The School of Spiritual Science VII
GA 277d — 2 March 1924
The first event of the School of Spiritual Science took place during the Christmas Conference and immediately after it. It emerged from the Section, of which Dr. Ita Wegman, M.D., is the leader. This event was divided into two parts. In the last days of the Christmas Conference, the practising physicians who were present as members of the Society met and formulated questions that interested them, which I then made the subject of corresponding discussions. The leadership of the School of Spiritual Science will try to find a continuation of what has been initiated with it, according to the possibilities available to it. As soon as it is in a position to do so, it will indicate in a letter to those interested the way in which it would like to accomplish this.
Following the Christmas Conference, a course for younger doctors and medical students took place in the same section. The main topic of discussion here was the inner orientation in the soul of someone who wants to devote themselves to medicine. This course was given in response to the spiritual needs of medical students coming to the Goetheanum. It aimed to provide a suggestive presentation of what those in the medical profession strive to know about the world and humanity; but it also aimed to uncover the sources of true medical ethos, of 'medical conviction'. Due to the brevity of the event, it was only possible to give hints for a guide. But the hope remains that what has been initiated with this will also be continued in the sense indicated above.
The assemblies of the first class of the Free University have begun for the general anthroposophical section.
There was now an inner necessity to organize a course on eurythmy in the Section for the Speaking and Musical Arts, headed by Mrs. Marie Steiner. The practising eurythmists and teachers living in Dornach, those who teach eurythmy from out of town and are able to do so, members of the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council, and a few people interested in music and eurythmy have taken part.
The content will be made known in an appropriate way as soon as possible. Here we shall only speak in a few sentences about intention and attitude. The art of eurythmy has so far developed “sound” eurythmy to a certain extent. We are our own harshest critics and know that in this field, everything that can be achieved now is just a beginning. But what has been started must be further developed.
We have not yet come as far with sound eurythmy, the “visible singing”, as we have with speech eurythmy, the “visible word”. If the beginnings we have had so far are to be developed along the right lines, further training must take place right now - at the stage at which sound eurythmy has been practiced. This is what this course is intended to provide. But in doing so, the essence of the musical itself had to be pointed out. For in eurythmy, music becomes visible; and one must have a sense of where this has its true source in human nature if one wants to make its essence visible.
In tone eurythmy, what lives in music in the inaudible becomes visible. It is precisely here that the greatest danger of becoming unmusical exists. I hope to have shown in the lectures of this course that when music overflows into movement, the urge arises to cast off everything unmusical in 'music' and to carry only 'pure music' over into the realm of the visible. However, anyone who believes that the musical aspect ceases with the transfer of the audible into visible movement and form will have reservations about sound eurythmy as a whole. Such a view alone is not artistic in its deepest essence. For anyone who experiences art within themselves must take pleasure in every expansion of artistic sources and forms. And it is simply the case that music, like all true art, wells up from the innermost part of the human being. And this can reveal its life in the most diverse ways. What wants to sing in a person also wants to be expressed in movement forms; and only what lies within the human organism as possibilities for movement is brought out of it in sound and tone eurythmy. It is the human being himself who reveals his essence there. The human form can only be understood as arrested movement; and it is only through movement that the meaning of the form is revealed. One could say that anyone who disputes the legitimacy of tone and sound eurythmy is refusing to allow the whole human being to come to expression. Now materialism rejects the appearance of the spirit in human knowledge; the rejection of eurythmy as a legitimate art alongside and in connection with the other arts will probably have its origin in a similar attitude.
It is to be hoped that eurythmists have received some inspiration from this course and that something can be contributed to the further development of our eurythmic art.
(continued in the next issue).