Eurythmy as Spiritual Art: Evolution and Human Development

GA 277a — 7 October 1914, Dornach

My dear friends! We will begin this evening with the reading of some of the unpublished, and thus not yet printed, poems of our dear friend Christian Morgenstern, followed by some poems from the last volume to appear. Then there will be a musical presentation, after which we will have a slide show of pictures of our building. And for those friends who still want to stay, I will conclude with some reflections, in which I will include a brief note on the nature of our eurythmy, because some friends, particularly from Switzerland, have expressed a desire to hear something about the nature of eurythmy.

My dear friends! We feel that it is our sacred duty to seize every opportunity to bring before our souls the poems of Christian Morgenstern, especially those that were so close to his heart in the last period of his physical life, when he was so intimately connected with us. At the same time, we see this as something that is truly intimately connected with the whole nature and character of our spiritual scientific movement in the present day. It may be said without hesitation that Christian Morgenstern's way of immersing himself in what spiritual science wants to proclaim to the world has truly become beneficial for our movement in a spiritual sense, too, which is, after all, only at the beginning of its development.

Most of the friends gathered here know from various cycles and individual lectures that I have given here and there in the very last few months that one of my most significant occult experiences of late has been spending time with Christian Morgenstern after his death. And I have not held back the very experience that is so significant in connection with Christian Morgenstern for the blessing that flows to our movement from the spiritual worlds: that a poet could find his way to our movement and connect his soul so intimately with it that that, so to speak, the elements of his present nature in the spiritual worlds include that cosmic tableau, which – with the means of the spiritual world, and at the same time as an integral part of Christian Morgenstern – reveals the truth of that which we have to recognize and teach. Yes, my dear friends, this is something extraordinarily significant, something that can instill tremendous confidence in the inner truth, but also in the inner driving force of our movement. We know that something like the confluence of the spiritual cosmic universe is now connected with Christian Morgenstern's own being. Just as in a large tableau by a painter, a real painter on the physical plane, one sees many of the secrets of the physical world flowing together, so in the spiritual world, because there the human being has to give not only his abilities to what it offers, but his whole being, so the whole being of Christian Morgenstern is connected with this, I would say, cosmic painting in which he now lives. And it is one of the most moving experiences one can have to see how he is only now living in the spiritual world with his true and genuine nature. It is one of the most harrowing experiences to see how this human being lived in the physical world, locked into the most diverse inhibitions, and how it can now - conceivable, tangible for those who love this person - develop freely in the spiritual world. It is harrowing how we can only fully get to know such a being when we grasp its meaning after death.

Thus, after his death, Christian Morgenstern appears to me today as a spiritual leader of many people who, in the recent past, have ascended into the spiritual worlds during the spiritual development of humanity. These people have experienced tremendous advancement in that they were, in a sense, endowed with inner longings for the spiritual worlds in the physical world and yet could not find them. They brought this longing with them. We spoke of these longings on the day the foundation stone was laid, with reference to a particular personality: Herman Grimm. I showed how close he had come to grasping the spiritual world, and yet could not find it. For him and for many others it means an enormous advance that, expressed in human words, they can now be convinced of what they sought and could not find: they can be convinced that they have it in the soul of Christian Morgenstern. Not that they could not otherwise find it in the spiritual world; but it is something else to have it in this way. That is the tremendous blessing of Christian Morgenstern's having connected with the spirit of our movement and thus having had the opportunity to carry it up so that those beings in the spiritual world who longed to know anthroposophy could see it.

In my dealings with Christian Morgenstern, I often had to think of two facts after his death. One of them is connected with one of the greatest representatives of modern spiritual life, Goethe. Now, we all know Goethe as the poet of “Faust”, as one of the truest poets of all times, because he fought and suffered through in his own soul what he had portrayed in “Faust”. You all know that the second part of Faust ends with Faust's ascent into the spiritual worlds. Goethe had to depict this, but in Goethe's time there was no possibility of finding images that corresponded to the truth as it must be seen today. And in a certain respect it seems tragic when we read a conversation between Goethe and Eckermann, in which he speaks of the difficulties he had when he set out to complete the second part of “Faust” and to visualize Faust's ascent into the higher worlds. He says:

"You will admit, however, that the conclusion, where the saved soul ascends, was very difficult to express, and that with such supersensible, barely conceivable things, could very easily have lost myself in vagueness if I had not given my poetic intentions a beneficently restrictive form and firmness through the sharply outlined Christian-ecclesiastical figures and ideas.

We know that Goethe had to resort to these traditional Christian ecclesiastical forms, that he had to clothe the soul's passage into the supersensible world in these forms. But we also know that he had a yearning for what we are trying to express in new forms today, in forms that are appropriate for our time.

It is of infinite importance that our movement found a poet like Christian Morgenstern right at the beginning, who was able to directly translate everything that this movement could give him into personal feelings, which sound to us in particular so warm, so wonderfully loving from his posthumous poems. That he was able, right at the beginning of our movement, to absorb so directly and so fundamentally what our movement could give him is of tremendous significance, because Christian Morgenstern elevated everything personal to a transpersonal sphere that is connected to the starting points of our movement. That something like this is possible is truly connected to the trust that can be placed in our movement.

The other fact that I must always bear in mind during these days is the following: I once pointed out in a lecture in Berlin that I had a conversation with Herman Grimm, who was so close to all the longings that lead to an understanding of the supersensible worlds according to our way of thinking. In the conversation I tried to touch on these things. He only had a defensive reaction to this; he did not want to let it approach him. It was deeply distressing to see this peculiar behavior, especially in Herman Grimm, towards the form of intellectual life that is so very much our own in our time. I would like to mention that Herman Grimm was Goethe's accredited representative for the second half of the 19th century. All the efforts of our movement are directed towards pointing out to those spirits who are now in the spiritual world what Christian Morgenstern can tell them.

So you see how we try to elevate what we feel as our connection, as our relationship, our love for Christian Morgenstern, into transpersonal spheres. I have tried to hint at this in a few words.

If you follow what is to be presented to you now with your feelings, you will sense through the words of Christian Morgenstern in a different way what he is and will become for our entire movement. At one point in particular, one will feel deeply touched in one's heart in view of the events of these days. Even though Christian Morgenstern, when he wrote the little poem, of course meant a completely different war from the one we are experiencing today, in view of today's events, what this little poem contains goes deep to the heart.

So now, before I continue with these reflections, we will first listen to something from the posthumous poems of our dear friend Christian Morgenstern.

Recitation by Marie Steiner-von Sivers “From the posthumous poems of Christian Morgenstern”. It is not recorded which poems were recited, but they certainly included the following two:

ANTHROPOSOPHY Oh world, - you poor human, you who do not know, what is happening here in the midst of you . The true greatness of this confused time is vividly and humanly brought to life here, a piece of the most sublime history unrolls here before us - and we are part of it! I watch myself. Perhaps this will call for victory.

Oh great world, you poor mother (once again - oh dreamer!) you do not know, you do not suspect, what is being born within you.

(1911)

I

watch as the old world rises up within me and fights again and again, and how the new one gently glides over it, so alternately darkened and illuminated.

I watch. How will the war end? Will the murky smoke settle to the ground and dawn clarity gather over it? (1909)

Music. Presentation of pictures of the construction of the Goetheanum. Music.

My dear friends! Perhaps you have already gathered from much of what has been said here and in other places in the field of spiritual science – including the introductory words about our dear friend Christian Morgenstern – that it is important to me to take all our endeavors, including those that are linked to our endeavors, as a whole, as something unified, and that it is particularly important to me that this whole, which is to be incorporated into the evolution of humanity as an impulse for a new spiritual culture, really does connect with the longings, hopes and expectations of the spiritual culture of the immediate past. I tried to emphasize this in particular here at the celebration commemorating the laying of the foundation stone of our building. Our spiritual science and its aspirations, and also, among other things, what has just been shown before your eyes as pictures of our building, and finally what is to be introduced into our cultural context as eurythmy, should be seen as a unified whole, but also as something that is not just a whole in itself, but connects to something that has been awaited. And when I tried to draw a line from Goethe to Christian Morgenstern to Herman Grimm, this was only intended to give two examples of how, on the one hand, the development of humanity really gives us to believe in a deeper optimism in the progress of human development, but on the other hand also that spiritual factors and impulses continually intervene in human development. I have tried to lead you to your souls, as Goethe, at the end of his “Faust”, had to depict Faust's ascent into the spiritual worlds with old Christian-Catholic forms, and I have pointed out how in the poet Christian Morgenstern someone has found his way to us who has begun to shape the spiritual life, the supersensible worlds, into new forms, as is necessary for the human being of the present. From some of the poems left behind, from some of these words, you will have heard again how poetry can unite, most intimately unite, with what we mean by spiritual life: that a new relationship be found between the life of the human being on the physical plane and his or her connection to the spiritual worlds, and how spiritual factors intervene in the further development of humanity. I tried to make it clear by daring to express what may be expressed among true anthroposophists: that Herman Grimm, who may be called Goethe's accredited governor in the second half of the 19th century, may now find in the sight of what Christian Morgenstern was already able to carry up into the spiritual worlds what he could not find on earth in his physical body. There we see the interaction of the spiritual with the physical progress of humanity.

And are we not, my dear friends, seeking a new form for the old beauty with all that is expressed in our structure? Because beauty means much more than what is usually associated with this idea, with this concept. One has only to realize how diverse human progress is in order to understand what it means that in any age like ours, new forms of beauty, new forms of the whole human soul-attitude, should emerge. It must come about that out of the impulses of spiritual science, as we understand it, something develops that signifies progress compared to what came before, that goes even further than what Goethe himself could want in Faust. We must hope for something like that. When Goethe felt the longing to immerse himself in beauty, he could do nothing but go to Rome to relive Greek beauty in his soul. Basically, the whole of the 19th century could do nothing but go to Rome to relive Greek beauty. But the age has come when one must not only go to Rome, not only immerse oneself in classical Greek forms of beauty, but one must enter into spiritual worlds in order to find new forms of beauty from the spiritual worlds. And it must be emphasized that the past age, so to speak, thirsted for such an approach to an epoch of spiritual experience. More than the present time suspects, it expresses itself in just such a spirit as that of Herman Grimm, this representative of Goetheanism in the second half of the 19th century. Not to say something about Herman Grimm, but to show by his example what is expected of the spiritual life of our present time, I would like to insert this link, Herman Grimm, into the development of humanity as it has taken place from Goethe to us, who may consider ourselves as really living and striving in what, at bottom, was also the will of Goethe in the inmost part of his heart, in the inmost part of his soul. The way in which spiritual life progresses in the evolution of humanity is manifold and accessible only to deeper contemplation.

You know that I only mention personal matters when there is an objective reason to do so. Now, when I turn my thoughts to the evolution of humanity, I must sometimes mention a weak attempt that I made as a very young man. This writing was the second thing of mine to be printed. At that time I tried, childishly of course, for I was only 23 or 24 years old, to realize that progress from what Shakespearean figures are to what Goethe's Faust is. Through Shakespeare something was created that had to be created in his age, in which human beings could only be portrayed as archetypes, in such a way that the way they are portrayed directly reveals an unfolding of their inner soul forces. The progress in Goethe's “Faust” lies in the fact that Goethe did not present the individual figures as individual types - like Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth and so on in Shakespeare - but presented Faust as the human being of our age. Faust can only be placed in a poem once; what Shakespeare had to give could be placed before people in many human types. One must consider the diversity of human spiritual life in evolution in such a way that in each age precisely what must happen as the characteristic of this age is expressed.

And if we seek today to find a true soul-feeling, a true and deep feeling of the affiliation of the human soul to the higher hierarchies, then this is really - as it presents itself to us in spiritual science - in a certain sense the fulfillment of expectations, of expectations that have been there in the development of mankind, that one can say: It is precisely such representative spirits as Herman Grimm who, in their own way, express the deepest longing for something that they are waiting for and which must be given in the way we describe today the higher hierarchies and their relationship to the human being. You see, a spirit like Herman Grimm was able to express this most deeply, most soulfully, one might say, most powerfully at the core of the soul. And yet, whenever we open his books, we see once more how his personality is connected with the expectation of spiritual science, which, when it fleetingly came to him, he was unable to understand. It was necessary that something similar should happen as it was after Christian Morgenstern's death.

I once met Herman Grimm during his visit to the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar. He talked about how he imagined the evolution of humanity, that history was not a list of what is usually recorded as history; for him, history is an evolution of spiritual forces. But he could only bring himself to call it a history of the imaginative work of human beings. It was not possible for him to grasp that there are imaginations in the development of humanity that unconsciously flow into humanity and are transformed into human activity, that there are inspirations and intuitions in history. To him, it was 'the imaginative work of nations'. He could not come to replace the purely external, factual aspect of the Maya, which he called the “imagination work of the peoples”, with that which must present itself in the human spirit if it is to find its way out of the physical world and into the spiritual one. Only in the future will we understand what it meant for the nineteenth century when Herman Grimm said: What can interest us particularly in the way history has handed down the story of Julius Caesar? Julius Caesar – Herman Grimm says – interests me much more as he is portrayed by Shakespeare. That is truer, more historical than anything presented in historiography. – He repeatedly pointed out how much he likes to read Tacitus, for the reason that he was a person who knew how to bring to life and transform into the spiritual what he had to describe. From such conceptions there arose such a wonderful thought as that which Herman Grimm wrote down in the nineties and which is found in his book on Homer, a thought which really stands there as the expectation of what is to come as tidings from the Hierarchies: ” Recognizing themselves as a totality, human beings acknowledge that they are subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist, and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their inner disputes.

What a wonderful image of the court enthroned in the clouds, under which the nations know themselves! Does not all yearning for the hierarchies, for knowledge of what the hierarchies are for humanity, live in this?

Thus, in the newer development of the spirit, spirits had emerged who, in their historical conception, had something like a kind of transformative ability, so that here too such spirits stand at the gateway of what spiritual science wants. Only through spiritual science will humanity gain a true conception of the fact that something has really been added to world evolution by Herman Grimm's speaking as he did about Michelangelo, Raphael, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Voltaire and Homer, and will learn to feel this thought of the essential evolution in the world in its heart. And if you remember what Herman Grimm said about the Christ, you will have something like an expectation of what spiritual science says about the Christ. So you have another example of what is really very important to me when we consider the entry of spiritual science into today's life: to show how spiritual science comes as the fulfillment of much that has been expected. In 1895 the book was published in which there is mention of the “throne of judgment enthroned in the clouds”. One really feels in intimate connection with what was there, when one may then speak of a sequence of hierarchies; the image is translated into the spiritual, which reflects the inner truth of the matter.

And even the beginnings of this inner ability to transform were already apparent. For just as Herman Grimm spoke, for example, about Michelangelo, Raphael, Homer, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Voltaire, especially in the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the way in which he the way he knew how to bring Emerson's writings to life in the 1850s shows us something of the transformability that the serious part of humanity strives for and which can now find its fulfillment in spiritual science. And spiritual science must give precisely that which can become the most personal for each person, so that human feeling becomes the broadest, the very broadest, but in return also the most intense.

One would really like to say: Especially in such a representative spirit as Herman Grimm - with whom I believe I can increasingly associate more and more of our friend Christian Morgenstern's work for the spiritual world - the striving for the spiritual is evident, and it is important not to pass over these facts. When Goethe died, Herman Grimm was four years old. He died in Berlin on June 16, 1901 at the age of seventy-three. He lived through the second half of the nineteenth century in such a way that his personality had to show a unity with all the impulses of beauty that had flowed from Goethe into humanity.

In a wonderful way, one sees this tendency of humanity towards the spiritual in Herman Grimm in particular, this development of an organ for understanding the spiritual. And time and again, especially when I consider the cultural value of our eurythmy – yes, perhaps I may say so – I have to think of the external gestures in the life of Herman Grimm. Time and again I have to see how, in Herman Grimm's external gestures, everything was one, and there was no disharmony, which of course occurs particularly within materialistic life, where one does not see at all where the spiritual passes into the physical. It is enough to make you want to tear your hair out when you see all the modern sports, such as football and so on, and the way they mechanize people and add nothing of what is spiritual in them, however much they imagine they do. Everything that is striven for there is a mockery of the spiritual, however well it is meant. In contrast to this, a figure like Herman Grimm, in whom everything external is in harmony with the soul, appears as something unified: the way he walked, the fact that he always wore a top hat, all belong to the whole of his personality, the way he moved his hands, the way he spoke, the way he spent his time in Bolzano when he was working on his Homer book, the way he could only write the Homer book when he was awaiting spring in Bolzano. It all fits together so beautifully; how he writes at the Homer book, how he goes out as the days grow shorter and looks at the wonderful statue of Walther von der Vogelweide in the park in Bolzano, how he knows how to depict it down to the very gesture, , how he knows how to depict the wonderful marble that comes from the quarries near Bolzano, and how he knows how to incorporate everything he creates, everything he does, into the intellectual life in which he is immersed.

I dare to judge some things myself, since I myself was close to a center of German intellectual life for a while. From 1889 to 1897 I was in Weimar at Goethe's workplace, with which Herman Grimm was also connected. There one could feel how Goethe was the king of intellectual life and Herman Grimm his governor, accredited by the intellectual powers. One could feel with Herman Grimm how he tried to grasp everything that was connected to Goethe in a spiritual harmony of gestures. It was his endeavor to take Goethe spiritually. It was, so to speak, his endeavor to recognize the deceased Goethe, but one who lived on in his impulses, as weaving and living in the spiritual life in which one felt oneself to be included. It was the beginning of how we feel today, that the deceased are intimately connected with us, and that they live with us, as it were, only in a different form than before they passed through the gate of death. There was an effort to combine all the individual phases, all the individual moments of life into one gesture, with a spiritual gesture.

I am quite sure, my dear friends, that some things might have led me even then to what can be achieved in spiritual science, but not to what our eurythmy presents, if I had not been so close to this spiritual life at the time had I not seen for myself that there was an endeavour, in the way it could be at that time, to evoke something that is spiritual and at the same time really comes to life in the outer world, is really there in the outer world. Of course, all of this is part of a great karmic context, it is no coincidence. There is something like an inner eurhythmy in the way Herman Grimm wanted to live: the way he had the wonderful ability to transform himself as a very young man to take Emerson into German culture in a way that no other country has been taken into, the way he drew attention to the fact that that Emerson should be read more widely because he represented the best side of Americanism, how he resurrected Voltaire, how he resurrected Michelangelo, how he resurrected Raphael, and also Goethe, about whom he gave his wonderful lectures at the beginning of the 1870s at the University of Berlin. There were many things about these lectures that were not quite right for scholars. But in every thought, in every word, in every sentence of these lectures, Goethe lives; he is in them again, is in them with his own spirit. And Herman Grimm really wanted to give something to the life around him with his book “Goethe”. It was a unique event that Goethe, who had been physically dead since 1832 and who had almost been forgotten, was revived in the 1870s by Herman Grimm.

But now, because I spoke of the unified gesture, I would like to point out how Herman Grimm always strove to see all things in a larger context, how he is truly able to become a teacher in this regard for all those who seek the transition from the spiritual life of the 19th century to the spiritual life of anthroposophy. Goethe is something universal for humanity; in his 'Contributions to Cultural History', Herman Grimm draws attention to the way in which Goethe became earthly universal after passing through the portal of death into the spiritual world. Herman Grimm quotes a beautiful passage from one of Carlyle's lectures in 1838: “When a man like Goethe appears in an epoch, whatever that epoch may be, his appearance is the greatest thing that can happen in its course. He is the center. All intellectual influence radiates from him. Of him it must be said, as of Shakespeare: None was there like him before he came. He was not like Shakespeare, but the same clarity, the same spirit of tolerance, the same depth of human nature prevailed in both of them.

At the same time, such a word points to the universal, to that which cuts into all human relationships, which does not make us see the poet, the spiritual hero, as merely enthroned in the clouds, but as truly intervening in spiritual conditions. Thus, in the whole consciousness of Herman Grimm, there was something about Goethe that was truly capable of taking Goethe's spirit so universally that Goethe could appear to him as the spiritual emperor, the emperor of spiritual life. And in a different way, my dear friends, than one is otherwise accustomed to in the world, the free personality, the complete free reign of the personality, the self-assurance, is expressed in someone like Herman Grimm. One can truly say: In Herman Grimm lives something that allowed him to take external circumstances as they are, but on the other hand always let him base himself on what he had within as his spiritual life; and he judged all worldly circumstances according to the security of this spiritual life.

Thus the moment arises when, one might say, in his quietly distinguished manner, Herman Grimm could see a supreme moment when a monarch of the outer world pays homage to the spiritual emperor. This is also a gesture of this world, of unspeakable significance. I know that many have taken offense at it, but one must take things in their deeper context. Many have been offended by the fact that Herman Grimm mentions an event that happened to him on Christmas Eve 1876. But this fact is significant because it leads to a point where, in more recent times, there stands a man who feels it to be natural for a monarch of the external world to pay homage to the spiritual emperor. Thus it seems to me to be most significant for the newer spiritual life when Herman Grimm, in his “Contributions to German Cultural History”, relates how on Christmas Eve 1876 the following letter from the German Emperor Wilhelm I was delivered to him:

"My perusal of your book ‘Goethe’, a copy of which you presented to me on the 20th of last month, has given me very pleasant impressions. You have succeeded in sensitively adding many a lifelike trait to the luminous image of the great poet and in gaining new insights into the relationships between the external events of his life and his works. I am convinced that this thoughtful gift, given to the poet's admirers just before Christmas, will be recognized as a valuable addition to Goethe literature, and I thank you most sincerely for the pleasure I have personally gained from the book. Berlin, December 24, 1876. Wilhelm.

Herman Grimm had kind words to say after receiving this letter; for a mind like Herman Grimm's enjoyed the relationship between the intellectual and the secular life. And in this light he also saw Goethe and his time, seeking to climb up to what escapes many people. And so it came about that Herman Grimm, following this letter, gave a beautiful and remarkable description of the confluence of spiritual life with the life of the outer world in the 19th century. He says: “From Weimar” – for Weimar was for Herman Grimm the first capital of German intellectual life; I know this and have often rejoiced in it – “From Weimar the basic lines of Germany's intellectual development had been so firmly drawn that Goethe's views remained the natural standard. And when, in the rush of national political needs, Shakespeare rose beside him, he was like a mere appendage to the Goethean empire. For Schlegel had translated Shakespeare into Goethe's German on Goethe's behalf, as it were, and Goethe and Shakespeare united as if to form a single effective power.” Etc., etc.

And now follow the beautiful words: “And so the Emperor understood Goethe. Goethe was not only the great poet, the great thinker of his epoch, but the splendor of historical princely heights was associated with his person. I recall the end of the above writing, where the Emperor mentions the personal enjoyment he has drawn from the book. What was this enjoyment? Hardly in anything that would benefit its literary value. I do not know of the Emperor ever mentioning Goethe in conversation, but he had, I am told, had passages read to him from the book. I see in this the expression of an emotion in him that could not be described merely as an interest in Goethe. Goethe was a bygone power that had a claim on the participation of the German Emperor. Something like the holders of the highest Italian order, “Cousins du Roi”

How Herman Grimm manages to show how the intellectual life takes hold of everything, and he himself is such a representative mind. He continues: ”It was not his victories, his political successes, that were first remembered, but what was peaceful in the emperor. His mildness. His even-handed justice. It is wonderful how, in the judgment of the nations, even with warlike princes and rulers, what they did for peaceful development ultimately receives the most light. How, in the case of Frederick the Great and Napoleon, admiring consideration of their organizational activity already outweighs that of their military deeds."

Thus we see that in modern times the life of the spirit has come to stand in a unified gesture with that which is the other, the outer life. Herman Grimm knew that he lived in times of expectation. He expresses this beautifully in the following words:

"Goethe's age is dying with the century that bears his name. We no longer enthuse over the past merely because it is gone. No matter how much digging and searching is done today, no matter how emphatically the reports of archaeologists speak of the importance of the latest discoveries: the Goethean gaze no longer rests on them, under which the excavated marble was once transformed into spirit. And the audience that used to believe in the mysterious value of the thoughts slumbering in these finds is also missing.” “The Goethean era is over! But Goethe himself? Did the century named after him know all of Goethe's thoughts? Here we are confronted with a new historical experience.” - ”The rays of the still living Goethe had illuminated the German countryside when the war against Napoleon I was over and the liberated people began to settle into their own home, in the good faith that the victorious spirit would suffice for that too. As long as those who had taken part in the war still lived, an inviolable trust in the power of higher intellectual work reigned. The years of humiliation that followed the Wars of Liberation could not shake it. This spirit was still alive in the influential circles when I gave my lectures on Goethe twenty years ago. But even then, the prevailing opinion, which no longer expected anything from science in the traditional sense, was already forming. Science, as we old people understand the term, was based on unlimited recognition of what had been handed down in Greek and Latin.” And so on.

Now it is becoming more and more apparent that the age of expectation is approaching, which finds a last representative spirit in Herman Grimm.

"The twentieth century will perhaps discover that Goethe knew in advance what it would one day achieve for itself, and even what it is still striving for. The places in his works where this is expressed will be pointed out. The periods of time separating the generations that follow one another will expand more and more. But what does a century more or less do for the relationship of humanity as it continues to develop to Homer or Shakespeare? Their power to penetrate souls increases more and more. With them, Goethe will one day accompany humanity as a star in its own right."

One would like to say that everything in this man strives for spirit, for spiritualization. This is how he brings us the confidence, the genuine confidence, the true confidence, that we are not giving something that has arisen from external arbitrariness, but rather what humanity needs, what it has been waiting for. This is something tremendously important. And it is the universality of spiritual science that already lives in this expectation. Therefore, I may refer once more to what Herman Grimm says in his book on Homer:

"Men as a whole recognize that they are subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they dare not stand, and whose judicial procedure they seek to adapt to their disputes. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today endeavor to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, even the Germans themselves, recognize it. I have the feeling that Homer's aim was to depict the struggle of the nations before Troy as if this movement, which took place in the distant past, had once encompassed a multitude of nations whose moral consciousness was shared and within which the struggle for the leading position was waged. They resemble our own epoch in this. Not external, accidental force or accidental protection of divine powers, but the justification that character grants, gives the decision in the Iliad."

—A beautiful passage, a wonderful passage!—

"The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious endeavors of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction applies to the ethical worldview. We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. The assurance that peace is our most sacred wish is no lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” permeates us.” So says Herman Grimm in the heart of Europe in 1895.

My dear friends! Humanity has long aspired to harmonize life with the spiritual worlds, to find a community like ours. And there were endeavors that knew how to present themselves in the right way to all the peoples of the earth and to the peace of humanity, that knew how to express the attitude that also wanted to express itself. Homer, according to Herman Grimm's view for the Greek peoples: that peace is more dear to them than war. And so mankind should one day get to know how many people held the views I have described in Herman Grimm, how they were intimately connected with the soul, how there was an effort to maintain life from one source, and how surprising the outbreak of this war, which was really not wanted by such views, was.

And it should also fulfill our expectations if the - I would say - offshoots of our spiritual movement are to be drawn from the whole of our spiritual life. This is the case with our eurythmy, which must not be confused with any of the physical, sporting, gymnastic or dance endeavors that have emerged from the materialistic age, but which is rather singled out from our spiritual endeavors, so that people can experience in the most direct and intimate way how the spirit works, especially in this sphere. I have already shown from various sides how this eurythmy came about. The aim was to give humanity something that, I would say, already shows the spirit of evolution in an outward sense. This could only be done if it was clear that we also live in a world of forms in our immediate life and that progress is a penetration into the world of movement. The world of forms dominates our physical body, the world of movement dominates our etheric body. We must now find the movements that are innate to the etheric body. The human being must be guided to express in gestures, in movements of the physical body, that which is natural to the etheric body.

In the last lectures on “Occult Reading and Hearing”, you will have seen that there is something of regular movement in the universe, in cosmic becoming. This is transferred to the human etheric body. Our present-day materialistic culture, from which spirits like Herman Grimm longed to escape, has led to a situation in which people have no understanding at all for the fact that we can only move properly in external forms if we do not have movements as “dalkerte” - forgive the trivial expression - as in sports, in modern gymnastics or playing football, but when he follows the movements that are naturally inherent in his etheric body, when one begins to carry the movements of the etheric body into the movements of the physical body, when the etheric body lives on in the movements of the physical body. This is attempted in eurythmy. It will become clear that the human being, in his movements, is truly an intermediate link between the cosmic letters and sounds and what we ourselves use in the human letters and sounds in our poetry.

A new art will certainly arise out of this eurythmy. This art is for every human being. And one would like humanity to be seized by an understanding of this art, so that it would really be practised with children, starting with the smallest, where the most intimate joy in it has already been demonstrated, and continuing with the largest children, and even with those of seventy, eighty and ninety years of age. It is always good when a person learns to translate what is natural and innate in the etheric body into physical movements. It is self-evident in the spiritual life that what can be said poetically can be interpreted in the movements that our eurythmy brings.

Eurythmy expresses a pedagogical, artistic and hygienic principle at the same time. A pedagogical principle in that when a person grows up with eurythmy, when they have been making movements in the sense of eurythmy from the first years of childhood, then they have carried out movements with their bodies that have such an effect that, I would like to say, the gods feel very close to the earth. Therefore, it is a very good way to establish the connection between the divine spiritual hierarchies and the growing child.

For the occultist, it is immediately clear that a materialistic culture creates a terrible discrepancy between what is innate in the human being and what the head and heart often have to learn. I am not criticizing, but merely pointing out a fact. There is actually nothing more unnatural in the world today than that children growing up have to learn what they have to learn from about the sixth or seventh year. I am not saying that they should not learn it, because of course they have to learn; this is brought about by external social necessity. But for the souls it is often as if one wanted to bring about a natural development of the human body by breaking the hands and legs of children in their sixth or seventh year. That is roughly what happens when children are forced to learn letters, because for human beings, learning to read and write are the most unnatural activities there are. They have to be forced to do it, even though the art of reading and writing is in the greatest disharmony with what the soul wants. It is a sad sight to behold, but it is a necessity; it is no use closing one's mind to it. But teaching children to read and write at this age would be pretty much the most sensible thing to do. Even if they were instructed to make figures out of simple street dirt, that would be much more sensible. There is only one thing we can do: we can try to let the atrophied etheric body - for it atrophies under today's necessities - move in the eurythmic movements of the physical body, which the gods want. This is what eurythmy should offer in a pedagogical sense.

It is not surprising that many people today complain that this or that hurts them, without anything really being wrong with them; for today, unlike the Greeks, people no longer try to establish harmony between the external movements of the physical body and those of the etheric body. And if they do, they do something very strange. If he says to himself: “What the Greeks did in the Olympic Games was very clever, so we'll do the same,” then it's really very funny; because it means nothing other than if, for example, a twenty-five-year-old did not like studying at a university and would rather do what a five- or ten-year-old boy does. Simply to transpose Greek into our own time is the most ridiculous thing one could do; it is a betrayal of trust in the development of humanity. If we are to seek today for that which the Greeks sought in their own way in the Olympic Games, then eurythmy must become part of humanity. People must try to achieve bodily health from the soul by not allowing the etheric body to wither away, but by letting the physical body make the movements required by the etheric body. That is the hygienic side of eurythmy.

People will begin to grasp the artistic significance of eurythmy when they realize how they must immerse their whole being in the artistic, how they are not only the creators of this and that, but how they themselves must become artistic means; they become so by exercising the artistic with their own body. And they do that through eurythmy.

Eurythmy is not something arbitrary, arising from the same spirit as other contemporary endeavors. It asks: What movements are best for the ether body of the modern human being in pedagogical and hygienic terms, what movements best lead to an understanding of true artistry and best immerse the human being in full, true life? I therefore believe that eurythmy will become popular in our circles and be accepted as something that can help a great deal. You cannot teach your children Anthroposophy directly, but they can do eurythmy and will be able to cope with the life they are heading for in a completely different way than if they do not do eurythmy.

My dear friends! I have already spoken in many respects of the relationship between the large rotunda outside and the small one, of the relationship between what is in the large space of the building and what is in the small space inside. Now someone might ask: how do the forms of the small space emerge from those of the large space? The answer is: let someone try to let the forms of the large space of the building emerge through eurythmy, and the forms of the small space of the building will arise from them. If you try to imagine a person combining in their eurythmic movements everything that is expressed in the large rotunda and dancing it in the small room and radiating from there what they are dancing, then the twelve columns and the dome of the small room would arise from it by themselves.

And then I hope that something else will dance eurythmically in the building: the word! It will have good acoustics. In short, eurythmy can be defined as the fulfillment of what the human etheric body demands of the human being according to its natural laws. Therefore, something is really given in this eurythmy that belongs to our spiritual life and that is thought out of its wholeness.

Perhaps you will accept what I have tried to say and consider it an answer to a question that has just been put to us by many Swiss friends. What I have defined here is something you can actually get to know through the courses you have requested.