Art and Anthroposophy The Goetheanum Impulse: Summer Art Course 1921

GA 77b — 21 August 1921, Dornach

1. Opening Lecture

Dear Participants! It is my duty to extend the warmest greetings to you, who have gathered here for the spiritual work to be done during the next eight days here at the Goetheanum. You will believe me when I assure you of my sincere and heartfelt conviction that what is to be achieved here in this Goetheanum should not arise from the subjective arbitrariness of a single person or group of people, but that it should be the fulfillment of the demands placed on present-day humanity by the spirit of the time itself, for everyone who is able to hear it. And so I not only greet all of you here, but together with all of you who have come together for honest work, I would also like to greet this spirit of our time, this spirit of the present, which speaks so clearly of the forces of decline that most diverse areas of life and human work and what must be replaced by new forces from the mind, from the heart, from the souls of human beings, by new forces that can only be found if certain spiritual sources of the human inner being are tapped into in this present time: This spirit of the time, one would like to greet it through everything that can be achieved here in this Goetheanum, which itself has its origin in its demands. But there are many things standing in the way of the fulfillment of this demand at the present time. There is an enormous amount that comes from a certain kind of inner human laziness; there is much that comes from a very particular kind of human fear. And finally, there are many obstacles rooted in old habits of thinking that are difficult to overcome. It is hardly possible for anyone to offer the spirit of the modern age a completely honest greeting if they cannot come to terms with all the obstacles that lie in this mental laziness, in this spiritual fear, in these inherited habits of thinking. People have become so accustomed to the great, significant, genuine fruits of human development that have been brought forth by the last few centuries that they now find it quite uncomfortable to seek a transition to anything new.

At the end of the Middle Ages, humanity found a transition from belief in external authorities in spiritual matters to a certain inner freedom. But in the last three to four centuries, it has become dependent on something else, on all kinds of authorities that it believes to carry in its own heart, but which, in essence, are again only [external] authorities. It is the indeterminate, barely comprehensible authority of what one has been accustomed to calling “scientific” and there are other external authorities that lie in the social institutions to which the man of the present wants to submit and from which he can only escape if he escapes them out of his very own initiative, out of complete human freedom, if he outgrows them in activity, which he [but] finds so difficult to outgrow because he would prefer to continue comfortably in the way that the precepts of science or of external social institutions may suggest; he sinks, as it were, into what customary education, what customary general scientific belief, general culture have brought. He seeks, as they say, his place in the social world and does not find the very own initiative of the soul life, the complete freedom of the inner being. For the latter is uncomfortable: one cannot think in the worn-out ways, one must get out of them. This can only be done through inner courage, through inner initiative, and out of a complete sense of freedom. It is comfortable to move in well-trodden paths that have been laid out through the centuries. It is uncomfortable to seek out the demands of the spiritual in our present time from spiritual heights with inner courage, inner freedom, and inner initiative.

And the second thing, esteemed attendees, is, I would almost say, a mysterious fear that is present in humanity today. There is no other anxiety to be found in this present time; but it is as if the sum of all anxieties that could accumulate in the human mind were summed up in a common inner fear, the fear of the new, the fear of the still unknown rising forces in all areas of the soul and of the outer life that we need. But this fear does not appear in its true form. People today would be ashamed if this fear were to appear in its true form and they had to show it. This fear appears in a mask. It appears in a mask that does not seem so ugly, in a mask that is even very seductive. It occurs in such a way that the one who is actually merely afraid of the new, the unknown, in the face of the older, seeks all possible logical and intellectual reasons by which he can substantiate it. We experience it every day that the fear of the new, the unknown, actually sits in the souls of people. They come and say: What is being brought to us, that contradicts, as can be proved, the certain scientific results. Often such alleged proof appears in a tightly closed form, so that one can hardly escape its web of thoughts. But these thought webs are nothing more than the pleasing mask in which the fear of the new and the unknown is clothed. And because it is basically so nice to be able to say: You can prove something logically, all the individual reasons against the new are correct – you also mask the fact that you are afraid of the new, a fear that you would be ashamed of if you showed it in its true form. Much of what appears today with seemingly scientific justification, with seemingly strict logic, is nothing more than the mask of inner fear of the new, the unknown. Anthroposophical spiritual science, as it is meant here, wants nothing more than to lead these inner soul dangers for the further progress of the present time before the soul's eye in full deliberation.

And the third thing is to persist in those habits of thinking that have been brought up since the last three, four, five centuries, truly not from worthless sources; they have come up from what has really developed in strict science since the time of Galileo, which reached a certain culmination in the 19th century. Strict inner disciplines, disciplines of outer observation and experimentation, have come upon humanity; they have poured the spirit of their work and labor into even the lowest schools. But with that, those habits of thought have also emerged, which - because they are basically so easy to achieve, even though the methods are strict - also take root most intensely in the human soul, those habits of thought that we find everywhere today, wherever we hear any conversation about science and about faith, about art, about the progress of humanity, about social life. And these habits of thinking are most intimately connected with the outer life. Man has learned in a magnificent way to deal technically with the outer life, precisely through these habits of thinking. Therefore, these habits of thinking have also connected most intensely with egoism, with all that has brought it, this human being, into modern social life. And so these thought habits, which are only the product of the last four to five centuries, appear to today's human being as something that leads to thinking in all absoluteness itself. And while a person, once he has acquired certain habits, clings to these habits to such an extent that, out of an unconscious belief, he thinks that if he were to abandon these habits he would lose part of his own being, it is even much worse with thought habits, especially with those thought habits that have formed within humanity in the most recent epoch. Man regards what is only a habit of thinking as the actual essence of thinking itself. And since he rightly believes that thinking is connected with the deepest nature of man, he clings to these habits of thinking because he believes that they are the only correct thinking and thinks that he would lose his self, his human essence, with these habits of thinking. He believes that he would lose all ground of a world view, of a conception of life, if he abandoned these habits of thinking. And often he has not even an inkling of how much he has fallen prey to these habits of thinking of the last four to five centuries, habits of thinking that must be overcome just as the habits of thinking of older epochs have been overcome.

Only when we are confronted with the full magnitude of the task that arises from overcoming our inner psychological comfort, spiritual fear and thought habits, will we find the right path to the place where the spirit of the present wants to speak in a comprehensible language about the demands that are necessary so that the forces of decline do not carry away the victory over the forces of the rising sun. They have led humanity down into chaos. And this spirit of the time, it speaks quite clearly of the fact that people must seek a knowledge, a view of the supersensible, of the immortal, of the eternal, in contrast to the sensual, the transitory, the temporal. Especially that which has become so ingrained in the habits of the soul and in the habits of thought of modern times, my dear audience, is always connected with a human tendency towards the transitory, the temporal, the sensual.

This is not a criticism of the temporal and the transitory. Nor is it a cheap criticism of the temporal and the transitory. On the contrary, when one stands on the ground of anthroposophical spiritual science, one fully recognizes that humanity once had to go through what lies in having a world view that thoroughly deals with the transitory and the temporal. It is recognized, for example, that the greatness of the 19th century is based on the fact that man learned to see through, with the strictest views, the essence of the transitory, the essence of the temporal. But it would be a sad state of affairs for humanity if, in turn, the eternal, the imperishable, were not seen above the transitory and the temporal. But this eternal, this imperishable, cannot be seen with those powers of the soul that have been of great, great service to research in the transitory and in the temporal. These powers of the soul, the intellectual powers, the powers of abstract thinking and experimental research, have been developed to their highest level in the last few centuries. These last centuries have indeed developed in man everything that could lead to the feeling of freedom, to the awakening of the inner human personality values. But that which one develops in one's own human soul when one only draws near to the external transience and the temporal being does not penetrate inwardly to the full human being, and so, in a certain way, in his latest ascent, man has lost precisely that which is connected with his own human being.

It is easy to object: So the anthroposophical spiritual science, the Goetheanism, leads away from the proven, outwardly practical world, into dizzying, bottomless cloud cuckoo lands, into that which wants to rise to fantastic heights away from the strict methodology of the last centuries. One wants to forget and oversleep here – one could object – in this Goetheanum everything that the Galilei era has brought, and one wants to dream oneself back into the eternal, for example in a Platonic way. They want to enthuse about the eternal and the immortal in Plato's world of ideas because they lack the patience to engage with the achievements of the last few centuries in relation to the real external world. But if one only really got to know it without prejudice, this anthroposophy, as it is cultivated here in this Goetheanum, one would find that one does not want to flee here with a careless skipping of Galileism into a dreamt-up Platonic world, but that one wants everything here that man can achieve in truly understanding this outer, transitory sense world, in terms of the practice of outer life, that one wants to take up Galileism fully in order to carry its rigor and discipline to the heights to which Plato was allowed to ascend without this modern culture. Plato lived in his world of ideas, which was a living one for him, and he could do so because of the limitations of his epoch, before the age of Galileism. We would have to descend into the abyss, into enthusiasm, into fantasy, if we were to enter the Platonic world of heights in a dreamy state without the preliminary stages of what the times of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Giordano Bruno brought us. Therefore, if one only gets to know what the anthroposophy meant here intends, then one will not reproach it for wanting to turn away from life in a fanciful, enthusiastic way into a Platonic world of ideas. No, it wants to draw the forces full of reality from the spirit in order to penetrate into real practical life. And just as the anthroposophy in question does not want to dream and fantasize about the outside world, it also does not want to lead to the inner life of the human being in such a way that the human being as a mystic becomes a hermit of life, that he wants to steal away like a hermit from all that is his task in real, outer, practical life.

Anthroposophy knows very well that methods such as those cultivated in India, such as the yoga method, have had their time; it knows very well that anyone who, with a complete misunderstanding of the spirit of modern times, wants to return to old mystical systems, that such a person is striving for something that should be avoided here. He strives for a certain mysticism of which nothing else can be said than the following.

My dear audience, there is a superficiality towards the outer world that never wants to go into the real facts, that does not want to follow the finer gradations of the facts, that, I might say, wants to enjoy life arbitrarily on the outside in large meshes. There is such a superficiality on the outside; but there is also a superficiality of the heart. This is the superficiality that, without thoroughly experiencing the inner human secrets, only ever speaks of withdrawing from the perception of the outside world, of cultivating the innermost. Such mystical striving, as it is making its way into many circles today, does not correspond to the demands of the spirit of the time, but rather adds to the external superficiality the superficiality of the heart. And in many circles that today think of themselves as particularly mystically exalted, nothing lives but that mysticism which is inner soul superficiality. With this soul superficiality one does not penetrate into the eternal secrets of life. One can only penetrate them if one has the patience to truly awaken the forces slumbering in the soul or at least to engage intellectually with what the forces slumbering in the soul can find from stage to stage. Only by overcoming the superficiality of the heart, by overcoming this superficial mysticism, lies the possibility of finding those powers of the soul that lead upwards in the right way, from the temporal, from the transitory to the eternal, to the everlasting. But when grasped in this way, it is truly capable of having a fruitful effect on the most diverse areas of today's life. And we need this fertilization. We have a magnificent science that has taken hold of the external course of things out of intellectualism and external observation. We need to advance from this science of the senses to a spiritual science, which is carried out in the same way as the pursuit of sensory science. Just as if it always had to give account before the strict methods and disciplines of the outer sensory science, the anthroposophical spiritual science meant here would like to fertilize today's scientific life in general.

Other branches of life sometimes show an impossibility of being fertilized by ordinary science in its present form. The intellectualism and abstract concepts that have been brought forth in more recent times are avoided by the artist; the artist believes that the more elementary power and force of his artistic experience would be taken from him if the mildew of science were to be poured into his heart, if he were to try to deepen his artistic experience with the help of today's science. And so many people say: Yes, spiritual science also wants to fertilize artistic life, but we understand how destructively scientific life affects artistic life. — People only say this until they realize how closely related artistic experience is to what the soul of a true spiritual scientist must go through to enter the realms where spirit and soul truly live. On this path one must not reflect, one must create, one must connect with that which lives and abides in the essence of things, which constitutes the secret of things. And soul-forces are released from the innermost being with the same vividness, with the same directly effective presence as they have in the artistic experience. And when one first becomes acquainted with the extraordinarily living, creative and formative side of spiritual science, then one will realize that this spiritual science does not bring abstract concepts, but directly inner impulses of life, which again to those spiritual regions from which the artist must draw if he does not want to imitate mere external nature in a superfluous way and thereby fall prey to a superfluous naturalism. What the spiritual scientist has to go through is intimately related to what the artist has to go through. And what the artist forms in his imagination, the spiritual researcher forms in supersensible intuition. These are two different paths that can lead to a good understanding, as many people in the past have understood each other. Those, for example, who, out of a deep intuitive perception of the secrets of the world, have presented something before their soul, as it then lives through Raphael in the Sistine Madonna, as it lives in Leonardo's Last Supper. Again, we have to reach into regions of spiritual life, but in the sense of the newer time, the modern time, so that we also have something in the artistic field that is not just an imitation of nature. Because imitation of nature, that is not possible for anyone. Whatever one wants to imitate in nature, nature can always do better. Only then can one find the way to art, when one finds the way to the spirit.

And if we look at another area in which the newer life has led to a real inner tragedy for many individual human personalities, we see how, in the religious sphere, the depth needed for a real religious experience has been lost. Anthroposophy, as it is meant here, is not meant to be a new foundation of religion! To say that is to defame it. For what we need is not a new religion; what we need is a deepening of the religious impulses in the human heart, in the human soul, but this can be found by man again finding the paths to the spiritual essence of the world. Just as science and art can be fertilized by the anthroposophical spiritual science meant here, so religious life can be deepened through it. And I believe I need not speak of it at all for all those who, looking beyond the immediate everyday, see how we have come into a social existence in the civilized world that is truly threatening, with every year growing larger, that is already horrifying enough today. All sorts of speculations as to how this or that institution should be set up, what should be done from state to state, from nation to nation, have certainly not been lacking in the old ways of thinking. There has been much talk about such things, but nowhere is there any prospect that social chaos might be resolved in a better light.

Does this not indicate how necessary it is for individuals to find their way to the social life, those individuals who find their way to the innermost part of the human soul, from which understanding can be found for what is necessary between human and human, between nation and nation, between race and race! Only when social life is absorbed in spiritual clarity in each individual will the age of individualism also be able to become a social age. But one does not arrive at these social impulses, these social feelings, in the human individuality by, for example, talking in fine phrases about deepening the human soul, about all kinds of social impulses that people should educate in themselves. We only arrive at this when we learn to belong to the world of the senses with our sensory organism, as we have learned to do in the last three to four centuries; when we learn to belong to a spiritual world with our spiritual organism; when we learn to belong to a spiritual world with our spiritual organism, when we are able to carry down ideas about the great destiny of humanity into the individual everyday life.

Humanity has become so proud of the practice of life developed in recent times. What has this practice of life revealed itself to be? It has withdrawn more and more into small circles in certain gestures of life, and in the end it has led to a situation where people can no longer follow the overwhelming course of world events fleeing into chaos with their thoughts. What has emerged is not real life practice, but routine in individual areas, mere life routine. What the human body would be without soul and spirit is this life routine without the fertilization of ideas, which can only come from the acknowledgment, from the realization of the spiritual regions. The most mundane, the smallest things in life become routine if they cannot be directed in the right way towards that which can pulsate in a person out of their sense of connection with the all-encompassing spiritual world. We will not arrive at such a practice, which in turn can support our social life, if we do not introduce the spirit into everyday life, going beyond all routine. For only a life of everydayness that is truly spiritualized and ensouled is truly practical.

Therefore, what wants to be spiritually worked on here in this Goetheanum does not want to become something unworldly, something fanciful, something that leads people away from the practice of life like a hermit; on the contrary, it wants to place them completely within it. We need true and genuine practical life. Every day shows us this when we are told how every day more and more humanity is drawn into decline. Therefore, in these eight days, we will speak of that which in turn leads to the rising, what the spirit of the time demands of the person of the present, what it demands in the sense that only from the insight into the eternal, into the supersensible, into the immortal, can that strength be gained which is needed to transform the forces of decline into forces of ascent. We need only recognize in the right sense how the inner obstacles of mental laziness, spiritual fear, and thought habits lie before us, and we will feel that what we need — inner initiative, activity of the soul , the courage to do something new, the fearlessness in the face of the new and the unknown – that all this can be won if we are so seized by the spirit that it is the spirit itself that lives in all our impulses. For just as the world is created by the spirit, so human activity, human endeavor, human knowledge will be true when they are permeated by the spirit. May all that is to be worked out in experiments bear witness to such spirit-filled practice and knowledge, as has been the case in previous such events during these past eight days here in this Goetheanum. And inspired by this wish that we may work together here in accordance with the great demands of the spirit of our time, I wanted to bring you today the warmest greeting from the spirit that should prevail here in this Goetheanum dedicated to anthroposophy at the beginning of these working days, and I wanted to greet the spirit itself, which should and may prevail here more and more during these eight days and always.