| 287. The Building at Dornach: Lecture II
19 Oct 1914, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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| All these things are important for an understanding of the Ego culture, just as an understanding of the Intellectual Soul is important for an understanding of the Ego—This is indicated in the book Theosophy. |
| But the world does not understand the profound theory of this natural development because it is a product of the Ego culture. In Goethe's time the theory was not understood. |
| Darwin produces, out of the Consciousness Soul, the same that Goethe had produced out of the Ego, and all the world understands it; even the Ego culture understands it! It is not possible to understand the drama of the evolution of mankind unless one is able to recognise the actual connections through the guiding lines given by spiritual science. |
| 287. The Building at Dornach: Lecture II
19 Oct 1914, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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Friends should feel the quality of universality in the style of the Dornach Building. This means that endeavours must be made to transform into feeling the results of spiritual-scientific investigations that have come before our souls in the course of the years. Out of inner feeling we. shall then be able to conceive of the forms in our Building as a universal script, full of meaning When I last spoke here I drew your attention to clues that help us to acquire a really comprehensive view of the evolution of humanity. I pointed out how in Homer's works we find a figure who represents the transition from ancient times—when everything in human evolution and culture was based upon a certain kind of clairvoyance—to the age in which we are living and into which the rays of the Mystery of Golgotha have radiated. I said that in Agamemnon and Achilles, Homer has created figures in which he has shown how the ancient cultural life of man, permeated as it was with clairvoyance, passes over to a different kind of feeling, thinking, perception, willing, a different way of acting. Fundamentally speaking, what has come about since the dawn of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch (the Greco-Latin age), and also what has developed among the different peoples as the goal of their strivings, can be understood only if it is conceived as resting on the foundation of ancient clairvoyance. Certainly, much that is new has been achieved in the Fourth Poet-Atlantean epoch of culture and in the part of the Fifth that has already elapsed. Yet in the root-impulses at work in these epochs—as can be clearly felt by one who is willing to feel it—there still live elements that have come over from ancient times. It is not so very easy to recognise on the surface of history this ancient heritage of human evolution. But if one is willing to penetrate into those forces which hold sway in human nature either more or less unconsciously, and reach into more recent phases of development, one perceives everywhere how the men of the Fourth and Fifth Post-Atlantean epochs bear, so to say, in their nerves and blood, elements that have come over from the First Post-Atlantean epoch (ancient Indian culture), from the Second (ancient Persian culture), from the Third (Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian culture) and on into our own times from Greco-Latin culture. The achievements of humanity in these periods of culture are less easy to trace in outer history, but in the characters of men, how men inevitably—I say, inevitably—think and feel, it can be perceived and felt. The man of the Fifth epoch in which we are living is so constituted that his nerves, blood and astral body contain what he has received as a heritage from ancient times. It lives within him as feeling, as a fundamental impulse. He has received, in addition, impulses coming from higher worlds. As we live in the age when the Ego is developing, when culture based on external reason is the vogue and external philosophy is authoritative; what comes from above into the impulses of men in the physical world; from the guidance and leadership of the spiritual world; meets with little understanding. In order to kindle a feeling for the dynamic, let me indicate by a sketch how the men of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch are placed in the whole evolutionary process of mankind. To indicate it in a few strokes, we can choose this motif (one of the carved forms in the Building), representing a force that works from below upwards, and illustrates as can be clearly felt—all those impulses which man bears in the blood; in the nerves, in the etheric body, in the astral body, and which originates in the preceding epochs, actually in the First Post-Atlantean epoch of culture. [ Figure 1 (a) ] As an impulse coming down from above we can indicate the force that works downwards from the spiritual world into the intuition of the individual but with less power than what man bears within him from ancient times.  Spiritual-scientific investigation helps us to understand the conditions in which we ourselves live. This investigation has shown how the different qualities of the soul are distributed among the cultures of the leading peoples of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. The peoples inhabiting the Italian and Spanish peninsulas—as peoples, not as individuals—have absorbed into their culture everything that is connected with the Sentient Soul. Consequently the characteristics of the Sentient Soul predominate in the culture of these two peoples. These peoples represent a particular continuation of the main process indicated in the diagram. In a more concrete, more definite way, they make manifest what lives in the impulses of the blood and the nerves, of the etheric and astral bodies, in the sense referred to everything that came over from ancient times takes exprestion in these peoples and their fundamental impulses in such a way that the forces striving upwards from below take on a more definite configuration. In these peoples there is something inorganic, purely mathematical in the other forces; there is no more than an indication of the impulses of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. If we are to understand the particular character of the peoples of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas, we must be clear that the impulses working in the blood, the nerves, the etheric and astral bodies, are developed consciously into greater concreteness of form, but with the force of the old. The impulse from below upwards in these peoples can be indicated by elaborating the lower part of the design [ Figure 2a ] and giving it a form that opens upwards like a flower, suggesting at the same time, in what comes down from above as spiritual guidance, the kind of capacity these particular peoples, have for understanding that guidance. All this is connected with the plastic forms on the columns of the Building.  These peoples still have little relation with what is expressed by this central part of the design [ Figure 2b ], but they take over all the qualities and characteristics which the Sentient Soul is able to take over from ancient times, all the secrets of the ancient forms, of the ancient artistic script, if I may put it so. A force that shapes itself into forms enters into the first design, like a renewed gift from above [ Figure 2c ] . The character of these peoplee is expressed by this second design. Everything we come to know from spiritual science must find verification in the realities of the outer world—when, as is essential, we really survey the outer world. If we are to absorb spiritual science in the right way, we must first take what it says into our hearts and souls and then put the question to the world whether what spiritual science says is actually realised there. This means that we must be able to find in the external culture of the peoples in question the living elements of the Sentient Soul. And we shall expect to find in the culture of the peoples of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch a kind of resurrection of something that already existed in earlier times and to which the so-called Sentient Soul peoples gave expression. We shall expect to find a repetition of what lived in the Egypto-Chaldean age, but born anew, in a form corresponding to our age. What then, was characteristic of the souls of the Egyptian and Chaldean peoples? Abandonment to the outer world—in keeping with the character of the Sentient Soul—so that in the relation of the fixed stars to the planets men felt something that was connected with human destiny. Men looked out into the universe and found in what the stars expressed, the secret of happenings in the life of the human soul and spirit. The first stage of Fifth Post-Atlantean culture was to repeat what was contained in the former Sentient Soul culture, but now in the soul itself. If, therefore, spiritual science is a trigs guide, we shall expect to find in the peoples of the Italian peninsula something that on the one side expresses the character of the Sentient Soul in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, but on the other side indicates the great inwardness brought about by the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. We shall expect to find something that is a re-creation of the ancient spiritual astrology, but is now applied to the inner world, to the human soul. (Second design.) We must feel everything that approaches from the stars as a blossom springing from the human soul, indicated here at [ Figure 3a ] in the second design the aspiring impulses in man are met by what comes into them from the stars, that is to say, from the spiritual world [ Figure 3b ]. There must be something within the culture of these Southern peoples which represents an astrology applied to the soul—Egypto-Chaidean astrology applied entirely to the soul.  You are naturally thinking of something that provides complete confirmation of what I have just said. It is what Dante has presented in the “Divine Comedy”. Dante is the spirit who has re-awakened the Egypto-Chaldean element in a new form—applied now to the life of soul. It will be easy for you to designate everything that relates to the basic impulses of ancient times as “Saturnian”. The fundamental impulse of all connection between the cultures of the Fifth Post-Atlantean period and the ancient cultures, bears the Saturnian character. The Saturnian element works its way upwards from the fundamental impulses of the human soul and receives from above the impulses that can spring from the culture arising from the Intellectual Soul and the Ego. It will also be easy for you to perceive the impulse that is Sun-like in character [ Figure 2 ]. I have indicated that this Sun-quality is present in Dante, who represents an important impulse of Latin-Italian culture. It need only be added that Italy is the motherland of all that is formative, of the Sun—qualities that come to man through the Sentient Soul. We might even expect a thinker of a distinct character to arise within this culture, one who out of unconscious impulses remembers this Sun-element. In the light of what we have learnt from spiritual sciences this would seem entirely natural. There might, for example, be a philosopher—perhaps not philsophieally clear about the impulse in his souls but feeling it and allowing it to dominate him—who maintains that the external life of the State must be planned in such a manner that it is irradiated by the Sun-element.—We have no reason to be surprised when we find such a case. Campanella wrote a philosophical treatise on the Sun-State, the solar State.1 You will become more and more convinced that everything, every details accords with what spiritual science brings down from the spiritual worlds, ad that life can be understood only when it is illuminated by the findings of spiritual science. We then come to the culture-epoch which, according to the findings of spiritual science, will be designated as that of the Intellectual Soul or Mind Soul. It is the culture that has developed particularly in the region of present-day France. To find a suitable design for this culture we must realise that it was destined—in a more concrete way than was the case at any point in Italian culture—to lead what comes from above to particular brilliance, to a higher stage of elaboration of the Intellectual Soul. What comes from above [ Figure 3b ] Intellectual Soul culture—brings the earlier culture [ Figure 3a ] to a state of greater concreteness. If you steep yourselves in the characteristics of this new culture, you will perceive that it is particularly adapted to absorb the culture of the Fourth Greco-Latin culture, permeated with what comes from above trickles into French culture as a liquid might trickle into a chalice [ Figure 3 ] . Spanish and Italian culture passes over into French culture but in such a way that in the latter, Greek culture undergoes a revival and renewal. I do not think that a better design than this could be found to express the gradual transition from Spanish into French culture. Even the outer quality of finish can be expressed by allowing the central part of the design to be enclosed to right and left by these lines [ Figure 3c ]. Anyone who asks whether the results of spiritual science are also demonstrated in external reality can easily find an answer if he will devote a little study to actual conditions. But it must be emphasised that these things must be judged on the foundation of facts as they are, not on that of pre-conceived ideas. This has constantly to be stressed at the present time, because everybody wants to pass judgment on everything ignoring, of course, facts which can be understood only by dint of effort. But I advise anyone who wants to gain insight into the very distinctive form in which the Greek element flows into French culture, to study how the Oedipus theme has found its way into French poetry; how Sophocles' Oedipus lives again in the Oedipus of Corneille and also in that of Voltaire. What I have just said can be confirmed down to the very details. It can be clearly discerned in these particular examples, although many could be quoted. It is, of course, a fact that most editions of Corneille's works no longer include the tragedy of Oedipus and that in those of Voltaire practically no value is attached to this work. But study will show that the new form into which the Oedipus theme has been cast by Corneille and Voltaire is a sign of the revival of the Greek age in French culture. It will be found that because Greco-Latin culture stands at the dividing line between the age of ancient clairvoyance and the modern age, the element that in Sophocles is received, as it were, out of the spiritual world in the age of ancient Greek heroic culture, has become in Corneille and Voltaire entirely an affair of the human soul itself. Whether Sophocles' Oedipus is more to one's liking than the form given to the story later on must be altogether disregarded; attention must be concentrated upon the trans formation that took place, bearing in mind that this transformation consists in the Oedipus story being reborn entirely out of the personal soul-nature of man. I said that all antipathy must be put aside. This done, it can be demonstrated quite objectively that what in Sophocles is linked with the figure of Oedipus: is woven into a human-universal destiny: such as can be indicated only by words as momentous me those with which Goethe describes such a destiny: that it exalts man in that it crushes him. The breath of magic emanating from Sophocles' Oedipus is due to the fact that in this drama the spiritual worlds which guide the destiny of peoples can be sensed: worlds which play into human destiny in a way that men are unable to fathom; therefore what the gods allow to befall may appear to be the most cruel injustice. One can conceive how every Greek was aware of the inscrutability of the fate in which the actual will of the gods was contained. The Greek felt: Yes: this is how the gods deal with man; their will remains inscrutable; fate can befall everyone as it befell Oedipus, but it remains inscrutable. The breath of magic emanating from Sophocles' tragedy of Oedipus has been drawn right into the sphere of the personal by Corneille and Voltaire: quite as a matter of course. The transition is made in Corneille; in Voltaire the situation has become quite distinct. In Voltaire's Oedipus there is a figure who would be quite unthinkable in ancient drama. This is Philoctetus, the family friend who makes the conjugal alliance into a triangle. Jocaste was already acquainted with Philoctetus before her first marriage; the situation continues until she is widowed and then she marries Oedipus, her own son. These are personal relationships of soul which would be unthinkable in an ancient drama. But we can go farther; we can try to understand what streamed through the souls of the great French poets, and then we shall find how the Greek element was absorbed. This is clearly expressed, not only in French poetry itself, but also in the theory of poetry. Do we not know how Lessing studied the way in which, as part of its theory, French poetry had taken over from Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, the principle of the unity of Time, Place and Action, which is a feature in the works of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire? French classic poetry can be understood only by those who perceive how the spirit of ancient Greece shines into it. And if we want to find concrete evidence in French culture of the indications given by spiritual science, we can do so by asking: Where does the essence of this French culture appear in its most brilliant form? Where is it unparalleled? Where does it reach its highest peak? To answer this question rightly calls for great objectivity, and objectivity does not come easily to modern man, especially in our days. Nevertheless, for those who look at thinge objectively, the highest peak of French culture is to be found in the works of Molière. However strongly any culture may believe that what Molière achieved could be equalled among a people of a different character—leaving aside what has been achieved by Corneille and Racine, or also by more modern French culture—it would be foolish to assert that the particular perfection to be found in Molière has ever again been reached. In a different sphere there has been equal perfection, admittedly—perhaps even greater perfection—but not in this particular sphere. It would be a fallacy to maintain that Molière's essential quality.—born as it was from the Intellectual Soul or Mind Soul could be achieved again or even an echo of it. Molière represents the highest peak of the culture that is born out of the Intellectual Soul. Molière's comedy is comedy per se, comedy in its very essence. It cannot be understood inwardly, spiritually, unless one realises that the Intellectual Soul is dominant in it, in a way in which this uniqueness could never be repeated. For everything that arises in the evolution of humanity emerges at a characteristic point once and once only. Just as in one life the age of 18 or 25 is never reached twice, it is equally impossible for mankind to produce twice over that which reached the degree of finish it did in the personality of Molière. All this is indicated and can be felt in this design [ Figure 4 ].  If at this point we make a break and refer to what was said in my lecture-course on the Folk Souls about the European Folk Souls, of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, we can ask other questions of the same kind on the subject of Middle-European culture being the culture of the Ego. If this Middle-European culture is the Ego culture, its relation to the other cultures of which we have spoken will be similar to the relation of the Ego to the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul (Spiritual Soul). Here, too, the outer reality must provide adequate confirmation of the indications given by spiritual science, If Italian culture represents what is received through the Sentient Soul, it must have a particular relationship to the Ego culture, to Middle-European culture: that is to say, Middle-European culture, which works essentially out of the Ego, would have to submerge itself in the Sentient Soul, to be fructified by it, in the way that happens with the Ego and the Sentient Soul in an individual man. Let us think of the relationship of the Ego to the Sentient Soul in man. The Ego, in which the impulses of its own inmost being are contained, must dive down into the Sentient Soul, otherwise it remains unfructified by what can work upon it from the outer world through the forms of that world. Man must ever and again dive down into his sentient experiences, his feeling. A relationship must be in operation between the impulses of the life of feeling and the Ego. Accordingly we may expect that those who belong to the Ego culture of Middle Europe will try to establish a living link with the Sentient Soul culture in the South; they will seek for a channel of expansion, not only in political but also in higher, spiritual connections. Look up the history of the Staufer dynasty, look up the events originating in the impulses of the Hohenstaufen and the Guelphs, or the accounts of the constant campaigns of the Saxon and Staufen rulers to Italy. Study all these relations of Middle Europe with Italy, and you have an exact picture of the life of the Sentient Soul in relation to the Ego. But it can be further ecpected that the Ego-nature will produce forms of art in keeping with the character of man; from the Ego-nature, gnarled, knotty forms must be expected, forms shaped by the characteristics of the Ego. Such forms are to be found in the creations of Holbein and Dürer. But they are found in Dürer only after he had gone to Italy and had been enriched by the culture born of the Sentient Soul. In more modern times we find the same phenomenon everywhere. From Goethe's journey to Italy, down to Cornelius and Overbeck, and on into our own time, we find evidence of the exchange between the Ego culture and the Sentient Soul culture. What goes on between Middle Europe and Italy is an image of the relation between the Ego and the Sentient Soul of man. In every detail the outer course of evolution provides confirmation when we study it in the light of the indications resulting from spiritual-scientific research. Now let us consider the relation between the Ego-nature in the soul and the Intellectual Soul. There too we must expect that what shows itself inwardly in human nature between the Ego and the Intellectual Soul will also make its appearance in external life. The nature of the relation between the Ego and the Sentient Soul is such that the Ego dives down uncritically, as it were into the Sentient Soul, lets itself be fructified by the Sentient Soul culture. Intellectual Soul culture quite naturally assumes a character that is more like an intellectual exchange, a “head” exchange, so to speak. The Intellectual Soul, or Mind Soul, is the middle member of the soul. It is at the same time that out of which the Ego arises and with which the Ego, for its own sake, must come to terms. (Try to form an idea of the nature of the Intellectual Soul from the book Theosophy.) We must expect an inner relationship to exist between Intellectual Soul culture and Ego culture. One can think of no more graphic illustration of this than the relation to French culture of the philosopher Leibnitz, who was through and through a Middle European in his way of thinking. Leibnitz transposes into the idiom of Middle Europe everything he absorbs from outside—for example, from Giordano Bruno in whom the Italian Sentient Soul is so alive—and also the Monad theory. Leibnitz wrote in French; he formulated a great deal in his philosophy in accordance with the demands of the French language. A process of exchange between the Ego culture and the Intellectual Soul culture is clearly to be seen when we follow the arguments in Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie We see there the tension between what Lessing was striving for and the elements in French culture originating from Hellenism, from which he wants to free himself. Leseing engages in polemics, in intellectual controversy. This is an exact image of the exchange between the Ego and the Intellectual Soul. Lessing's “Hamburgische Dramaturgie” will be understood only when it is seen in this light. And there is something else that is apt to be overlooked today. The shape which external conditions have assumed in Middle Europe is in many respects connected with, the rise of the Prussian State, And who would not connect the emergence of the Prussian State with Frederick the Great? Of him it must be said, however, that he clung with every fibre of his being to French culture, and took over a great deal from it into his own. He said that he regarded Voltaire ae a far greater personality than Homer. He considered German culture to be still semi-barbarous He who laid the foundation of modern Prussia strove to promote culture by means of the French element. Frederick the Great must be understood in the light of his relation to the French element, for this still lives in modern Prussia today, just as everything originating from the Intellectual Soul lives in the Ego. All these things are important for an understanding of the Ego culture, just as an understanding of the Intellectual Soul is important for an understanding of the Ego—This is indicated in the book Theosophy. It would be extremely desirable if today, particularly, heed were paid to the real foundations of world-events before judgments are passed, so that the remarkable way of judging which has come to a head at the present time could be recognised at least by a few people as unreliable, hollow and superficial, and full of the shallow cynicism of the newspapers and the journalists. When we follow the course of evolution in the Fifth Post-Atlentean epoch we necessarily come to a further stage of elaboration in the forms of the columns. This advance can be expressed by indicating a powerful development of what comes from above as Intellectual Soul culture, accompanied by a certain shutting off from the Spiritual. This shutting off can be indicated by a dividing motif [ Figure 4c ]above the upper portions of the design. The element that comes from above flows in with greater definition and bears the stamp of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch more distimetly; but it shuts itself off in a certain way. Here we come to the culture of the Consciousness Soul that is in preparation, and is to be especially characteristic of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, Whereas Italian culture has taken over qualities and traits of the Egypto-Chaldean age, and French culture those of the Greco-Latin age, we now come to what expresses the essential character of the Fifth epoch of Post-Atlantean nature which stands entirely and solely upon its own base. What must necessarily be the attitude of this culture to the outside world? The man who stands on his own base becomes a spectator, an onlooker, and as such he will be in a position to gaze deeply into the configuration of the beings of the world, into their organic structure and mechanism, in order to be able to re-create them from within outwards, so that they stand there as if created by Nature herself. We find there a culture of keen observation, penetration into the nature of beings and things which are then described from the standpoint of the spectator or onlooker. What does this culture produce when it is really great? One need mention one name only—that of Shakespeare. He is great and unsurpassable as a spectator, an observer of the world. Shakespeare's creations would be unthinkable in any earlier or subeequent culture. When I was describing the characteristic English philosophers in the first edition of my book Welt- und Lebensanschauungen fifteen years ago, I did not take into consideration the aspect we have in mind today But I tried to find an expressive word, which I used in the second volume of the book “Riddlee of Philosophy”. I tried to find a telling word to describe the fundamental character of John Stuart Mill's philosophy. I chose the word “spectator”, a “spectator” of the world. All the indications given by spiritual science are indeed confirmed in outer reality. The further questien regarding the exchange between the Ego and the Consciousness Soul discloses something very distinctive. We can expect that because the Consciousness Soul itself must tend and foster the Ego, what the Ego wishes to achieve comes to it in many ways from the Consciousness Soul. We can expect that much from the Consciousness Soul will flow into the Ego. But because the Ego wants to preserve and protect its independence, there is a great deal that it must ward off. It is a wonderful experience to watch the process of how modern physics receives its stamp from Newton, but how, in Goethe, the Ego culture of Europe rebels against the Consciousness Soul culture. Read Goethe's “Theory of Colour”—it is wonderful to see how he rises up in opposition against Newton. It is wonderful to see how two discoverers of the infinitesimal calculus appear contemporaneously in Leibnitz and Newton, entirely in conformity with the relation between the Ego and the Consciousness Soul. The conflict of the Ego with the Consciousness Soul is mirrored here. Much that is rooted in the nature of the Ego appears in a characteristic form in the spirituality of Jacob Boehme in the 16th century. A great deal is rooted in the Ego for which the Ego cannot immediately find the adequate words. The Consciousness Soul then finds the words, finds the elements that can be outwardly effective. Think of Goethe's efforts to understand the precess of natural development, in the sense of the Ego culture of Middle Europe. He discovers the principle of the natural development of living beings, from the simplest to the most complex. But the world does not understand the profound theory of this natural development because it is a product of the Ego culture. In Goethe's time the theory was not understood. Then a representative of the Consciousness Soul appears on the scene. Darwin produces, out of the Consciousness Soul, the same that Goethe had produced out of the Ego, and all the world understands it; even the Ego culture understands it! It is not possible to understand the drama of the evolution of mankind unless one is able to recognise the actual connections through the guiding lines given by spiritual science. The living forces in the evolution of humanity progrees from culture to culture as if they were based upon the eternal pillars of the primal laws of mankind. We can divine the progress when in these designs we feel the Saturnian quality in the fundamental character of the Fifth Post-Atlantean culture, the Sun quality in the character of Italian and Spanish cultures, the Moon quality in that of French culture, and then a Mars quality in the culture that develops in the British Isles. It is not possible to understand what really ought to be understood—the symphony of the Post-Atlantean cultures as if in chorus—unless one can feel the distinctive characteristic of those Post-Atlantean cultures. Those who live with lots of spiritual science should be able to feel the course of human evolution is one great whole. Consequently a dome is to arch overhead, rising over the forms which help us to feel how the evolution of mankind goes forward. The dome or cupola is to show how human beings, how peoples, work together; it is a picture, too, of the interworking of the soul-forces in man himself. It will work upon the soul when we go into our Building with inner, sensitive understanding. For in our Building the endeavor has been made to put aside everything of a personal nature, and in every line, in every form, to represent what is spiritual worlds reveal whether we try to express world-happenings in forms, in order that men may be able to feel the meaning and significance of these happenings. It must be admitted that the world today is nowhere near the stage of transforming into feeling those things that have now again been spoken of. This requires an ever-increasing spread of spiritual science, a greater and greater understanding of a new style of building that is connected with the secrets of the World-Order, as has been attempted in our Building. Naturally this Building can be a people beginning only—it cannot be more than that. But among individuals there does live, more or less unconsciously, something that can provide the basis for an understanding of the symphony created by the several cultures existing in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. And so even in our own grievous times certain things may be welcomed with a feeling of elation, because in what is now coming to light we must watch for signs that give some promise of a peaceful culture—culture that will not be inactive, but full of vigour, and can be understood only when efforts are made to promote mutual understanding of the essential qualities of the various peoples. Although any egoistic relationship to one culture or another falls far short of the ideal of spiritual science, it is nevertheless to be welcomed when some measure of insight is developed into the element that makes for a bond of union—for there lies the force that is truly creative. And so by the side of much that is so deeply grievous, we may be mindful of other voices which gladden us because they show that the principles of spiritual science can be appreciated also by one who stands outside our circle. Those who are willing to listen to spiritual science are still only few. But I have said that in Herman Grimm there was a longing for spiritual science, and I can also give another example from our own unhappy times. Among many voices I will quote only one—When some of the young men at a university in Middle Europe were to leave for the Front and some to remain at home, one of the tutors spoke words which cheer the heart and deserve to be known, because, although they were spoken without any knowledge of spiritual science, they reveal impulses of hope and longing for the mutual intercourse among the peoples that must one day result from spiritual science. This tutor said to his students: “You will come to know that nothing attunes the cultivated soul to Beauty more deeply than efforts to perform heroic deeds. You will come to know that nothing calls to the soul and steels it more effectively for renewed efforts, and that there is no purer bond from soul to soul, than that which resides in the hallowed realm of Beauty. Then, even if, as the most terrible consequence of this war there should remain a hatred among peoples such as was never known before, amid all the enmity you will not forget to love the higher soul of the enemy. You are fighting a good fight for the truth. There is no need for you to engage in the calumny and slander emanating from confused minds. You will receive Shakeapeare as a guest among the good spirits of German culture and know that, in the sense in which he is ours, just so much of English thought belongs your reputedly to our own spiritual life. you will remind yourselves of the noble struggles of the French mind for aesthetic culture in its great refinement. You remember how in Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Russia in our time had both her Homer and her Shakespeare. Certainly, the Russian State meted out to these two greatest of her sons nothing but sorrow and sometimes inhuman persecution. What would they think of present developments! Yet through them speaks, unforgettable in its inwardness and sincerity, the eternal evangel of the people of God, of the realm where love is a sustaining, helping power. The meaning of the war lies in the peace to which it leads. As warriors, bear the lofty meeting of the coming peace within you, in order that the hatred among the peoples may ultimately end in a new kingdom of love. The deepest German quality is to love everything that bears the countenance of man, to love every kind of people as a portion of humanity, as a revelation of God. Realm of human love, filled with understanding, is the realm of the German spirit.” These words were spoken by Eugen Kühnemann, any university tutor, on the 18 August 1914, to his students who were going to war. They are words to rejoice over in these momentous times when one experiences so much that is grievous. These words show great understanding of Shakespeare, who is ours to, in as much as through him English thought becomes part of our spiritual culture; they also show great understanding of French spiritual culture. They emphasize the significance of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky for the new spiritual culture—and to emphasize that it is a great deal better than what is so often to be heard today from another side. May such an attitude of mind and heart not disappear in our days! Perhaps our friends may be able to do something to point to the fact that such an attitude does the deed exist and furthermore that it is by no means rare in Middle Europe. I will now close this lecture, and tomorrow at 7 o'clock I will speak about how the further stage of evolution—represented by Middle European culture and the Russian spirit—is indicated in the forms of the columns in our Building.
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| 287. The Building at Dornach: Lecture IV
25 Oct 1914, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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| I can do no more than indicate, but everyone can understand it who makes the effort to go through it as an actual experience of his own. How can one develop a feeling for such a motif and what it expresses? |
| Only think of all that could be done to enable men of every cultural community to acquire mutual understanding of one another if what was presented in the two last lectures were to become living feeling, living knowledge. |
| Our feeling for the Building is true only if we say to ourselves: There, in the sunshine, the dome of our Building with its glistening grey slate roof gleams. over the countryside. We are under this arching vault, above all, spiritually under it. By these words I wanted again to indicate what must be the attitude of those who understand the inmost impulse of Spiritual Science towards what is to be found in the outside world. |
| 287. The Building at Dornach: Lecture IV
25 Oct 1914, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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In the last two lectures an endeavour was made to interpret the sequence of columns in the Buildings to give one of the many possible interpretations to which the Building naturally lends itself. It is possible for one who enters the Building from the West to feel, as it were, in the very heart of humanity, because the forces working in the various cultural communities are given expression in the forms of the capitals, and the mutual relationships of the single European cultures in the architraves. It may have occurred to some of you that mention has not been made of all the European peoples. It is of course, impossible on every occasion to present a subject in all its aspects, for it is a matter of indicating the principles involved, not of making dogmatic statements. In the single motifs of the capitals, artistic expression has been given to the impulses at work in the souls belonging to European civilisations—in the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, or rather the South-westerly peninsulas, of Western Europe, Middle Europe and Eastern Europe. The subject was presented as it was because the character of these civilisations enables them to be expressed by a single design, a single motif. The design and the cultural community concerned are therefore related. From West to East, the second pillar is an expression of the civilisation of the peninsulas in the South-West of Europe; the third pillar of that of France; the fourth of that of the British people, and so on. But there are also other European peoples. I cannot deal with all of them but will again speak of the underlying principles. It may be said that the cultures already referred to are the simpler cultures, however strange that may seem; they are simpler at any rate as far as the occultist is concerned. For the occultist, the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian cultures, for example, are much more complicated than those already mentioned, for many things which to the observer on the physical plane may seem the simpler, are for the occultist the more complicated. Thus if we are speaking of Danish culture, the queation may arise: How should we approach the designs in this case? In entering from the West we should have to look, first, at the capital of the third column, and then also at that of the fifth, seeing the third column, as it were, through the fifth. Obviously there is something more complicated here, for two capitals have to be taken into consideration. Now take Sweden. There we should have to view the capital of the second column from the West through the capital of the fifth column. And now, Norway. We should have to take the capital of the fourth column from the West and look at it through that of the fifth. It would be a matter of superimposing these capitals, and then we should have the same expression of feeling in connection with the cultures of Denmark, Sweden and Norway as we have for the Italian-Spanish, the French, the British and the Middle-European cultures when we look at the corresponding capitals. Really, everything is contained in these motifs of the capitals. Now that the principle has been explained, it might be very interesting to study for example, how it applies to the civilisations of Holland, Switzerland, and so forth. But I leave that to your own occult studies. So you see, when we speak of our Building we are truly not speaking of anything arbitrary, of anything whose forms and other artistic content have arisen in such a way that one can remain stationary at these forms and think of them as one is obliged to think of the forms of painting motifs produced at the present time. As I have already said, everything we have absorbed of Spiritual Science in the course of the years, and a great deal more besides, is expressed in this Building—but the appeal is to perceptive feeling, not to theoretical, intellectual cogitation. It would therefore be possible to speak about this Building without ever finishing. But again I leave it to your own hearts to elaborate the indications I have given you. For the aim of the Building is to bring hearts and souls into movement when, in contemplating the forms and their relationships, people do not interpret them intellectually or symbolically but allow the heart and mind and soul to speak when they are inside and outside the Building. What I now have to say can be explained by taking a particular motif of four columns embraced above by a cupola or dome. To regard any such motif as completely self-contained would be to take too constricted a view. Nothing in the world is completely self-contained—not a blossom, not an animal, not a human being. Neither, then, is a motif such as this, for part of its very essence is that forces are present entirely apart from the geometrical aspects. There are four columns embraced shows by a dome. But this geometrical aspect is only part of the whole. What belongs to the motif in addition is a set of forces which inhere in the whole structure of the universe and enable the columns to support the dome. The dome rests on the columns, the columns stand on the earth; the force of gravity comes into play.  If we really feel this motif, we do not feel the geometrical aspect only, but also the other, which I have often called the dynamic element, or element of force—the insertion into the configuration of forces of the whole universe, more particularly of the earth. This motif, then, has the peculiarity 0f being symmetrical at every point in its circumference. It is symmetrical in every direction of space, as far at least as the dome is concerned. So we can say: On the body of the earth there is a motif which stretches heavenwards and at its periphery is symmetrical. The important thing is to have an artistic feeling for such a motif. If we try to feel this motif in the right way—it is of course a matter of really sinking oneself in the character of the forms themselves—we shall come to realise: This motif, which rises upwards from the earth and in its upper part at least is symmetrical in every direction, seems to impel us to go down into ourselves, to experience our feeling inwardly. If you want to make progress in occultism it is essential to abandon the one-sidedness of an abstract, intellectual approach, and to adopt an approach which originates in actual experience. For this reason many things must be expressed, not in terms of the intellect, but in terms of experience. It is particularly difficult for the man of the present day to accept forms of experience in the same way that he accepts forms of the intellect. I will tell you what I mean by a form of experience. I can do no more than indicate, but everyone can understand it who makes the effort to go through it as an actual experience of his own. How can one develop a feeling for such a motif and what it expresses? This can be done in the following way.—In the morning, on getting out of bed to set about the day's work, you can say to yourself consciously: “I have now passed from the lying position into the position of standing or walking.” That is an actual experience—one of which few people make themselves conscious, but it is an experience to pass from the lying position into that of standing and walking. When one is lying down, the force of gravity works upon one as it does upon a sack, let us say a sack of flour. The force of gravity also works in a deeper sense, for when you are lying down you always lie on some area of the body and this area presses upon what is underneath. So pressure is always being exercised upon the area of the body on which you are lying. True, you are not aware of this pressure in the ordinary way, but for all that, it is there; it is connected with your sentient experience of the force of gravity and it works into your astral body. When a man begins to be conscious of this pressure-experience, he becomes aware at the same time of the elemental spirits of the earth. It is here that he is very well able to be aware of them, for when he is standing or walking the only area of pressure is that of the soles of the feet. When you stand up after having been lying down, you leave the sphere of the pressure; you assert yourself against the force of gravity; you insert the axis of your own body into the field of gravity, no longer resigning yourself to it like a sack of flour; you enter actively into the sphere of gravity. That is an actual experience different in character from some thought-experience of the brain which thinks in abstractions. In the lectures I gave on “Occult Reading and Hearing” I spoke of three brains. As soon as a man begins to experience things with his middle brain, he experiences them in a living way; feeling begins to be a middle brain experience. Very well, then, when we have made ourselves conscious of the experience of standing up, we have the experience of Feeling the World, and we know for the first time what feeling really is. This can be achieved in many other ways too, but we do really begin to realise what feeling is when we make the act of standing up a conscious experience. If it is brought to consciousness in the real sense this experience will lead us to understand the form here (see diagram). We say to ourselves: This form differs from what I myself am, in that it cannot stand up but must remain always in the lying position. To achieve my experience it would have to turn through 90° into the vertical plane. This dome stretches heavenwards. When man standing upright, has a feeling of the world, this upward stretching impulse works especially through his hands. And if he were to lie down and were able to feel what is above him, he would feel with his hands something of the nature of a cupola arching over him. What comes to expression in this architectural motif is contained in the sphere of feeling.  If man were able to lie bound to the earth, reaching out spiritually into the universe with his hands, he would feel the spiritual world above him as though he were inside a great dome, symmetrical in every direction. In a certain respect the Greeks had a similar experience. Greek culture, which sprang primarily from the Intellectual Soul, was, in one of it aspects, a, culture born from a peaceful union between man and the earth; while peacefully united with the earth, man felt the heavens above him.—There may appear to be a contradiction here, but when we are, finding our way into occultism such apparent contradictions must be faced and understood. We in our age have not the impulses that were at work in the inner life of the Greeks, nor have we within us what is now for the first time beginning in the evolution of humanity and is to come to expression in our Building.  A man who rises out of repose must not merely make the transition into the standing position, but he must also begin to move, to go forward. As well as the sphere of feeling he must come to know the sphere of will. This can be expressed in art only by transforming what was symmetrical on all sides (the dome) into something that is symmetrical about a single axis only. We can therefore say that when the dome-motif is transformed into a motif that has only one axis of symmetry, we have expressed in the Building not only what is experienced by the man who passes from repose into the sphere of feeling, but also by the man who pasees from feeling into willing, into progression, going forwards. The motif of will is a motif that leads onward. Hence the experience of one who is looking at the architraves and capitals must also lead him onwards; it must be an experience of progression. This was indicated in the two foregoing lectures.  Now the will is the sphere in man's being that is connected with subconscious experiences. It is that element which, in the case of man as he is at present, is for the most part directed by the gods. Naturally, then, by Lucifer and Ahriman as well. Hence there can also be evil will. Nevertheless, the will is borne onwards by the gods, and only in the rarest of cases is man able to know what goes on in his will. What a man expresses quite involuntarily when he is speaking belongs to what is conditioned in his will- nature and to which his will gives rise. One may even say that this is as it should be. It is not at all necessary, to begin with, for man to be fully conscious when he gives himself up to the primal, fundamental nature of his will, when he allows the impulses of the gods to be active in his will. The impulses of the will are the most fundamental of all. Hence the human being is able in his successive incarnations to progress from nation to nation. This is expressed in our Building through the progression in the series of columns. Man is able to progress from nation to nation, from people to people with every incarnation he is born into a different people. He experiences what proceeds from the sphere of his will as coming in a certain sense from the gods. Neither, to begin with, can he change very much that belongs to this sphere of the will. A man who is born in some particular place on the earth cannot alter the fact that he is born at some place represented in one or another of the forms of the columns. For he stands at this particular place in the evolutionary process through the subconscious foundations of his life of will. The way in which the members of the different nations think about each other, the way in which they mutually—let us say—esteem each other, is basically connected with what rises up like smoke out of the substrata of the sphere of will; it springs from nothing else than the impulses of the will. From what has been said we shall realise that it is possible for us to raise ourselves above these impulses of the will. But then we must naturally take a different direction. The direction of the will-impulses is it ˂—: it is the direction of progression. The direction of the impulses of feelings, however, is from below upwards. Man can raise himself out of what proceeds entirely from the impulses of will. He can do this through contemplating what is expressed in the motifs of the columns and architraves. Is not our whole mental horizon widened by these thoughts? And is not Spiritual Science a means of attaining this wider mental horizon? Only think of all that could be done to enable men of every cultural community to acquire mutual understanding of one another if what was presented in the two last lectures were to become living feeling, living knowledge. How could a member of one cultural community hate and abuse a member of another if he understood the things that were spoken of in those lectures? The limitations of what springs from the sphere of will in a single cultural community expand into the harmony formed by all such communities together when we know what mission each one has to fulfil. We begin to feel the single communities as we feel our own soul-members. This too had to be given artistic expression in the structure of our Building, in the direction from below upwards. And what is indicated as a theoretical, ethical principle in the first declared Object of our Movement (the universal brotherhood of peoples) has been given concrete expression in the forms of the Building, when these forms are contemplated in their flow from below upwards, inside and, as well, outside the Building. Now the whole is always contained in the part, so we have not only the direction of the will impulses ˂—, and the direction of the feeling-impulses (up), but something else as well. We have something else as well through the fact that there is a closure, an endings, overhead. In referring to this motif I have so far spoken of the supporting force, with its upward direction. But I can also speak of the closure above, the covering, the roofing in. The motifs may thus be described as motifs which progress, ascend, and enclose. You can also picture the Staff of Mercury. If you carry it, forward, it progresses; if you lift it up, it ascends; if you press the spirals together at the top, allow them to become rigid in themselves you have the closure above. This closure represents the thought-sphere, just as the progression represents the will sphere, and the ascent the feeling nature.  A true feeling of the whole evolution of humanity will develop in one who absorbs what is contained in the form-motifs of our columns and architraves in their flow from below upwards. They are motifs which express the principles of mutual understanding between the members of the different cultures and civilisations on the earth. To pass from the sphere of the will into the sphere of feeling one must rise above the state of isolation, of separateness; one must actually participate in what is expressed in this movement from below upwards. A certain element which will become more and more essential in the modern age will then be laid into the life of feeling, into the sympathies and antipathies of the members of the different spheres of culture. The Unconscious is an even stronger factor than what man has in his actual consciousness. The will impulses belong to the Unconscious; the feeling-impulses are more conscious, but still partly unconscious. The thought-impulses belong to the sphere of Consciousness, for a man is conscious of what he is thinking about. He is conscious of it, but only when he is really thinking, when he lives in the thoughts. But he does not always do this; when he is speaking he more often brings the impulses of the spheres of feeling and of will to expression. It is a peculiarity of man that he can speak but by no means always gives expression to thoughts; what seems to be thought in what he says is often maya—nothing more than an unburdening of the spheres of his will or feeling. To think in the real sense is something different, something more. Despite the fact that it is man's privilege to have thought-impulses, it is nevertheless one of the most difficult things to fill these impulses with real thoughts. Although it suffices for daily intercourse, if one desires to have adequate thoughts about the great impulses at work in the evolution of humanity, it will certainly not do to remain content with what originates from feeling, still less with what originates from the will. Thinking must be irradiated by something still higher; it is not enough merely to let the successive spheres of culture work upon the soul; there is something that works still more deeply in these spheres of culture. This can be brought to expression only in the effect made by the dome, the cupola. So one who passes through the Building from West to East will have in the progression of the columns the expression of will; and as he becomes aware of what flows from below upwards, he will feel the nature of the several European cultures, and a great deal else as well. What will come to him from the dome? The secrets of the evolution of all earthly humanity. Therefore, as he looks up into the dome or cupola he will see on the one side the portrayal of the primeval Indian inspiration: how through the Rishis there flowed into mankind what was to come from spiritual spheres into ancient Indian civilisation. What had to come to mankind in those days in conformity with the character of the ancient Indian epoch will be painted in one part of the dome. How Zarathustra gave the ancient Persian culture its stamp—the sunlight battling as it were with the darkness—this will be seen at a second place in the dome. Then how the Egypto-Chaldean culture gradually comes right out to the physical plane but is still permeated with astrological, spiritual realities—this will be found in a third area of the dome. At a fourth place will be portrayed the Greek, as if standing by an abyss. This is the culture born of the Intellectual Soul or Mind Soul. What man is, comes to the fore, how he is faced with the necessity of having to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, how, through solving it, he thrusts the Sphinx down into the abyss—that is to say, down into his own being—this will be portrayed in a fourth area of the dome. How the eternal, divine forces and powers work into this evolution of man will come to expression inasmuch as what lies still deeper in the evolution of humanity than the Post-Atlantean impulses, namely the impulses of the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs, will be portrayed at the points of the compass: Atlantean evolution in the South, Lemurian evolution in the North of the dome. And finally, the outcome of the Lemurian and Atlantean evolution will be portrayed: namely, our own era. Implicit within it is that impulse in world-evolution which expresses itself in the “J A O”. This will meet the gaze of one who looks from West to East towards the smaller cupola., Not that “J A O” is represented symbolically, but it is expressed in the motif. One who looks from East to West will see that which speaks out of the depths of the Cosmos into the development of culture, just as the “J A O” speaks from within into the development of the soul. But all that I have described is perceptible to a man only if he overcomes the dome which arches over his brain; if he frees the etheric body of his head and looks from within outwards, then what I have described comes to him as a mighty Imagination. These things are realities, are actually seen. when the etheric body is liberated from its physical foundation. Then one sees what presents itself inwardly to the etheric brain which has expanded to the Cosmos. The whole earthly evolution of man is represented here. (See sketches for paintings in the large cupola.) To have thoughts about the realities of the evolution of humanity is possible only when we penetrate the secrets that are to be portrayed in paintings in the interior of our dome. In the same way that we can reach the sphere of feeling—that is to say, unprejudiced feeling devoid of sympathies and antipathies—when we experience what comes to expression from below upwards in the motifs of the columns and architraves, so through these motifs (of the paintings) we can penetrate to what is living reality in human evolution at every hour, every moment. Only when we know what is actively at work in the human soul at every moment, can we know what has been evolved in the course of millions of years. For everything that was contained in the Atlantean and Lemurian cultures lives in every soul—otherwise no soul would be as it now is. A human soul in all its depths can be understood in thought only if it is understood as the product of the whole process of world-evolution. And so our Building expresses—if I may use the word “expresses”—Willing, Feeling, Thinking, but in their evolution, what they should become in the human being who is striving to achieve a measure of self-development. Thus neither the forms as they are, nor the things that are done here, are the result of arbitrariness, but everything comes out of the very core of what we also try to grasp in Spiritual Science. How often, when we are trying to describe the secrets of manes nature, do we not have to consider Willing, Feeling and Thinking? We have portrayed them in our Building and there, just as in man's own nature, willing, feeling and thinking are mysteriously linked with one another. If we go from West to East in this Building, we are moving as the Will-sphere of man moves; if we direct our gaze from below upwards in contemplating the forms of the columns and architraves, we sink down into the Feeling-sphere of human nature; if in what arches over the Building in the painting of the domes we study what we experience inside the Building, then we are studying the secrets of the sphere of human Thinking. In a production such as this Building, everything corresponds to a certain inner necessity, everything comes into being as it inevitably must. And that is part of the significance of a Building of this kind. What makes us realise that some Imagination, Inspiration or Intuition contains objective reality? We realise it through the fact that when we have the Imagination, the Inspiration or the Intuition, we have the actual experience that it is not something that has arisen out of ourselves but has its place within the harmony of the whole Cosmos. From now onwards into the future, humanity must have a concept of art which has as its essential characteristic what is felt to be inner necessity. We must feel that a truly artistic creation is not due to ourselves but that the gods create it through us, because it is their will that it shall be in the world. We may well be convinced that the real progress of 0f human nature will depend upon such feelings and ideas gaining wider and wider recognition and taking the place of those that are current today. What I mean by saying this, is that everyone who is working on this Building or is in any way connected with it, should feel above all that it is his business to compare what is aimed at here, what is expressed by and in this Building, with what is dominant in the world today. Such a comparison can give rise to the fervent question; What was it that enabled Christianity in its earliest form to come into being? I have often spoken of this, for all such impulses in cultural life have arisen in the same way: namely, through the fact that in the case of a genuine, initial impulse of culture, those who were the first to ally themselves with it, were sufficiently strong in their souls to let this impulse completely dominate them. What would have become of Christianity if in the souls of the first Christians the Christian impulses had not been all-powerful? In the Roman world above them, in the physical light of day, a different culture prevailed; we know that Christianity developed in the darkness, down below in the little cells in the catacombs, and then rose above the surface. Nothing of this Roman culture has remained—what developed down below in the catacombs rose up and conquered the world. This came to pass because Christianity became part of the hearts and souls of those down there in the catacombs. Today the position is not quite the same—if it were, we should have to hollow out this Dornach hill into catacombs so that nobody should see anything of what we are doing. We need not hollow out the hill, we need not keep anything in concealment, we need not prepare the new culture underneath the earth while what is now taking place on the surface runs its course. Spiritually, however, the situation is the same. How much of what we want to inscribe in our hearts and souls is to be found in the culture of the present day? As much as there was of early Christianity in Rome! Even though we do not worship physically in the catacombs, spiritually we are in the catacombs, and our feeling is true if we realise that this is indeed our situation. Our feeling for the Building is true only if we say to ourselves: There, in the sunshine, the dome of our Building with its glistening grey slate roof gleams. over the countryside. We are under this arching vault, above all, spiritually under it. By these words I wanted again to indicate what must be the attitude of those who understand the inmost impulse of Spiritual Science towards what is to be found in the outside world. Oh, those early Christians—they heard the Word that resounded through their souls, their hearts, the Word that came from the Mystery of Golgotha, and they did not succumb to the temptation of what was taking place above the catacombs! May it be the same today—spiritually—within our Movement! A certain difficulty lies in the word “spiritually”. The difficulty is expressed in the fact that if one considers the actual situation, one might sometimes be tempted—I say, might be, not is tempted—to wish that there were still present today the dire compulsion for inner deepening that would be there if we were forbidden by all the means of present-day culture to build on the Dornach hill, so that we should literally have to go into caves and there, in concealment, take up our abode. Confronted with such a prospect we should realise more strongly how our own impulses, which should be those of Spiritual Science, must differ from the blustering racket overhead. These are things which can be expressed only by analogies such as I have now put into words. You can feel something of what is meant—and more is meant than seems, to be contained, in these analogies—if you penetrate a little into the gist of these words. May you feel all that I have meant to convey in today's lecture and in these concluding words. |
| 287. The Building at Dornach: Lecture V
12 Oct 1914, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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| Reference was made yesterday to what the paintings in the two cupolas must represent; the impulses of Lemurian, Atlantean and our own life, as well as the impulses at work in the cultures of ancient India, ancient Persia, Egypt and Chaldea, Greece and Rome. In this way, the subjects will be inwardly understood and this inner understanding of colour, which, as it passes over into the actual painting, simultaneously becomes an understanding of form, will reveal to us what is actively at work in the evolution of humanity. |
| It will he difficult to make our contemporaries understand what is being aimed at here. We shall have to resign ourselves to this for as long as people persist in judging a work of art as “right” or “good”, or I don't know what else, when it reminds them of some real object, so long will our paintings not be understood. |
| We, however, could have a certain understanding of his attitude, because by placing such lofty ideals before us, we have indeed lost the dense, solid earth underneath us. |
| 287. The Building at Dornach: Lecture V
12 Oct 1914, Dornach Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond Rudolf Steiner |
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We spoke yesterday of the way in which the impulses of Will, Feeling and Thinking in man are brought to expression in our Building. It will be apparent to you from many things that have been said here recently that the art in our Building must contain a new element that has not hitherto existed in the evolution of art but is essential for the further progress of humanity. Admittedly it will be difficult from a purely external point of view to understand the real aim of this Building. A person may say to himself: I really can make nothing of it—and according to the standard of what he has hitherto regarded as artistic he will naturally have criticism to make. But remember, any new impulse in human evolution has always been criticised when it is judged according to the standards of the past. It will help us to understand the point here if we try to find a formula to express what is entailed by this renewal of the principle of art through the anthroposophical conception of the world. When we review the development of art, we can think of the architectural forms produced by mankind, either in the original Egyptian, Greek or Gothic architecture, or what represents the renewal in a later age of what was there in an earlier one—I mean the Renaissance. We can also think of sculpture, painting, and so forth. If we compare the effect made upon us by the essential character of these arts with what is aimed at in our Building, we can say; Everything that has been brought into being hitherto is like something in repose which, for us, has been wakened to life. Picture a human being in some fixed position. Somebody comes along and speaks to him - and he begins to walk, to move! This might well apply to the evolution of art up to our own day. We can regard it as something in repose, to which we would fain speak the magic word which rouses it into inner life and activity, into movement. This is what we want to achieve, because it is demanded by the impulses of transition which are at work in our time and call upon us to find a new impulse for the future evolution of humanity. To take an example, let us think of a beautiful Greek building. Its essential character consists in the symmetrical structures which mutually bear and support each other, just as the limbs of a human being standing immobile bear and support each other—but everything is at rest. Compare this with what we have aimed at in our Building. In time, of course, everything will develop, for we have been able to make only very primitive beginnings with the means and help available to us, In the Building we have movement from West to East; we have motifs which grow, as it were, from the simple forms to be seen in the West in the capitals and architraves into greater complication, and then become more inward and simpler again towards the small cupola. What was formerly a merely inorganic principle of symmetry has been brought into movement. What formerly was at rest is now in movement. This will have to come to expression in the painting—as far as it is possible in our age to achieve what must be the goal. In painting there are two poles. The one pole is that of drawing, the other that of colour, Fundamentally speaking, there are these two poles in all painting. Now a person may be a wonderful draftsman—that is to say, he may have the gift of reproducing in the lines he draws the inner form-quality of his subject, so that a picture of this form-quality is evoked by the drawing. Now we must be clear that anyone who concentrates on the actual drawing in a painted picture must inevitably be very one-sided in his relation to the Real—or, as is often said, to Nature. Nature does not work with lines only, but has far richer means for giving expression to what is inherent in a living being. Hence the painter or the draftsman, when he is inwardly moved by his subject, must express more in his lines than Nature is able to bring to expression in lines. But we shall never be able to avoid feeling that drawing in itself is nothing more than a substitute for what Nature can achieve. Whatever we may be capable of expressing through drawing, we can never produce anything that surpasses Nature; we cannot even equal Nature. Whatever we aim at in this respect must always remain a bungling attempt, for the simple reason that with the far richer means at her disposal, Nature is able to bring to expression the inmost essence of her creations. On this account, drawing can never be anything more than an auxiliary. And I believe that one who is a true draftsman will always feel that in drawing he is only producing something like a scaffolding to be removed later on, and that the less any evidence of it remains, the better. I think that anyone with artistic sensibility, looking at a painting in which the actual drawing is especially conspicuous, would have an impression similar to that made by a building from which the scaffolding has not been removed but still stands in position. Indeed the point can be reached where the actual drawing is felt to be just a clumsy adjunct to the work of art itself. It is rather different as regards the other pole of painting, the colour pole. Here we must bear in mind that colour is a fixation of something that, fundamentally speaking, is not present in Nature at all, or at most can be captured only momentarily. One cannot really count what is attached to some object, and which one then paints, as belonging to the element of colour in itself; for if a painter is concerned with making a meticulous reproduction of say, the colours of the clothes of people he is painting, he is certainly a bad artist. But fundamentally speaking, anyone who might try, in the colour of the face, for example, to bring the inner, vital processes of the human organism into evidence, would not be a good artist either. One who paints a pale face—assuming, to take the extreme case, that the pallor is intended to indicate that the person in question is ill—would certainly not have produced anything really artistic, not to speak of how inartistic it would be to depict a wine-bibber by painting him with a red nose! If it is desired to capture in colour something that is, so to say, stationary, and expresses itself in the world of reality, one is still not working with truly artistic impulses. But if one paints, let us say, a cloud, and in the cloud brings the whole magic of Nature to expression—perhaps the early morning sun and its effect upon the tints of the cloud—then one captures something that is transient in Nature and does not originate from the configuration of the actual cloud itself. What is captured here is something that is transient, but for all that rooted in the conditions prevailing in the whole environment, in the whole Cosmos, in so far as the Cosmos is involved in the phenomenon. In painting a cloud that at a particular hour of the day is brilliantly coloured, we really paint the whole universe as it is at that time. If in painting a human being we attempt to reproduce his inner, organic state, then, as I have said, we are not working with the true artistic impulses. But if we succeed in giving expression to what this human being has experienced—if, for example, we can suggest in the painting something that is the cause of the particular reddening of the countenance - then we are truly in the realm of the artistic; and still more is this the case when we can perceive from the picture itself what the experience has been, when the red of the cheeks tells us what the person must have undergone—again something that is not confined to the individual, but is in the whole environment, in the whole Cosmos. What I am saying here is connected in a certain way with something I spoke about in the lectures on “Occult Reading and Occult Hearing”. I said there that even in the waking life of day the soul is in reality always outside the body, and that the body is only a mirror by means of which man makes himself conscious of what is out there in the Cosmos. He alone is a true artist who lives, as it were, with the Cosmos and who regards what he has to portray simply as the stimulus to depict his life in the Cosmos. If we paint a cloud and therewith the whole Cosmos, we are outside the cloud in our life of feeling and ideation, and the cloud is there merely to enable us to project what lives in the whole Cosmos into a single entity. But if we want to live in this way in the Cosmos when it is a matter of using colour, we must awaken colour to life. Colours confront us as qualities of the beings in outer Nature. When our observation is confined to the physical plane we recognise the colours that are attached to the objects of Nature. If we are to see colours, a foundation is always necessary, with the possible exception of atmospheric phenomena such as a rainbow or other phenomena of the kind. Hence the rainbow has not without reason been regarded as something that unites the heavens, the spiritual, with the earth, because in the rainbow we see the heavens in colours; we actually see colours as such. I have already said that it is possible to plunge into the flowing world of colours, to live with the colours themselves, liberating them, as it were, from the objects. If we succeed in doing this, colour becomes the revealer of deep mysteries; a whole world resides in the flowing, surging sea of colour. But the world of colour must first be liberated from the conditions imposed upon it on the physical plane; the creative power of colour must be sought and found. If painting is to be an organic part of our Building, it must be born out of this impulse; the attempt must be made to portray in colour something that is not to be found on the physical plane, where everything coloured—with the exception of the rainbow and similar phenomena—is attached to objects. It must be possible to live in the colour blue, for instance, with one's whole soul, as if the rest of the world simply were not there; the soul must feel itself flowing out into the blue which fills the whole world. But if we really penetrate into the surging world of colour, the result will be that we shall not simply brush on tints, for we then discover the creative power of colour; we shall also find inner differentiation in colour. We shall find that blue has something about it that draws and attracts the soul, something in which our soul would like to lose itself, longing and yearning for it without end. We shall also find that forms arise out of the colour blue itself, forms which bring the secrets and the very soul of the universe to expression. From the creative power of colour a world will come into being, a world that has form, inner differentiation. Form will be born out of the colour itself. We shall feel that we are not only living in the colour, but that the colour itself gives birth to the form—in other words, the form is created by the colour. In this way we shall find our way, through colour, into the creative forces of the world. Only so can we succeed in painting in such a way that what we paint is not merely a covering of surfaces, but leads out into the whole Cosmos, participating in the life of the whole Cosmos. Reference was made yesterday to what the paintings in the two cupolas must represent; the impulses of Lemurian, Atlantean and our own life, as well as the impulses at work in the cultures of ancient India, ancient Persia, Egypt and Chaldea, Greece and Rome. In this way, the subjects will be inwardly understood and this inner understanding of colour, which, as it passes over into the actual painting, simultaneously becomes an understanding of form, will reveal to us what is actively at work in the evolution of humanity. A review of painting in the past will show that the tendency of this art has been to work with colour attached to objects on the physical plane. But colour must be freed from objects if the paintings in our cupolas are to achieve their aim. What is essential, therefore, is that the impulse of painting shall be deepened and quickened inwardly. It will he difficult to make our contemporaries understand what is being aimed at here. We shall have to resign ourselves to this for as long as people persist in judging a work of art as “right” or “good”, or I don't know what else, when it reminds them of some real object, so long will our paintings not be understood. As long as it is possible to say that a tree is well painted because it is naturalistic, giving the impression that one is standing in front of an actual tree—as long as this is the criterion for judging painting and art in general, just so long will people be unable to understand what our painting is intended to be. They will inevitably regard it as nonsense, and be incapable of seeing anything in it.—Why have works of art existed? Surely in order to be looked at! Who has ever supposed anything else? But what we want to create in our Building will certainly not be there merely to be looked at! Indeed, we may be happy if those people who believe, as a result of their previous experience and study, that works of art exist merely for the sake of being looked at, consider our art extremely bad. For one thing is certain: what these people do not want, is the very thing we want to achieve! Typical incidents often occur in this connection. One of our friends met me one day on the way from the glass-engraving studio to our house, and told me that he had been talking to an old gentleman who said that if the one who had conceived the idea of the domes of our Building had ever seen the Church of St. Peter in Rome, he would have designed them differently. Now the one who conceived the idea of our domes has seen St. Peter's not only once but many times, has admired and appreciated its greatness, but for all that he designed the domes as they are. It is quite natural that such things should happen. Even St. Peter's in Rome is there to be looked at—but what we are doing in our Building must not only be looked at, it must also be experienced. And what would have been the right answer to give to that old gentleman? The right answer would have been to say to him: Do you know the fairy-tale of the king's son who looked at things only through his window? And do you know what happened when one day he had to “eat of the serpent”? Then he began to understand what the sparrows on the roof-tops and the chickens in the courtyard say to one another.—That old gentleman had obviously not eaten of the serpent! What does it mean, to “eat of the serpent”? It means, not merely to have theoretical ideas about Spiritual Science, but to have been gripped by it in the very fibres of one's heart and soul, so that one feels oneself to be an actual image of this Spiritual Science. If we can feel this with our whole being then we have eaten of the serpent, and we shall know as an actual experience what is intended by our Building. We shall not merely look at it but experience what it aims to achieve; we shall realise that man, dimly and unconsciously in his life of will, passes from incarnation to incarnation, born in one incarnation in this people, in another incarnation in that. Just as this will-impulse in man can be experienced in the progression of the Building from West to East? in the successive motifs of the columns, capitals, and architraves, so can the element of feeling be experienced in what unfolds in the direction from below upwards—but it must be an actual experience. And the element of thought, when thinking is not merely abstract, cold, prosaic, but is quickened to life by the heart of the Cosmos itself—this should be experienced in the closure denoted by the domes, and also in their details. If, for example, the juxtaposition of one colour to another is one that is never found in Nature, if a being with facial features resembling those of man is portrayed in a colour which it could never have in Nature, one must feel in actual experience that what comes to expression there does so through its own inherent impulse. This will be achieved for the first time—even if only in the most elementary beginnings—if the attempts made are in any degree successful. In the paintings, particularly, things will not be as they are in Nature, but far rather as they are in the spiritual world. Two things must be achieved about which very few people nowadays are capable of thinking at all. But the fact that there are still a great many people who do not know, and moreover do not want to know, anything about the great vistas which lie ahead in evolution, certainly does not contribute to the welfare of humanity. To feel as it were in concentrated form those things of which our Building stands as the sign and token, we must quicken our inner life, quicken the soul to life through rich and varied experiences gathered from the manifold sources available in the world. Let us think of times very different from the present and of the mental horizon of men in those times. Think of the mental horizon of the Greeks and of all that was unknown to them but is well known to men of the present age. The Greeks did not know of America or Australia; they knew nothing of the Western hemisphere; they knew nothing of a very great many things we now know about Europe, Asia and Africa. Geographically, their horizon was narrow.—See what your feelings are when you study the map which a Greek was able to draw; think at tile same time of the rich inner world of the Greek, of his creative power. Compare what might be called the “geographical” chart of the heavens which the Greek was able to draw with present maps of the heavens. In ancient Greece, the map of the physical configuration of the earth was very meagre, the chart of the heavens very comprehensive. What was present in Greece was still, in essentials, a spiritual experience of the physical plane, geographically—within narrow limits; spiritually—a vista of wide expanses of the heavens. True, it was no longer as it had been, for example, in Egypt, when men looked out into the Cosmos and in astrological pictures still experienced something of the spiritual Being; whose physical expressions are the stars. Nevertheless, a precipitation of all this was still present in ancient Greece. When we read in Homer's “Iliad” that information is given by Thetis that Zeus can do nothing at the time because he is in Ethiopia and will not return home for twelve days—that still has an astrological meaning—but it is expressed in such a way that the reader does not notice that the description refers to the passage of the heavenly bodies through the Zodiac, When 'the Greek said “Zeus is with the Ethiopians”, he meant: Zeus is in a particular sign of the Zodiac—and the number twelve is also mentioned. All this Indicates a change from an earlier time, but on the other hand there is still an echo of what was revealed to men originally from the wide expanse of his spiritual horizon. Now let us turn away from Greece and consider the modern age. Geographically , the globe has nearly all been explored and only a few regions today are blank patches in the maps. We see the new age arising. America is included by the Oriental peoples in their earth—the America that simply did not exist for the Greeks. The geographical horizon widens and widens but the spiritual horizon, the map of the heavens, shrivels up completely. What does modern man know of the denizens presented to us in Greek mythology? He knows nothing at all! Europeans really live under the delusion that they still know something about the heritage left by ancient Greece.—What precedes the times of ancient Greece has no more than a spectral character for historians, however much they may investigate it by means of physical records.—But man is at least still a living reality in Greece. When the man of today imbibes what is imparted in the schools, he is assimilating history, and his soul lives in the history he has come to know in such an external way. We drag around with us a great deal of history—a very great deal of history. It is not so in the case of the Asiatic, nor is it yet so in the case of the American. Although he has his history, it is not a vital part of his life. The American is much less conscious of history than the European. There will be few Americans who attach any great importance to being able to trace back their genealogical tree through centuries, Probably there are very few indeed—but in Europe there are numbers. That is what I mean by “dragging around” with us the history upon which so much depends today in the whole configuration of life, of the social life too. A time is conceivable in a far distant future—for the occultist more than conceivable—when everything that we carry around with us as history since the Greek age will lie at rest (we will not speak of where it will be resting)—a time is conceivable when the tide of the peoples will have rolled across Asia over the Europe and America, and when men will know as little on the physical plane of all that we now recount and experience as European history as we today know of what happened in Europe four to six thousand years ago. We can look towards a time when this tide of the peoples will have rolled across Asia, a time when a quite different kind of life will develop and when everything that now stirs the very fibres of our hearts will lie as it were in a geological stratum of history. It will then lie as much in the past as what happened in Europe some four thousand years ago lies in the remote past for us. The time will come when Goethe, let us say, will be “discovered” in the same way as modern man has discovered the ancient world and its happenings from the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs. For in the outer world there will be physical men who will need to discover Goethe in this way! We are gazing here at vast perspectives in the evolution of humanity. The Greeks knew nothing of America! In time to come no Greeks will be in existence, and the descendants of the present-day Americans will know of them only as a people belonging to a far, far distant past—or maybe they will know nothing of them at all! The process of which I have just spoken more as a physical process, also takes place in the spiritual, in the following sense.—In the course of his evolution into the future, man must acquire the faculties which enable him to discover the spiritual again, to know a future spiritual world which for most people today is as unknown as the present continent of America was unknown to the Greeks. We are at the beginning of this voyage of discovery to the spiritual America. In this connection—from the angle of scientific thinking—we stand, spiritually, at the same point where men were standing physically when the first ship sailed from the Old World to America. Spiritually, we are on the voyage of discovery to the other, spiritual half of our human existence. By saying this I only wanted to give some indication of the importance of Spiritual Science in the evolution of humanity. For now everyone can fill in for himself the gaps that still remain to complete the picture: Suppose for a moment that America had not been discovered, that Europeans were still living in ignorance of the existence of America. Is such a thing conceivable? It is quite inconceivable. But a time will come when it will be just as inconceivable that men were once incapable of discovering the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. This will be utterly inconceivable. And the thought can be carried even further. What effect has the expansion of the geographical horizon had upon humanity? if we look for the most spiritual culture that has developed on the earth up till now, we must look for it before America was discovered. For with the discovery of America, materialism begins. In a mysterious way, every geographical expansion is bound up with the expansion of materialism. Humanity must again acquire a spiritual knowledge of the world. This will be achieved through discovery of the spiritual America—when the path symbolised in our Building is found by the world outside. We have spoken of the element of progression in the Building from column to column, from architrave to architrave. That is the progression on the physical plane. But we can also follow the motifs from below upwards, we can look upwards.  What comes to light in the course of history—in so far as we can observe it externally—is expressed for us in the progression. But an inner deepening will become more and more necessary, a deepening of the soul which is at the same time—as in the case of Goethe's Faust who descends to the Mothers—an actual ascent into the spiritual world—naturally into the spiritual world of the good Spirits. But when man raises himself into the spiritual world, a kind of conclusion will eventually be reached. I say “conclusion”. Let us grasp what this word really implies. The idea of evolution prevailing today is that it is like a barrel that begins to roll and goes on rolling and rolling forever—it is also imagined that there was never any beginning to this process, that it has always been going on. People who talk about evolution today almost invariably imagine that there has always been evolution, that everything has always been evolving, that it has always been so! But in reality this is not the case. It is nothing but a bad habit of the mind, a slovenly kind of thinking, to conceive of evolution as having no limits either in the past or in the future. The geographical, physical evolution of the earth also means evolution for every race, every people, Yes, but that certainly has an ending, a conclusion, at some time or other! When everything has been discovered, there is an ending. We shall not be able to say then: Now we will equip our ship once again and make further discoveries. it is not true that evolution can continue endlessly; evolution has a conclusion. And just as physical evolution must have an end, so too will spiritual evolution have to have an end; an actual dome will arch one day over what humanity has experienced in the course of history. And true as it is that when the whole globe has been explored, no further ships will be equipped in order to discover still more distant lands on the earth, it is equally true that what is to be spiritually discovered by man will also one day actually have been discovered. The idea that men will go on investigating endlessly is the most erroneous there could possibly be. It is essential that thinking shall be in accordance with reality if sound ideas are to be developed. But so few people think in accordance with reality in our present age, although they are convinced that they do. One can, for example, come across people who say: When there is nothing more left to investigate, the world will be a very dull place. These people forget that according to the modern idea of evolution, investigation will never come to an end. Yet one day it will, just as geographical exploration of the earth will eventually come to an end. Those people who are tormented by the thought that investigation will one day come to an end and that there will be nothing more to do in this respect and who ask: “What will man do then?”—must be given the answer: That will be plain enough when the time comes, and in any case it will be something quite different from investigation. I have now given you a number of ideas, the purpose of which may puzzle you. But if you take them together you will be able to recognise this purpose yourselves. We see that the course of all historical life is reflected in the form of our Building. Men live on through the ages, just as in the Building one goes forward from column to column. They rise to a higher level just as one raises one's eyes to the columns, capitals and architraves. And they hope for a consummation—a conclusion—just as one will find it on looking up into the interior of the cupola. But there is to be a conclusion in history too—it is to be portrayed in the painting of the domes. This painting must not merely be a covering of the surface, but call forth the thought: When you come to the surface of the dome you will discover something.—One must forget that any physical structure is there. The physical element of the paintings must be pierced through; one must see through the surfaces into the expanse of the spiritual worlds. It may possibly be that we shall not succeed in this in the case of our Building, but as the principle is developed, one day, perhaps—as the result of Spiritual Science—men in some future time will behold a mighty dome whose configuration leads their gaze out into the infinitudes of spiritual life. If we live at some particular place on the earth and want to travel to another—at certain times we may want to do this but are prevented—then it is brought home to us that men can confront each other as enemies, that they can fight with one another about things of the earth, and even more than fight. But they cannot fight about the sun and the stars! Even though the Chinese have called their ruler the Son of the Sun, the Son of Heaven, and although for various reasons they have started wars on the earth, they have never started a war about ownership of the sun; it has never occurred to them to engage in strife with other nations about ownership of the sun. All kinds of things can be the cause of strife in the souls of the peoples spread over the earth; but that which directs men's gaze upwards into the spiritual worlds can never be an inducement to strife. It cannot lead to strife. It must be realised that a great deal has yet to happen in the course of earth-evolution before humanity will have advanced far enough to have such a vision of the spiritual world that Spiritual Science will be as the sun and the stars are in physical life. Much will be necessary before this point is reached—above all the point where, through Spiritual Science, men will begin to think not only with the instrument that is almost entirely used for thinking today, namely, the head. In a certain sense it is true to say that nothing is more remote from us than our heads! For in all, essentials, the head, as far as its main foundation is concerned, was already completed at the time of the ancient Sun-evolution. The rest is an inheritance, partly from the Saturn-evolution, and has developed to further stages; during the Moon-evolution another important impulse was given. But. what is thought out in the head is in reality as remote from men as is their knowledge of the Saturn-, Sun- and Moon- evolutions, Although there are often profound truths in many sayings current in everyday life, there is one very common phrase which should not be believed. One often hears it said “I have a mind (German, “head”) of my own.” That is an error. No one has a mind (or “head”) of his own; his head belongs to the Cosmos! If someone were to say: “I have a heart of my own”, he would be talking sense. But he talks nonsense when he speaks of having a head or a “mind” of his own. Men will have to begin to develop thoughts which are experiences in the way I described yesterday in speaking of the inner experience of rising from the recumbent into the standing position. We experience this too, merely with the head. In reality a stupendous process takes place in us when we raise ourselves out of the recumbent position in which we lie parallel with the surface of the earth, and place ourselves into the direction of the earth's radius—but we experience it in an utterly abstract way. This change of direction from the cross-beam of the cross to the vertical beam—when this becomes a real experience it is a stupendous. process, a cosmic process it is the Cosmic Cross.  This happens every day. But we do not by any means think every day about the fact that through the act of standing up end lying down, this Cross is inscribed into very life. It is a far cry for man from this abstract process of standing up and lying down, from this assumption of the form of the Cross, to the conception that can be expressed by saying: If man were not so constituted on the earth that he lies down and again stands up, the Mystery of Golgotha would not have been necessary. If someone utters the sound B—as for example in the word Building—and adopts the sign B for this sound, then the sign signifies the sound B. If someone asks for a sign to express the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha was necessary for earth-evolution, then it is to be found in the Cross, which embodies the acts of lying down and standing up. Because man is so constituted on the earth that he lies down and stands up, the Mystery of Golgotha had to take place. This will be known when men begin to think with the second brain—not with the “head-brain” but with a second brain to which I referred in the lectures on “Occult Reading and Hearing” when I said: The lobes of the brain must be regarded as arms held in a fixed position. If your arms and hands grew to your sides, you would think in such a way that there would be no possibility of doubting that this Cross is the appropriate sign for the Mystery of Golgotha. It is only the head-brain that is baffled by this kind of thinking. But it is also the head-brain that creates the soil for the many misunderstandings prevailing in the world. The reason why so many misunderstandings arise is because the head-brain alone is active and creative today. But the second brain must also become creative, creative to such a degree that something indicated figuratively a little while ago, is fulfilled. I said that the Greeks did not know of America. But when we go back to other ancient traditions, we find that there were times when the existence of America was indeed known. But then this knowledge was lost. There were also times when that which Spiritual Science is striving again to acquire was present. Spiritual Science knows that a great deal that formerly came to men from subconscious, dreamlike experiences, must come again consciously. Men also had something like a common speech, which only later differentiated. There is profound truth in the biblical legend of the Tower of Babel. But as long as men can only think with their heads they will not be able to be creative in the way they were creative in ancient times, for example, in speech. Spiritual Science, however, has within it the capacity to bring the elements of speech into movement. And when it is said that in our Building the element of art has been brought into movement, it must also be said that life itself must be stirred into movement. A vista can arise before us of a time when Spiritual Science will be truly creative, when through the thoughts and ideas unfolded in Spiritual Science, speech itself will become creative. Spiritual Science will one day be spread over the whole earth and will give rise to a common speech, corresponding to no speech or language existing at the present time. I am not referring to anything like Esperanto, for that is an artificial, inorganic invention. The speech of the future will come into being when man learns to live in sound itself, just as he can learn to live in colour. When he learns to live in sound, then the sound itself gives birth to the configuration, so that it becomes possible once again to create speech or language out of actual spiritual experience. We stand only at the very beginning of many things in Spiritual Science but as yet not even at the beginning of what has here been indicated. We must, however, keep it in our minds in order to realise the importance of Spiritual Science and to be aware that Spiritual Science bears within it a new knowledge, a new art, and even a new speech—a speech that will not be compiled artificially, but will be born. Just as men will never fight about the sun or the stars, they will also never fight about that new speech, by the side of which the other languages still in existence when this new speech has come into being can quite easily continue. As you will certainly have felt, we have placed a far-reaching ideal before our souls, a very far-reaching ideal. Most materialistic thinkers of the present time would certainly say: This is all airy nonsense, for the fool who can talk like this about the creative power of speech and about Spiritual Science must assuredly have lost all solid ground from under his feet. It is easy to imagine that if some person of eminence in our time had been listening from a corner to what has been said, he would have burst into derisive laughter at this flight into the clouds without solid ground underfoot. We, however, could have a certain understanding of his attitude, because by placing such lofty ideals before us, we have indeed lost the dense, solid earth underneath us. As long as the earth continues its evolution as a physical planet, this ideal will not be realised. The physical earth will have come to an end before this ideal is fulfilled. But the souls of men will live over into other planetary incarnations, and these souls will experience the fulfilment of this ideal if they become conscious of it in our time. Yes! Ahriman might stand there and be the arbiter between ourselves and the person we have imagined sitting in the corner, listening and chuckling to himself because he supposes us to have lost all ground from under our feet. Ahriman might well rub his hands and say: “They call that ‘ideals of the future’! They have lost the ground from under their feet; the gentleman up there on the hill says so himself. He mocks himself and knows not how! He is speaking the truth and is not aware that he is doing so”— But we know that even though we do not stand on the solid soil of the earth, we nevertheless stand in Reality with what we make into the living word of the soul, And why? Because we avow the Mystery of Golgotha in earnest and not with the shallowness that is so general today. We know that Christ lives, and that we can know the truth when we let Him be the great Teacher and Leader in our striving for spiritual wisdom. But He uttered words to this effect: You cannot truly believe in Me in your inmost being until you cease to acknowledge only those words and ideals which will perish together with the earth—(for the whole outer configuration of the earth will perish, the earth in its present form will pass away)—until you hearken to My true words. Of these true words He has said: “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away”. Therefore in the life of soul we can have firm foundations, even though our ideals cause opponents to say that we no longer stand an the solid ground of the earth. If we are to make true avowal of the mystery of Golgotha we must have ideals which are more enduring than the earth and the configuration of the heavenly bodies circling around the earth in the Cosmos. We must hearken to the revelation of the Mystery of Golgotha which will be there even when the earth no longer exists, nor the heavens which now look down upon the earth. The meaning of the word that proceed from the Mystery of Golgotha is infinitely deep. And those who will not lift their souls from the ground into the cupola—which should be transparent in order that they may look into the spiritual world—those persons are not living in Reality. For if this dome, this cupola, is to be the expression in architecture of the Mystery of Golgotha, it must itself remind us of the words: “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” |
| 288. Architecture, Sculpture and Painting of the First Goetheanum: The Symbolism of the Building at Dornach I
04 Apr 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| Architrave over the first and second columns We shall see how what is simple here [at the first column] grows downwards, how the lower part grows towards it, and how what grows downwards, what grows from top to bottom, undergoes a certain complication of forms, from top to bottom undergoes a certain complication of forms, thereby pushing forward other rising motifs. |
| But now, when we can rise to imaginations in abstract terms, we enter into nature and understand nature's growth. The entire structure should be designed in such a way that it is simultaneously the great hieroglyph through which the world can be grasped. Wherever you look in this structure, you should have a starting point for understanding the world. That is what is, if I may use the term, secretly woven into this structure, that in looking at these forms, that which, so to speak, governs the world at its core, is presented. |
| 288. Architecture, Sculpture and Painting of the First Goetheanum: The Symbolism of the Building at Dornach I
04 Apr 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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I would like to talk again today about the nature and significance of our building, for the reason that a number of external personalities are among us at the course for medical professionals. First of all, I would like to note that this building, as a representative of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, is intended to be in the world that which really gives an outward image of the significance and inner essence of this movement. If one wants to recognize this movement in its true significance, one must surely become familiar with the fact that this movement wants to enter the most diverse areas of life as something completely new, that its appreciation must arise from the realization that such a new thing is necessary in the face of the fact that old impulses in our present time clearly show how they are moving straight into decadence. If our movement had not emerged from that which the signs of the times themselves demand, from that which is not now in any human program, but from that which can be read in the spiritual development of humanity that lies behind our physical human movement, even if our movement were like so many other movements that also found societies, set up programs, and set up so-called ideals, then at a certain point this movement would have needed a larger building, larger premises for its membership, and they would have turned to some outside builder to have a house built. The architect would have built something in the traditional style, and the Society would have carried on its work in such a building. This is not how it should be with us. Rather, since we came to the point of being able to start a building project – which might even be completed one day – it had to be shown, precisely on the basis of this fact, how this spiritual movement, on the one hand, reaches the highest heights of spiritual life and, on the other hand, is a thoroughly practical movement that can directly engage with all aspects of practical life. That means that it had to be shown that our anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement is capable of producing new building forms, a new architectural style, out of itself. It had to be shown that our movement, down to the last detail, is not just a theoretical world-view movement, but something that can have a formative effect on everything that is placed externally in the physical world. Thus this building was not constructed as an outwardly unimportant house, but was built out of spiritual science, out of its very own feelings, ideas and thoughts, and in every detail it is an expression of what this spiritual science wants to be. It does not want to be some mystical driveling, it does not want to be some abstract theory, but it wants to be something that can deeply intervene in the most everyday life, and must therefore also intervene most in that which is to be its own representative. The whole of this structure should express how it places itself in the present as a living protest against what the centuries, the millennia, have brought to humanity and what is currently leading humanity to decline. Given that we could not build the structure in Munich due to the narrow-mindedness of the local artistic community, but had to erect it here on the Dornach hill, it must be seen as a stroke of good fortune that, by approaching the hill, this double-domed structure can now really be appreciated. For it is truly not for external reasons that this building has become a double-domed structure. This Goetheanum has become a double-domed structure – a building composed of a larger and a smaller dome – to show that something is to be revealed to contemporary culture and that something is to be received. That which emerges from the depths of spiritual life is represented by the small dome, and the fact of receiving is represented by the large dome. And I think that fate has done well that the one who approaches this hill in Dornach can already have the feeling, through the way in which this double dome rises above the hill, that something new is being added to human development, but something that can also have an effect on human development at the same time. The first pictures we will show you this evening should demonstrate to what extent this is the case. The first picture we will show is of the building as seen from the north.  Another aspect. Approached from a slightly different angle, the building looks like this.  The third picture is supposed to show the northeast aspect.  The fourth picture is intended to represent the southwest aspect.  The next picture is supposed to show the northwest aspect.  This is yet another aspect.  And now let us visualize how the building appears to someone entering from the west. The building is oriented from west to east. You enter at the bottom, and the cloakrooms are downstairs. You come up to the walkway through a stairwell and enter the building through the gates, which are in the west. The whole building is designed in such a way that it presents an organic architectural concept in contrast to the dynamic-mechanical architectural concept to which one is otherwise accustomed. Therefore, the forms everywhere are such that they blend in with the organism of the whole building, just as I would say that any limb – even the smallest in humans, the earlobe – blends in with the whole organism. Thus, a limb blends into the whole organism in such a way that it must be in its place, as it is, as large and as shaped as it is. In the same way, every detail should be in its place in this building; every detail should take its form from the overall form of the building. Furthermore, without falling back on mystical symbolism, there is not a single symbol in the whole building; everything in the building should be poured into artistic forms and show in artistic forms what task each individual piece has.  The West Gate. The West Gate has the task of welcoming those who enter. This welcoming, this receiving, this welcoming, so to speak, should be expressed in forms that are not geometric, but which should be expressively organic forms. As I said, you enter the building from below, via a staircase leading to the gallery, from where you then enter through the west gate.  Now the staircase. You are looking here towards the northern side of the staircase. It can be clearly seen from these things how everything here is designed so that it has to be in its place, where it is found. For example, you see how this column capital is perfectly adapted in form to this side, its inclination towards the place where the whole structure must be supported; narrowing on the other side, where the entrance is, where there is nothing more to support.  During on-site explanations, I have often pointed out this structure at the beginning of the staircase: there are three semicircular shapes with their planes perpendicular to each other. It is the shape that emerged in my mind when I tried to imagine how a person walking up these stairs would feel. He would have to feel at the point where the first step of the staircase begins: When I step into it, the external influences of life are calmed. Inner emotional movement will be found inside, which completely calms the outer feeling. In there I will stand on safe ground. That was what I wanted to express. This presented itself to me because I had to develop this thing here. It is a formation that has an external similarity to the three semi-circular canals in the ear, which, when injured, lead to dizzy spells that thus take away the certainty of the person when they are injured. But that is a discovery that occurred to me only afterwards; the matter itself is formed entirely out of the sensation.  You can also see a radiator cover. These radiator covers are designed in such a way that they represent, on the one hand, growing out of the earth, that is, the forces that grow out of the earth in a supersensible way and permeate the sensible; they are counteracted by other forces coming from above. For those who can perceive this interplay of forces, elemental figures emerge, and these elemental figures are expressed in the forms of these radiator covers, which are otherwise built in their entirety according to Goethe's principle of metamorphosis. Each radiator is the organic metamorphosis of the other. Each was designed to fit exactly into the place in the house where it belongs. But at the same time, the principle of metamorphosis is carried out with the same fidelity as in the plant itself. Every single form, every line, every curve is shaped according to the spatial and functional requirements, and I would say, the original form, which of course is not found here. Every curve is appropriate to the position of the limb of the structure on which the curve is located. A curve that is diverted points to something else in the structure, as opposed to a curve that is bent inward, as you can see here, where the perspective is not even quite right.  There we saw the same thing again, in more detail. You can see here how an attempt has been made to replace the conventional mathematical-dynamic pillar with something organic, which in its form has the character of support, of support through a force that comes from the elementary forces of the earth and is precisely suited to the distribution of the load that is to be supported at this point in the way in which it shapes its forms. Of course, I am well aware of the many objections that can be raised against such designs from the point of view of traditional architecture. But it is high time that an attempt was made to replace the usual dynamic-mechanical building concepts with an organic building concept that is based not on dynamics and mechanics but on organic principles.  Here we have again seen the side on one side of the main entrance, where you can see how they tried to bring out the character of this being a side piece, how it turns towards the center, how it points to the side. This shaping is particularly important.   The next picture. Here you can see the side wing, as it goes north, with its windows. And you can see here how it has been tried to overcome the merely decorative. Here, the support is led down everywhere, so that the windows stand up at the bottom, so that not only the windows are worked out of the wall like a decoration, but that the windows stand up everywhere. But you can also see how, in the room containing the motif in question, the same motif that is above the side windows above the main entrance reappears here at these windows. But if you can properly visualize the metamorphosis internally, then such motifs take on such a form that, from a purely external point of view, they no longer resemble other motifs at all, and yet they are actually the same. Just as the sepals and stamens are no different from the petals and leaves of a flower – even though the leaves take on completely different forms depending on the plant's position – so it is here. Thus, Goethe's idea of metamorphosis has been realized in its entirety in the artistic process.  Here we have the upper part of the side entrance. You see, once again, the same motif above, transformed, but also the motifs that you see everywhere, metamorphosed.   Here you see my original model, cut in half, that is, at the point where the axis of symmetry lies. The forms were first worked into this model. This model was, after all, the basis for the construction.  This is the floor plan of the building. This floor plan shows the extent to which the building is designed as a double-domed structure. The small domed room faces east. The main group will stand here, which all of you already know. Here is the west domed room, the auditorium. You can see that when you come in through the entrance, you enter the auditorium. You first come to a vestibule lined with wood, each individual piece of which is handcrafted, and all surfaces and curves are worked so that their surfaces and curves must be exactly where they are.  You enter below the organ (Fig. 29). The casing and framing are designed so that you can see that the organ is not just placed in the room, but grows organically out of the entire surroundings of the building. Then you always have a walkway on which you can walk around outside and below during intermissions. The auditorium holds about nine hundred or a thousand people. Then the entire perspective of the building is arranged according to an axis of symmetry; you won't find the same axis of symmetry anywhere else, everything is oriented towards this one axis of symmetry, while otherwise the auditorium is arranged, stepping forward, from seven columns on each side. These columns in the auditorium have bases, have capitals, and above them are architraves. Everything that is worked into these columns is done so in strict accordance with the principle of the evolution of nature itself. If you follow how the capitals, bases and architraves of the individual columns grow out of one another, you will see an image of evolution, of development, in the emergence of one motif from another. It is necessary to immerse oneself in the way in which one form grows out of another in these columns, with artistic devotion, with artistic sensitivity, just as one form of nature's development always grows out of another. It is not good to start from an abstract terminology in a philistine, pedantic way. There are certain reasons why one can name the one column Saturn's column, the other Venus' column, etc. But one must not obscure what is essential in the essence: the belonging together of the seven columns, the emergence of one column from the other. And above all, we must not obscure what lies in the forms themselves, which must be felt by following the line of swing, the curve of the form, by dreaming ourselves into a symbolism that does not exist. This is more inherent in the emergence of the form of one column from the form of the other column than in simply looking at a column. In the process, it turned out, by recreating nature itself, so to speak, that the idea of development, which is very often understood as if in each development the following stage of development is always more complicated than the one before, that this idea of development is not correct. Every development proceeds in such a way that at first there is a simple form; then a more complicated one develops from it, then an even more complicated one. This reaches a certain culmination; then again the forms begin to become simpler and simpler, and outwardly the most perfect form reveals itself as the one that has been simplified again. It is only an apparent simplification, but it is still a simplification, I would say, in the limbs, and there is a certain complication in the formation of the limbs. This is strictly adhered to here. You can see how the design of the columns becomes more complex up to the middle column, and then becomes simpler again towards the east, so that the seventh column is relatively simply designed again. The small domed room is closed off in this way on each side by six columns, the bases of which are designed to hold twelve seats, and here too the principle of development is fully adhered to for the capitals, the bases, the seats and the architraves. When you endeavor to recreate nature, it is the case that you only truly discover your findings in the finished product that you have created. One can – and this is something that only presented itself to me after the design of the matter in the model – one can, if one takes the raised, convex form of the first column, one can place it in the concave form of the seventh column in a truly artistic way, of course with metamorphosis, but with a true one. The second column fits with its raised part into the concave parts of the sixth column, the third into those of the fifth, and the fourth column stands alone as the central column. Of course, the same principle cannot occur in the same way in the six columns. There, the first and the sixth, the second and the fifth, the third and the fourth really correspond to each other as I have just expressed it. It is something that is found throughout nature, that certain polarities occur, and it was interesting that only the idea of development was retained in the formation of the forms, and that the polarities resulted automatically from the pure retention of the developmental idea.  The next picture: Here you have a section through the building in a west-east plane, so that the order of the columns is presented to you exactly as it can be shown in a section.  Here you can see the glass studio in the area below where the windows were cut, which I will talk about later. This glass studio is in some ways a kind of metamorphosis of the whole Goetheanum; only the metamorphosis is brought about by the fact that, firstly, the domes have been pulled apart and a central element has been added, and secondly, the domes have become the same size. For all such inner processes of drawing apart and becoming equally large, metamorphic experiences then arise for the whole organism of a thing. These are then faithfully executed in every detail. You can also see that the usual geometries in our building have been overcome by the fact that the symmetrical axis has been interrupted to the right and to the left. The idea that each individual piece should be seen in the context of the symmetry of the whole has been applied to the stairs. You will also see this when you look at the gate for this studio (Fig. 99), with the staircase, the shape of which has been designed in such a way that it really does represent a staircase, precisely because of its shape: you go in, you have a right and a left, while very many stairs that are designed are now really nothing closed, have no right and no left. All these things are to be considered when it comes to a truly artistic creation. The gate itself is designed in such a way that one recognizes its symmetry as a necessity. When you enter this glass studio, you will also see the lock. It is designed to differ from the usual philistine locks that are otherwise in use and which are really the opposite of anything beautiful.  The next picture: Now you see what has been most contested in a certain way, but which will also be understood over time. It is the building in which the heating and lighting are housed, the boiler house. And it is built according to the principle that what is inside has its envelope in the building. Just as a nutshell is shaped so that it is a shell for a nut, here the shell is entirely appropriate for what is inside, right up to the shapes of the chimney, which is only complete when it is smoking, because the smoke is part of these shapes; it then forms the top of the chimney. So everything is conceived according to the same principle by which nature creates when it forms the nutshell around the nut.  We will now turn our attention to the internal motifs. You have used the organ motif here as a model. The architecture around the organ should be such that the whole structure is organically integrated into it, so that one does not have the feeling that the organ has been placed in some random location, but rather that the organ grows out of the whole organization, as it were.  So, by walking through the space below the model and then turning around, we have the two symmetrical columns in the auditorium with the simplest architrave motif at the top. We will now look at each individual column each time.  And as we advance, we first see here the simplest column, one of the two, and now, after we have let its forms act on our perception, we will look at it in connection with the second column.  We shall see how what is simple here [at the first column] grows downwards, how the lower part grows towards it, and how what grows downwards, what grows from top to bottom, undergoes a certain complication of forms, from top to bottom undergoes a certain complication of forms, thereby pushing forward other rising motifs. This can only be felt by observing the succession of the two columns. It is precisely this succession that must be observed. You can also see here how the architrave motif becomes more complicated. It is actually the case that by immersing yourself in these forms, you can learn more about the idea of development, the developmental principle, the developmental impulse in nature than through any theoretical discussion. Because nature is such that it creates in images, and it must be emphasized again and again that, even if our philosophers prove that one should work with abstractions, with analyses and with the discursive principle to build a science of nature, then nature simply turns its nose up at this science and does not let itself be grasped in this way; it eludes comprehension and leaves us alone with our abstractions. Because it does not create in natural laws, it creates in images. But now, when we can rise to imaginations in abstract terms, we enter into nature and understand nature's growth. The entire structure should be designed in such a way that it is simultaneously the great hieroglyph through which the world can be grasped. Wherever you look in this structure, you should have a starting point for understanding the world. That is what is, if I may use the term, secretly woven into this structure, that in looking at these forms, that which, so to speak, governs the world at its core, is presented.  We will now see the second pillar on its own.  And now again the second with the third column in relation, with the modified architrave motifs. You see how here again the forms become more complicated from top to bottom, and how they are met by forms that become more compact towards the bottom. However, these forms can only be produced, one from the other, if the artistic design is based on the same developmental forces that nature uses to form a plant leaf by leaf, or in a series of developing creatures, one species emerges from the other, one species develops out of the other. By imitating nature, such forms are created. And those who immerse themselves in nature will succeed in recognizing the principle of development in nature. Indeed, something has been set up in this building that should inspire people to say: what surrounds me here as something growing, what surrounds me here as something formed, is something that stands as an explanation of the whole surrounding world.  We will now see the third column on its own.  And now we will see the third column in relation to the fourth column again. You can also see that the architrave motifs are becoming more complicated. You just have to imagine how, according to the principle of growth, one emerges from the other, one grows over the other, and you do not need to say: here is a caduceus, but you have a principle of growth that emerges out of it, grows over it, breaks through the overgrowth, and the caduceus does not stand there as an isolated symbol, but as a developmental phenomenon, as a developmental form that emerges from the other. It is the same below with the capital motif.  We will now look at the fourth column on its own.  Now again this column with the following one. You can see how purely by one growing over the other, this caduceus, snake-staff-like structure emerges. It is taken entirely from the growth, not placed as an isolated motif. It is perhaps also cleverer in the usual intellectual sense to throw one motif after the other. That is not what is aimed for here. The aim here is for each motif to emerge from the last, and for the harmony of the motifs to give the actual impression of reality.  The fifth column on its own.  Now again this column with the next. You can see how here, through the continued growth, not a complication occurs, but a simplification. The architrave motifs have long since become simpler; but here you can see how this motif simply continues to grow, grows upwards, and the motif arises in a completely natural way. In growing, there is always a pushing away. The two parts below here grow upwards; this is rejected, and the motif emerges in a natural way. This is eliminated as it grows; on the other hand, this grows downwards and the shape emerges quite organically from what went before.  The sixth motif on its own.  And again this motif together with the next one. You can see how the next motif simply emerges from the previous one by growing further, growing, then overgrowing at the top and finally merging.  Now the seventh motif on its own. Another simplification, but a complication in the lines. Tomorrow I will show you this artistic element, which lies in the complication and simplification, by means of a simple representation on the board. We have now arrived at the point where the curtain column is, where the large dome space merges into the small one. Here you have the last column, the connection between the large and small dome spaces.  We are now moving further into the small domed room. You can see that it goes into the small domed room.  We have here the order of the columns and the architraves of the small domed room. If you remember how the two motifs were on the other columns, you will see that the forms have been changed to reflect the fact that this is a smaller room with only six columns. You just need to consider the following: If you have seven columns that are supposed to create a unified effect, then you have to give each column a different shape. Then imagine circling the same space with six columns instead of seven. In that case, the distances between the columns, which are one and one-seventh, or 8/7, would be different in relation to the previous ones, and so individual shapes would now be changed. And here, in addition, you have the smaller dome space. This further changed the forms. You see, when something like this is created, you get what I would call a sense of space. Those who think abstractly – and such thoughts have even appeared in scientific literature – are of the opinion that, for example, one can also imagine a human being as very small, atomistically small, that size itself, the spatial volume, has no relationship to the being. But this is not true. Anyone who has immersed themselves in the essence of artistic creation knows that a particular form can only be reproduced in a particular spatial volume, that the size of the space is in an inner relationship to what is being depicted. If you have conceived of some figure for a particular large space, and you then make it en miniature, it seems distressing. But this feeling must be there. The artistic elements must be coordinated with their spatial content to this extent, otherwise they are not truly artistically designed.  The next picture shows another row of columns from the smaller dome with the corresponding architrave. You can see the slit for the curtain, the first column, the second column and so on. We will study the individual columns in their sequence later.  The first column of the small dome.  The next one will now be more complicated, according to the growth principle.  The next one is more complicated again.  Now it is about simplification, but it is a sham simplification; it is simply an outgrowth.  The next column.  There we come to the two columns that border the east end.  We have the carvings of the east end here. You will see them if you look closely. I would say that the forms here can be felt more than seen. If you look closely, you will find that the carving here in the east end encompasses everything that the other forms of the columns and the architraves contain, but of course modified for the vaulting of the room, metamorphosed. Above it a five-petal flower. Anyone who wants to can imagine a pentagram there, but in the same way that one can imagine one in a five-petal plant leaf in nature. A symbolist would have put any old pentagram there. But then one would be acting according to the principle by which we have often acted. Time and again, we have had to experience that artists came to our branch offices who were unpleasantly touched by the fact that unartistic motifs were found everywhere. A cross that was ugly in design, with seven roses around it, was something that was considered more dignified than something truly alive in artistic forms. It is precisely when one is able to pour the spiritual out completely into artistic forms that what is to be achieved here is achieved: not intrusive symbols, but a shaping in forms in which the spirit lives. When we describe how the Earth developed from Saturn, the Sun and the Moon [gap in the text], we do so in such a way that what lives in the whole also lives in the ideas of our worldview. However, it does not live by expressing itself symbolically through any form, but rather the forms themselves have real inner forces of growth.  Here you can see this eastern end a little more clearly in its individual forms.  The next picture is a detail of the side of the small domed room. And now, my dear friends, I have begun to use these pictures to explain something about the building to you. I will continue this discussion tomorrow so that those who are hearing it for the first time will get a complete picture of what our building should be from this presentation. I will continue these reflections tomorrow with the help of more slides. |
| 288. Architecture, Sculpture and Painting of the First Goetheanum: The Symbolism of the Building at Dornach II
05 Apr 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| The next picture shows us the Greek personality as she lives under the initiation, a more feminine figure, since in fact the Greek initiation spoke more to the feminine. |
| Those who look at the roofs of our building, as they shine, especially under certain effects of the sun in their grayish-blue, will see that this idea was indeed a justified one, to ship this Norwegian slate to the south just enough to cover this building. |
| But it is, my dear friends, a demand of the time, it is a demand of the future. It is something that should be understood quite differently than one has been inclined to understand it until now. And it would perhaps be the first sign of a manifestation of the will to heal the world if, let us say, an understanding were to awaken from the English, French, and American sides, precisely for the completion of this building. |
| 288. Architecture, Sculpture and Painting of the First Goetheanum: The Symbolism of the Building at Dornach II
05 Apr 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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I would like to start by talking about the principle of development, which I already hinted at yesterday. I said: If we follow the metamorphosis of forces within a developmental series, we first come from the simple into the complicated. So I want to draw a simple [it is drawn]; then a next more complicated one would perhaps be this; then we would come to a third, to a fourth, which would be like this (Fig. 105). Now we might have four stages of development of the same thing. Now the next one could be somewhat more complicated than the previous form. We would then perhaps get this [fifth] form. But this would not come out, instead this other form will develop. What I have drawn with the thick line, that would then perhaps be visible on the outside. And if it were a real form in nature, one would then progress from this to this form. And yet it is only in the etheric that development continues in such a way that the more complicated forms, which I have indicated with the dots, emerge, while the physical, the externally visible, that which reveals itself again, perhaps simplifies itself again. The next forms would then perhaps be such that the ethereal forms would be these [sixth]. But it is not this ethereal form that comes to the fore, but rather what remains visible on the outside is this [the thick line], which in turn is a simplification, an essential simplification, so that if you just consider physical development, you go from a stage of 1-2-3-4 in complication, then in simplification. This is also really the principle of development in nature. For example, we can see how, let us say, the eyes of certain lower animal beings – considered physically and externally – are more complicated than the human eye. Certain lower animals have blood vessel-like organs, a “sword-shaped process” and a “fan” in their eyes. These are also disappearing, and the human eye is relatively simpler in its outward form, but the etheric body has a more complicated form. We can only grasp the principle of evolution correctly if we present it in this way. The principle of development is correctly captured in the evolution of the columns, capitals, architraves and bases that you were shown yesterday. If you want to understand our building, you also have to bear in mind that the entire treatment is appropriately designed for the new architectural style in terms of character. It is the case, for example, that even the artistic treatment of the wall is different from the way walls were treated in earlier architectural styles: the wall was always conceived as the boundary of the space that one wanted to close off. Here at the Goetheanum, the wall is conceived in such a way that it actually overcomes itself. This is physically achieved in our windows. Our windows, in so far as they are the main windows of the auditorium, are etched out of single-colored glass panes. It is then the case that the artistic works are actually only created by the sunlight shining through. So the processing of the window panes is a preparation, and the whole impression is created by the interrelationship between what has been worked on the pane and the sunlight shining through. In the windows, in particular, what has otherwise been striven for in the entire building has been physically achieved, whether through the design of the columns, the carving on the walls, or the painting: the wall virtually dissolves. So that when you look at the wall, you don't have the feeling that the space is closed off, but that you have the feeling that you are being led out into the cosmos through the wall. With the windows, you must have this feeling physically, because you lead directly, I would say, to the effect of light on the outside, purely through the physical design of the panes; but with the other wall designs, this has also been attempted artistically. This will give you an idea of how a new stylization of building forms has been striven for here, down to the last detail, how the formal language of our building is to be a new one, so to speak. It is understandable that philistinism cannot immediately comprehend this new design language, my dear friends. Now, it is important that we first show you some of what has been achieved with painting. First of all, I will show you the painting of the small dome, because I only have pictures of it here for now.  Let us look at what our revered friends actually saw. By visualizing this now in non-colored images, we must immediately point out that the essential thing about the painting of the small dome is not the motifs, but the bringing out of the motifs from the colors. There lies, I might say, the very beginning of what painting of the future will have to bring. Man will indeed have to understand more and more that in the details of nature, in essence, there is always something essential. For example, when you immerse yourself in a color, or in a color combination, it is not just this color combination that is present, but the color itself is something alive, something that works out of itself, and it is possible to educate oneself, for example, to live with the color blue. You will then get the feeling that the blue color gives you the impression of the designed, the moving, that which moves or is formed in space. So if you approach it in a creative way, you will get something that you draw out of the blue. The red or yellow gives you the impression that it wants to reveal itself, come towards you, talk to you. While the blue glides past you, the red gives you the impression that it comes towards you. In this way, being with a color, but especially with many colors, can be invigorated. And all these things actually are in the work of nature. And only someone who educates himself in this immersion in the elements of nature can understand this. Therefore, it is somewhat striking when, let us say, in the current, indeed, in itself quite justified new striving for art, things come across that actually show that one has come out of imitating nature and, isn't it true, into something that one is actually striving for new artistic things in the inartistic. When we see that all manner of expressionist and futurist and so forth things are put together in any old way, or put together differently, what appears in nature in a certain way, then very often – not always, of course – there is something very unjustified in such a combination. For example, someone who forms a human eye cannot help but place the second eye in the right place if they do not merely see, but if they know how to live intimately with the creative forces of nature. This is because the eye is not something in itself, but only exists with the second eye. But one only comes to the inner essential creation of nature when one can live with the entities of nature, for example with colors. And now, look, how could it not be possible to create from color itself? I just want to know when someone says: I am not interested in something created according to the model, but I am interested in applying the colors, I just want to know why then the form should not emerge from this pure application of the colors as the creature of the color. We have to get away from the model again. We have to get away from being tied to the naturalistic. Art has worked on that long enough. But we have to be able to develop an interest in seeing a light surface simply as a color spot and seeing a dark surface as a color spot. I would like to know how, when you simply have a light and a dark surface in an arrangement [it is drawn], how you could not feel a face turned in this direction, surrounded by hair growth here (Fig. 105). Everything can be brought out of the color combination. Just as everything can be brought out of the treatment of the surface, of the treatment of the form in sculpture. In contrast to color, if painting wants to work with color, the line, the drawing, is actually an untruth. Because, you see, the horizon is not really and truly present as a line. That is not true at all. It is not a horizon line. What is real is the blue sky, and below it perhaps something shaped by nature, and that borders on each other. It is the contact of two colored surfaces. Whoever draws the line is lying. Whoever paints two colored surfaces, which of course must then have a border, is telling the truth. And it is with things like this that one begins to get used to the truth. Because we, wanting to be naturalistic, have lied so much artistically, that is why we also have the plight that so many lies are currently being told in the other world contexts. Just think what, let us say, for example, the drama has achieved. Drama, at the end of the 19th century, in the culmination of materialism, began to be materialistic as well. There were people sitting in the auditorium watching dramatic performances of Arno Holz or Gerhart Hauptmann and so on, and now they didn't have something dramatic in the old Shakespearean, Schillerian or Goethean sense, where great series of events that are far apart are summarized, but a back house, a front house, or something like that, which was to be recreated in a very naturalistic way. The people should not talk about anything other than what is usually talked about in three hours. What kind of naturalism is that? It is the naturalism that, just like today's natural science, only takes into account the extra-human, which also, in the artistic, only takes into account the extra-human: can it be seen? If you wanted to be a model for a drama, you would have to remove the third wall so that everyone could see inside; then you could see what happens in three hours and recreate it from the stage. These things are of course not taken into account at all in the age of naturalism, and one does not find the possibility of really placing the human being back into the whole natural and cosmic context. But this must also happen in art. It is understandable that art has long adhered to the model; but now the time has passed when art can adhere to the model. Art must grow together with the creative forces of nature and work out of the creative forces of nature. For what is the point of recreating nature in a naturalistic way? Whatever is created in a naturalistic way can never be achieved by nature. Every smallest achievement that is made out of something that is not there in the senses can be more significant than anything that appears to be so perfectly created in nature. If you want something realistic, you can say that you are sticking to nature itself. And in addition, in many areas naturalism was even somewhat extraordinarily frivolous. One thinks of Hauptmann's “Weavers”: the well-fed people sat down in the theater to overlook the whole series of scenes in Hauptmann's “Weavers”. This was called “social art”, bringing the misery of life into the theater, something frivolous, a frivolous cultural phenomenon. So we have to turn to the supersensible again. Today, people find it difficult to decide to enter the supersensible in art. But it will not become light in humanity if we do not decide on something like this in all areas. Because the small cupola room is painted, the motifs are only the novellistic, not even the truly pictorial, artistic. But you have seen the thing itself, and so you might remember, especially in the pictures that I can show here, what you saw. It is perhaps even interesting to note how what is on the dome wall there cannot be reproduced if you only have the motif. But the motif itself, if you have it, must show that there is something incomplete about it. A motif that only appears in black and white is simply not satisfactory, because you have to be able to say what is missing. There must be something missing, because what is actually supposed to be depicted is areas of color, not black and white, and not lines, while what will appear to us is the novellistic element, the thought, which basically does not belong at all.  What you see here is what meets you from the small dome when you enter it. A child, emerging from the indeterminate material forms, flying towards the medieval figure, which has been captured by capturing a kind of Faust figure. It should be captured in a certain sense, the initiation of the Middle Ages. After humanity had gone through the most diverse forms of initiation, this initiation of the Middle Ages came about with all its tragedy. It is indeed the case that, according to the spiritual conditions of this stage of human development, the human being cannot rise to an understanding of the living unless the realization of death stands beside it. To see through the connection between life and death is what leads, ultimately, from the Middle Ages to our own day, and through it to true knowledge.  In the next picture you see here that which lies further to the east: this medieval initiate himself, who comes to his realization out of reflection, out of turning away from the world. But precisely if we want to experience this turning away from the world, we must experience it by acquiring an understanding of the forces of death that are out there in the whole world. And these forces of death are intimately related to our powers of consciousness. The same thing that confronts us in the human skeleton, that, my dear friends, that is the external image of death, at the same time expresses in external physical form what lives in our nervous system when we experience the reflective consciousness of modern times. The consciousness of the early Middle Ages and especially the ancient consciousness were such that they did not depend on the human being dying in every moment of their waking lives in order to think. But in return, human beings were filled with images and imaginations in their consciousness, even if they were atavistic. Intellectualism has only developed since the middle of the 15th century. It has developed because our head organs have assumed a formation that, when it takes hold of the whole person, continually leads to death. A battle between life and death is constantly taking place in the human being. The head wants to die. This is prevented by the life forces that continually surge up from the rest of the organization. This dying of the head, to which we owe our intellectual consciousness, is what should also be expressed through all the colors and everything that has been brought out of the color in this form. This is the only place where the letter, the written word, appears within our entire structure, and rightly so, because it is only in this time that the I, the I-thought of humanity, has become so abstract that it can be pointed to with letters. The I-thought will only be able to be borne more and more by the fact that this I is indeed filled with the Christ. That is why medieval mysticism had the task of developing the Pauline word through a whole series of sermons and reflections such as those of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart. It is fixed for all eternity within the medieval language, which developed in the German-speaking areas after the modern era, that the I: written out, the initials of Christ Jesus: ICH;  For the reasons I have just explained, you see Death beneath the Faust figure; this Death comes from forces that work from the center of the Earth towards us and combine only with the Mercury forces that work from the cosmos towards the Earth. The sight of the Faust-like figure with Death below him would be unbearable if the counter-image were not created in his perception, in the child flying towards Faust and the ego.  The next picture shows us the Greek personality as she lives under the initiation, a more feminine figure, since in fact the Greek initiation spoke more to the feminine. In general, in Greek high culture, the content of the initiation had to be gained by the initiate acquiring what female figures, who to a certain extent intervened in the flow that comes to man from the cosmos, what could be gained from such female figures: The Pythian priestesses in Greece are intimately connected with the whole structure of the Greek initiation. So that then such things appear as these heads, for example, which are worked purely from form. This already invites us not to ask in the abstract sense: What does something like this mean? This question is an unartistic one when posed in abstract form. At this point, one must look at what color is there and how, according to the principle that I have just explained here, the shapes themselves emerge from the experience of the colors. Everything that belongs to this figure has actually come about in the end through the perception of the colors.  The next picture: you have a larger area to see here, here is the flying child seen earlier; here the small dome connects to the large dome; then this figure of the medieval initiator, and here is death. And here is the figure you just saw, above it the inspiring figure, an Apollo-like figure. Unfortunately, the picture is very imperfect. And at the top there is still the higher inspirer. In these pictures, there is always what is initiated as a personality. Above it, there is the figure that sinks the imaginations into the personality to be initiated, and above it, there is the figure of a higher hierarchical order that sinks the inspirations into it. So here you have the inspiring figure, which is above the Faust-like figure.  The next picture is unfortunately very unclear. This is the inspiring figure that is above the Greek initiator. If you imagine the one you saw earlier, with the three heads on the shoulder, then this is the figure above it, the one who lets the imaginations flow into the lower figure, and above that the inspirer of the heads of the inspirer. Here is the head of the inspirer, and below that would be this Athena-like figure, who inspires and is inspired and imagined.  And here you have the two figures. The figure at the bottom is that which sends the imaginations down into the Egyptian initiates, and the other figure is that which allows the inspirations to flow into them. And as we move forward, we come to the representation of Egyptian initiation.  So the next picture is the Egyptian initiates; above him are the two figures that have just been seen here.  And so we come to the older Persian-Germanic initiation. This Persian-Germanic initiation is still effective in our time, but it has, as it were, something enclosed within it, the medieval initiation mentioned earlier, that is, the one characterized in the first figure. The medieval initiation is, as it were, shorter, and this one encompasses the whole long period. What matters in it is that the duality in the world - the bright, Luciferic, the dark, Ahrimanic - be seen through in its entire effect on the world. Here you have on the one hand the dark, Ahrimanic: the small head is in fact Ahriman, the other is his shadow, which he carries with him. On the other side: the Lucifer figure. You can see how this is developed in the sculptural group – you have all seen the group. So you can see how the contrast between the head of Ahriman and the head of Lucifer confronts you. And in the painting, one could also clearly express this mutual relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer. If you see, for example, how the forward thrust of Lucifer's forehead virtually takes away Ahriman's foreheads, or how Ahriman's foreheads are hardened towards the back, then you see the interplay as it is the organizing force of nature. This then goes down. You see how a kind of centaur shape corresponds to Ahriman – a kind of centaur shape also corresponds to Lucifer – that they are connected to each other, want to be apart and cannot, complement each other in the colors, and below that the Persian-Germanic initiate, who carries the child floating on his hand, pointing out how the future and the hope for the future must be taken up in man by seeing through dualism.  The next image: Ahriman is alone with his shadow. The Ahrimanic is therefore everything in man that works in one direction in man. The human being is so essentially that man constantly strives to keep the balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic in him. The Ahrimanic is everything in us that, if we take the matter spiritually, inwardly, strives in us for the sober, prosaic, materialistic, for the philistine, for the bourgeois, for the tantric. That is the Ahrimanic, that which hardens man, that which solidifies man within himself, which prevents him from opening up to the world, which makes him absorbed in his egoism. It is that which draws man to the earth, physiologically speaking, it is that which works in man and by which he would actually be continually exposed to the danger of succumbing to hardening, to sclerosis, to ossification, if it were not for the reciprocal, the Luciferic. He would be constantly in danger of becoming diabetic, for example, or of developing terrible gouty lumps. That is the Ahrimanic. Ahriman suffers greatly from constant gouty lumps, from constant rheumatism, etc. There are things that are physiologically connected with the soul-like philistinism, materialism, bourgeois conformity, and so on, as I characterized it earlier.  This is the Luciferian figure, the complete opposite image. It is the other side of man, that which continually causes man, in his soul, to stray into the mystical and the fantastic, continually causes him, as it were, to be a being that wants to get beyond the human head. All enthusiasm in man is that which is striven for by the forces that are, as such, Luciferian in man. Now there are two ways in which these contradictions can be present in human nature: One is that man strives to achieve a kind of equilibrium, that is, to facilitate everything that strives within him towards the philistine, the bourgeois, by also developing imagination, by also being able to devote himself to the world, and by also understanding how to bring the artistic into the purely abstract. That is to say, it is possible for a person to achieve such a balance of these two opposing currents that the person becomes one through the two harmoniously blending into each other and becoming one. But the other is also possible, that the two extremes continue to work in man, so that man does not find a balance in which they flow into one another, but that the two things are active in him. For example, you can meet mystical enthusiasts who ascend to the highest theosophical, symbolic regions, always wanting to rise above their heads, but in ordinary life they are philistines. Loving everything philistine, pedantic, materialistic, tough and so on - yes, tough! - goes quite well with mystical enthusiasm in a person. This, so to speak, obscures the balance deep within the unconscious. There, what is actually a twofold nature comes out in dualism. So in some ways, these two sides can also be present in a person, revealing themselves. One is not a philistine just because one is a dreamer. One can very well be a philistine and a dreamer at the same time. Figure 13 (Fig. 80): There you see the one who is inspired by the insights of the interaction of the dark and the light world, who must connect what is indicated by the child's hovering.  Here you see that which is already there in a certain way as an initiation principle, but which will only have its task in the future: the way in which the secrets of the upper world can be received in Slavic countries today, a kind of Russian figure that has its own shadow beside it, as so often the Russian invisibly carries its own shadow with it, always has its shadow beside it. What is inspired from above, we will then see more clearly. A centaur figure, something that is already humanly shaped or already superhumanly shaped. There is no need to decide this question, but rather to think in terms of form. In between, as a counter-image, the angelic form. Just as we have Ahriman and Lucifer in the present culture, the Germanic-Persian one, so here, where we go a little further, we have the human form, stuck in the animal, and a superhuman form as its opposite.  You see here above the figure still reminiscent of the animal, so to speak the animal transported into the world of the stars, the animal having become ethereal, which contains within itself the forces of initiation for this future time, when these forces on the other side – these forces, which are more of an Ahrimanic nature – are held in the balance by the superhuman, by the angelic, which approaches this figure from the other side.  Here you have the angelic form together with the animal form, but it is something that is ethereally animal and ethereally superhuman. It is the interaction of the mysteries that work in one form or another that will bring about the initiation for the coming age.  The next picture: Here you have once more, so that you can see more of it, the initiating and the initiated. Thus, an attempt has been made to put together in the dome that which leads to the knowledge of the supersensible from the most diverse human conditions - Egyptian, Greek, medieval, past, future - and from the most diverse temporal conditions. And all of this is worked out of color to such an extent that one can have the impression that the wall is destroying itself, destroying itself with something that actually has no end in the soul, that enters into the spiritual; so that the wall, through its artistic design, cancels itself out.  Here you see the Luciferian figure as it is in the central figure; here is Christ. You will remember that you saw it over there in the building: it is in particular red color, worked out of red and yellow. I wanted to distinguish it from the other colors; so that the whole – if one may say so – the Luciferian experience – is a red-yellow experience, from the burning, phosphorous color, from the hot color, everything that leads people to want to rise above their own heads. Everything that is otherwise in the dome and in the building in general is as if synthesized in this eastern group, in this Christ-like figure in the center, Lucifer above it, Ahriman below it, which is then completed in the rock group below. The whole mystery of man is there as a mystery: Christ, Lucifer, man, Ahriman, and thus there is a continuation of the building idea, which was found in its various metamorphoses from ancient Greek, Gothic times to our own. The Greek temple, as a dwelling for a god, had only one meaning in that it enclosed the god. One cannot imagine its forms of construction other than as the dwelling of the god. The medieval Gothic cathedral only has a purpose if the community is in it, otherwise it is abandoned. Its walling indicates that it only has a purpose if the community is in it. Inside, there should be that which leads man to self-knowledge, which presents man to himself, what man is: a being that has to seek the Hypomochlion between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic.  In the next picture, you can see below it the Ahrimanic, which is struck by the rays of fire emanating from the arm of the Representative of Humanity - the Christ Jesus. The Ahrimanic is also held fast by the forces of the earth. It is everything that pushes the human being towards the earth, the heaviness of the earth in the human being, just as the Luciferic is that through which the human being wants to move away from the world. The Ahrimanic: the inward brokenness, the inward heavy suffering. The Luciferic: that which leads the human being to stupefaction, to illusion, to hallucination. Here with Ahriman, everything bony, everything hardening. In Lucifer, everything feverish, pleurisy-like, etc., everything that, if developed one-sidedly by the human being, would cause the human being to burn inwardly through his joy and lust and greed and desire. The Ahrimanic: that which freezes within in pain and therefore endures infinite pain when the rays of fire come over its coldness.  The next picture: the head of the Representative of Man, as I believe it can be fully captured in spiritual science. The usual image that one has of Christ - it was actually only in the sixth century that the bearded Christ emerged - the history of Christ portraits is extremely interesting. The Christ portraits emerged from lively discussions about whether Christ was beautiful or ugly. Of course, these discussions took place at a time when there was no longer a living image of Christ. Then the urge to capture Christ in pictures arose at a time when people could no longer depict beauty in the old Greek sense. We have to try to see Christ spiritually. And as far as I believe I can advocate the matter, it is – precisely by transforming the whole into the spiritual, which can only be seen in what has been preserved in the Akasha Chronicle – the figure of the one who really walked in Palestine at the beginning of our era. But this should not be taken as if there were a portrait study, but it can be felt that the representative of humanity is also connected with history in this way. Everything must follow from the artistic intuition itself. Now I still have a few figures in the next picture: you see the middle group here. Here the Russian initiation, above it the angel, the centaur; then this Golgotha Way, the threefold path, to Christ, to the two thieves or robbers. Here the Ahriman figure, struck by the rays of fire, then the Christ figure, above it Lucifer. Here again the other side: the angel, the centaur figure, thus the initiating one. Below that, in turn, would be the two initiators that belong together. Here you see the five-part leaf that I mentioned yesterday. Then you see the Germanic-Persian initiation, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic one, and then the Egyptian initiation. But this is already very unclear in this picture. You can still see the Egyptian initiate. An attempt has been made to photograph the object in a variety of ways. It is of course true that photography can only give the motif in the most diverse ways, which is basically not what it is all about. I would also like to mention that our building, the double-domed structure, is covered with Norwegian slate. Once, when I was on a lecture tour that took me from Kristiania to Bergen, I looked out of the window of the railway carriage and noticed the beautiful Voss slate from the Voss slate quarries. During that journey, I had the idea that it would be a good idea to use this Voss slate to cover our building – an idea that could then be realized. Those who look at the roofs of our building, as they shine, especially under certain effects of the sun in their grayish-blue, will see that this idea was indeed a justified one, to ship this Norwegian slate to the south just enough to cover this building. It does indeed reflect the sun's rays wonderfully, and the rays of light in turn. Of course, I can only give a brief description of what was attempted in this building. If you combine what I have been able to discuss, because there are pictures, with what you will see in the future, along with many other things, in general and in detail, you will get an idea of how this building should become a hieroglyph, an immediate revelation in the forms and colors of that which lies in the entire anthroposophically oriented world view. It should be presented as a great hieroglyph to the present day. And something would really be done for our time and for the near future if this building could ever be completed. It has been started with a certain devotion to the cause, started at that time especially from those areas that are now confined to world life, that can no longer really contribute because they are completely impoverished in relation to the rest of the world. Events have brought it about that precisely these regions have become impoverished in the face of world events, which first gave rise to this idea of building, and it would actually be good if so much un-chauvinistic, pure humanity could arise in the world that this building could now really be completed on the part of those regions that have suffered less from the horrors of recent years. It should actually be completed. However, if you look at everything that has been a motivating factor in the last five to six years, and if you see it continuing to have an effect on the winners and the defeated, if you see how nowhere does the realization dawn that a completely new situation must take hold, then there can be little hope that this edifice will ever be completed. But it is, my dear friends, a demand of the time, it is a demand of the future. It is something that should be understood quite differently than one has been inclined to understand it until now. And it would perhaps be the first sign of a manifestation of the will to heal the world if, let us say, an understanding were to awaken from the English, French, and American sides, precisely for the completion of this building. The first impulse came from Central Europe; the rest would have to come from those who were neutral in the last years or from those who were hostile to Central Europe, if there were real understanding. But it really seems as if souls want to continue sleeping, as if most of them say to themselves: Oh, what's the point of getting involved in something new! Things will only turn out well if we go back to what was more or less the case until 1914. Many people long for that. My dear friends, that will never come back. And those who want that, and who are working to bring it about, those who cannot rise above the idea that something as new must come among us as the architectural styles of this building here are, they are working towards the downfall of humanity. Isn't it actually, I would say, heartbreaking in terms of the culture of humanity and its development, as Dr. Kolisko had to say here a few days ago, as he had to characterize, as it were, how at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century and well into the 19th century, the Goethe culture had emerged, and that this Goethe culture has completely dried up. It had already dried up in Germany by the 1880s. Perhaps I may allow myself a subjective judgment in these matters, because I myself came to Weimar for the first time in 1889, then in 1890 to the Goethe-Schiller Archive. Yes, my dear friends, there we really were at the burial place of Goetheanism, at the real burial place of Goetheanism. And in that, there was no difference between the various nations of the world. There the German scholar, by cutting syllables, recalled Faust, together with Calvin Thomas, the American scholar, who cut syllables in the same way. People from all over the world worked there. Science had come to the point where it was far away, where it was concerned with Goethe. Truly, everywhere a cutting up of the living Goethean being, terrible, terrible! In Austria, however, which already carried the seed of destruction within itself, which, through its state-political system, carried the seeds of destruction within itself, there were still a few isolated developers of Goetheanism, as Dr. Kolisko characterized it here in these days. Then, what once existed was finished, covered up! It is up to humanity itself whether the same fate that befell Goetheanism befalls all of European culture and its American offspring. It is hard to believe, but the question for humanity today is: Do you want something new and thus save the white race from barbarism, or do you want the same fate for the entire culture of the white race as for Goetheanism? And rising above this barbarism of the white race, what will the non-white races, namely the Negroes and similar races, bring about what is now the civilized world? 1 The question today is: How many people are able to face this problem? How many people feel how serious it is today that it is a matter of the existence or non-existence of contemporary civilization? This building was intended to be nothing less than a living expression of this. It is the continuation of what European culture has achieved, and this continuation should live, not die! But this building does not appeal to an indeterminate fate, to which one might comfortably surrender, but rather appeals to something actively alive. If people want to save European civilization without this active life, without this impulse for salvation, without this will, without this act of freedom, then this culture will not be saved, and will meet the same fate as Goetheanism in Central Europe. Then one might establish large archives and do philology in these large archives about what once was in Europe. But we should not let it come to archives alone; we should let it come to living buildings, both physical and spiritual, which already announce their liveliness through their forms. I would like that to be read from these forms. Because this name, Goetheanum, was longed for by someone, my dear friends, as the final name for this building here, which has already experienced the difference between a mausoleum of Goetheanism and what could be a living organism for the Goethean spirit, but in its further development, now for 1920, in fifty years for 1970, etc. That is what I wanted to say to you today, following the description of the building.
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