Lecture IV

Now, you see, behind something like this is hidden a very important Symptom of the times. It is, on the one hand, just as correct to say that the gymnastics of today is usually one¬sidedly conceived—since it is taken out of the physiology and anatomy of the organism alone—as it is at least one-sided on the other hand to say that gymnastics is a barbarism. Why? Because when one develops gymnastics out of the physiology of the body alone it becomes a barbarism. It is our materialistic education and civilization that first made a barbarism out of gymnastics. In the manner in which gymnastics is practised today, it is a barbarism. And this conception of gymnastics is connected with some completely false notions, is it not? For example, people believe—although the experts don't believe it anymore, still many people believe that if one has a person exert himself mentally ( geistig) and then allows him to recover, as they believe, corporally thereafter, that constitutes a proper recuperation. But that isn't true at all! If a person does arithmetic or gymnastics for an hour he will become equally tired in reality; it makes no difference. That is known today, but people cannot properly judge how soul and Spirit should be brought into gymnastic movements, how the movements carried out are to proceed from the human being as a whole. Now one will have to develop gymnastics gradually in such a way that what we are developing as artistic eurythmy can unite with what is thus developed as physiological gymnastics. And one can make the transition from the eurythmic to the gymnastic quite well. It will only be necessary to see that this sort of eurythmy which actually takes the part of a sort of soul-filled gymnastics in the course of instruction is done with humour; before everything else it must give the children delight. It must give the children joy; that is a part of it. To teach eurythmy like a grumpy, dried-out school-master would be something which could really not be done at all.