The Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society

GA 260a — 2 March 1924

The School of Spiritual Science VII

The first event of the School of Spiritual Science took place during the Christmas Conference and immediately after it. It originated from the section headed by Dr. Ita Wegman. This event was divided into two parts. During the last days of the Christmas conference, the practicing physicians who were present as members of the Society came together and formulated questions of interest to them, which I made the subject of corresponding discussions. The leadership of the School of Spiritual Science will try to find a way to continue what has been started, according to the possibilities available to it. As soon as it is in a position to do so, it will write to those interested to explain how it intends to accomplish what is possible.

Following the Christmas conference, a course for young doctors and medical students was held in the same section. Here, the focus was on the inner orientation of the soul of those who wish to devote themselves to medicine. This course was given in response to the spiritual needs of medical students that had been brought to the attention of the Goetheanum. It sought to give an indicative presentation of what those in the medical profession strive to know about the world and human beings, but it also sought to uncover the sources of true medical ethics, the “medical mindset.” Given the brevity of the event, it was only possible to give hints for guidance. But we can hope that what has been introduced will be continued in the spirit described above.

The meetings of the first class of the School of Spiritual Science have begun for the general anthroposophical section.

There was now an inner necessity to organize a course on eurythmy in the Section for the Spoken and Musical Arts, whose director is Mrs. Marie Steiner. The performing artists and teachers of eurythmy living in Dornach and those from outside who were able to attend, as well as the board members of the Anthroposophical Society and a few personalities interested in music and eurythmy took part.

The content will be made known in an appropriate manner as soon as possible. Here we will only say a few words about our intentions and approach. Eurythmic art has so far developed speech eurythmy to a certain extent. We are our own strictest critics and know that everything that can already be achieved in this field is only a beginning. But what has been started must be developed further.

We had not yet progressed as far with tone eurythmy, the “visible song,” as we had with speech eurythmy, the “visible word.” If the beginnings we had made so far were to be continued on the right path, further training had to take place right now — at the stage at which tone eurythmy had been practiced. This was to be achieved through this course. However, it was also necessary to point out the essence of music itself. For in eurythmy, music becomes visible; and one must have a feeling for where its true source lies in human nature if one wants to make its fundamental nature visible.

In eurythmy, what lives in music in the unseen and unheard becomes visible. It is precisely here that the greatest danger of becoming unmusical lies. I hope to have demonstrated in the lectures of this course that when music flows into movement, the need arises to reject everything unmusical in “music” and to carry only “pure music” into the realm of the visible. However, anyone who believes that the transfer of the audible into visible movement and form means the end of the musical will have reservations about eurythmy in its entirety. But such a view is not artistic in its deepest essence. For anyone who experiences art within themselves must rejoice in every expansion of artistic sources and forms. And it is simply the case that music, like all true art, springs from the innermost being of the human being. And this can reveal itself in the most diverse ways. What wants to sing in the human being also wants to express itself in forms of movement; and only what lies within the human organism as possibilities for movement is brought out in speech and tone eurythmy. It is the human being themselves who reveal their essence there. The human form can only be understood as fixed movement; and it is the movement of the human being that reveals the meaning of their form. It can be said that those who dispute the legitimacy of tone and sound eurythmy are thereby refusing to allow the whole human being to come to the fore. Now, materialism refuses to allow the spirit to manifest itself in human knowledge; the rejection of eurythmy as an art form that is as legitimate as the other arts and connected to them probably has its origins in a similar attitude.

It is to be hoped that eurythmists have received some inspiration from this course and that it has contributed to the further development of our eurythmic art.¹