The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This evening I want to speak to you about the cultural life of our present time; and especially about the basis of the work we are doing here (Waldorf School, etc.) and of our aims. I shall possibly have nothing specially new to say to you to-day, but I am going to give you a kind of comprehensive survey; that is the sort of thing that ie necessary at the present time.

The keynote from which I want to speak to-day is to indicate that a really genuine spiritual deepening is necessary for mankind at the present time—a spiritual deepening brought about by means of those new methods of obtaining spiritual knowledge which are accessible to men of the present age,and which I have often described.

We have said again and again that men will not be able to make any further progress in matters social, if understanding of the facts in social life does not arise as the result of a spiritual deepening induced by the new methods of acquiring spiritual knowledge which are essential to it. It has already been indicated with what earnestness this spiritual deepening should be sought with the help of these new methods of acquiring knowledge—and that only those have a true understanding for the needs and demands of the present time, who are able to take seriously to heart all that the call towards spiritual deepening entails, and who, moreover, have come to the absolutely firm conviction that in the very nature of things there can be no possible kind of compromise with any older methods of entering the spiritual worlds. Endeavour to compromise here only leads to side tracks. Do you think it could truthfully be said that in our time men who presume to be leaders in this or that sphere of life, really know what a serious striving after the Spirit is? Such men must not have a feeling merely for theories about the Spirit, but for the real living power inherent in the Spirit; but when one speaks of this living spiritual power to-day it is to many people absolutely and utterly incomprehensible.

I will just illustrate what I mean by an example, Not very long ago I got a letter from a man who takes an active interest in spiritual things. I am only going to quote the contents as an illustration and so shall give no name. It says that this man had got hold of my “Appeal to the Cultural World” and that he entirely agreed with the idea of the “Threefold Commonwealth.” The writer goes en to say that he had got certain useful information from my book on the “Threefold Commonwealth” and that he had repeated them in public. But then he saye that the Committee of the Threefold Commonwealth League had sent him a copy of the lecture which I gave to the workers at the Daimler Company, and although he says that he does not venture to criticise the essential details cf the lecture, on the next page he finds a great deal to grumble at because the tone of the lecture should, in his opinion, have been different—he feels aggrieved that middle class culture, as it has existed up to now, ie spoken of in rather a derogatory way—and so on. I need not go into details. Very well, now,what is the cause of thie? Let us consider the thing as it really is. Here is a man—and it after all a good thing that such men exiets—who theoretically agrees with what is to be found in the “Appeal to the Cultural World” and has absorbed something of what is contained in the book on the “Threefold Commonwealth;” who, moreover,agreee with what I said in the lecture to the Daimler workers, but who criticies the “tone”—considers it “demagogic” and so on. Theoretically, the man agrees with much of the lecture; but it is no use at all to-day to agree with a thing theoretically. This man really hast no perception of the true state of the case; he has no discernment in reference to the manipulation or application of the thing. If I sit in Dornach and write an “Appeal to the Cultural World” I have before my minds eye such men of the present day who can respond to such an appeal I do not write down any theoriee I may have evolved—I write in living, vital relationship with those who can,and who would be able to understand and grasp it. It is an understanding which comes as the result of a vital connection, a relationship wherein there is ever present in the mind, the Spirit which rules at the present time. And again in the “Threefold Commonwealth” I do not write in order that the words may stand there in little printed letters on paper, eventually to be criticised by theorists. I write for humanity as it is to-day, in a way that is in acccrdance with reality. Suppose, now,I go into a hall where the workers of the Daimler Company are sitting. I know perfectly well how I ought to speak to these people; I know how to put things to them because I speak from out of the living Spirit! Anyone who does his work from out of the Spirit gives no sort of academic lecture! In academic lectures people have “thought thinge out,” and give their personal opinions to their hearere. But a man who stands within the Living Spirit, speaks out from hie heart—not up to the stars!

It may well be said that men who themselves are able to follow a thing theoretically have as a rule no idea that anyone who wishes, to be active in the Spirit must work outwards from within that same Spirit in which he actually lives at that moment. External criticism there may be—but I assure jou that the lecture which I gave to the Daimler Company, was understood by those who were present. If I had spoken as my correspondent would have had me speak, those men wculd certainly have laughed me out of the hall. To-day it ie no longer a matter of preserving these ancient (for they are ancient now) theoretical customs in order to be able personally to agree or disagree with something; it is rather a matter of having a living, vital conception cf the working, of the nature and essence of the Spirit which exists there in actuality. And so again I have to repeat that the question of outward similerity in the words and sentences is not the point. What is of importance is this: from which realm of the Spirit comes that which is spoken? Men of the present day have still very very much to learn about these things. For there is a general belief among men to-day that when they have got hold of the content of anything, they have also absorbed the thing itself, whereas, as a matter of fact, to absorb the content of anything many only mean that one has got hold of the text and it is possible still to be far, far away from the Spirit of it.

It is very specially necessary to know just what Spiritual Science teaches with reference to social matters, shall flow into our present day materialism. Otherwise the connection of Anthroposophy with social life will not be understood. To-day we are living, to a greater extent than we realise, within a stream of materialistic culture in every department of life, and when as often to-day, we hear it said that here and there this materialistic culture is being overcome, that is an error. In words here and there, there may be a fight against materialism, but from out of the Spirit, no—there is no fight. Some idealistic academic manifesto may be issued—or a book written—but both may very likely themselves be the product of the spirit of materialism. Above all things it is necessary to-day to realise what has brought about present materialism, for if we do not realise how we have fallen into it, we shall never be able to raise ourselves out of it!

Well, now, wherein consists the real corruption of the materialistic impulse of our time? It consists in this, that things soon burst into flame when some spiritual truth is emphasised or brought forward as the result of living experience of spiritual reality. For example, suppose someone, as a result of practical knowledge, made certain statements about the animal kingdom; suppose be wished to make comprehensible the fact that in the animal kingdom and its evolution, spiritual forces are working. It is quite possible that through his knowledge of the spiritual forces which work in the animal kingdom, he might nave to speak in such a way which would immediately make some group of Evangelical or Catholic Theologians- blaze up and criticise him root and branch without once really examining what he said, just because he had ventured as a result of his knowledge of the animal kingdom, to speak of the Spirit! Or again, one might speak. of the necessity for bringing spiritual forces into the social life of humanity, because only by first recognising them and then incorporating them into the social order can any true reconstruction come about. At once the desire for attack, for aggression, which is characteristic of the followers of Karl Marx and other Socialistic is revived—just as in the other case the particular peculiarities of the Protestant or Catholic Priests. And the tone of the things said by both sides is not very different! It should be noticed however, that one attitude has been cultivated in a sentimental-theological religious atmosphere (I say that quite kindly) and the ether in a more tempestuous, uncultured atmosphere! I do not say, remember, that the last is worse than the first but that fundamentally the attitude proceeds from the same thing in both cases.

Whence comes the materialistic spirit of the present day? What has bred and cultivated it? Religious Creeds and avowals. And the fundamental reason why this materialism pulsates through the social world conceptions to-day is that they have been apt pupils of what has proceeded from religious creeds through the centuries. It was very much more significant than is usually recognised—that in the year 869, at the Council of Constantinople the Catholic Church cut out the Spirit from the Creed. Since that lime it has not been legitimate for catholic erudition to state that man has a spirit within him, but only that he has a body and a soul. This was so, through all the Middle Ages, and there was nothing which learned Catholics of the Middle Ages dreaded more than pronouncement about the Threefold nature of man, of man as body, soul and spirit; for the Council of Constantinople had laid down that man consists of body and soul, and although in the soul there may be certain spiritual, qualities and forces, it is not permissible to speak of an individual spirit. Then the scientists and philosophers came to believe as a result of this, that when they divided man up, into body and soul this was purely scientific without any kind of bias—whereas it was the influence of that Church Dogma laid down in the 9th century which led them to do so. Such professors as William Wundt are, as Psychologists, simply the pupils of Catholic Dogmatism—but as a rule nobody sees the real connection that exists.

Why is it that in discussions of universal science one may not speak of the Spirit? This has come about again as a result of this Church dogma. Neither may one mention “soul”—at least not what is truly “soul” because religious creeds have claimed for themselves the sole right to speak of the soul, and also of the spirit to the degree to which it is permitted by this dogma. It is a monopoly of theirs! And a man is not within his rights when he speaks of soul and spirit because such matters are a monopoly of those who speak to humanity from the standpoint of the religious beliefs and creeds. So there is nothing left to science per se, to Zoology, Physiology, Chemistry, Physics, to speak about except “materiel processes.” When something lights up and they speak of spirit—they are said to be interfering in what is a concern of religion! And so there was left to this unfortunate science nothing except matter, and it grew into materialism just because religious creeds deprived it of the possibility of concerning itself with the spiritual.

In this there is something of very vital significance. It is very important to recognise that the powers which have brought about materialism are the Ecclesiastical powers of the West. We owe our materialism to the Churches. And unless the Churches lose their power as directors of the religious life of man, materialism is bound to grow stronger and stronger. It is not possible to indulge in any illusion in this connection if the question of culture is to be taken really seriously; and to-day these things simply must be taken seriously. To-day men must not want to come to compromise after compromise in their lives, just because of their human frailties. If in external life we are compelled to make some compromise, we must be fully aware of it. We must never imagine that what we are doing perhaps under the pressure of external force is right: and deliberate compromises should not be made.

It is above all things essential to create a foundation, a basis for knowledge which is trustworthy. To-day things must be sharply and concisely defined. We live at a time when knowledge of the spiritual world simply must be taken seriously. The scientific knowledge of the 5th Post Atlantean period, beginning with Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Kepler, Copernicus and having in the 19th century one of its most significant representatives in Julius Robert Mayer, follows the methods of natural science and sets to work from a scientific point of view, both are quite different from the methods and convictions of the creeds and religious avowals which have come over from ancient times. Between them there is, moreover, no possibility of union. A spiritual science which has really arisen out of modern culture must, however, be founded upon the same basic principles of knowledge as natural science. What is said in my book “The Mystics of the Renaissance” must be taken seriously. And if we do not see the spirit in ail that we observe in the world, then we are not taking that book seriously. Matter is nowhere present merely as matter. Concrete matter and concrete spirit are together, everywhere. And to-day when man says that below him in the world are the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral—he is stating a half truth only, if he does not recognise that just as from his body downwards exist the animal, vegetable and mineral Kingdoms, so upwards are to be found the three kingdoms of the spiritual hierarchies of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. It is not correct to speak of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms as lower degrees towards the physical if it is not realised that up towards the spiritual exist the three other spiritual kingdoms. For man as he exists in the physical world is connected, through his body, with the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, and through his spiritual and psychic being he is connected with these three higher kingdoms, which, for perfected human perception, are just as much spiritual realities as the three lower kingdoms are real for the physical senses. As long as man will not recognise that it is through a perception of external reality itself (unhindered as he must be by any religious avowal) that he comes to a realisation of the spiritual—he cannot understand that which must work as impulse at the present time. A statement for instance like this—that whales exist, does not prevent us from affirming at the same time something about the spiritual world. These are the things which must be deeply thought about to-day.

The fact of the matter is that we have entered upon an epoch of human evolution wherein man has become a different being from what he was in earlier periods of the Earth evolution. Of course Man, at some stage of development, was always to be found in the Earth. When the great Atlantean flood had subsided and the first Post Atlantean civilisation developed out of a much older civilisation, man's body was still evolving strongly upwards and forwards, this was still the case in the ancient Persian epoch, the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean period, and to a certain extent in the Graeco-Latin period, which lasted until about the middle of the 15th century. But since that time the progressive evolution, the forward evolution of the bodily part of man has been gradually ceasing. The purely corporeal evolution of humanity is finished. We cannot now say that in future the bodily evolution of man will proceed and progress as it did during the first, second and third and fourth evolutionary epoch, for that it will not do. For the rest of the Earth-evolution there will be no further evolution of the human body. It has passed the highest point of forward evolution and as a body, filled with the forces which build up corporeality, is facing not a progressive, but a retrogressive evolution. If by the methods used by spiritual science, we try to find out why this is so, we have to come to the conclusion that just as man to-day has entered upon a relationship to the animal world different from that which formerly was the case (man had for instance during the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch much more of the animal nature in him than he has to-day, he was more instinctive in an animal sense)—so he is developing another relationship to the three higher kingdoms of Angels, Archangels and Archai. Up to the time of our epoch, these three higher kingdoms had a special interest in concerning themselves with man. Humanity of the present must begin to realise that these things are realities. The .Angels, Archangels and Archai, were in the past vitally interested in man, but in our epoch this interest is ceasing—it began to cease in the middle of the 15th century at the beginning of the fifth Post Atlantean period. It was the ideal of these higher hierarchies to obtain a perfect human figure and this was not possible until our epoch, because man had not yet reached the summit of his bodily perfection. They had to wait. Humanity to-day with its confused ideas of Divinity which so easily make men into Atheists, cannot understand that these spiritual beings standing higher than man, had to wait until they had brought him to a point where a figure or image of his perfection was placed before their spiritual eyes. For this reason instinctive knowledge, perceptions, impulses of will, arose in men in earlier times as the result of the work of these Beings. Man could not of his own free will induce these things in himself—it was a more instinctive process—and it was the work of these Beings. And these Beings were vitally interested in the forward development of man because only when they had succeeded in bringing him up to the point at which he has been since the middle of the 15th century, had they the image or figure before them which was necessary for the sake of their own evolution. At the present time they have brought man far enough, and they are no longer interested in him from this particular point of view. It is for this reason that at the present time man is so bereft of the Spirit; the spirits have lost a certain interest in him which they formerly had. For this reason too he so easily becomes an opponent of all spiritual knowledge, because the spirits are no longer working on him. The spiritual beings of the Hierarchies immediately above us have lost their interest in this connection, and man must now, out of his own free-will, waken this interest again. As in earlier times through his body and his instincts he was instigated as it were to develop towards the spirit, now, and in future, he must develop towards the spirit out of his own free knowledge. He must, in a certain way develop out of himself new “substance” for the higher beings to use, by seeking for concepts which are their concepts, but which transcend that which is instinctive in man. Hence it must become possible for us to confront the spiritual world in a completely new way. This is a matter which must naturally be put before humanity it general in a more guarded form, and yesterday, at the Opening speech at the foundation of the Waldorf School, I tried to do this. But just because on the one side there must be discretion and caution, so on the other side these things must, be sharply, clearly and definitely pointed out. For if, there were nobody able to hear the truth about these matters to-day, it would augur very badly for the spiritual culture of modern times.

Now what, for instance, has ceased in reference to the nature of evolving humanity? In earlier times it was quite correct when it was said of a man that he was “gifted” that he had “natural tendencies to genius” and to seek for the primary conditions in his corporeal or bodily nature. It was right in educating a man to apply oneself merely to his bodily nature and by developing this in the right way, the man's genius proceeded from it. His natural qualities came out, but as we have seen, corporeal or bodily evolution has ceased and nothing will come by merely developing the body according to some kind of physical education. To-day it is to the soul that one must apply oneself. To-day one must take into account something which does net proceed from mere physical hereditary evolution, for nothing more comes out of that now; one must take into account that which a man has within him because this Earth life is the repetition of earlier incarnations. To-day we must face other men with the living consciousness that we have a soul before us. The “gifts” of the body per se, have, as it were ceased, and it would be nonsense to speak of them in regard to future humanity. In future it will not be possible to say that a man through his body has a talent for this or the other, but that through his soul he is gifted in one direction cr another. Now this is a point of tremendous significance in the life of present day humanity, for much of what was said in earlier times about man is false if it is repeated to-day. To-day when we read about methods of education which are not yet penetrated by spiritual science, we may knew that they have been built up out of old beliefs which in their time were justifiable—beliefs which had reference to the physiological “gifts” of men. But to-day these a are of no account and there is no sense in speaking of anything but gifts, or the soul.

Very well, then, we must begin to educate in a new way, for this is what the evolution of humanity demands at the present time. When we speak with old conceptions, we do not speak of anything which is applicable to modern times. Of course it sounds well to tell people to-day that it is right to regard Christ in the same way in which Luther regarded Him! But men of the present day cannot do this, simply because the Lutheran view of Christ has no reality nowadays and becomes falsehood when it is urged upon men. If man of the present day is to find Christ, he must find Him by direct perception. Just as through external perception we discover Nature, so through inner perception, we find the Christ. It is quite possible for that which spiritual science has maintained for many years to found an understanding of a social impulse at that point of time when it is necessary for civilised humanity.

Things must be considered in their relation to the whole. The superficiality of life is sufficient to show that it is necessary to-day to remind men that the most primitive impulses of their own religious faiths should be taken seriously. The Christians have a precept that the name of God must not be lightly uttered. But when someone comes and speaks of social matters, people say: he makes no mention of the Christ, therefore what he says is not Christian! But I assure you that a man is not necessarily Christian just because he utters the name of Christ in every third line he speaks! We should speak in such a way that men are permeated by what is said in a sense that is according to Christ's Will at the present time. But when one endeavours to speak in this way, from out of the Spirit of the time, people say: Oh, that man does not speak about the Christ. He ought to speak in a more inner way; and then this so-called “inner” element is brought forward in the most exoteric way possible! The opposition which we were faced with once, which suggested that after every five words or so there ought to have been some mention of this so-called “inner” element, was really the outcome of a kind of priggishness, an “old-maidish” outlook. I would, naturally, rather not bother any more about it; but it is necessary at the present time, to allude to it, because this kind of attitude does much harm to what has to be brought about. I should like to ask whether this priggishness really tries to get to the heart of that which must be proclaimed as spiritual truth at the present time. We must own that all we do individually, and all we teach individually, must be with the knowledge that humanity has within it evolutionary impulses which are different from what they were a comparatively short time ago; that, as a matter of fact, the guiding Spirits of the super-sensible world until a short time ago, were specially interested in bringing men to a certain point of perfection. But the image of man is completed, and out of his own inner being man must seek for the union with what is spiritual, in order that what he produces over and above his body and his corporeal “gifts” or “talents” may make him of interest to the spirits standing above him. If this is not done, then our civilisation and culture will stagnate and choke and rot. Anything which tries to revivify what is old cannot save us from that. The only thing that can save us from that is the courage to take hold of the spiritual with the same kind of attitude which men had at the beginning of the 15th century, when, in the face of the old beliefs, they began to build up natural science. The point I want to make is this; that we only set up a right relationship to the spiritual beings above us when we recognise that with the end of the 19th century man's former relationship with them ceased and that since the last third of the 19th century, it has become necessary for humanity to enter into a new relationship to the spiritual world. Let us be sure about this point. It is not necessary to be inhuman when we are sure of something, but we must be sure. As far as external life is concerned, it is not possible for man directly to participate in the collective metamorphosis of humanity. Men have been brought up to this through that which has remained over from old impulses, so it is with those men who from pulpits to-day preach the old creeds. Now of course we can look quite kindly in this kind of thing ,but oh! for goodness sake, do not let us take it seriously, as being truth in these present times! Our attitude should be; “Oh well, let them go on talking” We should not imagine that it is necessary to give any weight to discussions from such quarters except of course in a purely external way in answering their attacks and so on. [Translator's Note. The German of this paragraph is very obscure and colloquial and is very difficult to render in English.]

Now it would, as I have said, be more agreeable to leave such things unsaid, but this is impossible, because we are approaching such terribly difficult times. There is far too much tendency not to take these things seriously. Of course anyone can say that he cannot shake himself free from this state of things because of his position, or something, but, that is no justification, it is rather an acknowledgment that he is making a compromise. The important thing to-day is to champion the Truth even if one only believes this to be necessary from a consideration of external events. When one considers how it is that modern humanity has come to be immersed in such a fearful catastrophe as that of these last years , the cause is found to lie in nothing else than the fact that men are so far away from looking at the relationship between facts and words. There is a tendency to-day just to consider words and then to believe that one really knows something about the facts. There is a tendency to repeat phrases unendingly at the present time, and as a consequence of this, it is not realised that the facts are not necessarily there at all—even if the words are.

During these last weeks we have been working at the course of instruction for the teachers of the Waldorf School. There we are trying to transform dead pedagogic systems into a living art of education. And a truth which is often overlooked simply because people treat words as words and do not penetrate the reality, came vividly before our eyes. There came before us fat volumes of papers, printed stuff, marked “Official” on the outside. One volume is marked “Curriculum,” that is, a plan of instruction. And inside we are not only told that in such and such a class, of such and such a school, such and such things are to be taught, or (which would still leave an element of mobility) such and such a subject must be learned up to such and such a standard—but—one would hardly believe it—we are actually told how the instruction is to be given—how the material is to be treated. Such is to-day the content of official orders of Government!

What does this mean—if we look at it in its reality? Well, if you put it in this way that the official paper gives well-meaning instruction, in all good-will, how children should be taught, if you put it in this way, and do not think about it, it is easily to be got over. But if we think about it—which is a very uncomfortable job for most people of the present day—then we must realise that to-day pedagogy—didactics—are not taught in the training colleges so as to be grasped and understood, but they are set forth in laws—in State instructions; just as the Law orders people not to steal, so by official papers and instructions, people are ordered how to teach! And people do not realise what that involves. But as a matter of fact it is only by feeling what that means that we may find a starting point for an improvement of matters on healthy lines. It is really only in modern times that these things have come to such a pitch. But assuredly fifty people placed in positions where words are listened to as are the words of the members of the National Congress at Weimar—fifty people who felt what such a thing means—would do far more for the healthy improvement of the world's affairs than all the stale talk which has been going on at that place during the last few weeks.

There must, I say, be feeling for these things, and such feeling arises through the inflowing of the living forces of spiritual knowledge into human hearts and souls. Mere theory that only makes us agree with something in an abstract way and does not teach us how to take the Spirit really seriously, will not do. And to take the Spirit in earnest, means that when anyone enters a lecture hall he is one with the spirits and souls of those who are there. Confessions of faith, or creeds which are theoretically grasped are to-day of no account whatever. The one and only thing which matters for the healing of humanity, is the feeling and perceiving of one's own Self in the Spirit.

The object of beginning our social work here was to work from out of the Living Spirit. Up to now men have only got to the point of saying: Oh yes, I am in agreement with what the words say. Men are clever enough to-day to be able quickly to come to agreement with words and sentences; and anyone whose inner spiritual knowledge enables him to assert that those spiritual beings who up to now have been working in evolution, have got men to a point where he represents their ideal of perfection, would be the last to deny this cleverness. That men are clever, that they have critical faculties, that intellectually they have got very far, that in a certain sense they are even a perfect earthly creation—that is not denied, but just because they are all these things, they must liberate a new source of knowledge in themselves, a source that is entirely new. Of course one who knows spiritual life considers men to-day as being in a sense perfect beings. But just because they are perfect in a sense, and because their perfection has come about through beings other than themselves, they must begin now to do something of themselves.

It was this that caused me over ten years ago, to put moral science on a different basis, and in my “Philosophy of Freedom” to speak about Moral Fantasies—that is, about what has been created by man in the domain of the moral—because what has been, I knew that that which man develops instinctively out of himself, calling it “Ethic” has nofuture in front of it.

At the end of my address I have often said how pleased I should be, if, even in spite of the very imperfect way in which such matter must inevitably be put, I succeeded in getting some real response from the hearts of friends present. For it has never been a point with me to make this or that theoretically plausible, or clear to you, but to indicate what must be inculcated into humanity at the present time.

It is upon these principles that anthroposophical science, as I try to teach it, is based. If there were a question of anything else, it would be better to leave off working for anthroposophy, because of the simple fact that any single person who teaches spiritual science at the present time, is pelted with every possible kind of abuse. That is quite obvious, and it cannot be otherwise, because things are like this in the present transitionary epoch. The only thing to d do is to proclaim spiritual science, to give it out, just because one realises the urgent necessity of bringing to humanity what lives within it. We should not speak now merely of a “successive evolution” but of a sudden change or transformation in evolution. The development of a plant is by successive stages, but the transition of the leaf into the coloured flower petal is an abrupt one. In this sense there has been a successive evolution of humanity, but the transition from the time when the evolution of man was directed by divine spiritual Beings, who brought humanity to the point where he now stands, to the time when must bestir themselves into activity, is an abrupt one, and it simply must come about. And without the recognition of the abrupt transition there is no crossing the Rubicon of the miseries of modern culture. Whoever wishes for the sake of convenience to carry over anything from old channels, can never really enter the region out of which the impulses of the culture of the future can develop.

What has to be undertaken to-day is not the kind of thing that various people here and there think about, not at least if they are to have any prospect of success; they are rather the kind of thing that we are doing, for example, in our Waldorf School. In the Waldorf School something has been undertaken of which one cannot say otherwise than that to anyone who takes it really seriously, it becomes his deepest concern.

I, for example, acknowledge it quite frankly, that when I look at the spiritual constitution of the present, day, and see the necessity for collaborating with the establishment of such a school, there is something in my heart which I could describe by saying that, this Waldorf School belongs to that category of things which concerns me most of ail—and in my life I have concerned myself with many things! It was a thing which simply had to be undertaken. And I felt that I had to concern myself with it not merely because I had any idea that it might somehow prove not to be successful. It will succeed—but because of that we must take care that the right elements work towards its success. It would be quite foolish not to acknowledge that anxieties exist. But perhaps we have done something for this special task in that we have had the courage to be absolutely and unceasingly true and sincere. And in order that things should not be taken in a one-sided way, I wished to-day to speak as I nave done. Naturally, in the public address yesterday I could not strike the same note as to you to-day. I could not speak to the people who were gathered together in the public meeting, of the interest which the higher Hierarchies had in completing a perfect image of man, and that something new must now come about, etc. But if a tree is photographed from one side, in order to obtain a complete picture, it must also be photographed from its other sides, and so I had to add that which I have said to you to-day. In our day the Truth must be expressed in a way that is True. We must learn that we nave not only to advocate the Truth, but the Truth in a true way. We have come to a time in human evolution when it is possible for man to advocate untruly! In many places to-day truths are as cheap as blackberries—one has only to read them here and there. And in this connection human culture is, as it were, complete. But only these perform what is necessary for the future. who do not only do that which is easy. It is quite an easy matter to form a conception of even a new world concept, but those who do this and nothing more, accomplish nothing at all that works on into the future Truth must be expressed from out of the soul. To-day it is not merely a question of the verbal text, but of the spiritual “fluids” and currents which penetrate through the words. Men have to acquire a feeling for this nowadays, and they have none at the present time; they will read pages and pages without realising at all that the author of them is a liar. Oh, humanity must acquire the faculty for feeling what the source of Truth is, and not alone perceive the logic of the thing. Much more “inner” than those men think who to-day believe that they are speaking about inner things, is that which can make humanity really able to work and to act for the future.

For this reason it has been necessary for years that facts which have been described should have been put from as many different points of view as possible—because only so is it possible to understand them completely and vitally. We must equip ourselves with an inner longing to approach world mysteries and feel them inwardly in a true and vital way. My sole purpose to-day in what I have said, has been that you should learn to feel in yourselves the necessity for such a longing and also to make you feel what a sway Untruth holds in the world to-day among men of our age. It is Truth, TRUTH, which humanity must champion, with all the intensity of which hearts and souls are capable. There is very, very much to be learnt, from such an example as I gave you at the beginning of this lecture—one may fully agree with the verbal text of a thing, but not really get hold of it in any true sense, because it comes from out of the spirit. Try to understand the teaching in this way and you will be serving the task which the present time sets you. You will find out many other things as well, which you have not yet discovered and a great deal still rests in the bosom of the present which must be discovered for the healing of humanity. A great deal too has already been said and has not been discovered by humanity. Look deeply into these things, and you will find that this is so; if you try to understand these things aright, then you cannot fail to help in the spreading [of] the Truth among men—not merely in an externally logical form—but Truth in its essence. And then you will be members of that Order which humanity so sorely needs, whose motto is “Truly to advocate Truth” (Die Wahrheit wahr zu vertreten). It is possible to spread Truth in a false way and thereby often to do more damage than occurs through the spread of a lie. It is very well worth while to ponder on what this means, to cause harm through the proclaiming and assertion of Truth in a false way.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

On January 16, 1921, a performance of eurythmy with children from the Waldorf School took place in the domed hall of the art building in Stuttgart, which Rudolf Steiner introduced with a speech for which no transcript is available.

Rudolf Steiner, in all that he created and gave to the world, took his start from real needs,—never from theoretical programmes. Time and again, what he gave took its inception from the spiritual questions and interests of individuals or groups among his friends and pupils. Yet as the faculty to apprehend the spiritual aspect of the World first had to be rekindled and awakened in our time—a slow and gradual process—it must have signified a very great sacrifice and a severe hindrance for this universal spirit to bring the spiritual truths from infinite horizons into the narrower range of outlook of his contemporaries. This sacrifice he did not shun. Even into the anxiously constraining walls of earth 20th-century scientific thinking he brought the light of spiritual knowledge, and we who have received this cannot find adequate words in which to thank him. Our truest thanks must be the will to widen out our own horizon, thus making easier the teacher's task.

The Anthroposophical Movement within this 20th century is seeking to bring about a return from materialism to a spiritual understanding of the World. It is a good thing for mankind that in this Movement some individualities have also chosen the very hardest task, namely to lead again to spiritual sources that realm of human knowledge which has plunged most deeply into agnostic materialism—Natural Science. Future generations will surely be very grateful to the scientists—teachers of the Waldorf School at Stuttgart above all—who had the inner courage to put their questions to the great spiritual teacher.

We take this opportunity to thank those who have hitherto administered this spiritual treasure—who first revised and duplicated the notes of the lectures, thereby preserving them for posterity. We refer especially to the Waldorf School teachers E. A. K. Stockmeyer, Alexander Strakosch, and above all Dr. Eugen Kolisko and Dr. Walter Johannes Stein. My thanks are also due to Ehrenfried Pfeiffer of Dornach for his assistance in preparing the present edition.¹

It will be well for us to refer at this point to the following passages from Rudolf Steiner's Autobiography:—

“The anthroposophical period of my life-work began at a time when many people were feeling dissatisfied with the ways of knowledge of the immediate past. They looked for ways to get beyond that realm of existence to which the scientific era was restricted inasmuch as nothing was held valid as “secure knowledge” unless it could be grasped in mechanistic forms of thought. The strivings of many of our contemporaries towards some form of spiritual knowledge touched me deeply. There were biologists for instance such as Oskar Hertwig. Having begun his career as a disciple of Haeckel, he afterwards took leave of Darwinism, for he now felt that the driving forces recognized by the Darwinian school were inadequate to explain the facts of organic evolution. The longing of our time for knowledge seemed to me to find expression in such men as these. And yet it seemed to me this longing was oppressed by a heavy load—a burden due to the belief that only those things which we can investigate by means of the outer senses and then express in terms of measure, number and weight, constitute genuine knowledge. Men did not venture to unfold that inner activity of thought by means of which reality is experienced more intimately than by the physical senses. The most they did was to declare that with the kind of scientific explanation hitherto applied also to higher forms of reality—those of organic life for example—no fundamental progress was possible. If a more positive contribution was looked for,—if they were now to say what it is that works in the realm of life—they could bring forward only the vaguest notions.

“Those who were striving to transcend the mechanical explanation of the World generally lacked the courage to admit that if we want to overcome the mechanistic system we must also overcome the habits of thought which have led to it. The time was calling, yet called in vain, for a clear recognition of this kind. The orientation of our faculties of knowledge towards the outer senses enables us to penetrate what is mechanical in Nature. This mental tendency has become habitual throughout the second half of the 19th century. If the mechanical aspect of the world no longer satisfied us now, we ought not to expect to reach into higher regions in the identical frame of mind. The outer senses develop and awaken in the human being, so to speak, of their own accord; but on this basis we can only gain insight into the mechanical domain. If we desire to know more than this, we must by dint of our own efforts give to our deeper, latent faculties of knowledge the same development which Nature gives the powers of the senses. The faculties with which we apprehend what is mechanical are awake of their own accord; those that apply to higher realms of reality first need to be awakened.

“The time required, so it seemed to me, that in our striving after knowledge we should arrive at this clear recognition of our state, and I was happy when I saw any beginnings or indications that seemed to tend in this direction. . . .”

“There now exists a twofold outcome of the anthroposophical period of my life-work. There are my published books upon the one hand, while on the other hand there are a larger number of lecture-courses, printed at first for private circulation and available, to begin with, only to members of the Anthroposophical Society. These printed versions of my lectures are reports, more or less accurately made, which I was quite unable to correct for want of time. It would have pleased me best to let the spoken word remain as spoken word; but members wanted the lectures made available in printed form; so it was done. . . .

“To gain a picture of my own inner work, my unceasing effort to present the spiritual science of Anthroposophia to the prevailing consciousness of our time, one must have recourse to my published writings. In these I tried to come to terms with the modern striving after knowledge in its many aspects. Here I set forth, what in the realm of spiritual perception grew for me ever more fully and clearly into the edifice of “Anthroposophia”, admittedly imperfect as it still is in many ways. Herein I saw my essential task, in the fulfilment of which I only had to bear in mind what is required when communications from the spiritual world are imparted to the prevailing culture of our time. Yet side by side with this requirement I had to do full justice to another one, namely to meet the inner needs and spiritual longings that became manifest among the members of the Society.

“To this end the many lecture-courses were given in the Society; and this involved another circumstance. The lectures were attended by members only. Acquainted as they were already with the initial teachings of Anthroposophia, one could speak to them as to more advanced students. Thus the whole tenor of these member's lectures came to be different from what was possible in written books intended for the world at large. In these more intimate circles I might speak of many things in a form which I should certainly have had to change had I intended it for publication from the outset.

“Competent judgment on the content of these privately printed lectures will of course only be possible for those who are acquainted with the premisses of thought, taken for granted in those who heard them. For the great majority of these reprints, this implies at the very least some knowledge of the anthroposophical science of Man and of the essence of the great Universe as described in Anthroposophia; also a knowledge of ‘anthroposophical History’, for this too is an essential part of the communications from the spiritual world.”

Whoever reads the lectures here reproduced should bear the foregoing words in mind. If those who work with this lecture-course approach it with the will “to awaken in themselves the faculties of knowledge for higher forms of reality”, the time will surely come when the dead mechanistic picture of the world which the last century produced will be transcended—transcended above all by the most up-to-day, the most gifted and conscientious of our scientists, who will then see through the inherent impossibility and untruth of this world-picture. Then will the far more living and spiritual form of Science which Rudolf Steiner had in mind reveal its truth and beauty, also its ethical inspiring power. The Section calls to all its fellow-workers: Help the Goetheanum bring about the beginning of this new epoch even within the present century. For generations due to come at the end of the 20th century, let there be in existence a Science of Nature permeated with the living Spirit, permeated with the Christ-Impulse!

For the Natural Science Section at the Goetheanum
Guenther Wachsmuth.
Dornach, January 1925.

• 1. TRANSLATOR: The English version (1948) has been based on this edition, and on a number of corrections and improvements, issued a few years ago by Paul Eugen Schiller of Dornach.

[Dear attendees!]

Allow me to say a few words to introduce this attempt at a eurythmy performance. I am not doing this to explain the artistic aspect of the performance, which would be an inartistic undertaking in itself. Art must make an immediate impression and be understood in the immediate sensation; otherwise it would not be true art. But what is being attempted here as eurythmic art comes from very special artistic sources and is presented in a special artistic formal language. I would like to say a few words about this source and this special artistic formal language.

We are dealing with a kind of soundless language in eurythmy, a language that comes about through movements that an individual performs with their limbs or in some other way, or that groups of people perform through their movements or changes in their mutual relationships in space and the like. What comes about in this way should not be pantomime or mimicry, but it is important that it is based on the same organic law as the human tonal language as such. What is presented here is not acquired by bringing together some feeling or thought or the like – emotions, for example – with a gesture or something similar through a momentary connection, but it is also this art in the sense of Goetheanism, that is, Goethe's artistic view. And Goethean artistic sentiment is expressed through a kind of visual, sensory-supersensory seeing. This is a mode of expression in Goethe's Theory of Colors that he uses.

Through a kind of sensual-supernatural seeing, one can actually see what kind of movement tendencies are present in the larynx and the other speech organs when the sound language is heard. In the ordinary listening, one is busy turning one's attention to the sound. One does not notice this because one does not have the underlying organ that is based on something moving in the whole organism. One understands what is meant here if one starts, for example, from Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, this theory of metamorphosis, which will only be properly appreciated in the future for knowledge and for life as a whole. Goethe sees in the whole plant only a more complicated leaf and in the individual leaf only a primitive whole plant. Goethe applies this in his morphology in order to understand the living in its becoming, in its weaving. If one transfers this to artistic feeling, artistic creation and if one comes to understand through sensual-supernatural contemplation: what movements the larynx and the other speech organs actually want to carry out? [gap in the text] they only pause so that it is not these movements that are expressed, but rather the transformation of these movements into the fine vibrations of the air, which are then conveyed by hearing. So in ordinary hearing, only a tendency of the speech organs to move comes about - which is immediately transformed into air vibrations.

We will now try to explore this tendency of movement of the speech organs through sensory-suprasensory observation, and then transfer it to the whole human being. In this way, you will basically have a living, moving larynx or living, moving speech organs in front of you in the people or groups of people here on the stage: you will see what is being spoken.

At the same time, there is recitation or musical performance. For basically it is necessary that what is presented in the eurythmic art is also presented in another way, which brings language to revelation in musical form or in speaking, in recitation and declamation. This can be illustrated here, that the recitation practised today, the art of declamation practised today is definitely on the wrong track. It does not really take into account what arises in true poetry from the prose content. Today, we live more or less in an unartistic time, and so we do not always know in the deepest sense how poetry arises through eurythmy, which is brought into the prose content of what is presented in poetry. We must always remind ourselves, for example, of how Schiller first had an indeterminate melody in his soul. He was then able to create one poem or another according to this indeterminate melody. The literal content was not important at all, at least not in essence. This can also be seen in what Schiller then presented as his aesthetics.

What the recitation must now strive for here is to also feel the musicality in the poetic form and likewise the pictorial, the plastic. For language only becomes truly poetic through the differentiation of images, through the poetic and through the details of the musical. What is important here is not the content of what is being expressed, but how it is shaped. Thus, the recitation must accompany the eurythmically presented in such a way. And the eurythmically presented itself will be all the more perfect the less it approaches the content of prose, pantomime, and so on.

Those of our honored audience who have visited Dornach often and have watched our attempts over time will see that we have continued to make progress by overcoming more and more of what was initially there as an imperfection in pantomime and in mime. The same applies to music. We can reveal in the succession of movements, in the inner harmony and disharmony, I would even say in the theme of the movements, what the poet also wants to express by shaping language artistically. And so we can express serious things in a corresponding eurythmic style, and we can also express humorous things. I am working on gradually extending eurythmy to include drama. So far, we can only present the drama of the appearance of the ghosts in “Faust” or of some other sensually or supersensually conceived figures in “Faust”. We can only present the drama that rises into the supersensible. What is being attempted in this area is not yet complete; but a very serious attempt is being made to find a eurythmic form for the purely dramatic. These things take time. They need to be studied in depth through sensory and supersensory observation.

However, this will testify to the fact that, as I have said, a thoroughly solid presentation is being sought for what we call eurythmy here. And the more we gradually bring out all pantomime, all mimicry, all mere gesturing, all mere dancing, the more we approach the ideal that we actually want. That is something about the art of eurythmy.

But this eurythmy has another side. It has a significant therapeutic-hygienic side. I will not talk about that here. But please allow me to say a few words about the pedagogical-didactic side, which you will also see, since children are also performing. We have made eurythmy an obligatory subject at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Now, I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous physiologist who was here recently and who also watched such a eurythmic performance, heard my introductory words about eurythmy. And as he told me afterwards, from his physiological point of view, gymnastics is not an educational tool at all, but a barbarism. So I don't want to go that far. I can only say that if we think more objectively about this, gymnastics will be judged differently in the future than it is today. Gymnastics has great value in relation to what the human body is and can be understood physiologically.

But there is something else that goes beyond this. This is what we must also strive for in education: the will initiative, the impulsivity of the whole soul. For this is precisely what today's humanity lacks, and what the next generation in particular needs to receive. After a year of teaching at the Waldorf School, it can already be said that eurythmy has become a powerful factor in teaching, that it has formed a subject, as can already be seen from the way the children engage with into eurythmy, how the children are present, how they take part in what it means to perform soul-filled movement, where soul is truly in every movement, where the body moves in such a way that the child follows the movements with the soul. We can already see from what has been achieved in a year of lessons what else can be achieved and can be achieved through soul-inspired gymnastics. So, in addition to being an art form, eurythmy is soul-inspired gymnastics.

We will therefore endeavor to always give not only the purely artistic but also performances that are given by children. Somehow, through the child's organism, the eurythmic is presented in a very strange, childlike-genius conception.

On the whole, we still ask for forbearance. We are our own harshest critics, we know where the mistakes still lie. But everything is in its infancy. And such a beginning has to be made in all things at some point in the development of humanity. And so I ask you to see the performance as an experiment, or perhaps even just as the intention to experiment. But at the same time we are convinced that what is intended in eurythmy will one day be perfected – perhaps by us, or probably by others. And then this eurythmy, which uses the whole human being as a tool – that is, which basically uses the microcosm itself as a tool and needs it as a means of expression – will become an art in its own right, one that can stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully legitimate one.

The performance of April 9, 1921 took place in the carpentry workshop, and the closing ceremony of the Second Anthroposophical College Course as a “performance of eurhythmic art and musical performances” took place on April 10, 1921 in the Goetheanum building, with the “Ariel Scene” from “Faust” eurythmically presented with music by Max Schuurman and Henry Zagwijn.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Second scene from the mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul” by Rudolf Steiner

Prelude “Planetary Dance”

“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

“Proem” by J. W. v. Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (1.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Mount Olympus” by J. W. von Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (2.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Good Night” by Engelbert Humperdinck (children's group)

“The Beech's Guests” by Rudolf Baumbach with music by Jan Stuten (children's group)

“Beim Anblick einer Gans” by J. Fercher von Steinwand

Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Der Schnupfen”; “Der Aromat”; “Die Geruchsorgel”; “Das Butterbrotpapier”; “Mondendinge”

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

As on previous occasions when these eurythmy exercises were performed, I would like to introduce them with a few words today, in which I will speak about the particular artistic means, the formal language, in which this eurythmic art moves. The point is that on the stage we see a language that is truly inaudible but visible, a language that is performed through movements of the individual human being, through movements of groups of people and so on. What the human being performs is then accompanied either by music or by the recitation of poetry. And what occurs in the movements of the individual human being or the group of people should be the same revelation through a visible language or through a visible song, as on the other hand the same motifs are revealed musically or poetically, through recitation.

But it is not a matter of some kind of mime or pantomime or other kind of gestural art being the basis here; nor is it a matter of what is called dance in ordinary life being the basis here. Rather, it has been developed into a language of the human form and human movement that is just as essentially fixed as the language of sound and song itself, in which the human form lives, only in a different way. This has come about through the fact that, through sensual and supersensory observation, the movement tendencies that underlie the audible sound, the word formations and so on, and also the sentence formations, have been overheard in the human larynx and the other speech organs. In this way, something has come about that is as internally logical in the sequence of sounds as musicality, for example.

If you want to see what this eurythmic art is actually about, then it is useful to consider some of human development. Human development proceeds in such a way that [it is clear –] although it is not visible more clearly in historical times, but only in prehistoric times – how certain expressions of human life, let us say, for example, his ability to move, his ability to speak, have developed.

For our purpose here, I would like to point out one thing. There is an interesting fact, already known to ordinary science today, that points to an element of development in the human race: it is the fact that in the older languages, the primitive languages, for the human movement that then became dance, for the rhythmic movement that, as I said, later transformed into the movements performed during the dance, that for these “primal ic” movements, and for singing, there was only one word. They did not distinguish between what they were convinced belonged together: singing and rhythmic movement of the human body. In a sense, primitive man felt compelled, whenever possible, not to make sounds with still limbs, but to always accompany them with some movement of his limbs. He then also behaved in such a way that, when it was possible, the work he performed and in which he moved his limbs, when it was possible, he performed this work in such a way that his limbs could move in a certain rhythm, a certain regularity that arose instinctively in him.

This, which was characteristic of man in very early times, then became differentiated. As man advanced in civilization, the movements that arose from the will, so to speak, separated to a certain independence; they adapted more and more to the outer life. Only the leg movements did not retain a certain freer mobility, but the arm movements did. But even in these, I would say that in the leg movements, which were emancipating themselves from the tonal, the singing, that which was possible in such movements when they did not serve mere utility was still held back. These movements were, as it were, relegated to the instinctive will, to all that which the human being then placed in the indeterminate, unconscious will as his own humanity. In this way, the movements that had previously always been linked to song became differentiated into ritual dances. And even what in older times were called “love dances” had in a sense become differentiated. But it differentiated in such a way that in the case of cult dances, the movements, which used to be more closely related to the [gap in the text] and the emotional, were led down into the nobler unconscious, while in the case of love dances, they were led down into the instinctive unconscious will-like movements, which were also felt as one with singing, with the sounding word.

On the one hand, the movement that comes from the will differentiated and separated itself. On the other hand, what lay in the sound, in the word, differentiated itself, in that the movement increasingly passed over into the useful and the playful, and also into the cult-like in certain peoples. So that the word became the word of knowledge, into which, as it were, everything that can be expressed thoughtfully through the word was pressed from the intellect. So that, while the lower movements differentiated themselves into the useful, the words differentiated themselves into the means of knowledge and into the external conventional means of communication.

By advancing to a spiritualization of that which is given for human knowledge, the word is again imbued with the spirit, which in turn can then connect with the will. But, my dear attendees, if you want to achieve something artistic, you have to overcome the intellectual and the conceptual wherever possible. The intellectual and conceptual is paralyzing for art. But that which lives as spirit in the intellectual and conceptual can in turn be united with movement.

Now, what was once, I would say, a unified human revelation in the art of song and movement, for which there was only one name, is intimately connected with the human breathing rhythm. And the peculiar thing is that one can say that what actually plays from the innermost part of the human being, from this interplay of the spiritual-soul, physical-bodily, as it is expressed so finely in the breathing rhythm and the pulse, is more than in what is human rhythm in general. On the one hand, we can see how what is, so to speak, in the head becomes the intellectual in the word, and how, even if only in a slight way, arrhythmia occurs in the rhythmic being of the human being. And in the same way, arrhythmia occurs when the human being's mobility develops only in terms of what is useful.

If we now try to discern through sensory and supersensory observation what has now differentiated itself as a single group of organs in the activity of speaking, then we can see particularly well how this speaking is connected to breathing, how the breathing movements, so to speak, interact with speaking in one, but how the interplay of the thought and intellectuality causes arrhythmia. And we find arrhythmia in, I would say, an overly developed intellectual speech. But we also find arrhythmia in a speech that is too strongly based on the mere principle of utility.

By now trying to go back to the inner essence of man, to that inner essence that expresses itself, if I may put it this way, in the purely human rhythm and thus also coming back to how the sound adapts to this pure human rhythm, we find on the one hand that the true poet unconsciously arranges his speech in such a way that he lutes and words and in the whole sentence structure of the language in such a way that it connects to the pure human breathing rhythm or at least stands in a very specific relationship to this pure human breathing rhythm.

But as our civilization is today, if one were to start from the intellectual and rational, much that is arrhythmic would still enter into the human being. On the other hand, if we start from what develops out of the full human being in the will, we can already work back into the [movements of human limbs, especially the movement of the arms,] so that the soul-spiritual can also be expressed in the arm movement, as it was once developed out of human nature. In this way, and in exactly the same way, only in a different direction, in the movements of the human limbs, especially the arms, something similar is achieved to that which is present in the shaping of the air movements that are released from the rhythmic breathing process. One then expresses in a visible language the same thing that is formed in the air when the word is sounded. And one thereby gains the possibility of translating into the visible what is musically at the basis of song, what is poetically at the basis of formative language.

So here we do not have ordinary poetry, or a gestural art or a mimetic art, but a real expression of the human soul and spirit in the physical body, in the most beautiful harmony, in the same way as in those speech formations that are not borrowed from the principle of external utility, but that reveal themselves out of human nature itself. All that is striven for through eurythmy actually reveals what underlies a poem, what underlies a song, on the one hand from the musical side, and on the other from the pictorial side, from the plastic-creative side. And that which has lived in the poet as a fully human being comes visibly to the outside for revelation.

You can also see that, for example, all the bad habits of recitation and declamation, which are developing particularly abundantly today in an unartistic time, must be avoided. All the insertion of the prosaic content and the literal element into recitation and declamation, where one has particularly the emotional, inner emphasis – which is not intended to be a harsh judgment on the emotional, but it must merge into rhythm, tact [or into that which is plastic, image-like]. All the aspects that are particularly emphasized in prose recitation and declamation cannot be used for the declamation and recitation that should accompany the visible speech presented in eurythmy. For it is precisely that which is genuinely and truly artistic that is drawn from the realm of poetry. And in poetry it is not the literal meaning, but rather the underlying meter and rhythm, which is then expressed in the shaping of the language.

Therefore, even today, some people who are perhaps already sufficiently shocked by the eurythmic art itself are particularly shocked when they hear the special way of declaiming and reciting as an accompanying art, as it is required for this eurythmy.

This is something that is still widely misunderstood today: what this eurythmy is striving for, this visible language. Critics appear, such as “something is being shaped automatically” - one can predict - that our eurythmists showed too few facial movements, and yet the face would be the most expressive, and so on. For someone who really engages with the connection between the human soul and spirit and the visible language that appears here in eurythmy, it is as if someone were tempted to accompany what they say with continuous unnatural grimaces. That is why it is important that what is expressed should be expressed through a special language of form, through a special language of movement – and not through what otherwise also accompanies our ordinary speaking, for example, as random gestures or random facial expressions.

This is what I would like to say today about the one side of our eurythmic art: the artistic side.

I would just like to mention that this eurythmy also has a second element, an important hygienic-therapeutic one. Since the movements are taken from the human being itself, they can also be shaped in such a way that they have a direct healing effect. And movements can be found that must then proceed in a somewhat different way than those formed purely for artistic purposes, which can then also play a significant role in therapy, in hygiene. I just wanted to mention that.

The third element I would like to mention is the didactic-pedagogical aspect of our eurythmic art. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is under my direction, we have had the opportunity to introduce this eurythmy as a compulsory subject. And it can be seen that from the moment the child enters primary school, they already feel it as a matter of course to live in these eurythmic movements. They feel how what is being developed here as a movement emerges from the whole being of the human being. This has already been clearly demonstrated in the practice of the Waldorf school. And so we have this eurythmy as a soul-inspired gymnastics, while in ordinary gymnastics there are only physiological processes. So that what affects the human body is taken into account, as we do in eurythmic didactics and pedagogy, that spirit and soul work together with the body, that the whole person is engaged in the activity. And here we can see for ourselves – our time, in which the Waldorf school exists, has been quite enough for that – how the eurythmic element is a training of the will initiative, how the impulses that are unleashed and released within the human being are in fact deep impulses of the will. If we consider how much our time needs the training of the will initiative, we will admit that it is indeed important that such bescelte gymnastics be practiced in our schools.

These are the various aspects of our eurythmic art, as far as they can be developed at present. That this eurythmic art is justified may already be seen from the fact that it is used to make use of that which is, as it were, an extract, an imprint of the whole great world, that is to say, a small world: the human organism itself, as an instrument for artistic activity. And if, on the one hand, Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art,” then it must be said that human nature will reveal itself most beautifully through art when the human being uses his own organism as the tool for this art.

And when, on the other hand, Goethe says: “By being placed at the summit of nature, man beholds himself as a complete nature, which must bring forth a summit within itself. To do so, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.He can also rise to the production of the work of art if he not only places himself at the summit of nature in order to take measure, harmony, order and meaning from the external nature, but if he seeks measure, harmony, order and meaning in his own being, sets these in motion, makes himself the expression of the secrets of the world and makes visible in speech that which mysteriously moves through the human soul.

And when art is most beautiful when what the eyes see externally frees the spirit at the same time, and when everything that wants to give spirit becomes an external expression of the senses at the same time, then one can say: eurythmy fulfills these requirements. For that which the human being experiences inwardly in soul and spirit, by reliving the most beautiful products of language, the poems: that also comes to expression outwardly in the senses, visibly for the eye. Thus, in this eurythmic art, we have, quite obviously, the outer visible and the inner soul-spiritual of the human being working together, which, when they work together, give the most noble, the most beautiful expression of art.

We still have to apologize for some things because we are still in the early stages of this eurythmic art. And yet, the distinguished guests who are here often will have seen how we have been working, especially in the development of introductory silent forms, silent endings and the like, where we can show that in the eurythmic forms, even when nothing is spoken or recited, there is something linguistic, something visibly linguistic. But after all, this eurythmy is only at its beginning. Perhaps it will also be seen that when the poetic is already directly conceived rhythmically, when everything is looked at down to the last word — and that is the case in my “mystery dramas” — I would like to say that then the eurythmic expression arises by itself. This will be the case with the first part that we will perform today before the break, which is intended to provide a eurythmic rendition of a scene from one of my “mystery dramas”. After the break, there will be eurythmic renditions of other poems.

As I said, we must apologize. We ourselves are the strictest critics of what eurythmy can do today, but we are also in the midst of its developmental possibilities - they will perhaps first be developed by others, not by ourselves. But these possibilities for development are such that one can indulge in the hope that this youngest sister among the arts will one day be able to stand worthily beside her older sister forms, which are already fully entitled today.

At the meeting of the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum on April 27, 1924, it was decided to establish a special membership for young people, to last for a trial period of one year and then become permanent after that.

This membership can only be granted to minors if their parents or guardians agree. It is granted if the applicant has graduated from a Waldorf school or has similar prerequisites.

As the executive council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum, we hereby authorize Mr. Louis Werbeck as our delegate for scientific and artistic matters in the Hamburg area. We recognize him as authorized to make all arrangements in this area in agreement with us.

We will now continue our discussions by speaking of certain matters of method, and here I should like to say that in these few lectures our purpose cannot be to give detailed indications but only general principles. You can also study the Waldorf School Seminar Courses, and with the indications you have received here you will be able to understand them thoroughly. We must get a clear picture of the child between the change of teeth and puberty; we must know that in the years before the change of teeth the inherited characteristics are the determining factors, and that the child receives from his father and mother a “model” body which is completely thrown aside by the time he changes his teeth, for during the first seven-year period it is being replaced by a new body. The change of teeth, indeed, is only the external expression of this replacing of the old body by a new one, upon which the soul and spirit are now at work.

I have already told you that if the spirit-soul is strong, then during the school period from the change of teeth to puberty the child may go through great changes as regards the qualities he formerly possessed. If the individuality is weak, the result will be a body that very closely resembles the inherited characteristics, and with the children of school age we shall still have to take into account deeply-rooted resemblances to the parents or grandparents.

We must be clear in our minds that the independent activity of the etheric body of man only really begins at the change of teeth. The etheric body in the first seven years has to put forward all the independent activity of which it is capable in order to build up the second physical body. So that this etheric body is pre-eminently an inward artist in the child in the first seven years; it is a modeller, a sculptor. And this modelling force, which is applied to the physical body by the etheric body, becomes free, emancipates itself with the change of teeth at the seventh year. Then it can work as an activity of soul.

This is why the child has an impulse to model forms or to paint them. For the first seven years of life the etheric body has been carrying out modelling and painting within the physical body. Now that it has nothing further to do as regards the physical body, or at least not as much as before, it wants to carry its activity outside. If therefore you as teachers have a wide knowledge of the forms that occur in the human organism, and consequently know what kind of forms the child likes to mould out of plastic material or to paint in colour, then you will be able to give him the right guidance. But you yourselves must have a kind of artistic conception of the human organism. It is therefore of real importance for the teacher to try and do some modelling himself, for the teachers' training of today includes nothing of this sort. You will see that however much you have learnt about the lung or the liver, or let us say the complicated ramifications of the vascular system, you will not know as much as if you were to copy the whole thing in wax or plasticine. For then you suddenly begin to have quite a different kind of knowledge of the organs, of the lung for instance. For as you know you must form one half of the lung differently from the other half; the lung is not symmetrical. One half is clearly divided into two segments, the other into three. Before you learn this you are constantly forgetting which is left and which is right. But when you work out these curious asymmetrical forms in wax or plasticine, then you get the feeling that you could not change round left and right any more than you could put the heart on the right hand side of the body. You also get the feeling that the lung has its right place in the organism with its own particular form, and if you mould it rightly you will feel that it is inevitable for the human lung to come gradually into an upright position in standing and walking. If you model the lung forms of animals you will see or you will feel from the touch that the lung of an animal lies horizontally. And so it is with other organs.

You yourselves therefore should really try to learn anatomy by modelling the organs, so that you can then get the children to model or to paint something that is in no way an imitation of the human body but only expresses certain forms. For you will find that the child has an impulse to make forms that are related to the inner human organism. You may get some quite extraordinary experiences in this respect in the course of your lessons.

We have introduced lessons on simple Physiology in the school, and especially in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh classes, as this is obviously an integral part of the Waldorf School method. Our children paint from the very beginning, and from a certain age they also do carving. Now if you simply let the children work freely it is very interesting to see that when you have explained anything about the human being to them, the lung for instance, then out of themselves they begin to model such forms as the lung or something similar. It is really interesting to see how the child forms things out of his own being. That is why it is essential for you to take up this plastic method, and to find ways and means of making faithful reproductions of the forms of the human organs exactly in wax or plasticine—even, if you like, as our children often do, in mud, for if you have nothing else that is very good material to work with.

This is an inner urge, an inner longing of the etheric body, to be at work in modelling or painting. So you can very easily turn this impulse and longing to account by deriving the letters of the alphabet out of the forms which the child paints or models, for then you will be really moulding your teaching out of a knowledge of man. This is what must be done at this stage.

Now to proceed. Man consists not only of his physical body and etheric body, which latter is emancipated and free at the seventh year, but also of the astral body and ego. What happens to the astral body of the child between the seventh and fourteenth year? It does not really come to its full activity till puberty. Only then is it working completely within the human organism. But whilst the etheric body between birth and the change of teeth is in a certain sense being drawn out of the physical body and becoming independent, the astral body is gradually being drawn inwards between the seventh and fourteenth year, and when it has been drawn right in and is no longer merely loosely connected with the physical and etheric bodies but permeates them completely, then the human being has arrived at the moment of puberty, of sex maturity.

With the boy one can see by the change of voice that the astral body is now quite within the larynx, with the girl one can see by the development of other organs, breast organs and so on, that the astral body has now been completely drawn in. The astral body finds its way slowly into the human body from all sides.

The lines and directions it follows are the nerve fibres. The astral body comes in along the nerve fibres from without inwards. Here it begins to fill out the whole body from the outer environment, from the skin, and gradually draws itself together inside. Before this time it is a kind of loose cloud, in which the child lives. Then it draws itself together, lays firm

hold upon all the organs, and if we may put it somewhat crudely, it unites itself chemically with the organism, with all the tissues of the physical and etheric body.

But something very strange happens here. When the astral body presses inwards from the periphery of the body it makes its way along the nerves which then unite in the spine (see

drawing). Above is the head. It also forces its way slowly through the head nerves, crawls along the nerves towards the central organs, towards the spinal cord, bit by bit, into the head, gradually coming in and filling it all out.

What we must chiefly consider in this connection is how the breathing works in with the whole nervous system. Indeed this working together of the breathing with the whole nervous system is something very special in the human organism. As teacher and educator one should have the very finest feeling for it; only then will one be able to teach rightly. Here then the air enters the body, distributes itself, goes up through the spinal column (see drawing), spreads out in the brain, touches the nerve fibres everywhere, goes down again and pursues paths by which it can then be ejected as carbon dioxide. So we find the nervous system being constantly worked upon by the in-breathed air which distributes itself, goes up through the spinal column, spreads out again, becomes permeated with carbon, goes back again and is breathed out.

It is only in the course of the first school period, between the change of teeth and puberty, that the astral body carries this whole process of breathing, passing along the nerve fibres, right into the physical body. So that during this time when the astral body is gradually finding its way into the physical body with the help of the air breathed in, it is playing upon something that is stretched across like strings of an instrument in the centre of the body, that is, upon the spinal column. Our nerves are really a kind of lyre, a musical instrument, an inner musical instrument that resounds up into the head.

This process begins of course before the change of teeth, but at that time the astral body is only loosely connected with the physical body. It is between the change of teeth and puberty that the astral body really begins to play upon the single nerve fibres with the in-breathed air, like a violin bow on the strings.

You will be fostering all this if you give the child plenty of singing. You must have a feeling that the child is a musical instrument while he is singing, you must stand before your class to whom you are teaching singing or music with the clear feeling: every child is a musical instrument and inwardly feels a kind of well-being in the sound.

For you see, sound is brought about by the particular way the breath is circulated. That is inner music. To begin with, in the first seven years of life, the child learns everything by imitation, but now he should learn to sing out of the inward joy he experiences in building up melodies and rhythms. To show you the kind of inner picture you should have in your mind when you stand before your class in a Singing lesson, I should like to use a comparison which may seem a little crude, but which will make clear to you what I mean. I do not know how many of you, but I hope most, have at some time been able to watch a herd of cows who have fed and are now lying in the meadow digesting their food.

This digestive process of a herd of cows is indeed a marvellous thing. In the cow a kind of image of the whole world is present. The cow digests her food, the digested foodstuffs pass over into the blood vessels and lymphatic vessels, and during this whole process of digestion and nourishment the cow has a sensation of well-being which is at the same time knowledge. During the process of digestion every cow has a wonderful aura in which the whole world is mirrored. It is the most beautiful thing one can see, a herd of cows lying in the meadow digesting their food, and in this process of digestion comprehending the whole world. With us human beings all this has sunk into the subconscious, so that the head can reflect what the body works out and sees revealed as knowledge.

We are really in a bad way, we human beings, because the head does not allow us to experience the lovely things that the cows, for example, experience. We should know much more of the world if we could experience the digestive process, for instance. We should then of course have to experience it with the feeling of knowledge, not with the feeling that man has when he remains in the subconscious in his digestive process. This is simply to make clear what I want to say. I do not wish to imply that we now have to raise the process of digestion into consciousness in our teaching, but I want to show that there is something that should really be present in the child at a higher stage, this feeling of wellbeing at the inward flow of sound. Imagine what would happen if the violin could feel what is going on within it! We only listen to the violin, it is outside us, we are ignorant of the whole origin of the sound and only hear the outward sense picture of it. But if the violin could feel how each string vibrates with the next one it would have the most blissful experiences, provided of course that the music is good. So you must let the child have these little experiences of ecstasy, so that you really call forth a feeling for music in his whole organism, and you must yourself find joy in it.

Of course one must understand something of music. But an essential part of teaching is this artistic element of which I have just spoken.

On this account it is essential, for the inner processes of life between the change of teeth and puberty demand it, to give the children lessons in music right from the very beginning, and at first, as far as possible to accustom them to sing little songs quite empirically without any kind of theory: nothing more than simply singing little songs, but they must be well sung! Then you can use simpler songs from which the children can gradually learn what melody, rhythm and beat are, and so on; but first you must accustom the children to sing little songs as a whole, and to play a little too as far as that is possible. Unless there is clearly no bent at all in this direction every Waldorf child begins to learn some instrument on entering school; as I say, as far as circumstances allow, each child should learn to play an instrument. As early as possible the children should come to feel what it means for their own musical being to flow over into the objective instrument, for which purpose the piano, which should really only be a kind of memorising instrument, is of course the worst possible thing for the child. Another kind of instrument should be chosen, and if possible one that can be blown upon. Here one must of course have a great deal of artistic tact and, I was going to say, a great deal of authority too. If you can, you should choose a wind instrument, as the children will learn most from this and will thereby gradually come to understand music. Admittedly, it can be a hair-raising experience when the children begin to blow. But on the other hand it is a wonderful thing in the child's life when this whole configuration of the air, which otherwise he encloses and holds within him along the nerve-fibres, can now be extended and guided. The human being feels how his whole organism is being enlarged. Processes which are otherwise only within the organism are carried over into the outside world. A similar thing happens when the child learns the violin, when the actual processes, the music that is within him, is directly carried over and he feels how the music in him passes over into the strings through his bow.

But remember, you should begin giving these Music and Singing lessons as early as possible. For it is of very great importance that you not only make all your teaching artistic, but that you also begin teaching the more specifically artistic subjects, Painting, Modelling and Music, as soon as the child comes to school, and that you see to it that he really comes to possess all these things as an inward treasure.

The point of time in the life of the child which falls between the ninth and tenth year must be very specially borne in mind in the teaching of languages. I have characterised for you this turning point between the ninth and tenth year as the time when the child first learns to differentiate between himself and his environment. Up to this time they have been as one. I have already indicated the right method of teaching for the child entering school, but he ought not really to come to school before he begins to change his teeth; one might say that fundamentally any kind of school teaching before this time is wrong; if we are forced to it by law we must do it, but it is not the right thing from the point of view of artistic education. In a true art of education the child should not enter school until the change of teeth. Our first task, as I have shown you, is to begin with something artistic and work out the forms of the letters through art; you should begin with some independent form of art as I have explained to you, and treat everything that has to do with nature in the mood and fashion of fairy tales, legends and myths, in the way I have described. But for the teaching of languages it is specially important to consider this epoch between the ninth and tenth year.

Before this point of time is reached language teaching must under no circumstances be of an intellectual nature; that is to say it must not include any grammar or syntax. Up to the ninth or tenth year the child must learn to speak the foreign language just as he acquires any other habit; he must learn to speak as a matter of habit. It is only when he learns to differentiate himself from his environment that he may begin to examine what he himself is bringing forth in his speech. It is only now that one can begin to speak of noun, adjective, verb and so on, not before. Before this time the child should simply speak and be kept to this speaking.

We have a good opportunity for carrying this out in the Waldorf School, because as soon as the child comes to us at the beginning of his school life he learns two foreign languages besides his mother tongue.

The child comes to school and begins with Main Lessons in periods, as I have already described; he has the Main Lesson for the early part of the morning, and then directly after that the little ones have a lesson which for German children is either English or French. In these language lessons we try not to consider the relationship of one language to the other. Up till the point of time I have described to you between the ninth and tenth year, we disregard the fact that a table for instance is called “ Tisch” in German and “table” in English, that to eat is “ essen” in German and “eat” in English; we connect each language not with the words of another language, but directly with the objects. The child learns to call the ceiling, the lamp, the chair, by their names, whether it is in French or in English. Thus from the seventh to the ninth year we should not attach importance to translation, that is to say rendering a word in one language by a word in another, but the children simply learn to speak in the language, connecting their words with the external objects. So that the child does not need to know or rather does not need to think of the fact that when he says “table” in English it is called “ Tisch” in German, and so on; he does not concern himself with this at all. This does not occur to the children, for they have not been taught to compare the language in any way.

In this manner the child learns every language out of the element from which it stems, namely, the element of feeling. Now a language consists, of course, of sounds, and is either the expression of the soul from within, in which case there is a vowel, or else it is the expression of something external and then there is a consonant. But one must feel this first of all. You will not of course pass on to the children exactly what I am saying here, but in the course of your lesson the child should actually experience the vowel as something connected with feeling, and the consonant as a copy of something in the outside world. He will do this of himself because it lies in human nature, and we must not drive out this impulse but rather lead on from it.

For let us think, what is the vowel A [In these references to A and E the sounds of Ah and Eh should be considered, not the names of the letters.] (ah)? (This does not belong to the lesson, but is only something you ought to know!) What is A? When the sun rises I stand in admiration before it: Ah! A is always the expression of astonishment, wonder. Or again, a fly settles on my forehead; I say: E (Eh). That is the expression of warding off, doing away with: E. The English sounds are somewhat differently connected with our feelings, but in every language, English included, we find that the vowel A expresses astonishment and wonder.

Now let us take a characteristic word: roll—the rolling of a ball, for instance. Here you have the R. Who could help feeling that with the R and the L together, the ball rolls on (see drawing a.). R alone would be like this (see drawing b.):

R. L. goes on. L always implies a flowing on. Here you have an external process imitated in the consonant (see drawing c.).

So the whole language is built up in the vowels out of a feeling of inner astonishment, wonder, self-defence, self-assertion, etc., or out of a feeling of imitation in the case of the consonants. We must not drive these feelings out of the child. He should learn to develop the sound from the external objects and from the way in which his own feelings are related to them. Everything should be derived from the feeling for language. In the word “roll” the child should really fed: r, o, l, l. It is the same thing for every word.

This has been completely lost for modern civilised man. He thinks of the word simply as something written down or something abstract. Man can no longer really feel his way into language. Look how all primitive languages still have feeling within them; the most civilised languages make speech an abstract thing. Look at your own English language, how the second half of the word is simply cast aside, and one skips over the real feeling of the sounds. But the child must dwell in this feeling for language.

This must be cultivated by examining characteristic words in which such a feeling plays. Now in German we call what one has up here “Kopf.” In English it is called “head,” in Italian “testa.” With the abstract kind of relationship to language that people usually have today, what do they say about this? They say, in German the word is “Kopf,” in Italian “testa,” in English “head.” But all this is absolutely untrue. The whole thing is nonsense.

For let us think: “Kopf,” what is that? “Kopf” is what is formed, something that has a rounded form. Theform is expressed when you say “Kopf.” When you say “testa”—you have it in the word “testament” and “testify”—then you are expressing the fact that the head establishes or confirms something. Here you are expressing something quite different. You say of that organ that sits up there: that is the establisher, the testator— testa. Now in English one holds the opinion that the head is the most important part of man, (although you know of course that this opinion is not quite correct). So that in English you say “head,” that is, the most important thing, the goal of all things, the aim and meeting-place of all.

Thus different things are expressed in the different languages. If people wanted to designate the same thing, then the Englishman and the Italian too would say “Kopf.” But they do not designate the same thing. In the primeval human language the same thing was expressed everywhere, so that this primeval language was the same for all. Then people began to separate and to express things differently; that is how the different words came about. When you designate such different things as though they were the same you no longer feel what is contained in them, and it is very important not to drive out this feeling for language. It must be kept alive and for this reason you must not analyse language before the ninth or tenth year.

Only then can you pass on to what a noun, a verb or an adjective is and so on: this should not be done before the ninth or tenth year, otherwise you will be speaking of things which are connected with the child's own being, and this he cannot yet understand because he cannot yet distinguish himself from his environment. It is most important to bear in mind that we must not allow any Grammar or comparison of languages before the ninth or tenth year. Then what the child gets from speaking will be similar to what he gets in his singing.

I have tried to illustrate this inner joy in singing by picturing to you the inner feeling of pleasure that rises up out of the digestive organs of the cows in the meadow when they are digesting their food. There must be present an inner feeling of joy of this kind, or at least some feeling for the thing itself, so that the children feel what is really contained in a word, that they feel the inward “rolling.” Language must be inwardly experienced and not only thought out with the head. Today you mostly find that people only “think” language with their head. Therefore when they want to find the right word in translating from one language into another they take a dictionary. Here the words are so put together that you find “testa” or “Kopf” and people imagine that that is all the same. But it is not all the same. A different conception is expressed in each word, something that can only be expressed out of feeling. We must take this into account in language teaching. And another element comes in here, something which belongs to the spirit. When the human being dies, or before he comes down to earth, he has no possibility of understanding the so-called substantives, for example. Those whom we call the dead know nothing about substantives; they know nothing of the naming of objects, but they still have some knowledge of qualities, and it is therefore possible to communicate with the dead as regards qualities. But in the further course of the life after death that soon ceases also. What lasts longest is an understanding of verbs, words of action, active and passive expressions, and longest of all the expression of sensations: Oh! Ah! I (ee), E (eh); these interjectional expressions are preserved longest of all by the dead.

From this you can see how vital it is that if the human soul is not to become entirely un-spiritual it should have a living experience of interjections. All interjections are actually vowels. And the consonants, which as such are in any case very soon lost after death, and were not present before the descent to earth, are copies of the external world. This we should really experience in our feeling, be aware of it in the child, and see that we do not drive it out by giving lessons on nouns, adjectives and so on too early, but wait with these until the ninth or tenth year is reached.

From the first class of the Waldorf School upwards we have introduced Eurythmy, this visible speech in which, by carrying out certain movements either alone or in groups, man actually reveals himself just as he reveals himself through speech. Now if there is the right treatment in the language lessons, that is to say if the teacher does not ruin the child's feeling for language but rather cherishes it, then the child will feel the transition to Eurythmy to be a perfectly natural one, just as the very little child feels that learning to speak is also a perfectly natural process. You will not have the slightest difficulty in bringing Eurythmy to the children. If they are healthily developed children they will want it. You will always discover something that is pathologically wrong with children who do not wish to do Eurythmy. They want it as a matter of course, just as when they were quite little children they wanted to learn to speak, if all their organs were sound. That is because the child feels a very strong impulse to express his inward experiences as activities of will in his own body. This can be seen in the very early years when he begins to laugh and cry, and in the various ways in which feelings are expressed in the face.

It would have to be a very metaphorical way of speaking if you were to say that a dog or any other animal laughs. In any case it does not laugh in the same way as the human being does, neither does it cry in the same way. Indeed in the animal all gestures and movements which carry over inward experience into the element of will are quite different. There is a great difference between animal and man in this respect.

What is expressed in Eurythmy rests upon laws just as language does. Speaking is not an arbitrary thing. With a word like “water” for instance, you cannot put another vowel in place of the “a,” you cannot say “wuter,” or anything like that. Speech has laws, and so has Eurythmy. In the ordinary movements of the body man is in a sense free, although he also does many things out of a certain instinct. When he is cogitating about something, he puts his finger to his forehead; when he wants to show that something is not true, he shakes his head and his hand, extinguishing it, as it were. But Eurythmy leads inward and outward experiences over into ordered movements, just as speech leads an inward experience over into the sound: this is what Eurythmy is, and the child wants to learn it. For this reason the fact that Eurythmy is not yet taught in modern education proves that there is no thought of drawing forth the human faculties out of the very nature of man himself, for if you do that then you must come to Eurythmy in the natural course of things.

This will not mean any interference with Gymnastics, the teaching of physical exercises. This is something quite different, and the teacher and educator must recognise the difference. Gymnastics as taught today and all kinds of sport are something quite different from Eurythmy. You can quite well have both together. For the conception of space is very often considered in quite an abstract way, and people do not take into account that space is something concrete. For people have become so accustomed to think of the earth as round that when someone who lives in this part of the world makes a jump he says he jumps “up.” But when someone in the Antipodes, who has his legs down here and his head up there, jumps, he jumps “down”—or so we imagine. But this is not anything we can experience. I once read a book on Natural Philosophy where the author tried to ridicule the idea that the sky is above us by saying: Down there in the Antipodes the sky must be below! But the truth is far richer than that. We do not make judgments about the world and about space in such a way that we leave ourselves out of it altogether and simply consider space by itself as something abstract. There are certain philosophers who do this—Hume and Mill and Kant. But this is all untrue. It is really all nonsense. Space is something concrete of which man is sensible. He feels himself within space and he feels the necessity of finding his place in it; when he thus finds his way into the balance of space, into the different conditions of space, then Sport and Gymnastics arise. In these man is trying to find his own relationship to space.

If you do this gymnastic movement (arms outstretched), you have the feeling that you are bringing your two arms into a horizontal direction. If you jump you have the feeling that you are moving your body upwards by its own force. These are gymnastic exercises. But if you feel you are holding within you something which you are experiencing inwardly—the sound EE—and you reflect upon it, then you may make perhaps a similar movement, but in this case, the inner soul quality is expressed in the movement. Man reveals his inward self. That is what he does in Eurythmy, which is thus the revelation of the inner self. In Eurythmy there is expressed what man can experience in breathing and in the circulation of the blood, when they come into the realm of soul. In Gymnastics and in Sport man feels as though space were a framework filled with all sorts of lines and directions into which he springs and which he follows, and he makes his apparatus accordingly. He climbs a ladder or pulls himself up on a rope. Here man is acting in accordance with external space.

That is the difference between Gymnastics and Eurythmy. Eurythmy lets the soul life flow outwards and thereby becomes a real expression of the human being, like language; Eurythmy is visible speech.

By means of Gymnastics and Sport man fits himself into external space, adapts himself to the world, experiments to see whether he fits in with the world in this way or in that. That is not language, that is not a revelation of man, but rather a demand the world makes upon him that he should be fit for the world and be able to find his way into it. This difference must be noticed. It expresses itself in the fact that the Gymnastics teacher makes the children do movements whereby they may adapt themselves to the outside world. The Eurythmy teacher expresses what is in the inner being of man. We must feel this, we must be sensible of it. Then Eurythmy, Gymnastics, and Games too, if you like, will all take their right place in our teaching.

We will speak further of this tomorrow.

When we realize that everything of external nature is transformed inside the human organism, and this in so radical a way that the mineral must be brought to the warmth-etheric condition, we will also find that all that lives in man, in the human organization, flows out into the spiritual. If—according to the ideas so frequently deduced in current text-books on anatomy and physiology—we imagine man to be a firmly built form taking into itself the products of external nature and returning them almost unchanged, then we will always labour under the absence of the bridge which must be thrown from what man is as a natural being to what is present in him as his essential soul-nature.

At first we shall be unable to find any link to join the bony system and system of muscles, composing the solid body which man believes himself to be, with, let us say, the moral world-order. It will be said that the one is simply nature and that the other is something radically different from nature. But when we are clear about the fact that in man all types of substantiality are present and that they must all pass through a condition more volatile than that of muscles and bones, we shall find that this volatile etheric substance can enter into connection with the impulses of the moral world-order.

These are the modes of thought we must use if we are to develop our present considerations into something which will lead man upwards to the spiritual of the cosmos, to the beings whom we have called the beings of the higher hierarchies. Today, therefore, let us do what was not done in the foregoing lectures—for those were more occupied with the natural world—and take our start from the spiritual moral impulses active in man.

The spiritual-moral impulses—well, for modern civilization these have more or less become mere abstract concepts. To an ever greater degree the primal feeling for the moral-spiritual has receded in human nature. Through the whole manner of his education modern civilization leads man to ask: what is customary? what has convention ordained? what is the code? what is the law?—and so on. Less account is taken of what comes forth as impulses, rooted in that part of man which is often relegated in a vague way to conscience. This inner directing of oneself, this determining of one's own goal, is something which has retreated to an ever greater degree in modern civilization. Hence the spiritual-moral has finally become a more or less conventional tradition.

Earlier world-conceptions, particularly those which were sustained by instinctive clairvoyance, brought forth moral impulses from man's inner nature; they induced moral impulses. Moral impulses exist, but today they have become traditional. Of course nothing whatever is implied here against the traditional in morality—but only think of the ten commandments, how old they are. They are taught as commands recorded in ancient times. Is it to be expected today that something might spring forth from the primary, elementary sources of human nature which could be compared to what once arose as the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments? Now from what source does the moral-spiritual arise, which binds men together in a social way, which knits the threads uniting man to man? There exists only one true source of the moral-spiritual in mankind, and this is what we may call human understanding, mutual human understanding, and, based upon this human understanding, human love. Wheresoever we may look for the arising of moral-spiritual impulses in mankind, in so far as these play a role in social life, it will invariably prove to be the case that, whenever such impulses spring forth with elemental power, they arise from human understanding based upon human love. These are the actual driving force of the social moral-spiritual impulses in mankind. And fundamentally speaking, in so far as he is a spiritual being, man only lives with other men to the degree that he develops human understanding and human love.

Here one can put a deeply significant question, a question which is indeed not always voiced, but which, in regard to what has just been said, must be on the tip of every tongue: If human understanding and human love are the real impulses upon which communal life depends, how does it come about that the very reverse of human understanding and human love appears in our social order?

This is a question with which initiates more than anyone else have always concerned themselves. In every age in which initiation science was the primal impulse, this very question was regarded as one of their most vital concerns. When this initiation science was still a primary impulse, however, it possessed certain means whereby to get behind this problem. But if one looks at conventional science today, one is forced to ask: As the god-created soul is naturally predisposed to human understanding and human love, why are these qualities not active as a matter of course in the social order? Whence come human hatred and lack of human understanding? Now, if we are unable to look for this lack of human understanding, this human hatred, in the sphere of the spiritual, of the soul, it follows that we must look for them in the sphere of the physical.

Yes—but now modern conventional science gives us its answer as to what the physical-bodily nature of man is: blood, nerves, muscles, bones. No matter how long one studies a bone, if one only does so with the eye of present-day natural science, one will never be able to say: It is this bone which leads man astray into hatred. Nor yet, to whatever degree one is able to investigate the blood according to the principles by which it is investigated today, will one ever be able to establish the conviction: It is this blood which leads man astray into lack of human understanding.

In times when initiation science was a primal impulse matters were certainly quite otherwise. Then one turned one's gaze to the physical-bodily nature of man and perceived it to be the counter-image of what one possessed of the spiritual through instinctive clairvoyance.

When man speaks of the spiritual today he refers at most to abstract thoughts; this for him is the spiritual. If he finds these thoughts too tenuous, all that remains to him is words, and then, as Fritz Mauthner did, he writes a “Critique of Language”. Through such a “Critique of Language” he manages to dilute the spirit—already tenuous enough—until it becomes utterly devoid of substance. The initiation-science which was irradiated with instinctive clairvoyance did not see the spiritual in abstract thoughts. It saw the spiritual in forms, in what produced pictures, in what could speak and resound, in what could produce tones. For this initiation science the spiritual lived and moved. And because the spiritual was seen in its living activity, what is physical—the bones, the blood—could also be perceived in its spirituality. These thoughts, these notions, which we have today about the skeleton, did not exist in initiation science. Today the skeleton is really regarded as something constructed by the calculations of an architect for the purposes of physiology and anatomy. But it is not this. The skeleton, as you have seen, is formed by mineral substance which has been driven upwards to the state of warmth-ether, so that in the warmth-ether the forces of the higher hierarchies are laid hold of, and then the bone formations are built up.

To one who is able to behold it rightly, the skeleton reveals its spiritual origin. But one who looks at the skeleton in its present form—I mean in its form as present-day science regards it—is like a person who says: there I have a printed page with the forms of letters upon it. He describes the form of these letters, but does not read their meaning because he is unable to read. He does not relate what is expressed in the forms of the letters to what exists as their real basis; he only describes their shapes. In the same way the present-day anatomist, the present-day natural scientist, describes the bones as if they were entirely without meaning. What they really reveal, however, is their origin in the spiritual.

And so it is with everything that exists as physical natural laws, as etheric natural laws. They are written characters from the spiritual world. And we only understand these things rightly when we can comprehend them as written characters proceeding from spiritual worlds.

Now, when we are able to regard the human organism in this way, we become aware of something which belongs to the domain of which the true initiates of all epochs have said: When one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world, the first thing one becomes aware of is something terrible, something which at first it is by no means easy to sustain. Most people wish to be pleasantly affected by what seems to them worthy of attainment. But the fact remains that only by passing through the experience of horror can one learn to know spiritual reality, that is to say true reality. For in regard to the human form, as this is placed before us by anatomy and physiology, one can only perceive that it is built up out of two elements from the spiritual world: moral coldness and hatred.

In our souls we actually possess the predisposition to human love, and to that warmth which understands the other man. In the solid components of our organism, however, we bear moral cold. This is the force which, from the spiritual worlds, welds, as it were, our physical organism together. Thus we bear in ourselves the impulse of hatred. This it is which, from the spiritual world, brings about the circulation of the blood. And whereas we may perhaps go through the world with a very loving soul, with a soul which thirsts for human understanding, we must nevertheless be aware that below in the unconsciousness, there where the soul streams down, sends its impulses down into the bodily nature, for the very purpose that we may be clothed in a body—coldness has its seat. Though I shall always speak just of coldness, what I mean is moral coldness, though this can certainly pass over into physical coldness, traversing the warmth-ether on its way. There below, in the unconsciousness within us, moral coldness and hatred are entrenched, and it is easy for man to bring into his soul what is present in his body, so that his soul can, as it were, be infected with the lack of human understanding. This is, however, the result of moral coldness and human hatred. Because this is so, man must gradually cultivate in himself moral warmth, that is to say human understanding and love, for these must vanquish what comes from the bodily nature.

Now it cannot be denied—this presents itself in all clarity to spiritual vision—that in our age, which began with the fifteenth century and has developed in an intellectualistic way on the one hand and in a materialistic way on the other, much human misunderstanding and human hatred has become imbedded in men's souls. This is so to a greater degree than is supposed. For only when man passes through the gate of death does he become aware of how much failure to understand, how much hatred, is present in our unconsciousness. There man detaches his soul-spiritual from his physic bodily nature. He lays his physical-bodily nature aside. The impulses of coldness, the impulses of hatred, then reveal themselves simply as natural forces, as mere forces of nature.

Let us look at a corpse. Let us look with the spiritual eye at the actual etheric corpse. Here we are looking at something which no longer evokes moral judgment any more than does a plant or a stone. The moral forces which have previously been contained in what is now the corpse have been changed into natural forces. During his lifetime, however, the human being absorbed very much from them; this he takes with him through the gate of death. The ego and astral body withdraw, taking with them as they go what remained unnoticed during life because it was always entirely submerged in the physical and etheric bodies. The ego and astral body take with them into the spiritual world all the impulses connected with the human body, all the impulses of human hatred and coldness towards other men which had gained access to their souls. I mentioned that it is only when one sees the human being pass through the gate of death that one perceives how much failure to understand, how much human hatred have been implanted into mankind just in our civilization by various things about which I shall still have to speak. For the man of today carries much of these two impulses through the gate of death, immensely much.

But what man thus carries with him is in fact the spiritual residue of what should be in the physical, of what the physical and etheric bodies should deal with themselves. In the lack of human understanding and in human hatred which man carries into the spiritual world we have the residue of what really belongs in the physical world. He carries it thither in a spiritual way, but it would never profit him to carry it onward through the time between death and a new birth, for then he would be quite unable to progress. At every step in his further evolution between death and a new birth he would stumble if he were obliged to carry further this failure to understand the other man, this human hatred. Into the spiritual world, which is entered by the so-called dead, people today continually draw with them definite currents which would halt them in their development if they had to remain as they actually are. From whence do these currents proceed?

To discover this we need only look at present-day life. People pass one another by; they pay little heed to the individual characteristics of others. Are not people today mostly so constituted that each one regards himself as the standard of what is right and proper? And when someone differs from this standard we do not take kindly to him, but rather think: This man should be different. And this usually implies: He should be like me. This is not always brought into the consciousness, but it lies concealed in human social intercourse.

In the way things are put forward today—I mean in the whole manner and form of people's speech—there lies very little understanding of the other man. People bellow out their ideas about what man should be like, but this usually means: Everyone should be like me. If someone different comes along, then, even if this is not consciously realized, he is immediately regarded as an enemy, an object for antipathy. This is lack of human moral understanding, lack of love. And to the degree in which these qualities are lacking, moral coldness and human hatred go with man through the gate of death, obstructing his path. Now, however—because man's further development is not his own concern alone, but is the concern of the whole world-order, the wisdom-filled world-order—he finds the beings of the third hierarchy, Angels, Archangels, Archai. In the first period after man has passed through the gate of death into the world lying between death and a new birth these beings stoop downward and mercifully take from man the coldness which comes from lack of human understanding. And we see how the beings of the third hierarchy assume the burden of what man carries up to them into the spiritual world in the way I have described, in that he passes through the gate of death.

It is for a longer period that man must carry with him the remains of human hatred; for this can only be taken from him by grace of the spirits of the second hierarchy, Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. They take from him all that remains of human hatred.

Now, however, the human being has arrived about midway in the region between death and a new birth, to the abiding place of the first hierarchy, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, which I described in my Mystery Play as the midnight hour of existence. Man would be quite unable to pass through this region of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones without being inwardly annihilated, utterly destroyed, had not the beings of the second and third hierarchies already taken from him in their mercy human misunderstanding, that is to say moral coldness, and human hatred. And so we see how man, in order that he may find access to those impulses which can contribute to his further development, must at first burden the beings of the higher hierarchies with what he carries up into the spiritual world from his physical and etheric bodies, where it really belongs.

When one has insight into all this, when one sees how this moral coldness holds sway in the spiritual world, one will also know how to judge the relation between this spiritual cold and the physical cold here below. The physical cold which we find in snow and ice is only the physical image of that moral-spiritual cold which is there above. If we have them both before us, we can compare them. While man is being relieved in this way from human misunderstanding and human hatred, one can follow with the spiritual eye how he begins to lose his form, how this form more or less melts away.

When someone first passes through the gate of death, for the spiritual vision of imagination his appearance is still somewhat similar to what it was here on earth. For what a man bears within him here on earth is in fact just substances in more or less granular form, let us say, in atomistic form; but the human figure itself—that is spiritual. We must really be clear about this. It is sheer nonsense to regard man's form as physical; we must represent it to ourselves as spiritual. The physical in it is everywhere present as minute particles. The form, which is only a force-body, holds together what would otherwise fall apart into a heap of atoms. If someone were to take any of you by the forelock and could draw out your form, the physical and also the etheric would collapse like a heap of sand. That these are not just a sand heap, that they are distributed and take on form, this stems from nothing physical; it stems from the spiritual. Here in the physical world man goes about as something spiritual. It is senseless to think that man is only a physical being; his form is purely spiritual. The physical in him may almost be likened to a heap of crumbs.

Man, however, still possesses his form when he goes through the gate of death. One sees it shimmering, glittering, radiant with colours. But now he loses first the form of his head; then the rest of his form gradually melts away. Man becomes completely metamorphosed, as though transformed into an image of the cosmos. This occurs during the time between death and a new birth in which he comes into the region of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

Thus, when one follows man between death and a new birth, one at first still sees him hovering, as it were, while he gradually loses his form from above downwards. But while the last vestige of him is vanishing away below, something else has taken shape, a wonderful spirit-form, which is in itself an image of the whole world-sphere and at the same time a model of the future head which man will bear on his shoulders. Here the human being is woven into an activity wherein not only the beings of the lower hierarchies participate, but also the beings of the highest hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

What actually takes place? It is the most wonderful thing which, as man, one can possibly conceive. For all that was lower man here in life now passes over into the formation of the future head. As we go about here on earth we only make use of our poverty-stricken head as the organ of our mental images and our thoughts. But thoughts also accompany our breast, thoughts also accompany our limb-system. And in the moment that we cease to think only with the head, but begin to think with our limb-system, in that moment the whole reality of Karma is opened up to us. We know nothing of our Karma because we always think only with that most superficial of organs, our brain. The moment we begin to think with our fingers—and just with our fingers and toes we can think much more clearly than with the nerves of the head—once we have soared up to the possibility of doing so—the moment we begin to think with what has not become entirely material, when we begin to think with the lower man, our thoughts are the thoughts of our Karma. When we do not merely grasp with our hand but think with it, then, thinking with our hand we follow our Karma. And even more so with the feet; when we do not only walk but think with our feet, we follow the course of our Karma with special clarity. That man is such a dullard on earth—excuse me, but no other word occurs to me—comes from the fact that all his thinking is enclosed in the region of his head. But man can think with his entire being. Whenever we think with our entire being, then for our middle region a whole cosmology, a marvelous cosmic wisdom, becomes our own. And for the lower region and the limb-system especially Karma becomes our own.

It already means a great deal when we look at the way a person walks, not in a dull way, but marking the beauty of his step, and what is characteristic in it; or when we allow his hands to make an impression upon us, so that we interpret these hands and find that in every movement of the fingers there lie wonderful revelations of man's inner nature. Yet that is only the smallest part of what moves in unison with t he walking man, the grasping man, man as he moves his fingers. For it is man's whole moral nature which moves; his destiny moves with him; everything that he is as a spiritual being. And if, after man has passed through the gate of death, we are able to follow how his form dissolves—the first to melt away being what is reminiscent of his physical form—there then appears what does indeed resemble his physical structure, but which is now produced by his inner nature, his inner being, thus announcing that this is his moral form. Thus does man appear when he approaches the midnight hour of existence, when he comes into the sphere of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Then we see how these wonderful metamorphoses proceed, how there his form melts away. But this is not really the essential point. It looks as though the form would dissolve away, but the truth is that the spiritual beings of the higher worlds are there working together with man. They work with those human beings who are working upon themselves, but also upon those with whom they are karmically linked. One man works upon the other. These spiritual beings, then, together with man himself, develop out of his previous bodily form in his previous earth-life, what, at first spiritually, will become the bodily form of his next earth-life.

This spirit-form first connects itself with physical life when it meets the given embryo. But in the spiritual world feet and legs are transformed into the jaw bones, while arms and hands are transformed into the cheek-bones. There the whole lower man is transformed into the spiritual prototype of what will later become the head. The way in which this metamorphosis is accomplished is, I do assure you, of everything that the world offers to conscious experience the most wonderful. We see at first how an image of the whole cosmos is created, and how this is then differentiated into the structure which is the seat of the whole moral element—but only after all that I have mentioned has been taken from it. We see how what was, transforms itself into what will be. Now one sees the human being as spirit-form journeying back once more to the region of the second hierarchy and then to that of the third hierarchy. Here this reversed spirit-form—it is in fact only the basis for the future head—must, as it were, be welded to what will become the future breast-organism, to what will become the future limb-organization and the metabolic system. These must be added. Whence come the spiritual impulses to add them?

It is by grace of the beings of the second and third hierarchies, who gathered these impulses together when the man was on the first half of his journey. These beings took them from his moral nature; now they bring them back again and form from them the basis of the rhythmic system and metabolic-limb-system. In this later period between death and a new birth man receives the ingredients, the spiritual ingredients, for his physical organism. This spiritual form finds its way into the embryonic life, and bears within it what will now become physical forces and etheric forces. These are, however, only the physical image of what we bear in us from our previous life as lack of human understanding and human hatred, from which our limb-organization is spiritually formed.

If we wish to have such conceptions as these, we must acquire a manner of feeling and perceiving quite other than that needed in the physical world. For we must be able to behold what arises out of the spiritual becoming physical in the way I have described; we must be able to sustain the knowledge that coldness, moral coldness, lives as physical image in the bones and that moral hatred lives as physical image in the blood. We must learn to look at these matters quite objectively. It is only when we look into things in this way that we become aware of the fundamental difference between man's inner being and external nature.

Just consider for a moment the fact I mentioned, namely that in the blossoms of the plant-kingdom we see, as it were, human conscience laid out before us. What we see outside us may be considered as the picture of our soul-being. The forces within ourselves may appear to have no relation to outer nature. But the truth is, bone can only be bone because it hates the carbonic acid and calcium phosphate in their mineral state, because it withdraws from them, contracting into itself, whereby it becomes something different from what these substances are in external nature. And one must face up to the conception that for man to have a physical form, hatred and coldness must be present in his physical nature.

Through this, you see, our words gain inner significance. If our bones have a certain hardness, it is to their advantage to possess this physical image of spiritual coldness. But if our soul has this hardness it is not a good thing for the social life. The physical nature of man must be different from his soul-nature. Man can be man precisely because his physical being differs from his being of soul and spirit. Man's physical nature also differs from physical nature around him. Upon this fact rests the necessity for that transformation about which I have spoken to you.

All this forms an important supplement to what I once said in the course on Cosmology, Philosophy and Religion [* Ten lectures at the Goetheanum, September, 1922. Translation in preparation by the Anthroposophic Press, New York.] about man's connection with the hierarchies. It could only be added, however, on such initial considerations as those in our present lectures. For spiritual vision gives insight alike into what the separate members of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms really are here on earth, and into the acts of the hierarchies—those acts, which continue from age to age, as do also the happenings of nature and the works of man.

When man's life between death and a new birth—his life in the spiritual world—is beheld in this way, one can describe his experiences in that world in just as much detail as his biography here on earth. So we may live in the hope that when we pass through the gate of death, everything of misunderstanding and hatred between man and man will be carried up into the spiritual world, so that it may be given anew to us, and that from its ennobled state human forms may be created.

In the course of long centuries something very strange has come to pass for earthly humanity. No longer is it possible for all the forces of human misunderstanding and human hatred to be used up in new human forms, in the structure of new human bodies. Something has become left over. During the course of the last centuries this residue has streamed down on to the earth, so that in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth, in what I may call the earth's astral light, there is to be found an infiltration of the impulses of human hatred and human misunderstanding which exist exterior to man. These impulses have not been incorporated into human forms; they stream around the earth in the astral light. They work into man, but not into what makes up the single person but into the relationships which people form with one another on the earth. They work into civilization. And within civilization they have brought about what compelled me to say, in the spring of 1914 in Vienna, [* The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth (Rudolf Steiner Press).] that our present-day civilization is invaded by spiritual carcinoma, by a spiritual cancerous disease, by spiritual tumours. At that time the fact that this was spoken about in Vienna—in the lecture-course dealing with the phenomena between death and a new birth—was somewhat unwelcome. Since then, however, people have actually experienced something of the truth of what was said at that time. Then people had no thought of what streams through civilization. They did not perceive that actual cancerous formations of civilization were present, for it was only from 1914 onwards that they manifested openly. Today they are revealed as utterly diseased tissues of civilization. Yes, now it becomes evident to what a degree our modern civilization has been infiltrated by these currents of human hatred and human coldness which have not been used up in the forms of the human structure, to what a degree these infiltrations are active as the parasites of modern civilization.

Civilization today is deeply afflicted with parasites; it is like a part of an organism that is invaded by parasites, by bacilli. What people have amassed in the way of thoughts exists, but it has no living connection with man. Only consider how this shows itself in the most ordinary phenomena of daily life. How many people have to learn without bringing enthusiasm to the learning; they simply have to get down to it and learn in order to pass an examination, so as to qualify for some particular post, or the like—well, for them there is no vital connection between what they have to take in and what lives in their soul as an inborn craving for the spiritual. It is exactly as though a person who is not predisposed to hunger were to be continually stuffed with food! The digestive processes about which I have spoken cannot be carried through. What has been taken in remains as ballast in the organism, finally becoming something which definitely induces parasites.

Much in our modern civilization has no connection with man. Like the mistletoe—spiritually speaking—it sucks its life from what man brings forth from the original impulses of his mind, of his heart. Much of this manifests in our civilization as parasitic existence. To anyone who has the power of seeing our civilization with spiritual vision in the astral, the year 1914 already presented an advanced stage of cancer, a carcinoma formation; for him the whole of civilization was already invaded by parasites. But to this parasitic condition something further is now added.

I have described to you in what may be called a spiritual-physiological way how, out of the nature of the gnomes and undines who work from below upwards, the possibility arises of parasitic impulses in man. Then, however, as I explained, the opposite picture presents itself; for then poison is carried downwards by the sylphs and the elemental beings of warmth. And so in a civilization like ours, which bears a parasitic character, what comes down from above—spiritual truth, though not poison in itself, is transformed into poison in man, so that our civilization rejects it in fear and invents all kinds of reasons for this rejection. The two things belong together: a parasitic culture below, which does not proceed from elemental laws and which therefore contains parasites within itself, and a spirituality which sinks down from above and which—in that it enters into this civilization—is taken up by man in such a way that it becomes poison. When you bear this in mind you have the key to the most important symptoms of our present-day civilization. And when one has insight into these things, just out of itself the fact is revealed that a truly cultural education must make its appearance as the antidote or opposing remedy. Just as a rational therapy, is deduced from a true diagnosis of the individual, so a diagnosis of the sickness of a civilization reveals the remedy; the one calls forth the other.

It is very evident that mankind today again needs something from civilization which stands close to the human heart and the human soul, which springs directly from the human heart and the human soul. If a child, on entering primary school, is introduced to a highly sophisticated system of letter-forms which he has to learn as a ... b ... c etc., this has nothing whatever to do with his heart and soul. It has no relation to them at all. What the child develops in his head, in his soul, in that he has to learn a ... b ... c, is—speaking spiritually—a parasite in human nature.

During his years of education a great deal is brought to the child of this parasitic nature. We must, therefore, develop an art of education which works creatively from his soul. We must let the child bring colour into form; and the colour-forms, which have arisen out of joy, out of enthusiasm, out of sadness, out of every possible feeling, these he can paint on to the paper. When a child puts on to the paper what arises out of his soul, this develops his humanity. This produces nothing parasitic. This is something which grows out of man like his fingers or his nose!—whereas, when the child has forced on him the conventional forms of the letters, which are the result of a high degree of civilization, this does engender what is parasitic.

Immediately the art of education lies close to the human heart, to the human soul, the spiritual approaches man without becoming poison. First you have the diagnosis, which finds that our age is infested with carcinomas, and then you have the therapy—yes, it is Waldorf School education.

Waldorf School education is founded upon nothing other than this, my dear friends. Its way of thinking in the cultural sphere is the same as that in the field of therapy. Here you see, applied in a special case, what I spoke about a few days ago, namely that the being of man proceeds from below upwards, from nutrition, through healing, upwards to the development of the spiritual, and that one must regard education as medicine transposed into the spiritual. This strikes us with particular clarity when we wish to find a therapy for civilization, for we can only conceive this therapy as being Waldorf School education.

You will readily be able to imagine the feelings of one who not only has insight into this situation, but who is also trying to implant Waldorf School education into the world in a practical way, when he sees in the cumulative effect of this carcinoma of civilization something which may seriously endanger this Waldorf School education, or even make it altogether impossible. We should not reject such thoughts as these, but rather make them the impulse within ourselves to work together wherever we still can in the therapy of our civilization.

There are many things today such as the following. During my Helsingfors lecture-course in 1913, I indicated from a certain aspect of spiritual knowledge a view as to the inferior nature of Woodrow Wilson, who was at that time a veritable object of veneration for much of civilized mankind and in respect of whom people are only now—because to do otherwise is impossible—gaining some measure of perception. As things went then, so have things also gone in regard to the civilization-carcinoma about which I have been speaking. Well, at that time things went in a certain way; today those things which hold good for our time are proceeding in a similar manner. People are asleep. It devolves upon us to bring about the awakening. And Anthroposophy bears within it all the impulses for a right awakening of civilization, for a right awakening of human culture.

This is what I wished to say to you in the last of these lectures.