in one’s thinking than it is to form imagery, since the intellectual stems from our personality, while aesthetic creation makes much greater demands an our selflessness. It immerses itself in the object rather than reflecting upon it, lets itself be drawn along rather than seizing hold of it. Through living in intellectualism we lose our real connection with the world. We deprive human beings of their immortal part. The forming of images affects not only the intellect, but the whole man, entering into much deeper strata of the soul-life than does conceptual thinking. In attempting to speak in imagery, we bind the atoms sundered in the course of study, and divided amongst the conventional categories of learning, into a new synthesis. It must all be raised into the sphere of Imagination, where the plasticity of the language is released into movement and its musicality becomes ensouled. In this it draws near to the eternal in the soul which stands behind everything intellectual. Through imaginative, ensouled speech we can lead man to the substantial content of the word, to the super-sensible, to the creative word that flows from the super-sensible. The immortal life of the soul is roused to awakening when we speak artistically, out of the image; immortal life is smothered when we work out of intellectualism.

The day before yesterday we spoke of how at this point in time humanity is confronted by difficult events. We will be able to understand better why this is so if we consider our times retrospectively in terms of the whole of human evolution and thus bring ourselves up to date regarding many things known and unknown. You know that one of the most significant pronouncements made as the Christ event approached was, “Change the disposition of your souls, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” These are words of the deepest meaning, because they indicate that something most significant took place in man's entire soul development at that time. When these words were spoken, more than 3,000 years had passed since the beginning of what we call Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age. What is the significance of this age? It was the era in which it was normal for man to depend solely upon what was accessible to his outer senses and also to the understanding that was bound up with the instrument of the brain. This was all that man could experience, know, and understand in the dark period of Kali Yuga.

This Dark Age was preceded by an age in which man was not dependent only upon his outer senses and intellect, but he still retained a memory, more or less, of the ancient dreamlike condition in which he was able to feel a connection with the spiritual world. It is of these ancient human times that we wish to create a picture. Not only could man see the mineral, plant, and animal realms, as well as himself within the physical, human realm, but he could also, in a condition between waking and sleeping, see a divine world. He saw himself as the lowest member of the lowest realm in the hierarchical order, above which were the angels, archangels, and so forth. He knew this through his own experience, so that it would have been absurd for him to deny the existence of this spiritual world, just as it would be absurd today to deny the existence of the mineral, plant, and animal realms. Not only did he possess a knowledge of what streamed toward him as wisdom from spiritual realms, but he had the capacity to become completely permeated with the forces of this domain. He was then in a state of ecstasy; his sense of I was submerged, but the spiritual world with its forms really flowed into him. He thus not only had a knowledge, an experience of the spiritual world, but he could, if he were ill, for instance, derive healing and refreshment by means of this ecstasy.

Oriental wisdom refers to those ages in which man still had a direct connection with the spiritual world as Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Dvapara Yuga. In the last age, however, a direct glimpse into the spiritual world was no longer possible but only a remembering that took place in the same way that an old man might remember his youth. Then the doors to the spiritual world closed. Man could no longer frequent the spiritual world in his normal state of consciousness, and the time came when only on the basis of a long and rigorous preparation in the mystery schools could he turn again toward the spiritual world.

During Kali Yuga, however, something did occasionally penetrate into the physical world from spiritual realms. As a rule, it did not come from the good powers but was ordinarily of demoniacal nature. All the strange illnesses described in the Gospels in which people are described as possessed are attributable to demoniacal forces. In them we must recognize the influence of spiritual beings. This lesser Kali Yuga began in about the year 3000 BC and is characterized by the fact that the doors to the spiritual world have gradually been completely closed to man's normal consciousness, so that one must draw all knowledge from the world of the senses. If this process had continued unabated, all possible connection with the spiritual world would have been lost to man. Up until the time of Kali Yuga, man remembered some things that had been retained by way of tradition, but now even these connections have gradually faded. Even the teacher, the preserver of tradition, could not speak to him directly about spiritual worlds, because the receptivity no longer existed. The knowledge of humanity gradually extended only to the physical world.

It this development had continued, man would never again have been able to find a connection with the spiritual world, try though he might; this connection would have been lost had not something occurred from another direction, that is, the embodiment on the physical plane of that divine being to Whom we refer as the Christ.

Formerly, man had been able to raise himself up to the spiritual beings, but now they had to come close to him, to descend fully into his realm, through which he could recognize them with the essence of his I. This moment had been foretold by the prophets of ancient times. It was said that man would be able to find his relationship to God with and in his own I. When this time came, however, it had to be brought forcefully to man's attention that the promised moment had actually come. The one who did this most powerfully was John the Baptist. He announced that the times had changed, saying “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Later this was indicated in a similar way by Christ Jesus, but the most significant sign was given in advance through the many baptisms performed by John in the Jordan and through the teaching itself.

Still, by these means alone the change would not have been possible. A number of human beings would have had to have a much greater experience of the spiritual world through which the conviction could begin to live in them that a divine being would reveal himself. This was achieved by submerging them in water. When a person is about to drown, the connection of the etheric body to the physical body is loosened—the etheric body is even partly withdrawn—and he can then experience a sign of the new impulse in world evolution. From this comes the powerful admonition: “Change the disposition of your soul, for the kingdoms of heaven are near. The disposition of soul is come upon you through which you will enter a relationship to the descended Christ. The times have been fulfilled.”

Christ Jesus Himself expressed the fulfillment of the times in the most penetrating teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, as it is called. This was by no means a sermon for the masses. The Gospels read, “When Christ saw the multitudes of people, He withdrew from them and revealed Himself to His disciples.” To them He revealed that man, in ancient times, could become filled with God during ecstasy. While outside his I, he was blissful and had direct experience of the spiritual world from which he could draw spiritual and health-giving forces. Now, however—so said Christ Jesus to His disciples—a man can become filled with God by permeating himself with the God and Christ impulse and uniting himself as an I with this impulse. In the past, he alone could ascend to the spiritual world who was filled with streamings from the spiritual world. Only such a person, rich in the spirit, could be called blessed. Such a person was a clairvoyant in the old sense, and he was a rare personality. Most people had become beggars in the spirit. Now, however, those who sought the kingdom of heaven could find it through their own I's.

What occurs in such a significant epoch of humanity always affects all people. If only a single member of a man's being is touched, the others all respond. All the members of man's being—the physical and etheric bodies, the sentient, rational, and consciousness souls, the I, and even the higher members of the soul—receive new life through the nearness of the kingdom of heaven. These teachings are in complete accord with the great teachings of primeval wisdom.

To enter the spiritual world in earlier times, the etheric body had to be slightly separated from the physical body, which was thus formed in a special way. Christ Jesus therefore said this when alluding to the physical body, “Blessed are the beggars, the poor in spirit, for if they develop their I-ruled outer bodies in the right way, they will find the kingdom of heaven.” Of the etheric body He said, “Formerly, men could be healed of illnesses of the body and soul by ascending into the spiritual world in a state of ecstasy. Now those who suffer and are filled with the spirit of God can be healed and comforted, and they can find the source, the comfort, within themselves.” Of the astral body He said, “In former times those whose astral bodies were beset by wild and tempestuous passions and impulses could be subdued only when equanimity, peace, and purification streamed to them from divine-spiritual beings.” Now, however, human beings should find the strength within their own I's, under the influence of Christ, to purify their astral bodies. The place in which the astral body can be purified is now the earth. Thus the new influence in the astral body had to be presented by saying, “Blessed and filled in their astral bodies with God are those who foster calmness and equanimity within themselves; all comfort and well-being on earth shall be their reward.”

The fourth Beatitude refers to the sentient soul. He who thoroughly purifies himself in his sentient soul and undergoes a higher development will receive in his I a hint of the Christ. He will notice in his heart a thirst for righteousness; he will become pervaded with godliness, and his I will become sufficient unto itself The next member is the rational or feeling soul (Verstandes—oder Gemuetseele). In the sentient soul the I slumbers dully; it awakens only in the rational or feeling soul. If we slumber with our I in the sentient soul, we cannot find in another person what makes him a true human being, the I. Before a person has developed the I within himself, he must allow his sentient soul to grow into higher worlds in order to be able to perceive something there. When he has developed himself in his rational or feeling soul, however, he can perceive the person next to him. Where all those members previously referred to are concerned, we must bear in mind what was given them in earlier realms. It is only the rational or feeling soul that can fill itself with what streams from man to man. In the fifth Beatitude the sentence structure will have to take on a special form. The subject and the predicate must be alike, since it concerns what the I develops within itself. The fifth Beatitude says, “He who develops compassion and mercy shall find compassion in others.” This is a test of the cross (Kreuzprobe), an indication that we are here dealing with an occult document. Christ has promised everything, harmonized everything, in relation to the single members of human nature.

The next sentence of the Beatitudes refers to the consciousness soul. Through it the I comes into being as pure I and becomes capable of receiving God into itself. If man can therefore elevate himself to such a degree, he can perceive within himself that drop of the divine, his I; through his purified consciousness soul he can behold God. This sixth sentence of the Beatitudes must, therefore, refer to beholding God. The outer physical expression for the I and the consciousness soul is the physical blood, and where it brings itself most particularly to expression is in the human heart, as expression of the purified I. Christ said, therefore, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall behold God.” We are thus shown how in the most intimate sense the heart is the expression of the I, the divine in man.

Now let us advance to what is higher than the consciousness soul, to Manas, Buddhi, and Atman. Contemporary man may well cultivate the three members of the soul, but not until the distant future will he be able to develop these higher members, spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These cannot as yet live in themselves in man; for this to occur he must look up to higher beings. His spirit self is not yet in him; it will flow into him only later. Man is not yet sufficiently evolved to receive fully the spirit self into himself. In this respect he stands at the beginning of his development and is like a vessel that is gradually to receive it. This is indicated in the seventh sentence of the Beatitudes. At first, the spirit self can only weave into man and fill him with its warmth. Only through the deed of Christ is it brought down to earth as the power of love and harmony. Therefore, Christ says, “Blessed are those who draw the spirit self, the first spiritual member, down into themselves, for they shall become the children of God.” This points man upward to higher worlds.

Further on, mention is made of what will be brought about in the future, but it will encounter in ever-increasing measure the opposition of the present time and be fiercely rejected. This is indicated in the eighth sentence of the Beatitudes, “Filled with God or blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for they will be fulfilled in themselves with the kingdom of heaven, with life spirit or Buddhi.” In connection with this, we find references also to the special mission of Christ Himself, in the sentence that reads, “Christ's intimate disciples may consider themselves blessed if they must suffer persecution for His sake.” This is a faint allusion to spirit man or Atman, which will be imparted to us in the distant future.

In the Sermon on the Mount, therefore, the great message is proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In the course of these events the mystery of human evolution was fulfilled in Palestine. Man had reached a degree of maturity in all the members of his being so that he was able with his purified physical forces to receive the Christ impulse directly into himself So it came to pass that the God-man, Christ, merged with the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and they permeated the earth for three years with their united forces. This had to happen so that man would not lose completely his connection with the spiritual world during Kali Yuga.

Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, however, continued until the year 1899. This was a particularly important year in human evolution, because it marked the end of the 5,000 year period of Kali Yuga and the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of humanity. In addition to the old faculties present during Kali Yuga, man would now develop new spiritual faculties. We thus approach a period in which new natural faculties and possibilities for looking into the divine-spiritual worlds will awaken. Before the first half of the twentieth century has passed, some people will, with full I-consciousness, experience the penetration of the divine-spiritual world into the physical, sensible world in the same way as Saul did during his transformation into Paul before Damascus. This will then become the normal condition for a number of people.

Christ will not incarnate again in a physical body as He did at that time in Jesus; nothing would be achieved by it now. It was necessary then because of profound laws of cosmic-earthly evolution; otherwise, people would not have been able to recognize Him. Now, however, human beings have evolved further and have become capable of penetrating into etheric vision through their soul forces. Christ will thus become visible to human beings in an etheric and not in a physical body. From the middle of the twentieth century on, and continuing for the next 2,500 years, this will happen more and more often. Enough people will by then have experienced the event at Damascus that it will be taken as a common occurrence on the earth.

We occupy ourselves with spiritual science so that these newly appearing faculties, which are at first barely perceptible, may not be overlooked and lost to humanity and that those blessed with this new power of vision may not be considered dreamers and fools but may instead have the support and understanding of a small group of people who in their common purpose may prevent these delicate soul seeds and soul qualities from being roughly trampled to death for lack of human understanding. Spiritual science shall indeed prepare the possibility for attaining this development. Recently, I explained that these new qualities give us an insight into the land of Shamballa, through which we may learn to know the significance and true nature of Christ, whose second coming indicates a maturing of humanity's cognition.

Generally speaking, the ages of history repeat themselves, but always in a new way. In spiritual science the beginning of Kali Yuga is seen as the closing of the portals of the spiritual world. After the first millennium of Kali Yuga had passed, there was the first compensation for the loss: in the individuality of Abraham, after his initiation by Melchizedek, it became possible for a human being to recognize God in the outer world through true insight and a proper evaluation of the outer world spread out, as it were, like a carpet before his senses. With Abraham, we see the first dawning of a knowledge of what an I-God is, a God related to man's I-nature. Abraham realized that behind the phenomena of the world of the senses was something that made it possible for the human I to conceive itself as a drop of the infinite, unfathomable world-I.

A second state of this revelation of God was experienced in the time of Moses, when God approached man through the elements. In the burning bush, in the thunder and lightning upon Sinai, He revealed Himself to man's senses and spoke to his innermost being. A third millennium followed in which a knowledge of God was penetrating man, the age of Solomon, in which God revealed Himself through the symbols of the Temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem. The divine revelation thus proceeded in stages. God first appeared to Abraham as the I-God, or the Jahve-God, then to Moses in fire in the burning bush, in thunder and lightning, and then to Solomon in the symbols of the Temple.

What is representative of a particular age repeats itself later in reverse order. The turning point is the appearance of Christ Jesus in Palestine. What immediately preceded that time is the first to reappear. Consequently, the first millennium after Christ is again a Solomon epoch; the spirit of Solomon works in the best human beings of that time so that the Mystery of Golgotha may penetrate. In those early centuries after Christ, Solomon's symbols could be interpreted most readily and inwardly by those who could experience the deed on Golgotha most deeply.

In the second millennium after Christ we can recognize a repetition of the age of Moses. What Moses experienced outwardly now appears in the mysticism of men such as Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and so on. The mystics experienced in their inner beings what Moses experienced outwardly in the burning bush, in the thunder and lightning. They spoke of how the I-God revealed Himself to them when they withdrew into themselves. When they perceived within their souls the spark of their I's, then the I-God, the One God Jahve, revealed Himself to them. This was the case with Tauler, who was a great preacher and could make powerful revelations. To him came the layman who was called, “The Friend of God, of the Mountain,” of whom it was thought that he wished to become Tauler's pupil. He soon became Tauler's teacher instead, however, after which Tauler was able to speak of God from his inner being with such force that a number of pupils and listeners were reported to have fallen prostrate, lying as if dead, as he preached. This is reminiscent of the events that occurred when Moses received the Laws on Sinai.

The centuries up to our present time have been filled by this spirit. Now, however, we are entering an era that recalls and revives the age of Abraham, but in the sense that human beings are being led away from the world accessible to our physical senses. The spirit of Abraham will influence our knowledge so that human beings will renounce the old mentality that only laid store in the sensible world. In contrast to Abraham, however, for whom the spirit of God was only to be found in the world of the senses, we shall now grow beyond the world of the senses and into the spiritual world.

Although human beings knew nothing of all this in the past, one can well say that it has not interfered with our evolution. In the era now approaching, however, we will be placed in circumstances that will require human beings to take their destiny consciously into their own hands. They must know how Christ will be perceptible in the future. The legend is true that after the event of Golgotha Christ descended to the dead in the spiritual world to bring them the Word of Salvation. The Christ event works today in the same way. It is therefore the same whether a person lives in the physical world here on earth or has already passed through death: if he has gained an understanding for the Christ event here on earth, he can still experience it in the spiritual world. This will show that man has not lived upon this earth without a reason. If, however, a person fails to acquire an understanding for the Christ even here on earth, the effects of the event of Golgotha will pass him by without a trace during the period between death and a new birth. He will then have to wait until his next return to the earth, until a new birth, in order to be able to prepare himself.

Man must not believe that Christ will reappear in the flesh, as some false teachings claim, for in that case it would be impossible for one to believe in the progressive evolution of human faculties, and we would have to say that events repeat themselves in the same way. This is not the case however; they do repeat themselves, but on ever higher levels.

In the next centuries it will often be proclaimed that Christ will return and again reveal Himself. False messiahs or Christs will appear. Those armed by the above explanations, however, with a true understanding of Christ's actual appearance, will reject such manifestations. The knowledgeable ones who can see the history of the last centuries in this light will be neither astonished nor exalted by the appearance of such messiahs. As examples, this happened just before the Crusades and also in the seventeenth century when a false messiah, Shabattai Tzevi, appeared in Smyrna. Pilgrims flocked to him even from France and Spain.

At that time such a deceptive belief did not do so much damage. Now, however, when one with more advanced faculties should be able to recognize that it is a mistake to believe in Christ's second coming in the flesh and that it is true that He will reappear in the etheric body—now it is necessary to distinguish such things plainly. A confusion will have serious consequences. An alleged Christ who reappears in the flesh is not to be believed but only a Christ Who appears in the etheric body. This appearance will take the form of a natural initiation, just as now the initiate experiences this event in a special way.

We are thus approaching an age in which man will feel himself surrounded not only by a physical, sensible world but also, according to the measure of his knowledge, by a spiritual kingdom. The leader in this new kingdom of the spirit will be the etheric Christ. No matter what religious community or faith to which people belong, once they have experienced these facts in themselves they will acknowledge and accept the Christ event. The Christians who actually have the experience of the etheric Christ are perhaps in a more difficult situation than adherents to other religions, yet they should endeavor to accept this Christ event in just as neutral a way as the others. It will, in fact, be man's task to develop, especially through Christianity, an understanding for the possibility of entering the spiritual world independently of any religious denomination but simply through the power of good will.

Anthroposophy above all should help us in this. It will lead us into that spiritual land, described in ancient Tibetan writings as a remote fairyland, which means the spiritual world, the land of Shamballa. Not in a trance but in full consciousness man should enter this land under the guidance of Christ. Even now the initiate can and must go often to the land of Shamballa in order to draw from there new forces. Later, other human beings, too, will enter the land of Shamballa. They will see its radiant light, as Paul saw above him the light that streamed from Christ. This light will stream toward them, also. The portals of this realm of light will open to them and through them they will enter the holy land of Shamballa.