The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This ends the lectures of Rudolf Steiner on 5th September, 1919.

On the following day he sketched the teaching aims in the different subjects, at the different ages, in the different classes; he indicated the subjects which could be connected in practice.

In concluding this fortnight's work for teachers Rudolf Steiner made the following remarks:

“I should now like to bring these observations to a close by reminding you of what I should like you to take to heart: that is, to keep to four principles:

“Firstly that the teacher in general and in detail, in the general spiritualizing of his profession and in his manner of uttering individual words, of stating individual ideas, of creating every single feeling, reacts on his pupils. Remember that the teacher is a person of initiative, that he must never be slack; but must put his whole being into what he does in school, in his behaviour with the children. That is the first thing: The teacher must be an individual of initiative in general and in detail.

“The second is that as teachers we must take an interest in everything in the world and everything that concerns people and mankind. As teachers we must be interested in all worldly and all human matters. To keep ourselves aloof on any occasion from anything of possible interest to man—if we were to do this as teachers, it would be greatly to be deplored. We ought to be able to take an interest in the biggest and smallest matters that concern the individual child. That is the second thing: The teacher must be interested in every aspect of the world's life and human life.

“And the third thing is: The teacher must be an individual who never strikes a bargain with untruth. The teacher must be profoundly and inwardly true, he must never make a compromise with untruth, otherwise we should see falsehood coming into our teaching by many and devious channels, especially method. Our teaching will only bear the stamp of truth if we are ourselves unfailingly intent on aspiring to truth.

“And then something easier said than done, but which is also a golden rule for the teacher's work: The teacher must not dry up and not become soured; he must have an un-withered, fresh disposition of the soul. He must not get dry, and he must not get sour. To the very contrary is what the teacher must aspire.

“And I know that if you have absorbed properly into your souls the vision of the task which we have elucidated this last fortnight from the most various angles, what lies apparently far beyond your grasp will come very near to you in your teaching by this detour through the world of feeling and will. I have not said anything in this last fortnight which cannot be of direct practical use to your teaching if you allow it to ripen in your souls. But the Waldorf School will be dependent on your real inner response to the things which we have studied here together and to their activity in your soul.

“Remember the many things which I have tried to explain so that the human being should be understood, particularly the growing being, from a psychological point of view, and if you are at a loss how to introduce this or that point into your lessons, or at what juncture, you will always find inspiration from what has come up for discussion here, if you have remembered it sufficiently. Naturally a great many things ought to be repeated much oftener, but I have no desire to turn you into teaching machines, but into free, independent, individual teachers. It is in this sense that I have addressed you this last fortnight. The time, of course, has been so short that I have had to appeal to your generous, sympathetic participation.

“But you must think ever and again over the suggestions which have been made towards understanding man, and in particular the growing child. In all questions of method they will be useful to you.

“You see, when you and I look back on our thoughts during this last fortnight, however different our impulses have been, our thoughts have met. I myself—I can assure you—shall often look back. This Waldorf School weighs very heavily to-day on the hearts of the people concerned in initiating and organizing it. This Waldorf School must succeed. Much will depend on its success. Its success will furnish, as it were, a proof of much that we represent in spiritual development.

“If I may now say a few personal words in conclusion. I should like to say this: For me personally this Waldorf School will be a true child of care. My thoughts and cares will be continually returning to this Waldorf School. But if we realize the full gravity of our position we shall be able to work really well together. Let us be particularly faithful to the thought that fills our hearts and minds: that with the spiritual movement of the present day there are also united the spiritual powers of the living universe. If we trust in these good spiritual powers they will pervade our life and inspire it, and we shall find ourselves able to teach.”

Today I would like to conclude these discussions by pointing out something I want to lay upon your hearts: that I would like you to stick firmly to the following four principles.

First, teachers must make sure that they influence and work on their pupils, in a broader sense, by allowing the spirit to flow through their whole being as teachers, and also in the details of their work: how each word is spoken, and how each concept or feeling is developed. Teachers must be people of initiative. They must be filled with initiative. Teachers must never be careless or lazy; they must, at every moment, stand in full consciousness of what they do in the school and how they act toward the children. This is the first principle. The teacher must be a person of initiative in everything done, great and small.

Second, my dear friends, we as teachers must take an interest in everything happening in the world and in whatever concerns humankind. All that is happening in the outside world and in human life must arouse our interest. It would be deplorable if we as teachers were to shut ourselves off from anything that might interest human beings. We should take an interest in the affairs of the outside world, and we should also be able to enter into anything, great or small, that concerns every single child in our care. That is the second principle. The teacher should be one who is interested in the being of the whole world and of humanity.

Third, the teacher must be one who never compromises in the heart and mind with what is untrue. The teacher must be true in the depths of being. Teachers must never compromise with untruth, because if they did, we would see how untruth would find its way through many channels into our teaching, especially in the way we present the subjects. Our teaching will only bear the stamp of truth when we ardently strive for truth in ourselves.

And now comes something more easily said than done, but it is, nevertheless, also a golden rule for the teacher’s calling. The teacher must never get stale or grow sour. Cherish a mood of soul that is fresh and healthy! No getting stale and sour! This must be the teacher’s endeavor.

And I know, my dear friends, that if during these two weeks you have properly received into your inner life what we were able to shed light on from the most diverse viewpoints, then indirectly, through the realms of feeling and will, what may still seem remote will come closer to your souls as you work with the children in the classroom. During these two weeks I have spoken only of what can enter directly into your practical teaching when you first allow it to work properly within your own souls. But our Waldorf school, my dear friends, will depend on what you do within yourselves, and whether you really allow the things we have considered to become effective in your own souls.

Think of the many things I have tried to clarify in order to come to a psychological view of the human being, especially of the growing human being. Remember these things. And maybe there will be moments when you feel unsure about how or when to bring one thing or another into your teaching, or where to introduce it, but if you remember properly what has been presented during these two weeks, then thoughts will surely arise in you that will tell you what to do. Of course many things should really be said many times, but I do not want to make you into teaching machines, but into free independent teachers. Everything spoken of during the past two weeks was given to you in this same spirit. The time has been so short that, for the rest, I must simply appeal to the understanding and devotion you will bring to your work.

Turn your thoughts again and again to all that has been said that can lead you to understand the human being, and especially the child. It will help you in all the many questions of method that may arise.

When you look back in memory to these discussions, then our thoughts will certainly meet again in all the various impulses that have come to life during this time. For myself, I can assure you that I will also be thinking back to these days, because right now this Waldorf school is indeed weighing heavily on the minds of those taking part in its beginning and organization. This Waldorf school must succeed; much depends on its success. Its success will bring a kind of proof of many things in the spiritual evolution of humankind that we must represent.

In conclusion, if you will allow me to speak personally for a moment, I would like to say: For me this Waldorf school will be a veritable child of concern. Again and again I will have to come back to this Waldorf school with anxious, caring thoughts. But when we keep in mind the deep seriousness of the situation, we can really work well together. Let us especially keep before us the thought, which will truly fill our hearts and minds, that connected with the present day spiritual movement are also the spiritual powers that guide the cosmos. When we believe in these good spiritual powers they will inspire our lives and we will truly be able to teach.

Speeches by Rudolf Steiner at the preliminary meeting of the fourth ordinary general assembly of “Futurum A.G.”

Emil Leinhas greets the members of the Anthroposophical Society who are present and who represent about 80% of the share capital of “The Coming Day”, and asks Dr. Steiner to take the chair.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! Today we will probably have to hold the most sober and uninspiring meeting possible within the Anthroposophical Society, and therefore we may well ask that pure reason alone prevail in today's meeting, otherwise we will hardly be able to cope.

The point is that today we have to talk to each other in a certain way about the fate of the “Coming Day”, which is connected with many ideals that members of the Anthroposophical Society have embraced in recent years. We have in the “Coming Day” an institution that emerged, so to speak, as the last major institution from the once emerging threefold social order movement, and it is only with a certain pain that we can turn our attention to the fact that this “Coming Day” is now in a truly serious crisis that absolutely must be resolved. Above all, it is important to see things as soberly as possible.

The hopes have not been fulfilled that the things connected with the “Coming Day” could proceed as one had wanted, that the Central European economic crisis, so to speak, would pass by the “Coming Day”, but the “Coming Day” is now just as any other business, fully participating in what the declining economic life offers. The “Coming Day” is not doing better today, but also not worse than any other Central European business.

The crisis has come about in the following way: if, [after the currency was converted to gold marks], the “Coming Day” had cash today, the possibility of continuing its economic and intellectual operations with cash, if it could count on being able to take out loans, then it would be able to continue working, just as other businesses are truly not working under better conditions today. However, the “Coming Day” does not have any cash, and so it cannot continue its economic and spiritual activities as they have existed up to now. The material value of the “Coming Day” is - and this must be emphasized again and again - such that if cash were available or could be raised, there would be no objection to simply letting the leadership go. Of course, there may be other reasons why “The Coming Day” is unable to find cash at the moment, but the main reason is that German economic life has taken on forms that make it impossible for the “Coming Day” to continue as other commercial enterprises do, because to do so it would have been necessary for the “Coming Day” to be treated with the same goodwill from outside as other commercial enterprises have been. That did not happen. A large part of the reasons why the “Coming Day” is in this crisis due to the lack of any cash funds - soberly this cannot be put differently than this: a large part of the blame lies in the way the “Coming Day” was vilified in the world. A project that is presented to the world in this way could only continue to function if it had a core of people who would take financial responsibility for it. But if only what has happened so far within the Anthroposophical Society is continued, the only thing that can be counted on, this is not the case either, and so today we can do no other than objectively present the situation of the “Coming Day” as it is. Therefore, I will take the liberty of organizing today's agenda in such a way that I will first ask Mr. Leinhas to present the situation of the “Coming Day” objectively to you, and as the second point on the agenda, I will make the proposals that need to be made in view of the serious situation. So I ask Mr. Leinhas to give an objective presentation of the situation of the “Coming Day” as a prerequisite for our further negotiations.

[Emil Leinhas describes the situation on the basis of the balance sheet. The situation is such that the economic enterprises can no longer support the spiritual ones.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! You have listened to the description of the situation of the “Coming Day”, and I will now take the liberty, with a heavy heart but purely rationally, as I ask you to take it, of discussing the only way we can get over this crisis of the “Coming Day” in my opinion.

The essential thing here is that, in view of the description of the situation that has just been given to us, we now have to divide the “Coming Day” into two parts: one comprising purely economic enterprises and the other comprising spiritual enterprises. If we draw the conclusion from what has just been said, it is actually the case that we, who, as anthroposophists, have to reflect on the situation, have to say that The “Coming Day” is no longer able to provide any cash for the spiritual activities, which essentially include the Waldorf School, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, the Research Institute and the publishing house. Therefore, the question is – since the prerequisite that I believed I had to make, that the purely economic operations had to be organized first, has failed due to the impossibility of somehow managing today with the sale of these operations or the like – how we manage to separate the spiritual operations of “Coming Day” in a certain way. But this can only be done through extremely difficult measures that require heavy sacrifices on the part of our anthroposophical friends. It is not possible in any other way. You must bear in mind that these spiritual enterprises are now in a situation in which they have no possibility of being continued in any way out of the situation of the “Coming Day”. They have, so to speak, been abandoned, not by any decision, but by the facts.

The question arises: how do we get out of this situation? We have to consider the following: the “Coming Day” has issued 109,000 shares. Let us do the math based on the number of shares. If we make an estimate, but probably a fairly accurate one, of the share capital underlying these 109,000 shares, and divide it between the purely economic and the spiritual enterprises, then 74,000 shares are accounted for by the economic and agricultural enterprises and 35,000 by the spiritual enterprises. So, we have possessions for the spiritual enterprises, which correspond to 35,000 shares of “Tomorrow”.

Now, my dear friends, how can these enterprises, these spiritual enterprises, be continued? That is the fundamental question. And however you may look at it, these spiritual enterprises cannot remain as they are in the face of the situation of the “Coming Day”. For what would then have to happen? Then the “Coming Day” would have to proceed in the same way as other enterprises have to proceed today. The holdings would have to be consolidated, and the total mass of shareholders of the “Coming Day” would be faced with exactly the same situation, only with a significantly reduced number of shares. Perhaps this would somewhat increase their creditworthiness, but it is something that cannot be done, given all the prospects that have to be considered.

But if this cannot be done, what can be done? There is nothing else to be done – and I am now saying what I have to say with the greatest reluctance, but it must be said because of the situation, and if I were to present the matter to you in a long-winded way, it would not be any better: the only thing that can be done is to get rid of the 35,000 shares that correspond to the ownership of the spiritual enterprises. But this is only possible if enough people of influence can be found within the Anthroposophical Society who are willing to simply renounce their shareholdings in favor of the most important spiritual enterprises, so that the spiritual enterprises receive the 35,000 shares as a gift. It is just as if spiritual enterprises were to be founded and if a number of self-sacrificing personalities could be found who would contribute the sum corresponding to these 35,000 shares.

So, my dear friends, is it possible that the owners of 35,000 “Kommenden-Tag” shares renounce ownership of their shares? Then the 35,000 shares of Coming Day stock that are being given away could be left to the German Goetheanum fund, which would then have to be at my free disposal. This would give me free rein to run the spiritual enterprises. I see no other possibility for any other solution to the problem we are facing now than for this measure to be taken. You will understand that it is extremely difficult for me, one year after I myself resigned from the supervisory board of “Kommender Tag”, to have to make this enormous demand on the shareholders of “Kommender Tag” today: Give me 35,000 shares so that the spiritual activities can be continued in the way I will explain in a moment.

So if today there are shareholders willing to make this donation, then the matter is such that the “Coming Day” as such will continue to exist as an association of purely economic enterprises. How this continuation is envisaged will be discussed later. This continuation would correspond to a shareholding of 74,000 shares. We can discuss the matter in this area later. At this moment, I consider it my task to explain what can happen to the spiritual enterprises if the 35,000 shares are donated to the German Goetheanum Fund. It would then be clear that this willingness to make a sacrifice would at least express an anthroposophical attitude. The donors would say to themselves: Of course we are making a sacrifice, but we are doing so out of the anthroposophical spirit. There are shareholders in the “Coming Day” who will be able to make such a donation. Since they can, of course, only be placed in a position to make such a gift voluntarily, one can only say: Those who will give will also be able to give. It will be a group of shareholders who can give. On the other hand, there are shareholders of the “Coming Day” who cannot renounce their shareholdings; they are referred to purely economic enterprises. They would be in no different a position than other shareholders. And in order to preserve the full ownership of the 74,000 shares, it would be necessary for the spiritual enterprises to have no influence whatsoever on the economic administration of the “Coming Day”. If this condition were to be fulfilled today, that 35,000 shares of stock be made available to the German Goetheanum fund, and the economic enterprises were to be thought of separately, then the following would emerge:

First of all, the Waldorf School has 300,000 German Marks booked in the “Coming Day”. What the Waldorf School needs cannot really be covered by any kind of equivalent value. As you all know, the Waldorf School is entirely dependent on school fees and voluntary donations for its cash resources. Therefore, if the situation is to be rectified, the Waldorf School cannot be provided with the equipment it needs unless it receives a gift of the full amount. What corresponds to the Waldorf School [in terms of land, buildings and facilities], which is therefore listed in the “Coming Day” with 300,000 marks, must be donated outright.

The following then remains: the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, which is currently linked to the sale of remedies, that is, to the pharmaceutical laboratory. I will discuss the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute later. Regarding the sale of remedies, the balance sheet shows that it can be said that there is every prospect of it no longer requiring any significant sacrifices from today onwards. It is self-financing. However, cash will still be needed in the near future. And because it is a solid economic asset, it will be taken into account as such, and it must also be possible to buy it. Now it occurs to me that the Internationale Laboratorien A.G. in Arlesheim also handles the sale of remedies for all those countries in the world that have not even been ceded to the Stuttgart laboratory in a treaty, that this Internationale Laboratorien A.G. Arlesheim handles the sale of these remedies for the world. It is a joint-stock company. And in view of the balance of the local sales of remedies and in view of the general circumstances relating to our sales of remedies, which are extremely favorable in ideal terms, the International Laboratories A.G. Arlesheim will be persuaded to take over the sale of remedies and carry out the purchase of the laboratory. But again, given the circumstances there in Arlesheim, I cannot imagine that the purchase price could exceed 50,000 francs. These 50,000 francs will of course have to be added to the Goetheanum fund, since if the spiritual enterprises are now independent, if they are given as a gift, but the donation does not receive any cash, so that there could actually be no question of this purchase having the consequence that compensation - which would in any case be quite minimal - could be paid to the donating shareholders.

Regarding the publishing house, I would like to say the following: I can only feel an obligation to the publishing house to save from it the anthroposophical books that I have written myself, the books that are the result of the extraordinary and meritorious research of Dr. and Mrs. Kolisko, the two brochures and another book by Dr. Wachsmuth, a member of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum, which is currently being published. That would make a total of books that could be worth between 25,000 and 30,000 francs. This is something that should be acquired and the income from it should go to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press. The other mass of books is such that, speaking purely financially and from the point of view of the Coming Day, I not only cannot feel any obligation towards it, but must not feel any obligation towards it. In the case of this mass of books in particular, it occurs to me that despite all the objections I raised at the time when this book publishing house was founded, this publishing house has only behaved over time in such a way that it has essentially counted on the consumers of the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House within the Anthroposophical Society; that basically those who at the time created a competing company for the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag with the “Coming Day” publishing house with an alleged enthusiasm that was actually foolishness, could easily be taken to task for this. Therefore, I do not feel morally obliged in any way to take care of the remaining book stock of the “Coming Day” publishing house.

This remaining book stock brings me to another thought. In the future, I will have to work hard to ensure that no anthroposophical funds flow into economic enterprises that have nothing to do with the Anthroposophical Society as such. In this regard, there was a time when we gave in, but today it is imperative that no economic enterprises be fed anthroposophical funds in the future. Therefore, it was also necessary for me to ensure that in the future, the entire sale of remedies worldwide would not be based on capital that comes from anthroposophical pockets, but on capital from people who want to manage their own assets with these things, in other words, only by people who do not give the money for anthroposophical reasons, but only out of consideration for those who consider the sale of remedies profitable, without taking into account that this has anything to do with anthroposophy. In the future, these matters can only be dealt with from this point of view. The sale of remedies can be organized in such a way that, if it is also managed commercially in the future, it can become a profitable business in a purely commercial sense, given the great recognition that even those remedies find in the world that I myself have only, I would say, half-hoped for. But it can only be managed with funds that are given for the risk involved in selling the remedies. So I can also recommend to the Internationale Laboratorien A.G. Arlesheim, which will be based on the above principles in the future, the purchase of the sale of remedies here.

That leaves the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart, my dear friends. Although its finances are quite healthy at present, it cannot be thought of as needing any other kind of leadership than that provided by cash. In accordance with the intentions that emerged from the Christmas Conference in Dornach, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim can no longer be a member of the International Laboratories A.G. in Arlesheim, but only the local laboratory and the sale of remedies. In the future, a spiritual institute cannot be associated with purely economic enterprises. For this reason, the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim has also been separated from the International Laboratories A.G. in Arlesheim and has become an integral part of the Goetheanum. The same cannot be said for the ClinicalTherapeutic Institute in Stuttgart, because the Goetheanum could not guarantee or take on the risk of a penny subsidy. So the situation of the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart is such that it cannot be connected to the International Laboratories A.G. in Arlesheim, nor can it be connected to the Goetheanum for the simple reason that the Goetheanum cannot take on any risk. The only way to set up the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart is to make it a financially independent enterprise that can be taken over by a doctor or non-doctor who, if subsidies are needed, will take them on at their own risk. On the other hand, if subsidies are not needed, anyone with a little business sense can take them on at their own risk. But if subsidies are necessary, then the Goetheanum certainly cannot take them on. So there is no other option for the clinic than to make it an independent enterprise. As for Gmünd, I do not count it among the enterprises for which I am responsible; the “Coming Day” will have to continue to take care of it and find a way to make it profitable.

What remains, my dear friends, is the scientific research institute, which is almost heartbreaking when you have to talk about it in this situation. But as things stand, the fact is, on the one hand, that the “Coming Day” has no cash for this institute, that the Goetheanum in Dornach is in no position to take on any obligation for this scientific research institute, not even a single penny , so that there is no other possibility — not out of any wish or anything like that, but purely out of the economic situation — than, if no enthusiast can be found to take over and finance the scientific research institute, to dissolve it, to dissolve it completely. We may be burying the idea that we had in mind as one of the most sacred, I would say, to establish economic enterprises to serve the spiritual life. But the possibility of continuing this does not exist.

So the following situation would arise for the spiritual enterprises: the Waldorf School will be supported by donations. The Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart will become independent and will be made into a separate enterprise; Gmünd will remain in the care of the “Coming Day”. The scientific research institute will have to be dissolved if no individual or consortium can be found to maintain it. My books and the others mentioned will be removed from the publishing house and it will be ensured that these books fall to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House for further distribution. The rest of the book inventory must be sold on the open market to outside publishers. I would consider it inadmissible if any steps were taken within the Anthroposophical Society itself to sell the rest of this book stock and to found anything further on what lies within the Anthroposophical Society, because that would create competition for the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, and no one can demand that what the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag is doing should also be undermined by further competition.

That, my dear friends, is the stark and sober truth, which is the only thing that is necessary in the current situation. If we succeed in appealing to the willingness to make sacrifices of so many shareholders in the “Coming Day” today, so that 35,000 shares of stock for the spiritual enterprises are freely available and allocated to the Goetheanum fund, then we can undertake the reorganization of these spiritual enterprises in the way I have described. I would advocate for the order itself and then the remaining 74,000 shares would have to be dealt with for the further operation of the purely economic enterprises that are part of the “coming day”.

Do you believe, my dear friends, that what I have just presented to you briefly, soberly and dryly has really caused me the most serious concerns for weeks, has led to the most difficult struggles. But when Mr. Leinhas came to me at the Goetheanum in Dornach a few weeks ago and told me that the last of the economic enterprises with which the “Coming Day” still had to reckon, which, in a spirit of complete sacrifice, had actually raised the lion's share of the subsidies up to that point, it was clear that this enterprise would no longer be able to raise these subsidies either. Then it was clear: this would mean the end of the possibility of continuing the “Coming Day” in its old form. Then, despite its material assets, the “Coming Day” would be without the possibility of creating cash; then a reorganization would have to take place at all costs. Since that time, the whole matter has been a great concern to me. As long as there was hope that the economic enterprises could be sold first, and the spiritual enterprises would remain as a kind of rump of the “Coming Day”, one could think that what remains could be organized in some way. But now that things have progressed so far that we are standing before the General Assembly and have asked you to come together beforehand in confidence, it is not possible for me to put anything other than what I have just said before you as a proposal.

That is the point at which I would like to open the discussion. I therefore ask friends who want to participate to speak up. We can then, after the things that have been presented have been discussed, move on to discussing what possibilities can be considered for the continuation of the purely economic enterprises. I should also mention that one shareholder, who owns the corresponding number of shares, has made available to me the amount that the Waldorf School in “Kommender Tag” is currently worth. It can also be assumed that a number of others will definitely give it. So it will be possible for the shareholders who are willing to transfer their shares in the way described to add their number of shares to a list that is being passed around.

During the discussion, Emil Kühn asks whether it would not be possible for the shareholders who are donating today to participate in some way in the real values of the spiritual institutions.

Rudolf Steiner: As far as the economic enterprises are concerned, I myself would certainly be open to discussing the question that Dr. Kühn has just touched on. But as far as the spiritual enterprises are concerned, I would like to say the following: If the experiences that have been made in the economic management within the Anthroposophical Society in recent years are taken as a basis, then I can only say that I myself would not participate in the reorganization of the spiritual enterprises differently than if, in every respect, such conditions were created that would only make possible an administration in the spiritual sense for these enterprises.

As far as the Waldorf School is concerned, I would not be able to participate in a reorganization if, in any way, an economic administration were to be associated with this reorganization; and that would be the case if, in some way, the current shareholders of the Waldorf School were to participate. The Waldorf School can only obtain its operating funds from school fees and voluntary contributions, as I said before. And even if the property were there to begin with, it would always have to mean something quite imaginary for those who participate in it. The only healthy relationship is when the Waldorf School itself has this property, when it is given to it. On this condition alone, the spiritual enterprises of “Coming Day” can be detached from my proposal. I can say that I would only participate if a sufficient number of people were to give up their shares as a free gift - and this can only be done of their own free will - in order to find a solution. I myself would not participate in this solution if it were tied to the condition that gifts be made on condition that there should still be a participation. For that, financial administration would be necessary again, and I do not want to be associated with that. So I ask only those friends to sign up who are able to make their donations unconditionally, who want to place these spiritual enterprises on purely spiritual ground.

As you have seen, I have only made the proposals with a heavy heart. The proposal that has now been made is the most obvious one and has also been well considered. Otherwise it would be a matter of issuing bonds that would only represent an imaginary ownership. I want to keep away from anything imaginary. If the Waldorf School is not detached from an economic connection with the “Coming Day”, then I also don't know how the question can be solved, that I could remain the spiritual director of the Waldorf School. So I can't say what influence it would have on my own decisions if such a reorganization, as it has been suggested, were to take place. I have not appealed to a decision by you, but to the willingness of individual anthroposophical friends to make sacrifices. We do not have to bring about a decision if 35,000 shares are donated to the German Goetheanum fund as a gift – if Gmünd is dropped, it is only 29,000 shares – if 29,000 shares are donated to the German Goetheanum fund as a gift. I am not appealing to a decision, but only to the willingness to sacrifice in order to finance the spiritual enterprises in a certain way à fond perdu.

[Further discussion of the donation of shares to save the spiritual enterprises, which would also relieve the economic enterprises. These should become independent and, if possible, be taken over again by their former owners.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! The words contained in my proposal have, I am deeply moved to say, fallen on extraordinarily fertile ground. I do not wish to miss this opportunity to emphasize what seems to me to be important and significant, namely that despite the unfortunate circumstances that have arisen within the Anthroposophical Society as a result of various foundations - I have often spoken about this over the past few years - it has become apparent that the trust in the general anthroposophical movement is so great that we can only look on with the deepest satisfaction that this trust is so great that it has hardly been weakened at all in recent years, despite all the unfortunate measures that have been taken and that were intended to accommodate those who had the faith that such measures could do anything for the anthroposophical cause. I have already emphasized in various places how the reliance on purely anthroposophical ground since the Christmas Conference has been shown everywhere in the most energetic way, that trust in the actual anthroposophical cause has not diminished in recent months, but has become much greater. So that within Anthroposophy we can look with the deepest satisfaction at what is alive among us in this direction.

I must say that today, with an extraordinarily sad and worried heart, I set about making the proposal that I once had to make to you, my dear friends, after becoming aware of the situation of “Kommendes Tag”. And I could have well understood if this proposal had been rejected in the broadest sense. I must say that it is deeply touching and heart-warming that this did not happen, but that we can see that right from the outset, in the first hour, friends have agreed to donate 20,700 shares to the Goetheanum Fund. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this very beautiful result, that we can look at this result, that the indicated number of 20,700 shares has been made available, so that in the very near future we will be able to achieve full financial recovery of the spiritual enterprises in this direction, as far as possible, and thus also be able to contribute indirectly to the recovery of the “Coming Day”.

This is an extraordinarily distressing result, and we can only look back on the proceedings of this meeting with the deepest emotion. I thank all those who were able to donate and did so, truly from the bottom of my heart for what you have done, which means an extraordinarily significant deed not only for the “Coming Day”, but especially for our anthroposophical movement. For if this willingness to make sacrifices is now being shown in spite of the failures of recent years within anthroposophical circles in such a way, we will nevertheless be able to achieve what needs to be achieved on our main path in the near future. And what needs to be achieved is what can be done through anthroposophy in spiritual terms for humanity and for modern civilization. Even if our material undertakings have not had the desired success, even if everything that has emerged from the threefold social order movement has basically fallen through today, we still have the opportunity – and this is solely due to the unlimited trust that our anthroposophists have in anthroposophy – to make further progress in the spiritual realm.

This, however, also imposes an obligation on me to continue in the way I have tried to make the Christmas Conference fruitful so far, by making the Anthroposophical Society ever more esoteric and esoteric, in an active way. It is precisely from what our friends have done today that I feel how strong the obligation is to continue in this direction in the most energetic way. If we stick together in this way, each doing what he can do, we will make progress on the appropriate path.

You see, my dear friends, there is still work to be done: the threefolding movement was founded here years ago. Individual enterprises have emerged from it. The part of the threefolding movement that should have been carried out in a purely practical way, for which practical collaboration would have been necessary, did not initially prove itself. On the other hand, far beyond the borders of Europe, especially in America, there is a great deal of interest in these impulses. Let me use this word, which has been so much maligned: These are realities of the threefold social order. It is becoming apparent that these impulses are nevertheless being taken up with a certain understanding more and more. And perhaps it will be good for these impulses in particular if we do not try to translate them into unsuitable practice in a hasty manner, but instead follow what I have often said at the beginning of our explanations of our magazine Anthroposophie: Threefolding can only take effect when it has entered as many minds as possible. We have seen the failure of applying threefolding to the outer practice of people's lives, but it will make its way into the world as something that is, after all, on anthroposophical ground. All indications show that our strength must be applied in the anthroposophical-spiritual field. And in this sense, I would like to tell you that I feel it is my duty and my gratitude to do everything in my power to further and advance the esoteric-spiritual character of our anthroposophical movement. If we succeed, and we must succeed, because the spiritual does not encounter obstacles in the same way as external material things, then the friends who have shown this willingness to make sacrifices will feel even more closely connected to our life in the Anthroposophical Movement in a renewed way.

Since it is already late, we may perhaps close today's meeting with this.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to begin the meeting with a short speech.

Dr. Steiner asks about gymnastics class.

A gymnastics teacher: We tried teaching at the same time in the same room. We could just do it with the third grade, but it was completely impossible with the sixth grade. Because of the size of the gymnasium, we were unable to keep the two classes under control. We do not think there is any advantage in continuing in this way. In addition, we also need the gymnasium for teaching eurythmy some of the time.

A teacher: We do not yet have an instrument for the new small eurythmy room.

Dr. Steiner: That is only temporary.

A eurythmy teacher: The new eurythmy room is too small for some of the classes, which is why we have to use the gymnasium.

Dr. Steiner: The so-called “little eurythmy room” is large enough. It is not a little room, it is a large hall. Anything larger would be too large for eurythmy. It is not very fruitful to teach eurythmy in an enormous room. That would certainly not be fruitful.

The fact is that you need the gymnasium so much that eurythmy cannot be taught there. It was conceived as a gymnasium and thus should be used to hold gymnastics class. Where else could you teach it?

Concerning the first two grades, there is not much we can do for now. In the future, though, gymnastics is actually too much for the first two grades. Instead, they should have some supervised play. We should begin with such supervised games as soon as we have a little breathing room, so that in the third grade a transition can be made from games to actual gymnastics. The children need real movement.

The gymnastics teacher: Without increasing the number of hours, we could include the first and second grades by giving them only one hour of instruction.

Dr. Steiner: The third grade has two hours.

How are things with eurythmy in the various grades?

A eurythmy teacher: The first through fifth grades have one hour each; the sixth through eleventh grades, two.

The gymnastics teacher: Due to the large number of classes in the tenth and eleventh grades, we had to move one of the gymnastics classes into the time allocated for shop.

Dr. Steiner: Gymnastics loses less than shop if one hour is dropped. We could talk about it if the question was how to give a complete education without any manual training. That seems preferable to me since the children have a quiet form of gymnastics in their shop class. We have arranged the schedule so that the gymnastics does not adversely affect the periods following, haven’t we?

A teacher: We could arrange to have a games period.

Dr. Steiner: We have no one to teach it, so we can hardly consider that now. It will not be possible to decrease the teaching load until the end of this school year.

The gymnastics teacher: We are certainly not concerned with an overburdening.

Dr. Steiner: Fifteen hours are enough. If you teach fifteen hours, then you need to give two or three hours per day, and that is a lot for gymnastics.

The gymnastics teacher: We want to find a way.

Dr. Steiner: That is true. Nevertheless, you must take the following into consideration. In a school such as ours, we need to develop gymnastics class in a certain way, but that can happen only over time. Next year we may well be able to focus on developing gymnastics for the twelfth grade. At present, we treat it as only a stepchild. We will need to work together on that.

I think teaching gymnastics will present a number of difficulties for you as our Waldorf School develops. The main thing is that, beginning with a particular grade, the purpose of gymnastics will be conscious exercise for strengthening the human organism, a kind of hygienic whole-body massage of the human organism. I think you need to orient yourself more toward the upper grades.

In the lower grades, I am considering having the women work on the games. The authority of the gymnastics teachers should not suffer by first having them play with the children. They should represent what actually occurs in gymnastics. The children should not feel that their games teacher is now teaching gymnastics to them. I am, of course, not belittling games. A female games teacher in the first and second grades would not go on to gymnastics. The children would get a distorted feeling if we don’t make such a change. What I mean with games is movement.

What is important now is to find a replacement for Mrs. Baumann during her illness. Mrs. Fels should take over half the eurythmy classes and Mrs. Husemann, the other half. Mrs. X. would have the more mature students because she is older and more mature herself.

Marie Steiner: Mrs. X. first had quite a shock.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want Mrs. Y. to give the entire instruction, because I want the older children to have a more mature person.

A teacher: Tittmann will be free only after the first of April.

Dr. Steiner: Then there is nothing we can do other than wait. I am really sorry that this situation must continue. I thought it was very difficult that you had to do the French class immediately after art.

A teacher: There is nothing we can do about that.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult, but there is nothing we can do. Twentyfive hours is too much, but we have to wait.

A teacher: We will lose eight teaching days due to the earlier close of school.

Dr. Steiner: We don’t need to cling to our schedule as though it were a great treasure. The exact amount of material per week is not so important.

A teacher: Should we do a longer book in tenth-grade French?

Dr. Steiner: You could use a different book. They should complete at least one book, even if they do not read a lot. Have you thought of something? I think you could choose something shorter that could be completed in the remaining two and a half months. In a class like that, it might be best to read a biography. There is a nice little book called La Vie de Molière.

Marie Steiner: Enfant célèbre.

Dr. Steiner: I would particularly recommend a biography.

A teacher: We read Livius in Latin. Next we will do Somnium Scipionis. I also included Horace, and we will read two or three odes and learn them from memory.

Dr. Steiner: You will certainly take up Cicero?

A teacher: In tenth-grade English, we completed The Tempest, and now we are doing excerpts from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer that, instead of excerpts, you read the whole book. Making a selection for English is not easy. As soon as you move past Shakespeare, things become difficult.

It may be good to read Macaulay in the tenth grade, but that depends upon how you treat it. This is the age of life where children should learn to characterize in a broad and comfortable way. Biographies, for example Luther’s, are very useful for children at the age of fifteen. They are not very appropriate later, as the children will find them boring. In contrast, I think it would be good to read Carlyle and Emerson in the eleventh and twelfth grades. You might recommend Walter Scott for reading by themselves, but Emerson and Carlyle would be books for the class. Emerson has such short sentences.

A teacher asks about a newly enrolled child.

Dr. Steiner: She could go into the ninth grade. In foreign languages, she would be at the very bottom, but that is not so bad. You should, however, make her acceptance dependent upon her having some place to live, but you will need to do that with some tact. You might even consider trying to find good living quarters for her yourself.

We now have two children of workers at Dornach in the eighth grade, and the tuition has to be paid out of the funds for the building. They will have to find their own living quarters, but they will have to be places where we know that the adults pay some attention to such children. The workers at the building are quite connected to these things.

A teacher: If I were a man and had an apartment I would take some children myself.

Dr. Steiner: Now you tell me you are almost a man.

A class teacher: T.M. and O.Nr. need to be separated in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: With such children, much depends upon what they are accustomed to. It will not make much difference in the first half-year, but afterward for sure. They should be separated. (Speaking to the teacher of the parallel class) T.M. would go to you. He is easier to handle. I think it would be best if you took him.

A religion teacher asks if it would be all right if he were to go on a lecture tour.

Dr. Steiner: If you arrange it with the others, there should be no difficulty.

A teacher: We are striving to awaken a religious mood, but there are some problems with many of the children. X. often ruins the class. He does not like such moods.

Dr. Steiner: He certainly does not like moods, but there is nothing to be done. Even worse could occur. You could use his lack of participation to highlight the seriousness of the material.

A teacher asks about a service for the older children.

Dr. Steiner: I will soon arrange for an offering at the Sunday service.

A religion teacher asks another question.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with this question, we need to return to something we have already discussed. It is important that the youth of our Waldorf School talk less about questions of world perspective. The situation is that we need to create a mood, namely, that the teacher has something to say that the children should neither judge nor discuss. That is necessary, otherwise it will become trivial. An actual discussion lowers the content. Things should remain with simply asking questions. The children even in the tenth and eleventh grades should know that they can ask everything and receive an answer. For questions of religion and worldview, we need to maintain that longer. The religion teacher needs to retain a position of authority even after puberty. That is something I mentioned before in connection with the “discussion meetings.” They need to be avoided. If the children put forth questions of conscience, and you answer them, then there is nothing to say against that.

We also need a second thing. The older students often mentioned that we emphasize that the Waldorf School is not to be an anthroposophical school. That is one of the questions we need to handle very seriously. You need to make the children aware that they are receiving the objective truth, and if this occasionally appears anthroposophical, it is not anthroposophy that is at fault. Things are that way because anthroposophy has something to say about objective truth. It is the material that causes what is said to be anthroposophical. We certainly may not go to the other extreme, where people would say that anthroposophy may not be brought into the school. Anthroposophy will be in the school when it is objectively justified, that is, when it is called for by the material itself.

In things such as Parzival, it is already there, so that you will need to direct attention away from symbols rather than toward them. Wagner’s followers in Bayreuth have gone into much more nonsense about symbols than occurs here. We do not do that here. Parzival has to be taught as a man of the world, not a monk. I think this is something I needed to say today. For the children, of course, much is quite difficult.

It would be best if you discussed symbolism as little as possible. Stay with the facts, the historical background, without becoming trivial. Remain with the facts, not symbols.

A teacher asks about the English teachers who had visited the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Only women came, and they were quite satisfied. I certainly thought we would have to deal with much harsher judgments.

Discipline is much easier in England. When you go into a boys’ school there, you find only well-behaved boys. You might not find that so nice, but if you love discipline, you will find it wonderful. Modern Englishmen, at least in regard to their external behavior, are close to being insolent. Everybody assures you that they get better by the age of fourteen. That is certainly true in Gladstone’s school. I have observed how they go into the dining hall. It’s something that lies in the temperament of the people. The children are quieter there than here.

A teacher: N.G. is here.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to have anything to do with that family, even indirectly. Besides N.G., I feel sorry for the children.

I am very sorry to have disturbed the harmonious mood. So much occurred that I referred to as the “Stuttgart attitude” following that terrible misfortune. I could not let things pass by without naming names, because things were really catastrophic. I have to say that was the way things had to be. Due to the nature of the problem, I repeatedly needed to put these things in the proper light. I also would have thought, considering the situation, that no one would have thought of doing something like this. It is quite strange how things that outside, in normal life, would not occur at all, blossom so well in this anthroposophical foundation, the foundation of the Waldorf School that should be kept pure. It would be hard to imagine a normal faculty meeting where someone asks the school principal to say something nice. If we have no self-discipline, we cannot move forward. It is very painful for me that things are as they are. Aside from the fact that I have been unable to determine the actual content of the problem, everything is simply swimming around. If only something would move in a particular direction, but everything is simply floating about. I do not know what people are thinking. The mood here is so tense. We need to give some thought to all this. Certainly one task of the Waldorf School faculty is to cease all of this inner comfort. The fact that things are done in the way they are is a part of these nonmethods. It is really too bad for today’s meeting, since a disharmony has now come into it.

In the interest of the Anthroposophical Society, I had to see that the methods that have arisen here since 1919 do not go any further. Something must happen in the near future in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. This is an important question, but people will have to think about it. It would be best not to do things in that way, and better if you helped to improve the situation. You can certainly not say that working together does not make sense, and that everyone should work individually. If that principle had been in effect in 1901, there would be no room for us. People worked together until the end of the war. This kind of separation from one another arose only since 1919 when individuals went off to the great tasks that were begun then. That is the reason for what has unfortunately occurred in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that the Society has divided into a number of cliques. Before, there was some balance that inhibited the formation of such cliques. Now, there are big and little cliques everywhere, and everything is falling apart.

We cannot say everyone should live like a hermit. A harmonious cooperation should arise from the admonitions of our opponents that became so clear through the catastrophe at Dornach. Learn from our opponents! Our opponents know things very exactly, and they know, at least from their perspective, how to take them seriously, more seriously than is done by the Anthroposophical Society. There is a continual demand for something new, as has happened in Dornach. The Society as such needs to become a genuine reality, not simply a bureaucratic list of so-and-so-manythousand people who barely want to know anything about one another. The Society must become a reality, and there is much we can achieve through the Waldorf School if the faculty would stand as an example of harmonious cooperation. Everyone needs to really give something of themselves, and that is where individual activity comes in, namely, that everyone takes interest in each other’s work. It is simply narrow-minded to always seek the error in someone else. If we fall prey to that error, we will cease to be an anthroposophical society. There is certainly no other real example of anthroposophical activity if it is not here in the faculty. If you do not want to become enthusiastic about anthroposophy, then I do not know how it will be possible to save anthroposophy itself. That is really necessary. The catastrophe in Dornach is the culmination of our opponents’ activity. The Waldorf School faculty needs to take on the leadership of anthroposophical behavior. That is what is necessary.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to give you information. What I said recently about the incorrect methods relates to how anthroposophical matters are treated, not to the teaching methods here. What I have to say about that, I have already said. As of this morning, I cannot say that anything special has resulted. I was satisfied with the little I saw this morning. I thought things would come to a good conclusion. It was clearly noticeable, for example, that there is a greater level of seriousness in the higher grades. There is a much better tone in the higher grades. I see nothing to talk about there. I spoke about incorrect methods in connection with the extent of faculty participation in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society.

(Speaking to a teacher) It would be good if you were careful to leave out the inner school methodology in your considerations until tomorrow.

We will overcome the problems in the school methodology. The Waldorf School has proven what lies in its basic impulse. Individual problems have arisen, but as a whole, the Waldorf School has proven what lies at its basis. We will overcome the problems. Most certainly, we will move forward with the inner methodology. There is something else that comes into question aside from the general anthroposophical aspect. In connection with methodology, we could try to lift everything from the Earth and move it to the moon where we could perfect it. But, that is something we cannot do with anthroposophical activity. We will overcome the problems at the school because that is an isolated area and can remain so.

Everything was present in the discussions with the leaders of the Movement for Religious Renewal. In the lecture I had to give in Dornach on December 30, I directed everything toward anthroposophists, not toward those working for a renewal of religion. 4 That was clear from ten paces away, but it lead to an argument between the anthroposophists and those of the Religious Renewal. There is now a tense mood and a heavy atmosphere. If we leave these things the way they are, the Anthroposophical Society will be destroyed, and other institutions along with it. It is sad that this all occurred directly following the events in Dornach. We should have guarded against that. We need to do something to relieve it. Those anthroposophists who are not involved with the renewal of religion said nothing, but the anthroposophical perspective should have been maintained, but without rancor. You cannot expect the Movement for Religious Renewal to make things easy for anthroposophists. They are taking the cream and leaving the rest, but the Anthroposophical Society needs to stand firm. That is something of concern to everyone. The school should not shine because the faculty has no concern about the Anthroposophical Society. You need to have a strong interest in it.

DR STEINER:

My dear friends!

The first point on the agenda today is the pleasure of a lecture by Dr Schubert on Christ and the spiritual world: ‘Anthroposophy, a Leader to Christ.’

Dr Schubert gives his lecture. After an interval of fifteen minutes, Dr Steiner speaks:

My dear friends! Let us begin again today with the words of the self-knowledge of man coming from the spirit of our time:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

Today, my dear friends, let us bring together what can speak in man in three ways:

[Rudolf Steiner writes on the blackboard as he speaks. See Facsimile 4, Page XVI top.]

This will properly be brought together in the heart of man only by that which actually made its appearance at the turning of the time and in whose spirit we now work here and intend to work on in the future.

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men.
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

[Rudolf Steiner writes on the blackboard as he speaks]

That good may become
What we from our hearts would found,
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

[As shown on the blackboard]

DR STEINER: My dear friends! Yesterday's speaker, Herr Hans Ludwig Pusch, does not wish to continue. Instead, Dr Lehrs will say a few words on the theme. Please may I now ask him to speak.

Dr Lehrs completes what Herr Pusch had wanted to say the day before on the question of the Youth Movement.

DR STEINER: May I now ask Mrs Merry to speak.

Mrs Merry speaks about the work in England and brings the apologies of Mr Dunlop who has been unable to attend.

DR STEINER: My dear friends! I have spoken often and in different places about the extraordinarily satisfactory summer school in Penmaenmawr. [Note 63] Perhaps I may be permitted to add to what I have said so often. I truly believe that an exceedingly significant step forward will have come about for the Anthroposophical Movement if everything Mrs Merry has just sketched can come into being over the next few years as fruits of the seeds of Penmaenmawr. We may believe that the very best forces are at work promoting the endeavours of the Anthroposophical Movement in this direction, for Mr Dunlop took this summer school at Penmaenmawr in hand in an extremely active manner, an inward, sensitive and indeed esoteric manner. In Penmaenmawr conditions were fulfilled from the start which we have never found to be fulfilled anywhere else, conditions that were necessary for the success of Penmaenmawr.

You see, my dear friends, we expected Mr Dunlop in Stratford, in Oxford, and even once in London, and now here in Dornach. So my picture of Mr Dunlop is that of the man about whom it is always said that he is coming and then he doesn't come. But he did come to Penmaenmawr! And it went so exceptionally well, so well that I only wish he were here today so that we might once more thank him most heartily. I really did believe that Mr Dunlop would be here. In London he said to me that he would do it differently next time; he would not say he was coming but instead he would simply come. So in London he did not say he was coming. And yet he still has not come! So after all I shall have to ask Mrs Merry most warmly to take our thanks back to him, the cordial thanks of this whole gathering for that extremely significant inauguration of a movement within the Anthroposophical Movement which has such good prospects because of the summer school at Penmaenmawr. Out of the spirit of the descriptions I have given of Penmaenmawr I am sure that you will agree to my asking Mrs Merry in your name to take to Mr Dunlop out hearty thanks for the inauguration of the summer school at Penmaenmawr, and also to my requesting him to continue to take such work firmly in hand, for in his hands it will succeed well.

May I now ask Herr van Bemmelen, the representative of the Dutch school, to speak.

Herr van Bemmelen reports on the work of the school in The Hague.

DR STEINER: Now may I ask Dr Unger to speak. He wishes to refer to the problems of the Society.

Dr Unger gives his lecture about the problems of the Society and concludes with the following:

Dear friends. The way in which responsibility devolves for instance on the individual Societies and the larger groups, as a result of the new Statutes, means that it will be necessary to pass this trust and this responsibility on further. Ways and means will have to come about which must not be allowed to remain fixed in the old structure that has come to be adopted. Instead situations must be livingly transformed so that people can be found who are capable through their very nature of carrying the central impulses further. Thus a matter that appears to be merely organizational immediately leads to a further question: How shall we be able to bring this impulse into the public eye? Once again we shall have to let experience play its part. The other day I ventured to make some suggestions about working in public. What Herr van Bemmelen has just said shows us that Holland is no exception to the way in which everywhere people are waiting to hear about Anthroposophy in a suitable form and in the right way. People are asking about the soul of man and about cultivating the soul in its true nature. Beyond this it will fall to us to find people among the general public who want to work further in this realm. Everywhere it must be made possible to open our doors and welcome people to the Society. Necessary for this above all is an understanding of the human being which can arise out of the warmth of love for our fellows combined with serious work in the anthroposophical sense. So the question of the next generation coming to the Society will be a far-reaching one. It has always been difficult to find people who want to continue with the work because for this it is necessary to create a situation within the Society which enables younger people to make a connection in the first place.

Today, especially, if I may say so, in Germany, many of the supports and conditions of the past, and of life as it has been for so long, are in general breaking down. In this situation younger people in particular—perhaps students who are finishing their university courses or maybe people who would like to work out of the artistic impulses of Anthroposophy—are forced instead to creep into some corner of ordinary economic life, collapsing as it is, in order merely to make a living. It ought to be a task of the Society, and especially the individual groups, to find ways of creating a foundation within Anthroposophy on which young people can live out what they have learnt in their studies. And out of this arises the most important question of all: How can that which is coming towards us by way of young, striving, life-filled strength be taken up into the School of Spiritual Science? What form will make it possible, whether here in Dornach or elsewhere, to make studies possible that can lead to the future collaboration of these people? It is a problem which is already coming to the fore here and there but especially in Germany where there is a strong need for new colleagues but where those who ought to be working in the Society are often in such dire straits. We must find these people amongst the general public through our public work.

So the establishment of the School on the generous scale described to us so far can give us the hope that we need so badly. In the School as well as in the Society and in the groups there is a platform for tackling the problems which are arising.

The same applies to the scientific work in the institutions. Herr van Bemmelen has touched on the field of education, but similar questions could be asked with regard to scientific work. The influence of this Conference will lead to a flaring up of the will to work and to find ways. Other friends are sure to have questions about this too. Let us hope, when we return home and are asked about everything, that out of the experience of these discussions we shall be capable of giving genuinely concrete answers. So that we can come to this, problems that have arisen really must be brought forward, just as I have presumed to suggest certain things now. If other friends from the various countries bring forward these problems from different angles, let us hope that the new impulse in the General Society will be able to penetrate to every furthest corner, to all the groups and to all the individuals who are and who want to be members of this Society.

DR STEINER: May I now ask Herr van Leer to speak.

Herr van Leer speaks about the intention of sending in reports to Herr Steffen. He makes suggestions about how to divide up what is sent into different categories.

DR STEINER: I rather think that the purpose of this correspondence will best be served by taking the following into account. Without having discussed this with Herr Steffen I believe I can say more or less what he thinks, though perhaps he will have to correct me afterwards. The best reports will be those that come out of the individuality of the different correspondents. I think that all those friends I mentioned the other day, and also a number of others, are interested in what I meant by the life of the Society and cultural life in general. And I believe that most of these friends think about what comes to their attention with regard to either one or the other at least once a week, or even every day. Things go through one's mind; so one day they sit down and simply write down what has gone through their mind. As a result fifteen, or perhaps twenty, four-page letters will arrive here. It will be quite a task to read them all. Well, if twenty letters arrive, Herr Steffen will be kind enough to keep ten of them and give me the other ten. We shall manage. But we shall manage best of all if you spare us any categories. We need to hear how each individual feels in his heart of hearts, for we want to deal with human beings and not with schedules. Let everything remain a motley mixture; this will bring us the individuality of the writer in question and that is what interests us. We hope in this way to obtain the material we need, human material with which to fill our Supplements so that they in turn give a human impression with their all too human weaknesses.

Just write down on four pages, or sometimes even eight pages, what is in your heart of hearts. For us here the most interesting thing will always be the people themselves. We want to cultivate a human relationship with human beings and out of these human relationships we want to create something that will shine out even after it has gone through the process of being dipped in dreadful printer's ink. This is what I am talking about. It will be best of all if everyone can present himself in a human way to other human beings. Now, Herr Steffen, please correct me.

HERR STEFFEN: Certainly not. You have expressed exactly what is in my soul too. I only want to say that there is no question of this becoming too much work for me; it is part and parcel of my gifts as a writer that I enjoy reading reports of this kind. I always have to strive to see what is going on inside people's souls, so truly no letter can be too long. I don't believe it will be too much for me. I anyway enjoy reading several newspapers every day, but if interesting things come from our friends, then I greatly prefer to read them. As regards categories, an editor or a writer has only one, or rather two: the first is what he can use and the second is what he cannot use. That is all I wanted to say.

DR STEINER: Just imagine, after these discussions, what it would mean if these reports were to inspire Herr Steffen to write a novel or even a play! That would be the most wonderful thing I could think of.

MR COLLISON: I would like to know whether we might ‘sometimes’ receive a reply.

DR STEINER: I hope that the reply will be there every week in the Supplement. But if a special reply were to be necessary, then I would hope that one would be sent.

Now may I ask Herr Stibbe to speak.

Herr Stibbe reports on the opposition experienced in Holland, [Note 64] referring particularly to Professor de Jong.

DR STEINER (referring to Herr Stibbe's report with regard to Professor de Jong): Yes indeed. He has tried to form a methodical concept of mystery wisdom by bringing it down to all kinds of spiritualist phenomena, as he describes in his book.

Now, dear friends. It will still be possible in the next day or two to speak further on the questions that have arisen out of this discussion. So far as I can see, the questions that have arisen are: reporting, and then the opposition. These are the tangible questions that have arisen so far. I cannot see any others taking shape yet.

Tomorrow we shall start our meeting at 10 o'clock and I shall begin by asking those friends to speak who have reports to give about the results of their research. Frau Dr Kolisko and Dr Maier, Stuttgart. Now may I ask Dr Schwebsch to speak. When he has finished I shall ask for a report on eurythmy in America to be read out.

Dr Schwebsch expresses the gratitude of the Waldorf School for the manifold assistance it has received.

DR STEINER: Following on from this, please allow me to touch on a few things. The first is that once the grave financial position of the Waldorf School had become known, interest in it was awakened really everywhere. We have seen particularly in Switzerland how the efforts of the members of the school associations led to the creation of numerous sponsorships. Mrs Mackenzie has endeavoured to form a committee in England to carry out collections in aid of the Waldorf School. The first donation has already been sent to me and I shall ask the leaders of the Waldorf School to accept this small beginning.

Now I have something else to say: So many thanks are owed to the world on behalf of the Waldorf School—Dr Schwebsch has already mentioned a number of things—that it is impossible to encompass everything in a moment. We ought to make a long list of all those to whom we owe thanks in one way or another on behalf of the Waldorf School. The interest in it is indeed great. Yet we shall ever and again have to continue to ask for an even greater interest. The support given so far has in the main been for the school itself. Less thought has hitherto been given to the pupils or those who might become pupils of the Waldorf School. There is one case, or rather two, which really touch us deeply. At a time when those living in Switzerland were in a position to purchase a great deal in Germany with very few Swiss Francs, two workers here at the Goetheanum felt they could put into practice a very praiseworthy idea, namely to send their sons to the Waldorf School. Considerable sacrifices were made by our friend, Pastor Geyer, when he undertook to care for these two schoolboys. We at the Goetheanum take the view that we should finance the actual school fees and whatever is needed for the school in the same way as other firms such as Der Kommende Tag and Waldorf Astoria pay for the children of their workers. But now that life for the children has suddenly become so expensive in Germany, more expensive than it would be here in Switzerland, it is no longer possible for the families of the boys to pay for their keep. Now both families and boys are faced with the sad prospect of their being unable to return to the Waldorf School after the Christmas holidays. So I should like to ask whether it would be possible to make a collection here in order, at least for the near future, to pay for the keep of the two boys in Stuttgart so that they can continue to go to the Waldorf School. What we need is 140 Francs a month for both boys together. We shall try to set up a money box for this. Perhaps Mr Pyle will be prepared to lend us one for donations specifically for this purpose. Maybe this is how we can do it.

Now would Dr Wachsmuth please read the resume of the report on eurythmy in America.

Dr Wachsmuth reads a report from Frau Neuscheller on the progress made by eurythmy in North America.

DR STEINER: Dear friends, first I would like to ask those from further afield who wish to attend tomorrow's performance of the Three Kings Play to get their tickets today so that what remains can be available for Dornach friends tomorrow.

Secondly would you please note that my three last evening lectures will lead in various ways to a discussion of medical matters for the general audience. Then after the lectures there will be discussions about medical matters with the doctors who are here. Would therefore any practising doctors please come to the Glass House tomorrow morning at 8.30 for an initial meeting. [Note 65] I am referring only to practising doctors. After 1 January there will be opportunity for others interested in medical questions to participate in other sessions.

Tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock we shall start with the continuation of today's meeting. I would ask you to let us begin with the two reports already mentioned. Then, both tomorrow and the next day, I shall take the liberty of speaking briefly on the idea of the future building in Dornach and I shall ask you to let me bring up for discussion some points on how this idea of the building in Dornach might be carried into reality. It would not be right to recommend that this meeting should be allowed to pass without any reference at all to the financial side of the idea of the building in Dornach. I shall leave it to you to say something after what I shall be obliged to bring forward very briefly tomorrow and the next day about the artistic aspect of the idea of the building in Dornach.

Then I would ask for time to be set aside in the afternoon at 2.30 for a meeting of Swiss members or their delegates. Herr Aeppli has asked for this meeting and has requested that I attend, or indeed take the chair. So I would ask the Swiss members to hold this meeting tomorrow afternoon at 2.30. This refers only to Swiss members since the matters to be discussed apply solely to the Swiss Anthroposophical Society.

This afternoon at 4.30 we shall see a performance of eurythmy, and my lecture will take place this evening at 8.30.

Dr. Steiner: I had thought a meeting with the faculty would not be possible during this short visit. In light of the bad news I received today, though, I thought it was absolutely necessary to have this meeting and discuss the latest events. We cannot have a long meeting, since I have another meeting right after this one. However, we need to discuss the events of the past days. Before I go into the situation, I would like you to tell me about the events first.

A report is given about a theft by S.Z. and W.R.

Dr. Steiner: Aren’t both boys in the eleventh grade? Have you noticed anything unusual recently?

A teacher: Not in school. W.R. was very active in class, but S.Z. is less interested in learning.

Dr. Steiner: S.Z. lived with Mrs. A. and W.R. said they wanted to look at her furniture. That is undoubtedly when the boys took the key; now we have the question of whether Z. himself was truly active or whether R. is the real instigator, as appears to be the case. How long have the boys been in the school?

A teacher: S.Z. has been here for three years and W.R. for four.

Dr. Steiner: W.R. also stole some money. Which teachers worked with him?

A number of teachers report.

Dr. Steiner: These cases certainly give us a lot to think about. Now that I have heard what you said, there is even more to consider. These are symptoms of something that has recently become quite visible in other areas.

Through our Waldorf School methods, we bring children very far in one respect, which is in regard to intellect and spirit. Our students are very much farther along than other students of the same age. That is something no one can deny. From eighth or ninth grade on, the whole student body consists of very different young human beings than those in other schools. Now, of course, the human being is a whole, and bringing people forward in an intellectual/spiritual way requires that we also bring their souls just as far along morally. No one can deny that what we achieve in teaching in the Waldorf School is primarily limited to the period the children are actually in school, and that the relationship to the students primarily results from what happens during classroom hours. That is the relationship that results, and we can hardly change it when the faculty is so overworked that personal relationships to the children don’t actually arise as they should in order to achieve a moral and soul development parallel to the intellectual and spiritual development. Beginning in the eighth grade, the moral influence of the faculty upon the students is very much lacking. There is also no contact between the students and teachers outside class of the sort that should exist, so when the students of the eighth grade have certain tendencies, they are left too much to themselves morally. We do not speak about the students in the way we would if we had closer contact with them. The letter you wrote me about R. resulted from your classroom relationship. There was nothing visible in it to indicate that you had a personal relationship to the students. It was also quite clear from your verbal reports today that you have no real contact with the students. I can certainly see that there is not enough time and that the teachers are overworked; on the other hand, it is an objective fact that things have been this way for a long time. What we are missing is something that should absolutely occur through the attitude of the Waldorf School pedagogy; an exact psychological picture of the students should live within the teachers, but a detailed psychological picture of the students does not live in the teachers’ souls. I do not know how the way you have developed this student psychology in your recent faculty meetings compares with the way it could have developed in meetings with me. You could have given some of the students in the higher grades some special attention here. I don’t know to what extent you do that when you meet by yourselves, but what exists is certainly not what it should be.

We now have these three children, N.N., S.Z., and W.R. There was a slight limitation in N.N.’s mental capacities, which could have been healed through energetic and longer-lasting psychological treatment. Whenever we spoke about N., I said that if he were treated such that he developed some trust, then he would be able to come to a teacher when he was in need and relate to that teacher as he would to a father. That would have improved the situation. My impression is that you did not do that, so N.N., who would have been easy to treat, in fact did not develop the deep love for a teacher that would have enabled him to improve. In such cases, discussions about morality do not help. The only thing that can help is for the student to form such a close relationship with a teacher that he or she feels especially drawn to that teacher. However, such contact has not developed, though I had hoped it would. Now he has left, but we have certainly not earned any medals for helping him firm up his moral stance.

Now we come to S.Z. Although I do not know him as well, it seems he has a moderate moral and intellectual weakness. He seems to be a boy who is intellectually weak and easily influenced. Probably he is relatively suggestible, so that a strong moral influence would affect him just as much as a less-good one. As things stand, he is to a large extent morally ruined, and the effects of this have been going on for several months, so that the moral problem exists in addition to the moderate intellectual weaknesses.

Now we have W.R. He is clearly not just moderately, but extremely weak intellectually. In saying this, I need to remind you that young people can be extremely weak-minded in that they cannot use their intellects for doing anything more than busywork well. Such people can create basic and exact judgments and can seem quite clever. Nevertheless, in W.R. we have an absolute and constitutional weak-mindedness. We could have held him only if there had been an inner harmony between the care he receives at school and where he is living, so that he would have been strongly influenced by the school and by where he lives. Neither of these happened. Both where he was living and the school left him to himself in regard to his morals. No one worked with him. R.’s inner problems are therefore extremely great. These are things we must clearly examine from a psychological perspective. If the Waldorf School is to continue to exist, we need to think seriously about how we can overcome them. If the Waldorf School is to continue, everyone’s goodwill must act together, perhaps by having, prior to a new school year, a series of teachers’ meetings where we discuss the moral position of the school. We cannot move forward otherwise. We have a major deficiency in that regard. My first thought is that you have forgotten there must be a strong contact between the teachers and the students, and that concerns the school.

Concerning the two students, Z. and R., in spite of the fact that they were in the Waldorf School, they have come to behave as they did recently, and we have no real hope of favorably influencing them if they continue at the Waldorf School. Your lack of contact has become too great to have any real effects upon them. Thus, after what we have seen, we must unfortunately say, and this is quite painful, that if these two students remain in the Waldorf School, they will become worse and worse from a moral standpoint, and, in addition, they will infect others. What you have said in this meeting completely proves that. There is no possibility of thinking anything other than that they will become more and more morally depraved. We are faced with the fact, at least from our present knowledge of the situation, that we might be able to work with Z., but most certainly not with W.R. Z. may improve, and that is something we could attempt. Due to his suggestibility, we may be able to achieve an improvement with S.Z. We could consider that. As long as we had to deal only with Z., I said we should keep him, and I wanted to do that even against his father’s wishes. However, if both boys remain, they will most certainly become worse. There can, however, be no discussion about W.R. remaining in the school. The situation is extremely tragic, primarily because it is a question of conscience for our school. We need to admit that we presented the school to these two boys in such a way that the school was incapable of improving them morally.

Neither of the boys is a kleptomaniac. They are weak-minded, not kleptomaniacs, and they have an intellectual and moral weakness in addition to the weakness in their souls, which makes the problem particularly difficult. If they were kleptomaniacs, we could consider giving them some therapy, but since they are weakminded, there is nothing we can do but put them in a class for weak-minded children. That, however, is unthinkable.

The way things now stand, we have no real authority with W.R. It is quite clear that there has been an inner corruption of both boys for several months. Therefore, there is nothing we can do with R. other than advise that he be removed from the school.

We could give S.Z. a short probationary period during which we would really have to pay attention and try to work with him. With W.R., the situation is difficult. He should go someplace where there is a systematic working toward moral improvement. Of course, I don’t mean a normal juvenile home. If he remains in the school, he will become worse than he already is. If he leaves school and is left to himself, he will become even worse than if he remains in school. He needs to be placed with a family who will improve him morally, or maybe in some institution. There is nothing more that can be done with this boy. You need to accept his situation by recognizing that his inner moral corruption has reached an enormous level as a result of his intense constitutional weak-mindedness. It would be dangerous for both the school and the boy himself for him to remain in school in the same situation. We should look for a family.

We cannot protect the two boys from the juvenile court. They will most certainly be sentenced. Is there some way we can involve an expert in the sentencing? In such a situation, we would have to find a local doctor willing to be an expert for the cases.

I have to admit it is, in a certain sense, very strange that it is particularly the children of anthroposophists who develop so poorly in the Waldorf School. The children who were expelled some time ago were also children of anthroposophists.

What I mentioned before from a general perspective, namely, that you lack contact with the children, is something we should concern ourselves with. That weighs on me heavily, and I have also noticed it through other symptoms. The faculty has not developed a sufficiently penetrating psychological view of the individual students because—the problem is not that you need more time, but that you need to develop a desire for this contact, so that what the teacher wants is also wanted by the students. That is a quality you can learn, but now you engage in a certain distancing.

When I was going through the classes, I also noticed a tone I have often mentioned, an academic tone, which has increased rather than decreased. You are lecturing. To an extent, you make some attempts to use the Socratic method, but take a closer look at what often occurs. You lecture and ask questions now and then, but the questions you ask are generally trivial. You delude yourselves when the students answer such obvious things correctly. You simply throw everything else at the children in overwhelming lectures. There is a major difference in the way the lower grades are taught, but beginning with the eighth grade, you no longer have any appropriate intimate contact with the students. So far, there is no lecturing in the little children’s classes. There, things are considerably better. This certainly lies heavily upon my heart. I have often mentioned it, but you have not really done much to relieve the situation. You should say what you wish now; then we need to discuss some other things.

A teacher: What exists in the constitutions of these children? You spoke of a constitutional weak-mindedness.

Dr. Steiner: Where kleptomania is present, the situation is such that the human being has polaric constitutional aspects. The head tends to want to assimilate everything. The head is one pole, whereas the metabolism, which carries moral perception, is the other. It is possible to show that schematically by drawing a lemniscate. The head does not recognize property rights, it recognizes only an absolute ownership of everything that comes into its realm. The other pole recognizes morality. When, however, the function of the head enters the will, kleptomania results. This illness results because the aspect that belongs in the head exists in the will. Stealing is something quite different from a tendency to kleptomania, which is expressed through mental absences during stealing. The person takes things upon seeing them, because the item stolen seduces the person into doing clever things to obtain it. The symptoms of kleptomania are clearly delineated.

The situation with N.N. could have been a borderline case of kleptomania; with the other two boys, though, we are dealing with moral insanity, an absolute inability of the physical functioning of the head to comprehend lying. They have not fully come into their etheric and physical bodies. This is not a sudden event like epilepsy, but a continuous mental absence.

W.R. is someone who is never quite here. He does not go around like other people, but more like a sleepwalker. He even soaks up the rays of light that fall upon him from the side. He does not see like other people. The position of his eyes is quite abnormal. Also, his temples have hardened, so the astral body cannot enter. There is, therefore, a clear case of weak-mindedness inherited from both the father and mother, which inhibits him from comprehending what is allowable or not. He cannot grasp it, it always slips away from him. It is like trying to grasp a piece of glass that has been covered with oil. Since intellectual judgments occur within the etheric body and are then reflected back by the astral body, he can be quite extraordinary intellectually. If a human being is to develop moral impulses, the etheric body must grasp the physical body, but that is not the case with him. He is incapable of saying this is good so I may do it, and that is not, and so forth. In order to form a judgment, it is necessary to do more than simply to connect the subject and the predicate. An intense strength is also needed to feel or live your way into the judgment. He can certainly connect subject and predicate, but only in pictures, not in the will. That is why he is unable to develop a sense of morality. Just think for a moment how strong the hereditary influence is in him. It is really very strong.

Why does he lie? He lies because it is not possible for him to judge something due to the weakness of his will power, and thus he cannot develop a sense for truth. It does not matter to him whether he says something is white or black, whether he says yes or no. It has nothing to do with the integrity of his insight. You need to differentiate between integrity of insight, which can be completely present, and the intensity with which judgments can be grasped and held. Weak-minded people are lacking in their capacity to retain judgments. They simply cannot grasp the judgment. That has nothing to do with logic. It is a purely psychological phenomenon.

A teacher: What should we tell the class?

Dr. Steiner: You should tell the class that R. can no longer be in the class because of what he has done. You do not have to moralize about him. You could mention that in human society we must respect property, and that that is necessary in earthly life. As much as we like him, it is impossible for him to remain at the school. S.Z. is a little weak-minded.

I need to give things a new direction. At the beginning of September, I will be giving two courses in Dornach, one about pastoral medicine and the other on theology. I will be here later in September to give a seminar on these questions.

A teacher says it is difficult to develop contact with the students in the short period of time available and asks Dr. Steiner to help.

Dr. Steiner: I will do what I can, but do not forget that the problem is primarily a question of your interest in the children and young people, and is a question of enthusiasm. It is not without reason that I emphasize at every opportunity that we cannot move forward in any area without enthusiasm and without some inner flexibility. Actually, if I—I mean it is really bad. I do not see any of that enthusiasm. I do not see you making any effort to really create it. If I could actually do everything I need to do, I would, for example, look to see how many chairs I could find pitch on following a teachers’ meeting. It seems to me as though you are glued to your seats, you are tired. You cannot be tired if you are to live in the spirit. Being tired is simply a lack of interest. These are things that must be said.

You have to use some pedagogical tricks to get a psychological picture of the students, and we want to speak about those later. The most important things, however, are enthusiasm and interest, but enthusiasm cannot be taught. I have a slight impression that for some of you, teaching has become boring. You have not the least interest. We need enthusiasm. We have no need for superiority or clever thinking. We need to use the method upon ourselves in order not to become tired. You are also tired in the classroom when you should be teaching. That cannot continue. That is the same as if a eurythmist sat through rehearsal. This picture is terrible; it is without any style.

A teacher: What is actually an “old member”?

Dr. Steiner: Some people can be old members even though they have been in the Society only three days.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to propose that we begin today with the disciplinary problems.

A teacher: F.R. threw a stone at another student and hit him on the head. He has been suspended.

Dr. Steiner: I do not agree with the proposal that was made to deal with this problem. It would look as though we thought we could have a strong effect upon such boys by dealing with them in a way that is something of a caricature. We actually know only from what other students have said how bad the situation was. Now, however, things are better. We can hardly do more than require F.R. to appear before a committee or perhaps the entire faculty over Easter, and then we can question him. I would like to speak with him then, also. Has his father reacted?

A teacher: The father has given up leaving him at school.

Dr. Steiner: I think we should decide that I will speak to F.R. when I come. The situation is, of course, not good, but I would not recommend expelling him. He always behaves well after you speak with him, and that lasts for a time. There is always a reason when he behaves like that, but afterward he is sorry.

A teacher speaks about a girl, S.F., in sixth grade. She ran away from the people she was living with and tried to walk to where her mother lives, a long distance away. The police found her while she was walking there. Dr. Steiner received a letter from her uncle mentioning that the housemother had spoken deprecatingly about the girl.

Dr. Steiner: Are we simply here to marvel at all the good children? Children are not the way we would like to have them. This whole situation shows only that Mrs. N., her housemother, doesn’t know how to handle her. It is quite clear she hasn’t the least idea about how to handle the girl. Our task is to educate children, and not to judge how good or bad they are. This situation shows that we should not send any more children to live with Mrs. N. Her uncle has certainly maintained a good attitude. Of course, it would make someone angry when such things are said about a child. To call her a whore is so silly that I am at a loss for words. We cannot allow Mrs. N. to mix into our affairs here. The girl has a very good character. Physically, she is not quite normal and is a little smaller than she should be. All these things show that she needs to be treated carefully. We should just leave things as they are with her and simply tell her that after Easter she will be moved to a better home. It would also be good if we wrote to her uncle and told him that we do not agree with Mrs. N.’s behavior. We still do not have sufficient contact with the children here. Although we are very careful with our methods, we should not simply leave the children to themselves. They need contact with the faculty. With the methods we use, we cannot, as a faculty, live in Olympian heights, above the private situations of the children. The children also need a little human contact with the faculty.

A teacher reports about N.N. who had stolen something and had behaved very poorly.

Dr. Steiner: His is a difficult case. We need to remember that no father is present. His mother, who has always been a rather unfortunate woman with no inner fortitude, hangs onto the boy. She does not know what to do and has always been disturbed by every message she receives from Stuttgart. She also did not know whether she had enough money to leave him here. With her, all this insecurity is constitutional. She is quite unstable psychologically. That is clear from the fact that she is now here in an insane asylum. That is something that could have just as easily occurred earlier. She may well return to her earlier situation.

This woman’s entire psychological makeup was transferred from her astral body into the boy’s etheric body. He has absorbed it organically, so that his behavior is a genuine picture of his mother’s psychological situation. In the astral body, it is only an insecurity in making decisions, in not knowing what to do. With him, it results in a desire to show off. Take, for instance, one of the worst cases, when he acted shamelessly in front of a window. His mother’s psychological situation remains in the realm of judgment, so that allowing her soul to be seen in a shameless way is a psychological illness. With the boy, it has gone into physical exhibitionism. Here you can see how heredity actually proceeds. The things that exist in the parents’ souls can be seen in the physical bodies of the next generation. That is something that is known medically.

It is quite clear to me that it is important for us to treat this boy with good intentions until he reaches the age of eighteen or nineteen, when his conscience will speak. First, he needs to properly integrate the part of his I from his previous incarnation that is the basis of his conscience. It is not yet properly integrated, so his conscience does not play the same role as conscience does in others who are further along. He experiments with all kinds of things. People always experiment with their higher self when their lower self does not yet contain what keeps them firm and strong. This will last until he reaches eighteen or nineteen. You need to treat him with good intentions, or you will have it on your own conscience that you allowed him to be corrupted; and what develops in that way will remain corrupted. He is really very talented, but his talent and his moral constitution are not developing at the same rate. Today, he has an organic moral insanity. We need to carry such children past a certain age through our well-intentioned behavior without approving of what they do. Conscious theft was not at all present in the case where they hid some money, and so forth. Keep him in the remedial class; that will be good for him. We should continue to treat him in the same way.

The situation with his mother is much more unpleasant for us as anthroposophists. Her coming to the place she had always dreamed of certainly caused her present situation. She had always dreamed about Stuttgart.

We have other situations that are a result of current events and the effects of German nationalism upon the school. I have already been told about them. I do not feel that this trend began with one boy alone. The question is whether the boys do this just because they have too much time on their hands, or whether they belong to some group. This situation is difficult to understand. You can do something positive here only by undertaking things that would tend to include these boys and girls. Recall for a moment that nationalism does not need to play a very large role at that age. What attracts them is all the fanfare. They have the impression that our Waldorf teachers sit at home on Sundays making long faces down to their waists and meditating and so forth. The preacher is something else, again. “What kind of people are these, anyway?” If we do nothing about that, the problem could increase, under certain circumstances. The impression that the faculty sits on Olympic thrones has spread too far.

You can do something else to counter that. Of course, you don’t need to do everything yourself, but you could support Dr. X. so that the children have something to do. I thought it was a very good idea to carefully choose a number of our younger people from the Society and ask them to undertake some trips with the students. Surely even Waldorf School teachers could learn something from that about what is needed to arrange such things. Otherwise, the perception of your sitting on an Olympic throne will remain. Of course, the first responsibility of the faculty will always be leadership of the school, but you should still do something like that. These nationalistic things could have a far-reaching impact—we might end up with a corps of ruffians. I am not so afraid of the attitude as I am of the children turning into ruffians. If the students know we are together with them, they will not be caught by such things.

This also played a major role in the debates we had in Dornach about founding a youth section. Somehow, we must find a way within the Youth Section to create some kind of counterforce against all these other movements. You need only think about the youth groups within Freemasonry that use nationalistic aspirations everywhere. Here, under the careful guidance of the faculty, we must find a way to bring the youth movement into a healthy whole. Here, everything is still much too individual, too atomized. Our faculty needs to counter the general principle in Stuttgart of never working together, always working separately. A teacher asks about the upcoming final examinations.

Dr. Steiner: The children in the twelfth grade have written that they wish to speak with me. I can do that only when I am here Tuesday for the conference. I would like you to tell the whole class that.

In general, I think the results of the final examination have shown unequivocally that everything we have discussed is still true. It would, of course, have been better had we been able to add a special class and keep the Waldorf School pure of anything foreign to it. Everything we discussed in that regard is still the same and should not be changed. Nevertheless, the statistics seem to indicate that the poor results were due to the fact that the students were unable to solve problems for themselves because they were used to solving them as a group. You know it is very useful to have the children work together, and we have also seen that the class gives a better impression when they speak together than when they speak individually. We were somewhat short on time, but it seems you did not have the students work enough on solving problems alone. They did not understand that properly and were thus shocked by tasks to be solved alone. I have the impression that you overdid what is good about speaking together. For example, if a few were causing some trouble, you quickly changed to having them all speak together. It has become a habit to work only with the class as a whole. You did not make the transition into working with the children individually. That seems to me to be the essence of what was missing. We should have no illusions: The results gave a very unfavorable impression of our school to people outside. We succeeded in bringing only five of the nine students who took the test through, and they just barely succeeded. What will happen now with those who did not take the final examination or who failed it? When I am here on Wednesday, we need to discuss all these things with the twelfth-grade teachers.

A teacher requests some guidelines for the pedagogical conference to be held at Easter in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: The basis of the Vorstand’s decision about the conference was that the conference should express the significance of the Waldorf School within all of modern education and that we should clearly demonstrate the importance of the Waldorf School principle. In other words, you should say here and there why the Waldorf School and its methods are necessary. Such a presentation gives people the opportunity to notice the difference between Waldorf School pedagogy and other reform movements. Another perspective is that we can demonstrate what we have said to the youth movement in our letters to the newsletter.

The second letter to young members says that human beings presently do not do at all well to be born as children. It is really the case that now, when human beings are born as children, they are pushed into an educational method that totally neglects them and requires them to be old. It does not matter whether someone tells me about the content of today’s civilization when I am eighteen or when I am seventy-five. It sounds just the same, whether I hear it at eighteen or at seventy-five. That is either true or not. It can be proven or refuted logically. It is valid or not. You can grow beyond such a situation only after eighteen, so you might need to decide not to come into a child’s body at all, but instead to be born as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old body. Only then would things work.

An initiate from an earlier time, if born today, could not be an initiate again if he or she had to go through our present-day schools. I discussed that in Dornach in my lectures about the Garibaldi incarnation. He was an initiate, but his earlier initiation could appear only after he became separated from the world, a practical revolutionary. Garibaldi is only one example of how people today cannot express what exists within them. We must give children back their childhood. That is one task of the Waldorf School. Today’s youth are old.

We received a number of replies from young people in Dornach following the announcement of the Youth Section. They were all very honestly meant. The main thing I noticed was how old even the youth in Dornach are. They speak about old things, they cannot be young. They want to be young, but know that only in their subconscious. What has gone into their heads is mostly old. They are so clever, so complete. Young people must be able to be brash, but everything they say is so reasonable, so thought out, not at all spontaneous. I am happiest when spontaneous things happen; they may be unpleasant, but I like them best. What we spoke about at a youth meeting in Dornach a short time ago was so well thought out that it could have been said by professors. I made a joke about something, and they took it seriously. They have put on a cloak of thoughtfulness, which is ill-fitting at every point. You can see that in the way they speak. You feel very much like a child when today’s youth speak.

Regarding such things, you should express the responsibility of the Waldorf School to today’s youth with some enthusiasm at the Easter conference. We should not simply give clever lectures; we need some enthusiasm. We need to have some wisdom about how we speak of the relationship of the Anthroposophical Society to the school so that we do not offend people. We do not want them to say that we have been able to accomplish what we wanted since the beginning of the school, namely, an anthroposophical school. We need to show them that we have extended anthroposophy in order to do the things that are genuinely human. We need to show them that anthroposophy is appropriate for presenting something genuinely human, but we must do that individually. We should not give too strong an impression that we are lecturing about anthroposophy. We should show how we use anthroposophical truth in the school, not lecture abstractly about anthroposophy. That is the perspective we had at the time. The board of directors in Dornach follows such things with great interest. They want to be informed by everyone and to work on everything, but we need to round off some rough edges. The letters in the newsletter will, over time, discuss all aspects of anthroposophy.

The people in Bern are not asking the Waldorf School teachers for detailed lectures at the Easter pedagogical course. What they want are introductory remarks that will lead to discussions as they are usually held.

A teacher asks whether the present two eighth-grade classes should be combined in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: We need a third fifth grade class more than a second ninth-grade class. We could combine them. The children are fourteen or fifteen years old. You should be able to keep them under control. It is difficult to find an appropriate teacher, though I have tried. We can discuss the whole thing later.

A teacher asks whether it would be better pedagogically if the upper grades also had one class teacher for the whole time, like the lower grades.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do what is necessary simply by having one class teacher, if that teacher does not do what is really necessary. What we need is that everyone concerned with the upper grades wants to do what is necessary. I do not believe it is very important to have a single class teacher. If we all want a better relationship with the children, I do not see why we would need to restrict it.

A teacher asks about a possible summer camp in Transylvania.

Dr. Steiner: That may be possible, but I find it difficult to imagine how. The situation there is quite different. It is very much in the East. You can have some strange experiences there. I went to a lecture in Hermannstadt in the winter of 1888-89. When I arrived in Budapest, I was unable to make my connection. I had to travel via Szegedin and arrived at about two in the afternoon in Mediaš. I was told I would have to remain there for some time. I went into a coffee house in town where you had to scrape the dirt away with a knife. A number of players came in. There was something Vulcan- like and stormy in their astral bodies; they were somehow all tangled together. Everything went on with a great deal of activity and enthusiasm. The room was next to a pigsty and there was a horrible smell. You can get into such situations in that region, so we would have to protect the children from such experiences. Everyone gets bitten by all kinds of insects as well.

There had been some difficulties with Mr. Z., one of the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: I had the impression we should offer Mr. Z. a vacation to give him an opportunity to collect himself. My impression was that he needed some rest. The question now is to what extent we can still keep him in school. If he intensely felt how he is, we might be able to keep him. X. says he is unstable. We really can’t do anything other than send him on a vacation and bring him back again.

Concerning the entire matter, I would like to say that it seems to me that we must direct our attention toward not allowing such things as discussions with the students to develop. Where would we be if we had more discussions where the students can complain about the teachers? We cannot allow that. It was already very bad in the other case, which resulted in our expelling the students. Now, it is coming up again—a few students come and want to discuss things with the teachers. We cannot allow that. Z. does do all these things, but we cannot allow the students to undermine the authority of the teacher. That would result in the students judging the teachers, which is really terrible. Students sitting as judges over the teachers. We have to avoid that. Of course, one teacher yells at them more and another less, one is more creative, another less. However, we really cannot take such discussions seriously, where the students put the teacher before a tribunal. That doesn’t work. Were that to occur, what would happen is what they once proposed, that the teachers no longer give grades, but the students grade the teachers each week. After Easter, we have to see if we can have him work only in the lower grades. There is not much more we can do.

I fear Z. will always fall into such things. He will need to feel that behaving that way does not work, but that will take a longer time. You need to make the situation clear to him and tell him we may have to send him on a permanent vacation. He is a real cross to bear, but on the other hand, he is a good person. He did not find the right connection, and that has happened here also. A time may come when we can no longer keep him in school, but now we need to give him an opportunity to correct his behavior. I fear, though, he will not take it up.

In such cases, there is generally nothing to do but hope the person finds a friend and makes a connection, and that the friend can then help the person out of such childishness. In a certain way, everything he does is rather childish. In spite of his talents, he has remained a child in a certain area. He is at the same stage as the students, and that causes everything else.

His living conditions seem to be horrible, but I do not see the connection between his behavior and his living conditions. Others could have even worse living conditions and still not come up with the idea of doing such things in school. I feel sorry for him. He needs to find a friend, but has not done that. He would then have some support. There is no other way of helping such people. Apparently, he has nowhere to turn. It was perhaps a karmic mistake that he came into the faculty. If he found someone he belongs with, what I said would probably occur. I do not think, however, that there is anyone within the faculty that Z. could befriend. It is, perhaps, something like it was with Hölderlin, but not as bad.

There are two sides to be considered in teaching and education. One is connected with the subject-matter of the lessons and the other with the child whose faculties it is our task to unfold in accordance with what we learn from a true observation of the human being. If we adopt the methods described in these lectures, our teaching will always appeal to the particular faculties that should be unfolded during the different life-periods. Very special attention, however, must be paid to the development of the child's memory and here it must be realized that on account of a deficient understanding of the being of man our predecessors have been prone to burden the memories of children and, as I said yesterday in another connection, there has been a reaction from this to the very opposite extreme. The tendency in the most modern systems of education is to eliminate memory almost entirely. Now both methods are wrong. The point really is that the memory ought to be left alone up to the time of the change of teeth, when in the ordinary way the child is sent to school. I have already said that during this period of life physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego-organization are working in unison. The way in which the child works out by imitation everything he unconsciously observes around him has the effect of stimulating, even in the physical body itself, the forces underlying the development of memory. During these years of life therefore the memory must be left to develop without interference.

On the other hand, from the time of the change of teeth, when the nature of soul and spirit is in a certain sense released from the body, systematic training of the memory is of the greatest importance. Through the whole of a man's life the memory makes claims on his physical body. Unless there is an all-round development of the physical body the memory will be impaired in some way. Indeed it is well known to-day that any injury to the brain at once results in defective memory.

When we are dealing with children, it is not enough to notice how in illness an element of soul is involved. As teachers, we must always be on the alert for every little intimate effect that is being produced on the bodily nature of the child by the soul and spirit. An undue development of memory will injure the child for the whole of life, will even injure his physical body.

How then can we rightly unfold the faculty of memory? Above all we must realize that abstract concepts, concepts built up by the rationalizing intellect, are a load on the memory in the period of life between the change of teeth and puberty.

Perceptions of a living nature, plastic ideas conveyed to the child in his art lessons on the other hand call forth those living forces which play down even into the physical body and allow the memory to unfold in the right way.

The best foundation for the full development of memory is laid when the whole teaching during the Elementary School period is informed with artistic quality.

Art rightly taught leads to perfect control of bodily movement. If we are able to stimulate the child to self-activity in art, if as he paints, writes or draws, his bodily nature bestirs itself together with his qualities of spirit, we shall rightly unfold the forces that must proceed from the soul and come to the aid of memory in the physical body. In tomorrow's lecture I will explain how this is achieved in Eurhythmy. We must not fall into the error of believing that a complete elimination or an insufficient feeding of memory can ever be of benefit to the child.

There are three golden rules for the development of memory: Concepts load the memory; Concrete artistic activity builds it up; activities of will strengthen it. We have splendid opportunities for applying these three golden rules if we teach nature-study and history in the way I have been indicating during these lectures. Arithmetic too may be used for the same end, for in arithmetic we ought always to begin with an artistic understanding of things. But when the children thoroughly understand the more simple operations with numbers up to ten or twenty, let us say, we need not be afraid of working upon the memory afterwards. It is not more right to overload the child with too many concrete pictures than it is to put too great a strain on his powers of memory, for concepts carried too far into complexity have the same effect. We must therefore carefully observe how the memory is unfolding in the case of each individual child. Here we see how necessary it is for the teacher and educationalist to have some understanding of tendencies to health and disease in the human being. Strange experiences have often come one's way in this connection. A gentleman whose whole life is concerned with education once came to visit the Waldorf School and I tried to explain the spirit underlying the teaching there. After a little while he said: “Yes, but if you work on those lines the teachers will have to know a great deal about medicine.” It seemed to him quite impossible that they could understand medicine to the extent necessary in such a school. I said that even though this would arise naturally out of a knowledge of the nature of man, a certain amount of medical instruction ought to form part of the training course for teachers. Questions concerning health ought not to be left entirely to the school doctor. I think we are particularly fortunate at the Waldorf School in that our school doctor himself is on the staff of the College of Teachers. Dr. Eugen Kolisko is a doctor by profession and besides looking after the children's health, he is also a member of the teaching staff. In this way everything connected with the bodily health of the children can proceed in fullest harmony with their education.

This, in effect, is necessary: our teachers must learn to understand matters connected with health and sickness in the child. To give an example: a teacher notices a child growing paler and paler. Another child may lose his natural colour because his face begins to be excessively red. The teacher will find, if he observes accurately, that the latter child is showing signs of restlessness and peevishness. We must be able to connect all such symptoms in the right way with the spiritual nature. Abnormal pallor, or even the mere tendency to it, is the result of over-exertion of the memory. The memory of such a child has been overstrained and one must put a stop to this. In the case of a child with an abnormally high colour, the memory has not been given enough to do. This child must be given things to memorize and then we must make sure that he has retained them in his mind. The memory of a child who grows paler and paler must therefore be relieved, whereas in the case of a child with excessive colour, we must set about developing the memory.

We only approach the whole human being if we are thus able to handle his nature of soul and spirit in intimate harmony with his physical body. In the Waldorf School, the child, the growing human being, is handled according to his qualities of spirit, soul and body, above all according to his particular temperament.

In the classroom itself we arrange the children in a way that enables the various temperaments—choleric, sanguine, melancholic or phlegmatic—to be expressed and adjusted among themselves. The very best way is to make the choleric children or again the melancholic children sit together, for then they tone each other down. One must of course know how to judge and then deal with the different temperaments, for this in turn affects the very roots of bodily development.

Take the case of a sanguine child, inattentive in his lessons. Every impression coming from the outer world immediately engages his attention but passes away again as quickly. The right treatment for such a child will be to reduce the quantity of sugar in his food, not unduly, of course. The less sugar he absorbs, the more will the excessively sanguine qualities be modified and a harmonised temperament take their place.

In the case of a melancholic child who is always brooding, just the opposite treatment is necessary. More sugar must be added to his food. In this way we work right down into the physical constitution of the liver, for the action of the liver differs essentially according to whether a large or small quantity of sugar is taken. In effect, every activity of outer life penetrates deeply into the physical organism of man.

At the Waldorf School we take the greatest care that there shall be an intimate contact between the teaching staff and the parents of the children. A really intimate contact of course is only possible to a certain degree, for it depends on the amount of understanding possessed by the parents. We try however to the greatest possible extent to induce the parents to come to the different teachers to obtain advice as to the most suitable diet for the individual children. This is just as important as what is taught in the classroom.

We must not imagine in a materialistic sense that the body does everything, for obviously a child with no hands cannot be taught to play the piano. The role of the body is to be a suitable instrument. Just as one cannot teach a child with no hands to play the piano, one cannot rid a child whose liver is over-active, of melancholy, no matter what physical measures are employed by abstract systems of education. If, however, the action of the liver is regulated by increasing the quantity of sugar in the child's diet, he will be able to use this bodily organ as a fit instrument. Then only and not till then will spiritual measures begin to be effective.

People often imagine that reforms can be introduced into education by the reiteration of abstract principles. All the world knows what is desirable in teaching and how education ought to proceed. Yet true education demands an understanding of the human being that can only be acquired little by little, and so, although I neither attack nor belittle the knowledge possessed by nearly everyone on the subject of education, I say that it is of no practical use. This kind of knowledge seems to me just like someone who says: “I want a house built; it must look nice, be comfortable and weather-proof ...” And then off he goes to someone who knows quite well that the house must have all these qualities and thinks he can set about building. But to know these things is of no practical use. That is approximately as much as people in general know about the art of education and yet they think they can bring about reforms. If I want a house properly built, I must go to an architect who knows in detail how the plans must be drawn, how the bricks are to be laid, how massive the girders must be to bear the weight upon them and so on. The essential thing is to know in detail how the human being is constituted, and not to speak vaguely about human nature in general as one speaks about a house being weatherproof, comfortable and beautiful to look at.

The civilized world must realize that technique, a spiritualized technique of course, is necessary in every detail of the art of education. If it becomes general, this realization will indeed be a boon to all the very praiseworthy efforts in the direction of educational reform that are making themselves felt to-day.

***

The significance of these principles is revealed above all when we come to consider the very different individualities of children. It has become the practice in schools not to allow children who cannot keep up with the work in a particular class to go on to the next. Now in an art of education where the child is taught in accordance with his particular age of life, it must gradually become out of the question to leave a child behind in a class, for then he will fall out of the sequence of the kind of teaching that is suited to his years. In the Waldorf School, of course, each class consists of children of one particular age. If therefore, a child who ought to go up to the fourth class is left behind in the third, the inner course of his education comes into variance with his age. As far as we can we avoid this in the Waldorf School. Only in very exceptional cases does it happen that a child stays behind in his class. We make every effort to handle each child individually in such a way that it will not be necessary for him to stay behind.

Now as you all know, there are children who do not develop normally, who are in some way abnormal. At the Waldorf School we have instituted a special ‘helping’ class for these children. This helping class provides for children whose faculties of thinking, feeling and willing are under-developed and it has become very dear to our hearts. A child whom we cannot have in a class because of a weakness of some power of soul is taken into this separate class. And it is really delightful at the Waldorf School to find a kind of competition among the staff of teachers arising round a child when it is found necessary to move him from his normal class into the helping class. After all I have been saying, you will realize that there is the greatest harmony between the members of the teaching staff at the Waldorf School, but there is always a certain struggle when such a thing has to be done. It means that Dr. Karl Schubert to whom, on account of his wonderful qualities, the helping class has been entrusted has to face a regular onset! The teachers never like giving up a child to him. The children too feel it rather against the grain to have to leave their normal class and the teacher whom they love to go into the helping class. But again it is a blessing that before very long they do not want to leave the helping class because they have such a love for Dr. Schubert. He is extraordinarily well-fitted to have charge of this helping class on account of his qualities of character, temperament and his great capacity of love. This capacity of love, devotion and unselfishness—and they are really the foundation of the art of teaching—are specially needed when it is a matter of bringing on children in an isolated class of this kind to a point where they can again return to the class corresponding to their age; and this is the goal we set ourselves with the aid of the helping class.

True knowledge of the nature of man brings the following facts to light. It is really nonsense to speak of abnormalities or disease of the spiritual part of man's being, although of course in colloquial language and for the purposes of everyday life there is no need to be fanatical and pedantic about such matters. Fundamentally speaking the spirit and the soul are never ill. Illness can only occur in the bodily foundation and what then passes over from the body into the soul. Since however in earthly existence the being of soul and spirit can only be approached through the instrument of the body, it is above all necessary in the treatment of so-called abnormal children to know that the body, precisely through its abnormality, makes this approach to the soul and spirit impossible. As soon as we overcome a defect of body or of body and soul in the child and are able to approach his nature of soul and spirit, we have done what is necessary. In this connection therefore our constant aim must be to perceive the delicate and intimate qualities and forces of the bodily nature of man.

If we observe that a child is slow of apprehension, that something hampers him from connecting concepts and ideas, we must always realize that there is some irregularity in the nervous system. Individual treatment will do much in such a case, perhaps by going more slowly in the teaching or particularly in rousing the will and the like. When a child is abnormal, our treatment must always be individual and we shall do infinite good by such measures as I have indicated, perhaps by teaching slowly or stimulating the element of will into greater activity. Great attention of course must be paid to bodily training and culture in the case of such a child. Let me explain certain principles by giving you a simple example.

Suppose it is difficult for a child to put together ideas. We shall achieve much by giving the child physical exercises in which his own body, his whole organic system is made to act in accordance with an activity in his soul. We may tell him for, instance, to touch the lobe of his left ear with the third finger of the right hand and make him quickly repeat the exercise. Then we may tell him to touch the top of his head with the little finger of the left hand. Then we may alternate the first and second exercises quickly, one after the other. The organism is brought into movement in such a way that the child's thoughts must flow swiftly into the movements he makes. Thus by stimulating the nervous system we make it into a good foundation for the faculty which the child must exercise when it is a question of connecting or separating ideas.

In such ways we can experience how the spiritual nature of the child may be stimulated by the culture of the body. Suppose, for example, a child returns again and again to one fixed idea. This tendency is obviously a great weakness in his soul. He simply cannot help repeating certain words or returning over and over again to the same ideas. They take a deep hold of his being and he cannot get rid of them. If we observe such a child closely, we shall generally find that he walks too much on his heels and not with the toes and the front part of the foot. (All these symptoms of course take an individual form in each child and that is why a true knowledge of the human being, by means of which one can make individual distinctions, is so necessary.) Such a child needs exercises in which he must pay attention to every step he takes and these must be repeated until they gradually become a habit. And then, if it is not too late—in fact a great deal can be achieved in this direction between the seventh and twelfth years—we shall see an extraordinary improvement in the inner condition of the child's soul. We should, for example, understand too how movement of the fingers of the right hand influences the speech organism, and how movement of the fingers of the left hand works upon all that which comes to the help of thinking out of the speech organism. We must know too how walking on the toes or walking on the heels reacts upon the faculties of speech and thought, and specially on the will. The art of Eurhythmy, working as it does with normal forces, teaches us a great deal when we come to deal with the abnormal. The movements of Eurhythmy also, although they are founded upon that which is normal, are extremely valuable where the abnormal is concerned. For while for the normal human being they are artistic in their nature, for abnormality they can be adapted for therapeutic use. Since the movements are derived from laws of the human organism itself, the faculties of spirit and soul, which always need stimulus during the period of growth, are given an impulse that proceeds from the bodily nature. This proves how very necessary it is to realize the unity between spirit, soul and body when we have to deal with abnormal children at school.

The excellent course of teaching that is being developed by Dr. Schubert in this branch of work at the Waldorf School is achieving really splendid results. A great power of love and unselfishness is of course necessary when it is a matter of individual treatment in every case. These qualities are absolutely essential in the helping class. In many cases, too, resignation is required if any results at all are to be achieved, for one can only work with what is there or can be brought out of the human being. If only a quarter or a half of what would make the child absolutely normal is attained, the parents are apt not to be quite satisfied. But the essential thing in all human action that is guided and directed by the spirit is to be independent of outer recognition and to become more and more deeply aware of the sustaining power that grows from a sense of inner responsibility. This power will increase step by step in an art of education that perceives in these intimate details of life the harmony between the child's spirit, soul and body. Insight, perception, observation, these are what the teacher needs; if he has these qualities, speech itself will come to life in his whole being. Quite instinctively he will carry over into his practical teaching, what he has learnt from observation of the human being.

At a certain age, as I told you yesterday, the child must be led on from the plant- and animal-lore which he grasps more with his faculties of soul, to mineral-lore, to physics and chemistry, where greater claims are made on his conceptual faculties and intellect, but it is all-important that these subjects shall not be taught too soon. During this period of life when we are conveying the idea of causality to the child and he learns of cause and effect in nature, it is essential to balance the inorganic, lifeless elements in nature-study by leading him into the domain of art.

If we are to introduce art to the child in the right way, not only must all our teaching be artistic from the beginning, but art itself must play its proper part in education. That the plastic-pictorial arts are to be cultivated you can see if only from the fact that the writing lessons begin with a kind of painting. Thus, according to the Waldorf School principle, we begin to give painting and drawing lessons at a very tender age of childhood. Modelling too is cultivated as much as possible, albeit only from the ninth or tenth year and in a primitive way. It has a wonderfully vitalizing effect on the child's physical sight and on the inner quality of soul in his sight, if at the right age he begins to model plastic forms and figures. So many people go through life without even noticing what is most significant in the objects and events of their environment. Learning to see is what we must learn, if we are to stand rightly in the world. And if the child is to learn to observe aright, it is a very good thing for him to begin as early as possible to occupy himself with modelling, for what his head and eyes perceive is thus guided into the movements of fingers and hand. In this way we shall not only awaken the child's taste for the artistic around him, in the arrangement of a room perhaps, and distaste for the inartistic, but he will begin to observe those things in the world which ought to flow into the heart and soul of man.

By beginning musical instruction with song, but leading on more and more to instrumental playing, we develop the element of will in the human being. This musical instruction is not only a means of unfolding his artistic qualities, but also his purely “human” qualities, especially those of the heart and will. We must of course begin with song, but we must pass on as soon as possible to an understanding of instrumental music in order that the child may learn to distinguish the pure element of music, rhythm, measure, melody from everything else, from imitative or pictorial qualities of music and the like. More and more he must begin to realize and experience the purely musical element. By leading the child into the sphere of art, by building a bridge from play to life through art, we can begin, between the eleventh and twelfth years, and that is the proper time, to teach him to understand art. In the principles of education which it is the aim of the Waldorf School to realize, it is of vital importance for the child to acquire some understanding of art at the right age. At the age when the child must realize that Nature is ruled by abstract law, by natural law to be grasped by the reason, when he must learn in physics the link between cause and effect in given cases, we must promote an understanding of art as a necessary counterpoise. The child must realize how the several arts have developed in the different epochs of human history, how this or that motif in art plays its part in a particular epoch. Only so will those elements which a human being needs for all-round development of his nature be truly stimulated. In this way too, we can unfold the qualities which are essential in moral instruction.

If he acquires an understanding of art, the relation of the human being to his fellow-men will be quite different from what it could be without such understanding. For what is the essence of the understanding of the world, my dear friends? It is to be able at the right moment to reject abstract concepts in order to attain insight into and true understanding of the affairs of the world.

The mineral kingdom and also the domain of physics can be understood in the light of cause and effect. When we come to the plant-world, however, it is impossible to grasp everything through logic, reason and intellect. The plastic principle of man's being must here come into play, for concepts and ideas have to pass into pictures. Any plastic skill that we develop in the child helps him to understand the formations contained in the plants. The animal kingdom can only be comprehended if the ideas for its understanding are first implanted and developed in us by moral education. This alone will activate such inner powers as enable us to understand the forces building up the animal structure from the invisible world. How few people, how few physiologists to-day know whence the form of an animal is derived! Indeed the origin of the animal form is the structure of organs which, in man, become the organs of speech and song. That is the origin of the organic forms and structure of the animal. The animal does not come to the point of articulate speech; it only comes to the point of song as we know it in the birds. In speech and song, form-giving forces stream outwards, giving shape to the air-waves, and sound arises. That which in the organism of speech and song develops from out of a vital principle passes back into the form of the animal. It is only possible to understand the form of an animal if we realize that it develops, musically as it were, from organs which at a later stage are metamorphosed in the human being into the organic structures connected with the element of music.

To understand man we need an all-round conception of art, for the faculty of reason can only comprehend the inorganic constituents of man's being. If at the right moment we know how to lead over the faculty of mental perception to artistic feeling, then and only then is a true understanding of man possible. This understanding of man's being must be awakened by the teaching we give on the subject of art. If the teacher himself is possessed of true artistic feeling and can introduce the child to Leonardo's “Last Supper” or Raphael's “Sistine Madonna” at the right age, not only showing the definite relations between the various figures, but how colour, inner perspective and so forth were treated in the time of Leonardo or Raphael, in short, if nature and history alike are imbued with an inner quality of soul through teaching that conveys an understanding of art then we are bringing the human element into all education.

Nothing must be left undone in the way of imbuing the child with artistic feeling at the right age in life. Our civilization will never receive an impulse of ascent until more art is introduced into schools. Not only must the whole teaching be permeated with art, but a living understanding of art, called into being by the teacher's own creative power, must set up a counterpoise to prosaic conceptions of nature and of history.

We deem this an all-essential part of Waldorf School education. True indeed it is, and every artist has felt the same, that art is not a mere discovery of man but a domain wherein the secrets of nature are revealed to him at a level other than that of ordinary intelligence, a domain in which he gazes into the mysteries of the whole universe. Not until the moment when man realizes the world itself to be a work of art and regards Nature as a creative artist, not until then is he ready for a deepening of his being in the religious sense. There is profound meaning in these words of a German poet: ‘Only through the dawn gates of beauty canst thou pass into the realm of knowledge.’ It is so indeed; when we understand the whole being of man through art, we generate in others too an all-embracing conception of the world. That is why our aim in education should be to add to what is required by prosaic culture and civilization, the purely human element. To this end, not only must cur teaching itself be full of artistic feeling, but an understanding of art must be awakened in the children.

Art and science will then lead on to a moral and religious deepening. But as a preliminary to religious and moral progress, education and teaching must set up this balance: in the one scale lie all those things that lead into prosaic life, that bind men to the earth; in the other scale lie the counterbalancing factors leading to art, factors that enable man at every moment of his life to sublimate and raise to the spirit what must first be worked out in the ‘prose’ of life.

Dear attendees, We will take the liberty of presenting a performance of eurythmic art to you, one that will be performed by children, in order to illustrate the pedagogical-didactic value of eurythmic art. Since today we are dealing primarily with the educational and teaching side of eurythmy, I will present what needs to be said about eurythmy as art in particular at our next performance on Wednesday and will limit myself today to saying only what relates to eurythmy as an educational tool and subject of instruction. I would like to say a few words in advance to the effect that eurythmy is a truly inaudible, visible language, a language that is performed by the moving human being, that is, by movements of the human limbs, the whole human body, or that is also expressed by groups of people in space. What emerges as the eurythmic art, what is achieved on the basis of a visible language, is not an ordinary play of gestures, nor is it something in the ordinary sense of mimicry and least of all a dance art. Rather, it is a truly careful study of what the human organism wants to do, tends to do, by revealing itself in speech or song. The movements that the larynx and the other speech and singing organs are predisposed to perform are transferred to the whole human being according to the principle of Goethean metamorphosis. And because we are dealing with human movements that are natural and elementary way from the essence of the human organization itself, as language is taken in a natural and elementary way from the laws of the human organism, that is why eurythmy is also a means of education and teaching.

At the Stuttgart Waldorf School, which Emil Molt founded and which I direct, we have introduced this eurythmy as a compulsory subject from the earliest elementary school lessons up to the fourteenth or fifteenth year, as far as we have come with the Waldorf School so far. And it has already become apparent during the [two-year] existence of the Waldorf school that the children take this subject on with a special inner satisfaction. If we disregard the artistic aspect for the moment, we could call eurythmy in this respect: soul-inspired and spiritualized gymnastics. And as a subject, it is added to ordinary gymnastics like soul-inspired and spiritualized gymnastics. This ordinary gymnastics is, after all, only a logical consequence of the physiological study of the human organism, of the study of physicality.

The movements that children perform in eurythmy do not arise from this one aspect of the human being, the physical body, but from the body, soul and spirit, that is, from the whole human being. That is why the child also feels what it is doing as a soul-inspired gymnast, as if it has been taken out of the full human being, and it lives into these movements with particular satisfaction.

If we want to understand how this is, we need only think of how, for someone who is able to intuitively place themselves within the laws of the human organism, every possible movement that the body is striving towards is already present in the resting human form. The one who can see in this way sees in the resting human being how this being is constantly seeking to merge with the organism in movements that are already expressed in their formation in the formative or in the calm form. One only sets the human form itself in motion by moving from the observation of the sculpture of the human organism to this moving sculpture of eurythmy, which is at the same time a visible language. Anyone who is able to study the movements of the human being, which arise from the element of will deeply rooted in the subconscious, these possibilities of movement that lie within the human being, will find everywhere that these movements are nothing other than what, in turn, wants to come to rest in the same way as the human organism, when it rests, stands quietly or sits quietly, shows its calm form. You only need to look at a hand and the adjoining arm: If you look at the shape of the fingers, the forearm or anything else, you cannot imagine that it is meant to be at rest. Its resting shape is such that every possible movement and mobility is already expressed in the resting shape.

And when a person's arms and hands are moving, we see how only movements that are natural and elementary are possible, and these in turn point to the calm form of the hands and arms themselves.

The child senses that everything in eurythmy is derived from the inner laws of the human organism. That is why, as we see at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, they perform these eurythmic movements with such great enthusiasm, as spiritualized gymnastics.

And if we look even more at the soul, we have to say that ordinary gymnastics can actually only get out of the human being that which lies in his physical organization. One day we will think about these things more objectively, without today's prejudices. Then it will be seen how one-sided ordinary gymnastics is. I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous physiologist, perhaps even the most famous in Central Europe, who once sat here, listened to such an introduction, and who later told me: So, you consider gymnastics in general to be a one-sidedness that is taken out of physiology? I, as a physiologist, said he, I regard gymnastics as it is practiced today not at all as a subject for instruction, but as a barbarism.

Now, out of courtesy to our culture — one must always be polite too — I will not say that gymnastics is barbaric, but I would like to say: it is one-sided, it is only taken from the physiology of the human organism, while this inspired gymnastics, which occurs in eurythmy, is taken from body, soul and spirit, from the full human being. That is why it is used as a teaching tool, as an educational tool that brings out in the child what the present and future generations in particular will need very, very much, namely the will initiative, the initiative of the soul life.

This has already been demonstrated in the Waldorf school through the teaching of eurythmy, how the development of the will, the will initiative, is released from the subconscious depths of human experience during childhood. This has been achieved because eurythmy does not neglect the physical side, only address the soul and spirit, but takes into account all three elements of human life, developing the spirit, developing the soul, developing the body. that the child experiences eurythmy as something so natural that when it is brought to the child, the child learns to love it out of an equal inner urge, as is the case with speech. Just as with speech, when it is presented to the child, the natural urge in the child to reveal the speech is there, so too with eurythmy, when it is presented in a natural way, there is such an urge in the child to engage in eurythmy as in speech. And so we can hope, ladies and gentlemen, that eurythmy will be increasingly recognized as an educational tool in the pedagogical and didactic fields. What our time lacks, what our time needs, is for the introduction of eurythmy into the curriculum to be seen as a matter of course.

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I could not be here at the end of school. It was not possible, though I thought we would be able to meet at that time. You have told me there are a number of things we need to discuss, so I would like to begin there.

A teacher reads a letter from F.R.’s father. The boy had stolen sixteen silver spoons, and his father wants to keep him home.

Dr. Steiner: This story about the spoons is old. The boy’s relationship to his father was never any different. The father would like to take him out if he will go. We need to find a way to work with the boy. We can certainly not throw him out. The boy needs a little moral support at these times. We have to give him some moral support. He is only in the ninth grade, and the children in that class need some moral support. They need a certain relationship to the faculty. They need to love the faculty. I think you have lost contact with the whole ninth grade. The boys immediately see that is very wrong. I think this whole theft problem has caused an enormous amount of remorse in F.R. We need to help him. Under no circumstances can we allow the boy to be taken out. We should not give any cause for removing him from school. We need to work with him.

Doesn’t G.T. have a little tendency to fool himself? He seems to play the part of a pleasant boy.

You need to avoid expressing subjective judgments. If you use such expressions, you will have a subjective relationship. Even when the boys do the worst things, you need to stick to the facts and never relate them to the person. If you reprimand the boys, you can achieve nothing more.

Certainly old R. is someone who cannot control his anger. His treatment of the boy is such that you can almost understand when he exhibits such behavior. When the situation is like that at home, we can only feel sorry for the boy.

We need to have more contact with the students in the upper grades. At that age students cannot stand going through a whole morning of class without any personal contact. They want you to be interested in them personally. They want you to know them, to be interested in them, that is what they want. In those grades this is still a school, not a college; the class is too much like a college, like a seminar, and not enough like a school. They want some contact with the teacher.

I already said it was five, but these five are not just some boys we can throw out into the street. If we threw them out into the street, it would be an unnecessary loss for humanity. We cannot allow that to happen. F.R. is not nearly so talented as T.L.

The father can do what he wants, and we can only try to help. It is crazy to say we should try to force him. The father can do what he wants during the holidays. I think we need more personal contact with the students in the upper grades. It is important that we attempt to have a more personal relationship with them.

One of the ninth-grade teachers says that he would like to visit the class of the previous teacher.

Dr. Steiner: You could make some interesting observations if you visited, but it is very important that you have no difficulties when you stand before your class. During your free time, you should have worked through the material so completely that it causes you no effort while you are teaching, so that you can give all your attention to how you are teaching. The material should be second nature. This whole discipline question is primarily a question of good, methodical preparation. That is true for all the subjects in all grades. It is a question of preparation. Perhaps a basic question is whether there is enough time for preparation. Many of you have told me that there is not enough time for proper preparation. It is obvious that here in the Waldorf School we must do what is necessary to prepare thoroughly, so that the material itself gives us no difficulty when we stand before the class. The students notice very quickly when that is not the case. Then they feel themselves to be above authority. That’s when the problems start.

I can see nothing more than that these five boys are really very good. F.R. is a little weak. He is quite dependent upon being treated such that he feels that you mean what you say honestly. This is a feeling he does not have with his father. He is always wondering subconsciously whether things at school will be the way they are at home. He wants to be understood, but he thinks he is treated without any understanding. His father does not know he is so angry. Everything depends upon the interest the boys have for the content of your teaching. They all pay attention in algebra. They have not been so bad. I have often observed how you can work quite well with them.

It is silly that the father wrote this letter. He did so even after I told him that the way to avoid such problems is for no one to speak about them, not to anyone, and that we have to teach the boy that he should also not speak about them to anyone. Then the father did this anyway. The old man is less well behaved than the boy. This is all very difficult. The boy does not lie to anyone, even when he has to admit some misdeed, but the old man lies all the time. The problem is that the boy knows his father lies every time he opens his mouth. He knows that from his own experience. It would have been best if the boy had seen that, as bad as his action was, we still have so much sympathy for his moral situation that we will cover it up. He can only lose more if we hang it from the bell tower. It would be best if we could remove F.R. from his parents.

All kinds of problems are coming up. I have a new student to enroll, S.T. He is sixteen and will go into the ninth grade. The boy is very well versed in philosophy, knows Plato and Kant and also Philosophy of Freedom. He is good in mathematics, but poor in Latin and German, poor in history, knows a little about geography and natural history, and is horrible in drawing. We need to take all of that into account, but we cannot put him in the eighth grade, since he has already attended the ninth grade at another school. He would also be too old. We must find a place for him to stay, somehow we need to find one. Since there is no room with the teachers, we need to see if we can’t find somewhere else where he can stay.

A teacher mentions there is always so much noise in the eighth grade. She wants either to teach two students separately, or to divide the class.

Dr. Steiner: Taking them aside is not a particularly good method. You need to try to stop their running around. You could give them some extra help, but it is not good to teach them separately. You can divide the class if that is possible. The class is too large for the situation as it is. It would be quite good if you were to give them some extra help, but do not take them away from the class. Such things will always arise, that you have students who are difficult to handle. In normal schools you would not have such students, but with us, they need to move with the class. I think, however, that things would go better if you were better friends with them.

A teacher asks about B.B. in the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Such people exist, and your task is not simply to rid yourself of them, but to really work with them. I do not believe we should try to influence them. What the mother wants to do is another thing. Just because we see there are some difficulties, we cannot simply remove a student from school. You need to interest him. You can work with him if you give him some reason. B. said he didn’t take any of the plums, but when Mr. S. asked him if they were ripe or not, he said Mr. S. was really very sly. He gave the impression that he was defeated.

You must give him some reasons for turning inward, otherwise his thinking will always be like nailing a box shut with a hammer that is always falling off the handle. There are clumps of fat between the various parts of his brain, so that he cannot bring them together. If you get him to really think, he withdraws, but in that way he can get through the fat. I am convinced that he is a good boy, and that you can work with him.

You need to try to move him on so he can move to the next class. You still have five weeks. You can learn to be sly also.

Nettle baths would be useful for him. It might also be useful to add some lemon juice to the bath; in any event, bitter things, bitter plants. I could even say sauerkraut. If possible, use a mixture of all three, but no licorice. Do this three times a week, but not too warm. He should not eat too many desserts. If he has bread, try to toast it, so it has as little water as possible. He has a tendency to form fat, and we must eliminate that. He is also lazy. You could also do the standard curative eurythmy exercises for fat with him. You can also give him some coffee.

A teacher: How can I learn to be sly?

Dr. Steiner: Did you read the issue of Das Goetheanum that contained Brentano’s riddles? Try to get the book and then solve all the riddles. I am serious about that. I selected the four most difficult for the article. That is all there is to say about being sly with B.

A teacher: The Association for School Reform has invited us to participate in a pedagogical conference.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you have any interest in going there and speaking. It is senseless. Anyone who would write such a letter was not born to be a school reformer. This is all just nonsense. On the other hand, though, our perspective could be that we would just say something. We could take the standpoint that we would say as much as possible about the subject. Someone who is not afraid of doing that could go and speak about our work, although what you would say would serve no real purpose. Someone who would write such a letter has not been called to that task. It is all just show. That is immediately clear from the letter.

A teacher asks about participating in the art conference in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: Only the things we initiate under our full control have any real purpose. Participation in such a conference would make sense only if you took the standpoint that you wanted to go and talk about our work. Someone could become aware of our Waldorf School method in nearly every kind of gathering. Of course, it would have to be people with whom you could achieve something, as at the English conferences. We need to see them in a different way. This stuff here is just garbage, so we need to view it without any great expectations. If you have no particular desire to go, then simply write that in the near future we are so occupied with developing the Waldorf School and its methods that we need to devote our entire attention to it. That would be more useful than such a conference. We need to be careful to look at what people’s real interest is, otherwise we would degrade the Waldorf School. We can easily reply that we have no time because we need to further develop our methods. I don’t think it is very pedagogical simply to put children’s paintings on display.

We cannot discuss any principle questions today. Perhaps there are still some questions about the material to be taught or how to treat the children.

A teacher asks about algebra in the eleventh-grade curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: What I said was that you should go far enough for the children to have an understanding of Carnot’s theorem and how it is used. That essentially describes the whole curriculum. A great deal of algebra is involved. They will need to understand a lot of algebra, series and functions. The curriculum can stay with that. They should be able to solve problems requiring the use of Carnot’s theorem in all its aspects.

(Speaking about a new teacher) I have made the whole faculty responsible for his education as a human being. You need to be careful that he does not deviate.

A religion teacher: What should I use as examples for folk religions?

Dr. Steiner: The Old Testament. The Hebrew people.

Teachers ask about art class, Goethe’s poetry in the tenth grade, and metaphors.

Dr. Steiner: That material is included in almost all the grades. Of course you can teach them about metaphors and similes. You can teach them a feeling for poetic forms. We cannot say that Goethe could do that only after a certain age, that he could write a verse only after the age of forty. If we do, the students will ask themselves why they should do it when Goethe could do it only at the age of forty. Such things cause reactions, and you need to be very careful. Nevertheless, you can do it. In art, the problem is the material. You can, however, be guided by what the students understand.

A teacher asks about King Henry II.

Dr. Steiner: What I said was that it was his desire to found an ecclesia catholica, non Romana. That is a well-known story. You can certainly find a description of Henry II. Lamprecht is not a historian, he is a dilettante.4 He is interesting as being characteristic of the 3. See lecture of March 13, 1924, in Die Geschichte der Menschheit und die Weltanschauungen der Kulturvölker (GA 353, not in English). development of historical science. You will need to find some source book about Henry II. It is all written down. It is not some phrase, but something he really felt. Henry II introduced the Breviary as something holy. In that connection, we can always say that at that time it was possible for someone to come to the Divine Office who wanted a catholic, but not a Roman Catholic, church.

Lamprecht is more appearances, he has no real feeling. He is always speaking so smugly.

A teacher: What do Parzival’s words lapsit exillis mean as the name for the Grail?

Dr. Steiner: No one knows that now.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: The main thing is that you recover, refresh yourself. It is important that your enthusiasm blossom during the holidays, and that the flower will have become a fruit when you return again, particularly where the class is not so good. The children are already happy to know you will be here again.

The situation in Germany has become increasingly worse, and it will be complete chaos.

The lectures from Oxford should be printed. We are considering one thing. This morning Leinhas said to me that, in his view, there are so many people who have so much to say, but who write nothing. Why don’t they write anything? Even Das Goetheanum is slowly beginning to suffer from a deficiency of material.

A teacher asks how the pedagogical lectures should be prepared for publication.

Dr. Steiner: The pedagogy should be published independently, much as Steffen reproduces my lectures. Those working with the material should prepare it. You should speak about your personal experiences. Support and describe those areas of the Waldorf School that you have as an ideal, so that what results is a living discussion of the pedagogical principles of the Waldorf School. You could write some beautiful essays about art instruction. Das Goetheanum needs some real essays. There must be a real desire to do something independent, even if it is only an independent honoring of things already begun. But do something.

Where do all these useless manuscripts come from? Are they also coming from the Society? Sometimes they print really useless things. It would be good to present the things that arose in the art conference in a more universal way. Why shouldn’t that be the occasion for giving special presentations.

There is also a possibility of discussing very interesting questions of method, for example, questions like those I spoke about in Dornach. There is too little literature about the Waldorf School available to the public. Couldn’t you write something about your principles of teaching? We have forty-two teachers, almost enough that four could write something for each issue. These things need to develop here. We need to develop a feeling for how to present things from various perspectives. I wanted to give an example of that in the introductions to the various eurythmy performances, when I attempted to present something from various points of view. That is what I tried to do with the eurythmy introductions.8 When I gave such an introduction recently, people stood outside and did not come in to listen. That was during the General Meeting, after a session where the German delegates had distinguished themselves so much by saying that the Goetheanum was already in ruins before it burned. Four hours of pure rubbish were spoken during that session. It was just dirty garbage, four hours long.

I hope you will refresh yourselves in every way. In all the various areas of the anthroposophical movement, we need a renewal of our strength. It is really so that we should give consideration to renewing our strength, just as plants renew themselves each year. We need a new inner enthusiasm, a new inner fire. Of course, living conditions are difficult, and they become more so each week. Now the Mark has no value whatsoever; it is only a means of computing. There is no way to foresee what chaos we will slide into. Our monthly budget is now about DM 400,000,000. By August, it could easily be two billion, perhaps even more.

A man in Austria wrote me that he had completed a business transaction for which he will be paid in dollars. He wants to keep only six hundred dollars for himself, and what he receives beyond that he wants to give us. That will apparently happen. I asked him to contact the Waldorf School. That is about DM 500,000,000, but it is really only a drop in the bucket. It is totally crazy, the situation. I think that for a while, it will be just as necessary to have outside money for the Waldorf School as it is for the Goetheanum. This is something we should present properly. It was not done properly in Dornach. Now we need to close.